In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Greg Eckel explains his FAN-C Approach to Parkinson’s Disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

The combination of Naturopathic and Chinese Medicine (acupuncture and botanical medicine) has provided Dr. Eckel with a variety of tools to treat both acute and chronic illness while valuing the principles of prevention and wellness.

He has developed a deep and personal knowledge of chronic neurological conditions, including regenerative medicine and the development of a brain regenerative program.

Dr. Eckel is trained in family practice and maintains a particular interest in neurodegenerative disorders – including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injuries, headaches, migraines, palsies, and post stroke recovery.

Main Questions Asked About Neurodegenerative Disorders:

• What can you tell us about your FAN-C approach to Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative disorders?
• What more can you tell us about the brain regeneration aspect?
• So how often are these procedures done?
• What’s the long-term effect?
• What about the Brain Degeneration Summit you’re hosting?

Key Points made by Dr. Eckel on Neurodegenerative Disorders:

• The FAN-C approach is a process I’ve put together over the last two decades of practice. It comes out of research into the neurodegenerative field as a result my wife’s terminal illness,
• The “F” stands for functional – treating the whole dynamic, heart-centered people, really listening to people, and addressing them as the whole dynamic being.
• The “A” stands for assessment – a lot of time when you get a diagnosis in the neuro realm, there’s no definitive test or imaging, it’s a clinical diagnosis, but a lot of things can mimic central nervous system and brain neurodegeneration whether it be dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or M.S,
• A big component that I see with brain disorders and nervous system issues is heavy metals. We all have heavy metals in us, but in a neurological condition we must rule those in or out.
• There’s a lot of fat in your brain, and we store these toxins and metals in our fat. Once they are removed treatment can work,
• The second component is molecular mimicry, for Parkinson’s it’s Epstein-Barr virus, Cytomegalovirus, and herpes simplex virus. Also, other chronic infections can mimic neurodegenerative conditions; so you need to do a proper workup on viruses and infection.
• Thirdly, we do hormone balancing.
• The fourth area I look at is the microbiome to make sure that the flora and fauna of the gut is what is should be with no imbalances.
• Then the “N” stands for nerve, particularly nerve health. Here we’re looking at the specific nutrients for nerve health.
• Then the “dash C” is for cellular regeneration, exosomes and stem cell therapy. Just getting into the research, you realize that there is a lot showing that this is a safe and effective therapy.
• That’s how I codified the FAN-C approach to neurodegenerative disorders and Parkinson’s in particular,
• Honestly, the biggest lever in the whole approach is the regenerative medicine component. It’s controversial, but only because there’s an “unknowingness.”
• I use mesenchymal stem cells from cord blood.
• These cells secrete exosomes with growth factors and anti-inflammatory cytokines.
• My analogy is, when you have a condition/a disease process occurring, your symphony is playing the wrong tune, it’s become disorganized. When you introduce the cells to the body, they help reorganize the innate healing ability of the body – it’s like a new conductor coming in and getting your symphony playing the right tune.
• Additionally, these cells can differentiate into neurons in your brain, cartilage in your knee, osteocytes for your bone, muscle cells, epithelial cells, heart tissue,
• One of our practices is to do an intra-nasal procedure to bypass the blood-brain barrier.
• A lot of the procedures we do in regenerative medicine is more in the orthopedic realm; and I’m employing these cells mor in the neuro-generative space.
• I have people flying in from around the world for our Camp Nature Cures. We don’t’ just use the cells; we use the FAN-C approach – a functional, comprehensive program for all areas of the body.  We do hyperbaric therapy and some IV therapy and acupuncture, and we tailor Chinese herbs for people to take home with them.
• Basically, this is regenerative medicine. It doesn’t wear off.  It’s actually your body healing itself.
• We definitely do follow-ups by phone or Skype.
• Occasionally, we try to partner the patient with practitioners in their locale that can help with hormonal imbalances, viral loads or heavy metals, as we really want to address these things.
• During the upcoming Brain Degeneration Summit, I will be interviewing world experts on brain health on a full range of neurodegenerative disorders, including dementia or Alzheimer’s, M.S., Parkinson’s, and ALS, and the general mindset on healing the brain.
• Unfortunately, when we’re talking about our brain and our central nervous system, it’s so multifactorial. The environment we’re living in influences us; the food we eat influences us; our mindset and our thought processes influence us.  On top of that, there are viruses and stresses and traumas and the whole slew of what physicians do.
• I think there is a misunderstanding when you get these diagnoses and it becomes just “watch and wait” and get monitored. There are a lot of things we can do for our brain health, to either prevent or treat these things.

Resources Mentioned for Neurodegenerative Disorders:

Book – Shake it Off: An Integrative Approach to Parkinson’s Solutions

Dr. Eckel’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Neurodegenerative Disorders with Dr. Greg Eckel appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Terry Wahls explains her updated version of the Wahls Protocol for MS, autoimmune disease, and a number of other health issues.

Dr. Wahls is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa where she conducts clinical trials.  In 2018 she was awarded the Institute for Functional Medicine’s Linus Pauling Award for her contributions in research, clinical care and patient advocacy.  She is also a patient with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, which confined her to a tilt-recline wheelchair for four years.  Dr. Wahls restored her health using a diet and lifestyle program she designed specifically for her brain and now pedals her bike to work each day.

She is the author of The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine, The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles, and the cookbook The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions.

Main Questions Asked about the Wahls Protocol:

• Can you tell us your story of beating MS?
• So, can you give us the basic principles of your plan for your brain health and mitochondrial health (the Wahls Protocol)?
• You still use these principles in your clinics to help patients?
• So, it’s not just for MS and autoimmune disease?
• And, it’s not expensive?
• I would think within your group classes, there’s a certain amount of support from everybody?
• Thinking about the different parts of the Wahls Protocol, what are the three things listeners could do right now to start helping themselves?
• Are you still doing research?

Key Points made by Dr. Wahls about the Wahls Protocol:

• I’m a conventional internal medicine doctor who was diagnosed, in 2000, with multiple sclerosis. Of course, I wanted to treat my disease aggressively but, despite the best people and newest drugs, I went relentlessly downhill.  In 2002, I was introduced to the Paleo Diet, but I continued to go downhill.
• But I’d been reading the basic science, ancestral health principles, functional medicine, and integrating all that I was reading. I designed a diet and lifestyle protocol for my mitochondria, for my brain cells, to slow my decline.  And to my amazement, my brain fog went away, my pain was stopped, and then I began getting stronger.
• The first thing I’d been adding were supplements targeting my mitochondria, then I though of using the nutrients in my supplements as a guide for how I should design my nutrition plan. So, I created a very structured Paleo diet.  Once I redesigned my diet, the speed of change was breathtaking.
• So much so that I started focusing on diet in my clinics, the primary care clinic, the traumatic brain injury clinic, and I had remarkable results. Remarkable success at getting people to make these big changes.
• I began seeing people from the pain clinic, people from primary care and psychiatry clinics with complicated medical problems; and we’re helping them.
• We’re turning off brain fog, we’re stabilizing their mood, we’re dramatically improving their blood sugars; people with severe obesity are beginning to lose weight.
• It was remarkable the variety of people that would come. We had so many people coming that we had to figure out how to do all this in group classes.
• I ended up having to give quarterly reports to the chief of staff and director of the hospital with our progress – the number of people we saw, how we changed their overall blood pressure, their blood sugars, their lipid values, their use of pain meds, their use of blood sugar meds, the use of meds overall because we were so successful.
• I also want people to understand that many of the people we were serving at my clinic had severe financial restraints, so I’m teaching people how to make these changes while living on a fixed income. I did all this doing basic primary care lab work and using basic supplements.
• I’m now teaching at the Institute for Functional Medicine and the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine that we can have success without a lot of labs, without lots of supplements – we did this through classes, group efforts, teaching people how to cook, various meditative practices, movement practices and creating the group bond.
• There’s a huge level of support, they inspire one another. That peer to peer conversation bout real experience is so powerful.  It’s actually a much more complex process of behaviour change.
• I managed to create a more detailed, step-by-step, process that we go through in a very intentional way to support changing behaviour.
• This is discussed in my book, and I’ve started a training program to train other practitioners to have this more detailed approach to help people be successful.
• So, in addition to talking more about behavioural changes in the new book; we talk more about food addictions, and how to personalize the diet if you’ve got oxalate issues or FODMAP or histamine issues.
• I think that the discussion about behaviour change is very powerful, for both practitioners and patients.
• I think understanding what you want your health for is very important, because doing change is work.
• The next thing to work on is adding more non-starchy vegetable to your diet.
• The third thing is, if you’re not comfortable cooking from scratch (without having to go to boxes and cans), I’d sure like you to get a cooking class that can help you learn to improvise and cook with the ingredients you have on hand.
• Of course, our goals, hopes and dreams will evolve and change as our circumstances change, but they fuel the desire to do the work. I also encourage having a physical goal.
• I’m in the process of comparing a low-fat diet, known as the Swank diet, to the modified Paleo diet (the Wahls diet); we’re just analyzing that data now.
• I’m in the process of getting approval to start a new study – we’ll compare two cohorts, one group being trained on basically the Wahls Protocol, diet and lifestyle, the Wahls diet, a stress reducing practice and exercise program.
• We’ll compare that cohort to a cohort that’s getting the standard conventional approach (drugs) in the MS clinic at the university. We’ll compare the cohorts to see how they do.  If I can show that these two groups are equivalent, that will be incredibly powerful.
• If you go to my website, you’ll see links to a seminar that we have, it’s a live event every year where hundreds of people come from all over the globe.
• The new book will be available as of March 17th, 2020.

Resources Mentioned for the Wahls Protocol:

Interview – The Wahls Protocol – How I Beat Multiple Sclerosis (2014)

Interview – The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life (2017)

Book – The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine

Book – The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles

Book – The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions

Dr. Wahls’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post The Wahls Protocol for Autoimmune Disorders with Dr. Terry Wahls appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Jon Mitchell talks about the relationship between the environment and your health.

Jon Mitchell is a certified Physician Assistant turned Functional Medicine Health Consultant who shows driven professionals how to get abundant and sustained energy, mental clarity, and resolve their chronic health issues.

Main Questions Asked about the Environment and Your Health:

• How does the external environment impact our health?
• When it comes to the environment and your health, is there one area that you typically get the most bang for your buck?
• Can you talk about the use of light boxes?
• What about blue light?
• What about water and the minerals? How do you test water?
• What about air quality?
• What about noise pollution?

Key Points made by Jon about the Environment and Your Health:

• The framework that I work people through begins with working on their environment, and then we start moving onto those other things like the gut, hormones, etc.
• Things like your air, water, light, sound, EMFs and food are all going to influence a lot of the different functions within your body and at very basic level.
• A lot of times once you correct those things, everything else downstream works itself out.
• When it comes to the environment and your health, everybody is a little bit different in what is affecting them most and what they need to work on. One thing I like to work on is light.
• In our technology-driven life, we’re constantly being bathed in artificial light and it’s not normal, it’s just common. It has biological effects that we don’t realize.
• Our cellphones, laptops, TVs, even LED lights all produce blue light. Blue light is stimulatory, it suppresses melatonin.  Melatonin helps us get to sleep and helps set our circadian rhythms.  It is also an important anabolic hormone and a very powerful antioxidant.  I try to get my clients to think about their exposure to light and try to mitigate that exposure, put on some glasses that block the blue light.
• We do want to get out in the sun (just don’t burn). The first thing when you wake up, get outside in the sun, show as much skin as possible; then throughout the day you want to get some sun.
• It’s tough in the winter, especially up in Canada, because you’re typically not going to get the UVB light that will help with vitamin D production. However, getting outside or getting sunlight through the window is going to help entrain the circadian rhythm, which is going to be helpful in a lot of ways, e.g., serotonin is converted via UVA light, so light from the sun is actually going to make us happier.
• Light boxes can be very useful, especially people dealing with depression and seasonal affective disorder.
• It’s important to understand that there is no wavelength of light that is inherently bad, it depends on how much you’re getting and the full spectrum of light. Light boxes can be very useful for that type of thing.
• Using glasses at night will change the way everything looks; everything will look red and orange which is what you want to emphasize at nighttime.
• I usually want clients to avoid the blue light for two to three hours, minimum. It takes that long for your body to calibrate.
• Sleep is also triggered by a drop in temperature, so another tip for improving sleep is to drop the temperature in your home a little bit before getting ready for bed.
• There are apps that you can use to change the background light, I like them, but I think we tend to forget about all the other types of light that we’re getting. I think using the glasses makes the most sense because it’s very easy to do and you can still go about the evening without worrying too much about it.
• The reason I focus on all these different environmental factors, the air, the water, the light, is because these are things we’re exposed to day in and day out.
• On average, we should be drinking about three litres of water a day, but the question is, “What’s in your water?”
• In general, people don’t realize that there are a lot of contaminants in the water. We trust our municipalities, but when I actually test the water supply of my clients, it gives a whole different picture of what’s going on.
• It’s important to understand that just because you don’t notice something in your environment; it doesn’t mean that it’s not wearing you down.
• Just because you think your government is regulating these things, they usually aren’t doing a very good job.
• If we’re talking about filtering water, I like reverse osmosis, but it’s important that you have a remineralizer because reverse osmosis will take up all the minerals too, and we need minerals to maintain our body and our health.
• I also like a shower filter because shower water gets hot, it will be aerosolized, and you will breath in anything that is in the water and it will be absorbed into your skin.
• I tend, at this point, not to test water because once I say, get the filter, it’s actually cheaper to just get a filter than to test.
• What I want people to understand is that there is always a reason why you are developing some symptoms that are put in the name of a disease state. What we’re interested in is to get to the root of it and say, what are all the things that could be contributing to your disease state?
• When it comes to the environment and your health, people need to understand that they’re unique. They have unique genetics and upbringing, lifestyle, environment, that shapes how they are feeling.  A cookie cutter protocol is not typically going to get the results, particularly for a complex case.
• When it comes to thinking about air quality, most people think about outdoor air – emissions from cars, industrial plants, There’s no question that it affects us, it accumulates in our bodies and takes energy, minerals, enzymes to detoxify that could be used towards other things.
• The other important thing to realize is that your indoor air can be just as toxic, if not worse. Most people don’t realize this.  The home is a confined environment with little to no air circulation.  If you’re using cleaning chemicals, if you have furniture with flame retardants on it, certain paints give off volatile organic compounds (VOCs), all these things are gassing off into your environment and you’re breathing them in daily.
• Again, you can test, but I just like to go with a high-quality air filter or high quality HEPA filter to really make sure your house is clean; and working on changing out the different things we can.
• The bedroom is a huge place that we tend to have to do a lot of work.
• Old homes are sick homes, old buildings are sick buildings. It seems like almost everyday I’m hearing about some building that still has asbestos in it. If you’re in that type of environment, the first thing to do is, if you can, get out.  If not, bring in your own filter or air filtering plants like an aloe or peace lily.
• Noise can be a big issue, especially if you live in a city or near a highway. Noise will disrupt your sleep, it can increase your risk for heart disease, it can increase your anxiety.
• We need to be cognizant of the sound we’re exposed to; even if we don’t recognize it on a conscious level, our body is picking it up and it does have physiological effects.
• I like people to work getting some quiet time throughout the day, whether it’s a walk in the park or a quiet room. You just want to make sure that you are getting some time where it’s nice and quiet and you can relax.  The most important time is bedtime.
• The most important time is bedtime. You want your bedroom to be as quiet as possible.
• One last thing I like people to think about is how they breathe. You want to be nose breathing and you want to make sure that it’s nice and calm.  If you work on that, you can actually increase your oxygenation and improve your sleep quality.

Resources Mentioned for the Environment and Your Health:

Jon’s website

Jon’s facebook page

Jon’s Instagram page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post The Environment and Your Health with Jon Mitchell appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Kelly Brogan talks about a different approach to treating mental illness.

Kelly Brogan, M.D., is a holistic women’s health psychiatrist, author of the New York Times bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, and the children’s book, A Time for Rain, and co-editor of the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression.  Her latest book is Own Your Self.  She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College and has a B.S. from M.I.T. in Systems Neuroscience.  She is board-certified in psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, and integrative holistic medicine and is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms.

Main Questions Asked about Mental Illness:

• Why is that you see mental illness as a symptom not a diagnosis?
• What are the five reversible drivers of mental illness that you speak of in your book?
• What recommendations do you make to patients presenting with symptoms of mental illness?
• Can you tell us more about the adverse effects of medication?
• Why don’t’ more doctors prescribe thyroid medications for patients with mood disorders?
• What else is important for us to understand?

Key Points made by Dr Brogan about Mental Illness:

• Many people are walking around with an idea that we’ve worked out the taxonomy, so to speak, of psychiatry and mental health, and that we have all these discrete disease entities that are largely permanent but can be managed through lifetime prescription compliance.
• It’s simply not true.
• Remember, we don’t have any form of objective testing in psychiatry.
• For several decades there’s been research that largely comes under the umbrella of psychoneuroimmunology (mind-brain-immune system), sometimes it’s called psychoneuroendocrinology (mind-brain-hormonal system).
• Essentially, it’s a field of research that puts mental illness in the same category as other lifestyle conditions, e.g., heart disease, diabetes or autoimmune conditions.
• All of them, chronic illnesses, representative of a kind of mismatch between our native biology, our genomes’ expectations and the exposures we have daily.
• So, this is the concept that your symptoms are essentially messengers that allow you to learn the language of your own biology and begin to take control or the process of healing.
• Think of the parable of eight blind men feeling an elephant. It’s this idea that if you are focused in a cordoned off, segmented area of exploration without an awareness of its connectedness to the whole you could get a really wrong impression; like thinking that you’re just feeling a rope when you feel the elephant’s tail.
• So, it’s the same concept with psychoneuroimmunology, for a number of years they been studying the role of inflammation as a messenger system in the emergent phenomenon of psychiatric symptoms, whether that’s hearing voices or seeing things, whether it’s insomnia, poor concentrations, agitation or irritability.
• The list of mood, behavioural and cognitive symptoms that can attend an imbalance is very long.
• I found five drivers that are the most common reversible causes of what we’re calling psychiatric symptoms.
• I call them psychiatric pretenders.
• The first is blood sugar imbalance. Most, if not all of us to some extent, because of our stress exposures, the nature of processed food and the way we use food for our convenience rather than developing a more conscious relationship to the act of eating, are on a blood sugar roller coaster.
• The relationship of blood sugar dips to fight or flight chemistry is such that you can end up having something as severe as a panic attack. I had one patient who was on three psychiatric medications, on her way to electroconvulsive therapy and was totally symptom-free within four weeks of basic dietary change.
• Another one is thyroid imbalance. When you look at the symptoms of hypothyroidism and those of a major depressive disorder, they line up so completely that they’re virtually identical.
• You wouldn’t want to treat a thyroid imbalance with Zoloft or Prozac but if you don’t have access to the information that can help you interpret labs you wouldn’t know to connect the dots.
• Another big one is related to the adverse effects of commonly prescribed medications, including cholesterol medications, antibiotics, and birth control pills, and some very common over the counter medications, like Tylenol and Aleve.
• Not only can they have effects on systems that affect mood, cognition, gut integrity and nutrient deficiencies, but some have been directed to have a direct effect on mood. That Tylenol you take for your pain, is affecting a whole lot more.
• Then, there’s the realm of nutrient deficiency. While there are many deficiencies relevant to psychiatry, the one with the most jaw-dropping data is B12.
• I read one case on a 27-year vegetarian diagnosed with catatonic depression. She was unresponsive to multiple medications, when finally transferred to an outside hospital she was found to have a low B12 level (still technically in the range).  Two B12 shots later, she was symptom free.
• Regarding the thyroid issue, we’re not trained to look beyond the TSH reference ranges and understand the relevance of antibodies.
• In psychiatry, even if you have “normal” lab values for your thyroid hormone levels and the presence of autoimmune markers like thyroid peroxidase antibody, it’s relevant. There’s already an immune-inflammatory process at work that could be the real reason you’re presenting with symptoms like anxiety, brain fog or depression.
• I was shocked by what I learned about psychiatric medications, because I had been such a die-hard believer in them.
• I’ve since learned that the efficacy of these medications is grossly over-represented; and then I learned that the adverse effects can be jaw-dropping.
• So, I started researching the other medications that I been a believer in, like statins. I found no evidence to defend the fact that any woman would ever take a statin.  So many of my female patients taking statins had undiagnosed hypothyroidism, which is a document reason for elevated levels of cholesterol.
• So, when you don’t understand all these relationships, it seems to make sense to take medication, why not? But when you learn about the innate intelligence of the body, it begins to make less and less sense to reach for a pharmaceutical fix.
• What I’ve found is that once you engage basic lifestyle changes, it self-ameliorates and -remediates all the issues we’ve just discussed.
• You can heal, and if you know that, then you can set your sights on that goal and you can achieve it. I believe that.  That’s the most important ingredient, knowing it’s possible and wanting it because the success is nearly guaranteed.
• I think we can get into this kind of self-critical place that is very paralyzing when we feel like we’ve made choices that weren’t good though you thought they were the best idea. Or you get into this place where what you’re doing is never good enough.
• So, I think there’s a practice and collection of exercises that are a really important accompaniment to the healing path. They involve developing a relationship with the more tender parts of yourself, the more vulnerable aspects of your being.  It is possible to do through relatively simple attention to the habitual ways we relate to ourselves.
• That’s a lot of what I’ve tried to focus on in my most recent work and book.

Resources Mentioned for Mental Illness:

Book – A Mind of Your Own

Book – A Time for Rain

Book – Own Your Self

Interview with Dr. Carri – Heal Your Body (Heal Your Mind)

Dr. Brogan’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Mental Illness – A Different Approach – with Dr. Kelly Brogan appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr Ann Shippy explains the symptoms of mold toxicity and mold exposure.

Dr. Ann Shippy, MD, is on a mission to help create extraordinary wellness by using cutting-edge science, testing, and the latest genetic research to find and treat root causes—and not just the symptoms—of illness.  As a former IBM engineer, Dr. Shippy became frustrated that traditional medicine couldn’t find answers to her own health ailments, so she left a decade in engineering to adapt her skill set to the world of medicine.

She is board certified in internal medicine and certified in functional medicine. She is on a tireless mission to help create a world of wellness … “because every life matters”.  She is the author of two books, Shippy Paleo Essentials and Mold Toxicity Workbook: Assess Your Environment & Create a Recovery Plan.

Main Questions Asked about Mold Toxicity:

• Why is mold exposure dangerous?
• What are the symptoms of mold exposure and mold toxicity?
• How fast do these symptoms occur? What about susceptibility?
• What is the difference between a mold allergy and mold toxicity?
• Where are some of the common places you might find mold?
• If somebody thinks they might have mold, what’s the best way to remediate that?
• What about at-home testing?

Key Points made by about Mold Toxicity by Ann Shippy:

• Mold, in its growth process, makes chemicals called mycotoxins or mVOCs (microbial Volatile Organic Compounds). There are hundreds of types of mold and thousands of chemicals being made.
• The mycotoxins, when we study them, can cause cancer, can suppress the immune system, can flare up autoimmunity, can directly damage genes; because there are so many chemicals, they have a lot of different effects on the body.
• You need to remember, when you’re handling the sandbags or pulling up old moldy carpet, is that some of these chemicals are the types of things binge used for biological warfare. Some are really significant carcinogens.  We need to be handling these with caution – a Hazmat suit is not going too far.
• Just like any other environmental toxin, you won’t really have symptoms until your barrel fills up. Our bodies are constantly exposed to environmental toxins, but until you get to the point where the toxins are building up and interfering with the biochemistry and physiology, you’ll usually feel fine.
• What I see a lot with families is that each person has their own weak link where the toxicity has the biggest impact. Furthermore, this can occur in different timeframes, where one member of the household is suffering while the rest of the household feels “normal”.  It’s hard for them to understand.
• When I hear symptoms that are really suspicious for mold toxicity – e.g., brain fog, OCD, anxiety, insomnia, hair loss, skin rashes, new onset asthma or worsening allergies – I ask myself “do I try these other things, that are less upsetting to their lifestyle, to get them better, or do I go straight to the issue of an environmental toxin like mold”?
• I think it’s really important to be proactive – if you had a water leak in your house and it wasn’t dried up within 24-48 hours, it makes sense to get an expert to come in and see if there is hidden mold, or to do your own testing.
• It’s necessary to be clear on the difference between a mold allergy and mold toxicity. The former is an allergy to the spore, the organism itself which unless you have severe asthma is not life threatening.  The actual toxins themselves, however, is like getting poisoned, even a very small amount can make people very sick.
• Also note, that lack of an odour is not an indication that you don’t have mold.
• Mold toxicity is a big factor for cognitive decline, many patients with cognitive decline have some mold exposure in their history.
• Mold can result from, be hidden in simple things – the carpet you shampooed that didn’t dry properly, plumbing leaks (even pinhole leaks in dishwashers and ice makers), improperly sealed showers, flashing around chimneys and windows, air conditioning systems – there may not be enough water to be visible but there’s enough water to feed a mold colony.
• That 24-48 hours to clean up and dry up water is key.
• One of the clues for mold toxicity is when patients tell you they feel better at home than at the office; or feel better on vacation and worse when they get back. Mold is not always the case, but it is a red flag.
• If you think you have mold, you want to approach it very carefully. Professionals may be the way to go – someone who is very careful.  You want to protect what you can by wrapping it in plastic; then you need to build plastic walls around the area to be remediated and use air scrubbers so that the air is cleaned.
• Keep in mind that some of these chemicals released are carcinogens, and/or used for biological warfare.
• There are at home tests for mold; the two I like are RealTime Labs and BlackMoldScan.com. You collect as much dust as you can from the area and send it in and they’ll analyze it for the mycotoxins and and DNA.  Neither one will get 100% of the molds but it gives us a good starting point.
• You really want to get the mold eliminated. There’s some stuff you can do to alleviate symptoms while living in the mold but why not eliminate the cause.
• Then you need to detoxify the body, and do the rebuilding of the mitochondria, cell membranes, and organ systems, , that have been affected.
• The key thing I want people to know is that you can heal and get better.

Resources Mentioned for Mold Toxicity:

Book – Shippy Paleo Essentials

Book – Mold Toxicity Workbook: Assess Your Environment & Create a Recovery Plan

Dr. Shippy’s website

Dr. Shippy’s mold handout

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Mold Toxicity and Exposure with Dr. Ann Shippy appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Navaz Habib explains the importance of the vagus nerve to our overall health.

Dr. Habib’s book “Activate Your Vagus Nerve” is a simple to follow guide to help you identify and address a major missing piece in patients dealing with chronic health concerns.  By activating the Vagus nerve, we can optimize our productivity, focus and energy levels, allowing us to feel the positive effects of upgraded health.

Main Questions Asked about the Vagus Nerve:

• What is the vagus nerve and why is it so important?
• How do we know if our vagus nerve is working properly or not?
• Are there specific signs to look for? Are there tests?
• What about treatment? How do we fix this?
• Are there exercises to help rehabilitate the vagus nerve?
• What else do we need to know about the vagus nerve?

Key Points made by Dr. Habib about the Vagus Nerve:

• The vagus nerve is one of the most important nerves in our body. This nerve is the only one that leaves from the cranium, which is where our brain is located, and goes to the other organs.
• It goes to many different organs in our body; essentially, you name the organ and the vagus nerve goes to and innervates that organ.
• The vagus nerve not only sends information to the organs from the brain, but also from the organs back to the brain.
• Most of us have heard of the brain gut connection and the physical connection is the vagus nerve. It is the fastest and clearest direct path between the brain and the gut.
• An easy way to check if the gut brain connection is working, and that the vagus nerve can transfer the information between the gut and the brain, is to see if our gut is working the way it should be.
• Digestive dysfunction is one of the most important, most common signs of vagus nerve dysfunction that we see.
• There is one test that I feel is a great way for anyone to just check to see how well their gut is functioning. It’s called the sesame seed bowel transit time test.  Pick up a small bag of white sesame seeds, put a spoonful of these in a glass of water and drink it down, without chewing the seeds.  Our body cannot digest the covering so they will show up in the stool.  What we are looking for is the time it takes to see the first seeds in our stool and then when we see the last seeds to come out in our stool.
• Anywhere between 12 and 24 hours is good. Anything more or less than that is a sign that our vagus nerve isn’t working properly.
• There are other signs, as well. The vagus nerve has four different functions.  One being a parasympathetic function, which is our rest and digest function – so one thing I look for is how well people handle stress.  Inability to handle stress and/or recover from a stressful event means that their bodies are not very well adapted.
• 15% of the information passing through the autonomic nervous system (which is the system that controls all the things we don’t think about, g., digestion, heartbeat and breathing) is parasympathetic. If these things don’t function well and don’t allow for recovery, it means the vagus is not working well.
• This is where a lot of issues with inflammation occur. If we’re not able to control our levels of inflammation, it’s because our vagus is not able to do its job.
• We have a system called the blood brain barrier, which is supposed to keep inflammatory products, viruses, , out of the brain; but the vagus is a direct bypass.
• If we start to have leakiness in the gut because our function is compromised, it’s easy for the inflammation to get through the gut blood barrier into the vagus nerve and bypass the blood brain barrier leading to the brain fogginess incidents where you are dealing with memory loss, walking into a room and forgetting why, and forgetting where you parked the car, for example.
• This is a direct sign of inflammatory processes in the brain, especially when one had a good memory before.
• Thus treating the gut issues are not always enough to resolve issues.
• Travel is one of one of those things where our body is put under a lot of stress and that stress can be because we’re crossing time zones, for example, and our body is don’t know what time it is, and so we throw off our melatonin responses and our hormones get thrown off. And in doing so, when we change our schedules, our bodies don’t know whether they’re in a state of being awake or going to sleep. The vagus nerve does a lot of its work is during that sleep time to help the recovery of the stressors that have occurred throughout the day.
• What happens then, is the inflammatory processes are up-regulated, thus putting our bodies under higher stress, our parasympathetic system is down-regulated meaning we’re not able to control inflammation or digestive function, leading to all the symptoms people have when they travel or have a stressful event in their life.
• I said earlier that there were four specific functions to the vagus nerve. Parasympathetic being one of them, afferent, which is where the information being brought from all the organs to the brain. That is our second function. Our third function is motor function, and that motor function is to signal the muscles of the back of the throat and the muscles of the larynx to do their job.
• Vagus nerve function allows us to have pitch variability in our voice; and regulates our gag reflex. An inability to swallow pills is strongly associated with the latter.
• There a few things we can do and several tools we can use, based on the four functions of the vagus, to regulate the problem. The number one thing to do is to learn how to breath properly again.  What we need to do is get into a good posture and get our chest raised forward, make sure that our head is aligned, that our ears are aligned without shoulders, and learn to breathe using our diaphragm – using that balloon filling feeling of our gut and actually have the rise and fall of our gut occurring.
• Motion of the diaphragm allows not only for positive movement in the lungs, but in the digestive organs as well. So, the breath is where I have most people begin.
• When we talked of motor function, I talked of the muscles of the back of the throat, the larynx and pharynx – this is where we train our gag reflex and train our humming and chanting and vocal cord muscles.
• To help stimulate these muscles, I’ll have my patients activate their gag reflex. I’ll also get them to gargle with salt water, which can have a great effect on breaking up the bacterial biofilm that likes to sit at the back of our throats.
• I also like to have patients do some humming or chanting to get them into a calm state, especially before meals. It’s a great way to stimulate vagus function,
• There are some other ways to test vagus nerve function that do cost, for example, heart rate variability. Our heart rate varies depending upon the level of stress we’re experiencing.  The parasympathetic system (vagus) calms heart rate.  The heart rate will tell us whether we are in a state of sympathetic (running from that saber-toothed tiger) or parasympathetic (relaxing on the beach).  The lower

Resources Mentioned for the Vagus Nerve:

Book – Activate Your Vagus Nerve

Dr. Habib’s website

Dr. Habib’s book website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Vagus Nerve Activation with Dr. Navaz Habib appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Carolyn Griffin explains the link between fermented foods and gut health.

Dr. Carolyn Griffin is a chiropractor and Certified Fermentationist.  She created My Cultured Life which is a learning source to teach people how to make fermented foods and beverages on their own.  This is where she shares what’s brewing in her kitchen and easy ways for you to do the same.  Fermented foods and beverages are the best way to get your daily dose of a variety of healthy probiotics.

Main Questions Asked about Fermented Foods:

• What is fermentation?
• Why is it making a comeback?
• Why should we be eating fermented foods?
• What’s the difference between probiotic supplements and fermented foods?
• What are some examples of fermented food?
• What’s the difference between making your own and buying it at the store?
• How do you make your own kefir or kombucha?

Key Points made by Dr. Griffin about Fermented Foods:

• Fermentation has been around for thousands of years and is only recently making a comeback. It’s a natural process of preserving food.
• When food is exposed to bacteria and yeast, the microorganisms convert the sugars to lactic acid creating an acidic environment in which fools will not rot or spoil.
• I think people are reaching for more information and realizing that they need to be their own health advocate. And, fermentation is a healthy way of getting probiotics into your system, which is going to help your gut heal.
• We already know that 70% of your immune system is in your gut, so if you’re eating foods that are going to healthier for you, and you start to heal that, a lot of other conditions that people may be suffering with are going to resolve.
• I’m not 100% against probiotic supplements. I just think there is a difference between them and fermented foods. Probiotics are live bacteria.  A lot of time in the process of isolating the bacteria to put them in a capsule, a lot die.
• Because they’re live organisms, the best source is going to be from fermented foods that you create.
• Sauerkraut for example is loaded with probiotics, bacteria, enzymes, vitamins, all kinds of things.
• When you’re talking about a supplement, a lot can go wrong. You really need to learn to read labels.  So, there’s more of a question mark about a probiotic supplement versus a fermented food.
• Research is now showing that the more diverse the bacteria that live in us, the better. We’re finding that people in third world countries don’t have the same health issues that we do; for example, there’s not a lot of auto-immune disease.
• One of the reasons is the diversity. We, in Western civilization, tend to live in a very sterilized environment.  Dirt, dust and dander are our friends, but we tend to eliminate all of this, and it’s causing a lot of issues for us.
• We take 50% of the medications on the market, yet we’re the 37th healthiest country, at least in the U.S. so we’re not very healthy; a lot of it has to do with our lifestyle and what we’re doing to our gut.
• Kefir is one example of a fermented food. It’s a fermented milk product that has the consistency of drinkable yogurt.  It’s loaded with probiotics, 36-50 different strains compared to the 7-10 strains you might find in yogurt.
• The main difference between yogurt and kefir, is where we know yogurt will feed the good bacteria that’s already in your gut, kefir will actually colonize the gut.
• It’s 99% lactose-free, so people who are lactose intolerant can actually benefit from it.
• Kombucha is another, it’s a fermented tea. What’s really cool about kombucha is that it contains a yeast that is antibiotic-resistant.  If you were in the hospital and given antibiotics you would be given a probiotic that contains this yeast found in kombucha.
• And, of course, fermented foods like sauerkraut and other cultured foods that you make by creating a brine and/or immersing it in water.
• Buying fermented food versus making it at home has the same issues as store bought probiotics – it’s manufactured in a plant, it travels to the store, it sits on the shelf, who knows how long it will sit, it’s going to lose some of its effectiveness.
• Also, a lot of time store-bought kefir is flavoured because the plain is quite tart but you’re not in control of the sugar content – you could be getting more than you bargained for.
• Kefir is easy to make at home; it’s the best way to start. You need kefir grains and cow’s milk or sheep’s milk or goat milk – it must have lactose, so it has to come from an animal.  You leave it on the countertop for 24 hours, and it will ferment; strain out the grains and you have fresh kefir that you can flavour however you want.
• People with a lactose intolerance should be able to tolerate kefir; if, however, you have a casein sensitivity you might not be able to do milk kefir. You can use nut milk and get some of the benefits in that instance.
• There are only two ways to hill kefir grains – heat and starvation – so you need a routine to continually re-feed the grains, e., change out the milk.
• Kombucha is only slightly more complicated because of the bottling process. All you need is sweet black tea.  You can use other types of tea, but black tea is traditional.
• You put black tea with sugar in a glass bottle, no metal, you put in a scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast), and a little bit of starter fluid. Then let it sit for seven to 14 days.  You can now bottle it as it is, or you can flavour it; then refrigerate and enjoy.
• It’s very cost-effective, I usually get about two gallons per batch that can last my family a week or two.
• Another thing to note is, that depending on how long it ferments, it will have alcohol in it. How much alcohol really depends on how long it brews.  So, with young children or pregnant women you might want to err on the side of caution and avoid the kombucha and stick to kefir.  Use your discretion.
• I think fermented vegetables are the best way to take your vegetables. It’s like killing two birds with one stone.
• Sauerkraut is one of the best – two ingredients, cabbage and salt, and a little bit of elbow grease to massage the cabbage to the point where it makes its own brine. Let it sit for six days and you have an amazing food.
• I also love fermenting garlic, turmeric and ginger; not only are they healthy in and of themselves but when you ferment them it’s 10x better the way I see it. You can add these things to food or salads.
• One thing I want to say is, even though it’s fermentation, and fermented foods are one of the best things you can do if you have gut issues; you want to be very cautious about incorporating them right away because if you have SIBO you can actually cause a flare-up.
• I’ve created a course called The Five R’s of Healing Leaky Gut – it talks about the exact ways and process of how to heal your gut if you do have any issues and fermentation is actually the last phase.

Resources Mentioned for Fermented Foods

Dr. Griffin’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Fermented Foods and Gut Health with Dr. Carolyn Griffin appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Sandy Skotnicki talks about the downside to modern skin care.

Dr. Sandy Skotnicki is the founding director of the Bay Dermatology Centre and is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Medicine in the Divisions of Dermatology and Occupational and Environmental Health. Dr. Skotnicki is a consultant Dermatologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and is an expert in Allergic Skin Disease.

She is also the author of  Beyond Soap: The Real Truth About What You Are Doing To Your Skin And How To Fix It For A Beautiful, Healthy Glow, which details her “product-elimination diet”.

Main Questions Asked about Skin Care:

• Why is there such an epidemic of skin issues these days?
• How does the alkaline nature of soap affect the bacteria on our skin?
• Can you explain your product elimination diet?
• What do you see as the future of skin care?

Key Points made by Dr. Skotnicki about Skin Care:

• My interest is allergic reactions and just reactions to skin care and other things that touch the skin. It’s part of the reason I wrote the book.
• It’s been shown both in the US and in Europe that reactions to skin care products and skin care ingredients, both natural and synthetic, have increased.
• A lot of it has to do with how we take care of our skin, which is we do too much to our skin.
• One of the most fun chapters to write was chapter two, where I kind of look at the history of cleanliness. How did we get to the point where we have a shower every day or sometimes twice a day?  We use shampoo every day, even when our hair’s not dirty; and that’s to make a distinction between what it means to be clean and what it means to be hygienic.
• Your hands are the thing that you really want to keep clean, because they’re the tools for transmission of disease; and most people don’t do it properly. You have to do it for two Happy Birthdays.
• The other thing is that it’s more about pH. The pH of the skin is acidic, so that’s key to everything the skin needs to function, and if it isn’t acidic, it doesn’t work properly.  The first soaps that came along in the 40’s and 50’s were alkaline.
• We feel that the high pH cleaning of the skin has damaged our barrier and maybe led to the increase in eczema and allergies.
• Then, there’s a further issue of just the sheer number of ingredients in skin care products, and the lack of regulation in North America in particular.
• We don’t really know what the use of alkaline soaps for the last 50 to 60 years has done, we don’t have the science, but a lot of people are asking if we haven’t done something to our skin microbiomes over these decades.
• If you think about your skin as a brick wall, where the cells are the bricks and your lipids are the mortar, and even just water and soap diminish that mortar so that you end up with a leaky wall; so, what have we done?
• Shortly after my book was published, I found a link between food allergies and the skin barriers. There was a study that looked at mice who were sensitized to peanut allergy through the skin, once their skin barrier was disrupted with soap and water.
• One of the really important parts of the book is where I write that the reason we’re so clean has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with advertising. We’ve been told that we need to wash every day to be healthy and beautiful, and I’m trying to show the opposite.
• If you look at the evolution of humans, and homo sapiens has been around bout 200,000 years, and it’s only in the last 150 that we’ve been cleaning up.
• So, we clean up, we’re damaging our microbiome; so, the marketing machine of beauty will latch on to this and say now we need products to repair the microbiome. There’s already a company that has a spray of bacteria that you can put on your skin.
• There was study published in about 2012 showing that kids growing up on farms had less asthma. There’re also studies showing that kids that have animals have less allergies.  You’d think it would be the other way.
• Furthermore, the studies indicate that by adulthood your microbiome is stable and doesn’t change, which makes how we wash the kids in infancy and childhood critical.
• Another reason I wrote the book is that I was frustrated with patients coming in with persistent reactions and saying, “I think I’m reacting to something I’m using. I’m not sure.”  A lot of people when they get rashes or rosacea decide they’re going to go natural because they want to use something “natural”.
• But when it comes to rashes, eczema, itchy skin, red, scaly stuff, whatever, you want to us things that aren’t going to give you reactions, either allergic or irritant. It’s got nothing to do with plant-based or synthetic.  There’s a difference between what is toxic and what can give you a rash.  Poison ivy can give you the worst rash imaginable, but it’s a plant.  Right?  It’s natural.  There’s a big disconnect in the public.
• Part of the reason for the product elimination diet was to give patients a list of products that don’t have ingredients that will give them rashes. Some of my products have parabens, but parabens don’t give rashes.  My product elimination diet isn’t about toxicity; it’s about having a list of products you can use if you’re having chronic eruptions.
• The other reason is because marketing and labelling are not regulated; consumers are at a disadvantage. The diet is a play on words.
• It doesn’t have the most common things in skin care that give reactions, that includes fragrances, both synthetic and natural, preservatives, and other kinds of organic ingredients associated with both allergy and irritation.
• Patients basically follow this product elimination diet from head to toe, including shampoo and detergents and everything that touches the body. Hopefully they improve within a month.  Once they’re better, they can reintroduce products that they miss, one per week.
• The other thing about this diet is that products have to play together. If you look at the average woman, and you look at how many products she puts on her face, she could have as many as 500 ingredients.  It’s the accumulation of all of them; it’s not one thing causing the problem, and that’s why you have to eliminate all of them and start over.
• But there’s still a percentage of people who have actual disease. If you have eczema, your mom or dad had eczema or asthma (which are somewhat genetically related), and you cut out everything and see a 60-70% improvement, you’ll still need medicine because you have a genetic disease.
• I was seeing a lot of people on medication who weren’t getting better because they were still using products that aggravated their condition. It’s like having asthma and smoking, no amount of medication is going to stop flare-ups because the smoke is aggravating the condition.
• I think we’re so oversaturated in this market of beauty and skin care that the pendulum, at some point, has to swing backward.
• If you talk to any chemist who makes products, you really only need six to ten ingredients to make something that works properly. Everything else that’s added is for marketing purposes.
• There is a Canadian brand, The Ordinary, for example – some of their products have only two ingredients. This is where skin care needs to go.
• It’s going to be hard; it’s a billion-dollar industry that needs to change. I think we’re starting to see some of it – less is more:  fewer ingredients, no fragrance.
• Be careful of plants. Plants can give you rashes.  There was a study published last year that showed young boys using tea tree oil and lavender oil had hormone disruption and breast development.
• Just because it’s plant based doesn’t mean it’s safe; just because it’s synthetic doesn’t mean it’s bad. There are good synthetics, bad synthetics, good plants, bad plants.  It’s not black and white.
• I think it’s very important to get this message out to young people. They’re the ones that are so touched by the advertising.

Resources Mentioned about Skin Care:

Book – Beyond Soap: The Real Truth About What You Are Doing To Your Skin And How To Fix It For A Beautiful, Healthy Glow

Dr. Skotnicki’s website

Product Elimination Diet

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post The Downside to Modern Skin Care with Dr. Sandy Skotnicki appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Julie Gregory talks about Alzheimer’s treatment, the ApoE4 gene, known as the Alzheimer’s gene, and her personal story.

Julie Gregory is a founder and president of ApoE4.Info, a non-profit focused on learning about the ApoE4 gene. This vibrant online community is disrupting mainstream medicine by connecting carriers of the gene with Alzheimer’s researchers from all over the world to identify strategies to prevent, and even mitigate, symptoms of cognitive decline.  Julie has also partnered with Dr. Dale Bredesen to help write a follow-up to The End of Alzheimer’s which will feature survivor’s stories as well as a detailed handbook for how to apply Dr. Bredesen’s protocol, available March 2020.

Main Questions Asked about Alzheimer’s treatment:

• Would you mind sharing your personal story and how ApoE4.Info got started?
• How did you eventually connect with Dr. Dale Bredesen?
• How long have you been on this journey?
• What can you tell us about the follow-up book you’re working on with Dr. Bredesen?

Key Points made by Julie Gregory about Alzheimer’s treatment:

• About seven years ago, I decided to take part in genetic testing with 23andMe. I was having some health issues and thought genetic testing would help me better understand what was going on.  When I got my results, they were pretty benign with one exception – I learned I carry two copies of the ApoE4 gene.
• I am referring to the apolipoprotein gene. Everyone has two copies but there are three common epsilon versions.
• The E2 version, which is rare, is considered to be protective against Alzheimer’s.
• The E3 version, which is very common, is considered neutral with regards to Alzheimer’s.
• Then there’s the E4 version, which is closely associated with the most common form of Alzheimer’s.
• ApoE4 heterozygotes, who carry only one copy, comprise between 20-25% of the world’s population, have a mildly increased risk of Alzheimer’s.
• ApoE4 homozygotes, like me, have a greatly increased risk.
• The risk, in both cases, is higher for women than for men.
• Although less than 2% of the population carries two copies of the gene, it’s still a lot of people (75 million in the US alone).
• Learning that I was at a very high risk for Alzheimer’s was frightening. At that time, I was already exhibiting symptoms of cognitive decline.  I was having frequent senior moments, and I wasn’t a senior.
• When I finally revealed to my husband that I thought I might be exhibiting symptoms of Alzheimer’s, he blew me away by saying “that explains a lot.”
• I did online cognitive testing and found I was in the mid-30th percentile for my age group. I’d always learned and remembered easily; I was getting a lot of evidence that something was going on.  I dove into Alzheimer’s.
• 23andMe provided online forums where people learning of their ApoE4 status could gather. Once we developed a sense of community and support, we dove into the science, we solicited help from everyone we could, and we read and analyze medical research studies and paper.
• Our primary focus was to find strategies that could protect our brains. As I began to learn about the strategies for treating Alzheimer’s, I began to apply them – tracking and tweaking biomarkers, changing my diet, exercising differently, reducing my stress load, optimizing my sleep, taking targeted supplements and doing online brain training.
• My world opened up again.
• I repeated the online cognitive testing and, a year later, I was in the high 90th percentile for my age group.
• In October 2013, two other ApoE4 carriers and I decided to move away from 23andMe and create our own independent online community – ApoE4.Info. Several months later we attained non-profit status
• Our primary focus is to learn all we can about the Apoe4 gene and how it impacts health. Our ultimate goal is to try to find strategies that we can use to mitigate all high risk not only for dementia but also for heart disease.
• I was already several years into my healing journey when I stumbled upon his paper: Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program. He applied a protocol with 10 people exhibiting cognitive decline, and nine of the ten reversed their cognition.
• When I got to Therapeutic Systems 1.0, a table where he lists the Alzheimer’s treatment strategies that he used to reverse cognitive decline, I had been using the same strategies with similar results. Reading this paper was like an amazing confirmation of my journey.
• I sent him an email to which he replied the same day. He wanted all the details of my prior symptoms, my prior health issues, and all the strategies I was using.  He was also thrilled with the whole ApoE4.Info project and has been a big supporter of our work ever since.
• Bredesen has also helped me in my recovery. A few years ago, I felt like I was plateauing, and he was pushing me to get all these biomarkers tested.  I finally relented, mostly to prove to him that he was wrong.
• The test results were devastating. I learned that I was overwhelmingly positive for chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS) that he correlates with the Type 3 Alzheimer’s.  My other numbers too were off the charts.
• I did additional testing to figure out what might be driving the inflammation, my testing showed I was susceptible to chronic Lyme disease. Further testing showed it wasn’t Lyme disease but a co-related disease which is now completely gone.
• I’ve been on this healing journey for 7 years since the first genetic testing and I have tremendous hope for the future; not just for me but for anyone willing to use this approach.
• It’s not a straightforward process, it’s like peeling the layers of an onion. It takes time.  It’s a constant battle.  It takes time to implement all the changes and to see the results.  If you’re not seeing changes, there’s something being missed.
• One of the hardest aspects, was the idea of using this higher fat diet, particularly as I was already at risk for heart disease with the ApoE4 gene. I have to say, for me, getting into ketosis was one of the most healing things for my body.
• ApoE4 carriers have a reduced cerebral glucose utilization in the brain that starts as early as age 20 and is exacerbated with the onset of menopause which is when I was having my symptoms.
• The follow-up to The End of Alzheimer’s is a bit of a struggle as we need to be technical enough to convince the scientists that are reading the book, but the language needs to be simple enough that lay people can understand it.  I’m helping with the handbook portion of the book.  We’re basically going to provide detailed instructions for all his recommended Alzheimer’s treatment strategies – diet, exercise, stress reduction, optimizing sleep – all the many ways you can enhance your cognition.
• Mainstream medicine has nothing to offer other than two or three medications that might temporarily improve symptoms but do nothing to change the trajectory of the disease process.
• But it is possible, at ApoE4.Info they can see lots of people that are having success with the protocols. We are a non-profit because we know the obstacles faced by people when they go to visit their physicians
• The lack of an effective Alzheimer’s treatment is the greatest failure of modern medicine by far. We’re trying to create partnerships between researchers and our community to conduct our own self-organized trials.  We should be making some announcements about these shortly.
• As a final word, I want to encourage people to give this approach a try. As Dr. Bredesen always points out, you don’t have to be perfect.  I’m far from perfect, but I do enough that I get results that are self-perpetuating.  I want to follow the protocol because it makes me feel so much better.

Resources Mentioned for Alzheimer’s treatment:

Julie Gregory’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Alzheimer’s Treatment with Julie Gregory appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Christina Bjorndal talks about mental health.

Dr. Christina Bjorndal, ND is an authority in the treatment of mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders and eating disorders.  Having overcome many mental health challenges, Dr. Chris is a gifted speaker and writer who has helped many patients achieve physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. She has completed three books on mental health as well as a 10-week course and in-person retreat on mental health.

Main Questions Asked Mental Health:

• Can you talk about your story of regaining your mental health?
• What are some of the underlying factors that you look for when a patient comes in struggling with some kind of mental health issue?
• What can you tell us about the hormonal system?
• How do you look at neurotransmitters?
• Now what about detoxification?
• How do you address the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of health?

Key Points made by Dr. Chris about Mental Health

• My story started with an eating disorder in high school (just as a side note, I was taking antibiotics the year prior). At the time there was no mention of the relationship between the gut microbiome and mental health.
• I was an overachiever which served me well until my third year of university when I found myself paralyzed by anxiety and debilitated by depression. I was treated with some success with antidepressants but a few months later I suffered a full-blown delusional psychotic manic episode.  I was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.
• I basically pushed the diagnosis into a corner, ignored the whole thing, and went back to being the overachiever who had it all together. But I didn’t, this all culminated in a suicide attempt that left me in a coma with kidney failure.
• While on dialysis I was given a book to read by Marianne Williamson called A Return to Love. In it there’s a quote about surrender, which impacted me greatly because what I realized is that I didn’t love and accept myself, so I began to look for other ways and to find answers to what was going on with me.
• I went to a public forum and listened to a lecture by Dr. Abram Hoffer. I became his patient and started on a nutritional protocol, and shortly thereafter I began to feel relief from depression and anxiety which I hadn’t in the 15 prior years.  I made a career change to naturopathic medicine to help others.
• First, I explain that there are four aspects to people: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual; and that western medicine is focused on the physical.
• I also explain that there are three macro-systems comprising the physical: neurotransmitters, the neuro-endocrine system, and organs of detoxification.
• With respect to the hormonal system, we need to understand that every hormone, when out of balance, can have symptoms like mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, mood swings, etc.
• Most times, people are adjusting the neurotransmitters, but I find that in most cases we have to look at the three macro-systems to find the root cause.
• When we talk about hormones, we’re talking about sex hormones, stress hormones, thyroid, insulin, al.; which are often overlooked, especially in mental health. This was the case for me.
• In addition to the patient’s symptoms, I will assess them using an objective questionnaire to give me a sense of the degree to which they are experiencing symptoms of, for example, depression.
• From the perspective of neurotransmitters, diet is a big piece. For example, serotonin, one of the main transmitters implicated in mental health, is derived in the body from tryptophan, which is an essential amino acid meaning we can’t make it ourselves.
• There are certain nutrients that are essential building blocks for these neurotransmitters. If you’re not getting them through your diet, there’s no ability for you to make them on your own.
• I think from a root cause perspective we always have to ensure that we’re eating the right foods, although supplementation is often required.
• I don’t prescribe tryptophan because serotonin production is not its primary object; in fact, if we’re under stress, then tryptophan goes to make quinolinic acid which can be considered a neurotoxin. Thus, managing stress is another big part of the mental health puzzle.
• The environmental piece, and the connection with the organs of detoxification is extremely important.
• People mostly think of mental health conditions resulting from a deficiency. Something to consider is that perhaps there’s something from the environment that is blocking a receptor so that the hormone or neurotransmitter cannot get into the cell to do its job.
• We talk about the gut, or our digestive system, as our second brain; its health is a very important piece of the puzzle. The relationship, or balance, of bacteria in your gut is really important in our overall health and helps our organs of detoxification.
• It helps to have regular bowel movements. If not, what can happen is that the liver works diligently to get toxins out of your body, which can now be eliminated through the bowel or the urine; if the stool sits in the large colon and there’s an imbalance in bacteria, there are bacteria that end up breaking up the chemicals that the liver worked to get rid of, and these end up being reabsorbed giving you another toxic hit.
• This in turn contributes to inflammation and to leaky gut syndrome.
• All these factors play a role, and it relates back to our prior use of medications, to our levels of stress, to the level of stomach acid that we have. We always want to look at what’s happening from a digestive perspective as well as the liver and the colon.
• So, for me, it started with the physical piece, but I still had to work on my thoughts and emotions. I teach people how to manage their mind so they’re not at the mercy of it.  It’s important to understand that there is something called psychoneuroimmunology which means, basically, that your thoughts create neuropeptides, which then affect the hormones being produced in the body, which in turn can affect how you feel.
• It’s been a really important piece of my healing to learn how to manage my thoughts.
• I teach a Four R Process. The first R is to recognize the nature of the conversation going on in your head.  The second step to refrain from following these thoughts any further.  You refrain by relaxing into the present moment with your breath.  The last R is to resolve to repeat this process.
• Learning to move ourselves from a sympathetic, or stressed, state into a parasympathetic, or relaxed, state is extremely important. So many functions in the body require you to be in a parasympathetic state to benefit fully, digestion is one of them.  You could be eating the most pristine, organic food but if you’re in a sympathetic state you may not be getting the full benefit of the nutrition.
• Another important thing I want people to know is that ultimately learning to love and accept yourself is a really important part of this puzzle.

Resources Mentioned for Mental Health

Book – Beyond the Label: 10 Steps to Improve Your Mental Health with Naturopathic Medicine

Book – The Essential Diet: Eating for Mental Health

Dr. Bjorndal’s website

Dr. Bjorndal on Facebook

Dr. Bjorndal on Instagram

Dr. Bjorndal on Twitter

Dr. Carri’s interview with Kelly Brogan : Heal Your Body (Heal Your Mind)

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Mental Health with Dr. Christina Bjorndal appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Ann-Marie Barter explains the links between functional medicine and some of the surprising causes of pain.

Dr. Ann-Marie Barter is on the cutting edge of holistic healthcare.  As a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner, she helps people get out of pain and reach their maximum potential through her unique approach she has developed after studying under some of the finest minds in her field.

She now specializes in difficult functional medicine cases, helping people with issues concerning their thyroid, blood sugar, gut health and hormone dysfunction as well as other metabolic conditions.

Main Questions Asked about Pain:

• What are some of the things we can think about as the root underlying causes of chronic pain?
• What about the thyroid?
• How can the gut microbiome impact people with pain?
• What else do you think about for patients with pain?

Key Points made by Dr. Barter about Pain:

• My first approach is lab work, but I also like to lay my hands on the patient just to see what is going on. If this indicates systemic inflammation, I look at their labs to see if there’s some kind of underlying infection.
• A lot of times chronic infections are low grade until a stressful event triggers them and, suddenly, you have this systemic chronic pain that won’t go away no matter what they try.
• I recently had a case with severe shoulder, neck and upper back pain that flared up when she was moving into a new home. In looking at the labs, it turned out she had autoimmune thyroid and ultimately had a chronic low grade viral infection, after we started treating the viral infection, suddenly all her pain cleared up.
• So you see those simple cases, just may not be. Because inflammation can present as pain, but doing structural work is not what we need to do to address the main cause.
• When we’re looking at reference ranges, it’s a standard deviation of the population – meaning that whoever had lab work done at that lab that year is compared. So if your population is sick or average, you’re put into that normal group, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have symptoms.
• But 90% of the time, the CBC is completely ignored. These patients end up on anti-depressants, and pain medications that aren’t working. And, infections are a huge, huge cause of overall chronic pain.
• And vitamin D levels for most people are chronically low. And very low levels lead to an increased risk of autoimmune disease; and increased symptoms of fatigue, pain, anxiety, etc.  Everyone presents differently with autoimmune disease
• We also see a lot of thyroid cases in my office, the big reason being that so many patients with autoimmune thyroids present with pain – they have depression, they have anxiety, they have just chronic headaches and chronic pain.
• Ultimately when you start to drill down in their particular labs, you see very high levels of inflammation and also that they have autoimmune thyroid; we’ve also made connections to some viral infections that seem to be high as well in any sort of Hashimoto’s case or autoimmune thyroid.
• Another issue is an under-conversion problem, primarily in the liver, wherein T4 is not being converted to the active T3 form of your thyroid hormones. So if TSH is the only thing that they’re checking, something is being missed.
• I also think about environmental exposures to chemicals; most of my patients are exposed to about 70,000 chemicals per day. When we look at the labs we see a little bit of functional fatty liver, so they’re not processing the toxins the way they should.
• If you have a low functioning thyroid, everything in the system slows down; every enzyme reaction is slower; you can even see the gallbladder contracting slower on ultrasound.
• So we actually have a detox issue; and one thing I’ve found very interesting is that most of these patients don’t sweat. I believe it’s really important to get somebody sweating, because one of their main detoxification pathways is not working.
• The gut microbiome is a big issue; it’s influenced by what we eat. Has our meat or dairy been exposed to antibiotics, have our grain products been exposed to pesticides?  This affects our gut and creates a leaky gut syndrome.
• And when the foods we eat are going where they’re not supposed to go, we can have chronic problems every time we eat that food.
• I find that doing a very strict elimination diet for about a month and then slowly incorporating foods is effective. It’s an intuitive way to say “How do I feel when I eat this food?” and determine food sensitivities.
• I also find in my practice that many people are stressed out – they’re exhausted – they’re burning through neurotransmitters. And the microbiome influences how many and even, if we can make the neurotransmitters themselves.
• What I’ve found is that sometimes repopulating the neurotransmitters helps the patient stick to an elimination diet short-term, when they’ve been too overwhelmed at the idea. Lifestyle changes are pretty big and we want to set patients up for success.
• We also have a lot of pathogens in the gut, so a lot of times that has a potential to create pain or chronic pain.
• Another big one is dental infections. A lot of time you have sinus pain, referral headaches, and sometimes neck pain. Then there is exposure to mold, and, last but not least, some women have problems when their hormones are low.
• I don’t address the hormones first, because I find that if I can get the rest of the body back into alignment, then a lot of times the hormones will follow.
• One of the last points I really want to drive home is that this is a process. Pain is not something that needs to be totally blotted out.  The question is why do you have pain, and it’s generally not due to one thing.  When your body is saying “Cannot continue,” there tends to be more going on.

Resources Mentioned for Chronic Pain:

Dr. Barter’s website: https://altfammed.com/

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

The post Pain with Dr. Ann-Marie Barter appeared first on The Functional Medicine Radio Show With Dr. Carri.