159. Dr. Will Cole: Autoimmune Crisis? Uncover Mold and Toxins Harming You

Struggling with mystery symptoms? Most people chalk up brain fog, fatigue, or joint pain to aging, but what if it’s your body screaming for help? I sat down with Dr. Will Cole to discuss autoimmune conditions, gut health, and toxicity. Here’s the truth: your symptoms might stem from hidden culprits like mold, heavy metals, or a stressed-out gut. Cleaning up your gut and reducing toxins lets your body do what it’s built for… heal! Small, consistent changes can transform your health. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community and gain exclusive access to Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols today!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Get Dr. Will Cole’s book, “The Inflammation Spectrum”: https://amzn.to/4jnQe7r Listen to “ Dr. Will Cole “ on all your favorite platforms! YouTube:https://bit.ly/4jmEv9c Spotify:https://spoti.fi/4jCWkB7 Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4lzYenb Connect with Dr. Will Cole: Website:https://bit.ly/4iurxF0 YouTube: https://bit.ly/4jmEv9c Instagram:https://bit.ly/3GlSihK Facebook:https://bit.ly/4lGTEUh TikTok:https://bit.ly/4444EVw X.com: https://bit.ly/4cI59qw LinkedIn:https://bit.ly/4jEMG02 Thank you to our partners: H2TABS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - USE CODE "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE - THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP - GET 1 FREE MONTH WHEN YOU JOIN!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD HAPBEE - FEEL BETTER & PERFORM AT YOUR BEST: https://bit.ly/4a6glfo CARAWAY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF - GET 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:45 Definitions of Metabolic Health and Flexibility 13:23 Markers for Metabolic Inflammation Spectrum 17:16 Being Metabolically Healthy by Making Healthy Lifestyle Choices 19:50 Potential Impacts of the MAHA Movement 21:32 Toxic Burden Impacting Autoimmune Conditions 26:56 Leaky Gut Syndrome 29:56 Testing to Identify One’s Conditions 33:49 Emotional Connection with the Gut 41:23 Implementing Lifestyle Habits to Address Stress & Trauma 45:27 Gratitude and Self-Compassion 52:43 Testing for Mold Toxicity 58:15 Role of Genetics 59:04 Practices to Improve Gut Health 1:03:01 Fasting as a Hormetic Therapy 1:06:20 Testing for Metal Toxicity and Resolutions 1:12:29 Daily Habits Causing Inflammation The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There's so many health issues that are going on beyond the surface that conventional medicine has not caught up with.

• 0:04Gary Brecka?

  And I think the absence of disease is not the presence of good health.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  We have upwards of 93% of the United States metabolically unhealthy in some way. They're not checking all the boxes of saying, I'm in great metabolic health.

• 0:17Gary Brecka?

  We hear about metabolic health, metabolic flexibility, metabolic syndrome, but I don't think most people understand what that really means.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  People that have sexual abuse growing up and physical abuse growing up, neglect growing up, we have to look at these emotional toxins too.

• 0:30Gary Brecka?

  The emotion doesn't create aflatoxin, it's the dysregulation of the nervous system because of your emotional state.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  It's a piece of the puzzle. These mental, emotional, spiritual, or the part of gut feelings impacts the physical health so much.

• 0:43Gary Brecka?

  A lot of choice that I think the average American is forced to make is if they have one of these conditions, how do you best suggest that they go about healing the gut?

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the first part of the question, you said, how do they find out? Well.

• 1:06Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka. We go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And my guest today is a guest that my team and I have been watching for a long time. You know, I've been deep down the rabbit hole lately of autoimmune conditions, of gut health, of inflammation, metabolic health, and he is an absolute expert in all four of these categories. I can't wait to dive into this with Dr. Will Cole today. Welcome to the podcast, brother.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Gary freaking Brecka. I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening, man.

• 1:46Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47Gary Brecka?

  You know what's so crazy is I have people say that, and I feel the same way. Like, God is so good because I...

• 1:56Gary Brecka?

  I feel like, once he revealed his purpose to me, the kind of people that have come into my life, people like yourself.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:04Gary Brecka?

  Um, you know, that, that I hold in such high regard, you know, there's so many mentors of mine, like Dr. Mark Hyman and, and Dave Asprey, and some of these guys have just walked through my door to sit down on this podcast and they go, "Man, thank you, Jesus." It's just, it's, it's so amazing to sit here with you and the fact that you feel the same way is very flattering to me.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  This is gonna be great.

• 2:26Gary Brecka?

  Uh, cuz, you know, I don't see myself like that yet, but, you know, eventually I will, because I, I look at functional medicine practitioners like you that are making a real change in the world, and it's, it's just so inspiring, and I think finally, the work that folks like you do is, is coming out of the shadows.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:43Gary Brecka?

  Um, you know, and it's, it's getting a deserved seat at the table.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:47Gary Brecka?

  You know?

• 2:48Speaker 00

  It's a special time.

• 2:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Such a time as this, for sure.

• 2:51Gary Brecka?

  It's a special time. So, you know, lately, what, um, I, I've been deep down the rabbit hole of, um, toxicity, because, uh, you know, in, early when we started our, our functional medicine clinics, um, you, you have those clients that are just unresponsive, that are having, um, significant symptoms, and you don't find it anywhere on the labs, right? You look at the labs and you're like, "Well, you know, your, your hormones are in, in a good range, you've got a decent amount of D3, um, you know, your, your triglyceride and cholesterol is not, you know, off the charts, your C-reactive protein's kind of normal." And they're like, headaches, fatigue.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:31Gary Brecka?

  Brain fog, mood numbness, all the things that are just robbing them of their daily life. And I started then to really look at toxicity, main, the mainly mold, mycotoxins, metals, uh- Parasites and viruses.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:52Gary Brecka?

  And in almost every one of those cases, we we found one of those to be the underlying cause. I know that you talk a lot about metabolic health, metabolic flexibility. I wonder if we just talk about what is metabolic health and metabolic flexibility? And then I want to go down the road of, you know, for the folks that are watching, where would I start, you know, testing for some of these things to maybe find out what's at the root of my autoimmune disease?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Sure. Yeah. This phenomenon that you're explaining is something that I see on a daily basis. People that have things like brain fog, fatigue, digestive problems, anxiety.

• 4:33Gary Brecka?

  Joint pain, like global pain.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, joint pain. What the world may call mystery illnesses, they're falling through the cracks. They'll be told from conventional doctors, well, it looks autoimmune, but they're not like checking all the boxes.

• 4:46Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  There's somewhere on that autoimmune inflammation spectrum. And exactly what you were saying, where it's like, yeah, metabolic labs are pretty much okay. C-reactive protein, high sensitivity C-reactive protein looks normal. Homocysteine is sometimes suboptimal, but nothing crazy, these inflammation markers.

• 5:04Gary Brecka?

  That's what I mean.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Conventional inflammation. But you're right. When you look at things like TGF beta one, C3A, C4A, MSH, these sort of other immunological labs that are conventional labs, but aren't typically ran in the conventional setting, you will typically find for that subset of people, those labs will be off. And then when you start looking at biotoxins.

• 5:25Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  It confirms those conventional labs in my mind.

• 5:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  It confirms things like mold and bacteria and viruses. And why? And almost 100%, I don't know if you found this, but almost 100% of these people that fit to check all these boxes, what the world would call mystery illnesses, have these HLA gene variants.

• 5:43Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Like they're all, which for people that don't know, that's human leukocyte antigens. It makes your body more sensitive, if you will, to these biotoxins like bacteria, viruses and mold. So whereas, you know, mold is everywhere.

• 5:57Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Bacteria and viruses, humans have been. symbiotically for a long time, but these people, their immune system doesn't know how to calm down when they're exposed to these pathogens.

• 6:08Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 6:08Speaker 00

  And then we could talk, I think, in my mind, there's a environmental toxin component to it when you talk about glyphosate or forever chemicals. I think there's something man-made that is exacerbating these biotoxin sensitivities.

• 6:25Gary Brecka?

  Well, there's no question. I mean, if you just look at big data, if you just take a zoom out for a second, and you look at parabolic rise in skin cancer, parabolic rise in autoimmune conditions across the board, roughly 80% of which are in women.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:38Gary Brecka?

  You look at parabolic rises in type 2 diabetes, morbid obesity, multiple chronic disease in a single biome, the earlier, you know, the onset of metabolic syndrome getting down into teenage years now.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:49Gary Brecka?

  Right? Where we just thought, man, I can't be killed by a bullet at 15 or 16 or 18 years old, you know? And you have to think that there's an environmental component to that.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Whereas like, yeah, maybe the mold, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. But then it's like the analogy that I use, like, we all have different bucket sizes, right? That's your bio-individuality for how much junk can I handle?

• 7:14Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  And environmental toxins, man-made and biotoxins like bacteria, virus and mold are kind of be contributing factors. But then stress and result trauma, you know, not sleeping well, foods that don't love you back. I mean, it's a confluence of factors.

• 7:27Gary Brecka?

  Don't love you back. I like that.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  America loves those.

• 7:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, oh, we do.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  They love to be in a toxic relationship with things that don't love them back.

• 7:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and we very often, I read Dr. Pearl Mother's book, Grain Brain and Gut Brain Connection. It was the first time that the switch flicked for me that, wow, I mean, our gut bacteria really drive our cravings and not necessarily for the right things. Right? You know, the more highly processed food we eat, the more highly processed food we crave, the more sugar we eat, the more sugar we crave. We get dependent on this dopamine cycle. And, you know, I, You know, early again in my career, when we were doing lots of labs on people, it was it was really confounding because you think when you talk about I have an autoimmune disease or my immune system is like you said, you know, lit up. You know, in a fight for one of these auto, these environmental toxins.

• 8:18Gary Brecka?

  Classically, you think, okay, the white blood cell counts through the roof and the and the CBC, the complete blood count would be lit up like, you know, like a Christmas tree. And that's where I think these evade capture, right? Because they're hiding right in plain sight. And and I think most primary care physicians are not trained in functional labs.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:39Gary Brecka?

  And so, you know, these poor people are going back to their primary care doctor over and over again. They're like, you're fine. I'm not fine. I can't sleep. I'm depressed. I have no libido. I've got, you know, crushed days of crushing fatigue. My joints ache. You know, I've got now I've got PCOS. I've got positional orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. I got this POTS.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:58Gary Brecka?

  And so it can't be normal.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  No, but you're right. There's so much medical gaslighting going on to these people unintentionally, most of the time, right?

• 9:08Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Because they're just, they're a square peg in a round hole, like they're just not fitting in the conventional system, which, you know, it is looking at the diabetes, is looking at the R disease, looking, they're being screened for these things.

• 9:21Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  But this, there's so much thing, there's so many health issues that are going on beyond the surface that conventional medicine has not caught up with. They're seeing it on a daily basis, but they don't know how to help these people.

• 9:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and I think the absence of disease is not the presence of good health, right? Because you don't have type two diabetes or don't have hypothyroid or you're not particularly hypertensive. Doesn't mean, well, then everything's fine. It just means you don't have those diseases.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:49Gary Brecka?

  And I, and I, I want people to thrive in like ways that they never thought possible. That's what God put us on this earth for. He really meant for us to have it all. And so I want to start with metabolic syndrome and metabolic health in general.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:03Gary Brecka?

  And then I want to work my way into some of the specifics like mold, mycotoxin, virals, pathogens, some of these. And I certainly want to get into gut health, but but but for for folks that we we hear about a lot about metabolism, metabolic health, metabolic flexibility, metabolic syndrome. But I don't think most people understand what that really means.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Sure. So depending on the study that you cite, we have upwards of ninety three percent of the United States is metabolically unhealthy in some way. They're not checking all the boxes of saying, I'm in great metabolic health. But you're right, it's kind of a kind of abstract nebulous term. People maybe think of, you know, a weight gain, which is a part of it, but it's so much more than that, right? So, yes, it can be weight loss resistance or trouble losing weight, but poor metabolic health can manifest like low sex drive. It could manifest as sleep issues. It could manifest as brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, depression. It doubles your your rate of that when you're insulin resistant. That's really what's going on.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  I mean, there's a central seminal event that's happening in most of these people. It is some degree of insulin resistance. There's somewhere on that insulin resistance spectrum, which if you're saying, if you're looking at that statistic, seven, only seven percent of America is metabolically healthy. And I would say that's kind of, they have loose standards. Like if you, as you know, like in functional medicine, we're looking at a tighter range. Where does vibrant wellness live, which is where we get our name in functional medicine? Where does the body function the best? So we want triglycerides even tighter than what they want in the conventional setting. And most people, a lot of Americans have triglycerides above one hundred.

• 11:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  And that is like that proverbial Paul Revere.

• 11:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  You know, Paul Revere.

• 11:50Gary Brecka?

  Not the LDL cholesterol. I'm glad you said triglycerides, right?

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, triglycerides above one hundred is typically an indication that the body is saying, I don't know where to put this blood sugar. So I'm going to store it as circulating fat or triglycerides. It's going to store it around the liver and spike those liver enzymes, AST and ALT. It's going to start raising that A1C, that three month average. And there's, I mean, depending on the study that you cite, it's about four to ten years prior to someone having type two diabetes that's somewhere. Some, these people were on this insulin resistance spectrum. For most people, it didn't happen overnight.

• 12:25Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  And that's high triglycerides and that low HDL. So triglycerides above 100, HDL below 59. It, that ratio is a proverbial metabolic Paul Revere. And if you're a history nerd like me, Paul Revere didn't actually say in effect, the British are coming. But to use that analogy, it's saying diabetes is coming.

• 12:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  And if you don't do something about this, and this, you may feel fine. You may feel like, eh, I'm just getting older. I may, I'm just a little tired. Those are check engine lights.

• 12:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  That your body's saying, you know, let's figure out what's going on. So metabolic health, and when I say metabolic flexibility, or when we talk about metabolic flexibility, it's the ability to burn both sugar and fat. It's the, the flexibility to be, have energy and have optimal mitochondrial function. Most people are stuck in this sugar burning mode. They're hangry, which is hungry and angry is evil spawn. They're irritable, they're, they're, they're, they don't, they feel like a shell of themselves.

• 13:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  And then they, they gaslight themselves and then they say, I'm just getting older. They get gaslit from doctors because the doctors are just screening for these big pathologies. And then they go for years not living their best life. And they settle for it. So that's what we're talking about with metabolic health.

• 13:45Gary Brecka?

  That's great. And, and a lot of people's emotion is so tied to food, which is another indication that, you know, your mood shouldn't shift before you, after you eat, not by much anyway. I mean, you're, um, but when you have these, an emotional roller coaster that follows your hunger patterns and eating patterns. I mean, that's a sign that you are metabolically unhealthy or metabolically intolerant, whatever you want to call it. Because, you know, if I, I don't have to eat, I don't have to eat, I don't have to eat, I have to eat right now. And then you're hangry.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:14Gary Brecka?

  And you eat, and then your mood returns to normal. And then it tanks again as your blood sugar crashes and you have an afternoon crash. I mean, so those kinds of cycles are not normal pathic in terms of how our emotion and, and eating should be, you know, tied, tied into each other. Like many of you, the hardest. Thing for me is to shut off my mind at night when I want to sleep. And it's funny because sometimes I'll wake up tired already thinking of when I'll get back to bed again. But exactly the moment that I lay my head on the pillow, it feels like the machine of crazy what if thoughts has turned back on. Does this happen to you? Let me tell you my new secret to deal with this. You may have heard of magnesium breakthrough by BiOptimizers and how great it is for sleep and promoting calmness and relaxation.

• 14:57Gary Brecka?

  What I found out is that the brains behind magnesium breakthrough have taken it to the next level with a product specifically designed for sleep. It's called Sleep Breakthrough and it's been a total game changer for me. Sleep Breakthrough combines the power of magnesium with other natural ingredients to help us fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and actually wake up feeling refreshed. Since I started taking Sleep Breakthrough, I've been waking up feeling rested, energized, and ready to tackle the day ahead. I highly recommend giving Sleep Breakthrough a try. Trust me. Visit BiOptimizers, that's B I optimizers dot com forward slash ultimate and order now. Oh, and in addition to the discount you'll get by using the promo code ultimate, there are always amazing free gifts with your purchase.

• 15:41Gary Brecka?

  That's also why I love shopping at BiOptimizers. Go now to BiOptimizers dot com forward slash ultimate to get your sleep breakthrough and find out this month's gift with your purchase. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 15:56Gary Brecka?

  So what would be the big markers for people to check? So check engine light is triglycerides over 100, HDL below 59. And, you know, what kind of supplementation addresses that? You know, omega-3 fatty acids or what have you. And, and, and what are some of the other markers that they should be?

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, some other ones that I would recommend. And look, these are conventional labs. Like, yeah, we can run them in functional medicine and we do for people around the world. But you don't, you can go to your PCP, your GP, your endocrinologist and ask for these. So A1C, that's just three month average every blood sugar. We want it at the very least under 5.6.

• 16:36Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  We want fasting.

• 16:38Gary Brecka?

  That's the doorstep of prediabetes.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. Exactly. So this, it's, these exist, these exist on a spectrums. We want fasting glucose to be under 90. I want, I mentioned triglycerides, HDL, so triglycerides under 150, uh, HDL above 59. I want the, I think these, when you look at metabolic syndrome, these people typically will have high sensitivity C-reactive protein to be off. So you'll see HSCR P, even if it's not through the roof, you'll see it above one.

• 17:09Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  The American Heart Association, the CDC, want it in the optimal range, under one. We would want it under one as well in functional medicine. Homocysteine, which I mentioned earlier, it's an amino acid, it's supposed to be recycled down into methionine. But it acts like a neurotoxin, even subclinical, like just slightly elevated homocysteine has been linked to increasing blood brain barrier permeability, or what they call leaky brain syndrome, which is, and when I say it, it's kind of like people like, what?

• 17:36Gary Brecka?

  Hypertension.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  My brain is leaky?

• 17:37Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  It's not, right, it's linked to cardiovascular disease too. So we want homocysteine to be under seven. We would run what's called a nuclear magnetic resonance, NMR test, which I'm sure you run too. It's like, we want those small dense LDL particles to be as low as possible. Those are the, not the cholesterol, they're the protein carriers of cholesterol. So it's not the cholesterol that's the problem, it's the inflammation or oxidation of the particles, the protein that carries cholesterol that's the issue.

• 18:04Gary Brecka?

  I'm so glad that you're saying that. So, because, you know, I liken cholesterol to a fireman, right? I mean, when there's, when there's a fire, the fireman shows up to put it out. When there's damage to the endothelial wall, or other cascades going on, you know, cholesterol shows up to sort of plug the hole, if you will, or repair it. And, and then we blame cholesterol because it's at the scene of the crime for pulling the trigger. And we try to shove cholesterol down as low as we possibly can, especially LDL cholesterol. I actually did an amazing podcast with Dr. Asim Alhotra. So, you know, Dr. Asim, great, great, great dude. I, I want his accent, you know, I feel, I feel like anything you say in a British accent just, like if you're a dude, it makes you more attractive and like more intelligent. And if you're a chick, it makes you much more attractive.

• 18:48Gary Brecka?

  Like, I, I thought about actually developing one.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just, we just sound so more erudite.

• 18:53Gary Brecka?

  But, but, but then I would forget to do it, so.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  We may have a.

• 18:57Gary Brecka?

  It's like Sean Connery was like the ultimate, you know.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  And then your wife would be like, why are you walking around with a British accent?

• 19:03Gary Brecka?

  I don't know, babe.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Just doing it now.

• 19:06Gary Brecka?

  It's bloody, it sounds bloody well to me, you know. But, um, you know, I, I, I had a, I did a podcast with him. We talked, went deep down the, the rabbit hole of, of cholesterol. But then, you know, uh, conventional medicine comes in, shoves cholesterol down as low as they can. Forties, fifties, sixties, um, not addressing the underlying metabolic issue, not addressing the toxic soup that people are bathing their cellular biology in that got them into that place in the first place. Just use a medication to lower that one marker. And what we saw in the big data pools was, you know, then there comes the joint pain and the, and, and the brain fog and the short-term memory loss and, and, um, all the other consequences to cell walls, cell membranes, hormones, you know, that, that, that sort of thing.

• 19:44Gary Brecka?

  And, um, so I, I, I love that we're talking about becoming metabolically healthy because I feel like this is the hub of the wheel.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:53Gary Brecka?

  And you can affect all the spokes by, by fixing your metabolism.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 19:58Gary Brecka?

  Right? Um, and that has a lot to do with what you put in, um, you know, what you're drinking, what you're eating, how you're serving your body, um, how you're sleeping, how you're exercising. It's all of the, uh, I even like the term lifestyle medicine more than functional medicine.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's more descriptive to the average person out there.

• 20:16Gary Brecka?

  Cause it makes people realize that my lifestyle has the greatest impact on my health outcome.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:24Gary Brecka?

  And I don't care how good your physician is. If you're not sleeping and you're eating a highly processed diet and you're not moving your body and you've got unresolved trauma and you're not in any kind of, uh, circadian cycle at all. It, it, there's almost nothing that they can do for you other than manage your, your symptoms.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:44Gary Brecka?

  And it's so empowering to know that if I took these lifestyle choices back under my control, I would have these incredible, like, you know, health outcomes.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  And so many Americans, they feel disempowered. They, they think there's something like above that them, like they can't, it's inaccessible.

• 21:03Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  And they see social media as a, they're double edged sword, right? We see all everybody's highlight reels and you feel like I could never do that. But a lot of the things that we would say are probably some of the biggest needle movers for the average American. American or person out there, Westerner out there, anywhere you live are accessible. I mean, a lot of my telehealth patients, you know, contrary to what you may hear on social media, are just normal nine to five people.

• 21:27Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Like, they're just people that have a why bigger than their excuses. And they're realizing, I'm gonna break generational cycles. I'm gonna change the culture of my family. You do not have to be a one percenter. And look.

• 21:39Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  You don't.

• 21:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Right? And that is, we're there for those people too. But I don't want to limit this to just being like this elite thing where it, no, I want this. I was on a call with some heads of Walmart the other week because they wanna know about this whole Maha thing. Because the Walmart customer is wanting, they're becoming literate when it comes to reading labels.

• 22:02Gary Brecka?

  I love that.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  So to me, this is about that special time that we're talking about.

• 22:06Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  That it's like, we're, hopefully, there's more aha moments from people that shop at Walmart. That is normal nine to five people that are like, you know what? I can't do all the things, but I wanna do something for my health, which is more than we can say historically.

• 22:20Gary Brecka?

  The fact that the awareness is making it down to that level. I mean, my excitement about Maha, um, and for the record, I'm not on, I'm not in any kind of official government position or anything.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:28Gary Brecka?

  With, with, with Maha, um, other than that, you know, we, we support the movement and we're, um, we support Bobby Kennedy and, you know, we're, go to events, get the word out, that, that, that sort of thing. And, and try to have a positive influence on how this, this gets implemented, at least in the court of public opinion. Um, but what's so exciting to me is the opportunity to potentially affect public policy.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:50Gary Brecka?

  And really go from the top down and had to be, you know, someone at the top because of the corruption in our nutritional research, because of the corruption in our food supply, because the unnecessary levels of, uh, of, of poison in our food supply, because of unnecessary subsidies, in my opinion, for some of the most highly processed foods on the planet. And a lot of choice that I think the average American is forced to make is, is a choice based on price and availability.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:19Gary Brecka?

  And it's grains, corns, flours, soy.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:24Gary Brecka?

  Wheat. Um, those are all your most affordable, most widely available and inexpensive.

• 23:31Gary Brecka?

  Products.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:32Gary Brecka?

  And so, obviously, your dollar's gonna go a lot further. And if you're buying these subsidized.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:39Gary Brecka?

  Commodities and foods than if you even tried to go organic. You know, I heard Max Lugavere say one time on a podcast, he's like, if you're, if your grocery store has a health food section. What does that say about the rest of the store?

• 23:51Speaker 00

  What's the rest?

• 23:52Gary Brecka?

  It's like, it's so true. Why should we have a health food section? Why wouldn't it just all be health food?

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, why are we there?

• 23:59Gary Brecka?

  So, um, so let's take a step further. Because, you know, my audience is pretty educated on metabolic health and they're, they're very interested in some of the specifics. Everybody is on this journey, you know, to, to be the best version of themselves. I call it the ultimate human version of themselves. And on this journey, the things that we chalk up to a consequence of aging, brain fog, weight gain, water retention, poor sleep, poor focus and concentration, you know, uh, lack of libido.

• 24:31Gary Brecka?

  And when you bring in the toxic burden on, on people, I'd like to talk a little bit about how the toxic burden is impacting autoimmune conditions. Because the one thing that we absolutely saw in our clinic system, and especially lately, like last five years, is this just parabolic rise. Everybody has Hashimoto's, Crohn's, um, high ANA titers, you know, speckled ANA titers. And then they go to the primary care and they're like, that could be MS, it could be, it could be lupus. You start dropping words like that.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:07Gary Brecka?

  On somebody.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:08Gary Brecka?

  Even though they're not necessarily indicative of those specifically, but they're, they're, they're markers that your immune system is in a fight.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:15Gary Brecka?

  And then they don't know where to start.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:17Gary Brecka?

  And most of the time they're told, because I have clients that I'm working with right now, including some very well-known clients that everybody listening to this podcast knows. That just recently. Went to their physician, had these high ANA titers. And in a four month span of time, we're told they have Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroid. And now we're being told that they've got autoimmune markers for something potentially more sinister like lupus. Or scleroderma or some connective tissue disorders because of these high speckled ANA titers. And it absolutely freaked them out.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:54Gary Brecka?

  And in my conversation with them and the clinical team, we calmed them way down to say, listen, we're just going to come clean up. Clean up the environmental burden.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:03Gary Brecka?

  And then we'll see if this helps address that issue.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:06Gary Brecka?

  So let's start with thyroid, like Hashimoto's, because that is a massive one.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the most common autoimmune disease, right? And I think historically, the first, maybe the first autoimmune condition discovered in science, I think it was early 20th century, maybe. And I always find it interesting that guys wanted to name an autoimmune condition after themselves, right? Hashimoto's, Addison's.

• 26:27Gary Brecka?

  Is that, is that where Hashimoto's?

• 26:28Speaker 00

  I think it was.

• 26:29Gary Brecka?

  I didn't think, I never really thought about that.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  I don't, maybe if your life's work is that, maybe you would, but to me, it's like, I don't want a disease.

• 26:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I wouldn't want to be like Brecko's thyroiditis.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  No, I mean, more power to them. I'm sure they were brilliant people, but anyways, it's autoimmune thyroiditis. There's over a hundred different autoimmune conditions. Hashimoto's is the most common one. But then there's additional 50 above that 100 different diseases that have at least an autoimmune component. And then every few years, we hear about more and more autoimmune components to this and to that and to this. The things that we weren't even classified a decade ago as autoimmune, now we're finding autoimmune components. So if you break that word down, auto, that prefix, self immune, it's when the immune system turns against itself at that event, that they sort of

• 27:20Speaker 00

  seminal event within autoimmunity called molecular mimicry, that case of mistaken identity, when the immune system.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Is tagging antibodies, flags for destruction to destroy. So against the thyroid, it's against thyroxidase, the enzyme that makes the thyroid, or thyroglobulin, which is the thyroid protein itself. But then that, you can think about ulcerative colitis, it's in the gut. Crohn's, it's in the gut. MS, it's in the myelin sheath. Sjogren's, it's the connective tissue. Lupus, it's connective tissue. Sjogren's, again, pack, you know, the, the dry eyes and the dry mouth. And rheumatoid arthritis, the joints. So we can go on and on, but that molecular mimicry is that connective mechanism within all autoimmunity. And then you think of how researchers even describe molecular mimicry. It says the immune, they, they describe it as the immune system losing recognition of

• 28:12Speaker 00

  self, which you think about that on a physiological level that's happening. But then you think on a mental, emotional, spiritual level, the immune system, that person losing recognition of self. And then the research around stress and trauma, and when you talk about Hashimoto's specifically, there's a lot of stress and trauma component where these genetic variants that are associated with autoimmunity, like MTHFR is highly associated, it's on.

• 28:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  But genetics, depending on the study that you cited, it's anywhere between 77 to 91% of the autoimmune inflammation puzzle is due to epigenetics. It's the lifestyle stuff that we're talking about here.

• 28:50Gary Brecka?

  Totally agree.

• 28:50Speaker 00

  So genetics are part of it, like MTHFR, like HLA, like other, like other gene variants that researchers, endocannabinoid system too. But the majority of it is environmental. So that's why we're seeing zebbedemic rise of Hashimoto's disease. You're right. These levels, these TPO, TGA thyroid antibodies are high in so many people.

• 29:10Gary Brecka?

  But how did, how did the, how does, what is it about the toxicity that causes the immune system to then say, okay, I'm going after the thyroid proxidase antibody? I'm gonna.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Normally, there's different areas, but if you look at the.

• 29:25Gary Brecka?

  When does the switch get flicked?

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Normally, it's like a gut syndrome. Normally, when you look, and I would say most of the research is being done, is there's some sort of breach of the intestinal lining. So undigested food proteins and.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Bacterial endotoxins called lipopolysaccharides, these bacterial toxins in gram negative bacteria are passing through the gut lining because there's these proteins that govern gut lining permeability called a cludin and zonulin. Think of the Z in zonulin, this protein that protects the gut lining, the tight junctions of the gut as a zipper. So if there's increased zonulin antibody activity, increased zonulin activity, you're going to have things breach getting from the gut into the bloodstream. And that is at least part of it that researchers have looked at for the past 15 or 20 years or so as this event of what's happening as to why this molecular mimicry is happening. Because the immune system sees undigested food proteins, sees bacterial toxins and says, what the heck?

• 30:23Speaker 00

  It's not actually saying what the heck, but I'm saying I'm speaking for your immune system right now. And it is tagging the undigested food proteins with that flag for destruction, that antibody. And then cross reacts because it's similar enough in structure. The thyroid is similar enough in structure that it's attacking the thyroid. But then it could be the joints, the gut, the brain, or anything.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  So we have to look at what's destroying that gut lining.

• 30:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  And these environmental toxins like glyphosate.

• 30:50Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  When you talk about herbicides and pesticides, what it's doing to decimate this gut garden.

• 30:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  The gut microbiome, big part, microplastics, when they're finding it 90% of human tissue.

• 31:01Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  And Mike, there's not a healthy amount of microplastics in the human body.

• 31:04Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  And we should not be like microdosing microplastics. But we are doing more than microdosing these plastics.

• 31:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I heard on average, um, was it Dr. Gundry that I saw on a podcast? I heard on average, you know, about a credit card a week.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:17Gary Brecka?

  So you just like, instead of throwing your credit card away, just eat it.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Start chewing, yeah. Yeah, don't do that, but we are doing that without even wanting to do that.

• 31:27Gary Brecka?

  That's what I mean. Yeah. Over the last 20 years in human biology, one compound I've trusted again and again is NAD+ It's critical for energy, focus, and cellular repair. But your levels drop around age 30. I used to administer NAD via IVs in my clinics, but now I take Row Nutrition's liposomal NAD. The first oral formula that actually works. Their advanced delivery tech gets NED straight into your bloodstream. I take one teaspoon daily and the results are real. Clean energy, sharper focus and better recovery. You can try it risk free with the ultimate 15 code at checkout for 15% off. Just put in ultimate 15 at checkout. You'll receive 15% off and your cells will thank you.

• 32:12Gary Brecka?

  Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. The gut, and I want to go into that in a second because you know, I've often described some of these conditions as, you know, when an invader hides inside of a tissue or a cell. The, the immune system will go after that. You know, like the police chasing somebody inside of a, you know, locked home. You know, offender runs inside, locks the door. The police are going to come bust the wall down. The immune system does the same thing, you know, and it chases invaders, mold, mycotoxin nettles, viruses, very often these things harbor inside of healthy tissue or inside of, they harbor in the dorsal ganglion, they harbor inside of, you know, inside the cell wall.

• 32:57Gary Brecka?

  And so how does the immune system get in there? It cross reacts with the, you know, with, with, with, with the protein in the healthy cell.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:05Gary Brecka?

  And so I, how does somebody go about, if they have one of these conditions? First of all, how do they go about testing to find out, well, what is it that I might have? And then how do they, how do you best suggest that they go about healing the gut?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So the first part of the question, you said, how do they find out?

• 33:24Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  If we're looking, and this is a oversimplified Venn diagram, but that, when we started the conversation with these people that don't necessarily have high, these conventional inflammation markers like HSCR P, they don't have maybe super high homeostasis and their metabolic labs are pretty normal. There are obviously a lot of people that have, as I mentioned, 93% of the United States don't have great looking labs. But then there's this other group of people that have the, these normal markers, but these other biotoxin inflammatory immunological type labs. And then, of course, many people can have both.

• 34:01Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  So, um, and, and you're right. If someone has a poor metabolic health, it's going to exacerbate all, it's a gasoline on that inflammatory fire.

• 34:08Gary Brecka?

  That's right.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Somebody has insulin resistance. So you want to check all these boxes. Like, look at metabolic health, like we talked about. Look at those, those labs that I mentioned, but then look at these other autoimmune type labs and things that will perpetuate these inflammatory flare ups. So to understand inflammation, 75% of that's in the gut. So if I'm thinking of the average person out there, like, how do I get more bang for my buck on, where do I understand the predominance of where my immune system resides? It's, it's going to be in the gut.

• 34:41Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  So getting a good microbiome lab is a good place to start. Um, to look at this landscape, depending on the study, you know, upwards of 100 trillion bacteria in the gut. We have about 30 trillion human cells. We're exponentially more bacteria than human.

• 34:56Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  The sort of this.

• 34:57Gary Brecka?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  But I, I think, you know, in the nineties, when there was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, remember the villain? Krang, where the brain was inside of the robot? I don't know.

• 35:06Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  I'm like, that's how I feel like we are.

• 35:09Gary Brecka?

  It's so true, yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  We all have Krangs that are like giving, regulating our mood and our immune system and all of that stuff. Well, that's two thirds of the immune system. So to look at, um, where inflammation originates, there's a lot of gut centric drivers of inflammation. So I would look at the gut and then look, look at these environmental toxins. Like get a good blood, urine, blood and urine tests to look at these biotoxins like bacteria, viruses and mold.

• 35:37Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Look at the environmental toxic load, like these herbicides, pesticides, microplastics, and, um, forever chemicals and heavy metals.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Look, we have to understand the two thirds of that autoimmune puzzle. We have to look at the epigenetic variables of why people have these issues. And then we have to look at the one third. Because I think looking at genetics helps you understand your own bio-individuality. Because you can say, oh, yeah, I don't methylate as well. Oh, yeah, I don't detox as well. Oh, I have this HLA gene variant, so my immune system isn't as good at calming down whenever I'm exposed to a stress or a virus or something like this.

• 36:12Gary Brecka?

  I've used one called Vibrant Labs.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  I like them.

• 36:15Gary Brecka?

  You like them too? And there any others that you recommend?

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:19Gary Brecka?

  And by the way, I have no connection with Vibrant Labs at all.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Vibrant Labs is great. There's a lab, I always forget because they changed their name. It was called Dunwoody Labs, but they changed their name.

• 36:28Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, they're not usually the conventional ones that you get like Quest or LabCorp, or one of the conventional big laboratories, unless your doctor's really skilled at putting this.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  But look at environmental toxin panels. Syrex is another one.

• 36:42Gary Brecka?

  Syrex, okay.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a lot of, I would say, blood, urine, saliva labs that will look at the immune system in this way. Both the gut microbiome immune system and then these environmental toxins, both man-made and not nature.

• 36:56Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. And you know, you talk too a lot about the emotional connection with the gut.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:01Gary Brecka?

  And I rarely hear functional practitioners talk about emotion and the gut. And, and you know, I talk about the Blue Zone studies all the time because I don't, I think people shoot past the deeply emotional connection there that, that there was no continuity between diets in these centenarians. But there was a few things that were contiguous and non-negotiable. One was sense of community and purpose, which I think is another way of saying our emotional state, our emotional well-being. And the other was, you know, mobility into later in life. And so I want to come back to that emotional connection with the gut. Because I think this goes right to the heart of why the majority of autoimmune disease is found in women.

• 37:43Gary Brecka?

  And I think historically, if you look at female behavior within a familial setting or a relationship setting, they tend to be, sorry, guys, and I'm one of you, so I'm not throwing us under the bus, but they, they tend to be more selfless, you know, more putting other people first before the needs of themselves.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:02Gary Brecka?

  And there's only so many debits you can take, you know, from the account before, you know, you need, you need some credits. And by that, I mean, so, so far, you can put yourself in the backseat. So I'd love to talk about the emotional connection.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  It's massive part of my telehealth clinic. Like, for people, I didn't say this, but like, I started the first functional medicine telehealth clinic like 15 years ago. So I'm like a super nerd when it comes to this stuff, 10 hours a day. I need to get out more. That's why I'm so excited, is A, to hang out with you, but also I don't get out of that dang room very often.

• 38:35Gary Brecka?

  Oh, because you're just doing telehealth stuff?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, just, I'm in a room talking to people online, which I love. It's a blessing. I'm super, it's a sacred responsibility for me. But I need a break too sometimes. So this is my, I go to Gary Brecka's place to hang out.

• 38:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Have some, have some H B O T.

• 38:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  The, so, that's my, for people that don't like, my, the context of which I'm speaking with is not some theoretical pontification. It is like, just real people, getting them healthy, and I love what I get to do. Sorry, what was the question?

• 39:06Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, the question is the, the question is about the emotional impact, you know? I mean, because, you know, I think that we use stress as this sort of catch-all frisbee we toss, toss in the air. And I can't tell you how many people go to their primary care docs and they're like, eh, there's nothing really wrong with you, you know, just get stress out of your life. Well, what the hell does that mean? I mean, do I just quit my marriage, you know, not talk to my kids and not go to work? Because that's where I get my stress from, you know?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, most people can't do that. I would not recommend everybody do that. Some people should.

• 39:34Gary Brecka?

  No, I'm saying, like, it's, it's sort of, it's not, nobody drills into it and says, well, get stress out of your life. Well, how do I do that? First of all, how do I identify?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Well, then they stress about not stressing, because they're like, oh yeah, you're telling me, I already know stress isn't good, but how do I actually decrease it and not just talk about it? Which adds to those ruminating stress thoughts. So, the gut and brain are actually formed from the same fetal tissue. So when babies are growing in their mom's womb, and we all were there, the gut and brain are formed from that same fetal tissue, and they're linked for the rest of our lives through what's known as the gut-brain axis. So the vagus nerve is the largest cranial nerve in the body. It gets its root word from the, you know, I think it's Latin, wandering, the wandering nerve. And it's responsible for that parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system. The resting, digesting, the hormone balance, the anti-anxiety state. So we have to look at vagal nerve tone for a lot. A lot of this conversation.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  It's innovating, it's connecting the gut and the brain. The gut is known in the research as the second brain. Most of your listeners know that. But if you think about it, the intestines kind of even resemble the brain. Ninety-five percent of serotonin is made in the gut. Fifty percent of dopamine is made in the gut, stored in the gut. So our pleasure and our happy neurotransmitters are made in the gut, stored in the gut. A lot of them are. And they work, they don't pass through the blood brain barrier. The mechanism seems to be they are communicating through the vagus nerve. They're working on GM motility. They're cross talking between the gut and the brain and the brain and the gut. This bidirectional cross talk. So why we have to look at the feelings? Like I wrote a book about this and I called it gut feelings.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  Because I saw that cliche of, you know, gut feelings. I just, you know, feel it in my gut. I have butterflies in my stomach, a gut instinct. But gut and feelings and how the gut impacts the feelings and how the feelings impacts the gut or our physiology is an important part. And you can't look and talk to people with autoimmunity and other mystery illnesses that the world would call that. You can't do that for 10 hours a day and 15, for 15 plus years and not see the mental, emotional, spiritual component of this. You're not going to get them better if you ignore it. So I think that as a clinician, it just was, it was compulsive because it was so obvious.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  We're talking about things like unresolved trauma as a kid and chronic stress in your present life or both. And how, when you look at the research around the ACE questionnaire, the adverse childhood events or experiences. We have every telehealth patient fill that out. And we're talking about like really heavy stuff like Yeah. Sexual abuse growing up and physical abuse growing up, neglect growing up, substance abuse growing up, what's your parents' relationship growing up? And the higher your ACE score, you're more likely to have these autoimmune issues or metabolic problems or, you know, and obviously, mental health issues. So it's a piece of the puzzle. These mental, emotional, spiritual, or the feelings part of gut feelings impacts the physical health so much.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  So it's, it's part of what dysregulates. So as we're talking about environmental toxins. We have to look at these emotional toxins too.

• 42:43Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  That are stored in our body. So it's it's an essential part of healing.

• 42:47Gary Brecka?

  When you say emotional toxins are stored, you mean that the trauma is stored, so it's kind of stuck in this in this feedback loop. Cause it's not a, the emotion doesn't create like a specific, you know, aflatoxin or something. It's it's that it's the dysregulation of the nervous system because of your emotional state.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. The body has a memory, so it's living out the past as if it's still happening to some degree.

• 43:09Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  So the autonomic nervous system, again, simplistic way of describing it, but you have the sympathetic, the fight or flight or freeze or fawn, that sort of hypervigilant response, you're being threatened, right? That's the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, that resting, digesting state. Most people, that seesaw is out of balance, like sympathetic is overactive and the parasympathetic is underactive. What's governing that parasympathetic is the vagus nerve. So people have, researchers will refer to as poor vagal tone. It's a weak vagus nerve.

• 43:40Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  And the environmental toxins, like all that stuff we talked about, unhealthy gut foods, inflammatory foods, et cetera, all contribute to poor vagal tone. But so does the mental, emotional, spiritual stuff.

• 43:52Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 43:52Speaker 00

  So, yeah, it's it's not that it's literally, look, we're discovering these mechanisms every couple of years.

• 43:58Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  I'd be, talk to me in 10 years, we'll we'll understand even more. But as we understand it now, yeah, it's contributing to the nervous system and neural pathways living in this hypervigilant state and doesn't know how to calm down. And even that exists on the spectrum, disautonomia is the sort of end part of that.

• 44:16Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Very severely dysregulated nervous system. But a lot of Americans are somewhere on that dysregulated nervous system. They're stressed, they're wired and tired, anxious and exhausted.

• 44:26Gary Brecka?

  They're wired and tired.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  And don't know how to calm down.

• 44:29Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  You know?

• 44:30Gary Brecka?

  And so what's the, what's the first step towards recognizing and maybe putting, implementing some lifestyle habits that are going to actually bring down my emotional stress or locked trauma or just my overall level of stress induced? You know, secondary syndrome.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  I would say, yeah, and for people to keep like, there's so much self gaslighting with it around this topic. Because it's very easy for you to find someone that's gone through worse than you. And say, well, yeah, they had trauma, but you know, I don't have trauma like it's not that bad. It's not the event, it's the it's the experience of that person, right? So there's even bio-individuality with that, like you could have siblings that go through the same childhood. And have completely different memories.

• 45:18Gary Brecka?

  Divorced parents and one.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  One.

• 45:20Gary Brecka?

  Highly traumatized and one was.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  One and let it go. So it's like, what's your even bio-individuality to and perception in which you handled that event in the past? So I would say an ACE questionnaire is a good way to go. It's not exhaustive because it's just talking about childhood. And there's a lot of things that could be missed if you're as a clinician, if you're just looking at the ACE. Like I have to look at like relationships in life after childhood. And these are things that I'm talking about over an hour and a half, two years, two hours on an initial online consult. Because you have to look at these things that maybe you never even went back to and gave it much credence. But it's a piece of the puzzle, it's not the entire puzzle, but something to look at. But you know, I would start, we could just assume it's going to be at least a piece of the puzzle. It's dealing with that stress and trauma component.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  For some people, it's a big piece of the puzzle. For some people, it's a smaller piece of the puzzle. But I would say bringing in acts of stillness in your life is a good way to. Check in with yourself and start to like, look at this thing head on. Maybe it's the first time you've ever looked at it. You know, things like breathwork and meditation can be very uncomfortable for people.

• 46:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Because they have never quieted their thoughts. They're so looped up and thinking that their thoughts and emotions and not that observing presence of them. It's very scary. Yeah, I mean, when you think of people closing your eyes and doing some meditation, creating panic attacks. That's there's a reason why. Or then the average person, it may not be that extreme, but they may be doing some breathwork and meditation and be really not good at it. You know, and it's. The people that say, well, meditation is not for me, they're typically the people that need to do it the most.

• 47:00Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, right.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Because their nervous system is so disquieted, so used to being distracted and numb. Like, they want to be scrolling the FOMO-inducing content on social media, they want to be numbing themselves with food, they want to be doing anything but being rooted in the present moment. And that's a sign that that nervous system dysregulation is an issue, that you are avoiding what is within to heal it. And you have to, you know, that cliche of you need to feel it to heal it is very true when it comes to stress and trauma.

• 47:30Gary Brecka?

  And you've seen people that address stress and trauma have dramatic changes in their health outcomes.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. Yeah, for some people, that feelings part of gut feelings is a significant player. And I talk to people and they'll be like, oh, yeah, well, I got the food down, I got the environmental toxin thing down, but I never dealt with this feeling side. And for them, that's a big catalyst. And for some people, it's the opposite, right? They've really dealt with the feelings part, the mental, emotional stuff, they've done therapy, they've done EMDR, they've done trauma work, they've done somatic practices, but they have an unhealthy gut, they're eating inflammatory foods, they have environmental toxins. So a both and not either or approach is how healing happens. However it's manifesting in your life, believe me, as someone that talks to people all day long, this is a human issue, no matter who you are.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Like you said, really wealthy, affluent people have these issues and very everyday, normal people, nine to five people are having this issue because we all live in the same dang toxic soup.

• 48:33Gary Brecka?

  Hi, guys. Gary here. I want to take a few minutes of your time to invite you to my ultimate human VIP community. This is a private community with front row seats to my most advanced health protocols, exclusive monthly Q and A calls, a private podcast where you can ask my guests and me your most pressing questions, and my own personal wellness blueprints, and everything you need to optimize your health. You'll connect with like-minded folks in this community, you'll get firsthand access to cutting-edge insights, and enjoy special discounts on products that I trust the most. And here's the best part. Membership is just 97 bucks a month, a fraction of the cost my private clients pay for the same deep dive guidance. If you're ready to supercharge your wellness and skip the guesswork, I'd love for you to join us.

• 49:17Gary Brecka?

  Head to theultimatehuman.com/vip. That's theultimatehuman.com/vip right now to become one of my ultimate human VIPs. This is your fast pass to better health. So don't miss it. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. So for people that, you know, not fully embracing the, you know, the therapy or meditation route, just like you said, finding time to just be still and finding time to be present and silent, which I do every morning with breath work. It's really interesting. I just had a, I just had a free challenge that I do every quarter or so online. It was

• 50:02Gary Brecka?

  an ultimate morning routine challenge. And I invited some of the most impactful people in the world onto it. Lauren Redding, Lauren Reddinger, who's one of the few true female billionaires in the world. I had Mark Wahlberg on there. He called him from France and he was on a movie set. I had Stephen A. Smith on there from ESPN. The reason why I captured these people was because I, I wanted to show some of the most visible, very busy, you know, like, nobody would argue that, you know, hey, Stephen A. Smith doesn't have a very, you know, really busy schedule on ESPN. He doesn't dictate, he doesn't dictate his time, schedule of games and appearances dictates his time, which actually adds a

• 50:45Gary Brecka?

  layer of stress. And I, and what was really interesting, I found that I had four or five folks on men and women, both, all different areas of entertainment, sports, business.

• 50:56Gary Brecka?

  Every single one of them, without me prompting them, said that one of the greatest practices that changed their mind was the practice of gratitude in the morning. And I will tell you, five, eight years ago, I would have been the first person to take issue with that.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:13Gary Brecka?

  Even though I've been a Christian for a long time, a big believer in prayer, really didn't understand the impact

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:22Gary Brecka?

  of being silent, of being still, of being present, and of just taking a few minutes for yourself. Whatever higher power you believe in, to be grateful, all, every one of them said that same thing. And then taking a few minutes to just breathe, and not a lot of time. It's had a huge impact on my life. And it really hit me on this challenge because I was like, here's people totally different spectrums of the world.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:54Gary Brecka?

  But all at the highest end of the socioeconomic spectrum for their field. And, you know, without prompting them, they're like, you know, Mark Wahlberg says, first thing I do, I wake up in the morning, drop to my knees and pray.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:05Gary Brecka?

  Stephen A. Smith said, I find quiet time and I just say a little prayer of thanks for what, you know, what's going well in my life. Lauren Redinger, who just recently lost her husband, you know, very tragically, and her best friend, you know, said, I look in the mirror and I say, Lord, you're great. And I, and the fact that that basic mindset of being still and present in the morning, that small practice of self, you know, of gratitude.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:33Gary Brecka?

  Self-awareness, I think that does go lost.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it does.

• 52:37Gary Brecka?

  A lot.

• 52:38Speaker 00

  And yeah, you're absolutely right. Gratitude is a powerful medicine. It's like, it should be prescribed in every PCP's office. And that's not to

• 52:47Gary Brecka?

  Well, you don't see pharma go crazy. What did you prescribe, you know?

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Thirty milligrams of gratitude.

• 52:51Gary Brecka?

  Thirty milligrams of gratitude.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  But the reality, and that's not making light of what you've gone through, right? If somebody's like, just be grateful, just have positive thinking, that's not what this is about. This is about really a present moment awareness of just being surrendered to the present moment and looking at the good things within it, and then facing the dark parts and healing that through that. And I think intimately connected to gratitude is self-compassion. Like, I saw a study that measured, they had people doing math.

• 53:22Speaker 00

  And public speaking, two things that stress people out, right? And they measured interleukin-6, IL-6, which is an inflammatory protein. And they found that people that practiced the most self-compassion had the lowest interleukin-6 levels.

• 53:33Gary Brecka?

  Wow, and how do you practice self-compassion?

• 53:35Speaker 00

  It's, well, it's so much connected to gratitude, it's a gratitude practice.

• 53:38Gary Brecka?

  This is how you talk to yourself, right?

• 53:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's self-talk, exactly, exactly. They talk to yourself like you would a good friend. Like, so many people are really harsh on themselves, are this inner critic. And they're not really grateful, they're FOMO, there's a lot of, you know, comparing yourself to other people in your life. There's not a lot of gratitude, there's a lot of self-judgment. And we have 30 trillion cells there eavesdropping on our thoughts and emotions about ourselves.

• 54:06Gary Brecka?

  So true.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  And about other people.

• 54:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  And whether it's compassion to the world around us, which that's a whole other level. Like, there's so much lack of compassion to other people that think differently than us, or vote differently than us, or are differently than us. We need, but that compassion begins with yourself. Normally, people that are really judgmental to other people are really judgmental about themselves.

• 54:29Gary Brecka?

  Right, right, they're not content.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  They're not content, yeah.

• 54:34Gary Brecka?

  Content with themselves.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  They're dysregulated, right? And it's easy to lash out. Yeah, so, but these things are more nebulous, because it's easy and more prescriptive for me to say, well, these foods do the X, Y, and Z. Or environmental toxins, do this protocol. It is a lot more abstract, it's a lot more nonlinear, to say, well, like, don't have that trauma, or don't have that ungrateful heart, right?

• 54:58Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  It's like, you need to practice it, and they call it a practice for a reason.

• 55:02Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  We all suck at it.

• 55:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  We all do, that's why we need to do it.

• 55:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  So whether you're in is breath work or meditation, whether you're in is prayer and really surrendering to God, all the, you know? The Bible says, our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. So if you have, and any faith is gonna have some sort of similar concept. But like, how are we treating that temple, right?

• 55:22Gary Brecka?

  Oh, gosh, I talk about it all the time.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  And it's not just what we're feeding our body with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Like, what are we feeding our head and our heart on a daily basis about ourselves and other people? And clean crap up, like elevate that temple. Um, because it's, it's important because that shifts your biochemistry in a powerful way.

• 55:40Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree with that. Um, so, you know, um, back to the gut, you know, I, I, first of all, I wholly agree with you that, you know, finding a practice of gratitude or just taking some time to be silent or, you know, aware breath work. I try to post every morning and I, I sort of do a, you know, a play on words. I'm like, I'm taking my any morning antidepressant, um, you know, and, uh, it costs me zero. And, or I'll say, you know, because I take a video of me doing the, just getting natural light in the morning, every morning, sunlight in the morning and doing, doing breath work and I'll also often write down the side effects of improved mood. You know, better emotional stability, you know, clear memory.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, no negative side effects.

• 56:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, no negative side effects at all. And it's free. And if we would just realize the impact that it could make, maybe we'd actually make an effort to do it, you know, every day because it's also portable and people can take it with them.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:27Gary Brecka?

  And, um, um, and maybe the presence of that would be the absence of their SSRIs or some of, some of these other things. In fact, I, I actually saw a clinical study Joe Rogan turned me on to about, you know, exercises versus SSRIs and exercise. Yeah. Um, I don't want to misquote it, but like a fourfold increase in the, you know, positive outcomes versus taking a, an SSRI. So, but you know, again, back to, to autoimmune, because I think the basis of autoimmune disease and so many people listening to this, they either have an autoimmune condition or they know someone that has an autoimmune condition. Every single one of us, every single one of us knows somebody suffering from an autoimmune disease. I mean, by the time you had thyroid and growth disease and, you know, some of the big, uh, big autoimmunes, it's everyone.

• 57:12Gary Brecka?

  And, um, and the, and the fact that it could be this dysregulation from an emotional state, but also a dysregulation from the, you know, the presence of these pathogens. So let's, you know, pick one in, in particular because you were, we're in Miami. This is the mold capital of the world. Um, I found out from one of the doctors I had on my podcast. It was like, oh, great. I live in the mold capital of the world.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  We have a loving, like, when we have a telehealth patient from Florida, we're like, you're probably moldy.

• 57:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you're probably moldy.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  Probably moldy.

• 57:42Gary Brecka?

  Where do you live? Miami? Yeah. You got mold.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Probably moldy, probably a piece of the puzzle.

• 57:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. So. First of all, how do we test for it? And then what do we do about it?

• 57:53Speaker 00

  So remember mold, the context around this is mold is everywhere, right? So we're joking about Miami, it really can be any state. I have patients in very dry, arid place and it's not, you know, in Arizona, for example, it's not the desert that's necessarily moldy, but it's they're piping, they're plumbing within their home, it's leaking behind the walls. So the more humid a climate is, the more obviously it's going to be conducive to growing more, but don't count yourself out if you live in a dry, arid place and they go, I don't live in Florida, I'm fine. It really, it really can be anywhere. It's just more likely to be in more humid areas. So how, and the other context is not all mold is toxic. So we have to understand what type of mold are we talking about? How much and how long have you been exposed to the mold?

• 58:38Speaker 00

  And then what's your bio individual tolerance to that mold? That genetic, epigenetic puzzle, right? So all these variables matter because I think one accusation that we can get in functional medicine is like fear mongering around something like mold. But it's, people lose the context and the nuance. Like when I do a social media post, it's not a two hour consultation. So forgive me if I give you statistics about mold and realizing, yeah, I don't want everybody to be freaking out, but the reality is it is a piece of the puzzle. And when you talk to people for a living, it's something that's missed very often. So I wouldn't want to shadow.

• 59:13Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I just want to bring the awareness.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like. Exactly. So to answer your question pointedly, just it's a blood, a blood test or a year and/or a urine test, and I would say both are important because I want to look at the immune system's response to the pathogen, whether it's a mold bacteria or virus. And I want to look at if you can measure it and a lot of these things you can actually quantify the mycotoxins in the body. So looking at the blood, the immunological and the toxic burden of mold and then these other manmade toxins that can be exacerbating it. And a lot of these like Epstein Barr virus and other things that can be reactivated are because of these other toxins. Cause like the statistic is like somewhere like 90 some percent of people have Epstein Barr virus antibodies.

• 59:56Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  Percent of people don't have reactivated EBV. So just because you have antibodies, doesn't mean it's a reactivated.

• 1:00:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, there's IGM and IgG too.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:00:05Gary Brecka?

  You can see the difference between dormancy and.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  But I see a lot of people, they'll see like antibodies and then they'll automatically think it's a reactivated. Not necessarily, but it can be.

• 1:00:13Gary Brecka?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  And mold and manmade toxins can be something that's perpetuating these viral reactivations. So that's where you would start. And then I would look at the genetic component because you almost always it's going to be this big aha moment. I'm like, oh, that's why I don't, I'm sensitive to mold, but my spouse isn't. Because there's a lot of like marital relationship gaslighting going on where it's like. They think they're a hypochondriac, like the husband, not to generalize, but the husband typically is like, yeah, she's hypochondriac. She's just making it up, but you measure, you run his genetics. He doesn't have the same methylation in HLA gene variants. So you could be in the home and she's reacting very like hypervigilant.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Her immune system is very sensitive to it, but he's not, it's not healthy for the family. Our telehealth patients are typically that canary in the coal mine for our family because these things are carcinogenic.

• 1:01:06Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  It's not healthy for anybody. So maybe the guy, it's just going to be this slow burner for decades.

• 1:01:11Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  And it's going to be fueling cancer over 15 years, but she's having problems right now and she's going to save his life.

• 1:01:17Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  By getting that mold remediated.

• 1:01:19Gary Brecka?

  So good.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  So these are the type of things that it's not uncommon, really.

• 1:01:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. And you know, we see this with metal toxicity and other forms of toxicity. I mean, our bodies clear heavy metals, like they clear light metals just at a much slower rate.

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Gary Brecka?

  But you could have 10 people sit down and eat the same amount of mercury laden tuna fish, you know, over and over and over and over and over again.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Gary Brecka?

  And you'll have a component of them have, you know, critical mercury poisoning. Some have elevated mercury levels and the other don't look like they had any at all. So I think you're, you're, you're, you're really on point, you know, pointing out this individuality and.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Gary Brecka?

  And, and how transsulfuration and detoxification, glutathione pathways.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Gary Brecka?

  All of these things matter in terms of getting waste out. And sometimes we don't think of the cellular waste, right? We don't think of this process of metabolism, cellular metabolism is a really kind of a dirty process and it creates a lot of. Junk that we have to get rid of through, you know, transfuration through, through, you know, our detoxification pathways, glutathione pathways. So your genetics play a role because very often they predispose you to either healthy or slower amounts of waste elimination.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Gary Brecka?

  And I'm talking about cellular waste. And so those people can, like you say, they can be more, more, more sensitive.

• 1:02:38Speaker 00

  It's like that bucket analogy that I mentioned earlier, like this, our patients typically have smaller buckets, right? Because of the methylation detox, HLA gene variants, you can't change your bucket size, you can't change your genetic tolerance to handle stressors, but you can change what you put in the bucket.

• 1:02:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  So maybe like, I mean, the people that we're talking about here, they're like, I can't get away with anything, right? It's like, I, I look at my friends and family and they're eating whatever they want.

• 1:03:02Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  And I can't like, look at a food and I'll have a flare up if I look at a food that doesn't like me back.

• 1:03:07Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  So yeah, it's, that's the epigenetic genetic interplay.

• 1:03:12Gary Brecka?

  And then, so then specifically, what do they do? Like, if you found, if you've found patients with high aflatoxins and, and mold toxicity and different variants, are you activating their detoxification pathways like sauna, glutathione?

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Well, first, I would say, come to Gary Brecka's house.

• 1:03:32Gary Brecka?

  Come on over.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Just come on, I'm sorry.

• 1:03:34Gary Brecka?

  I've got everything here to get rid of mold. Oh, cat machines, hyperbaric sauna.

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, I mean, look, you, yeah, I mean, what we do, if they have access to these biohacks and tech, tech devices and therapies, yes, let's give it to them. But it starts with some basic stuff, right? It starts with, let's clean up the gut, let's lower inflammation levels in the body. Let's see how resilient you can be by just allowing your body to do what it was created for.

• 1:04:03Gary Brecka?

  Oh, my gosh, amen.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  So it's like you, most people, yeah, like let's, if we need to jump to hyperbaric, we will do that when we need to. But most Americans are not there. Like, let's just see how much of a needle moving capacity with the free and low cost and accessible stuff.

• 1:04:18Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree with that.

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  And then from there, then we have in such, we live in such a blessed time where we do. You have access to technology that our grandparents, great grandparents, all the generations before us never had access to. So, but yeah, so I would start with really, if we're saying seventy, seventy-five, some percent of the immune systems in the gut, really focusing on gut health. So we do a lot of souping and stewing, like things that are really gentle, calming to the gut. Instead of lots of raw foods, being on very like a proverbial siesta for the gut. This little break, this reprieve, this Sabbath where you can allow, it's when you're brothing and souping, like just think having hearty soups for meals.

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  And they could be bone broth based with lots of good meats in them and pureed vegetables or some soft cooked vegetables. And then when they have fruit, I even cook the fruit down, have people cook the fruit down as sort of a compote, like an inside of a pie. Because these people, their immune system is stressed. It's digesting even healthy foods is stressing an already stressed out gut immune axis.

• 1:05:26Gary Brecka?

  So by like boiling them down, steaming them down to break up some of the hard digestible fibers, things like that, to, to really soften them, release some of the nutrients and take the, take the pressure off the gut.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Everybody has to start there, but I'm talking about if you're, you have to meet your gut where it's at. And a lot of people are there because we've really messed up microbiomes in our culture today. But you know, carnivore, carnivore adjacent gaps, there's a lot of different therapeutic food protocols that could be helpful to, from a clinical nutrition intervention standpoint, to calm inflammation, to untangle these inflammatory cascades. As far as like supplementation is concerned, like glutathione or some glutathione precursor, like N-acetylcysteine, a great binder is going to be needed, like activated charcoal, ZLA, exactly, ZLA, Diatomaceous Earth.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Modified citrus pectin, we're seeing some great success with.

• 1:06:20Gary Brecka?

  Where do you fall on like sauna and?

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  I, they, we, it's a, I don't want to say non-negotiable, but it's, it's on my list of non-food, non-supplement protocol. It's one of the first things, if not the first thing that we recommend. So if they, even if they don't have access to a sauna, like even a sauna blanket, like just getting the body sweat, get some exposure to infrared, or traditional sauna. And obviously, there's a lot of, you know, better, better, you know, good, better, best when it comes to all of these things. But doing something versus nothing is going to move the needle. Most people aren't sweating enough. So yeah, supporting sweating detoxing is, is, uh, supporting detoxification pathways through sweating is definitely, uh, a, one of the first things we do.

• 1:07:04Gary Brecka?

  Yep.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  Ozone is another game changer.

• 1:07:06Gary Brecka?

  I believe, I totally agree with that, too.

• 1:07:08Speaker 00

  We were talking about that, yeah, Hawk and the.

• 1:07:09Gary Brecka?

  And how about fasting? I know that you've talked a lot. You've talked really extensively about fasting and, um, and why fasting works for some people, but not for others.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  Well, it's a, it's a hormetic therapy, right? It's, it's subject to the law of bio-individuality, just like all these other things we're talking about, right? It's like, he, that, for people that don't know, like hormesis, it's the, a dose makes the poison, basically, right? And I, I've heard, I don't know if it's true or not, but the, the legend is, it was, the concept of hormesis was a king in the, in the Middle Ages that thought he was going to be poisoned and thought his mom was going to poison him, which, if you know anything about history, there was a lot of royal poisonings going on.

• 1:07:52Gary Brecka?

  Oh, really? Just to move the older brother out of the way so I can serve on the younger brother?

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  All the time.

• 1:07:56Gary Brecka?

  Oh, and I've got the kingdom.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So this is the legend of hormesis is that the, the king took low doses of poison. So if he was poisoned, he would have built a tolerance to it.

• 1:08:07Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  That's what fasting is. It's not poison, but all hormetic effects in the body, which cold plunge, hormetic. Sauna, hormetic. Fasting and fasting mimicking diets, like the ketogenic diet, hormetic. So the dose makes the poison, or the dose makes the body more resilient. It's not a poison. Meaning that if you're always in a cold plunge, it frees the death. It's not good. But just to say that cold plunging isn't good is, it's losing the context of it. Same with, with sauna. You're not always in a sauna. You would die if you're always in a sauna. So intermittent fasting, fasting is still subject to that. It's like, okay, who are we talking about? How long are we fasting? So the, the, the, it's the science and art of these therapies, right?

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  It's, it's pushing the body to be more resilient. It's tapping into what Paracelsus, you know, the, one of the fathers of, he was known as, he was father of toxicology. He was known as the Martin Luther of medicine in the early. 1500s in Switzerland, he called fasting the physician within, which I think is a beautiful way of putting it. It's like an inner doctor that we can for free tap into. Some people need more of that inner physician, some people need less. So too much hormetic effect, just like any of these other therapies that I talked about, could impact thyroid hormones negatively, could impact, you know, a lot of things with putting too much stress on the body.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  But then to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is a horrible cliche, but it is striking that balance where it is a needle mover is where like my part of my job is like, it's like, okay, don't be all or nothing. Like what's like the way we can bring this tool within your toolbox? And for some people, maybe they shouldn't do it at all, right? But I think a lot of people should, we should find a way to use it because it is a way to tap into these healing pathways, like increasing sirtuins, these sort of gate.

• 1:09:56Gary Brecka?

  I mean, it's pretty much nobody that couldn't just do a 24 hour fast.

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Or even a 12 12. Yeah, not go too late at night, just allow your body a fast through the night. It's, I think we over complicate things back to our sort of addiction and dopamine. We're always wanting to consume, consume, consume, consume. So we're going to come up with all the excuses in the book to say why we shouldn't consume for a day. But the reality is most Americans could benefit from some time where we're giving the body a break.

• 1:10:25Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I totally agree with that. And then we go down the road of, you know, we talked about mold, you know, mycotoxins, virals. Metals is another really, really big one. I actually accidentally got metal toxicity from, from a water machine that I got from, from this doctor that convinced me that it was, it was structuring my water and I'm, I'm never that guy that just takes the device from somebody's like, oh, just going to start using it or, you know, give, give me your multivitamin and I'll just start taking it and see how I feel. I always am an incessant tester on things. You were talking about this before the podcast. I started drinking it. It turns out this, even though he's well credentialed, it was a modified welding machine that, that actually had lead welds in it. It was from China.

• 1:11:09Gary Brecka?

  So I got metal toxicity and I've been very transparent about that with my community and how I'm walking myself out of it. You know, I, I did a provoked chelation test and then eight hour urine, spotted, spotted the metals.

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  What did you use for the?

• 1:11:25Gary Brecka?

  Later. Um, yeah, the MSO. Yeah. Um, and another one, E. Uh, I'll get you the second one. So I take two. Okay. Take them orally at 1 a.m., 1 p.m. Chelation, uh, sauna detox. Yeah. My glutathione, um, uh, use gut binders. Um, I space them out between meals. Yeah. Um, and I've had dramatic drops and I do ozone on a regular basis. I've, oh, God. Um, and I'm walking my way out of it and I'm slowly in my VIP community. I'm posting about it so that, so that people can see. Um, you know, are these, are these levels, um, coming down? Cause I figure if I can get it, anybody can get it. And, and I think as we're wandering our way through life and, you know, you've got, um,

• 1:12:08Gary Brecka?

  you know, these, these, these aluminum toxicity in the air. Um, you know, if you live in Los Angeles, you know, just think about lighting a home on fire. Uh, what? Smoke. You know, what kind of volatile organic chemicals and polyfluorocles and, uh, bisphenols and all kinds of things. Accelerants, LEDs, I mean, flaming older homes. And, um, and so I noticed that, you know, they, they publish out there the particulate matter level. And, and I'm like, it's not the number of particles in the air. It's like, what are those particles? That's, that's what matters is what are they particles of? Yeah. Right? I mean, because if it's, you know, if just like dust, tree bark and. Yeah. You know, sand, um, that's not any, you know,

• 1:12:53Gary Brecka?

  that, that big of a deal, but if these are accelerants because of, you know, you incinerated. Yeah. It's a structure. Yeah. Has all kinds of things in it, you know, paints and dyes and tar. Um, that's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. And so I think we're going to see a lot of, you know, and unfortunately for people that were stuck in those environments, a lot of toxicity. Yeah. Well, the people are, um,

• 1:13:16Speaker 00

  It's analogous, I would assume, times exponentially more as 9/11. The people that were at ground zero at 9/11, the things that they were breathing in. I mean, this is an entire metropolitan area of these toxic things that people are breathing in. Yeah, it's not great.

• 1:13:34Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, so the final one is metals. So when we, and first of all, testing for metals is tough. Because I actually did urine and blood, and they were mediocre. And then I did the provoked test, and that, I mean, they shot off the charts. Provoked means, you know, I did a chelation to pull them out of the tissue.

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  That's common. That's common, because they're stored in the fat tissue, right? They're stored in the body, and it's not in the urine, just floating around all the time. It's not in the blood, always floating around. The body's trying to protect you by storing it in the tissue.

• 1:14:13Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  So you have to provoke, and put the lab in context if it's provoked. Of course, it's going to be higher, but that's in the body.

• 1:14:21Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  That's not healthy.

• 1:14:23Gary Brecka?

  It didn't just come from nowhere.

• 1:14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. It's not like you are artificially spiking it. It's just being chelated out, so you can measure it and see what is hiding from the basic tests. So urine provoked test for anybody where it's clinically appropriate, we should be looking at heavy metals. Because it is an issue. So, yeah, we have to.

• 1:14:44Gary Brecka?

  Once somebody finds out that they have them, where do they go from there?

• 1:14:49Speaker 00

  Well, look, I think the chelators, the binders that we talked about, the glutathione and glutathione precursors. Sometimes more advanced chelation, like the DMSL, there's other chelation tools that we could do. But sometimes it's spirulina, chlorella, right? It's just like the basic food is medicine to be supporting the body. Yes, sometimes we need to be more advanced with chelation and detox. But I wouldn't start there if you've never done this. I would start with seeing, yeah, the issue. Do the things that I talked about with lowering inflammation, allowing your body to be able to handle this stuff. And things like spirulina, chlorella can be great, cilantro can be great.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  The, I mentioned glutathione, liposomal glutathione, antioxidants like vitamin C can be wonderful. So, and sweating, right? A lot of the things we talked about with the biotoxins.

• 1:15:41Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  Making sauna, whatever you have access to, whether it's a sauna blanket, infrared sauna, traditional sauna in a gym. Making sweat like at least six times a week. Start off low and slow, building up a tolerance, do it if you're sensitive. But these are the things over time, we can start getting that number down. The body's amazingly resilient if you give it the chance to do what it is designed to do.

• 1:16:02Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I totally agree.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  Some people have more impediments than others, but it's, it's not, we're not fear mongering. But you have to know what you're dealing with to do something about it. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around and say, yeah, we are sicker than ever before.

• 1:16:18Gary Brecka?

  Yes.

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  And we're up against things that our ancestors, grandparents didn't have to deal with.

• 1:16:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, they did not have to deal with.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  A lot of this stuff is post-World War II, and a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is like since the 1980s and 90s. So it's like, yeah, they were not living in the world we're living in. So of course we have to be talking about these things because we've never been exposed to more in such a short period of time.

• 1:16:36Gary Brecka?

  What are some of the daily habits that are most contributing to the underlying cause of inflammation? You know, I often say inflammation is the root of all evil, right? But, you know, what are some of those daily habits where they're, you know, that are, that are, that are leading to increased levels of inflammation?

• 1:16:54Speaker 00

  Well, I would say we have to start with food because food is something that people are doing every day. Should be doing every day. What I call the inflammatory core four are going to be the four food or food additive ingredients are going to be the most problematic. And there's bio-individuality, there's nuance and context to this, like there's always better for you versions of all of these things, right? So it's not black or white, but I would say gluten-containing grains would be up on my list. Now, the interesting-

• 1:17:22Gary Brecka?

  Would you also say because they, they probably have the highest levels of glyphosate?

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. Is it the gluten or is it what we've done to it? I think it's more.

• 1:17:29Gary Brecka?

  GMO.

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, exactly. It's herbicides, it's sprayed with things. We are the soil microbiome, it's it's hybridized, so it's not like in biblical times, like ancient grains, einkorn. It's not what people are consuming now.

• 1:17:43Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:17:44Speaker 00

  But historically grains stored well during times of famine. But now we're feasting on a famine food and we're not properly preparing it. We're spraying it with tons of stuff and we're yeah, we're over consuming it.

• 1:17:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of like, okay, it's not all or nothing, but it's something that a lot of people should look at because it is a gateway food. Because of the the gluten and zonulin, the leaky gut syndrome that can trigger. Then it clearly creates a cascade for lots of things.

• 1:18:09Gary Brecka?

  I've never heard of gateway food. I've heard of gateway drugs, but that's a gateway food.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  I would say gluten with glyphosate is a gateway food.

• 1:18:17Gary Brecka?

  Gateway food to to more inflammation.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. More food sensitivities, etc. Yeah. So number two would be of the inflammatory core four would be dairy. Again, it's what we've done to it, not the dairy.

• 1:18:29Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:18:29Speaker 00

  Right? It's homogenized, it's pasteurized, it's denatured. The protein isn't what it once was. The enzymes that help break down the lactose and the casein is is beta A1, not beta A2. So humans would have consumed grass fed A2 raw dairy for thousands of years. But we've sort of, it's a shell of what it once was, what people are having. And so that would be number two. Third would be seed oils, which is a little controversial, but I.

• 1:18:55Gary Brecka?

  I don't know why it's so controversial.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  It's being looped up in all politics, but but it shouldn't be controversial. The overconsumption of omega six, not enough omega threes, the omegas three, six and nine ratio matters.

• 1:19:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Speaker 00

  Plus the manufacturing and processing of these things matter.

• 1:19:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, when you de gum things with hexane and you and you deodorize them with sodium hydroxide.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  What could go wrong?

• 1:19:16Gary Brecka?

  Bleach to to clear. My favorite thing is then the American Heart Association comes and puts a heart healthy label right on there. And so. You know, the average consumer is cruising down the aisle and they're, you know, if if I'm a mom and I'm getting this stuff for my kids and I'm cooking in the kitchen, I'm grabbing the heart healthy label.

• 1:19:30Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:19:31Gary Brecka?

  Right?

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:32Gary Brecka?

  So I I I don't think the jury's out on seed oils.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  No, I don't. Exactly. Well, yeah, it's it shouldn't be controversial. Now, there are you could make the argument. I don't know if I would, but you could make the argument that there are probably better versions like that organic sunflower oil probably is better than

• 1:19:48Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, cold expeller pressed or something like that.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  Exactly. So yeah, I'm not making blanket statements, but you have to look at its implication. And fourth would be sugar, right? Obviously, even even the even the nicer sounding euphemisms, like agave nectar is another one. It's like a lot of people within wellness are like, yeah, I'm having all these packaged foods that are healthy, but it's still a lot of added sugar. And if it looks like agave nectar, it's it's almost green washed in a way where it's like somebody just squeezed the agave and poured it in the cup and it's so natural. But it's still high fructose, lacking fiber. So it's going to impact blood sugar negatively.

• 1:20:23Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  So that's the inflammatory core four. And then if I could add one, it would be alcohol. Which I lose friends every time I talk about them.

• 1:20:31Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I mean, I've completely eliminated it. I drank once last year. It was on New Year's Eve.

• 1:20:38Gary Brecka?

  And I regretted it.

• 1:20:39Speaker 00

  How was it? Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  What did you drink?

• 1:20:42Gary Brecka?

  Tequila.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:20:44Gary Brecka?

  But you know, I was like, harkening back to my old, you know, days when I when I drank, I was like, looking for that, like, awesome, like, I was looking for my, you know, my night was going to go from a five to a nine and a half.

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:54Gary Brecka?

  And then I would just suffer the next day. And it went from, you know, it just stayed at a five and I still suffered the next day.

• 1:21:00Speaker 00

  Well, isn't that interesting? I mean, that's a testimony, right? Because people's

• 1:21:04Gary Brecka?

  If it went to a nine and a half, I would have been like, okay, maybe that night was worth it, you know?

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 1:21:08Gary Brecka?

  It did.

• 1:21:08Speaker 00

  You just need some methylene blue and some hyperbaric.

• 1:21:10Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, well, I did. Of course, then I punched myself and I was like, you know, I did hyperbarics and red light in my whole, you know, my whole, my whole circuit.

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. You see, you're getting you're getting the euphoria on things that love you back with not without the crash. And I think a lot of people, they, when I talk about alcohol or those foods, they think like, oh, man, like, that's a miserable existence. It's not like avoiding things that don't love you back isn't restrictive.

• 1:21:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Speaker 00

  It's self respect. So we need to get out of that sort of. Insane unhealthy relationship with things around us. Like because continuing to eat things that don't love you back and wondering why you're still miserable. It's like staying in this toxic relationship and wondering why you're still miserable.

• 1:21:52Gary Brecka?

  I call cold plunging my drug of choice because like nothing makes me feel better for longer. If you've ever been high on your own dopamine for six hours, it's like you won't want to do anything else. And you'd start getting addicted to cold plunging.

• 1:22:03Speaker 00

  It's not about living. Exactly. It's not about living this sort of ascetic monk-like life. It's really, it's the best of life. Feeling great is a blessing.

• 1:22:14Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, Dr. Cole's been amazing. I absolutely am bringing you back on the podcast for, for, for round two. I think you're doing amazing things in the world.

• 1:22:28Gary Brecka?

  I really, I deeply appreciate you coming on. You know, what we do now is I, for those that are part of my VIP community, we go into a private room and I allow the community to have some access to you because they, they knew you were coming on and they're gonna ask you some specific questions. So if you're interested in becoming an Ultimate Human VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com and sign up to be one of, one of my Ultimate Human VIPs. This is the community that I'm building to change the world and I can't do it by myself, but I can do it with all of you guys. But before I end the podcast, we always ask every guest the same question. And if you've seen my podcast, you know it's coming. There's no right or wrong answer to it, but what, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate?

• 1:23:09Speaker 00

  It's being, it's having deep gratitude and it's living the life that God has called me to. And being, not thinking I have that entirely figured out.

• 1:23:21Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 00

  Right? Being open to not becoming overly identified with what I do, right? But just being a vessel for Him in this life. That's what it means to me.

• 1:23:32Gary Brecka?

  Wow, that's amazing, man. Well, Dr. Cole, where can my audience find you?

• 1:23:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks, man. Everything's at drwillcole.com. The information about the telehealth clinic, the books, the podcast. My podcast is called The Art of Being Well.

• 1:23:44Gary Brecka?

  I'm about to be on it.

• 1:23:45Speaker 00

  Be on it. Thanks. Thanks so much. Yeah, but everything's there. I'm on at DrWillCole on Instagram and TikTok and all that stuff.

• 1:23:51Gary Brecka?

  Amazing, guys. So we'll link all this stuff in the show notes and as always, until next time.