The Hidden Cause of Brain Inflammation Doctors Miss | Dr. Pejman Katiraei

28:02Now you've got an environment that's hypersensitized to everything, right? And an extension of that are all the food sensitivities, right? If you've got 15 food sensitivities and there's more foods you can't eat than you can eat, that's because your gut is hypersensitized. And in this scenario, the gut also starts reacting to these common benign parasites that may not be a problem. So a lot of times people focus on the parasite and miss the bigger picture of like, well, why is the gut reacting this way, right? Now, every now and then, you also will find hookworms, roundworms, giardia, pinworms, things like that.

28:41And those can become very irritating and inflammatory to the gut, regardless of where the gut was. So I guess a way to look at this is there's the nasty worms and parasites that by themselves can trigger horrendous amounts of inflammation and take the healthy gut and make it fall apart. And then there are the common parasites that once something else has disrupted the gut, now these parasites could become a problem because the gut itself is a mess. Is the answer to your child's gut health doing the parasite cleanses you see online? I'd say 70 % of the time, those parasite cleanses create more problems than they solve.

29:20Because you're using botanicals or herbals or, you know, in some cases, pharmaceuticals that actually end up disrupting the gut even more. and if your child's gut is sensitive enough, you know, the benign botanicals that for you and I would never be a problem, literally a drop or two of that in a child whose gut is sensitive can cause them to go completely off the rails. Half the time families come to see me and their kid is already on a laundry list of stuff and I'm the one like, oh, they probably shouldn't be on that, shouldn't be on that, shouldn't be on that. And literally a family stops and they're like, oh my God, my kid is so much more calm.

30:01We were trying to fix the parasites, but in the process of fixing the parasites, we were triggering so much inflammation, causing the child to feel so much worse. So if parasite cleanses aren't the approach, what is the approach for dealing with parasites and addressing your child's gut health appropriately? It's understanding what created the problem in the first place, right? What caused all of this to fall apart? and first recognizing that, addressing whatever that was. And the thing, you know, call me biased. The thing that I see commonly is the indoor contamination because the mycotoxins in particular, but also some of the bacterial endotoxins are highly disruptive to the gut.

30:47So they cause the intestinal barrier to fall apart. And early on in my practice, I had a bunch of kids that I would just look at them like, why is your gut such a horrible mess? Like what happened? Because they were eating organic foods, families were living in super clean environments, no artificial chemicals, anything, right? Uber, uber clean living, yet the kids' guts were falling apart. And that is when I started piecing it together. And I realized that this indoor contamination was what was degrading the gut, which then caused these children to fall into this susceptible place. And the thing that's so fascinating is when the gut starts getting to a certain place of inflammation and dysregulation, the molds that are in the environment actually set up shop inside.

31:35So you become moldy from within, and the overgrowth of these fungi and molds actually cause more and more inflammation, which then causes everything else to become a problem. So half the time, what I'm doing now is making sure the environment is clean, using antifungals, nystatin, intraconazole to reset the fungal makeup of the gut. And I'd say 70 % of the time that allows the gut to reset to a healthier place. And then we go after the parasites, we fix the diet, do a lot of other things to take it all the way home.

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33:03Find a DeeDee's discount store near you and go check it out today. When you say clean indoors, I want to clarify that because we know that if you're too sterile indoors, that can negatively impact your child's immune system, their gut health. So when you say clean, what are you referencing? So it's really just indoor, I call it biotoxin contamination. So indoor mold in heavy amounts. That to me is one of the biggest things that sometimes is the key determinant from a child recovering and healing and doing well versus being stuck and constantly getting sick and constantly having issues, including within the gut that just can go on for years.

33:47How big of an issue do you think indoor mold is in the United States? Way bigger than we realize. Way, way bigger than we realize. If a home has been flooded, so in parts of the U.S. and frankly around the world where there's flooding, 50 % chance that there's mold. Without flooding in arid regions, California, Arizona, I'd say 25 % to 30 % of those homes have mold. And you think about it, we did something not so smart 50 years ago in the US. We decided to line every single home with paper, right? And then you ask, well, why is that a big deal? Well, what does paper have embedded in it? It has mold spores, right?

34:29So you have children that are so fragile to begin with. And then when you add this contamination to that fragile system, a lot of these kids don't have a fighting chance. I do think as much as people thought they were doing the best thing that they could in locking us all down, that was the worst uncontrolled experiment that we put generations through. But children especially, and I see so often online teachers talking about like, these children today, like their parents are so lazy. They're two years behind. And, and they're always, all these teachers are saying they're two years behind. They're two years behind.

35:05I'm like, because they got locked down for two years. Their parents were not lazy. Their parents were expected to be teachers for which they are not in a very stressful environment. And we know that based on the research that's come out, a disproportionate amount of labor fell on women because they, some of them still had their careers or, you know, whether they were stay-at-home moms, but they had to take on parenting and schooling and navigating how to get food when you're locked down and then also emotionally regulating the household. And so I think that there's so many layers to what it wasn't just a virus.

35:40Yeah, it's huge. It's for sure huge. And, you know, one of the things that I love about my mentor, Dr. Neil Nathan, is he has literally dedicated almost an entire book to that. And I think addressing psychological trauma, past trauma, just getting your psyche in a healthy place. And everyone that deals with chronic disease, one of their number ones is you cannot be in a psychologically traumatized state. You have to get your mental state in the right place to be able to heal. So obviously, and 100%, I agree with that. One of the things that's so fascinating, though, is I look at adolescence on up as acting more like adults.

36:27So adolescence, teenagers, and older pick up psychological trauma and thoughts and emotions. The thing that I love, I think, about little kids is there is a psychological purity to them, where minus, heaven forbid, some kind of abuse or some kind of horrific loss, emotionally, psychologically, they're still so pure that they don't develop the same psychological patterns as we do. And in the kids, the little, little ones, I oftentimes find you address their physiology and literally like a new human being snaps into place three weeks later. Whereas in the older kids, adolescents, teens on up, you have to address the psyche, get rid of their trauma, and address their physiology for them to heal.

37:18Well, I want to ask you, you know, when someone has inflammation in the brain, how does that change their personality and how they're actually experiencing the outside world? We talked a little bit about the fear, but I'm sure you have more to say on this. Sure. We don't oftentimes really look at how our entire experience is ultimately influenced by our chemistry to some extent, and right now we think chemistry is number one, and I would argue that's actually not the case. So our immune system is essentially pulling our puppet strings and influencing us. So we talked about the amygdala, the fear response, and with that, the anger and aggression.

37:59But if you ask, like, we're glutamate, right? It's the number one kind of neuro excitatory chemical, right? When we drink coffee, what makes us a wait, glutamate, right? The caffeine triggers glutamate, which then causes us to become awake. For those poor people that are addicted to speed, right? Amphetamines trigger glutamate, which is why you get these people that are like that. The most important source of glutamate in our brain is our microglia and their cousin cells called the astrocytes, which are still a type of immune cell that literally regulate the volume or amount of glutamate that is released in the brain.

38:44So when there's inflammation, glutamate levels just shoot through the roof. And there are a lot of families that are like, oh, I give my kid magnesium and GABA and melatonin, but they still don't sleep and they still aren't calmed down. Why? Because you've got this just flood of glutamate into the brain, which cannot be countered by these other things. So a lot of times what you need to do is actually calm down the immune system to get rid of the glutamate to allow things to work. Glutamate isn't just an excitatory compound. Glutamate also changes our sensory perceptions. So if there's a knob in your brain that's like a volume control, right?

39:25It's like on a speaker, right? You turn up the volume, it gets a little too loud, you turn it down. Glutamate can literally crank up the volume of sound in how our brain perceives sound. which causes sensory overwhelm. It can influence touch and how our brain processes touch. But glutamate doesn't work by itself because when there's inflammation between the microglia and these cells called mast cells in our brain, they release histamine. And then you ask, well, what the hell is histamine? Everyone's like, oh, well, histamine's allergy thing, right? Histamine actually is one of the most important chemicals in our brain that works like glutamate to influence our state of alertness.

40:09So glutamate and histamine influence sleep. So for those people that can't fall asleep, they wake up at two to four o 'clock in the morning or they get up at the crack of dawn, that's histamine and glutamate going wonky in your brain. It influences appetite. So for these kids that are picky eaters, when you look at them, they're not just picky in the sense that they're picky about food. A lot of times they're eating like little squirrels, right? They eat a little bit and they're done, right? They eat a few bites and they're done. That is actually histamine causing appetite suppression. Now, histamine in concert with glutamate literally completely distort our sensory experience of the world.

40:49It can distort how we process and experience sound. But we don't ever differentiate these things. We say, oh, well, that person is just anxious or they're highly sensitive, right? We give these labels to these people without asking why is this human being struggling, right? The same thing shows up in kids when they go to school and classrooms or recess is too loud, right? What do these kids do? Oh, they go off to the side. Why is this sweet child, right? Because all children want to be social. There's no asocial child. So when a child can't be social and they're off on their own playing at the side of the playground, it's because there's some kind of change in how they're experiencing their environment.

41:35It influences sense of touch, right? So like sometimes kids only want to wear certain clothing or commonly in the kids that I take care of, like hair washing is not fun for them. There are some sweet kids. Or just wet hands. We don't want to be wet. These are all signs that there's something going on with how our brain is perceiving the sensory information. And then a lot of times with this, between the immune activation in these chemicals, you get weird patterns of OCD. So I see it in the kids commonly where it's just constant, just regurgitation of the same thought. And I had this before. There were times when if I didn't eat well before finally figuring out what to do with myself, it was just this constant recycling of the thought over and over and over and over again.

42:30It would drive my poor wife absolutely nuts because she's like, stop, but I couldn't. So imagine if you've got this mind that is fearful, the entire world is a threat, your sensory experience of the world is completely off, right? So you're scared of the world, but the world is overwhelming. You've got this constant overthinking that's going on. And on top of that, you can't sleep. Your appetite is off. Your entire experience is off. And a lot of times, if you look at the core reasons why certain people behave the way they do, put aside the labels. Like I tell my families, I don't care what label your child is given.

43:10I don't care anything in terms of what you've been told. I want to understand who your child really is and why your child is experiencing life the way they do. And if you just translate that into adults, it's the same thing, right? There's the real us, the person who's kind and smart and loving and social and wants to connect and do these things. And then there is the other version of, you know, the children that I see where they're anxious and they're struggling. You know, some of them are struggling to learn, et cetera, et cetera. And through this, we create a differentiation. And we say, okay, well, these are all the stuff that are going on.

43:53What's behind this stuff? How do we get rid of this to allow the real version? And the coolest, coolest, coolest, coolest thing in the whole wide world is there's one mom that I just got a message from yesterday. Her son was diagnosed as being on the spectrum, had PANS, and they had horrible mold exposure a while ago. And he was angry and aggressive and dysregulated and anxious and would attack his sibling to the point where they had to put him in a boarding school. because he was so unsafe, like no regular school will take him. So they had to find the special boarding school for kids like him.

44:32We started treating the inflammation, et cetera, et cetera. And the mom was like, it's crazy. He's a different kid. Not only is he thriving at school, he came home for spring break. He was loving to his brother to the point where the mom and the dad were just like, what the hell is going on? You know, and like it just it gives me so much joy because that's who these kids always are, right? That that's who these human beings are. They just couldn't be who they truly are because of all of this stuff that's happening to them. Can you explain pans for people? Because that's different than being autistic.

45:11And I think some people, they would be very interested to know the difference between pans and pandas. Because certainly sometimes a child is misdiagnosed as autistic when in fact it's just an extreme form of inflammation happening in the brain. Yeah. So PANS is pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome. And I wish I could remember everything that PANDAS stood for. Oh, pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep. Thank you very much. Because my child had PANDAS. Yeah. So one of the things that I find oftentimes is with PANS, right now the conversation is predominantly around strep, some viruses, mycoplasma, a handful of infections, and Lyme and Lyme co-infections.

45:57And I don't discount any of that. Obviously, those are all true. One of the things that I commonly see, and you can't call me biased, is there is a pattern that sometimes shows up prior to this. So all of this is basically inflammation, right? It's like someone pours, I hate to use this example, but it's like someone pours kerosene in a sweet little child's brain, lights it on fire. You get this explosion, all of a sudden the child changes, right? Which sadly you saw. And as that pertains to autism, I find there's huge overlap, right? Because a lot of kids that are acting as if they're autistic, right?

46:36They can look at you, They can talk to you, but they've got this weird constellation of stuff. That's all inflammation. Whether you call it PANS or not, it's inflammation. And what we know is pretty much every single study that's been done on individuals with autism, so specialized neuroimaging, postmortem, so poor person passes away, they look in their brain. Every single study that's ever been done has definitively shown that inflammation is a part of autism. Now, we ask, how does this take place, right? So yes, these infections and all of these things could be. But one of the things that I commonly see that is overlooked is the child has recurring ear infections, and they had pneumonia, and they got a bunch of antibiotics, and they were sick often.

47:23And there's like this preceding set of events that we don't associate with the PANS or autistic regression. And oftentimes I find that that is actually the biotoxins eroding the immune system, eroding the gut, causing the susceptibility. The system falls apart, immune system crumbles, and now all of these other chronic infections and problems enter into the picture.

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48:44Find a Dee Dee's discount store near you and go check it out today. So I shared with you before we started recording that I'm publishing a book this year on ADHD and women. and there is a huge chapter that is going to probably feel cumbersome to some people. I apologize, but I'm explaining the immune system. I'm explaining how it affects neurotransmitters. There's a section, I put this box in there about pans and pandas. And my editor was like, I don't feel like this really fits in a conversation. And the book talks about autism as well, because it's very common to see co-occurring ADHD and autism happening.

49:21But my editor is like, this doesn't fit. What does pans and pandas have to do with having ADHD? And I'm like, well, then I didn't explain it well enough because it is very much been my experience, what I've seen clinically. And when you look at the research, children who are diagnosed neurodivergent, that neurodevelopmental condition created an immune system vulnerability. And so they tend to have more inflammation. Like I like to make jokes of like, you look at our immune system wrong. and it's like, I'm angry now. Now I gotta like pop off here. But this, I think also, you know, when you look at these children, they tend to have less gut dysbiosis, which is likely due to eating habits and possibly having a neurodivergent mother who also had restrictive eating habits and didn't have as much microbial diversity.

50:10I'm not blaming moms. We're just tracing a pattern here. They tend to have more intestinal hyperpermeability. And when you look at all of that with a dysregulated immune system, it makes sense when an insult comes in. And like, you'll see families where they have mold and everyone else is like kind of okay. But that child who's neurodivergent is far from okay. And it's because, you know, it's not just genetics. It's the interplay of the epigenetics in our world that, you know, contributes to the manifestation of symptoms. And I'm trying to be very clear in these words because oftentimes people will hear something and run with it and say, well, this is the cause of autism.

50:50So genetics laid down the autistic wiring and the environment came in. And this is, you know, what I believe in many experts believe the environment came in. And that is the expression that you see of the behavior and where somebody is on the spectrum. And that's where, you know, what we're talking about here, you can actually intervene so that they have a better experience as a human, not trying to erase them and their experience as a human, but trying to give them a better experience as a human. I love it. Hallelujah. Yes. One of the things that I explicitly spelled out in my book that's coming out hopefully next year is I think we have miscommunicated what autism is.

51:35Right. And when we say treating autism, a lot of people are like, you're going to change my kid. And it's like, no, because I'm neurodivergent. I land somewhere on the spectrum. And depending on how healthy I am, I'm essentially two different people. The beautiful part of human beings, right, their neurodivergence, how they think, how they process the world, how differently they experience the world, that is the magical part of the human being. And frankly, I think even if we tried, we couldn't change that, right? That's just part of their genetic wiring and how they're made. To your point, these individuals who are also usually highly sensitive individuals, highly intelligent people, are genetically super vulnerable.

52:22Their mitochondria are vulnerable, their immune systems, their gut, right? All of these things. When these individuals start falling apart, they become a different person with all of their challenges and struggles. And I think what we have done a disservice with is calling both of these autism, right? Which I think is frankly incorrect, right? Neurodivergence is the beautiful part of the human being. The quote-unquote autism are all the challenges and struggles and the overwhelm and anxiety and the anger and the aggression and the attacking and all of those things. And what we want to do is take away what is causing that so this human being can become who they truly are.

53:08Because I think that's the thing that people don't realize, right? When all of these struggles are there, the true essence of the human being can't show up. It's like multiple dark curtains that have been pulled in front of them. And there's this thing that is now in front that's having all these challenges. But as we pull away the curtains, we reduce the inflammation, we reduce the toxicity, get the gut healthy, the curtains pull away and then the real human being starts showing up. And the person who was, you know, level three autism, angry, attacking, disconnected. I have certain kids now within six to 12 months are now going up to other kids at the park.

53:51They're still nonverbal, but they're going up. Same kid that was attacking the kids at the park, totally overwhelmed, is now going up to the kids, smiling, giving them their toy because they want to play. That is the real child. That is the real beautiful human being. The challenges are their challenges, and we need to differentiate that. Well, and I think that the problem with autism diagnosis as well is that we've seen a lot of well-meaning people who don't actually understand autism starting to pull in other diagnoses and calling it autism, so intellectual disability. So we know in women who are autistic, they report over 90 % having PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

54:38It's a extreme form of PMS that actually leads to suicidal ideation. And you see that cyclically happening once a month. And people are like, well, that's the autism. We're not treating the right thing then if you start just grouping all of these things together. And I think that's a lot of the issue as well, is that we have to be pulling back the layers of what is what here, because you will always be autistic. But that doesn't mean we leave PMDD to be something that you struggle with cyclically. And that is also something, you know, it's been looked at as years of being a hormonal issue. We now understand it's not about hormone levels, it's about receptor dysfunction.

55:16And my hypothesis about that is it's brain inflammation leading to receptor dysfunction and that allopregnenolone can't dock on the receptor in the way that gets GABA to chill things out. And instead, we see this push-pull of hormones doing a push-pull with the immune system in the brain. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you add all of the other secondary factors that are causing additional inflammation, right? So it's like the system is already on fire, and then you get the surge of estrogen. It's like the house already has a gas leak, and someone came along and poured, you know, a thousand gallons of gasoline, and then the house explodes.

55:53And everyone's like, why the house explode? Because you poured a thousand gallons of gasoline on top of the gas leak, right? And I think that this is the biggest problem with our current medical model that with good intention, right, obviously, but with good intention, we're normalizing a lot of the challenges that people face because we don't know what else to do. Oh, that's PMDD. This is autism. This is a learning disability. And, you know, with learning disabilities, it's like outside of, you know, babies that are born with horrific birth trauma because something horribly wrong, you know, and they have neurological damage from day one.

56:31Take that aside. Are babies born with learning disabilities? Or are learning disabilities something that start taking place because something is happening to that child's nervous system in those first formative years that then causes them to have the learning disabilities, right we don't we don't look at things in this way the same way as the pmdd right we just say well that child has a learning disability this child has this this child has this this person has this right we've gotten so good at labeling things and by labeling it i think we're doing a disservice because now we're normalizing well this child is just learning disabled and this is their course in life.

57:10And I find that to be highly inaccurate. Can all children have totally normal neurological functioning? Maybe not. But if you look at going back to the microglia... What influences our neuroplasticity? What influences how we form proper neural circuits in those first few years of life? The microglia. Literally, the microglia are like the gardeners that are going around selectively snipping, you know, a little shrub here, a little branch there, you know, keeping the entire garden perfectly manicured, right? And as we develop, they're the ones that go around, they're like, oh, we don't need that circuit anymore, clip.

57:51We don't need that circuit anymore, clip. And they start forming our neural circuits that allow us to become who we are in terms of how we can function, et cetera, et cetera. If our microglia have a psychotic break, if your gardener literally one day had a psychotic break and now they take the chainsaw and starts hacking your shrubs, and next thing you know, you're like, what happened to my garden? A similar phenomenon, I believe, happens in many of these children where they have such intense levels of neuroinflammation that that neuroinflammatory response literally causes the microglia. And this is all in the literature.

58:32Causes the microglia to start disrupting the neural circuits to such a profound point that now you start getting all of these learning disabilities. What's really cool is in, let's say, 60%, 70 % of kids, you know, minus those that are severely affected, you bring down the neuroinflammation, you heal the gut, you bring in the right fats, you support the mitochondria, do all of the things the brain needs. I've had kids that were supposedly learning disabled, failing school, struggling to learn, couldn't learn a lick of math. All of a sudden, their brains come online, and a year and a half later, they're now one of the top students in school, right?

59:11So we don't question these things enough because we think that these are static, permanent things that have happened. But then when you ask, well, where do the learning disabilities come from? It's like, we don't know. They just happen. Things just happen. And if we get away from that and just start becoming curious, right, and just questioning everything, which is what I do, which annoys my wife, right? But if we question everything, right? This is how I know you're part of the Neurodivergent tribe.

59:46Somehow I ended up marrying one of the most socially intelligent human beings and we're like, we're the perfect balance. Anywho, but we don't ask these questions. We don't ask these questions and we're okay in just giving labels to people. And, you know, if a diagnosis helps someone get services, if a diagnosis helps someone find the right medication, which helps them feel more comfortable in life, hallelujah, right? I am the one that sometimes encourages families to think of medications. I have nothing against any of that. But when we stop there and we have no further curiosity or insights, that is when I think we're doing a huge disservice to, frankly, our entire society, to mankind.

1:00:30And that's what I have a problem with. Yeah. And I think a lot of people listening, we know that one of the largest populations being diagnosed with ADHD and autism are middle-aged women currently. And I think for a lot of them, there's a very real phenomenon of feeling grief after your diagnosis because you look back and you look at how hard you struggled, how much energy you put into masking, how many accommodations you could have had to have helped you. and you feel a lot of grief for how you went through your life. And I think that having the diagnosis is important for you to see that you're not inherently broken.

1:01:09Like the way I explain it is that you've got a different operating system. Everybody's got the iPhone, iOS. It's compatible with everything. It's very intuitive. And you've got the Android. And the Android is not compatible with everything. There's a learning curve to it. And most of society is just not made for it. And so understanding that, like, it's just different. It's not worse. It's not broken. But in that difference, there's areas that need to be addressed. So I agree with you. I think the diagnosis is important. I think also addressing your needs is important. So as we've been talking about in this conversation, the propensity towards gut dysfunction and having gut infections, the propensity towards being more environmentally sensitive, not just to sounds and texture, but also to the environmental toxins, the, you know, the mold exposure, all of that impacting your system.

1:02:02And when you know this, you can work with it. And, you know, we've been talking in the context of children, but there's a lot of adults in my audience that this applies to because I've been open about being late diagnosed. I was late diagnosed ADHD, then endometriosis, then autistic. And I was like, these things are connected. And I've only found two studies showing that women with ADHD are twice as likely or autism to have endometriosis. And what is endometriosis? A systemic inflammatory condition that keeps you constantly under the burden of inflammation. And the cytokines that those lesions produce, they can sometimes cross the blood-brain barrier.

1:02:43They can sometimes break down the blood-brain barrier. They can sometimes hit the blood-brain barrier, light up some prostaglandins, and activate the microglia. And then what do you have? You have these co-occurring anxiety, depression, seeing PMDD, even though we don't have literature on that yet, there's enough women reporting it to say we should pay attention to this. So we start to see all of these mood symptoms coming up as well. And so you really have to start piecing out like and ask the question of because that was my question. Why the heck do I have these things like this? This something have to go together.

1:03:17And it's like, yeah, it's probably like embryologically speaking, in that time of development, cells with endometriosis ended up in the wrong place. But also my brain did different things as well. And they probably have shared genetic pathways that were laying that down. But that's not where the story ends, right? Then there's the environmental aspect. So I want to ask you about, you know, when working with autistic ADHD children who have especially a high degree of sensory sensitivities. You know, what is the method? What is the starting place for parents of like, what do we look at first? And how do you actually go through the layers of that?

1:03:55First of all, I love everything you said. And as you were talking about this, you know, it just brought up how much overlap there is in terms of your work and my work and how it's all kind of rooted in the same thing. how do parents look at the sensory sensitivities and ultimately the ADHD and autism and so forth? So first thing for me, and I tell this to all the families that I work with, you look at the amount of sensory sensitivity your child has as essentially a barometer of how much inflammation there is. And in my practice, I have seen pretty much a direct correlation between the intensity of sensory sensitivities and the amount of inflammation there is.

1:04:35And also, as we bring down the inflammation, and sometimes it happens in real time within a month or two, the families will literally see that the sensory sensitivities calm down. So for me, the first thing is, how do I calm down this inflammation to bring this child into a comfortable place? And that could be through supplements, and as I mentioned, pharmaceuticals, et cetera, et cetera. Once we've done that, the next conversation then becomes, what is the source of this inflammation, which in these kids could be the biotoxins. It could be, you know, Lyme, strap, mycoplasma, parasites, gut. And then we go after those things to further address the root cause of it.

1:05:15But as parents start stepping back, and I think as individuals start stepping back, and just start looking at like, my God, like my child is completely overwhelmed by sound. They're completely overwhelmed by touch. They're completely overwhelmed by these things. That is suggestive that there's a lot of histamine and inflammation. How do we address that? Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands for the super athletic stuff, like running gear for cruising up the trail. And the super athletic stuff, like fishing gear for chilling by the creek. Nice cast. Fitness apparel to push for higher reps.

1:05:55You got this. And golf balls priced so you can afford to lose one. Or a few. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. This episode is brought to you by DeeDee's Discounts. Back to School season is officially here and DeeDee's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks, and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet. So don't sleep on Dee Dee's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, Dee Dee's has your whole family covered. Find a Dee Dee's discount store near you and go check it out today.

1:06:38Yeah, and I think that's helpful for people to hear, especially like I'll say if you're a mom. So I have certain times of the month I don't like to be touched. I'm pretty good at controlling things, but round ovulation, estrogen has to spike because that's what it's supposed to do. And that's usually the time when I'm like, please stop touching me. I don't want to be touched. And it's so, you know, for moms, you may be having a similar experience because we know that there's a high genetic connection. Like if you're autistic, you'll probably make an autistic child. If you have ADHD, you'll probably make an ADHD child and you may be having similar experiences.

1:07:15But it's interesting because women's hormones actually allow them to mask a lot of the time and society has trained us to be very different. But I think when you start recognizing these things in your child, you start seeing them in yourself as well. And it's really helpful to understand that this isn't necessarily that you don't like people or you're withholding affection. It is that it's too much sensory input because the system is overloaded at the moment. Yeah. Literally this morning when my wife and I were sitting there having coffee before we came here, I told her if there's one wish that I hope for with this book, it's just to give people a sense of understanding and compassion.

1:08:00Because I think what really makes me sad is how often children and their parents are judged because, and I'm sure it's carrying over to what you are saying, how often these individuals, child or adult, are judged because of things that are happening, right? It's the thing that is happening to the person, causing them to behave in whatever ways. But as society, we say, your child is acting out. You need to control them. Your child is acting aggressive. You need to control them. You need to parent them better. Or the child themselves is getting disciplined, right? There's one dear child that I'm thinking of.

1:08:44Child is very much on the spectrum. He has the flapping. He can't control himself. And the parents don't understand it well enough. So they're like, stop doing this to this child who has no control over his emotions. And when I see these things, And there was another time just last week, I was on a call with this amazing family, and their child is on the spectrum. And the dad is like, I'm going to parent him and discipline him and tell him that he needs to stop doing these things because he needs to stop. He doesn't have any control over these things. He does not have any, like these kids, these individuals, they don't have any control over what's happening to them, right?

1:09:25Right. And especially with the kids, when we reprimand them, we blame them, we crush their spirit. And I have so many kids that come in and they're like, I'm bad. Like, I'm just a bad kid. I mean, like they have these adjectives that they have to describe themselves. And it's the saddest thing. It's the same thing with the neuroinflammation learning challenges. I am dumb. I hate learning. I am stupid. They call themselves these things and they internalize these things. And part of what I hope is that we get to a place where we say, you're not dumb. You're smart as hell. You just have stuff that keeps you from learning.

1:10:12You're not mean. You're loving. You're kind. You're wonderful. You just can't be that way right now because things are happening to you, right? Which is what you have said in terms of how these women are affected. And I think if anyone took anything away from this conversation, they just got to a place of understanding that and having some grace and compassion with where these people are, right? And we get to a place in our society where we say, okay, something is happening to this sweet kid. Who and how this child is behaving and how they are is not who they are. It's how they're becoming, how they've become because of something, inflammation, right?

1:10:57Kerosene in the brain, brain is exploding in fire. How do we get rid of that fire to help that child become their real self? And that's something that I don't see discussed often enough, right? It's not part of our regular communication, which I hope changes. Yeah. And, you know, it's I think it's also a common misunderstanding that, like, a lot of these behaviors, they're actually how a child's regulating their nervous system. So if you see hand flapping, that's a dysregulated nervous system trying to the pendulum has swung and it's trying to come back. And so I think that's the other issue is that a lot of people interpret the behavior because it's outside the norm of what society expects, that it's dysfunctional and it's wrong and they don't actually just get curious and say, well, why?

1:11:44Why are they doing this? I want to ask you in line with what you're saying, how do you help parents distinguish between honoring a child's unique wiring versus ignoring something harmful and treatable that is happening in their body? So with their normal innate wiring, I would look at that as, again, that is part of the magical part of who they are, right? Could they be more sensitive to the world? Yeah. May they not want to be the social butterfly that goes clubbing and goes to loud restaurants? Sure. But when a person is in a place where their experience of life is overwhelming, they are struggling to be in the world, right?

1:12:31They're struggling to function. Everything is overwhelming to them. They're constantly overwhelmed by anger and anxiety, depression, et cetera. That is not their innate wiring. That's the inflammation and toxicity that is layered on top of it. And I think that is the important piece to differentiate. And I see this all the time in the kids that I take care of. We talked a bit about gut testing, but in your book, you've talked about how lab work, routine scans, even some of like the functional medicine tests, they miss things in children. So how can a parent know what is the best testing to pursue?

1:13:09So, you know, we've talked about PANS, we've talked about behavioral issues, talked about ADHD. How does a parent know what's worth investing in? Yeah, it's a huge challenge. And there's a whole chapter that I'm dedicating to that. One of the things that I don't think we do often enough in our holistic functional medical community is talk about the failures of our tests, right? And I think some of that has to do with, unfortunately, the amount of influence that the companies have in our medical community, right? between the sponsored conversations. You know, if you've been to conferences and there's a whole lot of companies.

1:13:50I get paid for sponsored conversations, full disclosure. But, you know, you tend to be very objective, but there are times that I've gone to conferences and some very well-known doctor who is clearly tied to a company is like, you need to do this test because this test finds this answer. And I'm like, no, it doesn't. I've used that test. It fails 60 % of the time, right? But we don't talk about this, right? Because there's no money to be made to say, well, this test actually fails X percent of the time in these cases, and it will give you a false negative because it doesn't simply have the capacity to detect what is there.

1:14:29And I think especially when it comes to biotoxin illness and biotoxin exposure, this is one of the biggest challenges. Well-intending people, first on the environmental side, hire an inspector. This inspector comes and looks at the house and says, I don't see any obvious leaks. Your ceiling is not about to collapse. And then they check some moisture readings. There's no obvious moisture problem. And then they plop one air trap, this little vacuum device, in the middle of a room, right? And then it sucks in air for about 10 or 15 minutes. they say, oh, well, the outside of your home has more mold than the inside of this room.

1:15:05Therefore, there's no problem. Except when you ask, how do mold spores behave? Well, mold spores, like let's say this wall, this beautiful wall right here had a water problem, right? It's concrete.

1:15:21It's not drywall. I don't live in drywall houses. So drywall, when it gets wet, let's say there's mold there, right? Right. Guess how many inches mold spores would travel from the site of that contamination? Well, I would guess. Oh, I would say like 12 feet. Four inches. Okay. Four inches. Four inches. So Berkeley did this study. They just look at the fluid dynamics of mold spores, which are kind of heavy. And they wanted to see like in an undisturbed environment, like how far these mold spores would go from the area. Typically about four inches. So if you plop a device 10 feet away from that mold source, would you expect that device to pick up the contamination?

1:16:02No, definitely not. No, right? The laws of physics, like the mold spores are not going to be like, oh, there's a device. I'm going to start flapping my wings to go to it. It doesn't happen. These devices don't check for the actual mold toxins, biotoxins, bacterial toxins, et cetera, et cetera. So environmental testing misses it. But on the patient side, right now with the tests we have, looking for subtle signs or subtle patterns of inflammation in the brain is basically impossible. Minus specialized PET scans, right? So specialized neurological scans. You can't see it. You don't see it on a CT scan.

1:16:39You don't see it on an MRI. You know all of that. You don't see it on regular blood work, right? You don't see it on any of the testing that we do. So it gets missed. And part of why I'm saying this is a lot of times what I do is I teach the parents to look at their child's signs and symptoms as a barometer on the neuroinflammation. Now, with the gut testing, a little bit different. There are some tests you can do, like there are these stool chemistries, right, where you can check CalProtect and Lysazime, et cetera, et cetera, which are decent at picking up the more severe patterns of inflammation.

1:17:16But one of the things that I see commonly missed are the fungal imbalances. I see this as a rampant thing in the kids that I take care of. And just as an example, when we use just simple nystatin, which is a basic antifungal that gets rid of candida, 20 % to 30 % of the kids calm way the heck down and their digestive issues improve. and they're now finding more and more that this is tied to presentations of autism. You don't see the candida on stool testing. I've tried every single stool test out there. And kids that I know have frank imbalances in all of the fungus. It doesn't show up on the stool test.

1:17:56The urine testing, the urine organic acids, which basically check the biochemistry, right? Little footprints of living organisms, 50 % of the time miss it. So it's one of those things where right now it's almost like you have to be borderline paranoid, which a lot of my families are like, dude, what's wrong with you? I'm like, I have to be this way. Do you ever check like candida antibodies? I do. And one of the labs called Cyrex came out with this microbiome and microbiome burden. And I was super, super, super stoked to start using it. And then what I ended up finding, and I've talked to Dr. Vujdani who created that test, it turns out that one of the things that seems to be happening in these kids is that they actually have a defect in their humoral immune response.

1:18:42So the way they can mount an antibody response to the fungal imbalances in the gut is actually suppressed. So a lot of times when I run the antibodies, like all of, not all of them, the vast majority of them come below the detectable reference range. And one of the hypotheses that I have right now in terms of what this biotoxin exposure illness is, is actually an error in how the immune system is able to regulate what happens in the gut, which then allows everything in the gut to go sideways, which then causes all of the other issues. Because I'm sure you've seen and know, like, the immune system is what ultimately controls the health of our microbiome, right?

1:19:26It like goes and picks off like, oh, there's some clostridium. I'm going to get rid of you, right? Candida, no, right? It's like, just comes and snatches it, right? Through the production of these immunoglobulinase and so forth. So when that immune system is like half asleep and it's like blind, it doesn't see what's going on, all of this dysbiosis can start taking place, which then causes everything else. So So because of that, I know in adults, these antibody tests are highly accurate, but I've run probably 50, 60 of them now in the kids. And it's like the same frigging pattern over and over again.

1:20:03Yeah. Cyrix, I like Cyrix Labs testing. I think that what they offer is really unique and insightful, but they're not cheap. And I usually will run immunoglobulins like first. So I just want to see what is your immunoglobulin status? Because if those are already low, so everyone listening, these are your antibodies. is if I already see your immune system is low, it tells me it's probably taking care of business somewhere else, getting used up. But also I'm not gonna run this really expensive antibody test because odds are I'm not gonna find what I'm looking for until we get the immune system built up.

1:20:35And the other part about candida is that it can be CFO. It can be small intestinal fungal overgrowth that you're dealing with. And so you're running this stool culture and you're like, well, there's no fungus, but then you've got a white coat on their tongue. And you're like, well, no, there's something. And there's the other aspect that I also see that people will treat the gut over and over and never think to check oral health. And that is something where I think always having a functional-minded dentist as part of the team is so important because I have seen patients where you're treating candida and you're treating candida.

1:21:12And I'm like, we're not like, you know, you've had this candida treated multiple, whenever people treat things multiple times and they're not getting results, I'm like, okay, Albert Einstein's definition of insanity. We're not doing that anymore. Like, let's check if you're swallowing candida. And now we've got these oral microbiome tests, which we didn't have a decade ago, but I used to send people to dentists and they're like, yeah, like we've got to do a deeper cleaning. Like there's a whole regimen we have to do. And what do you know? Their gut starts healing up because they were literally just re-inoculating themselves every time they swallowed, which is like a billion times a day.

1:21:45You're just shoving more of these organisms down there. And so we have to be looking at the full tube. I want to be a little controversial. What lab testing do you think is just not worth starting with in kids whose brains are on fire? I think every test has value. What I see happening often is people go on a fishing expedition, right? They order these$1 ,000,$2 ,000,$3 ,000 tests, right? Because they recognize, okay, your kid is inflamed. I'm just going to go throw a big net out there, see what I catch, and I treat what I catch. I don't think it's so much an issue of this test is horrible. You should never use it.

1:22:31I think there are limitations as we discussed to certain tests and people need to recognize. I still, despite the false negatives, I still run organic acids all the time because I think they're cheap, they're easy, and they provide meaningful information some of the time. But I don't hang my hat on the results of that test. There are times for just about everything. The one thing that I typically don't do, and families are like, hey, should we run this test to check if my kid has inflammation? and it's a$500 to$1 ,000 test. And I won't name names, but - Now I'm intrigued. I'm like, what test are we talking about?

1:23:10Because I would run a CRP. So CRP is just checking for systemic inflammation, right? Usually I run an HSCRP because I'm working with a lot of people who have like the sneaky, the sneaky kind of inflammation going on. And in some of the kids, the HSCRP comes back positive because their systemic inflammatory response is so far off. I've also found 50 % of kids have normal looking even HSCRPs, but their neuroinflammatory response is off the charts. But, you know, for instance, Vibrant has their neural zoomer as one example, which I think Vibrant is a great company. But for me, it's like, do you need a test to tell you the sky is blue?

1:23:50Just look at the sky. It's blue, right? If your kid is totally anxious and they're angry and they're aggressive and they've got all kinds of weird sensory issues, and they've got restrictive eating, and they've got sleep issues, you don't need a$1 ,000 test to tell you they've got inflammation, right? So there are times that I see us or us as providers having families direct resources to things that may not necessarily be that dramatically helpful. And I also sometimes see cases where the provider misses something like the contamination in the indoor environment because the family tested their home, oh, we don't have mold, right?

1:24:29So the provider's like, okay, they don't have mold. They told me they don't have mold. I'm going to move on, right? And then they go checking for Lyme and they go checking for all of these things. And then they give the kid one antibiotic after another, despite the kid having a fungal dysbiosis to begin with, right? Antibiotic after antibiotic, kids kind of gets better while they're on the antibiotics, right? Because of the anti-inflammatory effects, it's suppressing the bacteria, which are driving the inflammation, right? Second kid comes off the antibiotics, everything goes sideways. So it's really understanding the bigger picture and then understanding when do we use what tests to precisely help us understand what's going on, given the significant limitations of all of the stuff that we have.

1:25:14And the NeuroZoomer, I think, is a really good test. And often what I will find is that when people want that is because they have to have data to believe they actually need to do this work, right? Because it's work to heal from chronic conditions. It's work. The other thing that, you know, my colleagues who treat children, it's often the dad who has to see the evidence that we really do need to change our lifestyle. We really do need to change the diet. It's not usually the mom who already got her online PhD in this child's condition because like, she has literally gone all in. And she's like the master of every PubMed publication that's out there.

1:25:49And it's the dad who's like, no, I want to see the testing before I believe this. And so, you know, sometimes like the proof, right, the data and the evidence is what it takes some families and some people to be like, okay, change is actually needed. And I'm right there with you. I mean, I, you know, my book, I go through like so much detail. Like, what is it, what do your neurotransmitters like do when you're under inflammation? And then what does it look like in terms of behavior? And then I do give a big list of labs with the caveat of like, we can test systemic inflammation, but it doesn't really tell us much about your brain.

1:26:27But for those people who are like, I have to see the data, I have to see the evidence, like there are testing options. But what I'm hearing from you is if you've got the symptoms, we just need to figure out what the cause is. Yeah. And sometimes for these families, what I will do is actually use my treatment as a way to gauge, right? Because if you give a child an anti-inflammatory, and over time I've learned to gauge which child needs what, right? There are times I'm like, here, give your kid these supplements. Let's see how they do. And the parents are like, oh my God, you know, they're 40 % better.

1:26:58And then there are other kids, I'm like, your kid needs the helicopter fire drop. And that's what this pharmaceutical is for. But a lot of times I actually now use my treatments as a gauge. And then, you know, when the parents give the supplement or pharmaceutical and like, oh my God, he or she is less sensitive and less aggressive and sleeping better, pooping, whatever else, right? That then becomes the data for them to say, oh my God, like this was real. This was real and this was affecting our child. And then what do we do? Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands for the super athletic stuff, like running gear for cruising up the trail.

1:27:37Woo! And the super-athlet-ish stuff, like fishing gear for chilling by the creek. Nice cast. Fitness apparel to push for higher reps. You got this! And golf balls priced so you can afford to lose one. Or a few. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. This episode is brought to you by Dee Dee's Discounts. Back to school season is officially here and DeeDee's has everything on your list. I'm talking bold styles, cool kicks, backpacks and even dorm room essentials. All the prices that won't hurt your wallet.

1:28:17So don't sleep on DeeDee's. Whether you've got a second grader or a sophomore, DeeDee's has your whole family covered. Find a DeeDee's discount store near you and go check it out today. and you know i i think the a good question and might be on a lot of people's minds is you know how do we know what the right starting place is so you've talked about like there's times where i choose a pharmaceutical there's times where i choose you know a supplement that would be great if everyone could work with you um and get your book in their hands immediately Lee, books take time, y 'all. But if they're going with a practitioner, how do we educate patients so they know what to expect, but that they also can advocate in a healthy way?

1:29:02I think the first part of that is just becoming more informed. There's a substack that I wrote almost a year ago now that was kind of the first iteration of this conversation, which had to do with the protocol, essentially. So it was a big kind of diagram of like, if your child has X, Y, or Z, go in this direction, do this. What the book will have is a much more expansive version of that. Because I realized that not everyone can come to see me and that wouldn't ultimately help every family. So it's how do we help as many people, including providers, become informed enough where they can look at something and say, oh, I get this.

1:29:45I get why this is happening. I get what are the pieces. And now I've got a roadmap to figure out where to go because it doesn't have to be that complicated, right? And I'm sure for you, like at the level that you are now, like you can look at a problem and be like, oh, that's obvious, right? It's not obvious to other people, but that's because you and I have learned how to identify patterns in a different way. And now it's how do we, just like with your book, right? How do we help other people identify these patterns more easily, more effectively to then figure out where to go? Is there a supplement that everyone thinks is great for inflammation or great for behavioral problems that you actually see can make things worse?

1:30:28Yes. Quite a few of them. Probiotics, and I learned this the hard way, you know, five years ago, like a little bit longer, maybe six, eight years ago, I was pumping every kit full of probiotics, right? First go, right? Probiotics heal the gut, they can calm down inflammation, blah, blah, blah. It turns out that especially things like Saccharomyces, Boulardii, right? Some of the probiotics have streptococcus in them. A lot of these probiotics actually can become triggers to the immune system. Postbiotics, which sometimes have fungal beta-glucans, can actually be massive triggers to the immune system.

1:31:06And it's not to say probiotics can't be helpful. But it's like if your house is about to explode, right, it's not just that it's about it's not just that it's on fire. It's about ready to explode. The last thing you want to do is add any fuel to that. So don't be throwing your gas tank in there. You're not be throwing your gas tank in there. No cans of kerosene. No, no. So I try to really simplify things. Curcumin, fish oils, a lot of the things that we typically think are helpful actually can be pro-inflammatory. Curcumin can actually ramp up monamine oxidase, so the catecholamines can increase.

1:31:42So a lot of times with the kids that I start with, minus some supplements that the parents are like, this was absolutely helpful to my kid. It's like, okay, great. We don't touch those. But outside of that, a lot of times I take away things that are questionable, just put them on magnesium, zinc D, and then whatever anti-inflammatories. Another thing that I learned the hard way is most of our supplements are filled with citric acid. Citric acid is a derivative of aspergillus. Literally, they make citric acid from aspergillus. So to our immune system, when the immune system is hypersensitized, if it sees enough citric acid over time and it's been hypersensitized to fungus and yeast and molds, it starts freaking out.

1:32:28And I've had some kids that were doing fine, doing fine, and then all of a sudden they go off the rails and the parents are like, she's freaking out and she's having panic attacks. I'm like, what happened? Nothing. I'm like, something happened. Well, we did start this multivitamin and it's like, okay, what's in the multivitamin? One of the first things, citric acid. Get rid of the multivitamin that would have been perfectly helpful for anyone else. And then like a week or two later, the kid calms down. So it's being mindful of things that could be generally helpful to the population. It may be helpful for your kid down the road, right?

1:33:02Their gut immune system has calmed down, their gut is healing, you've detoxed, you've gotten rid of the fungus and everything. Now the probiotic can come in, the Saccharomyces boulardii can come in, and now it works wonders. What's your issue with omega-3s? I'm not sure why. I know with certain things, like for instance, choline, choline in certain fats, because it enhances the absorption of bacterial endotoxins. So if you've got a highly inflamed gut, the trillions of bacteria that are there are producing toxins and various other compounds. It seems that certain fats may help enhance the absorption of these toxins because these are lipophilic, right?

1:33:45They're fat loving. So when they clump onto fat, it helps them absorb. The studies that I read suggest that omega fats don't do it. But what I find in a lot of kids, again, in that early stage when they're inflamed, The omegas, which generally are fabulous, too early on cause them to go bonkers. And the best theory that I have is somehow the fats in those omegas are enhancing the absorption of these toxins from the gut. I'd be curious. So I was actually just reading research on this yesterday that so many children's supplements and supplements that are made for ADHD people, neurodivergent people, they tend to be higher in DHA.

1:34:23but the research does not support DHA as actually having a positive effect in these instances. It's actually that you need higher EPA and you do need the DHA as well. So everybody knows DHA, that's what we always think about for brain health but the EPA is what is anti-inflammatory and helps with modulating the immune system. And so, you know, I would just be curious if it's that you've been using children's supplements and they're higher in DHA and what really they need is higher EPA. Anyhow, I just, I found it Because I'm very perplexed that we know how beneficial omegas are for the brain, for inflammation.

1:34:59And yet the ADHD research is usually like it's not that big of a game changer. And as I got into deeper, it's like, well, the ADHD research actually says it is a bit of a game changer if it's EPA higher. But most supplements, because they're like brain conditioned or child, are having a profile much higher in DHA. So I would just be curious. I don't know if you have an answer now or you can come back to me. Well, as you were saying that, I was kind of scanning the back of my brain in terms of which of the fish oils. And I think it was across the board early on. So early on, it seems that whether it's kind of the ones that have more of an EPA versus DHA or the other way around, they seem to be a problem.

1:35:39Now, one of the things that you touched on, I think, is so fascinating to think about. If you're experiencing ADHD because of a lot of inflammation, right? Your gut is off. You've got tons of inflammation in your system. Would you expect the fish oils to really work? Not really, right? Because you've got to bring down the inflammation, get the gut to heal. But one of the things that's so cool is I find in the kids where those kind of foundational pieces are addressed. And then I start flooding their system with the fish oils. One, they don't have the same issues that they would have had before.

1:36:14And two, cognitively between that and the phosphatidylcholine and all these other happy fats that the brain needs, start really enhancing cognition. So attention, focus, processing, working memory, a lot of these things start clicking into place. One of the other things that I find, and I don't know if you've seen this in the adults, is I'd say probably 20, maybe 30 % of the kids that I have are actually low in cholesterol. So cholesterol is obviously an important fat for the brain on top of the adrenal glands. And I have kids, when I check them, their total cholesterol is 110, 120, 130. And there's this wonderful talk that this friend of mine, Dr.

1:36:58Shaw, William Shaw gave at a conference where he's like, you need to have a total cholesterol of at least 160 to have adequate cholesterol levels for brain function, adrenal function. And he started breaking down like, holy crap. Oh my God. And I totally missed it. And then I started going back. I'm like, oh my God, there's another one. There's another one. So recently, over the last year and change, I've started supplementing with cholesterol. And in some of the kids, it has been a game changer. Literally just some cholesterol, some anti-inflammatories, boom, the kids start calming down. So long.

1:37:36Well, there's been new or emerging research. I think it just came out 2025, 2026 about nutrient metabolism is actually altered in ADHD individuals. There's no reason to think that it's not also altered in autistic individuals. And so their need for omega-3 fatty acids is actually much higher because of how they metabolize it. But we also see that it's not just fat metabolism, but protein metabolism as well. And so now there's a hypothesis, if you know everyone's saying like, get 100 grams a day of like, well, actually, if you're neurodivergent, it might be more like 120 because the way you're actually metabolizing things so you're not getting the protein levels that you actually need and you know gut dysfunction can be part of that but there's actually alterations in the fatty acid metabolism pathways so it's really interesting that you're seeing that cholesterol component as well and then it begs the question of like well what the hell is going on with the liver like why is the liver not doing its job in making cholesterol and it could very well be going back to the top of this if you're talking about biotoxins because we know as environmental toxins, biotoxins, the immune system is bogged down, the liver is going to have to pick up the pace on all of that.

1:38:46Yeah. Yeah. And I see probably about 20 % of the kids have elevated liver enzymes. And I look at that as a direct cause, not to the environmental biotoxins. I see that as oftentimes being from all the bacterial endotoxins, right? Because when the gut falls apart, one, you've got this revolving door of all the environmental toxins just constantly recirculating. But now we've got a second load of all of the toxins from within us that should have never been entering our circulation, entering circulation. And a hypothesis that I have is the moment of autism regression that we see in these kids. And there's a pattern that I've now seen just over and over again.

1:39:32Kid is born into the world. These are usually kids that are born into these contaminated environments. Kid is born. Sometimes they get jaundice. Usually they get colic. And it's not like, oh, my baby cries for an hour. It's like three, six hours a day, constantly holding, rocking, bouncing, driving, et cetera. They start developing reflux. So the colic is the first sign of neuroinflammation, which I didn't know until like I started looking at it. I'm like, oh, my God. And then I had some kids that were still, quote, unquote, colicky, and they were like seven, eight months old. And the mom's like, please, God, do something because I'm about to lose my mind kind of stuff, which I would too.

1:40:10So I actually put the babies on natural anti-inflammatories through the mom. So I just gave her a bunch of supplements. I'm like, take this. And then sure enough, like two, three weeks later, the colic calmed out. So the colic, first sign of inflammation, the gastric reflux being the gut starts to disrupt, right? You've got gut disruption causing that. Then they start developing some food sensitivities. They start developing some eczema. Things are okay, right? Nothing terrible. And not to say to the audience, like, this is for sure a sign that your kid is going to develop autism. But there's like a march.

1:40:46Then the kids start getting ear infections, right? Sometimes as early as a year. antibiotic, antibiotic, their sleep starts getting disrupted. They start becoming more sensitive to the world. And if you look at, I don't know if you're familiar with this pediatric autism screening called the MCHAT. So it's something we do at 15 months to see literally is the kid hypersensitive to the environment? Do they have issues in other areas? And then you say, what the hell is that? That's neuroinflammation, right? So there's neuroinflammation, there's gut inflammation all starting. And then what I see oftentimes is there's a breaking point, and it could be something that got injected into them.

1:41:24It could have been a virus they had. It could have been an antibiotic. And then all of a sudden the child changes. But why I bring this up is right now we're so focused on that moment of change. But then if you look, these kids did not have an easy breezy kind of history. There were all of these other things that were like, oh, some kids get colic, some kids get reflux, some kids get a ear infection, some kids just had sleep issues, some kids are just sensitive, some kids, you know, it's like, again, going back, we just normalize all this stuff. But if we step back and say, how does this march, why does this march go forward?

1:42:00What is it telling us? And I believe like, if we got to a point where we could identify these things. And I'm not saying this happens for every kid and I'm 100 % right. But if we can start identifying these kids and say, what is going on in this child system? What do we need to do to support them? And through that, could we get to a place where, for instance, I mean, the individual is neurodivergent. Again, we're not going to change that. But could we prevent that moment where their nervous system catches on fire? And I think that moment that the nervous system catches on fire is when the gut loses integrity.

1:42:35And then you've got the secondary flood of bacterial toxins, right? So you've got all of the other toxins, all the inflammation, gut falls apart. And it's like, there's a dam. Imagine the Hoover Dam or whatever dam, right? Big dam holding back a lot of water. Crack here, crack there. Dam is still holding. All of a sudden, dam gives way. Gush of water, trillions of gallons pouring through. Those are the bacterial endotoxins now going into circulation, causing a secondary, more massive neuroinflammatory response, which then causes the brain circuits and everything else, and what we call the regression.

1:43:13Yeah. You just explained my child, my firstborn's progression, minus the antibiotics. We did not do antibiotics for ear infections and whatnot. But it's interesting because as you describe all of this, he never got screened because the way we thought about autism 14 years ago was very different. He started talking at six months and I was like, red flag. Like, this is not normal that I'm driving a car and he's being like, mama, look. I'm like, what did you just, what is happening? And his pediatrician's like, he's just really smart. He's really smart. He is really smart. But we thought about autism very differently.

1:43:48And so, you know, the thought was he had to be nonverbal, not hyperverbal. And for him, you know, he ended up developing PANDAS, which is strep mediated everybody you know on the internet is always like you know it had to be something else i'm like no we tested there were strep antibodies like we tested the gut there were strep there we we treated strep and things got better but it wasn't just strep i just want everyone to understand it was a lot of layering on gut healing a lot of bringing down neuro inflammation and then the moment i went really hard on the mitochondrial health was when like everything turned and that's when i like started developing like my hypothesis of this like Like, you know, immune neuroendocrine and the mitochondria get like caught up in all of that.

1:44:34So I think that's going to resonate with a lot of parents. But when you talk about that regression, this is where I think people get confused, where they're like, oh, were they instantly turned autistic? Or what actually happened there? So I believe what happened there is your immune system, it's the kerosene that landed in the brain. And it's when the immune system's activation went from mild, colicky, a little irritable, a little sleep disturbed, to full-blown. An analogy that I give in the book is imagine if the microglia in the brain, right? These immune cells are like Steve Bannon and the Hulk, right?

1:45:14Steve Bannon, nice guy. He's got an edge to him, but super nice, right? Don't mess with Steve Bannon because if he freaks out, he turns into the Hulk. And the Hulk, as those of you that have seen the movies, like they just go – it just destroys everything. Like, I'm Hulk. Right? What if the microglia in the brain are like Steve Bannon? And normally they're calm. They're nice. They're peaceful. I like the idea of Steve Bannon in my brain. That's why I'm smiling. I'm a huge Marvel fan. Me too. If the microglia turn into hulk mode and now they're smashing and bashing and literally if you look at what does microglial activation do to the brain, it literally disrupts neural circuitry.

1:46:00And then what happens at that moment of autism regression? It is a full-blown disruption of neural circuitry. Now, depending on how advanced it gets, how long it takes place, what are the factors driving it, you get different outcomes. But if you look at what happens, because kids are born neurodivergent, but a lot of parents will say, my kid was babbling to me. They were happy. They were making eye contact. They were social. They were engaged. And then something changed. I believe that that moment of change is when the neural circuits become disrupted because of this microglial activation. And if that is the case, then we address microglial activation, the mitochondria, cell membranes, et cetera, how much good could we do to help a lot of individuals start feeling better and doing better?

1:46:51Yeah. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Do you have a name of your book yet? You all, I got like early sneak preview of the book, but does it happen? Have you been titled it yet? We haven't. We haven't. We're batting around ideas. TBD. Well, thank you so much. We will link. I want that, uh, that sub-stock article on your algorithm so I can put it in the show notes for people. And we will link everywhere that you're found so people can follow you and learn more. But thanks for taking the time to sit down with us today. It's my pleasure. And thank you for having this conversation and bringing this information into the world because it's definitely needed, as you know.

1:47:29And I hope this helps a lot of people start understanding what they're going through, what their kids are going through. And if nothing else, have some hope in just understanding. Yeah.

1:48:09We'll see you next week.