spk_0:   0:00
Some people like to argue we can co exist with parasites. I just don't. I see the inflammation. I see the gut barrier function. We see the nutrient and malabsorption indicators. We see the symptoms depression, anxiety, fatigue, weight gain, et cetera. And so I don't believe that you should leave these things alone. If I find him on a test, I'm going to take care of him.

spk_1:   0:18
Welcome to the less stressed Life Podcast. This is your host Krista Bigler. Private practice, Integrated nutritionist helping people across the U. S. Reverse digestive issues. Exuma and Auto Immunity via phone and video. Consult toe. Learn more. Visit less stressed nutrition dot com Now onto the show. Okay, so today, on the less stress life we have Evan Brand a fellow podcaster, he's the podcast host of It's actually called the Oven brand show. Right? Evan? That's right. All right, cool. So he's a certified functional medicine practitioner and nutrition nutritional therapist. He's really passionate about healing chronic fatigue, obesity and depression epidemics. After solving solving his own similar issues. His Evan brand podcast has over seven million downloads and counting, which is awesome. He's the author of Stress Solutions, R E M. Rehab and the Everything Guide to New Tropics. He offers free 15 minute functional medicine consultations at his website. Evan brand dot com Welcome to the show. Evan.

spk_0:   1:20
Krista. Thanks for having me.

spk_1:   1:21
Yeah. So I'm excited to talk about kind of the emotional side of of functional nutrition, functional medicine, All these back end things because it's just like we were talking a little bit about how I work on skin issues before we sort of you things as an external problem or a different kind of problem. We don't always think about the nutritional manifestation or the like, functional manifestation of emotional issues, right?

spk_0:   1:43
Yeah, Well, I just had a client last week, and she was talking about how she didn't know at detox actually meant emotional detox as well, which was kind of interesting. And so we were primarily working on her chemical. It is that we had found. But what we figured out was that she had a lot of emotional stuff in the bucket sodas week, too. And so once we got rid of all toxins from a heavy metal chemical perspective started having like childhood M o Shin's pop out on all sorts of crazy things. So, uh, I think the gut and emotions are highly league believe we're holding emotion in our gut you can literally detox from

spk_1:   2:23
Yeah, you know, I watch this show with my husband, and that was on the episode this week on This is us. She talked about, um, you know, I really think I held all my emotions in tow where it started as a stomachache. And now it just takes deep down to my bones because I held in all those emotions. And I think

spk_0:   2:42
that's such

spk_1:   2:43
a big piece. You know, i e. I will often say this. I don't have a podcast called the Less Stress Life because I'm some kind of stress expert. But because we we manifest stress in different ways, it's not just emotional. It shows up, is different areas, But you can't discount the emotional and psychological factors, or it's really hard to get better.

spk_0:   3:00
Yeah, well, this is part of the reason I have the ace question near the adverse childhood experiences questionnaire my intake form. Because I started talking with a friend of mine. Nikki grab tricks. She's a lady talks a lot about trauma. She'd be a good guest for your broadcast too. And, ah, she told me about how traumas to, in effect, this and the fact that and cortisol rhythm, et cetera, and I will crap, you know, I'm getting court is all on testing the gut. Why am I not tempting, so to speak for these issues? So I just started asking people, and it turns out, I would say that the vast majority of people I work with, they're a score a maximum of 10. That's a very bad traumatic childhood. The average client's about a five. I mean, almost all of them have a handful of traumatic experiences, whether a sexual abused or verbal abuse physical, abused, being around parent, watching your parents get it used, watching your parents of being alcohol, you know, with alcoholism, watch with parents with Brooke issues could even be prescription drug issues. You know, doesn't have to be hard. Drugs could be your mom's on pain pills all the time, you know. So when I see that the soars above five, I start to get really curious, and then I'll probe these people a bit more and stay. You know what's the most stressful period every life. That's always a question I have a lot of times. It's now the current time why, they're, you know, family reaching out for help, but could have been something 20 years ago,

spk_1:   4:25
right? Absolutely. And sometimes you don't even realize, you know, this is where it gets a little challenging when we think we're going in to work on medical or nutritional type issues. And then you kind of are being a little bit the council or not that that's our focus, but trying to refer out to the right people. I was talking to a client who is a therapist the other day and we were discussing, um, fibromyalgia, and she was telling me about how in research it's just there's like a very, very high association with fibromyalgia later in life and having childhood abuse at some point. And so that makes tons of sense because I definitely see with almost all out of immunity, a huge component of stress as, ah, apiece. So yeah, I found that really interesting. I think if we would dig into the research, it's very, very much linked. But this is where it's a challenge with clients, sometimes because they come in there sometimes emotionally wrecked, and that needs to be handled as well.

spk_0:   5:22
Well, that's I mean, that's where a practitioner has to know when to refer out just because we can get into some really deep stuff with people. And then at a certain point, you're like, Holy crap. Um, I actually capable of having this conversation about this person wants to get a divorce. This person, you know, their husband just beat him last week like this is crazy. So, yeah, I think a lot of us in this field, we want to help as many people as we possibly can. But at a certain point, you got to know when you've got to get somebody else on board on the team.

spk_1:   5:48
Absolutely. That is a huge piece. But from that perspective, if we think about it, sometimes these underlying nutritional or gut or whatever issues can be causing the emotional or it's starting to manifest is this emotional piece. For example, Evan, if you see kids, we were just talking about seeing kids. For example, what are some common signs and symptoms you see from kids that have an underlying pathogen or some component?

spk_0:   6:13
Yeah, it's the behavior number one. So it could be issues that the teacher is expressing to the parents. So it could be they can't sit still there, Fidgeting know, could be something related to minerals or adrenals, but a lot of times it's the gut. Could be signs on the fingernails of kids, the vertical ridge ing on the fingernails. If you see ridges on the nails, you see little white spots or other issues on the fingernails. That could be some underlying issue of malabsorption. It could be mood, so could be irritability. Could be anger. Could be outburst could be depression. You know, I've had moms bring their five or 10 year old kids to me and tell, you know, I've had many moms say, Yeah, my my nine year old says, I want to die or I don't want to live anymore or, you know, you've got suicidal kids that are not even teenagers yet, so it's quite scary. But the good news is you can figure out where this stuff is coming from, and usually it's the gut.

spk_1:   7:09
Yeah, and at least the parents are looking for help. I think that's a huge testament to how awesome. Some awesome parents out there that are really looking for help and not just ignoring it right? That's the worst thing we can do is ignore the problem because they don't get better on their own.

spk_0:   7:22
That's right, well. And it's not a deficiency of pharmaceutical drugs, either, because the conventional approach you always have to bring this up is that it's going to be some type of Ritalin. If it's an 80 de radiates the issue. It's potentially like an Adderall or a Vie Vance or some other type of methamphetamine derivative. So you know these air the these air, the prescriptions that are getting written on a daily basis. And when it comes to Children, we know antibiotics are very heavily used, an overused them. The parents don't make the connection between the food sensitivity or the food allergy and say ear infection. And so then the kid goes and gets tubes and their ears, which has been shown not to be very effective after all. And the parent was never told about the link between the nutritional peace and what's going on with the kid. Also, other symptoms of kids you know, it's usually the stuff with the bowel. So could be diarrhea or constipation. Or maybe the bowels. Alternate skin issues are huge, so exam ob psoriasis dermatitis type issues. Thrush on the tongue very common, very easy to see in spot. Also cradle cap. But cradle cap could happen. I just call it Cradle Cap. But it could happen for older Children as well. So 234567 years old You could see kids that have kind of a yellowy flaky Scalea type skin under their hair, right against the scalp. And that's usually Candida. But we know candy. It is rare to see by itself. So if we find candy, they usually just the tip of the iceberg is probably something else going on,

spk_1:   8:52
right? Absolutely. Um, you know, the thing is, we start to get really complacent because we're like, Oh, everyone's got cradle cap, right? But really, every little thing is kind of ah, is just a picture. If we really were aware of listening to our body and seeing some of those different things you mentioned, I can't help but share something that was really ailing me this morning. Um, I have this 13 year old girl who was on a T H A T H D medication before she came to me, and we did really well with her skin or skin's looking really beautiful. She's had this for her whole life. And then now, suddenly last week, after skin cleared, everything looks good. Her hair started all falling out like really overwhelmed. I mean, you can't You can't push it all these, you know, this is a big deal, right? Like toe lose your hair is a really big deal, especially as a woman or a girl or girl. There's a teenager so very distressing. And so we looked at what happened three or four months ago because hair loss is gonna be latent about 3 to 4 months after a big thing. Was there a surgery? Was their medication change? Whatever. And Mom finally decided that the E T H D medication was changed about 3 to 4 months ago, which was before we started working together. And so it's almost really dead on. And if you look up some of the research about it, there was some very similar cases where this happens to this poor girl is losing this just really it breaks my heart because we're pretty medicated. You know, we kind of we put our trust in people, though the, um we believe are gonna help our Children. And we're no one's at fault here, right? But it's just it's like, Gosh, there's so much more we could be doing right then be giving medications that have side effects that air so detrimental toe to kind of like our overall emotional health.

spk_0:   10:26
Yeah, I'm not a fan. I mean, I've had some people, unfortunately, where, though, will say hey, between now and last time we talked, you know, my kid got an ear infection and his year was hurting and it was on the weekend, so I knew you might not respond the email. So we went to the urgent care and they pumped him full of antibiotics. It's like, Oh, crap, because now we know when we get that test back again, the retest we're probably gonna see there's more candid, a potentially more bacteria going on. So it's Ah, it's not. It's not. It's not a good situation out there in the mainstream world, and, you know, we're kind of chatting off air about kids, and it's like Look, I you know, I wasn't trained necessarily as a pediatric functional medicine practitioner. I just had to evolve into that because I was seeing these pediatricians that call themselves integrative or pediatric where they're called functional or holistic or whatever. But then they still prescribe antibiotics, and it's like, Well, what the heck? That's not functional. That's not natural. That's not holistic. So I've just had to get shine my light out there, be a beacon and say, Look, there is another way.

spk_1:   11:29
Yeah, there is a real lack of pediatric functional, Um, and it's just it's kind of like with anything. It feels like this scarier, uncharted territory of people don't want to touch it. And so they're just fewer practitioners in it.

spk_0:   11:45
Good point. Good point. I think the fear is a huge aspect, and people wanna they do the c y a policy cover your ass. And so nobody wants to go and use an herb with the kid because people are gonna say, Well, herbs haven't been studied on kids. And then there's this gray area where you don't know it's something safe is okay And the kids how old, you know, and then people Yeah, they get scared. So then they just do nothing.

spk_1:   12:08
Yeah, doing nothing doesn't really an answer. So and we could go on about that. But let's talk about your history. Ever, because this is really how you got over to this end of the ponds, it sounds like Tell me about your background.

spk_0:   12:23
Yeah. So my story is more my own suffering, which is most of us that did this, you know, by necessity, not really by choice. I dealt with anxiety issues and depression issues as a teenager and developed gut issues that went into college and developed skin issues and went to the conventional doctors, got prescription pad written for antibiotics and anti spazz Matic drugs and other prescriptions that I can never remember. It was maybe three or four different prescriptions, and I just denied him all left and said, Well, I've got to figure this thing out. That was about 10 years ago, and so once I knew the conventional medicine wasn't gonna help me. I had to figure out what the heck else is out there. And I didn't know that the term would be functional. I didn't care what the term was or you know what letters? After the name that people had, I just cared. Okay, who has answers? So I just started doing the food is medicine thing went on a paleo template. Got maybe 80% better realize that wasn't good enough. Started getting into functional medicine. I honestly don't know what the how how I ended up from from there to there. I just I was in the trenches and then you come across stuff right when you're when you're desperately looking for answers. And so then I found out Hey, there could be some stuff going on in my gut. I had a buddy of mine suggest I had parasites, so I ran a stool test confirmed. I did have parasites. They had giardia and cryptosporidium, which are two waterborne parasites. I also had an H. Pylori infection. Massive candied overgrowth. My gut was super inflamed. My gut was super leaky, so I had to go and approach these things using herbs. We know the conventional treatment for each pile arise was called triple therapy or a quadruple therapy, which is three or four antibiotics at the same time. Hasn't abysmal success rate. By the way, I didn't want to do that. So I did herbs instead. Luckily cleared out all the bugs and now I'm way better. I'm better than I've ever been. And I'm not done. I'm not out of the woods. I don't think we're ever out of the woods. The modern world is so toxic and stressful. We just have to always be working on ourselves, in my opinion. But I'll tell you, if I knew that I would end up where I am today, I wouldn't have believed it just because I always kind of joke about. It's not really. Joke's not funny, but this was my realities. When I was in college, I would go into a new hall or a new room. I have to figure out where is the bathroom in this building? Because I'm after girl running poop. And that was probably the giardia Were the crypto mean All these parasites and pathogens can cause loose stool. It could cause constipation. A lot of people end up constipated with got bugs, but my case, it was the other, and now I'm good. I mean, it's great to be able to sit somewhere and be able to know. Hey, I could hang out at this place for a few hours and not have to think about pooping. That's a great feeling. And that's priceless. People don't understand.

spk_1:   15:17
And, you know, the other thing is, um, did you kind of do history or did you really consider about Did you think a lot about where these things came from after you found them? Have you thought a lot about that and kind of where we're picking these up in our environment?

spk_0:   15:33
I did. I thought somewhat. I thought some of it was a result of swimming and Barton Springs. I used to live in Austin, Texas, for a couple years, and that's a spring. It's a natural spring. I grew up swimming and being out on the water with my dad, going fishing, writing boats, writing jetskis, et cetera. I mean, I was in the lake or the river or a creek, A stream. I mean, I was an outdoor kid. I was No, not literally. But I was locked outside. Go play. I mean, I'm very fortunate that I was outside as much as I as I was as a kid. Now, kids air so deficient in nature, you've got people writing books on that. Now they call it Nature Deficit disorder. Luckily, the nature is so good for your health. But it has the downside that running around barefoot and swimming in lakes and creeks exposes you to these pathogens, which is where most of them originate from so cycles. Flora's another common parasite we see. We see Dent, amoeba, fragile iss We see blastocysts Ha menace. We see the gee rt of the crypto. All these guys could potentially come from water. Now there's others in the soil. There's some that could be in the air, the water supply, even your tap water supply for not drinking a high quality filtered water cooking with a high quality water. You know, think about it. What they used to make rice, they use water. So you go to a restaurant and you get rice. Well, what kind of water you think they use for that rice Will course. It's tap water. So you could You could get something in the food very easily. That's a quote. Waterborne parasite. You're like, Well, I didn't swim in a lake. Well, did you eat rice? It could be something that simple, and some people like to argue we can co exist with parasites. I just don't. I see the inflammation. I see the gut barrier function. We see the nutrient and malabsorption indicators. We see the symptoms depression, anxiety, fatigue, weight gain, et cetera. And so I don't believe that you should leave these things alone. If I find him on a test, I'm going to take care of him.

spk_1:   17:27
You know, I bookmarked a page Recently, I read a book about nothing to do with medicine. But I was really someone taking a motorcycle trip from the US down to the southern trip of South America. And there was a really excellent Pedro's gonna scan and put in my program. And it really talked about, um, them, you know, they had some anti parasitic things on hand. I don't know what they all had with them on their trip, but basically, she would talk about, um my boyfriend was sick that night, so he went to bed and blah, blah, blah. We didn't know if we wanted to use this medication. And she talked about a friend from South America who said she told her friend, I think it's gross that you automatically do these medications to get rid of parasites and her friends that I think it's gross that you don't. And so I thought that was just really interesting. That was a really interesting paragraph in the book. I have nothing to do with health, and it was just modern day. Ah, it was written about a trip that was taken a few years ago. I think that the tricky thing that makes this a complicated conversation is that my understanding is in the United States. We used to look at parasites more readily, right, like maybe even as late as the eighties. But now it's almost like unless you went to a foreign country or something like that, it's like it's not even a concern. I wonder what the shift was. What do you think?

spk_0:   18:37
Oh, I think it's just pharmaceutical industry is not making as much money on anti parasitic drugs, and so we know just by talking with many friends of mine that are doctors that are in the conventional field, and we're trained conventionally as medical doctors, you know they'll tell you straight up that they'll have a weapon or or a seminar sponsored by Pfizer So if there's not a pharmaceutical interest in it, why pursue that? Why go down the rabbit hole? Why spend time educating a re educating or giving the latest data on parasites statistics? If you're only gonna make 10 bucks on a bottle of Metro Night is all are Maybe it is all or some of these other commonly prescribed drugs. That's problem, Really. Not one. You just have to follow the money trail. Probably other causes. But that's my first guess.

spk_1:   19:21
Yeah. And we want to think that we're clean and were not affected by this, that we're just as affected, I always think like, Okay, so we eat sushi an hour in tow, like raw things. I mean, we're really I nowadays after you look at somebody got tested like, yeah, I don't think I'm comfortable with with, uh, three claims that your fish is clean enough to, you know, I'm just not sure. Yeah,

spk_0:   19:42
I would agree with you. Yeah, the raw fish. You know, people are doing raw butter. They're doing raw milk, They're doing raw cheeses. Everything's going wrong. Like, you know, pasteurization is the devil now, So there are some enzymes and things that do get killed in pasteurization. So I'm not saying you should eat pasteurized. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat unpasteurized. I'm just saying when you're doing a work up on somebody, you've got to consider what All's coming down the hatch. And so for me, this is why a lot of times we pulled dairy out of the picture, at least temporarily, just to help rule in or rule things out. Now, butter generally is okay, but a lot of the cheeses and yogurts and stuff like that. Generally we pull those out these for period of time until we can get things settled down.

spk_1:   20:21
I always say it's kind of like Russian roulette, because for multiple reasons, unless you're milking the cow, you don't know what the scoop piss. And the second thing is that I think some of my clients get lost in it is whenever I reintroduce Terry, I asked them to start with grass fed versus just regular people definitely see the difference. I saw the difference in my own health. I was getting more itchy from regular dairy. Um, and I've got this other IBD client. He says, you know, he gets gas when it's regular dairy, but he does just fine with grass fed cheese. But recently I had and, you know, that's really fun to be able to pinpoint that because you've been really strategic about everything to the point where you're like, Yeah, I see the difference. This is cool. Um, and so you're able to see kind of how you feel differently. But I recently had a case I was telling you about. Where, um you know, I say when you re introduced this start with grasp it, um, butter and cheese. So Mom took that and went and bought grass, Had Raj cheese and her son, like, started having blood in the stool right away. And I'm like, Okay, not raw. Just grasp it. Um, you know, this is kind of a kind of a red flag when this happens. Maybe that's not gonna work very well for you,

spk_0:   21:21
right? What happened after that? Did you figure out it was that or

spk_1:   21:24
Yeah. So we stopped the cheese and the blood stopped, and then we turned up our gut improvement or anti inflammatory options, and, you know, said Please don't do that. Um, we're gonna reintroduce do grass fed butter if anything but this mom is really into her. Her dairy. She was a raw milk person beforehand, and so it's kind of hard when you see all these things. But just like you had just said, once you start seeing the kind of mess that lies beneath here, like, you're not worth the effort on this, So I agree he's

spk_0:   21:54
good about It's about as far as I'll go with it. I'm not putting it in at this time with myself. I've worked so hard that to me it's kind of a step back,

spk_1:   22:02
right? Yeah, right before air, we were also talking about the prevalence. So just talking about through history and the US, especially. I'm talking about overall parasites. I think something that became kind of passion about this year because my daughter experienced this was pin worms, and this is really kind of frustrated to me that this isn't part, you know now because we don't have a choice. Like Life's prevention, life's discussion has become really caught, like that's becoming kind of normal to talk about in schools. Could you know we're having We're being really prevented of the school's most preventative do the best job. But why don't we talk about pin worms a little bit because they're so common? You know, when my when I found these on my child, who, by the way, had those same behavioral issues you mentioned earlier? Um, and I knew there was a problem, but sometimes it's hard to get the people around you to believe the things that you know where. True. Um, I was surprised and appalled that on the CDC website, it says, and I paraphrase directly from them that if you have Children, you work with Children or you work in an institutional I setting your prevalence rate or your prevalence of potential pin room infection. It's 50% now. How come no one wants to talk about that?

spk_0:   23:12
Wow. Yeah. I mean, parasites are huge. My daughter had, um I would suspect a lot of kids have them. And that's the itchy bum, too. You know, kids may complain that their butt itches, you know? Could be could be pin worms. Very, very common. Why don't they want to talk about it? I've got no clue. I don't have a good answer for that. When I would just say that I do see it often, and it's more difficult than you think to get rid of it. You gotta really work hard on the bed sheets and everything. I mean, those little eggs can get under fingernails and all sorts of little sneaky places,

spk_1:   23:43
right? So let's talk about common parasite seen in the United States and beyond. And how you figure that out because it's not, um, which doctor stuff. We have some easy to use parasite testing options, so tell us about things that you see in the method of how that is tested for

spk_0:   24:03
yes, so we use the DNA connections or Dina connections is lime. I had DNA in my brain, D n a. G. I'm at panel from a company called Diagnostic Solutions. That's what I use currently. So for listening in in the future, maybe I switched. But for now, that's been the best one. I've run over 2000 of these tests, and I mentioned some of the parasites already. The crypto spirit iam giardia blast Oh, didn't meet a fragile ISS cyclospora. Those air kind of the big ones that we see. There's others on there, too, but those are kind of the top go to ones that we see bacterial pathogens. We test for those as well. Gut inflammation. We look at that. Each problem arise. Huge. My daughter just showed up with a TSH problem right on her stool test. So got to get rid of it. And what was the other part of question? That one part was, How do we find him? What are the common ones? Was there another part to that question?

spk_1:   24:57
Yeah, it was just like, Is it a stool test? Because I think sometimes people don't realize that is a stool test is how we're most commonly testing for it.

spk_0:   25:04
Yeah, and this is an at home stool test, which is great, because we can work around the world with people. And I've had clients as faras South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and we can send the test kits over there and get that back to the States. And so there's no Dr required, and you don't have to go bag a doctor who doesn't want to explore new things with you. You know, so many people, all my doctor doesn't want to run this. It's like, Okay, well, that's what we're here for. We're not doctors. But we're able to get this testing done that. You know, frankly, doctors just don't have a clue about. They're using an outdated technology. Sometimes it's human microscopy. Or sometimes it's Auntie gin based testing, which is far more inaccurate. So I need to bring up a nine point point important point here, which is that if you go to your kids, Doc and they refer you to a gastro doc or for adults listening as well, if you go to your gastro doc, they're going to run a very outdated and highly inaccurate test on you. They may run some breath testing. They may do stool. They may do urine, but their technology is not the same as what we're using. We're on the bleeding edge here, and so it may be another 10 or 20 years before we see these type of technology is being used widespread. So long story short. If you get an all clear message from your G I, doc. But you still have symptoms, then you need to pursue further because I doubt that test was accurate and you probably have infections because I see it every single day. I see all these workups people have had done and it got missed. And then we run our testing and guess what? Now we find X y Z bug. And then we know why this person has suffered for so long.

spk_1:   26:33
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I saw a famous functional medicine practitioner not too many years ago, and he did some of this poor testing. And so one of the things he told me was that I could do nothing. I'm like, Wow, I cannot believe that is what you were telling me, but it was really important. It was an important experience because it allowed me to not do the same thing, and so I couldn't agree more of that. I think that's something that is accidentally missed. We automatically think that all these tests are gonna be the same. But you it takes practice and, um, research to know which ones are the best. And, you know, when your provider is in a place where he's only got access to one that is a bit of Ah, that's a bit of a, uh, inhibition. I mean, a bit of a barrier. I guess so. That's a really, really good point, and, you know, I don't know about you, but I find some of, um something that's a little tricky. And I like to do still testing on someone who's got a digestive issue on someone who's had problems for more than 10 years. Um, I always tell them like a you're gonna want to do this. Anyone has gone on immune factor or not are immune issue. But I find that people who don't necessarily have a diagnosed condition are some of the worst ones. Right, So you might not. I really believe that you've got much for digestive issues, but let's say you're pretty fatigued and you just don't really feel great. All you feel just kind of not great, But you don't have the all these diagnoses that some people D'oh! Those tests still look like crap, right? Wouldn't you say?

spk_0:   27:49
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I would say my might. I guess qualifications for running a stool test is if you poop. And that should be everyone because you're human. So, you know, because I've seen now people may say, Well, I'm biased because I'm working with people that are not well right. These people are not the 1% top of health. They feel amazing. Everything's perfect. Some of those people still choose to work with me, and you'd be surprised some of these top athletes that I've worked with that they still have infections. And then we clear those and they get even better performance, even better energy, better sleep, etcetera. So people may say I'm biased in the sense that the people that come to me have symptoms. Therefore, there may be more higher prevalence of infection, but looked your average person. I mean, the obesity rate is astronomical. We've got more obese people than overweight people now. So overweight, you know, that's when your B m I is up some and then you've got obese, which is your B m. I is really high, you know, 40 50 60 £100 overweight. There's more obese than there are overweight people. If you look at some of the CDC statistics, they just put out this year on obesity, I mean, it's absolutely insane. So those people probably have just as many got bugs, causing just as much inflammation, causing just as many auto immune conditions as the people who have done all the low hanging fruit they've dialed in the diet. They listen to the podcast, they've done the supplements, et cetera, and then they still have problems. Those people are probably not that much different when you get to the piece of paper.

spk_1:   29:17
Yeah, that is very true. Um, so let's talk about Go back, Thio. Um, not just your story about overall. If someone comes in and they have parasites, right, which is very likely what are some of the few points that you have them consider when trying to make sure that they're not going to get re infected? Because that's a thing as well. So you haven't I'm looking at water. Maybe. I heard you say before you haven't they look at pets that Could you walk us through how you want them to look at their environment to make sure that we're not, um, just re infecting?

spk_0:   29:47
Well, they're partners. The first place to start Now we can't say with 100% certainty that all partners are going to re infect their partner. But I would say based on the thousands of tests I've run, I would say about 90% of the time, we're seeing that the partner. Whether this is just kissing or sharing cups or spoons, you know, sharing a fork. This could even be with your Children. A lot of times the parents are actually the vector passing the buck onto the Children. Hey, honey, try this bite of this. Here's my fork. And then you passed the H Pollo right through saliva and you infect your Children. And so we have to test the parents if we're working with kids. If we're testing the wife or the mom, then we also test the husband or the dad. And a lot of times the guys, I don't know what the problem is, but they're reluctant and their skeptics and they're stubborn and they don't want to do it. And I say, Look, don't be selfish. If you don't care about yourself, that's fine. But if you're going to spend this money, make sure you test yourself because you're going to reinfect your wife and then your wife's been all this time and money and suffering. And now she can't get better because you re infected her and this happens the other way, too. But I would just say vast majority of time. It's the guys that are stubborn. But I did have 11 male client who he was in his fifties. We cleared out the age. Pablo Rai. His issue was chronic pain in his abdominal area, which, though that's H. Pablo I. A lot of time specially if you're hungry and that pain worsens when you're hungry on the times. That's H Pablo, right? And we clear them out. He felt great. And then three months later he emailed me Evan, I have gone backwards. I was like, Did you ever test your wife? Nope. She doesn't want to get tested like Well, I don't know what to say. I said we could do another round of antimicrobials, but you're gonna waste your money. Maybe you can feel great again for three months, which is fine. And then you can go backwards, whatever you want to do. Finally, guess what? She bites the bullet. She gets her stool test their does boom h. Pylori. And so now what we do. We did a protocol for both of them, and then now he's better. And I haven't heard from him until our next appointment, which is in like, a year, because he's doing so good now. And you know his wife was the roadblock. So sometimes you've got to look outside of yourself. Sometimes you're not the problem anymore. And you gotta look elsewhere.

spk_1:   31:55
Yeah, I'm sure some people will, like, bookmark this spot on the podcast and then send the little sniff it to their husband, probably. So you're looking at partner. Where else do you look at when you want to make sure someone's not getting reinfected?

spk_0:   32:06
The pen worm issue? As I mentioned earlier, you gotta change sheets. You've gotta wash stuff and hot water. You've got to clean door knobs. You've got to clean door handles. You've got to go nuts. There's a product called Ben Effect. I believe the name. It's like a natural, clinically proven blend. I want to say it's time. Oil, maybe clove. Either way, they have wipes. Been effect wipes in the bin effects liquids kills like 99% of all sorts of different bad bacteria versus using, like Lysol or some other conventional chemical. Right. You got all these people being diagnosed with COPD now that have never smoked and because they're using all these terrible personal care products and terrible inhale It's like you're Let's say your life's all your 409 You're fantastic. All those name brand cleaners. Those were just toxic. So if your quote detoxing or cleaning your house, make sure you're using legit, clean, safe, healthy products. You could look up the environmental working group and researcher products to make sure they're clean. So some of it is like a house detox and that sense of sheets and door handles and door knobs. You mentioned the pets, so that's a good one, too, because a lot of times let's say you have a dog with aji Artie infection. Very common right, cause the dog runs outside. DRD is a common parasite found in creeks and streams. The dog could go outside and drink up. A bottle gets giardia, gets infected that could be passed via saliva. Your kid goes and grabs the disgustingly slobbery dog toy and throws it, and then the kid picks his nose or eats his boogers or, you know, puts his fingers in his mouth and guess what? Now? The kid's got giardia, so the pets could be another potential vector, And the good news is you can get rid of parasites and pets the same way you can with adults and Children, which is by using natural, anti parasitic herbs so it could be the pet and water. So I got to make sure you've got good clean water for cooking, drinking, bathing. I have a whole house filter. I also have a reverse osmosis system, and I have a Burkey, which is a stainless steel countertops system. It works great, so water you'll spend a little money to have good quality water. But if you're just depending on something like your fridge filter or a Brit up those air garbage thrown away, it's not even worth it. You know, Britta, maybe. Where the pure that p u R brand that you attach to your sink maybe reduces a little bit of lead, maybe a little bit of chlorine or chloramine? That's about it. In terms of cyst, giardia, cryptosporidium, etcetera. You need a really, really high quality filter. You're not gonna be able to filter out gasoline and all these other crazy stuff, you know, pharmaceutical drugs, for example. We've got anti depressant drugs. We've got cardiac drugs. We've got anti anxiety benzodiazepine medications in the water supply, so I could go on an hour rant if you wanted me to. About why you have to filter your drinking and cooking water. I don't even travel without bringing my water with me. Now I'll just bring a big stainless steel container of filtered water if I'm out in about really far away from the house. Of course I can buy something, but I'm is traveling locally. I've always got my own water. I avoid tap water like it's the plague. Now that sounds like snobby. Right? So, people Oh, my God, This guy is a water Nazi. Look, I'm super grateful that we have potable water, something that we can turn a faucet on and drink it and it looks relatively clean and relatively clear. I'm super grateful. Don't get me wrong. My gratitude level is 1000 to be ableto have good looking clean water. However, we know based on the E p A studies of thousands of different cities and tap wire supplies. The water is contaminated. So, you know, in the Third World, in second world developing world, there's the own. There's issues over there with water. We've got issues over here with water to it just manifest differently.

spk_1:   35:51
Absolutely. And I mean, I'm with you because water was a big piece of my own health journey. A kind of the wrong kind of water sent me over the edge, actually, and we don't

spk_0:   36:01
kind of water.

spk_1:   36:02
Well, I was at a swimming pool too many days in a row, and so the Koran really just taxed me to the max. And I have had many clues before that. And then it all. Really, When you really assemble your own puzzle, you get up. I just don't do well with chlorine at all.

spk_0:   36:14
That's a lot. That's a lot with kids to a lot of kids. With these behavioral issues, you know, they have, like swimming club memberships, and especially when the weather's bad. These kids were going to indoor pools and those places look att. Look at life guards who work at indoor pools. Most of them are overweight due to the chlorine blocking the iodine Recep their site, therefore causing hypothyroidism. We can measure this via blood. Look at the life guards working at a salt water pool. In comparison, you're going to see less obesity. No, of course, that is a very big statement for just one potential bad guy. Of course, they could have a bad diet and infections and all sorts of stuff. But the chlorine aspect is huge. And so what we do for kids swimming is good for you, right? It's fun. It's relaxing. It's great. But what we do is we just gives some kids some of the Micron Isaac Lorella just a few drops before and after swimming. And that mitigates the risk.

spk_1:   37:07
Yeah, along that same line, if we think about it, you know, I think we just really discount water because we just count it right. We take it for granted, right? Because we have clean water, thank God, but because we take for granted, we don't think about what a big piece of our lives it is. And so were bathing in it, were drinking. And it's the majority of our drinking. I hope so. It is a big, big piece on, and it's hard to find, like the perfect um, I've had people have tried to send them to get water tested because it is really nice to understand where am I getting this problem? Because I don't want to keep having that problem But sometimes it's like, Well, let's just get some good filter's in place and and other things So those air, Good point. So just to recap, it was evaluating people you live with. Another are studies that show that we share Microbiome with the people that we love with right, once studying particular looked at, um the microbiome of all the people in the house, whether they were intimate or not intimate. And the one person was lying on antibiotics. And for the six weeks, 4 to 6 weeks Don't remember how long the study was following everyone in the houses. Microbiome was impacted. So partners feel yeah, yeah, so and then we've got pets. We we care about that, you know, The other thing is, we were always We always treat our pets better than ourselves. Sometimes I think a lot people do give their pets anti parasitic ce. But I have seen or heard some stories from other mentors talking about someone that did not get over H pylori. Treat the dog. Now we're over H pylori.

spk_0:   38:24
Ah, wow. So here's the funny thing, right? Like it's so common and normal when you go into the vet. When your dog's sick. What kind of food are they eating? When's the last time you went to your doctor? And they said, Okay, What's your diet? Never. That's the first question of that. Ask most of the time.

spk_1:   38:39
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, There's a lot there. There's a lot we could discuss about vetting the different stream. Veterinarian. Human medicine. I should always have a veterinarian. Come on. Actually, you should. That's a good That's a good point. So we talked of water partners, pets. All the people were living with and did I miss one? I feel like I missed one. Never.

spk_0:   38:58
I mean soil. Like going barefoot in the soil, you know, totally beneficial and helpful. But there's a lot of bugs, a lot of blood of bacteria in the soil, some good guys, some bad guys. And so if your kids like eating dirt, obviously you could get exposed to some pathogens that way, too.

spk_1:   39:13
Yeah, and another thing to mention about the chlorine. You were talking about iodine, but just from like a big picture standpoint, chlorine is bleach, so it's anti microbial. So if we're automatically kind of drinking like a little grade anti microbial, all the time it's gonna impact our microbiome. And we know that our microbiome can impact things like ghrelin and leptin, the hunger and satiety hormones, right? And so all of those can have a big picture impact. And I think the challenge is Is that, especially in research, is that sometimes we look at everything like they're the same. But we know each person is individual, and they all have their own immune system status, a lot of their own personal genetics. And so some of us are affected more by certain things. And other people are right.

spk_0:   39:51
Yeah, you make a really good point about the chlorine. You know, I was talking just about bathing and chlorine, which could be a bad thing for your your skin microbiome, because it's sort of like an a topical anti microbial right? You're killing off these good bacteria on your skin, and so you could have issues just from that perspective, but also the drinking and the drinking of the chlorine. Also, fluoride is commonly added, like in Kentucky, where I am. Fluoride is added to the water supply not good for thyroid and causes dental fluorosis. It can cause issues with the teeth as well. And so you've got to make sure you filter out chlorine for bathing as well as drinking in your home. And there's a study on this that the Canadians have done. If you just type in, try Halo. Methane is cancer. You could read a Canadian study that estimates 30% of all cancers are caused from Try halo methane exposure via, ah, hot shower on the hotter the shower you take, the more try halo. Methane is which of the byproducts of the disinfectant chemicals used to kill hopefully pathogens like parasites in the top water supply. Those byproducts of disinfecting remain in the water, and when you heat that up, those disinfectant products become airborne. You breathing into your lungs negatively affecting your lung tissue as well as creating cancer risk. And so this is a big deal is why everyone should have a shower filter. And if you don't now, it's time to get one.

spk_1:   41:12
Yeah, big deal. I haven't read that study. I'll go look for it. So that's rap by talking about kind of your personal story and maybe some other things that you've seen in clients from dealing with parasites cause we were talking about the mental emotional component in depression. So tell us, you know, give us a little bit of a timeline on how that just reversed. Like, how did you see that start reverses. You treated yourself? Or maybe in some of your clients.

spk_0:   41:32
Yeah. So for me, it was a gradual thing. Like the food is medicine thing got me maybe 80% better, right? So the gradual reduction of the other 20% of issues took longer, but the initial 80% just what died alone was was very awesome from her. Most clients, you know, I tell people 5 to 10% improvement each month, and a lot of times we beat that. So I did a podcast that should be coming out real soon. I've already had recorded with a woman named Rebecca, and we speak about her daughter, who was nine years old and who had psoriasis, full body rashes all over, and was gonna be in a wedding. And the little girl was too embarrassed when she went to go try on dresses. She was just humiliated. She felt so ugly and she didn't want to be part of the wedding. anymore, you know, So just really affected her. Her social confidence. And Mom gave me a pretty strict timeline. She's like, looked at the wedding is this day. I want her to be better by then. I'm like, Oh, my God, You put me under the gun here. So we worked as fast as we could. We investigated her gut. We did find several infections in the gut. We kind of talked about the lab results on the podcast. I don't have her file up right now, so I can't remember exactly what was going on. But it was a handful of bad guys and we cleared up the diet. We cleared up the gut and within six weeks to maybe eight weeks on the long, and she was like 95% better with her skin. And the mom was like, You couldn't even tell anything was ever wrong with skin. And that just, I mean, that almost brought tears to my eyes when I got to hear the progress, you know, it was just so exciting. She said she went to the wedding. She was in the dress. She looks so beautiful. We've got all these great professional pictures now where she's just so happy, like at the end of the day. That's why we do this. We're not just doing it for the piece of paper. Obviously, it's great to see the piece of paper right? The bad guy goes away, but really, we're wanting to see that we're putting these kids back in society so that they can be better teachers so they could be better students so that we can be better parents. We could be a better wife, a better husband, a better partner, you know, a better granddaughter or a better grandfather. You know, we want to be good, productive members of society. We look at the health care cost that we have. It's astronomical. It's so many miss days of work. So many medical appointments, so much radiation, so much antibiotics. I mean, we're just we're on this carousel right now and we want to get off of it, and that's kind of my goal at the end of the day is to get people off the carousel. You know, it's kind of a bittersweet moment when you get a client to the point where you go through the list of symptoms that kind of check in and the list is gone. And you're like, Well, I guess because you don't need me anymore, talk to you next year for a follow up. You know, like, that's almost kind of sad. It's like, Man, we actually, when you move the needle so much, it gets so fun. And it's addicting as a practitioner that once you resolve everything inside Oh, man, I wanted you to have something else to complain about so we can fix it, you know? But, uh but, hey, look, you want to teach people how to fish, right? You want to get him off that carousel ride?

spk_1:   44:25
Yeah. Actually, that's funny that you say that because I always do an initial intake to see if we're a good fit. And I always say to people like, I like when you have a lot of problems because that's a lot of you know, it's so fun to fix everything. You know, it's fun for us to have so many things to fix. I had

spk_0:   44:39
excited when I ch problem where I pop up on a stool test, I'm like, Yes, a Polaroid because now I know. Hey, look, Miss Jane, your fatigue, your abdominal pain, your bloating, your heartburn, your digestive complaints, your constipation alternating with diarrhea, your skin issues, your depression, anxiety that I mentioned it already. Look, I have an answer for almost all of these now for potentially where this could be coming from. So to be able to see the answer and have the golden key, it's just It's a very great empowering feeling, which is what just makes this so fun.

spk_1:   45:12
Yeah, it is really fun. And I'm glad we had the conversation because you said something that I thought was kind of important. People come to me a lot of times for food, and that's what really got me started on. The addiction was like massively helping people not do just a generic thing, but kind of a customized protocol that really helps them. But then sometimes you can get to, Ah, plateau to a certain point because you do have to address these other infections or pathogens or other stressors, you know. And that's why this is the last stress life, right? So you come looking for diet in sits for me. Sometimes it's talking them, talking to them. Some of this is the first time they've heard that that cash there could be another piece, dear, like there's a reason that you're not getting more tolerance, too. But you should not be on this restricted diet forever. To the point of you feel like you can't be normal, right? Mabel Thio. You should be able to enjoy things, make it feel normal, et cetera. And so that's right. It really went down this path. And then once you see all these stool tests, you're like, Yeah, I mean, you're exactly where everyone does need this, but sometimes it's a matter of Let's have the Let me help you understand why you need this even if you don't have digestive symptoms, because if you are fatigued and having their things, you don't want to be having a problem. An underlying problem that even though you're so much better with food, causes you to relapse later because you didn't address all the pieces. And so that's kind of a big It's a big kind of soap box that I have kind of routinely, So I'm glad we're having this conversation publicly because I often have it behind the phone or behind the computer like, Hey, I don't want youto have a relapse. I want you to feel your best ongoing so you don't need me. So you don't need really anyone. So you feel like you own this. You are your best self.

spk_0:   46:47
Yeah. People who were going for, like chocolate to make themselves feel better, like in the middle of the day. If you're tired and you feel like crap and you go sneak and eat a piece of dark chocolate. Or maybe it's regular garbage milk chocolate that's got high fructose corn syrup, which is coming from genetically modified corn, which has glyphosate, which is damaging your mitochondria and causing further fatigue. Maybe you're doing that. Maybe not. Either way, you probably have issues with your endorphins. And so this is a common whole nother can of worms that I won't open at the end. But I'm kind of opening, so I'll just finish my thought, which is? A lot of people lack the endorphins, So this includes your norepinephrine, your epinephrine, your whole family of cattle cola means which also includes dopamine, and we try to self treat and not address the root cause. So we may go for a piece of dark chocolate to comfort or numb us or to get us through the day, give us a boost of energy, vegans and vegetarians. I'm specifically calling you out because you're not getting my thigh inning. And ah, lot of the complete amine owes you need from avoiding animal protein. So when you avoid animal proteins, I just did a whole podcast on this. That will be upon my show about metabolism. And that's why we see so many tired and overweight vegetarians is because there there's a process in the body called the carnitine shuttle, which takes freeform fatty acids and turns them through a through a dial. What you could call it, you've got the citric acid cycle of the Krebs cycle. In the bodies away, you manufacture energy. If you're lacking in dietary carnitine Matthias, any other amino acids because you don't have animal protein in the picture, you're gonna be more tired. And that's why you talked to a vegetarian vegan asking about one of their favorite foods. Aren't guess what they're gonna tell you? They're gonna tell you it's dark chocolate, and that's because they're trying to self treat. And so the food is medicine stuff is great. It's like, Oh, it's organic. It's stone ground. It's, you know, hand picked by a monk in the Himalayan mountains. Chocolate. It's like, OK, still chocolate. Still trying to self treat You're not addressing the root cause, which is you don't have enough endorphins, and we gotta fix that. So when you talk with these clients, you know, part of it is is the compliance peace that becomes difficult if they don't have enough reasons, is why now we run the testing to show Hey, here's where the issues coming from and then you fix it. And then when you can fix the brain chemistry, sometimes you have to start with the brain because you got to get their brain working enough so that they could even stick to your gut protocol. Right? So this is when kind of the finesse of the practitioner comes in. This is where it becomes more of an art form rather than like a protocol template is getting the person to the point that they could do what you're telling them to do. So that's all that's a whole Maybe part two can be that conversation.

spk_1:   49:26
Yeah, that's a big piece of kind of how I refined things I get. I tell people it's not that you weren't doing some of the right things is that a lot of people don't finish or don't follow through. Don't completely finish something, But on the note of carnitine shuttle, I mean, I think some of my favorite micronutrient tester I feel very strongly that vegetarians and vegans can benefit so much from looking at genetics and micronutrients because you deserve real time test you to reserve some real time data on what's going on. So that way you can make adjustments as needed so you can actually feel your best. And those are some of the more challenging micronutrient deficiencies and profiles for some of the reasons you mentioned, right, and so I think, is just really important for people to I kind of have that check and be able to say, Okay, well, here's X y Z reason Well, why? Maybe I could adjust either via supplement via food, whatever. If so, it's empowering for sure.

spk_0:   50:14
Yeah, and and I'm not, uh I'm not saying this without data. I'm saying this with data, So people that are mad at me, I've got the piece of paper to prove. So if you wanna have a chat about it, let's have a chat. I'll show you on a piece of paper. What happens to vegetarians and vegans? It's not the meat. That's the problem. It's your digestive system. That's a problem because you feel bad when you eat me doesn't mean you blame the grass fed steak. It's likely an issue where age stress, infection and inflammation has lowered your ability to secrete stomach acid. When you have reduced stomach acid, for example, H. Pylori, it damages your parietal cells. These air the cells in your stomach that secrete HCL, this hydrochloric acid that's necessary not only to break down your food and turn proteins into free form amino acids, which then manufacturer hormones and neurotransmitters. That's extremely important, but also the piece that stomach acid neutralizes pathogens. So if you have HPAI Lawry, you've lowered your stomach acid. Now you're more susceptible. You and your friend could go eat the same sushi. You get infected. They don't because you had HP Polaroid lowering stomach acid. Therefore, you didn't give your food the acid bath that it was supposed to have in your tummy and this food and these bad guys on the food can continue on and make a home and your small intestine or wherever else. And that's why they stay. It's because they didn't get killed. So with supplemental acid and enzymes and fixing the infections that the root cause here you can prevent yourself. So this is why you know people will try to ask. Well, why am I this way? And why is this person not? We both had the same food or we had the same water. We both went to Mexico. He got sick. I didn't. Why? Well, that's part of the answer.

spk_1:   51:53
That's exactly the answer. I love it. In fact, it's almost this is This should give you some reason. I'm almost surprised when people come back. What if they do that kind of a self test? Or like a free self test of stomach acid when they come back like seeming like they have enough stomach acid? I'm shocked, too, just because pretty much everyone I work with would have low stomach acid, so that helps you understand how big of a problem it is. It is. You also mentioned age stress, infection inflammation. It was almost like a pillar for each one of the worst micronutrient test, I see says really, really funny. Um, well, he ever And I hope that this was really ah inspiring for people listening today. Hope that they took away several things. And I hope you got them thinking about how infections aren't just this mythical far off thing that they are living with us right where we are. And controlling them can help us live our best life.

spk_0:   52:43
I never went out of the U. S. And I had all these bugs. So just cause you lived in South Dakota for 20 years or he lived in upstate New York and you had this pristine farm that you grew up on and you had, well, water that was tested and there's no chemicals in it. Trust me, you're well could be contaminated. That was 20 years ago when you tested it or whatever. And you could still have bugs. If you get pineapple and you live in New York and you're eating pineapple in February that came from Costa Rica, you could have bugs. The food supplies International. Go look at your organic blueberries in your fridge. Guess where those came from? Probably Chile or some other South American country. If you're eating Berries in the fall because they're not growing right now, there's like, last week there was snow on the ground where I live here in Kentucky, so that that's why bugs were there. Because the food's international Now, even if we aren't

spk_1:   53:35
Yeah. So it's okay to think that this is it. This is not abnormal. It is normal, so? Well, thanks so much for sure.

spk_0:   53:42
I see it every day.

spk_1:   53:43
Yeah, thanks so much for sharing your story, Evan On, um, got bugs, depression and some other things. Uh, was in lightning. It was a fun conversation, and we'll talk to you soon.

spk_0:   53:52
Thanks so much for having me One

spk_1:   53:53
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