Inflammation: The Hidden Fire Behind Pain, Aging, and Disease

25:36That's enough to kill most of us pretty quickly. And it does, which is why we see we're the sickest population in the world. then some people die from diet-related diseases. So it's in sugar, it's in high-fructose corn syrup, it's in processed flours and foods. Also, inflammatory fats may be a factor. So lots of refined oils, non-formega-3s, trans fat, which have been ruled not safe to eat by the government, but they're still everywhere in food. I don't know how that works, to be honest with you. I guess there's little loopholes that the food industry gets to give them maybe years or decades, but this was 2005, seven years ago.

26:13They say, hey guys, trans fat kills you, not safe to eat, don't use it. But if you go to the grocery store, you can find it everywhere, which is terrifying. I mean, more and more companies are removing it, but it's still there. Also, what else can cause low-grade inflammation? Sitting on your butt. Not exercising. Exercise is a powerful anti-inflammatory. Not over-exercising, not running a marathon, but doing a moderate amount of exercise every day really helps lower inflammation. Stress, another big cause of inflammation. So nothing we knew about stress. It's out there. Bad things happen. Reading the news.

26:48I try to stay away from the news, by the way. It's so stressful. Like I figure if something really bad is happening, I'll hear about it. But the key is to find habits and behaviors that reduce your stress response. Meditation, yoga, hot and cold therapies, massage, breath work, whatever works for you, try it. But it's got to be a daily practice. I do it every day. Today, I worked out, I did a sauna and an ice bath, and that really helped me calm my nervous system. I also deal with toxins. Toxins are also inflammatory. They're called immunotoxins, low levels, pesticides, chemicals, petrochemicals, heavy metals.

27:26I encourage you to go to the Environmental Working Group's website, EWG, and find out how to reduce your exposure through food, including fruits and vegetables, animal products, fish, household cleaning products. and even skincare products. I mean, did you know that lead is in a lot of lipsticks? That a lot of skincare products have petrochemicals that get absorbed through your skin and get in your body and cause harm. Yeah, don't be doing that. So also another source sometimes is latent infections. We might not know we have it, like a virus or tick infection or mold we're exposed to. So those all can drive inflammation.

28:07And of course, our microbiome is probably one of the biggest sources of inflammation in us. We all have an imbalanced microbiome, mostly from our poor diet, lack of fiber, processed food. So we want to cultivate our inner garden. I've written a lot about this. We create a new product called Gut Food that helps people actually heal their gut. And it's like a multivitamin for the gut. So I encourage you to check it out, gutfood.com. So really tending your inner garden is so important because there's actually a phenomena called metabolic endotoxemia. This is a phenomenon that is resulting from bad bugs that produce these toxic compounds called endotoxins that get absorbed through your gut lining into your bloodstream and then activate your immune system.

28:49Like for example, these lipopolysaccharides, which are these little endotoxins. And then your immune system gets activated, triggers inflammation, and there's all the downstream causes, consequences of that. For example, high levels of TNF-alpha, one of the inflammatory molecules, and it triggers insulin resistance. So literally, not even by changing your diet, you can become pre-diabetic just by the toxic bacteria in your gut. That's why they call it metabolic endotoxemia. So what is inflammation? What's the big deal? Why does it become so dangerous? Well, inflammation is a natural part of your body's function.

29:25It's essential. Yes, you cut yourself. What happens? The white blood cells gather. They come to the site to rescue. They create swelling. They bring all kinds of healing factors. And what you see is redness and swelling and pain and heat. That is the classic sign of inflammation in the body. We used to call that in medical school, rubor dolor, color, and tumor. Tumor just means swelling, not tumor you know that's anyway latin whatever but the key is that it's this normal process that happens as a result of dealing with problems that go wrong but here's the rub in the past most of what we had to deal with was acute things that caused inflammation like a cut or an infection but today our modern lifestyle is driving so much hidden inflammation systemic chronic inflammation silent inflammation it's a silent killer and it turns out that it's not the kind of inflammation that we are familiar with like a sprained ankle or a sore throat or something that's an obvious kind of inflammation the kind that's good the kind that we're talking about is the kind that's bad and that leads to almost every known disease of aging heart disease cancer diabetes alzheimer's not to mention things like ADD, depression, obviously autoimmune disease, obviously allergies, asthma, all sorts of gut issues.

30:54All of these problems are caused by inflammation. Of course, then the question is, what causes inflammation? We're going to get to that. From a functional medicine perspective, I don't care that you're inflamed. I care about why you're inflamed. I don't want to give you an immune suppressant, an anti-inflammatory drug, a pile of aspirin. I want to find out what the cause is and get rid of it. In functional medicine, there's a simple rule, and it's this. It's called the TAC rule. If you're standing on a TAC, it takes a lot of hours to make it feel better. Take out the TAC. And if you're standing on two TACs, taking one out doesn't make you 50 % better.

31:27So get rid of both of them, okay? And all of them. Maybe there's five or 10 TACs, and that's the secret of functional medicine. It's a method of investigating the body as a system, looking for root causes and getting the body back in balance. All right. So what is the deal with this inflammation? I mean, I think, you know, when I was in medical school, heart disease was a plumbing problem. You know, it was clogged arteries. We now know that it's an inflammation problem, that the reason your cholesterol becomes an issue is because it gets inflamed and white blood cells scop up, soupsop up the cholesterol and stick it in the arteries causing plaque.

32:02Same thing happens in the brain. Alzheimer's is inflammation in the brain. and all those plaques in the brain come from inflammation. So cancer also is a disease of inflammation. And when you, for example, look at various studies, even with cholesterol, if your inflammation level is high but your cholesterol is also high, you're at high risk. But if your cholesterol is normal and your inflammation is normal, you're at no risk. But if your cholesterol is high and your inflammation is not high, you're really at not great risk. And the worst is if you have obviously both. So inflammation is a real big issue.

32:36They did a study of an enderly population. They found that if their CRP was high, which is a blood test for inflammation, and interleukin 6, another cytokine test for inflammation, they had a 260 % more likely chance of dying in the next four years. So this is no joke. So you might feel fine. I had a patient with me, he's like, I don't know what's wrong. I feel fine. I saw my blood test test. I don't really care. I feel fine. Why should I change what I'm doing? I'm like, well, if you don't change what you're doing, it might not go well for you. Now, there's no guarantees that's true, but it's likely true.

33:07So the real concern isn't our response to an injury or an acute infection or something like that, but this chronic smoldering inflammation that slowly destroys our organs and our ability to function and leads to rapid aging. In fact, I just finished my book on aging called Young Forever, and they talk about the hallmarks of aging. One of the key hallmarks is inflammation, or they call it aging itself, inflammaging. And what happens with aging is there's this runaway inflammation that just degrades your whole body. So understanding what inflammation is, how to diagnose it, and how to deal with it and get rid of it is so essential if you want to be healthy.

33:43Now, what's the problem with the treatments we use? Why not just take Advil or aspirin or take a steroid like prednisone? Well, they're fine for acute problems, but when things are in this slow, smoldering state, they really don't work. In fact, the new data on aspirin was pretty scary about heart disease. Oh, it's going to help you and stabilize your blood, blah, blah, blah, and prevent clotting. But it turns out that the recommendations for aspirin were over-enthusiastic and that there are certain patients who should be on aspirin, but very few compared to the universal statement that everybody should take an aspirin to prevent heart disease.

34:20No, because it causes strokes and it causes bleeding, which is not good, like GI bleeding. So, you know, if you look at those drugs like aspirin or Advil or Aleve, they're not benign. I mean, they're really helpful when you need them, but they can cause terrible gut issues. I had gastritis, for example, after taking them for a broken arm. And many, many people die. In fact, as many people die from taking those drugs as from asthma or leukemia. So imagine if we literally eliminated those drugs, we'd basically be essential. It'd be the equivalent of curing leukemia or asthma. So it's not a joke.

35:00So, you know, statins, for example, even cholesterol drugs like statins like Lipitor, they may not have their main effect by lowering cholesterol. In fact, it may be because they actually lower inflammation. That's what they do. It's a side, quote, a side effect of the statin, but actually may be their main effect. So how do you know if you have inflammation? Is there a way to test for it? Is there a blood test? Well, there are, and there are more and more coming. So the most common one that people do is called C-reactive protein. It's high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. It's something your doctor can order.

35:33It's on any lab panel you can get. And you can also see that as a sign of hidden inflammation. Now, if it's super high, it could be infection. But if it's in the sort of 1 to 10 range, that's usually the hidden inflammation. Ideally, it should be less than 1. Any higher than that means you're on your way. Now, there are other blood tests you can check, cytokines, sedrate, and so forth. May not be as helpful, but there's a new test developed by a professor at Stanford called I-A-G-E, I-A-G-E, meaning immune age. And it really looks at your immuno, which are 50 different cytokines, many of which you've never heard of.

36:11They're molecules that are regulating immunity and inflammation that he was able to correlate by using artificial intelligence with disease. So he found there really there were about four that highly correlated with your risk of heart attack, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and so forth. What's so amazing is this test is really not that expensive. It's easy to get and you can track it over time. And then the good news is you can change things and change your inflammation. Anyway, enough with that. So, you know, the reason we really don't track this is because doctors just kind of are not thinking about the root causes of disease.

36:49They're like, okay, what's your symptom? What are you suffering from? Okay, let me find the drug that best matches that. You know, if you have a strep throat and I can give you penicillin, great, I'll get a cure. But most of the time I'm just managing symptoms and, or I'm giving you an immune suppressant. And that's not the answer, unfortunately. So, okay. So let's say you've identified the causes, you figured out you have inflammation. You know, how do you live an anti-inflammatory lifestyle? So it's the same old stuff. I hate to say it, but it's eat real food, lots of phytochemicals. All those colorful plant compounds are anti-inflammatory.

37:19All the phytochemicals in food are so powerful for reducing inflammation. Also, just real, whole, unrefined, unprocessed foods, not lots of sugar and starch, no trans fats, no refined oils, and get lots of those phytonutrients. Good fats are really important too. Avocados, olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, ideally, omega-3 fats, things like sardines, herring, sable, wild salmon, they're all really rich in omega-3 fats and they're very healthy for you. Exercise, lots of research on exercise can reduce inflammation. It supports your immune system. It strengthens your heart. It corrects insulin resistance and improves your mood.

37:57It helps reduce stress. I mean, it's one of those miracle therapies that can really do so much for you at so many levels. um practice active relaxation which sounds like a contradiction or an oxymoron but no you have to actively relax it's not i don't mean sitting watching tv drinking a beer i mean meditating doing yoga deep breathing then in massage doing something where your body just kind of hits down into the parasympathetic state and calms your nervous system hot bath i love that last night I had a very busy day, lots going on, and I just took a hot bath with Epsom salt and I just kind of floated away.

38:35It was great. Also, food sensitivities are another big factor. You might not know this, but a lot of hidden inflammation can come from not allergies, but food sensitivities. Things like gluten, dairy, and certain things that people react to that they may not know they react to. So I often recommend an elimination diet, like the 10-day detox diet that I've created to help people reduce their overall level of inflammation. And then you can add back foods and see what's really the problem. So maybe eliminate a lot of things, and then you just add back one at a time. And for example, dairy I know causes inflammation.

39:07If I have dairy, I get pimples, my skin's weird, I get congestion, so I don't eat dairy. Although I do manage to tolerate goat and sheep okay. Healing your gut. You know, doing a gut repair program, that's why we've created Gut Food. that's so important. And I think many people would benefit from actually a focused gut repair program because a lot of their imbalanced bacteria are causing inflammation. And lastly, take the right supplements. A multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D all help drop inflammation. Well, what are the things in your mind that you go through as a checklist if someone comes in with an autoimmune disease?

39:41Well, the first step I'm going to go is looking for celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. I mean, that is a do not miss in anybody with an autoimmune condition. I mean, if you just look at the overlap, you see higher prevalence of celiac disease and gluten sensitivity in anybody with any autoimmune condition. I mean, we've talked about this before with Sidney Baker's TAC rules. If you're trying to control the autoimmune condition, but you're sitting on that gluten TAC, it's going to be really hard to quiet everything down and feel good. You have to remove the driver of the inflammation and the autoimmune upregulations.

40:18That is the first place that I go. Before you go on from that, I want you to explain the rest, but I just want to emphasize that because, you know, when someone comes with an autoimmune disease, getting a celiac panel is like checking a blood pressure. It's just the most basic thing you can do. And often people misinterpret it because the levels are quote normal, but they might be in the continuum. So what if normal is up to 20, but your level is 18 or 17 or 15 or 10? Is it relevant? And the answer is yes, it's relevant because it means your body's having an immune response to an antigen or foreign protein in the gluten that you're absorbing across your gut.

40:58And your immune system is seeing and then getting pissed off about and creating a systemic reaction around. Now, how bad is that reaction? Will it cause symptoms? Do you feel bad? Maybe, maybe not. but it is causing some low-grade level of inflammation, and it's a low-grade hidden inflammation that's driving so many chronic diseases. Right. I think that's a really important point, and it's another one of those that sometimes doing more in-depth testing, somebody might say, well, I don't have celiac disease, but every single other gliadin or gluten protein is showing up elevated. That might be a big motivator to say, all right, I guess I do need to stop eating the bread and remove the gluten from the diet.

41:38So sometimes we do more testing to convince people or really engage them because it's hard. If those are foods you love, it's hard to get people to give up what they're used to eating. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And of course, there are other foods that could be culprits too, but gluten is the number one in my list. So go through now the rest of the kinds of things you think about with an autoimmune disease. Yeah, so I also think about gut health and the health of the intestinal lining because anything that disrupts the health of that lining creates more input to those antibody-producing cells.

42:14And I think if we quote Alessio Fasano, unlike Las Vegas, what happens in the gut doesn't stay in the gut. If it's not healthy, if that wall is more permeable and there's more bacterial proteins getting into the bloodstream or more food proteins getting to the bloodstream, there's that immune system just going, ah. And it's not just acting at the gut level. It can start cross-reacting to organs that we should normally be tolerant to, hence an autoimmune condition. So we really want to understand the health of the gut microbiome, the integrity of the intestinal lining, how well are we digesting and absorbing our food?

42:50Do we have an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine? That's the second priority. Yeah, so you've got gluten, you've got the gut microbiome, you've got leaky gut. What else goes through your mind when you see someone with an autoimmune disease? Well, so you also think about whether there could be a toxic insult, a toxic exposure that could be upregulating the immune system. We know that, and I won't say that stress per se necessarily causes an autoimmune condition, but it can certainly perpetuate the cycle of inflammation. Makes it worse, for sure. Makes it worse. Just like sleep deprivation, the same thing.

43:26Yeah. So toxins, like you said, are actually immunogenic. And there's a word for the role of toxins in autoimmune disease. They're called autogens. It literally cause an autoimmune response in the body, whether it's pesticides, heavy metals. And I've seen this and I'm sure you have seen it many times in your practice. And you never know if it's that. Or so because we've gone through the gluten and we've gone through the microbiome, we've gone through toxins. And there's a few other things I think about, like food sensitivities besides gluten that can be a play role, which just goes along with a leaky gut.

43:57And then the last thing I think about are infections that are infections because we often ignore those. And the body is, you know, you're living as a host to all sorts of bugs, right? And when you have AIDS or HIV, you don't die from the AIDS virus. You die from all the latent infections that you actually have already living in your body, like pneumocystis or candida or CMB or tuberculosis or whatever you've got kind of laying around. It's just your body's handling. That's what kills you. And in autoimmune disease, I think there's an unrecognized role of infectious disease. And there is some literature about this for sure.

44:37Absolutely. What was interesting to me is that nobody chases it down. So even though if you look at the PubMed, the National Library of Medicine, all the data on autoimmune disease, you can type in autoimmune disease and toxins and diet and gluten and allergens and Lyme disease. And you'll find all these papers. But what's striking to me is that when you go see the rheumatologist, they don't go, oh, we should look for these things. They just don't. Sometimes they'll check a celiac panel. That's actually more common now. but they don't really look at diet they don't look at toxins they don't look at allergens they don't look at latent infections and you'll often see dramatic improvements when you actually help people with those issues well you know mark it's interesting um when we were in medical school way back in the day we learned about writer's syndrome right um writer's syndrome where people would show up with symptoms like rheumatoid arthritis hot swollen joints and positive rheumatoid markers and it either came after a gut infection like Shigella or Yersinia, or it came after a genitourinary infection like chlamydia.

45:41So we knew even 30 years ago that those infections can actually trigger an autoimmune reaction. And more recently, there's been a link with Porphyromonus gingivalis, so an oral bacteria and rheumatoid arthritis. So if you have bad teeth, that can also be a source, right? Yep, yep, which I didn't mention. So absolutely. So if someone comes with Raynaud's, you're thinking about all these things in the back of your head. And you're wondering, oh, what's this person's story? And you go into their story and you can usually ferret out what the issues are for them. And then you can start to chase down the things that are really abnormal.

46:16So tell us about Raynaud's. How common is this problem? What are the symptoms? And what is the general approach with traditional medicine? Sure. So you talked a little bit about the symptoms. that it's typically fingers, sometimes toes, sometimes nose, turning white or blue in the cold. And then when they come in, and it can be very painful, and then you come inside, and as it warms up, they can turn beet red. So it's small arteries that react to the cold. And there's two primary, there are two types of Raynaud's. There's primary Raynaud's, which supposedly is just the Raynaud's by itself. And then there's secondary Raynaud's, which is associated with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and progressive systemic sclerosis.

47:04And the second component tends to be more severe. It can even lead to ulcers on the tips of the fingers and things. It's more common in women. It's more common in lean women, interestingly enough. And it can significantly affect quality and quantity of life. And if it's a primary source, it's usually reassurance, wear mittens, stay out of the cold. If it's the more serious issues. Sometimes they'll use topical nitroglycerin, calcium channel blockers, even medications like Viagra. Wow, so Viagra, which is increased blood flow, so it makes sense, right? Yeah, isn't that interesting? Yeah, with some benefit, right?

47:43But I think the important thing is to say, well, what does it actually mean, either if you have small arteries that tend to react to cold, or if you've got an autoimmune condition, because that opens the door into thinking about things from a much broader, comprehensive way. Yeah. And so from the perspective of the biology of it, you're getting these sort of contracted blood vessels. What is the cause of that? Well, we don't know 100%, but those arteries, if we think of the importance of artery elasticity, so your arteries are dynamic. They can dilate and they can constrict when needed. Sometimes it's a way to kind of maintain core body temperature.

48:26But those small arteries in particular, we think of that inner lining, the endothelium that's responsible for regulating the tone. It is another one of those proverbial canaries in the coal mine. It's affected by a lot of other things besides cold. In fact, it's affected by many of the other factors that increase our risk of cardiometabolic disease. We know that arteries can spasm in response to an unhealthy diet or hydrogenated oils. We know that arteries can spasm in response to stress or sleep deprivation. Arteries can spasm in response to air pollution. So there are many, many other factors that will make maybe a predisposition become more significant and more relevant.

49:13more relevant. And the other piece is there's some evidence that if you have arteries that are prone to spasm, it may be a marker that you are at higher risk down the road of developing high blood pressure, heart risk, and stroke. So it's really a time to pay attention to the health of your arteries. So it could be found in isolation, just as a random condition, quote random, or it can be associated with other autoimmune diseases that people have, like Sjogren's or lupus or other conditions. And essentially it's an, almost an autoimmune disease of the blood vessels, right? And it creates inflammation.

49:49So then the question is, you know, how do we think differently? You know, if you're just giving drugs like Viagra or you're giving drugs to, you know, like increasing blood flow, like, like blood pressure pills and so on, what, what do we do differently in functional medicine? How do we think differently about this problem? One of the diagnostic approaches we use to test, and figure out what the cause is, and what do we do in terms of treatment? Well, I think it's important, number one, to really do a deep dive into vascular risk measurements. We want to know somebody's quality and quantity of cholesterol.

50:23We want to know their glucose and insulin and how they're able to manage glucose. We want to know their inflammatory markers, like their C-reactive protein, and do they have evidence of oxidative stress. anybody with an autoimmune condition mark i mean you've talked about this for such a long time we want to figure out what the underlying cause is that's upregulating the reactivity and leading to the autoimmune condition so we want to look for food triggers we want to look at the health of the gut lining and all of the other things that people are familiar with so it's really looking for upstream to see from a vascular standpoint how healthy that is and what's driving it and from driving and upregulating the immune system, what we can identify and remove and address.

51:10How do we assess people? Is there a test for a Raynaud's or is it just looking at the symptoms? It's primarily a symptomatic diagnosis, to be honest. There are tests you can do to look at artery elasticity in general. They're not widely available, but some places will do them. They're usually done in the context of cardiovascular disease to look at how resilient to the small arteries are. There's one by a company called Itamar based out of Israel called an Endopat. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. It's not very comfortable. They basically put a little probe on your finger and pump up a blood pressure cuff to block the blood flow for two minutes and then measure how quickly it takes for the blood to get back to your finger when they let it down again.

51:58So they can tell you about the small arteries. It's like medical torture. yeah well that's fine so that's good but but then it doesn't really tell you why just tell you they're not working which is you know what we're really good at in medicine is figuring out what's not working but we don't know how to figure out why it's not working you know what's not working but not why it's not working and i think that's the beautiful thing about functional medicine so and i i've seen you know patients in raynause when we start to dig down on these issues we look at toxins we look we look at their microbiome we look at allergens we look at food sensitivities we look at infections we can really can start to bear it out what the issues are and often get these people a lot better.

52:33So what is the approach then from a functional medicine perspective for Raynaud's syndrome? Yeah. So from a diagnostic standpoint, as I mentioned before, we want to look at all those cardiometabolic risk factors. We want to look for the underlying tax that are upregulating the immune system, whether it's gluten or food sensitivities or something going on in the gut microbiome or an infection. And then from a treatment standpoint, a lot of the same lifestyle things that we normally want to do specifically help those arteries be more resilient, less reactive. So we know, for example, that studies on meditation and yoga biofeedback can show improvements in Raynaud's and artery elasticity after six weeks of a regular consistent practice.

53:18Which is great. Right. It's great. So you can basically meditate your blood vessels healthier, right? That's good. Yeah. What was that story years ago of somebody meditating and they could change the temperature in one hand versus the other? Five degrees or something incredible. Yeah. So we have more control over that autonomic nervous system than what we thought. You know, I've often found, you can find any other things around diet or supplements helpful for these patients. Yeah, there's a lot. So again, specific food components, omega-3 fatty acids have benefits on artery elasticity, whether that's fish, fish oil, nuts and seeds.

53:56You know, arginine is an interesting amino acid. It's used by the arteries to make their own version of nitroglycerin. So it's a precursor of nitroglycerin, which, of course, dilates blood vessels. Nitric oxide. Nitric oxide. Yes, thank you. Nitric oxide. So getting nuts and seeds or maybe even supplementing arginine. the deeply pigmented foods that are rich in bioflavonoids a lot of those polyphenolic foods also relax the arteries things like resveratrol for example folate rich foods dark leafy greens another powerhouse for the arteries so we think of that extra virgin olive oil another food that has natural benefits on relaxing the arteries so that's really a lot of what I use Simeon I often and I'll supplement with arginine.

54:48They're very symptomatic if they're going out, and often even ginkgo, which is another product. And I think the nitric oxide is interesting. You can increase nitric oxide by your breathing too. Just by breathing practices, we had a Louis Gnaro on our podcast who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of nitric oxide and its role in improving overall health, reducing inflammation, and it's incredibly important for lung health as well. And with COVID, they're finding nitric oxide being very effective in naturally treating COVID, patients. And he talks a lot about that on the podcast, but the, the, um, the nitric oxide can also be increased by Viagra or Cialis or any of those drugs that are used for sexual enhancement, but they actually, they actually work by increasing blood flow and circulation.

55:31So that's a good thing. So, you know, maybe if you have Raynaud's that might help as well. So arginine, you can take, or you can do the, uh, those drugs, or, you know, you can actually inco and other things, bioflavonoids. I used to use quite a bit and combining that with the root cause the medical detective piece. Because you can't just give those, someone's got radios, oh, give them argy. No. Well, why do they have radios? Like, what is the cause? What is the root? And I think that's what often people miss. Even in integrative medicine, they'll say, oh, well, you have radios, you have argy. I'm like, no, no, no.

55:59Why do you have radios? Like, what is the root cause? And this is the part that we often miss in medicine. And that's why at the Ultra Wellness Center, we really have such a robust practice because we are the medical detectives looking for the root cause. You know, and I'll just tell you, I just had like an anecdote of a patient I just had this week that was just, you know, it's one of those stories. He's really awesome guy. And he developed a ticket ticks when he was not tick bites, but he developed like motor ticks, you know, when he was eight. And I started asking about his story and a doctor, there was nothing you can do, take these drugs, whatever.

56:34So I said, well, what was it like? What was happening? You know, did you get infections? Did you have this? Did you have that? So I started digging into a story and tons of infections and strapping. all kinds of things. And, uh, you know, we know there's a syndrome called PANDOS, which is pediatric autoimmune disease of neurologic, blah, blah, blah. I don't forget what it stands for, but so long. And, um, and, and that is associated with strep infections to cause behavior issues, OCD ticks. And when I checked his labs, he had super high antibodies to strep and on the cutting hand panel, he had really high antibodies against some of the components in his brain related to strep.

57:13And yet no one had even thought to ask the question of why. And so whether it's tick disorders or whether it's Raynaud's or whatever, if you get into the habit of thinking, which is what I love about functional medicine, because it makes you think as opposed to just sort of rote memorization and knee-jerk reaction, it's sort of what we get in medicine, which is we make the diagnosis and then we don't have to think anymore. We just basically say, here's a cookbook protocol that is in 2021 for XYZ disease. And functional medicine is different. We have to start thinking, we call it thinking and linking.

57:50You know, like, oh, we know why you're, we go, we know why your fingers get cold and turn white and you have no circulations because you have Raynaud's. Like, no, that's just the name of what it looks like. That's the name of the problem. It's not the cause of the problem, right? And so So that's what's so beautiful about functional medicine is you get to actually go into thinking and linking with what Sid Baker talks about. This whole idea of thinking and linking and changing the way that we actually approach diseases by once we get the diagnosis, that's the beginning of the process of thinking and connecting the dots and being a medical detective.

58:23And that's what we do in functional medicine. One of the first principles, the first pillar is eat real food, real, whole food. Understand that food is medicine. It's not just energy or calories. It's truly medicine. It's information. It's instructions. It's code that literally programs your biology with every bite. It regulates your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. Pretty much everything is controlled by food. And if you're eating the wrong food, you're sending all the wrong messages. If you eat the right food, you're turning on the right method.

58:53So, there's a 10-day detox. You're basically taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. You're taking all the foods that cause inflammation, that are toxic to your system, that are inflammatory, can mess with your gut, and you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system. And it's pretty much a very simple approach. It's lots of veggies, so mostly veggies, lots of good fat, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein. And what does that look like? It's tons of non-starchy veggies like broccoli, any kind of veggie you think of that's not basically a potato. um you know sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people uh avocado is good fats avocado olive oil nuts and seeds lots of good protein grass-fed organic regenerative meats fish chicken uh sometimes we you know for vegetarians we can uh regans we can use plant-based proteins like uh tempeh or non-gmo organic soy tofu uh those are the most dense sources of protein but you do need protein as you detoxify so for the 10 days you're gonna be getting rid of all the other jobs right processed food uh other carbs sugar dairy coffee gluten alcohol uh pretty much actually all grains and beans uh and the reason we get rid of games i mean they're not necessarily all bad is a lot of people have issues a lot of issues with their gut a lot of people have issues with inflammation a lot of people have issues with gluten a lot of people have issues with um um, in some resistance and prediabetes and obesity, and they can be problematic for these people.

1:00:28So basically get off all the bad stuff. Now it's not calorie counting. You can eat as much as you want. We're not like crazy how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that. No, it's just pick the right foods. And we focus on what to eat. You don't have to focus on how much to eat. Right? So, um, when you look at your plate, it could basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be non-starchy veggies. And I often will put two or three veggies in my dinner. I'll make mushrooms. I'll have broccoli. I'll make maybe a salad. So I'll have lots of veggies. And I'll have a portion of protein that's essentially the size of my palm.

1:01:07Four to six ounces, usually 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now, that's a good amount of protein, but you don't need that much if you're having antall protein. It should be very generally raised. It should be pasture-raised chicken, wild-caught fish. There should be low mercury, obviously, all that. And we'll put all that show notes. Lots of good fats with dinner, like avocados, nuts and seeds, olive oil in your veggies. You can even use, for example, ghee, which is a kind of a butter, but it actually has the inflammatory proteins removed, casein, and whey. It basically has just the fat. It's called clarified butter.

1:01:41Very common. You can get my book, 10-Day Detox Diet. You can get the 10-Day Detox Diet cookbook. whatever you want. Put all the show notes and links together. I do call it the 10-day detox diet, but sometimes you need to do it longer, like two weeks, three weeks, 10 months, maybe even 10 years, depending on the situation. But we're going to talk about the 10 days and how powerful that can be to transform your health. Now, I find that most people have never connected the dots between how they feel and what they eat. They walk around with what I call FLC syndrome. That's when you feel like crap.

1:02:18And that is a big problem for people. What do I mean by that? Well, you might be tired, sluggish. You might have brain fog. Maybe you have digestive issues, reflocked, heartburn, irritable bowel. Maybe you have nasal congestion, sinus issues, muscle aches, joint pains, headaches, insomnia. Should I go on rashes, acne? I mean, it goes on and on and on. And many of these things are caused by food. And the only way to know is to do a total body reset, like hitting the reset button on your commuter when all the systems are jammed. It's a complete reboot. How do you do a reboot? It's very powerful.

1:02:58And most people have never experienced this. And this is what I love to do with people. And I actually run programs all around the world. where people can come and actually experience this. We do programs where we have people do this just in five days, not even 10 days. People have a 70 % reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. Now, I'm going to put in the show notes the medical symptom questionnaire that I use in my practice, which essentially gives you a score based on the degree and frequency and severity of symptoms. So if you have a headache, is it zero meaning never? Or four, I get it all the time, and it really that, or some version in between.

1:03:30And then you get a score at the end, and people have a score of 60, 70, 100. It should be less than 10, maybe even zero, ideally. I usually have symptoms. It's not normal for human beings to suffer this much. And that's really why I created this book and the program, The 10-Day Detox Side, because I was doing this with my patients and seeing such incredible results. So I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year to really reset my system, to kind of get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff. I'm going to walk you through how to do this.

1:04:02I'm going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology to help your gut, to help your detox system, to help your immune system, to help reset your nervous system. And it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. I remember I wanted to do this with a junior high school once and the teachers were like, well, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe.

1:04:48Maybe they don't want their children doing this. I'm like, what, is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food? I mean, they should get then note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school it's the opposite anyway yes it's very safe anybody can do this um and uh some people by the way you know need more certain things or other things but but basically this is a very universal approach to resetting your system a second pillar aside from what you eat the food is really important and by the needy approach in the morning you need to make sure you get rid of sugar and starch in the morning super important when people start their diet their day with carbs which is the worst thing you can do sugar-sweetened coffee, steams, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads.

1:05:31Bad news. Second pillar are your daily habit. This energy involves a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm. It helps you reset your nervous system. And there's a few really important habits as part of the 10-day detox. One is when you eat and also when you sleep. Let's talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don't eat in the right pattern. We tend to, you know, eat all day long. We tend to snack. We tend to eat before bed. We snack late at night. It's kind of bad. So basically when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health if you eat at night.

1:06:13So the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner is six, breakfast at eight. That's a 14-hour fact, okay? if you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night that doesn't count right and it's the most uh simple form of what we call time restricted eating and it's basically giving our body a rest and getting the body to reset and i wrote a lot about this in my book the um young forever but but basically there's all a process at night that happens called autophagy and cleanup and repair you want to get your body uh the ability to do that the next is food now you can do a breakfast if you're eating, you know, for example, dinner at six and breakfast at eight or so, that's a 14-hour fast.

1:06:56Really important to have protein in the morning and not carbs and sugar. Also, not eating three hours before bed is really important. So most people eat and snack after dinner. Don't do that. Have at least three hours of time you eat and you go to sleep. That way, you will lose weight. Your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. What about sleep? Sleep is one of the most underrated pillars of health. It's probably even before exercise, meditation, maybe even before nutrition, because when you don't sleep well, you're going to eat tons of sugar and carbs. You're going to crave more.

1:07:27So you want to focus on sleep and restorative rest. We know that getting in a routine of waking and sleeping can help with a deeper, more restful sleep. So try to pick the same bedtime every night. Try to get off your screens for an hour or two before bed. Keep your room, or use blue blocker glasses. Keep your of dark and cold, probably 65 to 68. Really important because your body does much better with sleep at night. Try to relax at night with meditation. Do guided imagery. Do breath work, stretching, journaling, gratitude practice, whatever you like. But do something. Very important. So your evening routine should be like set a bedtime in six or ten days.

1:08:06Turn your phone off and get out of your bedroom. Turn the TV off for at least an hour or two before you go to bed. And then use the time of night to read. to journal, to meditate, to connect with people you love, and just kind of wind down. The third pillar is extra support we need on the journey, right? Now, we all need nutrients. They're called vitamins because they were vital amines, vital to life, right? And so we've seen a dramatic reduction in the nutrient density of our food. Our organic matter has gone out of our soil. Nutrients can't be extracted. Foods travel long distances. We have commodity crops that are bred to actually breed out the nutrients and end the starch and yield.

1:08:53And so foods aren't as nutritious as they once were. And probably 90 % of Americans, according to the government-owned surveys, are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency. So how much vitamin you need to not get rickets? Not very much, like 30 units. How much do you need for optimal health? Probably 3 ,000 to 5 ,000. So we need to really probably focus on nutrients. And even with a perfect diet, because none of us are hunter-gatherers anymore, we're eating all kinds of food that we never ate and nutrient depleted. We need the basic supplements. So we need a basic set of supplements, a multivitamin, mineral, foundational.

1:09:29Magnesium, a lot of us are deficient, probably 45 % or low are deficient in magnesium. It's involved in over 300 different enzymatic reactions. Super important, helps relax your nervous system at night, help you calm down. Also, people get constipated sometimes when they change their diet. So taking magnesium citric can help. And lastly, vitamin D. It's also like fish oil, but vitamin D is really important. Vitamin D over 80 % is lower deficient in vitamin D. It's involved in so many different things in the body. So really important. And it helps your mood, helps your muscle function, helps your brain, helps your energy, helps inflammation, autoimmunity.

1:10:02It's just super important. And most of us are low. Fish oil is also important. And I often recommend fish oil to people or omega-3 fats. So what are the program steps in the 10-day detox? What should be the tip? And then we're going to go through this. The first step is to eat from the 10-day detox approved list for 10 days. So eat what I'm telling you to eat, right? Whole foods, you know, whole food-based shake in the morning. You could add, you know, protein powder, grass-fed protein if you want. I have a grass-fed protein called super-sickle protein. But you really need to make sure you have a good breakfast.

1:10:36Second is commit to daily habits, right? Pick your designated eating window, right? You want a 12 to 14-hour night fast, which means eating within a 10 or 12-hour window. Don't snack before bed. Try to have the same bedtime. Get off your technology an hour or two before. Practice some active relaxation. Huge impact on your health. Step three is add in the supplements. Now, you don't have to do this, but I really encourage you to have a multivitamin, magnesium, vitamin D, and potentially fish oil. And we're going to list which products you should take in the show notes so you have it all listed there um also what you should eat and what you should avoid during your 1080 talk let's go through that um so here's the full food list um you can you know we're going to have it in the show notes you can take it with you to the store it's in the book the 1080 talk it's in the 1080 cookbook but essentially uh here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of uh what you should eat is um protein you need the right protein so grass-fed or regeneratively raised meats is great you can have a path-raised lamb beef bison venison elk grass-fed beef pasta-raised chicken turkey duck all that's fine what you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and eggs and so forth and by the way you can also have eggs if they're pasta-raised eggs meat get rid of all processed meats deli meats all conventionally raise feedlot meats, get rid of all that stuff.

1:12:03What about fish and seafood? Lots of small fish are good, big fish are bad, right? Big fish like swordfish, tuna, sea bass, halibut. Most farm-raised fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, I call this mashfish, small wild salmon, stardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel. You can have black cod, shrimp, scallop, trout, all those are fine. eggs as i said uh pasturized eggs are fine non-organic regular eggs are not fine what about nuts and seeds very important uh almonds brazil nuts cashew nuts hazelnuts macadamia pecans pine nuts pistachios walnuts all that's great um you can even kept to count in chocolate not actually chocolate but where chocolate comes from uh seeds are great chia seeds flax seeds hemp seeds pumpkin seeds sesame seeds sunflower seeds pumpkin seeds all great uh nut butters also great so um uh unsweetened nut butters so almond cashew pecan macadamia i love macadamia a walnut oh that's great um you also eat beans at their if you're a vegan and you want to do this you can use uh gmo free or non-gmo tofu or tempeh as your protein um what you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar, that are cooked in oils, that are basically candied stuff.

1:13:25A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogenated fats. Peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I would say mostly avoid peanuts because they have aflatoxin in them. They often are rancid, and so you want to be careful with that. What about oils and fats? Well, the ones you want to use are organic avocado oil. you can use forget a coconut oil for cooking grass-fed ghee if you want to use tallow lard duck fat chicken fat that's okay as long as they're they're um pathways or regenerative raised for salads and you can use different kinds of oils like almond oil flax oil hemp oil macadamia oil and conversion olive oil um and you can cook with olive oil but only like tomato sauces and things like that things that are not high heat sesame oil tahini is great as well great fat sesame seed kind of paste, walnut oil, those are flavorful oils, they're not made.

1:14:18But you want to avoid the traditional oils, all the seed oils like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, saffron oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff. What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you want to stick with lots of non-sargy veggies or arnchokes, organic if you can. I use the Dirty Dozen guide from the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. I'll tell you which of the clean 15, meaning you can eat them not organic or the dirty dozen, which you definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm, kohlrabi, leafy greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, radicchio, radish, rutabagas, all the kind of stuff.

1:15:07seaweed is great lots of minerals shallots summer squash tomatoes turnips zucchini list goes on we have all in there you can have some uh things like sweet potatoes i like the japanese purple sweet potatoes winter squash carrots pumpkin all that's fine i mean carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice or that's a problem but basically try to limit it to a like one uh serving which is like half a cup a day uh we should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes mostly a little you know some of the little uh ingling potatoes or the peruvian potatoes purple potatoes can be fine what about dairy um you can eat pasture-raised butter or ghee but i encourage you to get up all dairy including sheep and goat which are mostly fine for people but i encourage you to just get up all other dairy and if you're having um i encourage you to have make sure it's grass fed or regenerally raised what about beans well uh you can have green beans you can have green peas.

1:16:01You can have a non-GMO or organic soy, just tofu or tempeh. You can have snap beans. You can have snow peas. But otherwise, definitely no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that, I incredibly get off all that. Why? Because it just shuts down the insulin response, helps people lose weight, reduce inflammation. not that these are necessarily all bad but eventually you can add them back but basically get rid of all all the other all grains wheat barley rye rice amaranth millet tap oats everything uh get rid of it uh fruit fruit can be okay but um small amounts of non-hydrlycemic fruits so organic blackberries blueberries cranberries kiwi lemons limes raspberries all that's fine uh not too much right you don't even like you know two pounds of blueberries but you can have a cup, half a cup a day.

1:16:56You want to get rid of all the other fruit, all the high-glycemic fruit, like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherries, grapes is the worst. Even foods that you think may be good for you are actually good for you, right? Whether it's peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, for example, but you don't want to eat them while you're on the 10-day detox. You want to really shut down the blood sugar and insulin response. What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry, you can sometimes have a little monk fruit or stevia you have in the shake uh we have but generally i tend to avoid all that stuff um also just get all the other artificial sweeteners all the sugar all that stuff if you have to ask the answer is no basically um then what should you be drinking well lots of water herbal tea green tea uh let's go with caffeine that's okay a little green tea is fine.

1:17:49You know, if you get off coffee, uh, sparkling water, mineral water, all the time, issue void, alcohol, coffee, bottled water, some plastics, soda, obviously sugary beverages. Um, basically that's the program. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more.

1:18:22Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.

1:18:53If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public So i'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible Thanks so much again for listening