Heavy Metals, Glyphosate & Microplastics: Environmental Load

hi everyone welcome to our next part of our allergies this this month I'm like struggle bus and today guys I'm just coming off of about 8 hours of working so bear with me but I'm very excited to be talking about this topic just because just alone today I had a variety of different patients coming through my doors with all different types of food and tolerances and really just struggling day-to-day with what they are consuming and let alone also on top of that struggling with the change of seasons I know that there are a lot of people that are struggling with different types of seasonal allergies some people call them seasonal allergies but deal with them all year long and some people have it worse in the fall some people have it worse in the spring but overall it's really trying to understand you know what is going on in the body that is causing us to be triggered by these different types of environmental changes and also what is the major reason why so many people including children are struggling with what they can and cannot eat and it really comes back to you know what is going on with the food industry what is going on in our bodies and why are we so immune reactive so we really want to uncover some of the basic things about the limitations with testing because I know there are many of you that potentially have had food allergy testing and you feel confused about it you feel overwhelmed about it or you feel like it's not accurate so it's understanding some of the limitations there some of the better tests that are out there and in addition to what can we start doing about changing this dynamic and helping our bodies to be less or more tolerant and less sensitive and really what can we be doing to help our children from being so overly sensitive to a lot of the foods that are out there so as we get started I am on a webinar for those of you that are watching me on Instagram live so you guys either if you're on the webinar or on Instagram live definitely feel free to put questions in the comment section or in the chat box I'm happy to answer them as we go in addition to that if you are on Instagram please direct message me your email if you are looking for the full webinar because it is going to cut me off okay so we're gonna get started with my PowerPoint just primarily because this is going to cut me off but I just gonna have a warm welcome for you guys today or this month it's all about allergies we are really helping you to understand more about allergies and really breaking through some of the false beliefs that you think that you just have to live with them I know many people just think that this is what it is for me and I just have to know how to navigate around it and we definitely work with has to work with allergies but allergy is is something that we've been faced with as integrative practitioners because there are so many people that are struggling with really overworked and taxed out immune systems so it's really helping to understand you know what is going on why why is that happening what is potentially things that we are being exposed to just in our food industry that are causing us to be so hyper reactive and really from day one myself and the other practitioners that I work with we've always questioned we've always kind of pressed the envelope and ask better questions instead of just saying well everybody has allergies and we just need to help them navigate around them it was always about figuring out why and also understanding that there is a variety of different systems that can actually uh really contribute to these sensitivities and allergies in addition it's not just oh you just have an allergy is called a day there is always going to be other systems that are involved in the immune system being super reactive so as we kind of understand a little bit more about allergies like I said before I don't just work with allergies I work with variety of different types of people but it's inevitable that I work with allergies to some capacity with all of my patients and it's primarily because if you are someone who has a history of Lyme disease maybe you're someone who has autoimmune conditions maybe you even have hormonal imbalances maybe you have irritable bowel syndrome all of those systems and all of those conditions are really representation that there is dysfunction in the body or there imbalances in the body and the more imbalances that we have the more immunoreactive we are and this can definitely be part of the Cascade effect that happens when it comes to the development of sensitivities and allergies the other thing that I do on all of my and all of my extra time is I run the Institute for Integrative Wellness which has been a recent thing that we have launched and it's very exciting because for those of you that are here listening to me now you're usually here because you're looking for answers and you're usually here because you haven't found answers and other conventional approaches and my goal is to really help to involve how healthcare is being done as a whole and not necessarily just within the four walls of my beautiful office in Belmar so it's really about helping physicians to understand the bigger picture to better serve you your families and all of your loved ones so the Institute has really been created to further this concept of Integrative Medicine and to have people leverage better testing because testing is tricky I know that it took me you know nine years to really develop the approach that we have now and to understand why I hit plateaus with my patients I hit plateaus because it was a lack of information and it was a lack of information because I was assuming that I was gonna get everything I needed from the conventional test and I found that that was not always true and that was not always accurate and also too for myself I know that a lot of physicians you know they have that story that you know they were either really they were a mystery to conventional medicine and you know some type of functional or integrative practitioner helped them get back to health and you know it's interesting for me because I actually have almost the opposite story to that I found for myself I thought it was pretty healthy I actually thought that my labs we're gonna check out great I thought my blood work he was gonna come back perfect and all of my other lab testing that I did and when I actually did my testing it turned out that I had massive mercury toxicity I had a lot of gastrointestinal infections parasites being the primary and I remember almost being taken back by the information but in that moment what I realized as so many of the things that I dealt with intermittently nothing was a chronic reoccurring problem but I would have occasional brain fog I would have you know the occasional poor sleep I would toss and turn and I would have an occasional stomachache but there was always an excuse oh I had a heart population Jay oh I drink too much caffeine oh my stomach is hurting oh I ate too much oh I ate out oh I'm tired oh it's because I didn't sleep great oh it's because of my pillow and trust me I know that a lot of you can relate to those things because I hear it over and over in my practice most of us have just gotten used to our symptoms or we've normalized those symptoms and we think it's normal that everybody's tired we think it's normal that you know you can't get through a whole night's sleep without getting up to go to the bathroom it's normal that your memory is not good if anything you probably joke about it with your friends so we've definitely normalized allergies we've normalized sensitivities we literally have peanut butter free tables in schools there are some schools that are completely nut free and you ask any teacher or anyone who works at a school that's been doing this for 15 20 years they all look at you and go oh my goodness things have changed there is such a different dynamic kids with their a DD with their ADHD these kids are there's more kids than ever in these special classes for special needs there are now epi pens on every corner of the hallways and there are you know special classrooms and special cafeterias that are avoiding certain types of foods this is definitely something that we need to ask better questions about you know we've just normalized it and if anything parents have become aggressive about it you know you're gonna kill my kid by bringing in this sandwich but I think the bigger question that stands is why are these kids so reactive why are allergy is a bigger problem than they ever have been in the past I'm in my mid-30s and I never had one friend that had allergies I'm not even that old we did not have segregated cafeterias we did not have autoimmune conditions I don't remember any of my friends being on medications and now it's almost weird if you're not on medications it's almost weird if you don't have an allergy it's almost weird if you don't have a TD so times have really changed and we really need to start thinking about why and what is the causation behind it so I know we are ten past seven right now and there are many things happening in the house if anything if you're a lunatic like me you may still be working you might have your email browser open you might also have kids that are demanding food or you might have spouses that are demanding attention but just give yourself the next like 25 minutes to really dive in with me because the information that we're touching on today is not your run-of-the-mill information we're not gonna sit here and talk about everybody give up gluten and the whole world will be saved I'm actually gonna give you a better understanding as to why you and your family might be struggling with allergies and what are some of the things that you can actually do about it without going potentially on an elimination diet for the rest of your life so first and foremost I think this is such an important point to make is that it's not your fault it's not your fault you potentially just gave birth and you have a baby that is allergic to every formula it is not your fault that you have kids that have to sit at the peanut butter free table it's not your fault that your kid has anaphylactic shock from eating certain things it's not your fault that you potentially have tried to do your best and get clean organic food in your house but your kids still have allergies or you've tried an elimination diet that you still don't feel well it's not necessarily always about elimination elimination there is usually a core route or a foundational problem that is being completely overlooked because if you suspect an allergy or sensitivity what you're doing first and foremost is you're usually going and getting a skin prick test you're getting a skin prick test test which is going to give you you know the information of what you need to avoid then you think I'm just gonna avoid that and my problems will be solved then if it doesn't work out that way then you go and get allergy shots for three four or five years and sometimes you still don't even have full resolution but nobody is telling you otherwise nobody is telling you to get a different test nobody is telling you that your gut might be causing it nobody is telling you that you might be toxic nobody is telling you these things so you usually get frustrated and you give up so today we're really trying to understand what are the things that nobody's talking about and what are the missing pieces so when we talk about this different concept of allergies and we talk about the root cause and allergies there's a couple of foundational things that you need to understand number one is that when we segregate out all of the body systems in traditional medicine or conventional medicine we assume that everything is working independent of each other we assume that the gut has nothing to do with the onset of allergies we assume that sinuses in seasonal allergies we assume that neurological system is not being affected by the allergies we just assume that everything is working independently of each other and that we have all these separate things going on and when we do this we actually ignore basic physiology we ignore the fact that everything is connected and one of the most basic concepts and concepts of this is that 90 to 95% of your serotonin which is your primary feel-good hormone that gives you joy it allows you to feel pleasure that hormone is made in your gut so if you have a patient who's dealing with depression and then you also have a patient who's dealing with irritable bowel syndrome but maybe they're irritable bowel isn't bad enough there is no reason to take action on it because it's just mild and it comes and goes then this patient potentially is being treated for a depression that is actually caused by their low-grade gut issues so the point of me telling you this is that there is a massive cascade effect that happens when there are toxicities when there are infections when there are foreign things in our bodies that are triggering our immune systems and then making us more susceptible to the development of in tolerances sensitivities and allergies so we need to stop looking at just chemistry and we need to look beyond that to get better information through better testing and be able to figure out what the actual root cause is so one of the really fascinating things that I wanted to talk about early on in this presentation is food allergies are not black and white literally it couldn't even be farther from being black and white so you go and get a test and your test is negative but you know that every time you eat that food it makes you feel crappy in addition to that we also notice sometimes that we have an issue with a cooked food but don't have the issue with the raw food vice versa so just you know there are tests out there that actually break down food and evaluate it cooked versus raw even the breakdown of the food all the way down to its peptide level so I'm gonna try to keep this as simple as possible you have a protein breaks down into amino acid and breaks down into a peptide so you could be reacting to a peptide that is then causing you to feel not well from the consumption of the food protein but when you do the test on the food protein it comes up negative so then you're super confused because you're like well I eat the meat and it makes me feel bad but technically I'm not allergic to it so again this could not be further from being black and white there is a lot of gray when it comes to food allergies and food allergy testing so like I said is you might be having an allergy to the peptide so which is like the breakdown of the food protein so if that's the case you might actually be having an issue with a variety of different foods that share that peptide so this gets really confusing because people get so overwhelmed and frustrated and they're like I'm allergic to everything I can't even drink water anymore I feel like my body is reacting to everything and really what it comes down to is that you might actually be reacting to the peptide and not necessarily the food protein allergies can start in the womb so I will give you an example here so there are many I've worked with many young patients literally in their infancy and it's primarily because we've worked with parents and then there they have they give birth to the child and the child is having massive intolerances two types of formulas they might even be having intolerance as to the breast milk and then what happens as it turns out that they are dealing with an issue - dairy or they're dealing with an issue - to mold so what happens is is that if mom had some type of intolerance that maybe she was not aware of the symptoms and then she kept consuming that food through her pregnancy this is very common dairy by the way that then the child is going to be intolerant to dairy and then maybe you're gonna do formula and your child is spitting up or having colic and it's because they have an intolerance to the dairy another really common one is that when kids are very young maybe they're you know below the age of 1 years old and they're getting ear infections and they're getting ear infections and what's happening is that their parents are obviously going to give them an antibiotic and then it turns out that they have an allergic reaction to either penicillin or amoxicillin so if mom had toxic mold in her body then that is actually what makes these children reactive to these antibiotics so most antibiotics including penicillin and amoxicillin and ampicillin they are actually derived from Penicillium mold so by mom having multiplicity that then get passed to the child that actually will then cause a reactivity to the antibiotic so I think that this is such an important point because you cannot have an allergy to something that you do not have a that you have not had exposure to so the only way that you can have a allergy is if you've had an antibody that has built up against something that you've been exposed to so it's impossible to have an allergy or sensitivity to something that is not in a toxic amount in the body and again when it comes to the environmental allergy is this this principle holds true because if you have been exposed to toxic mold and maybe it was in the womb maybe it was due to antibiotic use as a young child then that definitely going to be a catalyst to the development of environmental allergies as well the other thing too is that we assume oh I just have allergies well you know I just got to deal with it but if you have allergies what that's really telling us is that you have a hyperactive immune system so the hyper hyper reactivity of your immune system is really an indicator that your immune system is pretty stressed which is very difficult for your body to be healthy in the event that there is chronic inflammation due to half of over-reactive your immune system is so we need to get away from this thinking oh it's just allergies no big deal instead of thinking what is going on with my system that is causing my immune system to be so hyper reactive the biggest one that I think people are always shocked about is that you don't have to live with allergies forever if you actually have the tools and you have a skilled physician to help to figure out what is the root cause of these allergies and sensitivities then you can definitely have your body completely rebound from these allergies and sensitivities you know when we're talking about sensitivities that is obviously a lot easier to work with not every child is going to be able to fully recover from the anaphylactic immediate onset throat closing situation but when you're having more of a delayed onset type of reaction those are things that once you remove the foundational stress the body can fully recover from so there's some really like staggering statistics when it comes to the epidemic of allergies but what I think was the most astounding on this slide is that there has been a 50% increase in food allergies in children between 1997 and 2011 that is a huge number that is a massive percentage so we're literally talking about a huge jump in a very short amount of time so when it comes to these food allergies we have to start asking why why has this become such a significant issue and when it just comes to the anaphylactic that's the immediate onset throat closing can't breathe situation 30,000 emergency visits a year in addition to that is a hundred and fifty deaths like that is just so unbelievably heartbreaking that we have not been able to you know get a handle on this that we're still having deaths due to this type of immune response so we really again need to start understanding this more in-depth as to why and the types of foods that are causing these allergies are are growing so at this point in time peanuts eggs shellfish cow's milk tree nut meat fish soy so some of the craziest things about some of these foods is that when it comes to peanuts tree nuts wheat and soy those books are all classic foods so when these foods grow they actually have a tendency to get invaded by fungus so fungus is in the same family as mold so sometimes it's because of a reaction or a toxicity of the fungus that people are starting to react to these foods in addition to that when we're talking about fish and shellfish shellfish particularly is a filter feeder so it is literally filtering out out the the toxicity of our ocean so sometimes we're not really reaction to the shellfish we're reacting to the toxicity of the shellfish so there is a lot of things to be considered with these foods is that the food is that the protein of the food is it something that is on the food is it pesticides or herbicides that we're spraying onto the crops is it going to be the fact that the cow was consuming tons of corn is it because the cow is also fed tons of meat and are we reacting to the cow's milk are we reacting to the feed of the animal so these are all things that are very cross reactive that have to be considered in understanding these food allergies so again I mentioned earlier that a lot of you might be familiar with the skin prick test and it's something that you may have done for yourself and something you may have done for your child to help understand you know do they truly have food allergies but the point of me wanting to give you information about this task is that there is a lot of probability for false positives so the reason being the biggest reason is the food extracts that are being put into the skin or onto the skin are not standardized so if you go to two different doctors you might have two different results because the standard of the wheat extract that they put onto the skin is not going to be the same in both doctors offices because there is no standard for it so they could easily be purchasing those food extracts from two different companies that they're the the extracts are completely different in addition to that there is a lot of room for error so if they are putting the the skin prick if they're doing the skin prick closer than two centimeters then you're gonna easily start to have a lot of cross contamination and cross reactivity so you could easily have false positives due to the positioning of the skin prick in addition to the use of the food extracts so the point of this is that there is a lot of room for error when it comes to this test and you can easily walk away from this test feeling so overwhelmed because you're thinking oh my gosh I'm allergic to everything like how am I going to live my but it's because of some of the error and the lack of standardization when it comes to the food extracts this is a bit less common but one of the other routes that they use in conventional medicine is going to be the oral food challenge you actually have to be hospitalized for this because in case you do have an anaphylactic shock they are going to obviously have to medicate you to get you obviously out of that anaphylactic reaction so with that being said there is definitely a lot of Route rule there's a lot of risk and there's a lot of room for false positives and this can be due to things that the person has actually ingested within a few days leading up to the test it also can be if someone's avoiding a certain food and then introduces the food they might not necessarily have immediate reaction there's can also be skewed by medications supplements there is a lot of room for error with this test as well so with that being said is we have to also understand that this might not be giving us the information that we are looking for so one thing that I think is off the radar quite often when it comes to food allergies is the actual health of these sinuses and the tonsils so many kids are actually dealing with major issues with their sinuses ear infections tonsillitis strep throat and a lot of these kids are getting their tonsils removed due to the chronic infections but what's very fascinating about the tonsils is that the tonsils are actually the major detoxification I should rephrase that so the the neurological system the primary way that it detox is is by dumping toxins into the veins of the head and neck and those toxins get dumped into the tonsils and the length of the head and neck so what happens is if you have a lot of overload in the tonsils due to reoccurring infections or also due to sinus drainage into the tonsils we can actually be causing a higher risk for allergies we can also be causing a higher risk for a DD and ADHD because if all of this is congested we're gonna have a lot of backup of these toxins getting into the neurological system so the body is so intricate and how it Detox's and in every organ serves a purpose because so many doctors say you don't really need tonsils you only need one kidney we don't even know what the appendix does it's not an important organ but what's fascinating is your tonsils your spleen your appendix are actually all part of your immune system so it's very important that if your child is suffering with massive allergy issues but they also have a lot of tonsil issues and they've had tons of sore throats strep throat we need to consider how these are playing into each other and how having continually large tonsils can actually further perpetuate more and more food allergies so I had a patient presenting with an allergy to penicillin and ten terrible seasonal allergies so I could have mentioned this earlier but just to reiterate so when we're dealing with seasonal allergy is again we just kind of think oh well you know I'm having a reaction to the different pollens and this is pretty normal but a lot of the pollens and danders that come from both trees and animals are very similar under a microscope to molds so when you are a child and you are dealing with common cold ear infections sore throat sinus issues upper respiratory urinary tract infections whatever it is for you and you get prescribed different types of antibiotics so you get prescribed different types of antibiotics and most of those antibiotics are derived from mold so penicillin amoxicillin and ampicillin are actually made from a mold called Penicillium so with that being said is that if you have had high amounts of antibiotics as a kid or you grew up in a water damaged house building there was water in the basement a leak etc then you potentially can be exposed to toxic levels of mold so as you are exposed to toxic levels of mold your immune system build antibodies from there you now have an allergy to penicillin because it's all in the same family so again because those molds actually are very cross reactive to different types of pollens and danders now you start to have seasonal allergies and maybe they potentially get worse every year so there is a huge huge connection to having high levels of toxic mold in the body that can be a contributing factor to your seasonal allergies so myth number one food allergies are an epidemic globally so for the most part food allergies are an epidemic in the u.s. many of my patients we have a conversation about the things that they really need to you know give a break to and I say it that way because my goal for my patients is not that they're gonna have to go under elimination diet for the rest of their lives and not they're gonna you don't have to avoid a category of foods for the rest of their lives my goal is to fix the root cause fix the foundation so that they can obviously go back to eating a balanced diet don't get me wrong gluten in the u.s. is crap so I think all of us should really make an effort to avoid it to the best of our capacities but often when we have the conversation about gluten because people hear how it's really not great they say you know I'm so stressed I'm going to go to Europe and I'm going to I really want to eat pasta I'm so sad because I know that you said I shouldn't eat blue egg and I usually respond with eat it because you'll probably be fine I've even had someone who technically had celiac that didn't respond to gluten while they were in so anything if that's creme so in the u.s. our wheat is very altered and what I mean by that is they've taken various strains of meat and hybridize them they've hybridized the wheat in order to make it grow bigger and faster so with that being said most of the wheat that we are consuming is completely hybridized and it is not your ancient meat anymore in addition to that we also alter the wheat by a process called d imitation so most wheat is alcohol soluble so you also probably hear how there's gluten in weird things there's gluten in your soy sauce there's gluten in your your chicken from chase sauce there's cookin in your salad dressing there's gluten you know in a variety of different things that you don't always think about so the reason why gluten is in so many of these miscellaneous items or even condiments is because when they take gluten through this deamination process what they do is they take gluten from being alcohol soluble and when they DM innate it they switch it to being water soluble so when the gluten is then water soluble it can actually be mixed into a variety of different types of foods to act as a filler and to also act as a thickener so they do this specifically to be a cheap ingredient in a variety of different different condiments and other types of ingredients but in addition to that when you go through that deamination process from water or alcohol soluble to water soluble this is actually one of the the biggest immune system so they actually find that the fact that the wheat is hybridized in addition to this DM nation process this is one of the major or both of the major reasons why people are so immune reactive to gluten and for those of you that are listening right now thinking like oh well food doesn't hurt my stomach and I definitely don't have a problem with it I know that I was in denial for a long time I definitely have zero gut complaints when I eat gluten but when I started to be honest with myself and I started to pay attention what I realized is that it actually made me fatigued and it gave me brain fog not the same day but the next day so don't always be thinking about a gastrointestinal response when it comes to food allergies you need to also start thinking about am I having a neurological response am I having inflammatory response are your joints hurting after you eat certain things so the other big thing about gluten that I talked about in a previous podcast or I'm sorry as previous webinar and podcast actually but I talked a lot about celiac disease being connected to a very specific chemical called glyphosate so glyphosate is the primary ingredient in roundup yes roundup the things that you kill your weeds with roundup is actually being sprayed on the majority of our produce and the majority of the produce that are being sold in all of our grocery stores so unfortunately there is not one of you that are listening that do not have some level of glyphosate poisoning or toxicity it is inevitable that we are all being exposed and the glyphosate is now been linked in the research again not my opinion this is proven research that Clay Fauci is destroying the microvilli of your gut and one of the leading causes of celiac disease so we really have to ask ourselves are we allergic to wheat or we sensitive to wheat or are we allergic or sensitive ah see so this is extremely important to take into consideration because when you go to Europe and you're tolerating the week just fine chances are you're not really reacting to the protein or the even the peptide chances are in the u.s. you're reacting to the chemicals that are on the beat so when it comes to wheat yes there are sprouted in organic and better versions but for the most part it is very very difficult to find pure ancient wheat in the u.s. another big myth is that allergies happen after the introduction of table food so there is a big difference between formula and breastfeeding and I know that some kids actually even react to breastfeeding as well but the thing that you want to understand about baby formula this was kind of just even a couple of weeks ago a very good friend of mine she came to me because she has a newborn and he was reacting to his formula she had a specific condition that she was not it wasn't in her best interest to breastfeed so she opted to bottle-feed and he was having reflux so then they recommended a specific type of formula that was supposed to be more gentle and as he came into the practice and I did a couple of tests on the baby the first thing that presented itself was an intolerance to condensed milk nutrition condensed milk nutrition is a primary ingredient in baby formula in addition to that the first ingredient of this gnat or this gentle baby formula was hydrolyzed corn maltodextrin if you were to google that it is literally carcinogenic it is as toxic as it gets so guys you need to really be careful with what you're giving your children you need to be careful what your children are giving their children these baby formulas have so many toxins cross-contamination and ingredients that if you were to start breaking them down and researching them you'd be completely horrified so with that these are children that are having these allergies so so early on and you might be thinking like how does an infant already have an allergy or intolerance and a lot of times this can come from antibodies that were already built up in mom's body and there are other factors that have to be considered with was the baby did the baby was the baby a natural birth did the baby go through the birth canal and get exposed to all of that good bacteria was the baby exposed to bad bacteria like Group B Strep so this specific child was not only reacting to the condensed milk nutrition but was also reacting to some of the cross-contamination of molds in the formulas yes there's mold in your baby I'm starting to horrify all of you but the reason being is because the baby was pumped full of antibiotics because mom had Group B Strep so this already potentially exposed the baby to molds because that is how these antibiotics are made so there are so many things that have to be taken into consideration when your child is having allergies or intolerances at such a young age the other most common thing that I am hearing is that the onset of the allergy is were at the two-year-old mark and what is happening is that there is with the introduction of certain vaccines a lot of these vaccines have peanut oil in them and the peanut oil is there as a preservative so the peanut oil in the vaccines is definitely can be tied to why some of these kids are developing reactions to peanuts in the first place because this is an epidemic at this point with how many kids are dealing with peanut allergies so there definitely has to be other components that can from you to that but if the baby's immune system is already being triggered maybe because of the exposure to the Group B Strep going through the birth canal maybe because the baby has already been given antibiotics to the ear infections in addition maybe the baby is reacting to the different ingredients in the formula all of those compounding factors and then we introduced vaccines that are potentially added adding more stress to the system in that current moment and this can definitely trigger this peanut intolerance as well so the big one is that we always assume that our testing is accurate we always assume that our blood test is giving us all the information that we need we always assume that even the the skin prick test is giving us all the information that we need but what I've realized over time and this is not just about food allergy testing this is also about all different types of testing is that there is so much room for human error there is a process that has to be that these tests have to be taken through so if you go get a blood test depending on how long the blood sat there if the blood was fun properly if it was stored at the right temperature if it was transported at the right temperature if they added the proper reagents to it if they skip this step because they forgot a step out they were processing it so you can easily have results that say no you don't have an allergy but in reality you do because there is room for error depending on how these samples are being handled in addition to that is we need to stop looking at the food protein we need to start breaking the food down into its peptide level so that we understand the bigger picture so the primary lab that I gravitate towards because I think that they are pioneering in food allergy testing is vibrant America vibrant America number one has to automate it their process they've taken humans and lab technicians out of it so your samples are actually all processed through automation through artificial intelligence in addition to that they have also taken your sample and they break everything down and test it down to the peptide level so they are literally breaking it down to be extremely specific and also to understand are you reacting to a variety of different foods because of an issue with the peptide so this is really one of the tasks that is giving you the most accurate information to truly know where you fall when it comes to food allergies and even environmental allergies as well the other big thing that I think people need to be clear on is that there are all different types of allergies there are all different types of sensitivities so when I say allergy I know that there this term is kind of bastardized but an allergy is the immediate onset throat closing situation a sensitivity Falls more in the IgG or IgE antibodies so when you get a test back that's revealing IgG what that's actually telling you is that you're the delayed onset sensitivity so you might be eating the gluten and two days later feel tired or foggy or you know your stomach is upset but you're not gonna feel it that same day you're not gonna feel it immediately at all IgA is even more confusing because this is showing that there is a response in your mucous membranes so you hear all the time people say oh I eat dairy and I get slummy or I get congested so that's more of an IgA response because you're having an inflammatory response in the mucous membranes or you're even having that response in the mucosa of your so you might be having inflammation in your gut that's making you get bloated but again it's having days later so you just are ripping your hair out being like what did I eat today I don't even know I ate chicken for the past two days like why would I react to the chicken today and it's not the chicken that you ate it's what you ate three days ago so you have to be able to know how these tests me to be interpreted because most of the time if you're requesting getting food allergy testing through your primary care physician they're gonna run a really basic IgE panel and again the IgE is the immediate onset throat closing situation most people are dealing with the delayed onset reaction by the way don't go to your doctor and ask them to run i GG because you will be charged I made this mistake so IgG is not covered by insurance quite often so it's best for you to just use a separate lab and get the foods tested that you need to get tested so like if you use vibrant America they you know it's gonna cost you anywhere between two to four hundred dollars depending on how many foods you need to be run but there's no surprises because it actually cost you $90 per food to to test through like LabCorp request so don't make that mistake so another big thing is that when people are there feel like their allergies are progressing over time they literally just got to the point without alerts to everything I don't even know to eat anymore drinking water is bothering me but again this can get really really confusing because of cross reactivity cross-pollination and even rotation of crops so I'll give you an example I remember for the longest time not understanding why they would say gluten free oats Oh naturally are gluten free and I was like I wonder if it's a contamination in the manufacturing plant and it's actually not that it's actually the rotation of crops so very often in the fields where they grow wheat after the wheat is harvested they actually then grow oats in the same field so there is a lot of issues with contamination across Polynesia so in addition to that the cross-reactivity conversation so this is kind of what I was saying about the whole mold conversation so some of the foods that grow and have a susceptibility to fungus is gonna be grapes so think of wine wheat corn soy rice all of these foods in their growing process have a susceptibility to fungus so you would hope that they are monitoring and not necessarily harvesting these crops that have been infected with the fungus but you will be surprised that they do so sometimes if they're infected with fungus like mold sometimes they won't harvest it and sell it to us at the grocery store but they'll use it for feed for the animals so either way you could be a vegetarian you could be a meat-eater chances are you're still getting exposed to these different types of fungus through the foods that you're eating so then you had you're eating these foods you're getting exposed to the mold the mold is getting in your body maybe now you get diagnosed with Candida maybe you're getting really bloated maybe you have a fleets foot maybe you have yeast infections as a female maybe you're getting skin rashes all of these are fungal issues so now all of a sudden you start to have seasonal allergies merely where the heck did this come from and it's because now your immune system has started to react to the mold that's in your body from the foods but now it's gonna react to the pollens and the danders and the molds that are on trees and bushes so you can tell that it becomes quite a significant cascade effect that happens so again this is not about manage the allergies manage the allergy is it's about get rid of the stuff that's in your body that should not be there get the mold out of the body start to clean up the foods that you consuming so you're not continually being exposed and get the pathways that help you detox working more optimally again because that the thing is the more and more junk we're exposed to the less resilient our bodies are so the famous example that I use is that when you you know you're young and you go out and you know you have drinks with your friends and then you know you wake up the next day and you go to work and you do your thing and you feel fine the older we get you know we're like oh gosh I had a glass of wine and I'm hungover for three days so that is an indicator that your body isn't as resilient as it used to be and it's not because you're old it's because the major filter filtration pathways like your liver are not filtering the way that they used to and a lot of times those pathways become compromised because of the things you're being exposed to from an environmental standpoint so this is going to be pesticides herbicides mold toxins infections viruses all of these things are contributing factors to further compromising how well our bodies get rid of the bad stuff so sometimes you just go in you clean up those systems and you decrease the reactivity of the immune system and you find that you can actually balance out a lot of the allergies that you have so this is kind of like a prime example of a patient so this patient was getting to the point that they were literally bloated with water and this person had a history of irritable bowel syndrome they also had elevated eosinophil in the blood they were non celiac but definitely had gluten intolerance bloating with most carbohydrates it really didn't matter what they were consuming it wasn't just about the wheat but just blown it with everything from rice corn or other types of carbs and then they were having a lot of issue like how well their blood sugar was being regulated so really just to kind of like understand how this all plays in with each other so number one is that elevated eosinophils this is something that comes up in people's blood work and it's usually not communicated with them like what does this actually mean so for the longest time when I was in school they taught us that if you're incentive those are high then that is an indicator of allergies but really what it is is that there is parasite infections that come from contaminated water can come from your pets looking at you in your face comes from sushi so you guys that get into your gastrointestinal system this starts to elevate the eosinophils which then triggers an allergy response so this specific person they were dealing with irritable bowel but it was primarily because they had parasite infections from their long-standing sushi consumption in addition to that they had glyphosate toxicity from the consumption of non-organic foods which then led them to have this issue with wheat in the first place and again it wasn't really a true allergy to wheat it was more so they were in they were tolerating the wheat because of the chemicals that were in the gut at this point so between the parasitic infection the glyphosate toxicity of the gut this was starting to really throw off the blood sugar because your intestines work hand-in-hand with your pancreas which regulates your blood sugar and then it also because the the chemical toxicity was such a big part of the puzzle for this person then now they started to just get irritated by most of the things they were consuming because it wasn't about the food or the water it was about the chemical reaction so that's the thing you hear it all the time oh I only react to fruits that have skin so if I eat the skin of the Apple I don't feel well but if I take the skin off of the apple I'm okay you're not reacting to the skin you're reacting to the chemicals on the skin like you would be horrified if I even got halfway into what they do to the food like they put wax on the apples to make them look shiny so that you're more inclined to buy them there is 262 different types of pesticides herbicides and fungicides that are used on our produce and these are things that create toxicity in our bodies which make us more immune reactive and then cause us to react to so many different types of foods because again some about the food is about the chemicals on the foods so I mentioned this prior is that we assume that allergies are just allergies and that allergies actually are not a reflection of our overall health but with that the primary thing is if your immune system is very reactive and it's reacting to environmental toxicities it's in reacting to different types of foods this is going to create a massive inflammatory cascade which is then going to trigger on neurological inflammation at its lower degrees neurological inflammation is brain fog it's also going to be memory loss and it's higher degrees it could be pandas which is children that are dealing with ticks they're falling they're also potentially dealing with a DD ADHD and it can even develop into multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's and dementia way later down the line so the more allergies you have the more inflammation that you have which inflammation is going to destroy it your joints it's gonna cause your brain to degenerate faster and it is going to just overall impact your health in a very negative way and if you do have different types of infections on top of that those infections can definitely be a trigger to the further exacerbation and development of these allergies so the point of me saying this is that you need to connect the dots we need to be able to look at the big picture to see is there something going on in your gut is there do you have infections do you have toxicity do you have other things that are playing into the allergies that you are dealing with because chances are you are and treating the allergies is like a band-aid approach because it's not actually fixing the root cause most people think that they cannot get rid of their allergies because they you know we've all been led to believe that you just get them and there's not much you can do the biggest thing you could do is get allergy shots and hope for the best but when it comes to allergy is it's really comes down to if you get if you figure out what is the root cause that trigger the immune system to create these allergies you can definitely support the body in different ways to get it out and really the most common things that I see number one is going to be get rid of mold toxicity and pesticide residues herbicide residues fungal fungicide residues if we can help the body to get that out and get the gut healthy again most allergies are going to actually balance out on their own one of the other things that we do as well is actually we help to neutralize these different allergies using our bio scan technology so the BIOS can actually it actually sends signals into the body that are a homeopathic match to the food to help to neutralize the negative effect that the food is having on your body so we actually will use this as a modality to help to neutralize the negative effects from the foods as we fix the foundation and we fix the root which is balancing the gut and getting the toxins out so when we kind of pair those two approaches together we find that people really get better a lot faster but they're really able to resolve it overall so just you know instagramers this is going to cut me off in less than a minute if you're looking for the full webinar because I have a couple of minutes to go definitely direct message me your email address and I will shoot this over to you so if you haven't figure this out yet I'm here to tell you that you do not know what you don't know it's impossible to kind of understand how to piece the puzzle together when it comes to these food allergies but there are so many different components that have to be evaluated to really understand where they're coming from so that you can really stop the allergies and help to really get your body back to being less immune reactive and obviously one of the biggest things is is preventing them from getting worse I've worked with many clients that by the time they got to me they already had they were so limited on what they can do and what they could eat because their immune system was just so over reactive for so many years and their allergies kept developing and progressing over that time period but I will tell you that your allergies are not bad genes it is not that look it is not inevitable it is not just your doom there's nothing you can do about it there is always always always going to be a reason and you just may have not had testing that helps you to reveal what that is because very rarely do things look like the textbook very rarely do I have that textbook blood work that comes back that says this person is allergic to this this and this and the patient looks at me it's like yes that is a hundred percent I feel like that's 100 percent me most of the time you know with the old test that I used to use patients are like well this is saying that I do okay with corn but I know when I eat it I'm doubled over in pain so you know what's going on there so we have to really be able to look at the big picture and piece it all together and in addition to that we also need to uplevel our of approach to the healing process because what happens is is that if we're thinking everything's textbook we get really limited with the tools of how to help the person to get better but if you dig deeper and you look beyond the textbook we can actually leverage better tools one of those is actually the bioscan technology that really helps to neutralize these different types of allergies so when it comes to you okay how does this all work how do you look at allergies how do you get this information and how do you you know figure out what do you need to eliminate what is a true allergy what's a sensitivity what's the root cause so for a long time I focused more on functional medicine and then I gravitated more towards integrative medicine so functional medicine is great because I was able to leverage better testing to get better information so I was able to really decipher you know what was you know some of the major things going on in the person's body that's contributing to their symptoms but what I found is that functional medicine the the tools were somewhat limited and the tools were primarily focused on diet and supplements so I know in my own journey and also watching my patients is that putting someone on an elimination diet inevitably is not very fun and it's not very sustainable and people get overwhelmed frustrated and they quit so I also felt that that didn't feel right to me it didn't feel right that you just have to eliminate that food out forever and there's and just never go back to it and that's gonna be what helps you I wanted to really understand how to help people in a bigger capacity and have more tools in the toolbox and that's why I gravitated more towards integrative medicine so as we've really evolved our practices we now behind technology that helps to neutralize food allergies we use different types of detoxification mechanisms to get the bad stuff out of the body we use everything from detoxification deodorants two other ways to detox the liver etc so when you have more tools you can actually really help to resolve the root cause of the issue and not necessarily just be on this you know inevitable long-standing elimination diet so when it comes to all of the testing and different integrative modalities that we use one of the great things about it is that a lot of it falls in the out of network coverage that people have and people are getting reimbursed by their insurance company directly but when it comes to really being able to spend more time dig deeper ask better questions do better testing we would not be able to do that in the confines of insurance providers so we really in our practice choose to serve people and to not shoot or not serve the insurance providers so we always want to make sure that we are able to leverage reimbursements but we are here to really bridge the gap between the answers that you're not getting through conventional testing and really be able to bring that to the table for the people that are not progressing through those conventional methods so we definitely have that flexibility as an out-of-network practice and we give you all the tools that you need for your own reimbursement and then we also advocate for people using their flex savings accounts health savings accounts and even direct care so I really do think that insurance is changing and I really hope that it changes sooner than later but unfortunately when it comes to doctors that are really trying to provide this higher level approach for all the people that are just feel stuck a lot of times we do have to fall in that out-of-network bracket and you know I think that a lot of us - like we stay in this in network and we you know we use up the co-pays and we try to you know use the insurance for our best of our capacities but over time I feel like we almost forget that healthcare is supposed to be about answers and it's also supposed to be about solutions most of the time you know for the testing just saying you know you're allergic to this we have no idea why and your only option is to do allergy shots and you know we kind of walk around blindly not knowing like what we should eat what we shouldn't eat you know other other things we can do are there other you know modalities are there supplements like what else can we do I can't tell you how many of my patients came through my doors just living on zyrtec living on antihistamines living on flonase and just living on these things because they just didn't know they didn't know what else they can do and and really outside of that their quality of life really wasn't great like you know being congested and stuffing and having sinus headaches every day is really not fun it's not a way to live so when it comes down to all of the evaluations that we do so we do a really strategic onboarding process our onboarding process is actually designed to cover all of the bases we have evolved this process a lot over time and we've evolved it because we really know how much support our patients need and we actually you get a whole team of people which is pretty great so you're working with the doctor you're working with your designated health coach you're working with a nutritionist who's customizing your meal plan customizing recipes for you we also are then using a variety of different tests our tests are not just focused on comprehensive bloodwork but we're also looking at heavy metals mineral deficiencies vitamin deficiency is we are looking at the bioscan SRT for chemical environmental and food allergies and in addition to that we are doing a DNA based test called the bioresonance the bioresonance is really fascinating because we can actually pick up on toxicity infections and dysfunction in a fraction of the time so really on your first visit we already have an idea of what's going on with you from there we actually do one test called autonomic response testing this is my one of my favorite tasks and the reason I say this is because you've been through enough guessing you have been through enough trial and error and you've been through enough trial and error because as much as we want to think that everything is research driven and our doctors are only going to recommend things that are true then everything is subjective medicine is subjective if a doctor saw great results with allergies being treated by a certain medication they're gonna recommend that to other people and it's based off of what they've seen and it's based off of their opinion we have taken the guessing out of it so we do not guess everything is tested against the DNA of your body so when we talk to you about your diet we talk to you about supplements we talked to you about remedies we talked about how to detox or anything else all of that information comes from our autonomic response testing which is being tested through the DNA of your hair so it's great about this is we could do this testing from a distance even if you are not local but everything is customized and personalized to you so one of the reasons we've evolved this process is number one because we were trying to get the best information in the shortest amount of time because we were really tired of seeing false positives and false negatives in our blood work and other types of conventional tasks but in addition to that is a lot of times when you go to functional integrative practitioners you're going in you're getting your consultation for X amount of dollars and then you are leaving with a variety of different tasks that you need to complete and those tests are usually going to range from a thousand two thousand three thousand I've seen upwards of five thousand dollars and this is for you to test your stool food allergies test your your blood etc by the way a lot of people are like food allergy testing and they think that they don't understand how all the food allergy testing is different but for you to get a good quality food allergy chassé it's going to run you about six hundred dollars some tat if you need to test more foods it's going to remain up to $1,000 and that's just food allergies that's giving us zero insight as to why you have those allergies so in order to try to really have no surprises number one and number two is to save money on the testing we have customized our onboarding process and just a side note - I think this is really important as a disclaimer when it comes to this type of approach for health care is that a lot of times people are embarking on this new approach because they want to have more information they really want to understand the root cause but sometimes they don't always realize you know you can't necessarily go from level 1 to level 27 you know when it comes to our whole entire health care system our healthcare system is built on instant gratification take the pill you're gonna feel better get the surgery you're gonna feel better when it comes to true healing and really helping your body to get to a place that you can sustain that progress and and really true truly be at your best health it takes some time and we also need to understand we can't go from chronically ill secured it's really just not realistic so it's being able to kind of work on those layers and get from where we are to being healthy again and it's like that we understand the concept when it comes to a video game is that you have to master every level you don't say oh I completed level 1 I'm bored I just want to go to great to level 27 the game makes you do every single level and master it before you can reach 27 so it's a very similar concept when it comes to your healing process is that we need to make sure that we we work on the foundation and then we start to kind of listen to your body to get it where it needs to be and if you're the person who can't drink water because that makes you feel sick and bloated or you're the person not ripping their hair out every day because you have no idea what is triggering you and making you feel sick I really find that the information that you can get from doing better testing is priceless so it's really just depending on your goals and what you can achieve when you jet answers and finally understand what's going on with you it's priceless so everything always does come a price though our onboarding process that includes everything that I mentioned before it's actually 1997 so I know some of you might be like that is crazy I've never spent that much money on my health care trust me I get it but I will tell you is that you are never going to have better testing more information and you are also not going to be hit with a surprise test that are gonna cost you a boatload of money out of pocket because you will spend this somewhere else but it will be because you have to do a bunch of separate kits that you have to send out all of this is going to cover all of your time with all of your practitioners doctor health coach nutritionist it's going to cover your report of findings when we review everything and it's going to cover every single one of your tests and all of your recommendations moving forward so with that being said we always want to make sure that you are going to a good fit for us as we've so definitely we always recommend getting on a strategy call so that you can learn a little bit more about exactly how the process works you can definitely check out the link that's available there you can obviously access our application for these shot if you call on our website as well if you are long distance we can do all of our testing from a distance we would just outsource your blood work local to you in addition to that on all of your testing can be done through the DNA in your hair sample so we obviously walk you through this process once we do your initial consultation but by testing the DNA in your hair we can actually do all of our tests from a distance so I love this quote just because it's the way it's always been done doesn't mean it's right I know that most of us have just been on this route of okay well you know I think I just need to do the allergy shots or I just need to stay on an antihistamine long term that you know that's really just the norm and that's definitely going to be the best option but when it comes to you some of these other modalities that we talked about tonight like the bioscan helping to neutralize allergies or getting rid of mold that could potentially be a trigger for your allergies these are all new concepts they're not new concepts in the world of social integrative medicine but they might be new concepts to people that have really been in the realm of conventional medicine so just because it's not the most common that everyone is talking about doesn't mean that it doesn't work doesn't mean that it is not highly effective so I think we need to start branching out and getting away from the more you know well known and well accepted because this is creating the epidemic of everyone being on pharmaceuticals you know we're dealing with kids that are being put on even antidepressants as young as three years old and I know that sounds crazy but that is the reality of it we are relying on pharmacology as being the end-all be-all to getting us healthy and this is also one of the reasons why there are so many allergies and there are so many autoimmune conditions and you know talk to anyone anyone nowadays is literally no one's walking around saying I feel great I feel awesome like I have so much energy most people have some level of a complaint about their health and I really feel like my passion is to to change that and to get people to a place that they can enjoy their lives again and they don't have to live in that mindset of fearing am I gonna get cancer am I gonna get Alzheimer's I'm gonna get am I gonna get multiple sclerosis you know these are conditions that are becoming more and more prominent and we are watching our family members deteriorate and then we're living in fear of are we next so it's it's really just trying to be proactive before things get bad and don't take your allergies lightly really be able to you know find the solution and find the root cause to deal with it now so that it doesn't become a bigger problem later so I see that there are no questions but I want to thank you guys for being here with me I really enjoy these webinars they're like one of my favorite things to do I think it's just so important to provide this information and get the information beyond the four walls of IWT but I will tell you is that when you finally get your own testing and you have the opportunity to start healing and getting your body to a better place that's really when this becomes such a breakthrough experience and I really hope that all of you can experience that at some point and if you're looking for any additional information definitely check out our website we have so much information we have so many amazing podcasts integrated wellness Kurt comm and if you are a health care practitioner or some know a health care practitioner that is trying to get into the world of functional and integrative medicine they can check out the institute integrated wellness comm because that is where all of the information about our Institute lives so again I thank you guys for being here we're gonna be talking more about allergies next week so I will see you then and then we will be talking about skin issues as we move into October all right guys I hope you have a good night and I will see you next week