Identify Neurodegeneration Early, with Dr. Greg Eckel

What happens a lot with neurodegeneration is people get these diagnoses and there's no known cure. And you don't have to go it alone. Having a trusted source and guide along the path is really needed.

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo. This is Dr. Ed Levitin, and our guest today is Dr. Greg Eckell. In practice since 2001, Dr. Ako co founded Nature Cures Clinic in Portland, Oregon, where he shares what he calls Soraya's gifts with the world. As a loving husband and clinician, he took a deep dive into medical research, looking for cures to his wife's Creutzfeld Jakob disease, a rare chronic neurodegenerative condition with no known cure. While he unfortunately didn't find a solution for Soraya, the information he discovered and now uses in his clinic is showing promise for thousands of people in their brain health. Welcome, Greg.

Very excited.

Thanks for being here.

My pleasure.

So starting like so neurodegeneration is pretty widespread, right. So there's a lot of diseases. What are kind of the top things, top three things you see, and what is your general approach? Let's talk about kind of big picture stuff and we can narrow in. But what, who do you do it with?

What do you do with people? Right. So the components of this, this continuum from neurodegeneration where I'm finding we are actually having success. And I will explain what falls into that camp thought, well, heck, if it's working for folks that are really progressed into a pathology, it's got to be working for as a preventative. And then we can also then push the bounds on longevity. So neurodegeneration. So Sariah had Creutzfeld Jacob disease, which really nobody ever sees in clinical practice. It's one in a million diagnosis. I always knew she was special and one in a million. And unfortunately the specialist agreed with that in such the wrong way. You know, there's 300 cases of CJD in North America a year. Well, when you get in on the Prionic textbook, it's still in its first edition. Prions are misfolded proteins. You realize, oh, this is why there's been no breakthroughs for neurodegeneration, because nobody is addressing prions or misfolded proteins. So what are the classes that go in there? So that is, you know, that's like mad cow syndrome in people for folks that don't know what that is. So it's alpha synuclein for Parkinson's. So I wrote a book called Shake It Off, An Integrative Approach to Parkinson's Solutions. I've hosted a brain regeneration summit. We had a hundred thousand people go through that summit on different facets of neurodegeneration. Well, it's also beta amyloid plaque in Alzheimer's, it's tau proteins. It's also implicated with anxiety. So anxiety can be actually classified in a neurodegenerative state as well. It's not just a mental emotional disorder. And so we're looking at Alzheimer's, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson's disease. ALS also gets categorized here. So there in all of these conditions are on the rise. I have a couple hypotheses as to why those are on the rise. And in particular, it's different than what most people would think. I mean, definitely levels of toxicity are definitely a causative agent. I mean, if you just follow what the lawyers are doing, right? If you have a Parkinson's diagnosis, you're getting hit up by lawyers for your exposures to pesticides as possible causative components for Parkinson's. Heavy metals are implicated there as well. So that's one category. But the bigger component here, I think, is trauma. It's unresolved trauma. I see it. It's as if the innate intelligence of the body just says, you know what? They're not dealing with this. And it could be the person's individual trauma in this lifetime, or it could be ancestral trauma from generations prior to your great great grandmother's epigenetic, you know, switches were turned on, and now the disease process is expressing for you today. You know, we see this with survivors of the Holocaust and levels of anxiety and depression. Now for folks that had family members that were lost in that tragedy and, or survived that tragedy. And so it has made my job as clinician much more harder to get into some of those family lineages. But we've also been on the planet longer as a species, so we've accumulated more of those traumas that are unresolved. So, you know, we're, we're addressing that clinically. For folks in trauma and levels of toxicity Those are the two biggest causative agents. So then you get into, well, what, how do you, how do you unpack that for folks? How do you address it? You know, we, we do a thorough, thorough workup. You know, one of the components. And I'll just. Let's pick on Parkinson's. You know, everybody's focused on dopamine and dopaminergic receptors there, and that is in the substantia nigra, small region of the brain. Well, you know, the frontline medication for that is carbidopa, levodopa. In fact, it's part of the diagnostic criteria because there isn't a good lab test or imaging that would be a definitive diagnosis for Parkinson's.

So if you get better on that, then they diagnose you with Parkinson's, right?

Yeah. So they give you the drug carbidopa, Levodopa, and if that improves your symptoms, it's presumptive of, oh, well, you have Parkinson's. Because the medication, and this was instituted in 1974, I believe Carbidopa Levodova came on the market.

That's okay. Nothing's, nothing's changed since then. It's okay, right?

I mean, and that's the whole point of this, is that it's treating a symptom and, and it actually could be very life changing for folks, but it doesn't do anything to get at underlying cause or imbalance for folks. So I definitely, you know, my moniker is where east meets west. Naturally, we want to use what works, what moves the needle in the real world for folks. And I talk to a lot of patients, they don't like being on the medication. You know, as a naturopathic physician and Chinese medicine practitioner, I, you know, I, my bias is to do more natural therapeutics. And at the same time, sometimes the carbidopa, Levodopa is very beneficial to help people with their gait, you know, the smoothness of their gait, decreasing their tremor, you know, alleviating some of the symptoms. And it's, you know, sometimes it's not. Again, I don't want to take that away from folks, but I do see a lot of folks that aren't on that and don't need to go on it. And with the levers that we've discovered, you know, we're, we're having some good success with other items as well.

Let's back up a few steps because, you know, you, we are clinicians, so we understand what to look out for. For if we're picking on Parkinson's today. As a neurodegenerative disease. What are the things our listeners would be looking out for to say, oh, that's actually something I should walk out, look out for, get tested for, think about. And then we could talk about reversal and prevention, but I think they might not even have the distinction of what we're talking about.

Yeah, early signs and symptoms for sure. And we can put in some of the other neurodegenerative states as well here, but we'll stay on the Parkinson's front. You know, loss of sense of smell, constipation.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you distinguish that for people given Covid? I know, I said it. I said the first swear word.

Well, why does Covid affect sense of smell? It's indicative of neuro inflammation is what is happening there. So definitely I'm seeing an acceleration of folks into neurodegenerative states post vaccination and also post getting Covid. Because if you've done nothing to squash that neuroinflammation for folks, you know that fire still burns. And so that is, you know, cranial nerve number one, the olfactory. Your sense of smell is a very telltale sign. Now, post Covid, I don't want to be, you know, alarmist of saying, well, because you had Covid, you're now a candidate for Parkinson's disease. However, it is on the same pathways that we're talking about. It's neuro inflammation. That's why that's a part of the symptom of COVID or post Covid or long Covid syndrome. You know, most people after two weeks to a month will get their sense of smell back if that was part of their symptom picture for Covid. Covid, but it just means the inflammation on the brain had gone away. So this is more long term sense loss of sense of smell. There are some simple scratch tests that you can do, right. Remember back from childhood, the scratch and sniff books that we had? So that, that's one. Constipation also is pretty ubiquitous in North America because we don't eat our vegetables. Right. The pat answer from the naturopath is eat your vegetables. But you know, it is. There's multiple causes to constipation, but there's a hypothesis in Parkinson's disease called the Brock hypothesis that Parkinson's starts in the gut one to two decades before any central nervous system symptoms begin. And how they figured that out, they took two sets of mice, they severed half the half of the mice, they cut their Cranial Nerve 10, the great wandering nerve, the vagus nerve, the and then they injected both sets of mice with alpha synuclein in their gut. And the portion that had an intact vagus nerve all developed Parkinson's disease. And those that had a severed vagus nerve did not develop Parkinson's disease. We know the afferent or the direction of that nerve. We, most of the time we think our brain controls our body. But that cranial Nerve X, actually 78% of the information is coming from the periphery and coming back to our brain to inform for regulation. And I'd call it the homeodynamic state of the body. So that constipation, acting out your dreams. This is what took Alan Alda of MASH fame into see his neurologist in that he was hitting, hitting his wife with his pillow. He thought it was a sack of potatoes and she was an invader. Now this was in his dreams. But acting out the dreams, you can get into a REM sleep disorder pattern before any neurodegenerative state. So, you know, we look at sleep, sleep issues as well. And again, pretty ubiquitous symptoms that people could have. But those are earlier symptoms to say, you know, know, don't blow those off. Those are very important to share with your healthcare provider and could be clues to a process that is simmering in the background. While it may have not created a tremor or gate walking difficulty, which is like the shuttle, you know, the kind of shuttling, step shuffling that you get into, but before you can really get into some preventative and try to get ahead of the curve on, on a progression of a disease process. So those are early, early symptoms, you know, on in the CJD realm that is a rapidly progressing dementia. So you know, what kind of catapulted me into a brain regenerative specialist and into longevity was really watching Sariah go through rapidly. So you know, what was that? That was stress triggering memory loss, which then progressed to in two months time, inability to speak and really loss of cognition. And then 18 months later, basically leaving her body off the planet. I mean it was a brutal, brutal ride. And by firsthand experience of myself and the kids living with Critzfield Jacob disease going through Sariah's body, that differential diagnosis, there's no test for that either. So it's a differential. So you look at, there's autoimmune encephalitis that could be happening or cjd, these kind of ominous currently incurable conditions. And then that also then goes into the mild cognitive impairment, dementia, Alzheimer's realm of medicine, memory loss, cognition. You know, it's this Statement when you hear from providers, just get used to it. You're getting old. I call hogwash on that. Right.

Did she at one point have a diagnosis of ALS Also, given the rapidity.

Of her progression that actually was not on the first tier of differential. Because of the component ALS is actually people keep their cognition and start losing bodily functions, which is the exact opposite. Is also as maybe more brutal because people know that it's happening versus CJD was, you know, she basically lost. Lost her mind early. So it is, you know, it just, you know, having your loved one with their life on the line and going through kind of the fractionated pieces, it's literally. It's heartbreaking. And so to go through it, you know, coming out the other side, I was like, you know, we. I want to make a difference here. It's really litten. Lit a, you know, a fire under my tuchus, so to speak, and a passion of putting flags on the earth around neurodegeneration. Brain health and then longevity are the three camps that I'm established in and really wanting to move the needle for folks. I'm a firm believer, you know, you, you don't have to go it alone. You know, what happens a lot with neurodegeneration is people get these diagnosis and there's no known cure. You know, I think neurologists actually have one of the highest rates of suicide because they can diagnose very well, but they don't have any solutions. I mean, you know, you look at, you know, we can talk about different components of neurodegeneration, but the, you know, the aspects of that are, you don't have to go it alone. And having a trusted source and guide along the path is really needed. I mean, I'm talking to people around the globe these days, and the way the world works again, the whole process for me, just reinstated my faith in the oneness of all, which has actually radically changed my, my, the way that I help people and the way that I talk about health and disease and also the, the way that I track, you know, what are we doing clinically with people? So it is, you know, thinking about disease as separation from source or the oneness or unity consciousness.

I'm good. Let's pause for a second just because I think some people are aware of that concept and some people are not. So can you give a little sense of what that is?

Yes, it is. So it's a different way of thinking about what is going on in this reality. So it's. We're bringing in a Little bit of quantum physics and discussion around. Instead of Newtonian physics, which is matter, you know, we go from point A to point B and there's time in between we can get above. So matter is the slowest waveform. That's why it feels very real right here. I'm knocking on my desk, this feels like pretty real solid. But we know if we push on all of the cells at the center of the cell we have the proton, we have neutrons circling around that there's actually nothing there. So in a lot of the great textbooks talk about it in the different religious philosophies around the you know, concept of this is an illusion. We're pretending to be separate in this reality. And it looks, I mean there's a lot of compelling evidence there. But if you look at it from a different framework, it is the as one whole entity, like the universe is one. There's this saying in Chinese medicine, you are the universe, the universe is in you. And so that concept is we're actually light beings being compressed down into these bodies. There's a lot of friction down here in the physical plane. But ultimately energy cannot be created nor destroyed. It just changes forms. So right now we have bodies and we should actually, you know, treat them a lot better. Like we just take them for granted. It's pretty miraculous actually to even be born on the planet, you know, so to have, have that understanding and bring that into a clinical encounter is. It's a whole different ball game and a different discussion with people.

So how did your practice change and how does it help you treat people?

Yes. So one, it, it has provided me the opportunity to just speak to the truth for people one without dancing around or you know, cutting to the chase of like, well, what actually is the, what is happening here?

Can you give a specific example?

Yes. So in the expression of I don't ever treat disease processes, so what does that mean? I'm treating whole dynamic heart centered beings moving through time and space. So I do not treat disease. A lot of people treat symptoms or disease. So what does that mean? Well, in the example of Parkinson's, well we give carbidopa levodopa for the symptom of dopamine, you know, depletion. But that doesn't do anything to address for the individual why. The question why. We may never answer the question why, but we have to ask the question why. And where that leads to in a, in a treatment program, in reality for an individual is well, if the innate intelligence, our natural born state is whole and we now have disease Process at hand in a oneness principle of okay, well that is actually the world. We're not victims. So this is happening for us. What is it that we're supposed to be learning through this environment? And it may never, you know, it may not get to the correction or progression of an illness like with Soraya. I was like, well this, everything that I discovered did not help Soraya. I mean it maybe prolonged her life. But the quality of life was not, you know, not great. And at the same time it has come out with a bunch of potential levers to push for people to actually create change. Like, you know, I have a patient, rick, he was 65 years old, really debilitated with Parkinson's, basically couldn't go from his bed to the bathroom. He came into our brain regeneration camp and using this oneness principle of addressing bio, physical biofield issues and down into biochemical and physiologic structure. So we address that all of the levels. He's out this summer, whitewater rafting in Alaska. Another patient, Cindy, also 10 years into Parkinson's diagnosis, debilitated. Stop walking, even with assistance because she was falling so much, really had the inability to get dressed because her tremors were so bad. So she was kind of stuck on her couch. We did kind of what I call my fancy approach to brain regeneration. Got a thorough assessment, looking outside of the box, addressing all levels of dis ease and looking at low hanging fruit of things that we could correct for her intelligence to correct and heal itself. And you know, she calls me a year later and says, Dr. Eckel, you'll never guess what. My husband just told me to slow down walking in the park. I was like, wow, when is the last time he said that to you, Cindy? She said it's been over a decade. So you know, she's walking, she got her quality of life back. And so looking at it at this oneness principle and treating in a whole, in a whole fashion, we're addressing all of the levels of the beingness, not just lab work, not just imaging, but really looking at a heart centered approach, I guess would be another way that I could talk about that.

So where can people find you? Because I know, I'm sure listeners will have a lot of questions.

Yeah, yeah, I know that was we, we rambled right on through there. So it's Dr. Greg Eckel, nature cures with an S clinic.com also B vital the letter B vital PC dot com. So we've got, that's. We just opened up our second clinic in Park City, Utah. So we're out of Portland, Orego Park City, Utah.

Congratulations.

Thank you. And, and we're also worldwide, so we do a lot of telemedicine. We do consults. I've got some great heart centered providers here and you know, we're out to make a difference. So, you know, my encouragement is you don't have to go it alone and just get into a conversation with these two lovely providers here or contact us and we, you know, we're here for you.

Awesome. Thank you.

Am I closing the episode?

You're always closed.

What do you mean?

Greg, thanks for being here. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. Our guest today was Dr. Greg Eckel and all of the ways to find him are in the show notes. If you like the show, give us a like and share it with a friend so we can spread the word. Have a good day.

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