Lower Your Risk for Cancer & Chronic Diseases, with Dr. Greg Eckel @thebrainregen

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 Levitan, and our guest today is Dr. Greg Eckel. In practice since 2001, Dr. Eckel co founded Nature Cures Clinic in Portland, Oregon, where he shares what he calls Soraya's gifts. Did I say that right?

You did.

You did.

All right. 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 Psoria, the information he discovered and now uses in his clinic is showing promise for thousands of people in their brain health. Welcome, Greg.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

Cool.

My pleasure.

So it stinks that your mess became your message, right?

It really. It really truly does. I. I don't wish that path on anyone, and it is my path. I didn't want my suffering to be for naught. You know, that whole process with Soraya, it's a, you know, kind of a curse and a blessing altogether. You know, one of the gifts of. Of the whole episode and chapters of my life was I. I got to learn one, the preciousness of life firsthand and know and know how, you know, how deep a love could happen on the planet. So, you know, for that, I am forever grateful to Soraya and my path. And in general, it, you know, it really ripped me open as a human being, opened my heart up and reinstated my faith in the oneness of all in such an odd way. Such an odd way.

Yeah.

How long ago was that?

That was four years ago. Four years ago. Not that long. And, you know, we don't do grief well in our culture. I. I definitely, you know, for a little while there, I was a harbinger of, like, the grief ambassador. Like, people would just. And they still do open up to me about their losses when they hear my story, and I'm comfortable with that. You know, we just don't. We don't do grief well. And a piece of this is, you know, I knew the health care system was broken, you know, being in practice for 22 years now. But having, 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 to go through it, you know, I. Coming out the other side, I was like, you know, 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 diagnoses 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 you know, they get a diagnosis, they get medicated, and then they get forgotten until the next year.

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 what.

Sure.

What do you do?

Well, you know, what 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 Brain Brain. Thank you. 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. And 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 on the planet. And I'll get into how we assess and kind of unpack this for folks. But 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, or it could be ancestral trauma from generations prior. Your great great grandmother's epigenetic switches were turned on, and now the disease process is expressing for you. Today 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 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 are, 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.

Well, so if you get better on that, just for the listeners, Craig, 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 medication, you truly had a deficiency in that.

Correct?

Right. And this was instituted in 1974, I believe.

Carbidopa, Levodopa came on 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 with 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.

Now let's back up a few steps because, you know, we are clinicians, so we understand what to look out 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 can talk about reversal and prevention. But I think they might not even.

Have 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, it is. Well, why does Covid affect sense of smell? It's indicative of neuro inflammation is what is happening there. So definitely we are. 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, it's, 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. And 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. But that 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. Um, and they, 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, 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. Most of the time we think our brain controls our body. But that cranial nerve 10, 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 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 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, 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 gait 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, you know that 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 Soraya go through rapidly. So that, 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, you know, experience of myself and the kids living with Creutzfeld 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 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. The way the world works. Again, the whole process for me just reinstated my. 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 before? Sure. Mentioned that a couple of times.

Yeah. Great. 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, right 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.

How has that changed your practice? Because I, from a. I've. I've studied Buddhism and the idea of non dual reality of we all think of the world as everything outside and then there's inside world of our thoughts, our feelings are in our body. And another way to describe what you're talking about is yes, we feel the desk or if. Let's see what I feel, I can feel this. But what. When does actually the atom of my hand actually touch the atoms here? And when does it mean to actually touch? Like we can't actually know. So a lot of the concepts you're talking about is actually very well scientifically studied. Disconsidered I guess.

And it is, yeah, it's unfortunate that it's considered on the woo woo. I mean it does sound woo woo when you start talking about it. But there is a lot of research to support that we can be both particle and waveform. And that gets out there. And I think it's just because it's not really in our awareness that we kind of put it in the woo category. But more and more, you know, we're seeing more and more quantum physics come into our discussion in this kind of 3D plane that we're now discussing of like well, how do you know? I mean, you know, it gets into well, what is consciousness? And it could be consciousness waking up to itself in this concept of in oneness.

So I think we need to, I think we need to roll that back a little bit.

I'm sort of, I'm the practical one. So I'm like what? I don't want this to sound nasty because I don't mean it to sound nasty. But what I want to understand is what's the difference that this makes? What difference does this conversation make for people? Yeah, like can we dial it back and come, come a little more.

Your practice changed once you actually got that. So how did your practice change and how does it help you?

Yes. So the plan. Yeah. In talking to people and in the real world. Wendy. So I super appreciate that because it's gotta be practical. Like it's gotta the needle for people in the real world. Right. And so one it, it has provided me the opportunity to just speak to the truth for people without dancing around or you know, cutting to the chase of like. Well what actually is the, what is happening here? So how has it changed my practice, dude?

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, 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, 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 may be 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 down into biochemical and physiologic structures. So we address at 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. Echo, 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 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 with you. Yeah.

So how does going from neurodegenerative disease to longevity, that's, that's a pretty one. You're talking about major disease that's majorly affecting people versus something that's gonna prolong, hopefully health span, not just lifespan, Right?

Yeah.

Yep.

When you start talking about I want to live to be 150 years old, people just look at you funny, right? Because they're like, have you seen what the elderly look like out there? Like, that's a diseased, sick state. But so what I'm talking about on longevity and how I got there was one, all right, I've gone through this process. It's given me a deep appreciation for the miracle of life, the gift that we have together. We have no idea how long we're on the planet. I mean, it, you know, this planet is beautiful, Nature is amazing. Relations with loved ones are treasure. And we, you know, so just the, the deep, deep appreciation for life like that, I mean, I got that, like, that was like, wow, once it's gone, you know, that's pretty permanent. And so why longevity? Well, it really has given me like, you know, boy, this is a pretty magical place that we find ourselves in. And it is really miraculous that we're actually even born. So why not treat it as the miracle that it truly is? And are we able to extend the quality with our brain and with our brawn and with community and have, you know, I want to just, I want to live long and then just die. Right. I don't want to be into disease, process or chronic illness. So. So it got me thinking, like, heck, if these programs that I'm putting together are helping people that are significantly progressed into a pathology, what if we put it in for us now and, and really, you know, change the game and get into thriving? Like, what does thriving look like? Like, how do we, are we able to age backwards? You know, I most of the time feel like an 18 year old kid. Like, I'm giddy with excitement when I wake up in the morning to see how does this mystery unfold today. And so I wanted to share that with People on the other end of the continuum of like, you know, I'm seeing this work over here. What if we just move the conversation on the continuum over into a wellness or health span discussion and you know, lo and behold, it's one, it's a lot of fun. Two, it is, it's a whole different conversation to have with people. So I think I did it mainly for my heart of like, okay, I can help a lot of significantly progress progressed people in their disease process. And I also want to work on what, what does thriving look like? Like, how good can it get? Like how, how, you know, along those lines. So that, and that's a fun conversation to have.

So are there any, have you been able to boil down in your work on this the top five things that set the stage for longevity? Maybe it's four, maybe it's six, but.

You know, like, let's talk about the top three. Right, the top three killers. Cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegeneration.

No, wait, let me stop you, Greg. Let's go from the other direction. Not the things that take away longevity, but what are the behaviors and lifestyle choices that lead to longevity generally.

Well, right, but you, you have to start on what are the top killers. And then you work backwards and forward. So we can start on whichever end of that discussion, I think to make it more practical to people, because those are the top killers. One, the first tenant is don't die. So you have to get a proper workup on that, right?

I guess, yeah.

Well, I mean, it's the truth though. Don't die is the first tenet of longevity because the longer that we're around, you know, the advances in medicine that are coming down the pike in the next 10 years are phenomenal. I mean, I, you know, I get to talk with Dr. Anthony Attila. He's growing organs in his lab from stem cells from skin at Wake Forest. And I mean, that's miraculous in and of itself. That should be, you know, he's predicting within three to five years having FDA approval for that process. So I mean, and those are solid organs. So that is like the truth is like the longer you're around, the more advances that we're going to see in medicine. But if we're going to talk about thriving. So from your in the direction that you want to go on that, which I can do that, you know, we're looking at, you want to maintain the vessel for as long as possible in a fully functional, pain free manner. You know, I've had the privilege of sitting with 91 year olds. You know, right when I started my practice, I'm sitting with 91 year olds and they're like, hey, Doctor, if I would have known I was going to live this long, I think I would have taken better care of myself, you know. And so I took that to heart. That was 20 years ago.

The accidental octogenarian.

Yeah. Right. And so having that is like, okay, well you want to really maintain your joints, you want to maintain your muscles and you want to maintain your heart and you want to maintain your brain. And not just maintain it, but you want to really is. Are there ways that you can reverse the aging? So we can measure biologic age, which is not just your times around the skin, but it's your. How old do your cells think they are? Right. So you've seen people your same age, they either look 10 years younger or 10 years older. And you know, for a variety of reasons, they're genetics component, there's lifestyle component, stress level component. I mean, you look at any US President and in the four years that they're in office, they age extremely fast. And so. Well, what is that? Stress levels. Right. And so stress, we know, is a metabolizer. It will fasten, quicken your metabolism and accelerate the aging process. So you, you look at what can you do to slow the that aging process and then how do you reverse it?

Okay, so.

So 150. So let's talk about. You said cardiovascular cancer and neurodegenerative. Yep. How do you prevent cancer?

So that's the trillion dollar question right there.

You brought it up. You said don't. No, no, I did.

So one, there's some early detection methods now. So there are, I believe the testing is getting more and more sensitive to picking up cancer in the body at earlier and earlier stages. So early early detection is crucial. I don't have the answer on prevention. We do know there are certain characteristics. One, if you're a smoker, please stop. We know that that is very detrimental and also accelerates the aging, also has increased cancer rates. Sugar balances are another big one. So on the diabetes front, to even uncontrolled sugar. So you can get measurements and blood with hemoglobin A1C fasting glucose, you can.

Measure there for a second. There is association with higher blood sugar with increased cancer risk.

Yes.

So that is there. And then I just want to make sure to go back, go back. The one of the newest tests that are out there is called gallery by company called grail grail.com I think. Right. We've been using for six months now or something over a year now. That just came out a couple of years ago. That really looks at the blood test, it's called the liquid biopsy and looks at early cancer and can pick up pancreatic cancer and things that we have had no good evidence ability to pick up. So.

Right, yeah, about 65 cancer varietals. There's also a test coming out of India from SAR labs that they are claiming they can pick up cancer six months before it occurs in certain biomarkers in their blood. And they actually have a pretty decent sample size. So that's not FDA approved in the states as of yet, but it shows really great promise. I know the owners over there. It's a really compelling family story of their father died of cancer and then the sons and family created this company to help, you know, kind of that personalized story. So like I said, don't die is the first tenet because there are these, these things are like right on the horizon as far as like figuring it out. And we do know if you can reverse the biologic age of an individual by seven years, we can prevent about 50% of chronic illness from developing. So that is, there's some compelling evidence there in this discussion. So on the cancer front, we do know there are lifestyle things as far as circulation, quality of blood hormone balances of like optimizing your innate intelligence as far as what, what it needs to heal itself. So you know, I operate from the, the understanding is the body can heal itself given the right information and removing obstacles to cure. And so that aspect of it in the cancer realm, you know, there are things like senescent cells, you know, there's some senolytics that are now on the market to clear the zombie cells out of circulation. We know, you know, caloric restriction or time restricted eating. There's great evidence on life extension with a quality health span with those behaviors. So along those lines are that.

The other thing I'll plug is toxins as you mentioned before, because we know toxins have a strong cancer.

Well they're innately inflammatory. So cancer to me is a state of inflammation gone terribly wrong, way out of control and growth. So manage toxins, reduce inflammation, reduce risk.

Yeah, and I mean we're, we're all exposed to crazy amount of toxins. And although we have a lot of, some of the toxins have some, some kind of profile in terms of their toxic profile, but nobody has a toxic profile with the hundreds of toxins that are currently in our body. And how do they work? How do they interplay together and mess up our body even more?

So, yeah, I mean that, I mean that. Yes. I, I mean I. Full on agreement. You know Professor Serolani who did a lot of the research in the European Union on glyphosate and Roundup in particular, he's one of my.

Don't get Wendy started glyphosate ending in.

Two weeks or three weeks on it.

Awesome. So he, I saw his first lecture in North America at the American Academy of Environmental Medicine a couple years ago and his perfect. And his, you know, his research, I mean it showed in the Lab roundup was 99 times more, more toxic than just glyphosate alone. And you know, it was like mouse study after mouse study is like, wait a minute, there's something else in this slew. And that stuff is still sold in like Fred Meyers here in the Northwest. It's like, wow, we are, we're.

Our neighbor's still spraying it cancer cosmic agents.

And we're getting. Cancer's coming from. Yeah.

Yes. We're getting heart attacks just looking at our neighbors and trying to talk them out of using around them.

Well, like this is where I drove up. He has the most beautiful lawn and he and his father in law lie on the grass and pick out weeds. So I actually thought that his beautiful lawn was because of manual labor. So I drive home one day and I see he's walking around with a portable can of glyphosate spritzing his yard. And I was like, round. Yeah. And I was like, I walked in the house, I said, ed, our neighbor sprays glyphosate. I mean I never really thought about it, right?

But like we have like, we have organic vegetables and fruit trees and we have like this back beautiful backyard.

And our neighbor to the right doesn't spray because he has a dog. Our neighbor to the left doesn't spray. I don't know why, but he doesn't.

It's like, even if we try the hardest next door, you never know drift, right? Yeah.

And you get that your neighbor drift. And so then you look at, okay, well we're all getting exposed, so what can you do? So saunas. We know the evidence on saunas, four to seven times a week will also reduce all cause mortality by 50%. So you can see the premise actually Wendy, is don't die. And there are. And it is on. And it is on these components of like, look, we know we have levels of toxicity. I truly believe as humans we have not been taught how powerful we are so, you know, we, we've got these kind of practical things that we can put in saunas. Exercise, movement, cardiovascular disease. So one of the things on that front would be to do VO2 max testing, which is this is, you know, putting somebody on a bike or a runner. You do a full EKG lead and you're measuring forced volume of oxygen out of the system. And then once you pass an anaerobic threshold of like, you can't get any more oxygen in because you're utilizing it so quickly. You see what does the heart and the lungs do? So that is the best predictor of longevity that I have found because it can pick up Cardiovascular microvascular changes 10 to 15 years before it ever becomes macrovasculature. Right. We know the first symptom of cardiovascular disease a lot of times kills the person, which is a heart attack. And they had no, you know, no symptoms before. Well, we know in the medical world that's maybe not true, but they weren't listening to some of the earlier, more subtle symptoms of what.

I don't know where you get that, because all our patients listen to their bodies innately and they have. They're perfect. I don't feel weird.

So basically, while we're sitting here, okay, so rule number one is don't die. Rule number two is optimize the function. Function. Rule number three. C. Rule number one.

Yes.

Like the.

That's like boil it down, but pay attention.

Yeah.

No. Part. Part of what?

We want to keep it simple.

Well, we spend a lot of time talking to our patients of like, I. I'll speak for myself. I have a lot of patience.

Why only now?

Oh, you know, start now.

I start now. We're in an interview and he goes, when do you really meant to say. And I was like, I'm sitting right here.

Can I speak down by loud? Really done heckling me. Okay, so one of the things we do is like, spend a lot of time talking to our patients about. Listen, listen, listen. If your body's tired, listen, don't. You don't need to caffeinate. It's not a caffeine deficiency. If your body's in pain, listen to the ouchies. If you, if we give you a few supplements, huh?

Ouchies, ouchies.

If you. If I gave you too many supplements and they don't feel good. Stop. Listen to your body. It's not. Don't give away your power. Don't give away your authority of your own body. So it's one of those, like, I think, when you talk about people haven't been educated. People are educated to say at least the old time older generations, doctors know everything. You listen to what they say, take your pills, don't, don't, you'll be fine. And the new conversation is at least on our side, I think, I'm sure it's on same in yours is your body has the intelligence and needs. Listen to what your body says. Get some inspiration from people. Could be doctors or whatever's the right place for you, but you got to listen, but you gotta actually pay attention and slow down enough.

Yeah, it's, it's like that Cat Stevens song, the answer lies within. Right? So it is the intelligence is speaking in the apparatus of our bodies. And I think as great clinicians and providers, we the ones that listen. Like you're saying you're coaching and educating your patient base on. You've got to listen to your body like. And that's what all I do. I say I do a lot of nothing all day. You know, it's the body, it's the person and it's the, you know, the levers that we push on. I can hold the space, I can create the certainty or at least knowingness that one, we have a safe space. Two, we're turning over the stones that we need to turn over. But ultimately it is the individual doing the work. They're the ones that are telling us what is the, what's the path here to Wellville, how do we get back there? So yeah, I love that like, and that is that component of really empowering the person to trust their, their wisdom and really getting them back in touch with that. Because what has happened now when people get into a fear based component, they're not able to access their prefrontal cortex, which is where all of the possibilities exist. So when we're in our limbic and amygdala, which is fear, when you're under fear or feel like okay, when's the other, when's the other shoe gonna fall? Or you know, some like we're being vigilant. Like we just went through, you know, three years of major propaganda around fearing other and some people are still in living in that fear. Well, that fear doesn't allow them to access their greatness or all of the resources and possibilities that exist for them. So I want to make sure in this discussion around longevity, we're talking mindset as well. And it seems like that's a good lead in to bring that into our conversation where you know, we, we've got some great research Coming out from the Joe Dispenza camp around, you know, meditation, turning on serpentine 5 gene, which is potently anti inflammatory and you know, really helps the body get into a relaxed regenerative state, parasympathetic activity. So there are those aspects of care that really there's no time in conventional medicine to address any of that. And there is no rep coming to the office saying, are you getting your patients to meditate? You know, here's a, here's a script.

Space isn't coming over your office. They came over. The reps came over my office.

Oh, there you go.

So I think this is a good time to recap because we're sort of drawing near to the end where it's. I gave you a hard time about don't die because it sounds so like kind of snarky, but really if you can stay long enough and healthy enough, even at a sort of basic level, technology will advance to keep you moving, to keep you alive. What did you call that?

Singularity?

Singularity?

No, no, no singularity.

But isn't there something like maximal volume or escape velocity?

That's what it is.

Okay. So if you stay alive long enough, escape velocity will help. Timed fasting, stress reduction, sleep, saunas, sauna, detox. I think detox is a category. Movement and food.

Yeah, yeah.

And love. Love wasn't mentioned there.

So I am so glad you brought up love. And it actually sounds like a very big hippie agenda right there.

More woo woo. Right?

Yeah. It is all about the heart. You know, in Chinese medicine we talk about the heart as the emperor empress and it's all guided by the heart. So it's, you know, how do we help people gain their full faculties back, get into heart and brain coherence and create from their heart space? So love is the answer. It is the vibration that is healing. We all desire it as humans. And so like that is, that's the secret special sauce there. Now we don't have that in a bottle, but the way that you get there is by opening your heart and allowing it in. So that. I'm really glad that you brought that up with Wendy.

Yeah, I think, unfortunately, I think we have to close. So where can people find you? Because I know I'm sure listeners will have a lot of questions.

Yeah, we're scratching the surface here.

Yeah, yeah, I know. That was we, we rambled right on through there. So it's Dr. Greg Eckel, Nature Cures with an sclinic.com also B vital the letter B vitalpc.com so we've got that's we just opened up our second clinic in Park City, Utah. So we're out of Portland, Oregon. Park City, Utah. Thank you. 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 you know we're here for you.

Awesome.

Awesome. Thank you.

Am I closing the office?

You're always close. 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. Sam.