136-The Cell Danger Response

Unlock the mysteries of aging and chronic disease as we navigate the compelling intersection of these conditions with inflammation, guided by the expertise of Dr. Eric Gordon. Our journey begins with the body's double-edged sword—its inflammatory response. Vital for healing yet detrimental when uncontrolled, inflammation presents a paradox in our quest for longevity. Dr. Gordon illuminates the role of mitochondria in this delicate balance, linking the cell danger response to our overall health and resilience.

As we peer into the complexities of chronic illness, Dr. Gordon stresses the importance of an individual's medical history, considering both genetic and environmental factors. Addressing these persistent conditions requires more than just a one-size-fits-all solution; it calls for a tailored approach that respects each patient's unique sensitivities. We explore a variety of treatment options, from biofeedback and meditation to carefully calibrated medication plans, all while acknowledging the integral connection between our psychological state and physical health.

The final leg of our conversation underscores the importance of mindset in healing chronic illness. Dr. Gordon shares his insights into the unique challenges faced by patients with long-term conditions, and the necessity of integrating hope into their therapeutic journey. The chapter concludes by highlighting the power of intravenous techniques and the significance of chronic inflammation as a biomarker for aging, offering listeners a pathway to more personalized and effective healing. Join us as we arm ourselves with knowledge and a fresh perspective on wellness that could transform the way you approach your own health journey.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Back to the Health, long and Gevity Secret Show, and I'm your host, dr Robert Lufkin. Today we discover the unexpected connections between aging, chronic disease and inflammation, as Eric Gordon, md, unravels the complexities of the body's response to stress. Our conversation delves into the cell danger response, where we reveal the mitochondria's critical role in inflammation regulation and healing. By probing into the stages of cellular response to threats, we expose the paradox of inflammation that it's indispensable in short bouts for survival, but ultimately detrimental when it's chronic or prolonged, leading to the host of chronic diseases that we all face. Join us for a narrative that bridges storytelling with deep scientific insights, offering a fresh perspective on the aging process. We also scrutinize the impact of stress and energy on our body's capacity to heal.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Dr Gordon discusses the phenomenon of senescent cells and their role in aging, and how the intricate balance of the body's healing cycle is easily tipped by this sustained stress in inflammation. This episode is an eye-opener to the intricate dance between ourselves and the environment and how this delicate interplay affects our overall health and longevity. For anyone interested in taking charge of their health, understanding the nuances of their body and embracing a personalized approach to wellness, this episode is an essential listen. Join us on this journey as we connect the dots between science, health and the art of living well. This episode is brought to you by L Nutra, maker of the prolonged fasting-mimicking diet. Please support this podcast by checking out their website and taking a look at their amazing products. And now please enjoy this week's episode.

Speaker 3: 2:10

I'm very pleased to have Dr Eric Gordon with us today, and the topic we're going to be talking about is aging as another chronic illness. So, eric, it's such a pleasure to have you here.

Speaker 4: 2:24

Well, thank you. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here and I love the topic. As I think I was telling you to begin with, I've always focused on illness rather than on wellness, because I never really knew for sure how to help the individual for wellness, because it's so individual, while once somebody was ill, it gets clearer and crisper the areas that need support. But after doing this for a long time, I've come to learn a lot about what I think also is involved in staying well and in healing.

Speaker 3: 3:08

So let's get started with your perspective on aging and how you see that and how chronic illness fits into that picture.

Speaker 4: 3:21

Well, I focus on the inflammatory part. I'm sure every story about aging has validity. Okay, it's like I mean I said, one of the things I emphasize is, what we'll talk about today is something called the cell danger response. And all these concepts that people use, whether it's, you know, in the old days it was the oxidative stress theory, or free radicals they're all valid. They all inform us of an aspect.

Speaker 4: 3:51

To me, why I focus on inflammation is because it's the way the body tries to protect itself is inflammation. There's nothing wrong with inflammation. In fact, that's why I found the cell danger story, if you will, that Dr Robert Navio has published, you know, has put together and helped really teach the world a little bit about, as so useful, because it lets us understand that many of the things that we label as pathologic are only pathologic because they're unrestrained, okay, and the healing mechanism is inflammatory, okay. It's just that it should be a cycle. You should start inflammation and then we slowly resolve it and go back to a more steady state of, you know, just preparation and healing. But you know, not, active inflammation, and all chronic illness is persistence of inflammation in some tissue, in some organ.

Speaker 3: 5:02

Well, you've mentioned a couple of times the cell danger response. Can you explain what that is and how it plays a role in this picture?

Speaker 4: 5:12

Well, it's a concept, it's not a thing. I always like to start with that because it's a concept to understand how the mitochondria, which everybody thinks about as the energy producer of the cell, is actually also the modulator of inflammation and healing in the cell. But so, and it's just to understand, I think the best way to step back is think of healing on the everyday level. You know, when we, during the day we're busy, you know eating, and at night we're busy, kind of like breaking down tissue a little bit and trying to recover from the day stresses, okay, and so that's, that's a. But even during that time the cell, your cells, are involved in transient inflammatory episodes. You know you. But when you get sick, and this is where the cell danger response comes in, when you're sick, those transient episodes of breaking down tissue and rebuilding tissue become much greater. I always say it's a difference between, you know patching a hole in your wall, like there were a picture was, and calling in the contractor to rebuild the whole room. You know, to tear it down. See, the cell danger response is when you're tearing down the room and rebuilding it. So the it's broken down into three phases and three phases reflect the three, the three types of mitochondrial function.

Speaker 4: 6:47

Okay, because people think of the mitochondria as creating energy, you know, through ATP and the electron transport chain, and that's what they do. When the cell is functioning is functioning normally, but when there is a danger of viral infection or trauma or a toxin or really anything, the first thing the mitochondria does is it senses that it's not getting all the raw materials and the electrons that it's supposed to and it begins to brown out, it begins to actually make less ATP and it begins to do something very special it puts ATP, it increases the amount of ATP, which is the energy currency of the body on the cell surface, and at this point, atp, instead of being used for energy, is being used as a signaling molecule. Okay, just like people think of hormones, well, this is a local hormone, a very paracrine effect, a very local effect, but it signals that this is a cell that's sick, which will call in the immune system and inside the cell, once the that mitochondria is making less oxygen I mean is is is making less ATP it's also using less oxygen and this makes more oxygen in the cytoplasm, which creates what we've always called oxidative stress, and everybody thinks oxidative stress is bad. But oxidative stress is life saving.

Speaker 4: 8:16

If it's transient, okay. It's what lets your cells kill things inside of them. You know it's very important. But if you stay there you begin to have chronic inflammatory diseases. So that's the CDR1, where you're having the acute viral infection or trauma, you know, and both of these involve calling in the innate immune system, the neutral cells.

Speaker 3: 8:43

So the cell danger response is a response to a dangerous situation of biochemical dangerous biochemical situations such as a toxin.

Speaker 4: 8:55

Yep, such as anything. See, that's the point is that it's not, it's an overriding story, see. I mean you can go into the weeds and bring it down to very, very specific biochemical details, but what it does for us is is gives us a story, and I love we need story because, like it's, you know the biochemical discussion in the room and you can see it. Okay, when you try to understand health and wellness as well as chronic illness, you need a story. When you try to just understand things at the very deep biochemical levels, you're always going to be wrong because we don't. I mean, if you read the literature, you quickly drop into a morass of acronyms and proteins and genes that we still don't really understand what they do. But it sounds very much like people know what they're talking about, but at the end of the day, the complexity is overwhelming. So to really understand that, we need story. And I think before we there's more to the CDR, much more. But before I go into that I think it's because people, it's too easy to get lost again in the detail Let me talk about a little more overriding picture that I think people will understand easier.

Speaker 4: 10:12

Okay, and that's the difference between what we call functional illness and pathological illness. Okay, in medicine functional illness is things like irritable bowel syndrome, where the tissue isn't broken. Okay, you can scope somebody with irritable bowel, get a colonoscopy. They look in there and it looks normal. Okay, you can have a lot of pain, a lot of diarrhea, a lot of constipation, but the tissue looks normal. So we call that functional illness. Now, it used to have a little bit of a not such a nice meaning to it, because it used to. Functional used to be the polite word that doctors used to suggest that it was psychological, it was all in your head.

Speaker 3: 11:02

All in your head, right?

Speaker 4: 11:03

I mean, and we want to remember that everything is in our head. So there's no such thing as a. I always tell people you can be. I've known people who've been severely anxious their whole lives and they're not sick at all. When you get really ill, you will get more anxious often, but you didn't get sick because you're anxious. That's one of the great fallacies of medicine, I think, is to think that the psyche will allow illness to persist. But I don't believe it. It rarely will create it. It takes usually a bunch of other stuff happening at the same time, but anyways.

Speaker 3: 11:40

I digress as usual. Right, but we can get into the role of stress in this process. But let's get back to your story.

Speaker 4: 11:51

Right you'll have to ride herd on me. I am able to go lots of different directions very quickly. So, getting back, functional versus pathologic, because this is to me the key understanding of why I believe inflammation is about aging Okay. So in functional illness it's a whole body process, okay. Pathological illness is local. Okay, you can identify the injured tissue. That's what medicine has focused on for the last at least 100 years, because we got really good at it and especially, I always say not that I, but many people have felt that medicine has been led by our experience in warfare and that's why our ability to heal trauma is so amazing, or to not maybe heal it, but to at least treat it.

Speaker 4: 12:50

Okay, so that's pathological illness. The tissue is broken, or you have an ulcer, the tissue was destroyed, you have a heart attack, you know it's local area and in that. So that's the CDR1, in a way that local tissue destruction. Okay, because and you know, when you have that destruction you have to get rid of you then have that CDR1, which begins to call in the immune system and you begin to chew up the dead cells. And then you get into CDR2, which is when you have to call in stem cells and growth factors and begin to rebuild tissue Okay, and so that's still local, okay. And then you get to CDR3, where that cell has to mature and the cell membrane has to normalize. Because in CDR1, you harden your cell membrane Okay, because you want to prevent egress of the viruses or and you also want to prevent other bad things from getting in. But in CDR3, that cell membrane is normalizing now and the receptors for hormones and cell to cell communication is being restored Okay, and so now we're getting to that area of function. Now the cell is going to return to becoming a fully adult member of society Okay, so it knows the rules, it can begin to interact Okay.

Speaker 4: 14:19

And that's when we start getting to this area of functional medicine, because now it's about signaling. That's not working well, okay. So the tissue is kind of back to pretty much normal, but it's no longer listening as well as it should to the communication around it. Okay, or the communicate, or it's getting persistent low level inflammatory signals, not enough to kick it back into the CDR1, but enough to not let it mature completely. So it's still either not listening well, okay, I was going to go into senescent cells, but we're not going to do that now. Okay, but that's another part of this story.

Speaker 4: 15:03

So here we have functional medicine. The functional part is about cellular communication and that is really coming from the brain on some level. Okay, because you see you have local tissue damage, okay, and then you have the signals that the war is over. That has to come from the brain, okay, because see so. So again, when I say aging is chronic inflammation, it's because chronic inflammation means we haven't restored full cellular communication in the body. Okay. So in a way it's really poor communication, because I mean, when you think about it from a psychological point of view, what is everyday stress in relationships about is where we're miscommunicating, you know. That's why, when you go to the therapist, sometimes if you're lucky, if you go to family therapy, you can suddenly hear what the other person has been trying to tell you.

Speaker 3: 16:03

Right right. The communication lines are open.

Speaker 4: 16:07

Right, but what happens in times of fighting whether it's in war or just in dealing with your spouse, who is foolish enough to not realize how right you are all the time Is is people aren't listening to each other. You've stopped hearing, and that's what your cells do the exact same thing. They stopped listening to each other, and so when we want to heal, we have to create the environment that lets cells know that they're healthy. So, on one hand, we have the micro, which is the local, the pathology, and I love to study the pathology, and the pathology is full of these micro details of which chemical, in which which protein or enzyme or gene is off. That is a fascinating world, but if you really want to get back to health, you also have to engage your favorite organ, which is the central nervous system, the brain, in giving the all clear signal that that it's safe, because safety is is what allows healing and is a danger signal.

Speaker 3: 17:17

I love what you're talking about right now. Let me let me share with you something that I talked to my clients about and see if it has a comparable in your language.

Speaker 3: 17:31

So yeah, it's all just different language, that one of the dangers of always being in a place of stress is that your body goes into defense and protect and when you're in defense and protect, there isn't the energy to go into heal and maintain. And the body's has limited resources and it's always making a choice and I think, like a cell and the cell membrane, you could think of it in a similar way, where, if there's, if it's in defense and protect, it limits the energy available for maintain and heal. Does that play a role in your story? That that's?

Speaker 4: 18:15

exactly. Yes, like I said, it is that. What I love is that we're all telling the same story. We're just using different, different ways of looking at it, because energy is the perfect example in the CDR one. Ok, that first step, the mitochondria is browning out and that's why, and that, and just for the details of the biochemistry that's why a lot of people who are stuck in have a lot of cells maybe not the whole body, but have a lot of cells that are stuck in the CDR one, and they're busy gobbling down CoQ, 10 and PQQ and all these good mitochondrial supplements that don't do anything. It's because that mitochondria has turned itself off. It's not broken. It's part of that self-defense mechanism. Okay, but I digress, I apologize, just wanted to get in another little story about the CEO, wanted to understand that.

Speaker 4: 19:10

The reason I love its richness is because that was always confusing to me why some people respond really well to mitochondrial supplementations and other people. They come in with a shopping bag of mitochondrial supplements and they don't feel any better. It's because their system isn't listening. Those mitochondria have made a decision to slow down and their cells are busy making all the energy that they can by burning sugar, and that's why they love the sugar, but anyway. But energy is the key, because what people don't understand is that it takes energy to relax. Okay, when you close your fist, when you tighten a muscle, you're using ATP that you've already made. You're kind of falling off the cliff. Okay, when you got to open, now you have to climb back up the cliff or walk up the hill. That takes energy and it's the same thing in the brain.

Speaker 4: 20:13

People don't get that is that the highest energy use in the brain is to relax.

Speaker 4: 20:20

And when we don't have enough energy, our GABA and NERGIC systems the things that tell our brain that kind of chill things, don't function well. And so the less sleep you have, the more irritable you are and the less able you are to heal. Because, as I was saying before, the real, all clear signal, as you were saying, the real place where people can begin to heal is from a sense of safety. And if you live like you're saying, if you live in chronic stress, if you can't find a place to remember, to open your eyes, to look out at the vista instead of looking up your butt, to use a bad analogy. But that's what most of us do. We spend our time with our heads very much stuck in places that aren't useful. Round and round that same cycle, cause I think on some level the obsessive, compulsive thinking is really a way to try to solve a, to try to make yourself safe, and unfortunately, the universe has to be a joke. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 3: 21:36

And so the cell danger response is a normal response until it's overused, Would you? Would that be accurate?

Speaker 4: 21:45

Yes, yes, it's the. It is the that the healing cycle. In fact Dr Navio has renamed it recently into the healing cycle because he cause. It is the healing cycle, it's just, but it's a response to danger and when you go through the cycle you get back to normal sleep with a cause. You're always doing a little bit of this tissue rebuilding and tissue you know break down, you know every night when you go to bed. It's all part of that. You know pathways, you know the, the, the longevity people love to talk about M tour and the MP kinase and and that's what happens every night.

Speaker 4: 22:23

But when you're in, stuck in the cell danger response, you're stuck in one part of that pathway. You might be stuck in just the breakdown part or just in the overbuilding in the cell danger in the CDR too, you're stuck in that place where you're making more tissue. So you get scarring, you know, you get hypertrophy of blood vessels, you get hypertension, you get diabetes. These are, these are diseases and you'll also. One of the off ramps for this is senescent cells, because senescent cells, you know, are a perfect example of chronic inflammatory, low level, chronic inflammatory signaling. Okay, that probably has a lot to do with aging, because there is, quote unquote, normal aging. It's just a question of whether, if we can control the inflammation, to age gracefully and drop dead, or, you know, age with a lot of diseases. You know, that is the. That that is. The big question Is how we go about this.

Speaker 3: 23:27

So the senescence is one of the consequences of this process. That is not in balance.

Speaker 4: 23:36

Yeah, well, because senescence is an off ramp for this, if you have cells in the CD, mostly in the CDR too. Again, see, the thing about all models and I always want to remind people is don't fall in love with the model. Okay, people do this all the time. They're models, they're stories. We don't know how this thing works. This body of ours, nature, you know we can build bridges, okay, and you know, and all engineers would probably pretty much agree, that this is a stable bridge. You know, if you gave them the mathematical formulas doesn't work like that in the body.

Speaker 4: 24:12

We don't have the, we don't have the handbook. We're making it up, we're making up stories to explain our observations and we get, you know, we, we have better and better stories because we've got better and better data, but we're still hanging them together with stories. You know, you know what? Yeah, plato said that a lot, you know, a long time ago, 2000 years ago. You know, science is a likely story and that's all we have. But people get so in love, you know, with their frameworks and I said this is mine, but it's got to hold it loosely. You know, don't, don't, don't fall in love with it. It's because there's exception.

Speaker 3: 24:52

It's an interesting story and it fits a lot of the data points. When someone gets there, this cell danger response out of balance so that there's functional illness. What's the road back? What's the pathway back?

Speaker 4: 25:12

Well, you put it. Well it's, it's, it's interweaving the local treatment and the systemic treatment in my mind. Okay, but at least cause I said I deal with people who you know. My practice focuses on chronically ill people, the people with you know line that that didn't get better after the antibiotic and the antibiotics, or the people with autoimmune diseases. You know, this is when the immune system has gone off the rails, so to speak, and is really stuck. And what I have begun, what I have seen over the years, is that it's a combination of what I call Band-Aids, which is the use of, you know, drugs or herbs it doesn't matter what it is to kind of quiet down a symptom, to lower the inflammation in the local tissue and to change the milieu. Okay, which is to change the environment in such as. I mean. The simple things are you know, you got to teach people how to breathe again. You got to teach people you got to work on the sleep.

Speaker 4: 26:14

Sleep is really hard because it's, you know, when you, when you're chronically inflamed, you've got lots of noise going on up here and lots of systems are activated. It's not so easy as, like sleep hygiene, I always like to laugh at the people who want to tell you to sleep hygiene. Well, you have a chronic infection. Sleep hygiene is helpful, but it's not the whole story. You're not going to need a Band-Aid to help sleep, but so breath, sleep, sun, nature, I mean it's, it's, those are the signals, and you know, obviously, and you know clean food, the basic things, and and and and.

Speaker 4: 26:52

A loving, if you can, a loving atmosphere. I mean, you know, and these are tall orders, not easy to do, but you need all of that at some levels. Again, the beauty of the human body is none of it has to be perfect. Okay, all of us, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be here. You don't need to be living, you know, with, you know with the Dalai Lama every day in order to heal. You know you can still live with your slightly angry spouse and heal. It's just that it's nice to find places where you have some some feeling of love and relationship. You know perfection is not needed to heal. I think that's very important.

Speaker 3: 27:33

You know, just kind of get close, right, take, taking a step back. What is the impact of chronic inflammation on the organs?

Speaker 4: 27:41

Ah well, each, each organ responds differently, but what you know, for most of us, I think Probably I have to say probably the liver takes the brunt of it. As we get older, the brain takes over. Unfortunately, our inability to remember people's names is the beginning of that little bit, of a little more inflammation than we'd like. There's a part of me that would like to believe is just there's too much in here. But the reality is we're losing it a little bit. But the liver is one that I keep coming back to more and more, because it's true that GAI tract is where we meet the world. But where the world really begins to, I think, hurt us is when it starts interacting with our liver. I don't know, it's 45, maybe 50% already of Americans have fatty liver.

Speaker 4: 28:49

That low-level fat infiltration in the liver is an example of chronic inflammation because of usually of the foods I mean what we've done to our gut can also be from the bad bugs. As this chronic inflammation affects the liver, it affects the quality of what goes obviously into our blood vessels. So we start having arteriosclerosis and we start having chemicals that get into our brain and inflammatory chemicals. Each organ is affected differently by inflammation. Each organ can respond a little bit differently because they have different mitochondria. I think to taking it back is that your heart can have 4,000 or 5,000 mitochondria per cell, while a skin cell can have like 400. And so they'll deal differently with inflammation, and that's why we tend to get. Our heart is much more sensitive to changes in energy metabolism. Our skin is much more sensitive to changes in hypertrophy, and that's why we have so much more of those issues with skin than we do with the heart.

Speaker 3: 30:16

So when you have a patient coming to you with some chronic or functional illness, what's your regimen of how you address that? I know there's probably systemic approaches, organismic approaches and organ approaches, but how do you approach someone that comes to you with a functional illness, a chronic illness?

Speaker 4: 30:49

Yeah, well, it's always looking for what the triggers are, what the triggers were, because sometimes it's nice if we find the arrow and can remove it. That's great. But oftentimes the arrow is gone. But the inciting event may have been a toxic exposure years ago and your body has dealt with the toxin, it's removed it from the system, but you might have damaged some of the cells in your liver and they haven't recovered and they haven't been gotten rid of. They're in that senescent state, they're stuck. So it's just always.

Speaker 4: 31:30

But we always start with trying to look back at what was the setting. It's this standard kind of like and on one level it's a standard approach. You want to get a very good history, because the history is going to tell you most things. Were you sick since you were a kid? Were you vigorous and healthy? Because the genetic component is huge. It's where the genes meet. Your environment is where your health is. So it's looking at your health, your story, your family history, your exposures, your toxin exposures, your infectious exposures and then weighing by where you are today. What your body can tolerate Because that's the biggest thing is that many times you can find that someone has a chronic infection, but as soon as you start to treat them, they get worse.

Speaker 4: 32:31

That's because their body is stuck in a place of sensing danger. Everywhere they're stuck in chronic inflammation and once you begin to try to engage, the immune system overreacts. And that's why again, that's why inflammation and aging are connected is because it's this inability to modulate the immune response, instead of being able to go through those three stages of the CDR, you've got too many cells that are stuck. The reason I emphasize cells is because often it's only 5 or 10% of cells in your liver, your kidney or some organ that is stuck in this inflammatory thing. That's why you're not dying. You can stay in this state and live to your 80 or 90. It's just that you feel miserable. You run into people with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia who are well into their late 70s and 80s and they just feel bad, but they're not dying, you know so some of the other the approaches you engage with.

Speaker 4: 33:42

Well, so then you know again. So the first step again is history, going through all the possibilities, and then we have to decide what, what pickup stick we can move. Okay, because the thing is, you know, can we just go after an old, unresolved infection because many times there are, they are present or do we have to do you have, it was your body just overreacting. You had, like for instance, one of the DNA viruses, one of the herpes families of virus that we know, staying the B cells, you know, quiescent. But if you get stressed when those B cells decide to reproduce, you expose your body to some of those proteins again and your immune system goes nuts. So maybe we just have to quiet down the immune response.

Speaker 4: 34:31

Or many people, a big thing today is this mass cell activation, which is huge for people with chronic illness that their immune system just way overreacts a very small stimuli. You know, because you should, you're no longer discriminating. I mean, it's a failure to to to failure to communicate, to use an old line. So we so I said this thing is looking at what we can remove, what we can quiet down. Do we need to quiet your immune response or do we need to actually pick it up a little bit, and that depends on you know, whether we have to help you kill something or help you stop killing it and just realize that you better coexist with it for a while. Okay, and then, and be able to rebuild that sense of safety. Because if you're always reacting to a low level pathogen that's not hurting you, you're always giving your brain a message that your body is in danger. And that doesn't let you sleep well, it doesn't let you digest well, it doesn't let your you know, it doesn't let the parasympathetic nervous and function like it should. Okay, here.

Speaker 3: 35:48

Are we talking about actually sort of psychological ways that a personal person can feel a greater sense of safety, or are you talking about some physical process?

Speaker 4: 36:00

both. Whatever you see, it just depends on what the person can hear and feel. Okay, some people do really well with biofeedback or meditation. You know, breath work, walking, and in some people that's not going to go anywhere. They are so frozen in in, in like whatever. For some reason they're stuck and that's just not working for their bodies. You know, there's no judgment there, just sometimes it can't go and then you have to use herbs and medications to get them to a place where there's a little less pain, a little less inflammation.

Speaker 4: 36:38

You know, I'm not talking about using opiates, but there's lots and lots of tools out there to lower the inflammation, to get the immune system to feel more comfortable, and then they can engage those healing mechanisms that are more in the quote unquote psychological realm. You know, to me there's no difference between psyche and soma. I mean, as we, in order to think, we break things down, but at the end of the day, you know every, every, you know brain cell not almost every, but but many brain cells have the same. You know they respond to the inflammatory signals. You know that the immune signals, you know, will make you depressed or make you angry. So it's all one bag of soup. It's just what your body can hear.

Speaker 4: 37:25

So in some people we can go right to the, the, the functional we can. We can involve your brain early. In other people we have to really work with the body first, and we do a lot of physical work. I have a lot of people who, whether body workers I hate to call it, it's no using cranial work, cranial cycle work, energy work, a lot of the different electrical machines. It just depends. You have to be careful, though, because really sensitive people can blow up from things that everybody else thinks are absolutely safe. You know, like the, the, the electromagnetic field, the. You know the, the healthy, like the PM, the post electro electromagnetic fields would wonder us. For some people, some people, they're too much. So that's what what I do is I work through what the body can hear, okay, and we just listen. It's a dance, okay. It's not a prescription.

Speaker 3: 38:29

I find that a lot of people in this category of functional illness have tremendous kinds of sensitivities, that you take them down a path but then they have a reaction to it. So it sounds like you have to pivot very quickly with how you're approaching what your, what your approach is.

Speaker 4: 38:52

Because you're right, I have people who react to water. You know I mean, and you know, when I was younger, I, when I started, you know the famous doctor I roll. You know people, you know, yeah, you know, like you know, I remember when I first started hearing these people, I couldn't. I wanted to believe them, because I do believe that nobody's coming to me to lie to me, but it was sounded so outlandish that these things could cause so much trouble for them. But after working with them for 30 years, yeah, it can. You just have to respect that and you have to. You know, it's like playing chess and you feel like you're always being checkmated and you just have to keep finding a different approach. And you, you know, not all, not always, but sometimes we do.

Speaker 4: 39:38

I mean, and it's funny because people who are super sensitive, you'll find that some of them, they can't take any herbs and yet they can take drugs. You know, I mean, it's just it's mind blowing to find that. You know these people who, like herbs will make them sick as a dog or even energy medicine will blow them up and you can give them a drug and it's like, and they respond. You know, you just have to keep an open heart and an open mind on what that individual will respond to. And it's and that's why we use a lot of, interestingly enough, that people who can tolerate them, a lot of the intravenous techniques can sometimes get the get information in in a way that kind of bypasses the body's normal, because the most of these people have become very there are window on the world. Okay, our eyes, our ears and our you know, nose and digestive track have become so hyper that, funnily enough, if they can, if their skin isn't too sensitive and sticking a needle into their vein doesn't freak them which it can some of their sympathetic nervous systems are so wired that their veins become hypersensitive. But if they're not, we can get a. We can get a lot of changes in people who can't tolerate anything by mouth through their veins. It's, it's just kind of the magic of dancing with this and this is, you know.

Speaker 4: 41:10

So these are the things we've learned for the chronically ill, and but you know, at the same time I'm seeing almost all of our tools being used for people who want to be, who want to stay well. You know that that that that is the magic is each one of these tools that really work and sick people in the right person. Who was interested in wellness. It can really help them get to the next level of healing, because it's about finding where the chronic inflammatory drive is, because even people who are well often have a, you know, under the hood there's inflammation. There's that high blood sugar. You know that's all inflammation. I mean I can't think of any, any marker for aging. That's not that I that I can't relate to persistent cell danger response.

Speaker 3: 42:12

So I think that's a good process. Eric, do you, do you look at mindset at all where a positive mindset might be helpful in this process?

Speaker 4: 42:25

Totally, but you can't. Most of the people I see at this point in time, okay, are people who've been sick for usually three to 20 years. Okay, I see very few people who've been sick well, except with since we've had long COVID and some of the vaccine injuries. But most of the people I see have been ill for a very long time. And if we start with mindset, they often get insulted because they've already been told by too many physicians that if they would just take the antidepressant or get therapy, they would be better, they would heal. But, as I said in the beginning, this controls your immune system on a very huge level. Again, local pathology will create inflammation, but the persistent self-defense thinking is what will maintain the inflammation. The healing message, the message that the world is safe again, comes from our brains. Okay. So, yes, the mindset is critical, but when you feel miserable and you're not, you know you wake up in the morning and to even get out of bed either makes you dizzy, light-headed or just fatigued. It's really hard to skip, to put on a smiley face. Many of these people have learned to, but it's still hard. So we have to go back and that's what I'm saying and find the band-aids. That can begin to help some of those physical symptoms and then allow them to engage the hope we have to find hope again.

Speaker 4: 44:08

And so, yes, the mindset is crucial. But it's hard to start with mindset. So there are many and we do use I mean, I do have people work with many biofeedback people and you know cognitive behavioral therapists and many of the programs that are out there that help realign because, like you're talking about the super sensitive people, you know, part of that is a mindset. Once you've reacted to smells, your body gets real defensive. I mean, if every time somebody walks in, you know the office you're in and they're wearing a perfume and you get a severe headache, your body gets primed, you know, and so it does become a psychological thing as well. You can cause that severe headache by just suggesting a bad smell.

Speaker 3: 45:00

This has been a really fascinating conversation, Eric. I really appreciate it. Can you share with our listeners how they can find you or your website where they might find more information about what you're doing?

Speaker 4: 45:18

Yeah, well, we keep it simple, just GordonMedicalcom. That's the website, and you know, like right there on there is the thing you know, for we have a wonderful young woman who talks to people and makes sure that it's just press the button for a discovery call. And because we always want to make sure that we're a right fit for people, you know, we really don't like to waste people's resources if we're not the right ones, so we always try to really make sure that it's going to be helpful.

Speaker 3: 45:51

Well, thank you again, eric. I really appreciate our discussion.

Speaker 4: 45:55

Well, thank you, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 45:59

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