EP085 | Dr Tom O’Bryan — Making it easy to do the right thing

Do you ever feel stuck in the cycle of chronic illness, trying endless protocols with little relief? 

What if the real answer to healing wasn’t more tests or supplements, but a shift in how you approach your body? 

Dr. Tom O'Bryan, a functional medicine expert and pioneer in autoimmune disease treatment, joins me today to show you how to truly transform your health by addressing the root causes of inflammation. 

 Known for his work on food sensitivities and autoimmune diseases, he’s helped countless people identify hidden triggers that contribute to their chronic health issues. 

In this episode, we’ll explore how inflammation, rather than symptoms, is the real culprit behind many chronic conditions—and how shifting your mindset can lead to profound healing.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Dr. Tom O'Bryan shares his personal journey into functional medicine, sparked by his own experience with infertility and hormone irregularities.
• Understanding inflammation as the root cause of autoimmune diseases—why symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg.
• How conventional medicine often fails to address the root causes of chronic illness and why a new approach is needed.
• The power of food sensitivities, environmental toxins, and the gut in healing autoimmune conditions.
• Dr. O'Bryan’s 5 must-do tests to uncover hidden inflammation and begin true healing.
• The importance of thinking differently about your health and taking empowered steps towards recovery.
• Simple, actionable steps you can take today to start transforming your health without feeling overwhelmed.

The road to healing doesn’t have to be a complicated maze of endless protocols and frustration. Remember, your body has the wisdom—it’s time to reconnect. 

Resources & Next Steps:

The Inflammation Equation — Free Docuseries
A simple, educational starting point for understanding inflammation and how it connects to chronic and autoimmune conditions.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by conflicting information, this free docuseries can help you zoom out, understand the bigger picture, and make sense of what inflammation really means for your health — without adding more pressure.

👉 Watch the free docuseries here:
 https://vc365.isrefer.com/go/TIE/ag/

• Book the Healing Roadmap Session (90 mins | ₹19,000) — get a clear first-phase plan
• Download The Body’s Whisper Starter Kit (free) — a gentle 7-day reset to reconnect with your body
• Join the Effortless Healing Companion waitlist — guided self-led support + community

Chapters

• 0:47 Welcome & Why This Conversation Matters
• 4:39 “Symptoms Are the Smoke, Not the Fire”
• 7:38 How Dr. Tom O’Bryan Entered Functional Medicine
• 11:32 Why Chronic Illness Is Different From Acute Disease
• 16:42 Inflammation: The Common Thread Behind Autoimmune Disease
• 21:39 Food Sensitivities, Gut Health & Hidden Triggers
• 29:18 What Brain Degeneration Research Is Revealing (Across All Ages)
• 31:39 Reducing Toxic Load Without Perfection or Panic
• 38:16 The Tests That Actually Reveal Chronic Inflammation
• 42:51 The Real Goal: Lowering Inflammation, Not Doing Everything
• 45:38 The One-Hour-a-Week Rule (The Secret That Actually Works)
• 46:56 The Cumulative Effect: When Small Changes Change Everything
• 48:27 One Message to Take With You
• 49:55 Closing Reflections & Next Steps

Transcript

Welcome Dr Tom. I am so honored, so excited that you are here today. And, uh, you are one of the most respected voices in functional medicine. 

Uh, welcome to Embrace Your Healing Journey, a podcast for women with autoimmune and other chronic conditions to help them navigate their illness without fear of isolation and uncertainty and find relief from their symptoms. Your body is your guide and ally in healing. If you are ready to embrace this journey with compassion and awareness, then this show is for you. Tune in weekly as I, a Functional medicine Certified Health Coach, deliver tips and insights that demystify the healing process, guiding you towards the relief you deserve so that you can feel healthy and happy once more. 

Dr Tom, you are the leading expert on food sensitivities, especially gluten sensitivity, uh, environmental toxins and autoimmune diseases. Right. So and that's the reason that I reached out to you. I love your mission, by the way. Making it easy to do the right thing. That's right up my alley. And today, let's keep it simple. We'll explore the hidden triggers of chronic illness and what it takes to rebuild health. I think we would like to give our audience something to shift the way they think, change the way they, you know, what they believe about, uh, chronic conditions, even the more complex ones. Yeah. And let's, uh, let's go from there. Yes. Thank you. That sounds like, um, a worthwhile venture. And thank you for the opportunity. So I would. I always start at the beginning. I would love to know a bit about how you got into functional medicine. What do you into functional medicine? Especially this, especially for the woman, for the person who's thinking, you know, I pretty much tried everything and nothing seems to be working because that's where a lot of people actually are today. Yeah. Well, that's actually where we were. My ex-wife and I, uh, I was an intern, and we were trying to get pregnant, and we were not successful. And, uh, I called the seven most famous holistic doctors I'd ever heard of. And I asked them, what do you do for infertility? And, you know, they're very busy. You know, they get on the phone and they'd say, uh, uh, well, do you know what a category one is? And I said, no. And he said, learn. Okay, category one. And I asked everyone what would they do? And I put a program together and we were pregnant in six weeks. My neighbors in married housing, we lived on campus. Uh, they had been through artificial insemination and nothing had worked, and they asked if I'd work with them. And I said, well, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I don't think it's going to hurt you. Sure, they were pregnant in three months and so we were now four months pregnant, just happy and telling the world in Chicago where I went to school, uh, about what we were doing and what I was learning. And a friend would say, my sister's had two miscarriages. Can she come talk to you? She lives in Wisconsin. It's not that far away. Please, please, can she come talk to you? I said, well, you know, I'm okay. Okay. And, uh. Uh, so I started treating patients out of my dormitory room. You know, you're not supposed to do that. And I actually got called into the president of the college's office, and I say, but, you know, we just had information that we had to share. So I opened my practice, uh, focusing on hormone irregularities for men and women. And there is not much in medicine. That's all. Or every. But this was every every couple that was having problems with fertility of one type or another. It didn't matter if it was premature ejaculation or low sperm count or recurrent miscarriages. It didn't matter. Every single one of them as a component of what was contributing to their problem. They were eating foods that they did not know were triggering their immune system, causing inflammation. They felt fine when they ate pizza. I feel fine, it actually tastes pretty good. But if their immune system is fighting wheat, as an example, or corn or soy and you eat corn, your immune system is going to create more inflammation trying to protect you from what it perceives to be a threat. The CDC, the center for Disease Control, tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. It's always inflammation. It doesn't matter if it's Alzheimer's or diabetes, cardiovascular disease or obesity, it's always inflammation. The only one that is not is unintentional injuries an accident? But everything else that's going to kill us slowly over time is an inflammatory disease. But doctors are not taught to think that way. You know, they're taught to address the symptoms that a person comes in with to help them feel better or to reduce their risks or but they don't address. Why is my immune system activated? Trying to protect me, creating inflammation right now, and that is the million dollar concept, is that you always have to include I don't care if you've got stage four cancer, you have to include why am I so inflamed? What could? Because let's look at what inflammation is. Inflammation is a response of the immune system trying to protect you. It's a natural response. Yes, you don't get inflammation for no reason. There's always a reason for it. Your immune system is activated trying to protect you. We have an incredibly sophisticated immune system, but it's just the armed forces, the army, the navy, the air force, the Marines, the Coast Guard. We call them IGA, IgG, Ige, GM, cytokines. They're all just different branches of the armed forces trying to protect you. So the million dollar question is, what are they trying to protect you from and get rid of or reduce your exposure to what's activating your immune system? Of course you want pain relief. Of course you do. Of course you want stable blood sugar. Of course you do. Of course you need to lose weight. And I need to lose some kilograms. Of course. of course, but you also have to include in your protocols. Why is my immune system trying to protect me? And that's the key to success what we find. And we have been fortunately well, it's a lot of work but very successful at arresting autoimmune diseases. And the literature is very clear. You can arrest and reverse autoimmune diseases. And the first thing you have to do is address the gut. The gut is the gateway in the development of autoimmune diseases. So that got me into this whole world when we were successful in getting pregnant and my my daughter was born and in sometime in there right around 1979, 1980, um, I went to my first lecture to listen to Doctor Jeffrey Bland, the founder founder of Functional Medicine. And it. I just resonated with how he looked at health because he'd show a slide. Here's an article from the New England Journal of Medicine that shows why insulin sensitivity is so important to look at. Is insulin working well in your body? Is it sensitive and working well, or do you or do you lean in the direction of insulin resistance? And this article was published in 1982. And here's an article from the British Medical Journal in 1986 on the topic. And then here's an article last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And he would tie together all of these pieces of where disease comes from, not just niacin helps to reduce high blood pressure, not just the treatment protocols. That can be very helpful. But really, where does it come from? What's the development? And that just captured my interest to the point to where I became a Sherlock Holmes with every patient I was. Exploring. Why do they have what they have? And I was fortunate enough to have teachers that emphasize that stomping their foot on the on the stage when they're lecturing, I mean, just pounding the table. Uh uh, we I'm of the era where you see the scene every once in a while of the president of Russia, Nikita Khrushchev, many, many years ago at the U.N. and he took his shoe off and he was hitting the, um, uh, lectern by the microphone to make the point very effective. And my teachers would kick the ground and hit the lectern. Why, why? Why does the patient have what they have? And for all of your followers and your clients, they don't have to study any of this. They just need to because it's very, very confusing. What they need to do is think a little differently. And I'm hoping that's the message we can bring out here today. How to think about getting healthier. That's the really key point. But anyway, that's how I got into all of this back in 1979. So basically, we've known about this for that many years. That many decades. Oh, yes. When I opened my practice in Chicago on Valentine's Day in 1980 and, uh, the University of Chicago had a has a very famous celiac center and, and, uh, one of the impressive centers and the head of that center, very famous gastroenterologist, when patients would go to him or his doctors and say, well, I've met this doctor O'Brien and he's telling me that my gut can leak is called a leaky gut. And they were just badmouthing me, saying, the guy's a nutcase. There's no such thing as a leaky gut. But I was just reading the gastroenterology journals of what was being already identified. But and they were behind the times. And unfortunately, the medical system does not embrace cutting edge information. And they've published the studies that say that the average is 17 years. 17 years from when new approaches, new technology is validated as being helpful for patients before the doctor down the street is using it in his practice. 17 years is the average worldwide, and that's from the World Health Organization. Uh, not not therapies that you question or could be dangerous. Just really good protocols, whether they're medical protocols or dietary protocols or tests to get a clear picture of what's happening. But the average is 17 years because the entire system is a politically based, profit oriented system. And I don't want to trash medicine of millions and millions of lives benefit every day from it. But when you're looking at triggers, and how do I arrest and reverse the direction of my health, you can't think in the traditional medical model. You have to think differently. And I'll give you this example. Um, I brought a consultant into my practice, and, uh, it was $10,000 for one day for him. What? What? No, I'm not doing that. And but, you know, I kept thinking about it. My friends had told me the benefit of working with this guy, and so, you know, okay, we did it. And, uh, he came and we talked all day long with a big board and vision and ideas, and it, uh, the purpose of the day, the focus of the day was, what's your drive? What what's your passion as an office? What is it you want to represent out there? Because there's so many things you can do. Most everyone listening to this has been very confused at times. Of all the things that you can do, the different diets, the different vitamins. Do I do this one? Do I do that one? What about that piece of equipment? What about that doctor, a different experience. right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, the same confusion is there for doctors. The same. The companies are marketing their products, and they're trying to get every doctor to listen to them talk about their products. We all have that same confusion, and then we choose something that resonates for us. So the purpose of this day, the Strategy Day, was to become laser focused on what we wanted to do, and then we could find the tools that best supported that particular approach to health. That was the goal of the day. And so I paid $10,000. I still have a hard time believing that, but it was so worth it because, um, what what we came out with at the end of the day was just what you did in your introduction, the phrase making it easy to do the right thing. That's our motto. And. Well, what does that mean? I mean, it's really difficult to understand what the right thing is to do in your case, Mrs. Patient. It's difficult. That's my job is to understand what is the right thing to do. But for you, I need to make it easy. You know, we do all the work in the background. I go to all the symposiums. I read all the research papers, I, I, I do all that. That's the difficult work to make it easy for you. And so we need to explain it to you in a way that you understand. It needs to be everyday language. It can't be technical gobbledygook, you know, it's got to be easy to understand. But also that makes sense. It's got to make sense for you. And so that is what my life is dedicated to, is to teaching doctors this concept of making it easy to do the right thing. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Alzheimer's or obesity. Uh, it doesn't matter. It's how you think about it, how you approach it. Because that governs every decision you make. Every day is how you think about it. What's the big picture view. And so it's the job. Our job is to teach the doctors how to think about all of this. Not I've got the best technique for blood sugar stability. You know, there's lots of good approaches to blood sugar stability. But the question you have to ask is if 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. Where is the inflammation coming from that's causing the blood sugar instability? You can't just deal with the blood sugar instability because that's the end dysfunction of a whole mechanism in your body that's been developing over time. Yes. And so you have to take a step back. And that's what functional medicine is. Is the doctors doing all the study and the hard work and and the health coaches, I mean, you guys are, as I said earlier, in your boots on the ground, you're the ones that have to interpret all of this for people in a way that they can understand and then implement. And that's the key to success for health coaches like you is and your success is because you translate all this technical gobbledygook into everyday language. I think, you know, a lot of things that you shared here and going back to chronic inflammation. Absolutely. Bang on. People are really overwhelmed with the things that they need to do. You know, you've given a superb example of the consultant. We were just chatting about it before we hit record. Uh, because you're absolutely you're right. That's where people are. They are struggling to figure out what is the first thing. And often, like, I was like, I was saying that, you know, they are they asked to do 50 tests. They have to take ten, 20 supplements. And that's not where we should be starting. I mean, we I mean that. So that is that's an issue. Actually, I think that's somewhere that, you know, we need to sort of, uh, whether it's conventional medicine, whether it's functional medicine, it doesn't matter. And as you said, it's not so much of the about the disease diagnosis as it is about the approach and the personalization. That's what functional medicine stands for. And I want to bring about something, you know, that you've said in your that you've said in the book that I highly recommend. It's called the Autoimmune Fix, and I have been recommending it for the last nine years that I've started working as a coach. Um, because I till I didn't know till then, and I wanted to point this out that symptoms are, you know, not the first thing that you see, there's so much damage going on underneath. I think that's as far as especially autoimmunity is concerned. Most people don't realize, which is why they don't do anything. So even if they have elevated antibodies, I've spoken to so many and they just wait because the doctor told them to wait till they get a diagnosis. Yeah, that's because that's because the doctor doesn't know what to do with it. He's not been trained. If you get a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, then they have the drugs for you. But if you have indicators of rheumatoid arthritis but not a lot of symptoms yet, they don't know what to do. They wait until it gets worse. Then they've got the drugs to help you, which is beneficial. You know, it's a band aid, you know, but you're not addressing the oozing wound underneath. So yes. And that concept. Uh, Professor Melissa Arbuckle, uh, wrote a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2003 that really changed the way that we think about all this. It's called we call it a paradigm shift. You change how you think. And that's what I hope will happen for all of your listeners over the next number of months. Is that from listening to what we say here today, you begin to think a little bit differently, and then eventually you'll make different choices, uh, choices that have deeper impact as opposed to just taking some drug or some nutrition to stabilize a blood sugar, which is helpful, but you'll have a deeper way of thinking. So Professor Arbuckle article, she worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital, and she looked for people in this one hospital with lupus, and she found 136 people in this hospital with lupus. Now, if you're in the veterans hospital, you're a veteran. If you were a veteran, you were in the armed forces, the Army, the Navy, the Air force. If you were in the armed forces, you had your blood drawn many, many times while you were in the armed forces, when you were healthy in the Navy or healthy in the Army. They drew your blood for many, many different reasons. And, uh, what most people don't know is that the US government's been saving and freezing almost all of that blood since 1978. They've got tens of millions of samples of service people's blood, tens of millions frozen. It's all stored and frozen. Well, Doctor Arbuckle knew this, and she asked for permission to look at the stored blood of the people currently diagnosed with lupus when they were healthy in the army. And she got permission. And what she found was that every single person there are seven antibodies to lupus, meaning seven different soldiers. I call them special forces of your immune system that are causing the damage of lupus. There's different soldiers that cause the damage of rheumatoid arthritis or. Multiple sclerosis or psoriasis. There are different soldiers, but they're still soldiers. And so Doctor Arbuckle was looking in the blood of the currently diagnosed lupus patients when they were healthy in the Army, and there were seven soldiers in lupus. And she found that every single person had every single antibody elevated. Years before they ever had a symptom, when they were strong in the Army or the Air Force, you know, young men and women at the peak of their lives, every single one of them had these elevated antibodies. Years before they ever had a symptom. Some of them it was 13 years beforehand. All of them. It was five years. All seven antibodies were elevated five years before they ever had a symptom. Why is that important? Antibodies are there to protect you from something. Okay. And, um, when they check you for antibodies, like, to your thyroid. The autoimmune disease is called Hashimoto's. Or there's two or graves are the two common thyroid autoimmune diseases. They check you for antibodies to Hashimoto's or antibodies to graves. And the laboratory report has a normal reference range for Hashimoto's. The antibodies are called TPO or thyroid peroxidase, and the normal reference range is usually 0 to 36 zero 0 to 34, depending on the laboratory, but the normal reference range is 0 to 34. Why are there ever normal levels of antibodies attacking your thyroid? Why is that? Why is there a normal range? Because, Mrs. Patient, you have an entire new body. Every few years, every cell in your body regenerates some really fast, like every couple of days and some much slower. But every cell regenerates. Well, how does that happen? Well, part of the process, you know, this is a geek word is autophagy. Now that means getting rid of the old and damaged cells to make room for new cells. Okay. Well, that's how you get a new body. Is that the old cells? The damaged cells, they get dissolved and you make new cells. Okay. And antibodies are part of the process of autophagy. So there's a normal level of antibodies to your thyroid, a normal level of antibodies to your joints, a normal level of antibodies to your skin, to your hair, to your brain. Okay. Because it's helping to get rid of the old cells and make new cells. This is a really important concept. Okay. But when you have elevated antibodies, when you do a test and you have more antibodies than the normal range, by definition, what that means is you're killing more cells than you're making. So that's there's too much too many antibodies. And when you kill off more cells than you're making, that tissue gets weaker. Your thyroid or your brain, the myelin in your brain or brain cells, liver cells. It doesn't matter what tissue. If they're elevated antibodies, you're killing off more cells. And you're making you're killing off more cells and you're making. This goes on for years and years until eventually that tissue is so damaged it can't work right anymore. Now you start getting some minor symptoms of that tissue not working right anymore. And they're annoying symptoms, whatever they are. And you don't pay attention to it until they get worse and worse and killing off more cells. And you're making killing off more cells, and you're making killing off more cells, and you're making until eventually you go see a doctor for your symptoms. And usually they don't look for an autoimmune mechanism with your symptoms right away, unless it's psoriasis. And it's obvious when you look at the skin, right. Usually they say, well here this will help you feel better and they prescribe something. You go home, it doesn't work, and you go back for six months later and and then eventually you've killed off so much tissue. Now they do a blood test for the autoimmune disease. That's those symptoms. And it comes back and it'll say, yep, you got elevated antibodies. You have the autoimmune disease. And or they'll find these elevated antibodies before you have a lot of symptoms. They'll say, well, a little bit, let's just wait and let's watch it. Let's wait and see. What are you waiting for? The mechanism is killing off more cells in your making. Killing off more cells in your making. What are you waiting for? That is the point. If you do those tests, the proper test, that is the point where you can take a look. You know, for example, we have a test now that looks at 53 markers of inflammation in the brain. That's my next question. What are the markers that somebody should be looking for? I mean yeah. Yeah. And no one comes back normal on that test because, uh, our aerosol polluted. We're breathing air. Now, I hadn't thought about this until just now to talk to you about it, but they've. There's one researcher in Mexico. She's actually in Montana, but she's from Mexico who's published many, many papers about the dangers of air pollution. And what she can show now in this paper came out just this year, is that they looked at, um. 378. Elder's average age was 83. Who had died either with dementia without dementia didn't matter. They did autopsies and they showed that something like 36% of them had evidence of Alzheimer's and 24% had evidence of frontal dementia, a different type of loss of brain function, and some percent had Parkinson's. So they showed the graph of all of that. Okay. Then they showed, um, uh, a similar number of people who unfortunately had passed. And actually I'm going to get this slide and show it to you. Can you, can you make sure that I can share my screen. Yeah. And let me find this one. This slide is so jaw dropping when you see it. Yeah. Here we go. And that's the slide. And now let's see if I can share my screen yes I can. Good. Thank you. So let's share a screen. Here we go. And can you see my screen now. Yes I can. I can okay. So let's this is the research paper from Doctor Lillian Calderon. And I can't pronounce that last name. That's one that's a little hard for me. But she talks about this. And this is the graph of the 375 individuals who had died at the average age of almost 84. And the blue color here are those with Alzheimer's alone. The orange color are those with Alzheimer's and frontotemporal dementia. And then the gray color is Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and frontotemporal dementia. And you can see the different percentages of each of these diseases. And now here's 129 people who unfortunately had passed at the age of 33. And you can see that these ratios, the percentages are a little bit different, but they've all got the same thing. They've all got this degeneration in their brain going on. And then this third one, this is 57 children. The average age was almost 15, who unfortunately had passed. They also had all of this going on in their brain. And Doctor Calderon is a famous researcher. She's published many, many papers on the dangers. And then the next one, this is all three of them side by side from the research paper, you know, and you can just compare them. On the left are the children, average age 15. The ones in the middle healthy individual. And NMC means metropolitan Mexico City. These are Mexico City inhabitants. And you see that and you go. Wait, what? What? And I'm showing you that. And I hadn't thought of showing you that, but Delhi I, I don't like coming to Delhi. My throat starts to hurt before I get out of the airport. You've been to. Yeah. You've been to Delhi a few times. Oh, yes. Yes, I've done a number of talks and I have some dear friends there now. But I don't like that city because I'm breathing pollution that's affecting my body every single moment of every single day. And you know when you live there, you don't know what to do about it. You don't know what to say and all that. But that air pollution activates your immune system trying to protect you. Yes. And you increase the inflammation in your brain. Killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells. No one's doing the research that I can find in Delhi. No one as to how much damage is occurring right now from air pollution, the way Doctor Calderon is doing in Mexico City and children onwards. I mean, that's the pattern. These are children who will grow up and continue to have health issues. So you're basically saying that even when they may not have had symptoms, this was what was going on silently in them. Oh yes. Oh, that's what you are saying that they didn't have with with every single one of them. Look, look at this. Every single one of the children on the left average age was 14.8, who unfortunately had died of something. Every single one of them. Have this brain degeneration going on. Well, I feel fine. I don't have a problem. Well, you feel the way you do. And you're making making do. Trying to make the best of. You're nowhere near at your optimum. Nowhere near. So I bring this up because we're all being exposed to so many toxic chemicals every single day. The average woman puts on over 180 chemicals on her body every single day. You think it's not a problem? That stuff accumulates. And when you do the right tests to identify what's accumulating in your body, your jaw drops to see glyphosate, which is a very common pesticide sprayed on fruits and vegetables. I'll give you an example of the impact of these chemicals at a French fertility clinic. They looked at men. They did blood tests on men at the fertility center who, you know, these couples are coming, spending tens of thousands of dollars just trying to have a family. It's a beautiful thing. It and 70 over 70%, I think it was 74% of the men had glyphosate in their blood. If they have glyphosate in their blood. It's three for every one of them. It's 300% higher in their semen. Oh. Their testicles? Yeah, because that chemical accumulates in the testicles when it accumulates in the chemicals. And you make antibodies to fight this chemical, this toxic chemical that's inside your body that's not supposed to be there. You create inflammation, and the inflammation damages the sperm. And the sperm. The way it damages the sperm is called fragmentation, which means the DNA is damaged. Now, the DNA is the blueprint, and, you know, you're going to build a new house, you know, and you work with the architect, and you have these blueprints that, uh, most people can't read blueprints. That's okay. You just understand they've got the design that the the wood goes here, the light switches go over here, you know, and all of that. The blueprint, that's DNA. It's the blueprint because every cell reproduces in your body. And the way it reproduces is following the blueprint. But when you have glyphosate in your semen, you damage the blueprint. You damage the DNA. It's called fragmentation. And when you. And they measure that in men, and when you have fragmentation of the DNA of your sperm, if that's the sperm that impregnates an egg. Okay. There is a 108% reduced likelihood of successful implantation at the fertility centers. It won't work. The the implantation won't take, but if it takes, there's over a 300% increased risk of miscarriages. And it's dad's damaged sperm because he's eating fruits and vegetables that are not organic, and the chemicals in minute amounts that don't stay, you know, or don't cause any damage, they're just a minor amount. There's no evidence that the amount of glyphosate on your broccoli is going to be harmful to you. There's no evidence, but these chemicals accumulate in the body. And when they accumulate and you cross a threshold, now your immune system says, what's that stuff that's not supposed to be here? Get rid of that. And now you create the inflammation that is the mechanism for every single disease. Yeah. So it basically we come back full circle to information. That's right. That's right. And that's how important this topic is. And we've talked a bit about the gut. Uh, this this is a whole huge topic. I mean, you know, obviously this is PhD level. This is a PhD. Yes. But it really is so, so so the takeaways the takeaways are how do I identify what is activating my immune system. How do I identify how much inflammation I have. And that's really the takeaway. And for that I don't have really good news for you because you're in India. And the laboratory tests that are now available in the US and they're going worldwide. Uh, I'm speaking for them in London and, uh, Hungary and Spain and Rome. Uh, they're expanding now, going worldwide. So it won't be long before they come to India. And perhaps a talk like this will help to be a stimulant, that someone will hear this. Who is in that world of bringing laboratory medicine into the country, and they'll look into this and they'll say, oh, my God, this is remarkable. Wow, I'd like to be on the front end of that, you know. So maybe that will happen. Yes. But there are tests now. And the the laboratory is called Vibrant Wellness. And when you go to the laboratories website and you just read about the tests, there are five tests that and they have 30 or 40 tests now, but there are five that every patient has to do before I'm going to talk to them. I won't even talk to them. It's a waste of time until we know what you want, to make it easy to do the right thing. I need the information. One of my friends, uh, uh, Doctor Andrew Campbell. Brilliant man. He has a saying, and I saw him the other night. I was lecturing in Salt Lake City, and and, uh, we had dinner together, and I said, Andrew, I have a picture of you on every slide or on, on in every presentation. I have a slide with a picture of you. And his wife was looking at me and I said, oh, but it's a nice picture. It's right. And it says, In God we trust. All others require data. And that's Andrew's phrase, and he's right on the money with that when you have the evidence in front of you. And unfortunately, the laboratories in India now are not as sophisticated with the identification of these triggers of inflammation. But the five tests that I require of anyone that wants to talk to me, I see about one patient a week by zoom. Only the difficult ones, you know, but, uh, and I give them the direction, and then I usually hook them up with a health coach like you and, uh, for the day to day. But I need the data to give them the right direction. Then the five tests, the first ones, the neural zoomer. Plus it looks at 53 markers of inflammation in your brain. The second one is the total tax burden that looks at 18 different heavy metals, 28 mycotoxins from mold. Mold is a very big problem, and 36 3434 chemicals that are in your food and your water that aren't supposed to be there. And and so that one test. So that's the second test, the total tax burden. The third test is the wheat zoomer. It identifies a sensitivity to wheat. And it's the most accurate test for leaky gut in there. The fourth one is the gut zoomer. Because please just take my word for it now as much as you can. All disease begins in the gut. All disease. So you have to know what's the environment of the gut right now. And the fifth one is called oxidative stress profile. And the oxidative stress profile is the one that tells you what your current state of damaging your DNA, which is what causes cancer cells, what causes disease to occur. What's your current state for all that? So with those five tests and they're highly, highly accurate. Mayo clinic published a paper. They've published many papers since then. But when they published a paper in January of 2016 and they talked about this technology, they said it's a new era in laboratory medicine. It's called silicon chip technology. And you get doctors can get information now that was never available to them before. Right. So when we have all this information in front of us, it's really easy to tell the patient what to do. Look, you've got tremendously high levels of mold that are affecting your thinking right now. Your brain function. So you have to find out where's the mold coming from? Is it in your house? Is it at your work? You have to find out and you have to get the mold out of your body. So here's the detox protocol that focuses on mold. And and here's a home inspector that will look to see where's the mold coming from. So you do that and you identify the chemicals from air pollution that are accumulating in your body. Say, look, you you need a home air filtration system. Um, go to my website, the drawn forward slash plant. And there's the handout from NASA on how house plants absorb the toxins in the air. Right. And it's free. So just go there and get that handout. And you get little house plants in every room of your house because they absorb over 90% of the toxins in the air. And so it's easy once you know what you're dealing with, and then it just takes time to clean this crap. Excuse me? Out of your body. That's activating your immune system. It just takes time. And you also are learning from your coach. What are the sources? How am I being exposed to this stuff? And I can't, or you say, you know, I can't afford organic all the time. I can't afford not a problem. Always. That's the goal. But here's a spray that you can use for all your fruits and vegetables. When you bring them home from the market, you spray them and you dip them in the water to rinse off the spray. And over 94% of the waxes and chemicals are gone from the surface of the vegetable spray. I mean, I would actually love to know if you can remember the name. Uh, well, the company that we recommend is called Truly Free, Truly, Truly Free. And there you'll find their list of ingredients in the spray. So you do the best that you can to reduce your exposure to whatever the toxins are that have accumulated in your body. Because you have to stop the I don't care if you get stage four cancer, you have to stop the inflammation. The levels of inflammation have to be reduced. If you want to build healthier cells in a stronger body, that's a that's such a critically important concept and you don't get it in 45 minute talk. You know you can't understand it all. It's impossible. But when you understand this principle and here's here's the actual secret to success, and I mean this sincerely, I've never seen anything be as successful for patients or for doctors. And I give the doctors the same recommendation. Mrs. patient, every Tuesday night after dinner, you tell your family, don't bother me for one hour. I'm going to learn a little more about how we can be healthier. And then when you read in my book that you store food in plastic containers and the plastic gets into the food, and next day you eat the food and you're you're getting more plastic in your body. The recommendation is get glass storage containers. Here's three URLs for glass storage containers. And you go online. Say those are nice. Oh, I like those. And you order three round ones, two square ones and one for the pie. And you pay with your credit card and hit send. It took an hour, but you're done. But never again will you poison your family with minute amount of poisons that you didn't know you were doing. Storing food in plastic containers. Next week you go to the URLs in my book for organic cosmetics. Because women are putting so many cosmetics on every day, right? And you order some and you try it. I don't like those. You don't. I'll try this company. Oh, those are good. Next week you go to my the URL, the forward slash plant, and you download the handout on plants. They say oh I've seen those before. Oh those are I see those often. And you go buy some plants next week. You learn about gluten sensitivity and what foods you can eat and you can't eat. And you start implementing that. And six months from now you go to temple and you see a friend that you haven't seen for. What happened to you? You look so young. You look beautiful. And how much weight have you lost? Well, let me tell you, I got glass storage containers, I got houseplants, I got, uh, organic, um, uh, vegetables whenever I can. And I'm using spray on all the vegetables for our family. Other than that, and the accumulative effect of all these little things I'm doing is that we all are healthier. Our son's attention deficit is in remission. Our daughter's cramps, teenager are gone, uh, when she has her cycles. Um, we're just so happy. And when we make mistakes, when we screw up and eat the wrong foods, we feel it. We understand. And that's the way we were living before all the time. But the secret is one hour a week because it's extremely overwhelming to try to do too much at one time. Um, I think that's the I mean, if there was one message that I wanted our audience to hear today, that would be that you can do something about it. Yes, we can make it less overwhelming. In fact, when you were talking, I wanted to share this with you. I was that person, uh, about ten years ago. 11 years ago, when my daughter was dealing with a lot of severe health issues. And that's how I found. Literally stumbled across functional medicine. That was 2014. I have never heard of the term. Nobody had heard of it in India. But sort of, you know, that's what I did for almost a year. It took me a year because we were dealing with a lot. And to cut a long story short, I found somebody in UK who actually had come on my podcast. I mean, he's going to come soon, Pete Williams, and he helped guide. I wish I had a coach back then to help me with the day to day things, but I had his guidance. It took two years. It took a long time because I didn't know what I was doing and I know like small, but as you said, it was those small steps. It was overwhelming. Um, but yeah. And in two years she got up all her medications. She was on immunosuppressive medications. She was an oral steroids. Today she is in university and she is off everything. So that's that's what brought me into functional medicine. And so when I here when you when you were saying that I had goosebumps like I was ten and I was trying to do the research, but I the reason I share this because I know how overwhelming it is, and I love how you brought it down into and how you made it easy to do the right thing. As you say. Yes, right? You know, you can you can take that next step, and then you take another step and then you take another step. Anything else that you would like to share before we end this amazing conversation? For all of our listeners, you have a resource here in our host who has lived this breed, this no one can argue with her, no one, about the effect of this, no famous doctor in some hospital who is, you know, a bit arrogant and cocky about the world that they're in. No one can argue with these, and I welcome arguments at any point. You bring it on here. Let me show you this study. Let me show you this study and let me show you this. This is basic 101 health care. This is not medical care. This is health care. And you have to protect yourself and your families. And you need a coach to help make it easy to do the right thing. And you've got just a tremendous opportunity here. So thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. Thank you. Thank you, doctor Tom. That was amazing. I loved our conversation. I think it's going to give so much of direction, like you said, with the consultant that you had brought in right at the beginning. Yeah. So kind of, you know, giving you a giving the person a direction. So if you are listening, if you are watching this now, you know what direction to move towards. And I think that example of taking out an hour every week, which is, which is doable. It's brilliant because, you know, that helps you to get the confidence, it helps you to get the momentum. And that's what we talk about in coaching all the time. So I think that was a lovely example. Um, I shared the links. I've talked about the, you know, the lab test, and I'm hoping that it's going to come to India soon. But nevertheless, I'll be sharing the links below. Anything else that you would like to any of the book I have talked about? Anything else you would like to share before we end people? People can probably get the lab tests in India. It'll be a nuisance. It'll be hard to do. It's not set up yet, but you can and you can go to my website and my team can help you. If you go to info, info, info at the doctor, uh, they can probably help you get the tests. You'll have to do some logistic work with Fedex and all of that, but it's not going to be easy yet to do it. But this is our future as humans. Uh, the numbers are so bad right now of the direction we're going in. We need every person doing the right thing at one hour a week. And you will change the direction of your health, your family's health, and by that, contributing to the well-being of the world. That's a lovely place to end this conversation. Thank you so much. I'll share the links below and make sure that you see the show notes. The links will all be shared, including the labs. Thank you so much for joining.