An Integrative Approach To Autoimmune Brain Conditions
Episode 169
Autoimmune Brain Conditions are defined as syndromes affecting the central nervous system that are often caused by antibodies or immune cells attacking the brain. In today’s topic, we’ll be discussing a few of the common as well as the not-so-talked about autoimmune brain conditions that affect people of all ages such as Autism, Multiple Sclerosis, and PANDAS. Dr. Nicole gives us an insight into how these conditions affect people differently and how they have different onsets and origins. Tune in and listen to the whole episode to learn more about these brain conditions through an integrative lens. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! Noteworthy Time Stamps: 03:18 It’s always about how you do it 5:42 It isn’t your fault 10:42 One Cause, One Solution Mindset 15:07 Antibiotics don’t always give the results that we want 20:26 Oxygenation of the brain 25:13 A child’s case study 35:51 Test to check the neurological system in a body 43:05 If you don’t know the root cause, you’re not in control
Topics: brain, conditions, autoimmune, integrative, different, system, cause, unknown
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## An Integrative Approach To Autoimmune Brain Conditions: Integrative You Radio
- Understanding Autoimmune Brain Conditions:** Learn the fundamental mechanisms behind how the immune system can target the brain, leading to a range of neurological symptoms.
- Diverse Conditions Explored:** Gain insight into specific conditions like Autism, Multiple Sclerosis, and PANDAS, understanding their unique characteristics and potential triggers.
- Individualized Presentations:** Recognize that autoimmune brain conditions manifest differently from person to person, influenced by age, onset, and underlying origins.
- The Importance of Root Cause:** Discover why identifying the fundamental cause of an autoimmune brain condition is crucial for effective management and control.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
Um, and they've also, also, um, come up with PANS, which is a more acute onset of autoimmune neurological conditions as well.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own. Hi everyone. So for those of you joining me, welcome, and today we're primarily focusing on autoimmune brain conditions.
**Unknown:** And as we're talking about autoimmune brain conditions, some of you may be familiar, some of you may not be, but primarily what we're talking about is different conditions, um, in the realm of everything from autism to something called PANDAS, which actually stands for, um, pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders. That is a mouthful. Um, and they've also, also, um, come up with PANS, which is a more acute onset of autoimmune neurological conditions as well. And then we also have multiple sclerosis that really falls into this as well.
**Unknown:** So there's many different types of autoimmune brain conditions. They all affect us in different ways, and they all have different origins for different people. Um, unfortunately, a lot of times when I speak, people are looking for the one answer. They're looking to understand what was the one thing that caused this.
**Unknown:** Uh, is it genetics? Is it hereditary? Is it an infection? Is it strep?
**Unknown:** But unfortunately, it's not usually that cut and dry. There is usually a lot of different reasons for why these symptoms become problematic, and there's usually also a snowball effect. And what I mean by that is there's an array of different things that are happening over a period of time, and what I call it is the straw that broke the camel's back, which allows all of these symptoms to really come to the surface that then leads us down the road of having a diagnosis like PANDAS, PANS, or even multiple sclerosis. So as we dive in tonight, I'm gonna explain a little bit more about this and how this happens, how it unravels, some of the different things that I've seen in clinical practice that are the root cause to these different conditions.
**Unknown:** But then obviously most importantly is people wanna know, what can I do? What can I do about this for myself, for my child, for my loved one, et cetera? Because often when we're dealing with these autoimmune brain conditions, we are pretty much told that they develop, we don't a hundred-- understand a hundred percent why they develop, and there's not much you can do about it other than manage it, and nobody's really giving you any type of long-term solution. So with that, we want to really understand the root, the origin, and then also be able to really discover what can we do about it.
**Unknown:** Um, because these things happen for a reason. They don't just happen for no reason. For everyone just to know what we're gonna cover. So the biggest thing we wanna talk about is really understanding you don't know what you don't know unless you have the right testing.
**Unknown:** And when it comes to discovering the root cause, when it comes down to the healing process, it's not about what you do, it's about how you do it. Because we have to make sure that we are taking all components into consideration so that we can really help someone recover, and recover by fixing the foundation of what caused this in the first place. So the other big thing is we want to really understand the limitations of the testing that is available, because the limitations in the testing is what causes us to not always understand the root to why these things develop in the first place. And then obviously the most important thing is to provide solutions so that we can figure out what we can do to actually be on a track to get better.
**Unknown:** So another piece of the puzzle here is, um, just kind of understanding a little bit about myself, my practice, and why I do what I do, but also why I look at things the way that I do, is throughout clinical practice, I hit a lot of different plateaus with working with people, and it allowed me to ask a lot of questions, and it also allowed me to uplevel the way that I look at the body, and it's really a matter of looking at the body from an integrative fashion because we can't sit here and assume that all systems are separate. We can't assume that the brain is working independently of the gut, and the gut is working independently of the cardiovascular system, and the cardiovascular system is working independently of the thyroid. All of these different systems, they communicate with each other. They affect each other.
**Unknown:** So this is why when we're talking about an autoimmune brain condition, we can't just sit here and say, "It's just the brain," because there's many things that affect the brain, and obviously the brain affects everything. So there's a two-way street when it comes to being able to look at the brain, the causes, and the effects that it's creating. So we really look at the body differently, and we also choose to dig and act as detectives in our consultation so we can understand the bigger picture, but we can understand the timeline. And that's some of the case studies that I'm gonna show you tonight about PANDAS and autism cases, is that it's really a matter of looking at the timeline of when they started to manifest the symptoms.
**Unknown:** Because if you can understand the timeline, you can see what led them to the development of the condition in the first place. So first and foremost, one of the biggest things that I want you to know as well as any of the people that I work with, is it's not your fault. It is not your fault that you maybe have felt paralyzed in getting your health on track. It is not your fault that you maybe have not been able to figure out the solution for your child's PANDAS or autism.
**Unknown:** It's not your fault that nobody could tell you why you developed multiple sclerosis.There, it's not your fault because there's a lot of mixed information out there. There is a complete medical system that is looking at you as a variety of separate systems and separate parts. So it's very, very hard to navigate the sea of information. You know, it's very hard to navigate through all of these different perspectives and opinions.
**Unknown:** And I say this because if you think that medicine is all driven by research and it's completely objective, it-- you're wrong. It's completely subjective. And I know that I used to practice subjectively. I used to give you a recommendation based off of what I saw that worked in my clinical practice.
**Unknown:** I don't do that anymore because now I do better testing and I do better digging. I act as a detective, and I have the ability to unravel what is the root cause because of the way that I've changed my strategy to be. So it's not your fault that you haven't had answers, but you're here, and you at least have the opportunity to figure it out now. So one very important foundational piece to understand is that I've said this already, uh, for those of you that have been with me from the beginning, is our-- I personally feel like the biggest, uh, detriment to medicine is the fact that we look at everything as separate systems.
**Unknown:** And this is dictated because we have specialists and we also have subspecialists, or we have experts. And when we go to a specialist, if we have a heart problem, we're going to a cardiologist. You have a gut problem, you're gonna go to a gastroenterologist. You have a mental health problem, you're going to go to maybe a neurologist, more than likely a psychiatrist or psychologist.
**Unknown:** So we're looking at the body as separate systems. We are assuming that everything is, is functioning independently. And this brings me to my second point that this is just removing the understanding of basic physiology. And what I mean by this is that ninety to ninety-five percent of your serotonin, which is your feel-good hormone, is made in your gut.
**Unknown:** So if you are dealing with gut issues and going to your gastroenterologist, but then you're also dealing with depression, going to your psychiatrist or psychologist, and we are assuming that these two different sets of symptoms are completely separate, we can't help you. There's no way that you can get better because we're completely missing the fact that both of these systems are a hundred percent connected. So it's really a matter of understanding that we're not a bunch of separate systems, and we need to start looking at the body from an integrated perspective because this is not just about, you know, your, your brain not communicating with your gut and not communicating with your immune system and not communicating with your kidneys. Everything is communicating together.
**Unknown:** So a big thing that I hear often is, "Why doesn't everybody look at the body the way that you do at IWG? Why doesn't everybody, you know, do the type of testing that you guys do?" And the way that I respond to that is that pretty much all of our testing that we do on an annual basis, which if we think about it, is pretty much blood work, blood work is a chemistry-based test. So if you have broken chemistry or altered chemistry, we are going to manipulate that by using chemistry-altering substances, which is drugs, pharmacology. So we all know that drugs are for profit.
**Unknown:** Most of medicine in the US is for profit. So we have a system that is-- it's a business. It's not necessarily we all wanna feel that this is in our best interest, but it's a business. So if we utilize testing that reveals broken chemistry, then our solution would make sense to be something that is going to alter or fix that chemistry.
**Unknown:** So that is the reason why we do things the way we do here in the US. But unfortunately, it's not always going to give us the results that we're looking for. And also, blood work is not always going to reveal the root cause of the problem, 'cause blood work, at the end of the day, is just a snapshot of the moment. If I was to run blood work on you every single day for a week, your blood work would look different day to day.
**Unknown:** And I think that that's something that people don't realize. They don't realize that their blood work is not a hundred percent definitive to where they are. It can change very rapidly based off of what you eat, based off of what you did that day, based off of your exercise level. There's many things that can change that.
**Unknown:** So the other big component here is that we're always looking for the one cause and the one solution. And this is not our fault, this is pretty much just the way that we've been programmed to think, is that, okay, if I can figure out what is my diagnosis, regardless of the array of symptoms, if I can just figure out my diagnosis, then I can get some type of one pill or one surgery or one protocol that's going to then fix that diagnosis. And unfortunately, the reason why I have a job is because that doesn't work . And some people, it might palliate your symptoms, and it might, you know, get rid of those symptoms for a short amount of time, but at the end of the day, it's very, very difficult for this one-size-fits-all treatment to actually fix the root cause and give us anything that is sustainable.
**Unknown:** And I think that's what most of us are looking for, is to start feeling good and sustain that. So I wanted to tell you guys a little story. Um, this is actually something that's happened more recent, but it was in relation to a young girl who came to our practice with PANDAS. So again, for those of you just joining us, PANDAS is a neuropsychiatric disorder that is caused by strep that gets into the brain.
**Unknown:** So as strep, yes, the strep that gets into your throat, um, strep can get into a variety of different places. Strep can be in your joints, causing you to have joint pain. Strep-Strep can get into your lymph nodes, it can get into your heart to cause rheumatic carditis, but it can also get into your brain. And if your immune system starts to attack the strep in the brain, it can create a massive inflammatory condition, which we now call pandas.
**Unknown:** So the thing about it is that pandas is the, is the most recognized. So when a child is having a neuropsychiatric inflammatory issue, it is assumed that strep is the primary reason for it. But it is not necessarily being looked at beyond that. We're not looking to see is there another player in this.
**Unknown:** Is it strep, but is it also something else? Is it a virus? Is it heavy metal toxicity? Is there multiple layers to the reason why this is happening?
**Unknown:** So we kind of settle for the strep, we pump the child full of tons of antibiotics, and we hope for the best. So for this child, specifically, the pandas, um, she really did have autoimmune strep markers in her blood work. Secondary to that, we were-- uh, she was dealing with a lot of migraines, and then she was also dealing with irritable bowel syndrome. So as we dove in and started to do the testing, this was multifaceted.
**Unknown:** This was not one thing. The primary thing that we actually found stressing the brain was not the strep, it was actually the herpes simplex virus. Yes, the virus that causes cold sores. Again, we think about these different viruses or infections very linear, and it's partly because how we've all been programmed to think about it.
**Unknown:** So we think of strep, we think of a sore throat. And then we also think, "Oh, I did the culture, and it was negative, so there's no possible way that it was strep." That's also not true. Then we also think of cold sores, and we think of the herpes virus, and then we don't think that the herpes virus can actually affect anything else. But very easily, you can have different viruses that affect the brain, you can have strep that affects the brain, and then on top of that, you can also have other effects from toxicity.
**Unknown:** So if we just keep it super simple, um, if you think about the mouth and you think about dental work, when you're dealing with dental work, first of all, if you have a root canal, there is going to be a huge issue with bacteria. I don't care if it was infected or not, there's still gonna be a bacterial problem. So you have bacteria that can get into the gums, which can get into the nerves, which then can travel up into the brain. Then you get these lovely silver fillings in the mouth.
**Unknown:** The silver fillings are mercury-based. The mercury can travel up the nerves or get into the lymph nodes and also affect the brain. So we cannot sit here and look at a diagnosis like pandas and just say, "It's just strep, and there's nothing else going on," because a lot of us are exposed to strep, and not everybody develops pandas. So why do some children develop it and other children don't?
**Unknown:** And there is many factors to be considered with toxicity, the immune system, and even genetics. So we have to dig deeper and not think that the antibiotic approach is going to be the end-all be-all, and it's gonna give us the results that we're looking for. Because most of the children that I work with have already been down that road, and they're still not better, and if anything, they might be worse. So the silver lining to this specific patient that came to us is she ended up having the herpes simplex virus be one of the primary players in her system.
**Unknown:** But there was also a massive amount of lead toxicity in her system. So this was a long-distance patient. She ended up coming to us for a week. And her mom, at the end of the week, was looking at me in complete, like, disarray.
**Unknown:** And I was just like, "Mom, how are you doing? What's going on?" Um, she was just like, "I just don't even know what to say because my daughter is, like, a hundred percent better." And I was like, "And you're scared she's gonna go backwards." And she was just so fearful because she never in a million years thought that her daughter could get better, that her daughter could wake up and feel good, her daughter could sleep, and the fact that her daughter didn't have a stomachache, her daughter didn't have a, a panic attack. All of these symptoms that plagued her every single day went away with an intensive immersion week. And this is something that is just so, so important because those of you that are dealing with a family member or a child that is dealing with pandas, don't get me wrong, there are many extremes of it.
**Unknown:** There are kids that are really, really not able to function, and then there are kids that are pretty functional. But, you know, this child was in the middle of the road. She had days that she was non-functional, and she had days that she was okay. But overall, being able to see this person transform in a condition that was deemed non-fixable is pretty amazing.
**Unknown:** One of the most amazing things about what I do on a day-to-day basis is obviously s- see stories like this, but secondary to that is being able to uncover what is the root cause and watch people's mouths drop and be like, "Oh my gosh, that makes sense," and, "I can't believe that you were able to piece the puzzle together for me." And at the end of the day, when it comes to anything in the autoimmune brain condition world, there's many possibilities for many causes. But I will tell you this, there are three things that your brain needs, regardless of what your brain diagnosis is. Your brain needs stable blood sugar because your brain runs on glucose. Your brain needs proper oxygenation from proper blood flow, and it also needs stimulation either through exercise or learning something new.
**Unknown:** And with that being said, most of us are dealing with an issue in one of those avenues. And, like, let's use the blood sugar as an example. So when you're talking about blood sugar, so first of all, there is so much hidden sugar in most of the food that we eat, which is causing us to have a lot of issues with our blood sugar spiking. The longer this goes on, we become pre-diabetic into diabeticSo if you are pre-diabetic, diabetic, you have massive stress on your brain because of the amount of sugar that is floating around in your system.
**Unknown:** But on the flip side, I know that personally for me, I was told most of my life that I was hypoglycemic. And hypoglycemic is when your blood sugar is low, and they tell you, "Oh, that's good. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with being hypoglycemic. You know, but be careful if it gets too low, then you can faint." So what's interesting about being hypoglycemic, and I tell this story because I think it's very relatable.
**Unknown:** Um, being hypoglycemic, you wake up in the morning, you're not really hungry. You s- you know, skip breakfast. You drink coffee, that suppresses your appetite. You get to the afternoon, then you know, all of a sudden you're really, really hungry, so then you're usually grabbing for something that's gonna spike your blood sugar if you know it or you don't.
**Unknown:** So you're gonna grab maybe something like a sandwich with that, which has bread or maybe a rice bowl, or you're gonna grab like crackers before your heat, your lunch is heated up, and you spike your blood sugar, you crash. Then two PM, you're super tired, looking for caffeine, then dinner comes around, you eat dinner, and then you want sugar before bed. You want ice cream, cookies, whatever the case may be. This is so many people.
**Unknown:** All of those are signs that you have hypoglycemia. So if your blood sugar is low, it's just as bad for your brain as having high blood sugar because this means that your brain is not getting any fuel, and then when you have too high of blood sugar, then that's going to actually create inflammation in your brain. So it's not about high or low, it's about balance. And it's really, really important to consider what you're eating and how you are eating.
**Unknown:** First and foremost, a great solution, eat breakfast. Do not eat cereal, don't eat toast. Don't eat, I don't even know, sugar, Pop-Tarts. You gotta eat something that is protein-based.
**Unknown:** That is going to be a protein shake, that is going to be eggs, chicken sausage, whatever. You have to eat something that is protein-packed in the morning in order to stabilize your blood sugar. And if you're s- nauseous in the morning, you're not hungry, that just means you're hypoglycemic. You need to eat, and you'll get over it in about three days or so.
**Unknown:** So the other big one I mentioned is oxygen. Oxygenation of the brain. So oxygenation of the brain is dictated by your blood flow. So if you have proper blood flow, then you're going to have proper oxygen.
**Unknown:** But the thing about this is your blood flow is going to be dictated by your cardiovascular health, but it's also dictated by all of the different vessels in your neck. So if you have had your tonsils removed, or maybe you get swollen glands, or you notice swollen lymph nodes in your neck, these are all signs that you have a roadblock that is not allowing blood to get in or possibly out of the head. Some of the symptoms of having improper blood flow is headaches, migraines, dizziness, vertigo, visual issues. All of these things are signs that you are not having proper blood flow to your brain.
**Unknown:** So these are things that are more than likely playing a role in the person who's dealing with multiple sclerosis, or they're dealing with PANDAS, or they're dealing with autism. The interesting thing about autism especially is for those of you listening that know someone who is autistic or have an autistic child, most of the time your child is craving massive amounts of sugar and carbohydrates. So the reason why they are doing that is because your brain runs on glucose. So the thing about it is that intuitively, they are trying to give their really, really, really stressed brain more fuel to improve their brain function.
**Unknown:** But the problem is, in the US, is most of our glucose is attached to fat. So your glucose comes in the form of chocolate, which is attached to fat, yogurt, milk, ice cream. All of these things are attached to fat. As soon as the glucose is attached to fat, the brain cannot utilize it properly.
**Unknown:** So with that being said, you need to make sure that if your child, who is having a neurological issue, is craving sugar, give them fruit with nothing else. Do not put the fruit in a smoothie. Don't put it with yogurt. Don't put it with almond butter.
**Unknown:** Eat it by itself, and you potentially might see an improvement in their behavior and their brain condition. So it's very, very important to understand some of these things is, yes, the brain runs on glucose, but not all glucose is created equal. So some of the ways that you can increase blood flow to your neck, one of the best things is inversion. That could be yoga, going into downward dog position, getting a lymph massage on your neck, making sure that your neck is properly aligned, uh, by a chiropractor, dealing with any type of head injuries through something called craniosacral therapy.
**Unknown:** These are all really great ways to improve your blood flow to the brain. Okay, so the other piece of the puzzle with the stimulation part of the brain is you have to make sure that the brain is being stimulated. So when you're dealing with especially autoimmune brain conditions, there is a lot of these children that are having tantrums. They're having a lot of developmental issues.
**Unknown:** They're, um, they're literally-- it's almost like their brain is on fire, and they feel very trapped. So they're having a lot of trouble with their behaviors, and part of that is that the brain is not being stimulated in a healthy way. And I know that this is really, really tough, but the last thing that you wanna do is stimulate your autistic or PANDAS brain with technology. You don't want to be handing them the iPad, putting them in front of a TV.
**Unknown:** These are all things that are going to negatively stimulate the brain. So getting them out and having them walk, having them do some type of exercise, having them use their hands, play with clay.Anything like that is going to actually stimulate the brain in a very positive way. So it's very, very important to understand that not all stimulation is created equal, and a lot of the stimulation that these children are getting through all of the technology is actually negatively impacting the brain for a variety of different reasons. But it's very, very important to utilize hands-on approaches to help them to stimulate their brain in a healthy way.
**Unknown:** So again, that can look different. It can look like exercise, it could look like a team sport, it could look like literally just, you know, playing with Play-Doh. So one of the biggest things that I tell my patients is that you don't know what you don't know, and it's very, very difficult for you to understand what is the root cause if you haven't had the right testing. So I'm telling you a story about a child who came to me with PANDAS to resolve the PANDAS, and it didn't even turn out to be that the strep was the primary stressor, it was actually the herpes simplex virus.
**Unknown:** So it's very, very important to not just stick with the definitive diagnosis of just saying, "I have PANDAS," or, "My child has PANDAS," or, "My child is autistic." There is a reason, and it's usually multifaceted. It is not one thing. It is in-- it is very, very-- Well, I don't even want to say it's very rare. It is never that I work with someone who just has one thing going on, and we need to not accept these diagnoses as being the end-all be-all, and we need to seek out other treatments that are not conventional, that are alternative, because the alternative practitioners are the ones that are seeing success with these conditions because they're thinking beyond the antibiotic approach or the, the suppression of the overactive brain.
**Unknown:** So it's very important to know that there are things out there for this. So when it comes to the myths about brain conditions, so number one is autoimmune brain conditions like PANDAS are only caused by strep. So again, we talked about this a little bit, but I'm gonna dive a little bit more into it. The other thing too is autism is caused by vaccines or genetic.
**Unknown:** I don't wanna get into a vaccine topic, but I think that there's a lot of people that are, are trying to say that vaccines are the sole cause of different conditions like autism, and I actually wanna shed light on that and just a little bit of a better understanding of how that even plays into the rest of the pieces of the puzzle. The other thing too is that thinking that you've always had the best testing because we get that test back that tells us that the child has different antibodies for the strep, and we just think, "Okay, well, this is it." You know, there's no other testing available, and we just are, are stuck with doing this linear approach. But there are many, many different modalities available to further evaluate the brain. And then the other big one is there's no possibility to heal because the origin is never understood.
**Unknown:** So I'm going to actually talk to you a little bit more about what you can do about these different conditions. So number one is brain conditions like PANDAS are only caused by strep. So when people have come to me with PANDAS, the primary things that I have seen is I've seen viruses in the brain, coxsackie virus being one of the most common. Coxsackie, that's called hand, foot, and mouth.
**Unknown:** How many of your children have had that? If you are teachers or you work in a daycare or you work in a hospital, how many kids or people have you seen with that virus? It-- There's so many. Very rarely is anybody talking about if coxsackie can get into the brain, and it can.
**Unknown:** So coxsackie virus and the herpes simplex virus are probably the top two that I see causing different types of neurological conditions. Everything from neur-neurological inflammation, to brain fog, to seizures, to, uh, learning disabilities, to even autism. And then, of course, there's Lyme disease. The Lyme disease is something that a lot of us contribute to joint pain, but there is neurological Lyme, and neurological Lyme can play a very, very big role in mental health disorders, everything from autism even down to seizure activity.
**Unknown:** So this is extremely important to know that Lyme disease has many, many faces. It is not necessarily just about it causing joint problems, and it's definitely not about it being resolved strictly by antibiotics. There are many things to consider when you're talking about Lyme disease, and you need to have somebody who understands all the pieces of the puzzle. Another big thing that is off people's radar when it comes to the brain is mold toxicity, and mold toxicity is something I've studied heavily because seven years ago at this point, when I was in the early stages of my practice, mold was something I knew nothing about, and every time I hit a plateau with my patient, it was because mold was part of the puzzle, and I just didn't know enough about it at the time.
**Unknown:** And mold is a type of molecule that is both water and fat soluble. All that that means is it can go wherever it wants. It can go into your joints, it can go into your muscles, it can go into your brain. And the thing about mold is this is not just about environment.
**Unknown:** This is not just about water damage buildings. This is not just about, you know, mold in your bathroom. This is also about heavy use of antibiotics, especially in kids with ear infections and sore throats. Penicillin is made from penicillium, which is mold, toxic mold.
**Unknown:** So penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, these are all antibiotics that are made from mold. So you can have mold toxicity based off of heavy use of antibiotics. You can also have mold toxicity from, uh, different foods, peanut butter being one, uh, coffee being another, cheese being another, milk being another. So there are many, many ways we are exposed to mold.
**Unknown:** It is not just about environment.The other thing too is when it comes to mercury and heavy metals. So mercury, aluminum specifically, are neurotoxic. These are toxic to the brain. They cause massive issues with the neurological system, and I know because I can speak from experience.
**Unknown:** I had massive mercury toxicity, which was creating memory loss, brain fog, and it was causing me to have a lot of learning difficulty as well. So when it comes to mercury, the crazy thing about it is that if you're dealing with a child that's been diagnosed with pandas or autism very, very young, you might be thinking, "Well, how the heck would my child be exposed to mercury at such a young age?" So the very interesting thing about mercury is mercury has been passed down generation to generation. And what I mean by that is almost every child, I don't care how young they are, that I work with, has some level of mercury in their system. And part of this is, uh, silver fillings in the teeth, fish consumption, but another one that is completely off of people's radar has to do with back in the early nineteen hundreds when a lot of people wore top hats.
**Unknown:** So they actually used to dip the top hats in mercury as a preservative and also a way to make it weatherproof. So the term the mad hatter comes from when it was hot and the mercury would liquefy and drip down into the skin and into the eyes. And then people would lose their minds because of the mercury toxicity. So mercury gets into the tissues and is passed down from mom to baby.
**Unknown:** So most of your children are being born with mercury toxicity. And I'm not saying this to alarm you, but it's really just a reality that people need to understand that toxicity is happening all across the board at all different ages, and it, it really reflects on all of the different chronic illnesses and conditions that we're seeing younger and younger and younger. The other thing too is, you know, talking about mercury, is that can have a lot to do with dental fillings, but at the end of the day, when you're talking about dental issues, you know, there are so many different procedures that are happening. People are getting wisdom teeth removed, things are getting infected.
**Unknown:** We are dealing with root canals, and what this is, is a lot of dead decaying, infectious matter that is in the mouth that is then contaminating the gums, the tissues, and getting into the nerves that go up to the brain. So our dental situation can play a very, very, very big role in what's going on with our neurological health. But the other thing too is talking about this whole, um, autism and vaccine correlation. So the biggest thing that I explain to people is people are always asking about vaccines.
**Unknown:** And I think the biggest thing about it is, yes, the schedule has changed. Yes, there's a lot more vaccines that are being given. Yes, there are additives. Yes, there are things that are in vaccines that you probably, if you had a choice, wouldn't want to give to your child.
**Unknown:** But beyond all of that, I think the most important thing is to understand is that when a vaccine causes problems, it's because it was the straw that broke the camel's back. It is not necessarily the sole reason for a specific issue. So what I mean by this is if you have a child, and your child was born with, say, this mercury toxicity because it was just passed down generation to generation, and also maybe your child was exposed to group B strep because that was something that showed up right before the birth. And then maybe you had a really, really hard pregnancy, and, you know, you didn't eat very well because you were constantly nauseous.
**Unknown:** And then on top of it, maybe the baby was a C-section, so maybe the baby didn't get exposed to tremendous amounts of good bacteria, and their immune system wasn't the best. And then your baby started having a lot of ear infections. It's just like kind of one thing after another, and all of these things stress the immune system, stress the immune system, stress the immune system, and then you introduce a vaccine which is supposed to work in tandem with the immune system, but sometimes at that time, the immune system is already stressed, so it becomes one more stressor. So it's important to understand that sometimes it's about timing, and it's not necessarily about autism being caused solely by genetics or by vaccines.
**Unknown:** Um, there is a conglomeration of different things that can be happening that are being overlooked. So it's very, very important to kind of understand that it's multifaceted, and there are various pieces of the puzzle here. And whatever your choices are about vaccine, you know, that's obviously up to you, but it's always a matter of being able to know what testing is available for your children to just know where their health is at at an early age. The next one is understanding the testing that is available for these different types of neurological conditions.
**Unknown:** So when you're dealing with neurological conditions, we kind of think that there's MRIs and there's CT scans, and that's the extent of it. There are so many different types of tests that exist to really check the neurological system in a deeper way and understand all the components here. So there is something called a quantitative EEG. Quantitative EEG literally maps out the brain hemispheres.
**Unknown:** This can be done on children. This has the ability to look at if the left hemisphere stressed, is the right hemisphere stressed? Are the brain waves off? Um, how is each hemisphere communicating with each other?
**Unknown:** Then there's also neurotransmitter testing. We have the ability to really look at where are these brain hormones at. Are we overabundant in stress hormones? Are we under, um, producing the feel-good hormones?
**Unknown:** And then on top of it, there are autoimmune neurological panels. One of the labs that pioneers in this is called Cerex Labs. This is a lab that has the ability to look atAll components of autoimmune neurological conditions. This could be an autoimmune neurological condition because of strep, it could be because of a virus, it could be because of gluten.
**Unknown:** So this is also something a lot of people don't realize is that gluten is not just about celiac disease. This is not just about hurting your stomach. You can have a gluten reaction that causes your brain to be inflamed. So it's very, very important to understand that what you eat and what you feed your children can easily be playing a role in their neurological inflammation.
**Unknown:** And gluten is just one common one, but there are many, many options and many other possibilities. So the other thing too is being able to test for infectious diseases when you're talking about neurological stress. When you have a child who's autistic, you know, it's just like, "Oh, well, your child is autistic and we don't really know why, but this is how we manage it." And we're not necessarily looking at what is stressing the neurological system to that level of an extreme. And this could be anything from Lyme disease to a parasite called toxoplasmosis.
**Unknown:** So interesting about toxoplasmosis is women that are pregnant, they're told to not change cat litter. The reason they're being told to not change cat litter is because they have the risk of being exposed to toxoplasmosis, which is a neurological parasite. So this is not an uncommon thing. This is a common thing that has been researched and studied.
**Unknown:** But it's not necessarily being explained to us the capacity that this could affect ourselves and our children. And then of course, making sure we're testing for toxic mold, testing for other types of infections like syphilis or bartonella. You might be thinking syphilis, like that can't-- that's not even around anymore. Trust me, it is.
**Unknown:** And it is something that will affect the brain. And very, very often, Lyme disease, or I should say syphilis is the real infection and it's being diagnosed as Lyme disease. And that's because the symptoms of both of those conditions are very, very, very similar. And people that are thinking about syphilis as sexually transmitted, that's not necessarily how it works.
**Unknown:** That could be one level of an exposure. So we had a patient, presentation was autism. He came to us about eight years old. His other symptoms that were showing up was constipation, seizures.
**Unknown:** He was nonverbal, lots of inflammation. The inflammation in his body was almost to the point that you looked-- it almost looked like you could put a pin in him and he would pop because his skin was like stretched and cracked because of how bad his inflammation was. And in addition to that, he also had a lot of violent behavior. It wasn't all the time, but it came and went.
**Unknown:** So we started to dig in to really understanding what was going on. And I went all the way back to birth. With birth, it ended up that he-- she had a really tough pregnancy. She had to do fertility treatment to get pregnant.
**Unknown:** Very, very sick. She ended up being on bed rest. Child was an emergency C-section. He had a mild head injury at two years old.
**Unknown:** But in addition, when he was born, he had a flat spot. So the flat spot is significant because that can compromise the cerebral spinal fluid as well as the blood flow to the brain. So pretty much I'm-- the reason why this is significant is because the brain was already not getting the nutrients that it needed at a very, very early age, which made the brain more susceptible. So then around five years old, which mom classified as the start to everything, he developed a very, very severe infection.
**Unknown:** And the infection, um, they classified it at the time as a pneumonia. Personally, I will never know if it truly was pneumonia or if it was something else. But shortly after that was the start of grand mal seizures. Um, the grand mal seizures were up to twenty a day at one point.
**Unknown:** So there was a lot of delay in development, speech impairment, et cetera. So as we dove in and started to look at this patient, it ended up being, again, multifaceted. It wasn't one thing. So what it turns out is that mom had Lyme disease, that she had it as a child, and she g- was given antibiotics and told that it was a non-problem, that she, she was recovered.
**Unknown:** So in our testing, we found that Lyme disease was one of the primary issues, and it was also one of the primary things affecting the neurological system. So we also found that the brain had a lot of issues with blood flow due to that cranial malformation, which was the flat spot. So we had the susceptibility in the brain because of the cranial malformation. Then we had Lyme disease that was in the body but not necessarily active.
**Unknown:** We also had group B strep that was an exposure in the womb. Then the, the pneumonia is what actually then activated the coxsackie virus and the Lyme that started to affect the brain and the body. So the Lyme was actually affecting more of the joints, causing all of the body inflammation, and it was the coxsackie that was creating the massive, massive issues in the brain, causing the brain to literally be on fire, causing the violent behaviors, the inability to develop, et cetera. So there were two major, major components here that were playing a significant role in the neurological system.
**Unknown:** And then on top of it, there was a lot of toxicity which had to do with penicillin and asbestos. One of the other big things was the child had a lot of ear infections, so there was a lot of antibiotic use as a baby due to that. And asbestos was obviously something not on their radar, but it was found in the testing. And when they actually had their home tested, they did find that asbestos was in their home.
**Unknown:** Again, I know that this is complex, but overall, I explain this because this was obviously a very significant diagnosis that had a lot of pieces to the puzzle that were completely being overlooked. And once we were able to figure all of this out, we were able to actually start to take steps in the right direction to get this child to function more optimally. So it's pretty amazing once you're able to figure that out and you're able to get to the root cause. And that kind of brings me to the third point here, is that when we don't know the root cause, it's impossible for us to feel in control to any capacity because we don't know what to do because we don't even know what we're working on.
**Unknown:** And it's just there's so many components to take into consideration. But first and foremost is we need to stop eating things that are potentially causing our brains to not function. One of the biggest things is gluten. The other one is all of these processed foods and food dyes and all of these things that are completely, completely foreign to our immune systems.And then on top of it is creating a healthy environment for the brain.
**Unknown:** We need to eat breakfast. We need to make sure our blood sugar is stable. We need to make sure that our blood flow is moving, if that's through exercise, if it's through yoga, if it's by going upside down, whatever the case may be. And then in addition, it's being able to stimulate the brain in a healthy way, stimulate it through exercise, learning something new, not getting stagnant with our day-to-day and not learning anything new.
**Unknown:** And it's also taking some time away from all of the technology and being able to give our brains a break from all of that negative stimulation because I know that it's something that we have to use to function on a day-to-day, but at the same time, if we really were to calculate the amount of hours that we're spending on technology, you know, we would probably be floored with the amount of time that we spend on technology versus off. And this is one of the biggest reasons why so many people are complaining about brain fog, memory loss, visual issues, fatigue, et cetera. We're putting our brains under massive, massive amounts of stress. But overall, I really thank you for being here with me, and, you know, these are something that I love, love doing because it allows me to get information out there in a big way to, to really know that there's testing out there.
**Unknown:** There is a solution out there for all of these different types of conditions. But, you know, this is truly just an educational experience, and when it comes down to getting, you know, getting better and, and finding out what's wrong with you, that's when this becomes a breakthrough experience. And it's just amazing to see people's lives transform and to really be able to get their lives back, and I think that's the most important thing, and that's really why I do what I do on a day-to-day basis. So I hope you enjoyed it.
**Unknown:** Definitely, uh, schedule that strategy call so you can learn a little bit more about how we work with our clients and how we work with them from a long distance. And you can also check out our website integrativewellnessgroup.com if you want to listen to some of our latest podcasts on PANDAS as well as multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune brain conditions. All right, guys. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you next week.
**Unknown:** All right, bye-bye. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com. All night, no sleep 'cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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