Dr. Elroy Vojdani
Appearances
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
With a VOC count, you're looking at the off-gassing of things like furniture or paint. And specifically, what we worry about the most is formaldehyde, which is one of the VOCs, especially with things like furniture. So if your meter looks at that specifically, then you get that other subsection.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I think the biggest point is just check. Check. You don't know until you check. You don't know until you check, right? Now, these days, there are a lot of air filters that are coming, number one, with the ability to filter something like a VOC, which is great. And they all include the ability to filter something like a...
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
two and a half line particle mass, but they'll come with the actual meters on the air filters themselves, whether they're actually like, you know, a separate screen on the filter, or whether it's embedded in the machine, and an app will actually give you those readings, check, you know, have some idea of what your exposure internally is. Number one, obviously, as a, you know,
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
impetus to get the filter, but number two, to make sure your filters are working.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Horrifying.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Can I tell you a little anecdote about the family that I grew up in? Yes. Tell me.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Absolutely.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
When you become aware of VOC exposure specifically and you start paying attention to when you're in the exposure and when you're out, you absolutely will get immediate brain fog. Absolutely.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
We have to. So you were talking about your family. You know my dad, right? Yes. Aristo. You know, his thing is he's, I think, always been incredibly ahead of his own time. Super ahead of the times. I don't know how. It's like the guy has... you know, the ability to see the future and brings it back 30 years.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I think here in the U.S., it's probably because we make the assumption that it's so much better than it was than when you and I were kids in the 80s and 90s, right? Like that was a time where major cities literally like you would live in a cloud of smog. And because of the measures in the automobile and industrial world to kind of reduce the pollutant emissions,
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So he sees it before anybody else does. So me as a teenager, right? We get a new mattress at the house, right? Most people will put their mattress on their bed and start enjoying it, right? my dad will unwrap the mattress, take it outside, and we'll leave it outside for two weeks before he lets anybody use it.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Okay. When he gets a new car, which he doesn't do very often for this specific reason, he will literally park the car outside with the sunroof open, the moonroof open, and with the windows down the entire time. Doesn't care if it's raining, whatever. Like that is how the guy operated, knowing that, A new car is going to off gas tons of VOC and it's harmful for you. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So I think honestly, he drives like a five or six year old car now. And I will still see it parked outside of his house with all the windows down and the sunroof open. It's just the way that he is, you know, pretty ambitious in a place like L.A.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So I was very fortunate to grow up in a household where there was somebody who had all of this stuff very top of mind.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
yeah i'm sure though when you were a kid you were like what the heck are we doing i had no idea what all the neighbors think we're crazy right but your dad he was ahead of the curve he was ahead of the curve so you know i think it's it's it's time for everybody to kind of catch up you know that yes you know the world today is not perfect there are lots of things that are great about
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
living in modern times. And like everything, there are negative things that come with it. And with all of these lovely things that we have available to us, at our disposal comes these risks. So that doesn't mean we don't enjoy them. That means we're smart about making sure we're minimizing the risks from them.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So airing out your furniture or mattress or your car or doing whatever it is when you get a new one, I think is a very good idea.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
uh release have improved so much we don't see it as much and i think we just assume that means that things are okay and then you know something like this major fire in los angeles happens and it becomes top of mind again as you know as it should but what i hope happens from that is As we dive into this, it becomes top of mind for everyone in all major cities.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty well documented that particularly the two and a half fine particle mass exposures
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
increase the risk of plaque rupture and and uh heart attack or stroke like specifically right um that's not even taking into account all the other pollutants that you're being exposed to in that situation you know the the benzene and dioxin and all the the kind of like plastic burn offs from the the industrial part of it as well too but that that part's actually well known you know you you have that exposure you're going to have an increased risk
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And we bring the necessary awareness to everyone to really focus on it. Another part of it is because we haven't talked about it because it hasn't been something that we've been forced to think about.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
There's actually two specific mechanisms in which an environmental toxin can accelerate an inflammatory or autoimmune response. The first is they represent an oxidative injury. They're essentially depleting the antioxidant reservoir, this defense wall that we have built up against things like this.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And when you deplete that wall to the point that it's no longer present, you get direct tissue damage. And the direct tissue damage will actually ignite the immune system in an inflammatory direction. Second way is that environmental toxins can actually bind to human tissue. And this was a study that was done by my dad and formed something called the neoantigen.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
That means a new antigen or a new target for the immune system. So essentially, It changes the structure of your own protein to the point that your body doesn't identify it anymore as you and therefore starts attacking it directly. So there's the indirect mechanism and there's the direct mechanism of inducing inflammation and autoimmunity.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Like we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, the health ramifications of that are literally the entire spectrum of diseases from cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative, cancer, allergies, autoimmunity. everything you can think of.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Maybe 150 at the top of the line. 150 at the top of the line.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Sure. Well, they should be measuring exactly what we discussed earlier, which is the particle counts in the 10 micrometer range, the two and a half, and the VOCs ideally. So those three things. And what are the numbers that you're looking for to really identify what's safe and what isn't safe? Well, a lot of that depends on whether you have a pre-existing condition or not.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So somebody with COPD or asthma or some kind of lung condition, you really want to be on the lower limits of detection there as far as the particle counts are concerned. So
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
you know, let's say a 30 parts per billion range on the particle count of two and a half, right in that situation, you know, if you're otherwise healthy, and, you know, doing okay, you know, 30 to 50, maybe would be your upper limit of exposures there. But, you know, you have to get in the habit of
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
checking what the outdoor exposure looks like and then making a determination of is that a good day for me to go for a hike you know should i be running outdoors today should my kids be playing outside for three or four hours today you'll find as you start checking that the overwhelming majority of days in major cities are actually totally fine it's going to be a few days based on
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
unexpected weather conditions or, you know, during points of the season where air gets kind of like trapped in urban environments that it becomes really problematic.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So what you're really doing in that situation is identifying the few days where it's in your health interest to skip that hike or that outdoor run or whatever it is that you were going to do and otherwise get reassurance that the days that, you know, let's say 90, 95% of them, things are clean, you're fine doing what you're doing.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And I think the other part of this that's important is that recognition that you are actually fine the overwhelming majority of the time.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, because we had significant rain a couple of days.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Well, in the case of Apple specifically, I think maybe two weeks ago, I don't know exactly the date. They actually started adding from external sources what the actual particle counts are. So click on the AQI. OK. And you will see if you scroll down, pollutant details. So we get carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen monoxide, nitrogen oxide.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So that's basically having an old school discussion about smog and kind of the air pollutants. I think in today's world, we're really more interested in the particulates under 10 micrometers and then the particulates under two and a half micrometers. We don't get VOCs on here.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
You know, but it's a pretty safe assumption that, you know, in the two and a half range specifically, that's where the majority of data or danger lies, because things like lithium, arsenic, cadmium, you know, dioxins, benzenes, they all travel in that particle mass. Luckily, there are even without a meter, very publicly available, more precise data points that you can look at.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
The problem with something like an air quality index, which is just the number, is you don't know if they're basing that number based on the carbon monoxide or if they're basing it on the PM two and a half. So luckily, they've updated the apps and giving you really nice information on there.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
For sure. And there are even government websites that will give you, you know, some of the publicly available meter counts outdoors. And then there are tons of private ones as well also.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to hold back here. I think that was one of the most unhelpful pieces of advice that you could give people in that situation. And also not true.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So, you know, metals, things like dioxin, benzenes, the acrolein, the things that we're most worried about, they travel in that same two and a half micrometer particle mass, or they will actually aggregate with the particle itself. So...
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
when you're looking at the two and a half micrometer particle mass you're looking at all of those things when you're in a burn zone or in in a neighborhood adjacent to a burn zone um to say otherwise that you're there's just this invisible exposure that everybody in the neighborhood is exposed to you know and you need to just pack your bags and get out of dodge It's just not the reality, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So you're not gonna get a direct assessment of what's in the air, but the indirect assessment is more than good enough to be able to judge what you should be doing with your life according to the conditions and whatever's happening that day. Um, so that's my take on it for the surrounding neighborhoods of Altadena and the Palisades and Malibu and Topanga.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
You know, if you're in, in the neighborhoods of, you know, let's say Santa Monica, Brentwood, where a lot of this, uh, fear Marina Del Rey, you know, has like kind of very specifically been focused based on those initial, you know, kind of things that started getting floating around, you know, WhatsApp groups essentially. Um, It's the same rules.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
The stuff that's going to hurt you is in that two and a half fine particle mass. Check it. Decide whether you're going to have some outdoor exposure or not based on that. And understand also that the more time that transpires between the burn going out and now... means also less potential for toxin exposure because it's been dissipated into the air.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And now that we've had rain, a lot of it is being pushed down into the soil. That poses another set of environmental toxin concerns for those who are thinking about going back to the Palisades or Malibu. That's very, very local to those burn sites. But for the people in the greater Los Angeles area, Just know that time is your friend in addition to measuring.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Not everybody. Some people.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Oh, let's give them a shout because what they did for the L.A. community in the time of need by offering air filters to people at cost plus shipping was really incredible.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
It's been one that I've recommended for a long time. I think the other ones would be an IQ Air and then Austin Air is the third brand that I typically recommend.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yes. And carbon.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Correct. You need to be up on your filter changes.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And? Be very proactive about changing the air filters on your HVAC systems. A lot of people leave those for years before they actually end up changing those. Change those, you can actually get ones that also will filter out the two and a half micron range. So make sure you're doing it for your HVAC system as well too.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I'd say consider that in your car shopping experience for sure. You know, there are also cars now that have the two and a half meters built into them.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And they will tell you what the outside reading is versus what the inside reading is after you turn the HEPA filtration on.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I don't remember the exact brands. Okay. We'll look it up later on. But there are cars that will do that out there.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Air quality should be in the upper parts of the conversation of environmental risks to us from a health perspective. I think plastics, metals, all these things that have been talked about a lot out there in the last few years, yes, they're concerning. But when you start to dive into the data about what
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Absolutely. It's one of the first things we talk about with our patients who are starting to actually get some slow degradation in their hearing. People need to understand that the processing center for sound is right next to the processing center for memory.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So if you get shrinkage of that part of your brain, because there's not enough auditory input going to it, it can leak into the memory part of the brain and you start getting unnecessary shrinkage there too.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Well, the primary reason would be the construction material and the toxins that come off of the construction material. And there's also the furniture that we purchase. So basically chemicals being released from those things that we put in our house are a tremendous risk, I think, to us. So things like formaldehyde, other VOCs will be released from that, acrolein, and they're incredibly toxic.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Another one sense of smell. Talk about that for a second. Same thing, right? You know, the processing center for those...
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
inputs are also next to the memory processing center so when when you start losing your sense of smell it's another warning sign that the uh you know the neurodegenerative process like dementia might be kicking in and restoring that sense of smell is actually something that you can see another way that people get their memory back
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
You have to invigorate the nerves, the nerve endings basically in the nose themselves. So a lot of them can get damaged, die off. We know that a lot from COVID, obviously, people losing their sense of smell temporarily. But many viruses can do that. Environmental chemicals can do that. Breathing in all of the pollutants can do that.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So eventually, these nerve endings, just with all that exposure, can just die off. So what do you do to rejuvenate them? You've got to give things that
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
nerves like and and luckily because you've got direct access to it there are some some sprays that you can use things like nad precursors along with b12 that comes in the brand name of something called synapsin um and then there are some amino acids that you you take like uh carnosine that can really help specifically
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And then a lot of people get a lot of benefit out of doing some kind of reprogramming. You know, we talk about, you know, like brain games. You know, you need to also think about that for your nasal sensing nerves as well, too. If you're losing your sense as well. If you're losing it. So, you know, like smelling very highly concentrated essential oils to kind of perk them up.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
That does work as well, too.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
No, no, no, no. Stay away from that. Those are chemicals. Stay away from the glade. Those are not natural. Stay away from the Glade and the Febreze. Please. Can we circle back to Brian Johnson for a second?
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So, you know, I actually hadn't seen that clip. But, you know, I've been thinking about that since you told the story. Yeah. What is the point of the ad nauseum amount of antioxidants that he takes and the extremely phytonutrient-dense diet that he consumes on a regular basis? The point of it is to provide you protection, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So when you're eating all those antioxidants that nature has to offer, or maybe even taking them in supplement form, you're building up your defense mechanism against occasional toxin exposures.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So what he should have been doing, instead of thinking about how this is going to impact his biological age clock, is, you know what, this is what I've been putting all of my time and attention towards so that when I have these exposures, my body's going to be fine. It has everything that it needs to fight back. deal with this temporarily.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And the next time I take my supplements and I have my, whatever he calls the pudding and all the other stuff. Nutty pudding. Nutty pudding. Have you tried it? It actually tastes pretty good.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And the supplements that he takes are generally really wonderful things for the body. But the whole point of them is, gives you a layer of protection against this environment that we're living in. So you have more of an ability to live your life without having to worry about what these things are doing to you.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And then the secondary reason would be Because an indoor environment doesn't have large amounts of outside to inside recirculation. So, you know, you're in this environment where depending on the age of the house and your furniture and whatever it is that you use to build it, you've got internal sources that are permeating to you.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
That's a good thing.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
We have a term.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's such a huge population, so much to offer the world such a beautiful place. You want the population to be as healthy as possible.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah. So I like to look for combinations of benefits from supplements. So in this situation, you want some type of protection, right? You want to help with detoxification pathways. And you also want to help support the immune system. That, to me, would be the holy trinity of what a supplement can do in the face of this conversation.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So first on that list would be an amino acid called N-acetylcysteine. We call it NAC for short. NAC is an amino acid precursor for glutathione. Glutathione being the major antioxidant of the liver, also very much responsible for pushing some of the detox pathways of the liver. More than that, it's a very potent lung specific antioxidant, as well as other barriers of the body.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And then you've got a situation in which if you're not, you know, filtering and have appropriate air systems built in, you're not getting a lot of fresh air coming in as well, too. So it just kind of builds over time.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And the last thing that NAC does is it dramatically improves immune function. There was a study published. There's many studies on NAC and overall protection from respiratory viruses, but there was one recently published about influenza. And there was a massive reduction in influenza rates for people who proactively took an acetylcysteine.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So and that's something that we've seen clinically, honestly, for years with people who proactively took NAC during the winter season. So no brainer. NAC is at the top of the list. You know, it covers the three things that you're really looking for. You know, other things that cover those three things, right?
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So sulforaphanes would be next on the list, you know, things that are taken from cruciferous vegetables like broccoli sprouts, you know, they have that same three pieces, antioxidant protective, supporting liver detox pathways, immune protective.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I'm a huge fan.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, those two I would consider probably the staples as far as like long term things that, you know, many people could take without side effects or issues, they would tolerate it very well. And it would have broad spectrum benefits, you know, not just detox, but also on the immune system side as well, too. So I'd say those two are number one and two by a long shot for me.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, let's drop the supplements for a second and just go back to basics. You know, sweat is an incredibly effective way to release toxins, whether...
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
know it's metals or you know other toxins that that's a very robust pathway to get rid of things so whether you're sweating via exercise or there's a you know heat induced way like a sauna or a steam room that you're sweating making sure that your sweat regularly is really important and along with that making sure that you're hydrating appropriately is really a good way to make sure that you're flushing things out of yourself if you want to think about it that way
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
um we process toxins through our liver and then they exit either through urine or through feces so you know another thing is making sure that your gut health is on point and that you're having regular bowel movements and that that internal environment is as healthy as possible because that helps to support the steady evacuation of those toxins without having to worry about something like leaky gut allowing transportation back into the bloodstream
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So gut support is also really important in that situation or, you know, fiber, you know, things that just probiotic foods are just going to make sure that you're having regular full bowel movements is really important for detox as well too. The fundamentals are, don't forget them.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Absolutely.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, I mean, being a clinician, we're right at that junction of dealing with people's anxiety and questions about this and their uncertainty. So to me, it's very important that the information is given to people. And at the same time, the message that I want people to take home from it is, this is not a doom and gloom scenario. The information is meant to equip you
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
to live the healthiest possible life it's not meant to be something that you know you you just like think about as oh my god you know all these different dangers in my life so these are actionable items use the information and just say i'm going to shape the way that i live my life based on this information and that is going to make my life and my health exponentially better than if i hadn't done that
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And that's the most you can ask for in life, making your situation as good as it possibly can be. And yeah, I hope that's what people take from it.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
It is.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
You don't need free coffee for everybody. Just air filter the place out. We'll be more productive.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, absolutely.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Absolutely. Which means we also have to get schools to be on board with this as well.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah, they're in school right now. You know, I think... We're very fortunate that we have a head of school that is actually very open to these conversations and is very proactive about it. So I want to acknowledge that maybe that's not the case in every single school. But in our situation, actually, our head of school has been at the forefront of the conversation actually saying,
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
These are our policies. These are what we're doing as far as our indoor environment is concerned. These are our policies about outdoor exposure. This is what we're doing to make sure that the outdoor environment is as clean as possible. This is what we're doing to make sure the indoor environment is as clean as possible. I think the most important thing is just approach them
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
know approach the people who are in the leadership positions of school in a friendly manner just kind of saying listen i want to make this situation as good as it possibly can be offer the resources and i think what helps a lot is when the parents offer to provide the things like air filters in certain situations um and you know i think when it becomes something like hey we want to bring this in to kind of like help the internal environment
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Almost every school situation is going to be very open to that.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
For sure. And, you know, you get 10 parents together and, you know, pitching a little bit of money each. And it could be a very, you know, that's very easy to get a high quality air filter in that situation for the room. So advocate for your kids. At the same time, offer to help. and come to them with information and material and just say, hey, listen, we want to help this situation.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
We want to provide the filter if you're okay with that.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Why are you here every three months?
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I just want to say thank you for having the conversation and, you know, you know, continuously being a place where we can be on the forefront of these medical discussions and sharing, you know, all of these thoughts with all of your wonderful listeners.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Sure, sure, sure, sure. All the clinic information is on our website, which is regeneramedical.com. We are currently taking patients if anybody's interested.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I appreciate it.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Thank you very much, Drew. And if you're looking for a book that discusses food-related autoimmunity, I wrote When Food Bites Back. That's available on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Is your dad, your dad's not on social media, right? Neither of us are really on social media, but he is definitely not on social media. Okay. Okay.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah. I mean, we try to, we try to update people as much as possible. You know, I think, um, If you want to follow what's going on with him, I try to kind of give everybody nuggets about his latest developments.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
My pleasure.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
living in a major city in the United States entails as far as risk is concerned, and how many different ways it impacts you, it's quite alarming. So, you know, it's everything from what you expect, which is a lung related risk, asthma, COPD, cancer, premature aging, to allergy and autoimmune diseases to skin related conditions like eczema. I mean, the list is really everything across the board.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
So I'm a medical doctor, graduated from USC, and now the practice is in the field of functional medicine, which you and I hope many of your listeners are familiar with. But the idea of functional medicine is to be a whole body physician that has in mind early detection and prevention of disease.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
And trying to use lifestyle as the primary way in which we influence, you know, positive health movements, right? So it's connecting all of the dots, being prevention-minded, and then, you know, looking at your environment, whatever that means, is the primary way to make you feel better.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I think air quality doesn't get, you know, discussed enough in the medical space and diagnostically as well as... a big thing that kind of moves people in a negative direction as far as health is concerned. You know, it's very hard to get a sense of how much is air quality causing this person's
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
illness or disease or whatever it is we're dealing with because the environmental discussion is massive right you have to consider what's going on with what they're eating what they're putting on themselves makeup lotion uh you know and then you move on to what are they breathing and you know each one of those areas is humongous but
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
I think you definitely get the sense that people who live in major metropolitan areas in the United States tend to have more of that chemical piece of things. So it must be playing a huge part in it. It's impossible to be able to break up when you identify chemical toxicity for somebody how much of this happened because...
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
of the dry cleaning solution that they've been exposed to, the plastic bottles that they've been drinking out of, the groundwater contamination. There's no way to tell which is which here. So my take on it is always assume it's there and take the appropriate steps to protect that individual from the realities of living in a city like Los Angeles.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Neurodegenerative diseases are elevated in major cities thought to be related to air pollution. So we should be talking about this at the top of the list.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah. Let's talk about that and then move into the two and a half fine particle mass. That's absolutely true. You can't, you know, look at all these individual areas and say, this is where this problem came from. That's where this problem came from. So what do you do about that? The first thing is,
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Understand that the goal of improving your health from an environmental perspective is not to be a perfectionist about everything. It's to make meaningful differences in the areas where differences can be made. Right. So low hanging fruit. Don't drink out of a plastic bottle. Don't microwave things in plastic containers. Right. There are equal things as far as air quality is concerned.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Exactly, right? You know, so do the fundamental things. And when you do the fundamental things, you dramatically reduce your overall exposure. That's, I think, the best that you can do in these situations outside of, you know, clean eating and maybe taking supplements to protect yourself.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
But this is not a, you know, a conversation in which I want people to take away from this, like, we're screwed. We're living in this, like, you know, complete toxic mess. Yes, but that knowledge is very important because it gives you an ability to make meaningful changes.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yeah.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Yes. what are some really straightforward things that you can do as you mentioned you know high quality air filters um you know i recently sent out a newsletter to all of our patients that essentially was trying to give everybody a little bit of a structure of what do you do in this post-fire LA environment, because there was a lot of understandable fear about it.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
But what I wrote in the newsletter was, I hope at this point you have an indoor air filter. And the reason I wrote that is because for anybody who's been in the clinic, we've kind of been harping for a very long time
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
about like reducing your environmental exposures where you can the plastic bottles the microwaving this that and getting a high quality indoor air filter and people who walk into our clinic will also see that there are several of them walking around which is you know for many reasons actually meant to be a talking point for people like oh what air filter is that why do you have that here why are you doing this and that's a way that we try to educate people about this is something that you should be doing for your own home but
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Absolutely. Everybody living in a major urban environment in the United States and around the world should have a high quality air filter in place. And I think the secondary thing that a lot of people should be doing is they should start monitoring what their air quality looks like, both indoors and outdoors, and making a assessment about what their outdoor activity levels are going to be
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
based on what those readings show.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
Let's segue into the two and a half micrometer fund particle count, right? Because when we talk about measuring the air, we're going to talk about, you know, essentially an air meter that looks at four potential things. So there's particle mass 10, which means 10 micrometers. It's a size.
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
of of the particle there is particle mass two and a half two and a half micrometers which we call the fine particle mass air meters can measure volatile organic compounds and specifically can give you a measurement of how much formaldehyde is in the air so if if you have those four metrics right
Dhru Purohit Show
A Silent But Deadly Killer: How Poor Air Quality is a Driver of Chronic Disease and What We Can Do to Protect Ourselves Now
With the particle mass 10 and two and a half, you're essentially counting the invisible particulates, things like, you know, exhaust particles, wildfire particles, the thing, the actual thing that's carrying something toxic to you that can get lodged in your lungs, go into the blood, reach the blood brain barrier, you're actually seeing a quantified amount of that thing that's carrying all the other bad things with it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah, it's a big chunk of their pie of how something like that happens.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Number two most established in the literature beyond Hashimoto's is multiple sclerosis. And multiple sclerosis is not typically gluten. So the target antibodies, the target tissues in multiple sclerosis are myelin basic protein or myelin oligodendrocytes. They have what we call significant cross-reactivity with the dairy protein casein. What does cross-reactivity mean?
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
The immune system is not a perfect system. When it recognizes things to attack, it does so with maybe 70 or 80% specificity. If there is another protein in the environment, that looks that 70% or 80% similar, it essentially cannot tell the difference between the two of them. That is the case for myelin basic protein myelo-oligodendrocyte targets.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Essentially, they look extremely similar to the immune system as dairy protein. So if an individual with known diagnosed MS has a food immune reaction to dairy, the consumption of dairy will drive the antibody formation against their neurological tissue.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Put that in a different context, if that person takes dairy out of their diet, their immune reaction against their neurologic target tissue is going to drop and they're going to feel better.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
In the vast majority of them, there's a food sensitivity issue.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
So I think the first thing that everybody should understand is when you're dealing with an environmentally induced immune problem, there are stages. So there is a pre-autoimmune stage, then there's three stages of actual autoimmunity. Most people who have
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
several different parts of their body that aren't functioning the way that they think they should be functioning, or it's a significant drop from their baseline, are suffering from that pre-autoimmune condition, the environment essentially driving their immune system into a chronic inflammatory imbalanced state.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah, I mean, in reality, food is the biggest part of the environment that you're exposed to. I mean, you know, you're consuming food three, four, five times a day. Depending on what that is, that could be regular, continuous inflammatory exposure. So the reason we focus so much on food is, number one, It's the biggest part of the environmental conversation.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And number two, it's the thing that you have direct control over. You don't have a lot of control over the quality of the air that you breathe on a daily basis. You have some control over it, but not as much as what you consume. Right. So that's why we really focus so much on it. It is the biggest piece of the puzzle and it's the most movable piece of the puzzle.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Right.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Currently, we're at 15% of the US population with a known diagnosed autoimmune disease, but most autoimmune diseases have a latent period of somewhere between three to eight years. So if you kind of want to back extrapolate that data, we're looking at maybe upwards of 25% of the US.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
It's very clear from the literature that that's not true. I mean, we have very robust data in the NHANES trial. If you look at the percent positivity of a positive ANA over time during NHANES, you see doubling of that percent population. And NHANES in that regard has only been analyzed, I think, back to 2015 at this point.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
So no question, there's no way to discuss this other than scientifically true fact that autoimmune disease is on the rise. And only in the last 15 years, let's say, which is a very, very alarming timeframe to experience something like that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
It's all, I think, the majority happening in that pre-autoimmune category, which essentially, if you want to break it down to a cellular level, It's really the normal physiology and function of our entire gut environment and the immune influence from that that are completely broken. The most important regulator of our immune system is a cell called the T regulatory cell.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
The T regulatory cell, we have different populations of them. There's a gut dependent or gut populated T regulatory cell, which is essentially responsible for the balance of what in my environment do I want to attack or not attack.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
So when you have, let's say a food sensitivity or you have a new adult allergy that you didn't experience before is essentially dysfunction of the T regulatory cell that brought that set of symptoms on.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Also, if let's say you consume foods and you get brain fog or runny nose and digestive issues afterwards, it's essentially the environmental triggers that are pushing that Treg cell to imbalance that are responsible for that. If you really wanna, break it down to one part of the immune system.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Treg cells, their balance essentially is fed entirely by what they see as threat versus non-threat in the localized internal environment of the gut. And with so many people experiencing intestinal permeability, so much dysbiosis out there, so much constant exposure to chemicals, the Treg cells see themselves as under constant threat.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And when they see themselves on constant threat, they're going to try to fight back. And the way they fight back is with a chronic inflammatory response from the immune system. And we feel like crap when our immune system is in a chronic inflammatory state.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah, it doesn't begin that way, I think, but it rolls in that direction. We probably have silent ongoing injury to that intestinal lining for years. And then when there's enough permeability, then we start developing the food reactions.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
I'll talk about my own story because I think it's very reflective of the majority of people that we see coming into the practice. So I was born in Los Angeles. My mom had me via vaginal delivery. She did breastfeed me for a few months, actually, I think almost a year. So did her best to try to help nourish my intestinal microenvironment, try to feed my immune system the correct things.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
But I got sick a lot as a kid. I remember very clearly a pink bottle of amoxicillin that just lived in our refrigerator. Antibiotics. Antibiotics, right. And back then in the mid to late 80s, medical practice was, you know, a kid's not feeling great, here's a tablespoon of antibiotics and just keep doing that.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
and he's baby too so i'm riding that boat yeah i'm telling both of our stories at the same time you know i remember loving that pink uh syrup that was sweetened and tasted good to me um but you know what those years and years of of antibiotics were doing were eventually depleting my microbiome of their most essential members chronically over the course of 5 10 whatever years that was
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Right. And this is no knock on appropriate use of antibiotics. Of course. You know, if you have strep throat, you should treat it, right? You know, the ramifications of that are untreated or not good. You know, if you have sepsis, antibiotics save your life. No knock on that. But I think in that era, we were very, very clearly dramatically overprescribing antibiotics. And that had ramifications.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And that practice likely existed up until recently. So that's a huge chunk of the population that had that ongoing regular hit to their microbiome. Also coincided with a dramatic rise in the availability of industrialized food, fast food. I think my parents were doing their best, but they both worked full time and we ate fast food pretty often, maybe two or three times a week.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And that's ultra-processed, tons of gluten, tons of dairy, typically coming from food sources that are mono-agriculture, high pesticide exposure, very improper breeding tactics for the cattle that's used, for the dairy that's used in those products. the cheapest way to grow anything that you're gonna be consuming.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Fastest and cheapest, right? And probably chemically engineered to taste the best and be most addicting. You pair that with somebody who has dysbiosis and those Treg cells that are developing inside of my gut at that time are just gonna be bombarded over the head over and over and over and over again until they're essentially gonna say, okay, whatever we're doing isn't working here.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
We're under continuous threat. We're going to recruit everybody here and we're going to start fighting. And unfortunately, though, that comes from good intent from the immune system, that inflammatory signaling propels the leaky gut and propels the food immune reactions to another level. And that's where you can start getting dedicated antibody formation to foods.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And, you know, like the inflammation just ticks up a notch. And people can have lifelong issues from that. For me, I had IBS and chronic sinus infections for a very long time. I was very fortunate that when I was in medical school in 2005, my dad was in the process of developing some of the first clinical applications of testing for these things, essentially the first food sensitivity testing.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
He had actually dabbled with it in the late 1980s and was bringing it back in the 2000s. And he ran his earliest versions of gluten sensitivity and dairy sensitivity panels on me. I came back positive.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah, I'd say he's the godfather of bringing leaky gut and food sensitivity testing to the modern world. And at the same time, also just continuing to push the now known idea that the environment impacts the immune system, that it's responsible for this spike in autoimmune disease.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that for whatever many people that I've seen in my clinic or have been seen in clinics successfully here in the US, there's probably an exponential larger number out there who have done their own version of healing just by taking the information and implementing it, which is part of the power, I think, of this movement is that it really provides people a pathway to make yourself feel better.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And that's just growing and growing and growing in popularity. The basics of it are remove and then repair. So what does remove mean? Remove means at least temporarily take things off of the table that are perpetuating this chronic inflammatory problem. If you wanna think about it simplistically, what's driving the leaky gut? Just you could say, I probably have it.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
My immune system is probably in this pro-inflammatory state. How do I take things off? that just give that immune system some breathing room. That's following an elimination diet. Start by removing gluten, do that for a few weeks, see how you feel. If you're not responding, progress to removing dairy. You can go to corn, soy, eggs next. Some people don't wanna play that waiting game.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
You know, depending on how willing you are, you could go straight to a paleo diet. I mean, a paleo diet is basically playing the odds and saying, it's maybe a grain it's maybe gluten it's maybe dairy it's maybe you know corn it's maybe eggs let me just take them all out focus on whole foods minimize my sugar intake you know it really is gonna cover 95% of people out there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
You could just go straight to a paleo diet.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
There are people out there. There are people out there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah, I include nuts and seeds in there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
I think grains would be the next step.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
All grains would be the next step.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
anything that fall in that grain category sorghum and the reason for that is that people who have really significant gluten sensitivities have a tendency to also have a grain sensitivity as well too why that is i don't think anybody really knows a hundred percent but you know theoretically it might have to do with the way crops are grown or stored or maybe even some cross reactivity between the proteins there but gluten dairy and then grains would be next
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah. And then try to take the opportunity and focus on eating whole non-processed foods. Yeah. I mean, that's probably the most important part of all of this. Yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yeah. And when you are sick, you would pay anything to get out of it. Yes. Right? So a little bit of an investment in prevention is huge as far as paying dividends.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Well, in theory, if you are having an IgG antibody response to the food, the half-life of those antibodies are somewhere between four to six weeks. So what does that mean in reality? That means you could stop the gluten exposure on day one, still have those antibodies rolling in your system in some significant fashion three weeks later. And you might not have seen a noticeable effect.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
So I generally counsel six weeks. You want a half-life of those antibodies to kind of come down a significant amount so the immune system can chill out.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
When Food Bites Back.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
For the practitioners out there, there is a textbook that my dad and I also wrote called Food Associated Autoimmunities. So both of them.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
The quickest things that will resolve are brain fog, insomnia, and joint pain. Those are like the three things that if they're going to happen, they happen right away. Wow.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
You know, you're testing your commitment to something. You know, some people might have some hesitancy to do that, but it's a good challenge for everybody. No question.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
So then you want to repair, right? And repair means two things. You want to repair that intestinal lining that's been damaged for all those months or years before you started doing that. Time will take care of some of that, but there are things that you could take to try to accelerate that process. And you also want to repair those pissed off Treg cells.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
The immune system sometimes could use like an external hug to try to convince it to come down back to its normal balance. So if you're gonna do like an intestinal repair, let's say you're doing it with food. The intestinal barrier loves specific amino acids, it loves growth factors, and it loves probiotics.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
So consuming collagen better, consuming bone broth, making sure that you're intaking a really decent amount of live probiotics in your food, sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, whatever it is that you decide that you wanna do.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Those are going to do wonderful things for repairing the barrier, and the Treg cells are very much influenced by both probiotics and the thing that they produce when they're in association with fiber, which is a short-chain fatty acid postbiotic. So do that. Vitamin D, zinc, fish oil, all those things, if you're going to start taking supplements, can really accelerate that healing process.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Yes.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
My favorite supplements for doing this, foods that you can consume if you want to do this entirely with food, which is absolutely possible. And yeah, it's all in there.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
Correct.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
and and that's why you really got to go slowly and see what your body can tolerate do you want to add anything to that yeah absolutely there's a subset of people out there a big subset of people who have these chronic immune problems and the results that happen as the result of really severe bacterial and maybe even fungal dysbiosis we call that cebo sifo you know i'm sure they're going to be different terms that we start using for it in the future
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
But essentially at its core, there is an overgrowth of a dysfunctional type of bacteria and or fungus, and also the presence of them in places that they shouldn't be. And bacteria are fermenting organisms. Yeast are fermenting organisms. So as part of their metabolism,
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
they produce a lot of gas and for some people if you're going to flood the system with more probiotics or more fiber raw uncooked fiber you're going to really push the gas pedal on that not to use a pun but you're just going to be producing a lot of gas essentially it's going to be really uncomfortable it might cause diarrhea it might cause constipation so in those individuals
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
you have to consume in this, I think, low fermented diet style. You know, essentially you want the veggies to be cooked so that the fiber is broken down a little bit. You want to avoid the consumption of probiotics. And in those people, I actually focus entirely on the postbiotic
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
supplement realm so those are things like short chain fatty acids tributerin is i think the big one in that space there's a postbiotic from pomegranate called urolithin a and then a secondary bile acid called tudka so Typically, when people are really sensitive to the pre and pro side, you're removing the prebiotic foods and then you're just pushing the postbiotic.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And eventually over time, for many of those individuals, as you influence the Treg cells to calm down, the immune system will therefore be able to do what it is intended to do, which is to regulate the microbiome.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
It depends on the context. So if I'm going to do a reintroduction, it's typically going to be for somebody who does not have a known diagnosed autoimmune disease. Because in that context, I don't think it's worth the potential flare of the autoimmunity itself for the reintroduction, because sometimes irreversible damage is done in that flare. So that's the first really important counseling point.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
If we're just dealing with you know, no autoimmunity, chronic inflammatory symptoms, you know, I usually will counsel, wait until we know for sure that your intestinal permeability is resolved, because that's when we know your physiologic resilience is back, meaning you're more likely to pass the trial, which is what we want. Wait until then, and then we can do a reintroduction.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
And, you know, depending on the foods that they reacted to, I'll make the list in kind of reverse order of what I think was causing the issue and do the reintroductions a week at a time. Essentially, we counsel people to do three days of small introductions sequentially and then to pause for four days and just be sure that over the course of that week, they feel the same as baseline.
Dhru Purohit Show
Autoimmune Conditions are On the Rise — Do Food Sensitivities Play a Role? The Role of Gluten & Dairy in Autoimmunity and How to Address Food Sensitivities Starting with Gut Health
The idea there is sometimes the delayed reactions will occur for people and You just want to make sure you're observing that cleanly and then you move on to the next and the next and the next.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
It's tough because it's multiple pieces. But if I was going to break it down to what I think the core of it is, the acquired... mitochondrial damage and the associated lack of autophagy to me is really core there. So mitochondria are the powerhouse of the body. We know that for energy production, but I think it's underappreciated how much a damaged mitochondria will lead to
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
a pro-inflammatory dysfunctional immune phenotype, meaning somebody who has a dysfunctional immune system just as the result of the damaged mitochondria. And then from there, there are neurological immune cells called glial cells. They will enter something called glial activation and end up with a pro-inflammatory immune subset in the brain.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Brain on fire, exactly. So tired, dysfunctional immune system, brain on fire, strictly from the mitochondrial damage that comes from the viral infection. And of course, in the United States, with all the metabolic dysfunction that exists. You already have mitochondrial issues, right? Massive mitochondrial issues to begin with, right? So that's why we're seeing a bigger problem with it here.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
both in the short term and the long term.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
It's clear. So if mitochondria can run either on something called oxidative phosphorylation, sorry for the fancy words, but to- It's burning carbs. Yeah, right. Burning oxygen and carbs, but that's an efficient form of converting food into energy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Yeah, right? Less fuel, more miles, right? And the more miles you get out of the amount of fuel, the less antioxidants or less oxidative injury is produced by the mitochondria. In metabolic dysfunction like insulin resistance, the mitochondria are not running on diesel. They're running on the least efficient fuel on the planet. So one gallon will get them a mile.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Yeah, the most important cell in the immune system is something called a T regulatory cell. And the dominant population of T regulatory cells in an adult lives in the lining of the gut. So the gut is the center of immune resilience. Those regulatory cells are responsible for
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
And in doing so, they burn through all of their antioxidant reservoir because the mitochondrial production relies on this continuous balance between producing things that require us to produce antioxidants to neutralize. Otherwise, the mitochondria damages itself, right? So you imagine somebody with insulin resistance running on that very inefficient fuel system.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
They're teetering on the edge, barely making it with the antioxidants. All of a sudden, a huge oxidative injury like COVID comes along, tipping point. Now the mitochondria cannot function anymore because you don't have enough antioxidants to meet what it's producing. And essentially what happens is
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
it structurally becomes damaged, and it will release its own unique DNA into the cytoplasm, which signals to the immune system, I'm in trouble. What does the immune system do when you're in trouble? It says, okay, we've got something we need to fight. It puts itself into fighting mode, which is a pro-inflammatory mode,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
The nervous system, the glial cells, know when macrophages, which are a kind of primal defense cell, are in this white blood cell, are in this fight, and they will convert themselves into glial activation and put themselves into this neuroinflammatory fight response, all from the powerhouse of the cell. But that makes perfect sense. It's a domino effect.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Yeah, but it's the most important part of you. Of course that's going to happen.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
you know, kind of balancing all the different sides, making sure that, you know, in an inflammatory attack against something that we should be attacking, we don't end up in that mistake of attacking ourselves. So the gut is absolutely the center of the immune system and immune resilience.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, 25 years of research now kind of starting to look at what is really happening here from a physiologic perspective, right? You know, intestinal permeability, leaky gut, you know, you've covered that many times on the podcast and in your books.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
But, you know, it's hard to understate how important that process is in chronic inflammatory disease, autoimmune disease, neurodegenerative disease. You know, the more and more and more we look at it, the more we're finding that it is centered to all of these. So, though we do keep talking about it, it's rightfully an incredibly important topic of conversation.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
So you listed all of the things in the environment that we are consciously or unconsciously exposed to on a regular basis as a population. Think about it from the immune system's perspective. If its job is to defend us from threat, and we are constantly pouring threat into ourselves again knowingly or unknowingly, I think it was only a matter of time until we saw what we are seeing now.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Massive explosions, viruses that I think five or six years ago didn't pose such a tremendous threat to us as an adult population. We talked about RSV, this last cold and flu season was horrendous.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
you know, adenoviruses and rhinoviruses, things that typically cause like three, four, five days of regular cold, causing two or three weeks of pro, you know, prolonged congestion, you know, lots of secondary infections, you know, just, you're just seeing the immune system just completely failing.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
So it's because I think of what we're continuously exposing ourselves to, what that does to the center of the immune system. And then we see all the ramifications of it, you know, now, 15, 20, 25 years down the road, in a population that's dramatically suffering. And the current medical infrastructure has zero answer for this.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
It's what other biologic medications can we come up with to try to kind of hinder, suppress, right? And now we're getting to the point where we have patients with three, four, five autoimmune diseases, and every biologic under the sun can't control what's going on with them. So it's a huge problem. It's progressive.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
And the only way that we're going to get out of it is to acknowledge that and to start making conscious choices that limit those continuous exposures to our gut.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
That's happening, again, because I think of the dramatic loss of immune resilience that we have as a population. So, you know, again, to go over those numbers, that was a huge, very well-done retrospective analysis, a million and a half people, two different studies combined, showing a very large increase in autoimmunity. And that was in a six- to 12-month window after the infection.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
more and more studies are coming out showing that everything from rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, you know, virtually every autoimmune disease under the sun can be triggered by COVID. So again, why is that? It's because our immune systems have lost their fundamental ability to be able to appropriately defend us against viruses in the short term and then also in the long term.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
You know, to be able to Resilience is an ability to defend yourself and then return to normal return to balance to say the threat is gone Everything is okay. We've handled this. Let's go back to the balance that we're supposed to be in and That part is completely gone as well to people stay in very prolonged chronic inflammatory states.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
I mean, the average long COVID patient has dramatic symptoms for 12 to 24 months or more. And part of that is because I think the infrastructure isn't addressing things appropriately, but part of that just speaks to how much, from a population perspective, immune systems are broken and immune resilience is completely gone.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
And the scariest part of it, I don't know what you've seen recently, but, you know, I think the early batch of long COVID was predictable. Those who were going to get really severe or hospitalized forms of COVID, you know, they were going to have really big struggles afterwards.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Now, you know, it's like 45-year-old dad walks into the clinic, metabolically healthy, not smoking, you know, not a heavy drinker, very mild COVID, all of a sudden horrendous long COVID afterwards, right? That again speaks to how broken the immune system of the population is. So is long COVID an autoimmune disease in and of itself, or is it just
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Well, in the research that my dad and I have done on lung COVID so far, we've found specific autoimmunity in a large percentage of them, but it's certainly not everybody. You know, whether it's, you know, cardiolipin autoimmunity, neurological autoimmunity, you know, a lot of joint related autoimmunity, sometimes thyroid as well.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
That's certainly, I think, one of the signatures, along with something called viral reactivation, which, you know, in the chronic fatigue space, we've known about for a very long time.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
There are a large group of viruses that we as adults, by the time we're adults, we've been exposed to, we've been infected with. HHV-6, which is roseola, something that we typically get by the time we're three years old, not a big deal. If you are symptomatic, you've got a fever for a couple of days, you have rashes.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Epstein-Barr virus, the majority of adults are asymptomatic from the infection, same with CMV as well too. These viruses are genius in their long-term evolution against us. They have figured out how to evade complete immune eradication by hiding in tissue after the acute infection. But with a normal immune system, they stay in dormancy.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
They wouldn't dare step out into the wild and get eradicated by the immune system. But what we're finding is that the best.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Correct. Right? It's not rolling around in the bloodstream active all day long. But a very, very large percentage of long COVID patients have viral reactivation as a core of their clinical symptoms and clinical disease. So again, that poses the question, what in the world is happening with the immune system in the short and long term following a COVID viral infection? It's not meeting
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
the demands in the short term and then not balancing itself in the long term as well, which provides a beautiful open window for these reactivated viruses.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
So currently, with what we understand right now, I break it into five buckets. So there's viral persistence, which is essentially somebody never fully clears the initial COVID infection. They've got this very low level infection that just keeps on going and going and going and going. There's something called super antigen activation, which is parts of COVID have an ability to just dramatically
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
I'll just say piss off the immune system. There's the mitochondrial dysfunction and loss of autophagy that happens there. There's the microbiome and gut permeability dysfunction, and then there's the autoimmunity component. So if you're going to talk about diagnostics to be able to accurately pick up,
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
what's happening with long COVID, you basically have to say, okay, which one of these five buckets is the person living in? Everyone is gonna have some unique spectrum of those five, though the majority will have, let's say three or four of them. So we don't have diagnostics for the mitochondrial part, maybe on the research side.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
They're real, for sure. The viral reactivation stuff, I think, you know, rather straightforward antibodies, IgM, IgG antibodies to different targets of Epstein-Barr virus, HHV-6, CMV. There's no diagnostics for COVID persistence, if that is in case what's going on.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
I mean, you can look at whether there's very high levels of COVID antibody production for long periods of time, and you can infer that there's COVID persistence there. The autoimmune part of it. You brought up the lab in Germany that's doing an autoimmune panel specifically for long COVID.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
In our studies as well, neurological targets like myelin basic protein, myelo-oligodendrocyte glycoprotein, the blood-brain barrier is a very common target that was demonstrated in mouse literature.
The Dr. Hyman Show
Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
The most important defense of your brain, which is the blood-brain barrier, disrupted in football players, boxers, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. So that same kind of core defense layer of the brain gets damaged by COVID. You can look at those markers in the blood. And then the specific neurological proteins like myelin basic protein, which is traditionally damaged in something like multiple sclerosis.
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Toxic Food & Hidden Chemicals Are Everywhere: Here's What You Can Do
Yeah, make an attempt to try to, on this kind of early leading edge side of things, identify how much of each one of them they're dealing with.