The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 159. Dr. Will Cole: Autoimmune Crisis? Uncover Mold and Toxins Harming You

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Struggling with mystery symptoms? Most people chalk up brain fog, fatigue, or joint pain to aging, but what if it’s your body screaming for help? I sat down with Dr. Will Cole to discuss autoimmune conditions, gut health, and toxicity. Here’s the truth: your symptoms might stem from hidden culprits like mold, heavy metals, or a stressed-out gut. Cleaning up your gut and reducing toxins lets your body do what it’s built for… heal! Small, consistent changes can transform your health. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community and gain exclusive access to Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols today!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Get Dr. Will Cole’s book, “The Inflammation Spectrum”: https://amzn.to/4jnQe7r  Listen to “ Dr. Will Cole “ on all your favorite platforms! YouTube:https://bit.ly/4jmEv9c  Spotify:https://spoti.fi/4jCWkB7  Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4lzYenb Connect with Dr. Will Cole: Website:https://bit.ly/4iurxF0  YouTube: https://bit.ly/4jmEv9c  Instagram:https://bit.ly/3GlSihK Facebook:https://bit.ly/4lGTEUh TikTok:https://bit.ly/4444EVw X.com: https://bit.ly/4cI59qw LinkedIn:https://bit.ly/4jEMG02 Thank you to our partners: H2TABS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - USE CODE "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE - THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP - GET 1 FREE MONTH WHEN YOU JOIN!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD HAPBEE - FEEL BETTER & PERFORM AT YOUR BEST: https://bit.ly/4a6glfo CARAWAY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF - GET 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 Watch  the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:45 Definitions of Metabolic Health and Flexibility  13:23 Markers for Metabolic Inflammation Spectrum 17:16 Being Metabolically Healthy by Making Healthy Lifestyle Choices 19:50 Potential Impacts of the MAHA Movement 21:32 Toxic Burden Impacting Autoimmune Conditions 26:56 Leaky Gut Syndrome 29:56 Testing to Identify One’s Conditions 33:49 Emotional Connection with the Gut 41:23 Implementing Lifestyle Habits to Address Stress & Trauma 45:27 Gratitude and Self-Compassion 52:43 Testing for Mold Toxicity 58:15 Role of Genetics  59:04 Practices to Improve Gut Health 1:03:01 Fasting as a Hormetic Therapy 1:06:20 Testing for Metal Toxicity and Resolutions 1:12:29 Daily Habits Causing Inflammation The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's so many health issues that are going on beyond the surface that conventional medicine has not caught up with. I think the absence of disease is not the presence of good health. We have upwards of 93% of the United States metabolically unhealthy in some way. They're not checking all the boxes of saying I'm in great metabolic health. We hear about metabolic health, metabolic flexibility, metabolic syndrome, but I don't think most people understand what that really means. People that have sexual abuse growing up and physical abuse growing up and neglect growing up, we have to look at these emotional toxins too. The emotion doesn't create aflatoxin, it's the dysregulation of the nervous system because of your emotional state.

It's a piece of the puzzle. These mental, emotional, spiritual, or the part of gut feelings impacts the physical health so much. A lot of choice that I think the average American is forced to make is if they have one of these conditions, how do you best suggest that they go about healing the gut? Yeah, so the first part of the question you said, how do they find out? Well. Whoa.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Ultimate human.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Breckett where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And my guest today is a guest that my team and I have been watching for a long time. You know, I've been deep down the rabbit hole lately of autoimmune conditions, of gut health, of inflammation, metabolic health, and he is an absolute expert in all four of these categories. I can't wait to dive into this with Dr. Will Cole today. Welcome to the podcast, brother.

Gary friggenbrekka, I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is happening, man. Really? Yeah. You know what's so crazy is I have people say that and I feel the same way. Like, God is so good because I feel like once he revealed his purpose to me,

the kind of people that have come into my life, people like yourself, that I hold in such high regard, you know, there's so many mentors of mine, like Dr. Mark Hyman and, and Dave Asprey, and some of these guys have just walked through my door to sit down on this podcast. And they go, man, thank you, Jesus. It's just, it's, it's so amazing to sit here with you. And the fact that you feel the same way is very flattering to me.

This is gonna be great. Because I don't see myself like that yet, but eventually I will because I look at functional medicine practitioners like you that are making a real change in the world. And it's just so inspiring. And I think finally, the work that folks like you do is coming out of the shadows. Yeah.

And it's getting a deserved seat at the table. Yeah, it's a special time. Yeah, it's a special- Such a time as this for sure. It's a special time. So, you know, lately what, I've been deep down the rabbit hole of toxicity because, you know, early when we started

our functional medicine clinics, you have those clients that are just unresponsive, that are having significant symptoms, and you don't find it anywhere on the labs, right? You look at the labs and you're like, well, you know, your hormones are in a good range, you've got a decent amount of D3, you know, your triglyceride and cholesterol is not,

you know, off the charts, your C-reactive protein is kind of normal. And they're like headaches, fatigue, brain fog, mood numbness, all the things that are just robbing them of their daily life. And I started then to really look at toxicity, the mainly mold, mycotoxins, metals, parasites, and viruses. And in almost every one of those cases, we found one of those to be the underlying cause. I know that you talk a lot about metabolic health, metabolic flexibility. I wonder if we just talk about what is metabolic health

and metabolic flexibility, and then I wanna go down the road of, for the folks that are watching, where would I start testing for some of these things to maybe find out what's at the root of my autoimmune disease? Sure, yeah. This phenomenon that you're explaining

is something that I see on a daily basis. People that have things like brain fog, fatigue, digestive problems, anxiety, joint pain, like global pain. Food sensitivities, yeah. Yeah, joint pain. What the world may call mystery illnesses, they're falling through the cracks.

They'll be told from conventional doctors, well, it looks autoimmune, but they're not like checking all the boxes. There's somewhere on that autoimmune inflammation spectrum. And exactly what you're saying, where it's like, yeah, metabolic labs are pretty much okay. C-reactive protein, high sensitivity C-reactive protein looks normal.

Homocysteine is sometimes suboptimal, but nothing crazy. These inflammation markers. That's what I mean. Conventional inflammation. But you're right, when you look at things like TGF-Beta-1, C3A, C4A, MSH, these sort of other immunological labs that are conventional labs but aren't typically ran in the conventional setting, you will typically find for that subset of people, those labs will be off.

And then when you start looking at biotoxins, it confirms those conventional labs in my mind. It confirms things like mold and bacteria and viruses. And almost 100%, I don't know if you found this, but almost 100% of these people that check all these boxes, what the world would call mystery illnesses, have these HLA gene variants. Like they're all, which for people that don't know,

that's human leukocyte antigens. It makes your body more sensitive, if you will, to these biotoxins like bacteria, viruses, and mold. So whereas, you know, mold is everywhere, bacteria and viruses, humans have been with, symbiotically for a long time. But these people, their immune system doesn't know how to calm down

when they're exposed to these pathogens. Right. And then we could talk, I think in my mind, there's a environmental toxin component to it when you talk about glyphosate or forever chemicals. I think there's something manmade that is exacerbating these biotoxin sensitivities? Well, there's no question.

I mean, if you just look at big data, if you just take a zoom out for a second, you look at parabolic rise in skin cancer, parabolic rise in autoimmune conditions across the board, roughly 80% of which are in women. Yeah. You look at parabolic rises in type two diabetes, morbid obesity, multiple chronic disease in a single biome,

the earlier, the onset of metabolic syndrome getting down into teenage years now, right? Where we just thought, man, I can't be killed by a bullet at 15 or 16 or 18 years old, you know? And you have to think that there's an environmental component to that. Whereas like, yeah, maybe the mold, it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

But then it's like the analogy that I use is like, we all have different bucket sizes, right? That's your bio individuality for how much junk can I handle? And environmental toxins, man-made and biotoxins like bacteria, virus and mold are going to be contributing factors. But then stress and result trauma, you know, not sleeping well, foods that don't love you back. I mean, it's a confluence of foods that don't love you back. I like that. America loves those. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we do. They love to be in a toxic relationship with things that don't love them back. Yeah. And, and, and we very often, I read Dr. Pearl Mother's book, Grain Brain and Gut Brain Connection. It was the first time that the switch flicked for me

that wow, man, our gut bacteria really drive our cravings and not necessarily for the right things, right? The more highly processed food we eat, the more highly processed food we crave. The more sugar we eat, the more sugar we crave. We get dependent on this dopamine cycle. And early again in my career, when we were doing lots of labs on people,

it was really confounding because you think when you talk about, I have an autoimmune disease or my immune system is, like you said, you know, lit up, you know, in a fight for one of these auto, these environmental toxins. Classically, you think, okay, the white blood cell counts through the roof and the CBC, the complete blood count would be lit up

like a, you know up like a Christmas tree. And that's where I think these evade capture, right? Because they're hiding right in plain sight. And I think most primary care physicians are not trained in functional labs. And so these poor people are going back to their primary care doctor over and over again. They're like, you're fine. I'm not fine. I can't sleep. I'm depressed.

I have no libido. I've got, you know, crush days of crushing fatigue. My joints ache. You know, I've got, now I've got PCOS. I've got positional orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. I got this POTS. And so it can't be normal. No, but you're right.

There's so much medical gaslighting going on to these people. Not intentionally most of the time, right? Cause they're just, they're a square peg in a round hole. Like they're just not fitting in the conventional system, which, you know, it is looking at the diabetes, is looking at the heart disease, they're being screened for these things.

But this, there's so much things, there's so many health issues that are going on beyond the surface that conventional medicine has not caught up with. They're seeing it on a daily basis, but they don't know how to help these people. Yeah, and I think the absence of disease is not the presence of good health, right?

Because you don't have type 2 diabetes or don't have hypothyroid, or you're not particularly hypertensive, it doesn't mean, well, then everything's fine. It just means you don't have those diseases. Yeah. And I want people to thrive in ways that they never thought possible. That's what God put us on this earth for. He merely meant for us to have it all. And so I want to start with metabolic syndrome and metabolic health in general.

Yeah. And then I want to work my way into some of the specifics like mold, microtoxin, virals, pathogens, some of these. And I certainly wanna get into gut health. But for folks that, we hear a lot about metabolism, metabolic health, metabolic flexibility, metabolic syndrome, but I don't think most people understand what that really means.

Sure, so depending on the study that you cite, we have upwards of 93% of the United States is metabolically unhealthy in some way. They're not checking all the boxes of saying, I'm in great metabolic health. But you're right, it's kind of abstract, nebulous term. People maybe think of weight gain, which is a part of it, so much more than that, right? So yes, it can be weight loss resistance or

trouble losing weight, but poor metabolic health can manifest like low sex drive, it could manifest as sleep issues, it could manifest as brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, depression, it doubles your rate of that when you're insulin resistant. That's really what's going on. I mean, there's a central seminal event that's happening in most of these people. It is some degree of insulin resistance. There's somewhere on that insulin resistance spectrum, which if you're saying, if you're looking at that statistic, only 7% of America is metabolic healthy.

And I would say that's kind of, they have loose standards. only 7% of America is metabolic healthy. And I would say that's kind of, they have loose standards. Like if you, as you know, like in functional medicine, we're looking at a tighter range of where does vibrant wellness live, which is where we get our name in functional medicine. Where does the body function the best? So we want triglycerides even tighter

than what they want in the conventional setting. And most people, a lot of Americans have triglycerides above 100. And that is like that proverbial Paul Revere. Paul Revere. Not the LDL cholesterol. I'm glad you said triglycerides. Yeah, triglycerides above 100 is typically an indication

that the body's saying, I don't know where to put this blood sugar, so I'm gonna store it as circulating fat or triglycerides. It's gonna store it around the fat or triglycerides. It's gonna store it around the liver and spike those liver enzymes, AST and ALT. It's gonna start raising that A1C, that three-month average. And there's, depending on the study that you cite,

it's about four to 10 years prior to someone having type 2 diabetes, that some of these people were on this insulin-resistant spectrum. For most people, it didn't happen overnight. And that's high triglycerides and that low HDL. So triglycerides above 100, HDL below 59. That ratio is a proverbial metabolic Paul Revere.

And if you're a history nerd like me, Paul Revere didn't actually say in effect, the British are coming. But to use that analogy, it's saying diabetes is coming. And if you don't do something about this, and this, you may feel fine. You may feel like, ah, I'm just getting older. Maybe I'm just a little tired. Those are check engine lights.

That your body's saying, you know, let's figure out what's going on. So metabolic health, and when I say metabolic flexibility, or when we talk about metabolic flexibility, it's the ability to burn both sugar and fat. It's the flexibility to be have energy and have optimal mitochondrial function. Most people are stuck in the sugar burning mode. They're hangry, which is hungry and angry is evil spawn. They're irritable. They feel like a shell of themselves. And then they gaslight themselves and then they say, I'm just getting older.

They get gaslit from doctors because the doctors are just screening for these big pathologies. And then they go for years not living their best life and they settle for it. So that's what we're talking about with metabolic health. That's great. And a lot of people's emotion is so tied to food,

which is another indication that, you know, your moods didn't shift before you, after you eat, not by much anyway. I mean, you're right. But when you have these, an emotional roller coaster that follows your hunger patterns and eating patterns, I mean, that's a sign that you are metabolically unhealthy or metabolically intolerant, whatever you want to call it. Because, you know, if I don't have to eat,

I don't have to eat, I don't have to eat, I have to eat right now. And then you're hangry, and you eat, and then your mood returns to normal, and then it tanks again as your blood sugar crashes and you have an afternoon crash. I mean, so those kinds of cycles are not normal pathic in terms of how our emotion and eating should be,

you know, tied into each other. Like many of you, the hardest thing for me is to shut off my mind at night when I wanna sleep. And it's funny because sometimes I'll wake up tired, already thinking of when I'll get back to bed again, but exactly the moment that I lay my head on the pillow, it feels like the machine of crazy what if thoughts is turned back on.

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That's also why I love shopping at Buy Optimizers. Go now to buyoptimizers.com forward slash ultimate to get your sleep breakthrough and find out this month's gift with your purchase. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. So what would be the big markers for people to check? So check engine light is triglycerides over 100, HDL below 59.

And what kind of supplementation addresses that? Mega three fatty acids or what have you. And what are some of the other markers that they should be looking at? Some other ones that I would recommend. And look, these are conventional apps. Like yeah, we can run them in functional medicine and we do for people around the world,

but you don't, you can go to your PCP, your GP, your endocrinologist, and ask for these. So A1C, that's a three-month average, every blood sugar. We want it at the very least under 5.6. Yep. We want fasting- That's the doorstep of pre-diabetes, I mean, ideally, yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. So this, these exist on a spectrum. We want fasting glucose to be under 90. I want, I mentioned triglycerides HDLs or triglycerides under 150 HDL above 59. I want the, I think these, when you look at metabolic syndrome, these people typically will have high sensitivity C-reactive protein to be off. So you'll see HSCRP, even if it's not through the roof, you'll see it above one, which the American Heart Association at the CDC

want it in the optimal range under one. We would want it under one as well in functional medicine. Homocysteine, which I mentioned earlier, it's an amino acid. It's supposed to be recycled down into methionine, but it acts like a neurotoxic even subclinical like just slightly elevated homocysteine has been linked to increasing blood brain barrier permeability or what they call leaky brain syndrome, which is, and when I say it, it's

kind of like people like what my brain is leaky. It's not right. It's linked to cardiovascular disease too. So we want homocysteine to be under seven. We would run what's called a nuclear magnetic resonance and MR test, which I'm sure you run to it's like we want this small dense LDL particles to be as low as possible. Those are the not the cholesterol. They're the protein carriers of

cholesterol. So it's not the cholesterol that's the problem. It's the inflammation or oxidation of the particles that the protein that carries cholesterol. So glad you're saying that. So, because, you know, I liken cholesterol to a fireman, right, I mean, when there's a fire, the fireman shows up to put it out, when there's damage to the endothelial wall

or other cascades going on, you know, cholesterol shows up to sort of plug the hole, if you will, or repair it. And then we blame cholesterol because it's at the scene of the crime for pulling the trigger. And we try to shove cholesterol down as low as we possibly can, especially LDL cholesterol.

I actually did an amazing podcast with Dr. Asim Alhotra. Oh yeah. Do you know him? Yeah, yeah, I love him. He's a great, great, great dude. I want his accent, you know? I feel like anything you say in a British accent,

just like if you're a dude, it makes you more attractive and like more intelligent. And if you're a dude, it makes you more attractive and more intelligent. If you're a chick, it makes you much more attractive. I thought about actually developing one. Yeah, we just sound so more erudite. But then I would forget to do it. We may have a... It's like Sean Connery was the ultimate...

And then your wife would be like, why are you walking around with a British accent? I don't know, babe. Just doing it now. It sounds bloody well to me. I did a podcast with him, we went deep down the rabbit hole of cholesterol, but then conventional medicine comes in, shoves cholesterol down as low as they can,

40s, 50s, 60s, not addressing the underlying metabolic issue, not addressing the toxic soup that people are baiting their cellular biology and that got them into that place in the first place, just using medication to lower that one marker. And what we saw in the big data pools was, you know, then there comes the joint pain and the brain fog and the short term memory loss and all the other consequences to cell walls, cell membranes, hormones, that sort of thing. And so I love that we're talking about becoming metabolically healthy

because I feel like this is the hub of the wheel and you can affect all the spokes by fixing your metabolism 100%. And that has a lot to do with what you put in, what you're drinking, what you're eating, how you're serving your body, how you're drinking, what you're eating, how you're serving your body, how you're sleeping, how you're exercising. It's all of the, I even like to term lifestyle medicine

more than functional medicine. Yeah, it's more descriptive to the average person out there. Because it makes people realize that my lifestyle has the greatest impact on my health outcomes. And I don't care how good your physician is, if you're not sleeping and you're eating a highly processed diet and you're not moving your body

and you've got unresolved trauma and you're not in any kind of circadian cycle at all, there's almost nothing that they can do for you other than manage your symptoms. And it's so empowering to know that if I took these lifestyle choices back under my control, I would have these incredible health outcomes. And so many Americans, they feel disempowered.

They think there's something above them. It's inaccessible. And they see Social media is a double-edged sword, right? We see all everybody's highlight reels and you feel like I could never do that But a lot of the things that we would say are probably some of the biggest needle movers for the average American or person out There Western or out there anywhere you live are Accessible. I mean a lot of my telehealth patients You know contrary to what you may hear on social media

Are just normal nine to five people. Right? They're just people that have a why bigger than their excuses and they're realizing I'm gonna break Generational cycles I'm gonna change the culture of my family You do not have to be a one percenter and look I totally agree you don't yeah, right And that is we're there for those people too But I don't want to limit this to just being like this elite thing where, no, I want this, I was on a call with some heads of Walmart the other week

because they wanna know about this whole ma-ha thing because the Walmart customer is wanting, they're becoming literate when it comes to reading labels. I love that. So to me, this is about that special time that we're talking about. Yeah. That it's like we're hopefully there's more aha moments from people that shop at Walmart that is normal nine to five people that are like you know what I can't do all the things but I want to do something for my health which is more than we can say historically. The

fact that the awareness is making it down to that level, my excitement about Maha, and for the record, I'm not in any kind of official government position or anything with Maha, other than that we support the movement and we support Bobby Kennedy and go to events, get the word out, that sort of thing, and try to have a positive influence on how this gets implemented, at least in the court of public opinion. Um, but what's so exciting to me is the opportunity to potentially affect public policy and really go from the top down and had to be, you know, someone at the top

because of the corruption in our nutritional research, because of the corruption in our food supply, because the unnecessary levels of, uh, of poison in our food supply because the unnecessary levels of, of poison in our food supply because of unnecessary subsidies, in my opinion, for some of the most highly processed foods on the planet. And a lot of choice that I think the average American is forced to make is a choice based on price and availability. And it's grains, corns, flowers, soy, wheat. Those are all your most affordable, most widely available and inexpensive products.

And so obviously your dollar's gonna go a lot further if you're buying these subsidized commodities and foods than if you even tried to go organic. I heard Max Lugavere say one time on a podcast, he's like, if you're if you're a grocery store has a health food section, what does that say about the rest of the story? What's the rest? So true. Why should we have a health food section? Why

wouldn't it just all be health food? Yeah, why are we there? So, so let's take a step further. Because, you know, my audience is pretty educated on metabolic health and they're very interested in some of the specifics. Everybody is on this journey, you know, to be the best version of themselves. I call it the ultimate human version of themselves. And on this journey, the things that we chalk up

to a consequence of aging, brain fog, weight gain, water retention, poor sleep, poor focus and concentration, you know, lack of libido. And when you bring in the toxic burden on people, I'd like to talk a little bit about how the toxic burden is impacting autoimmune conditions, because the one thing that we absolutely saw in our clinic system, and especially lately, like last five years, is this just parabolic rise. Everybody has Hashimoto's, Crohn's, high ANA titers,

you know, speckled ANA titers, and then they go to the primary care and they're like, that could be MS, it could be lupus. You start dropping words like that on somebody, even though they're not necessarily indicative of those specifically, but they're markers that your immune system is in a fight. And then they don't know where to start.

And most of the time they're told, because I have clients that I'm working with right now, including some very well-known clients that everybody listening to this podcast knows, that just recently went to their physician, had these high ANA titers, and in a four month span of time, were told they have Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroid,

and now are being told that they've got autoimmune markers for something potentially more sinister like lupus or scleroderma or some connective tissue disorders because of these high speckled A and A titers. And it absolutely freaked them out. And in my conversation with them in the clinical team, we calmed them way down to say, listen, we're just gonna clean up the environmental burden.

And then we'll see if this helps address that issue. So let's start with thyroid, like Hashimoto's, because that is a massive one. Yeah, it's the most common autoimmune disease, right? And I think historically the first, maybe the first autoimmune condition discovered in science, I think it was, early 20th century maybe. And I always find it interesting that guys wanted to name

an autoimmune condition after themselves right Hashimoto's Addison's I don't really thought about that. I don't maybe if your life's work is that maybe you would but to me It's like I don't want a disease. Yeah, I like a little disease or Breckos thyroiditis. No I mean more power to them. I'm sure they were brilliant people. But anyways, it's autoimmune thyroiditis There's over 100 different autoimmune conditions. Hashimoto's is the most common one. But then there's an additional 50 above that 100 different diseases that have at least

an autoimmune component. And then every few years, we hear about more and more autoimmune components to this and to that and to this. The things that we weren't even classified a decade ago as autoimmune now are finding autoimmune components. So if you break that word down, auto, that prefix self immune, it's when the immune system turns against itself at that event that they sort of seminal event within autoimmunity called molecular mimicry that case of mistaken identity when the immune system is Tagging antibodies flags for destruction to destroy so against the thyroid

It's against thyroid proxidase the enzyme that makes the thyroid or thyroid globulin, which is the thyroid protein itself But then that you can think about all sort of colitis. It's in the guide Crohn's it's in the guide MS It's in the myelin sheaths show grins. It's, it's the connective tissue, lupus, it's connected tissue, Sjogren's can impact the dry eyes and the dry mouth, and rheumatoid arthritis, the joints, so we can go on and on, but that molecular mimicry is that connective mechanism within all autoimmunity. And then you think of how researchers even describe molecular mimicry. It says the immune... they describe it as the immune system losing recognition of self.

Which you think about that on a physiological level that's happening. But then you think on a mental, emotional, spiritual level. The immune system, that person losing recognition of self. And then the research around stress and trauma. And when you talk about Hashimoto specifically, there's a lot of stress and trauma component where these genetic variants that are associated with autoimmunity, like MTHFR is highly associated.

It's not, the genetics, depending on the study that you cite, it's anywhere between 77 to 91% of the autoimmune inflammation puzzle is due to epigenetics. It's the lifestyle stuff that we're talking about here. Totally agree. So genetics are part of it, like MTHFR, like HLA, like other gene variants that researchers,

endocannabinoid system too. But the majority of it is environmental. So that's why we're seeing epidemic rise of Hashimoto's disease. You're right. These levels, these TPO, TGA thyroid antibodies are high in so many people. But how did the, how does, what is it about the toxicity that causes the immune system to then say, okay, I'm going after the thyroid peroxidase.

I'm going to. Normally there's different areas, but if you look at the when is the switch get flicked? Normally it's leaky gut syndrome Normally when you look and I would say most of the research is being done is there's some sort of breach of the intestinal lining so undigested food proteins and bacterial endotoxins called lipopolysaccharides these bacterial toxins and ground-negative bacteria Are passing through the gut lining because there's these proteins that govern gut lining permeability

called occludin and zonulin. Think of the Z in zonulin, this protein that protects the gut lining, the tight junctions of the gut as a zipper. So if there's increased zonulin antibody activity, increased zonulin activity, you're gonna have things breach, getting from the gut into the bloodstream.

And that is at least part of it that researchers have looked at for the past 15 or 20 years or so as this event of what's happening as to why this molecular mimicry is happening. Because the immune system sees undigested food proteins, sees bacterial toxins and says, what the heck? It's not actually saying what the heck, but I'm speaking for your immune system right now. And it is tagging the undigested food proteins with that flag for destruction, the antibody,

and then cross-reacts because it's similar enough in structure, the thyroid is similar enough in structure that it's attacking the thyroid, but then it could be the joints, the gut, the brain, and for anything. So we have to look at what's destroying that gut lining. And these environmental toxins like glyphosate, we talk about herbicides and pesticides,

what it's doing to decimate this gut garden, the gut microbiome, big part, microplastics, when they're finding it, 90% of human tissue, there's not a healthy amount of microplastics in the human body. And we should not be like healthy amount of microplastics in the human body. And we should not be like microdosing microplastics, but we are doing more than microdosing these plastics.

Yeah, I heard on average, was it Dr. Gundry that I saw on a podcast? I heard on average about a credit card a week. So you just like, instead of throwing your credit card away, just eat it. And that's about as much plastic. Yeah, don't do that. But we are doing that without even wanting to do that.

That's what I mean, yeah. Over the last 20 years in human biology, one compound I've trusted again and again is NAD+. It's critical for energy, focus and cellular repair. But your levels drop around age 30. I used to administer NAD via IVs in my clinics, but now I take Roe Nutrition's Liposomal NAD, the first oral formula that actually works. Their advanced delivery tech gets NAD straight into your bloodstream.

I take one teaspoon daily and the results are real. Clean energy, sharper focus, and better recovery. You can try it risk-free with the ultimate 15 code at checkout for 15% off. Just put in ultimate 15 at checkout, you'll receive 15% off and your cells will thank you. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. The gut and I want to go into that in a second because, you know, I've often described some of these conditions as, you know, when an invader hides inside of a tissue or a cell, the immune system will go after that.

You know, like the police chasing somebody inside of a, you know, locked home, you know, if the offender runs inside, locks the door, the police are gonna come bust the wall down. The immune system does the same thing, you know, when it chases invaders, mold, mycotoxin, metals, viruses, very often these things harbor inside of healthy tissue or inside of, they harbor in the dorsal ganglion,

they harbor inside the cell wall. And so how does the immune system get in there? It cross reacts with the protein in the healthy cell. And so how does somebody go about, if they have one of these conditions, first of all, how do they go about testing to find out, well, what is it that I might have? And then how do you best suggest

that they go about healing the gut? Yeah, so the first part of the question, you said how do they find out? Yeah. If we're looking, and this is a oversimplified Venn diagram, that they go about healing the gut. Yeah, so the first part of the question, you said how do they find out? If we're looking, and this is a oversimplified Venn diagram, but when we started the conversation with these people that don't necessarily have high, these conventional inflammation markers like HSCRP,

they don't have maybe super high homocysteine, their metabolic labs look pretty normal. There are obviously a lot of people that have, as I mentioned, 93% of the United States don't have great looking labs. But then there's this other group of people that have these normal markers, but these other biotoxin inflammatory immunological type labs. And then of course, many people can have both. And you're right, if someone has a poor metabolic health, it's gonna exacerbate all, it's a gasoline on that inflammatory fire if somebody has insulin resistance.

So you wanna check all these box, like look at metabolic health like we talked about, look at those labs that I mentioned, but then look at these other autoimmune type labs and things that will perpetuate these inflammatory flare ups. So to understand inflammation, 75% of that's in the gut. So if I'm thinking of the average person out there,

like how do I get more bang for my buck on where do I understand the predominance of where my immune system resides? It's gonna be in the gut. So getting a good microbiome lab is a good place to start. To look at this landscape, depending on the study, upwards of 100 trillion bacteria in the gut, we have about 30 trillion human cells.

We're exponentially more bacteria than human. The sort of this. I think in the 90s, when there was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, remember the villain, Krang, where the brain was inside of the robot, I don't know. I'm like, that's how I feel like we are.

We all have Krangs that are like regulating our mood and our immune system and all of that stuff. Well, that's two thirds of the immune system. So to look at where inflammation originates, there's a lot of gut centric drivers of inflammation. So I would look at the gut and then look, look at these environmental toxins. I get a good blood and urine tests

to look at these biotoxins like bacteria, viruses and mold. Look at the environmental toxic load like these herbicides, pesticides, microplastics and forever chemicals, and heavy metals. Look, we have to understand the two thirds of that autoimmune puzzle. We have to look at the epigenetic variables of why people have these issues. And then we have to look at the one third.

Because I think looking at genetics helps you understand your own bioindividuality. Because you can say, oh yeah, I don't methylate as well. Oh yeah, I don't detox as well. Oh, I have this HLA gene variant, so my immune system isn't as good at calming down whenever I'm exposed to a stressor or a virus or something like this. I've used one called Vibrant Labs. I like them.

You like them too? Are there any others that you recommend? Yeah. And by the way, I have no connection with Vibrant Labs at all. Vibrant Labs is great. There's a lab, I'm always forgetting, because they changed their name, it was called Dun'm always forgetting, because they changed their name.

It was called Dunwoody Labs, but they changed their name. Yeah, they're not usually the conventional ones that you get in like Quest or LabCorp, or one of the conventional big laboratories, unless your doctor's really skilled at putting those codes. But look at environmental toxin panels. Cyrex is another one. Cyrex, okay.

Yeah, there's a lot of, I would say, blood, urine, saliva labs that will look at the immune system in this way, both the gut microbiome immune system and then these environmental toxins, both manmade and not nature toxins. And you talk too a lot about the emotional connection with the gut.

And I rarely hear functional practitioners talk about emotion in the gut. And I rarely hear functional practitioners talk about emotion and the gut. And I talk about the Blue Zone studies all the time because I think people shoot past the deeply emotional connection there that there was no continuity between diets in these centenarians, but there was a few things that were contiguous

and non-negotiable. One was sense of community and purpose, which I think is another way of saying our emotional state, our emotional wellbeing. And the other was mobility into later in life. And so I wanna come back to that emotional connection with the gut because I think this goes right to the heart of why the majority of autoimmune disease

is found in women. And I think historically, if you look at female behavior within a familial setting or relationship setting, they tend to be, sorry guys, and I'm one of you, so I'm not throwing us under the bus, but they tend to be more selfless, you know, more putting other people first before the needs of themselves.

And there's only so many debits you can take, from the account before you need some credits. And by that I mean, so far you can put yourself in the back seat. So I'd love to talk about the emotional connection. It's massive part of my telehealth clinic. For people, I didn't say this, but I started the first functional medicine

telehealth clinic like 15 years ago. So I'm like a super nerd when it comes to this stuff. 10 hours a day, I need to get out more. That's why I'm so excited. It's a day to hang out with you, but also I don't get out of that dang room very often. Did you come all the way, oh, because you're just doing telehealth stuff?

Yeah, I'm in a room talking to people online, which I love. It's a blessing. It's a sacred responsibility for me. But I need a break too sometimes. So this is my I go to Gary Breck is place to hang out. Yeah Have some have some HBO tea

Yeah the so that's my for people that don't like my the context of which I'm speaking with is not some theoretical pontification it is like just real people getting them healthy and I love what I get to do. Sorry, what was the question? Yeah, the question is about the emotional impact. I mean, because I think that we use stress as this sort of catch-all frisbee we toss in the air. And I can't tell you how many people

go to their primary care docs and they're like, eh, there's nothing really wrong with you. Just get stress out of your life. What the hell does that mean? I mean, do I just quit my marriage, not talk to my kids and not go to work? Because that's where I get my stress from. My marriage, my kids, my job.

Most people can't do that. I would not recommend everybody do that. Some people should. No, I'm saying it's sort of, it's not, nobody drills into it and says, well, get stress out of your life. Well, how do I do that? First of all, how do I identify?

Well, then they stress about not stressing because they're like, oh yeah, you're telling me. I already know stress isn't good, but how do I actually decrease it and not just talk about it, which adds to the ruminating stress. So the gut and brain are actually formed from the same fetal tissue. So when babies are growing in their mom's womb, when we all were there, the gut and brain are formed from that same fetal tissue and they're linked for the rest of our lives through what's known as the gut-brain axis. So the vagus nerve is the largest cranial nerve in the body. It gets its root word from the, you know, I think it's Latin, wandering, the wandering nerve, and it's

responsible for that parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system. The resting, digesting, the hormone balance, the anti-anxiety state. So we have to look at the vagal nerve tone for a lot of this conversation. It's innervating, it's connecting the gut and the brain. The gut is known in the research as the second brain. Most of your listeners know that, but if you think about it, the intestines kind of even resemble the brain. 95% of serotonin is made in the gut, 50% of dopamine is made in the gut, stored in the

gut. So our pleasure and our happy neurotransmitters are made in the gut, stored in the gut. A lot of them are. And they work, they don't pass through the blood-brain barrier. The mechanism seems to be they are communicating through the vagus nerve. They're working on GI motility, they're cross-talking between the gut and the brain and the brain and the gut. This bidirectional cross-talk. So why we have to look at the feelings, like I wrote a book about this and I called it gut feelings because I saw that cliche of gut feelings. I just feel it in my gut.

I have butterflies in my stomach, a gut instinct, but gut and feelings and how the gut impacts the feelings and how the feelings impacts the gut or our physiology is an important part and you can't look and talk to people with autoimmunity and other mystery illnesses that the world would call that you can't do that for 10 hours a day for 15 for 15 plus years and not see the mental emotional spiritual component of this you're not gonna get them better if you ignore it. So I think that as a clinician, it just was compulsive because it was so obvious.

We're talking about things like unresolved trauma as a kid and chronic stress in your present life or both. And how, when you look at the research around the ACE questionnaire, the adverse childhood events or experiences, we have every telehealth patient fill that out. And we're talking about really heavy stuff, like sexual abuse growing up, and physical abuse growing up, neglect growing up,

substance abuse growing up, what's your parents' relationship growing up? And the higher your ACE score, you're more likely to have these autoimmune issues or metabolic problems, or obviously mental health issues. So it's a piece of the puzzle. you're more likely to have these autoimmune issues or metabolic problems or, you know, obviously mental health issues. So it's a piece of the puzzle. These mental, emotional, spiritual, the feelings part of gut feelings impacts the physical health so much.

So it's part of what this regulates. So as we're talking about environmental toxins, we have to look at these emotional toxins too, that are stored in our body. So it's an essential part of healing for me. When you say emotional toxins are stored, you mean that the trauma is stored, so it was kind of stuck in this feedback loop.

Cause it's not, the emotion doesn't create like a specific, you know, aflatoxin or something. It's that it's the dysregulation of the nervous system because of your emotional state. Yeah, exactly. The body has a memory, so it's living out the past as if it's still happening to some degree. So the autonomic nervous system, again,

simplistic way of describing it, but you have the sympathetic, the fight or flight or freeze or fawn, that sort of hypervigilant response, you're being threatened, right? That's the sympathetic. And the parasympathetic, that resting, digesting state, most people, that seesaw is out of balance.

Like sympathetic is overactive and the parasympathetic is underactive. What's governing that parasympathetic is the vagus nerve. So people have, researchers will refer to it as poor vagal tone. It's a weak vagus nerve. And the environmental toxins, like all that stuff we talked about,

unhealthy gut foods, inflammatory foods, et cetera, all contribute to poor vagal tone. But so does the mental, emotional, spiritual stuff. So yeah, it's not that it's literally, look, we're discovering these mechanisms every couple of years. Talk to me in 10 years, we'll understand even more. But as we understand it now, yeah, it's contributing to the nervous system and neural pathways living in this hypervigilant state and doesn't know how to calm down. And even that exists on the spectrum. Dysautonomia is the sort of end part of that. So very severely dysregulated nervous system. But a lot of Americans are somewhere on that dysregulated nervous system. They're stressed, they're wired and tired, anxious and exhausted, and don't know how

to calm down. Right. You know? And so what's the first step towards recognizing and maybe putting, implementing some lifestyle habits that are going to actually bring down my emotional stress or locked trauma or just my overall level of stress induced, you know, secondary syndrome. I would say, yeah, and for people to get,

like there's so much self gaslighting with it around this topic because it's very easy for you to find someone that's gone through worse than you and say, well, yeah, they had trauma, but you know, I don't have trauma. Like it's not that bad. It's not the event. It's the experience of that person, right? So there's even bio-individuality with that.

Like, you could have siblings that go through the same childhood and have completely different memories. Divorced parents and one highly traumatized and one was fine. One and let it go. So it's like, what's your even bio-individuality to and perception in which you handled that event in the past. So I would say an ACE questionnaire is a good way to go. It's not exhaustive,

because it's just talking about childhood. And there's a lot of things that can be missed if you're, as a clinician, if you're just looking at the ACE. Like I have to look at like relationships and life after childhood. And these are things that I'm talking about over an hour and a half, two hours

on an initial online console. Because you have to look at these things that maybe you never even went back to and gave it much credence, but it's a piece of the puzzle. It's not the entire puzzle, but something to look at. But you know, I would start, we could just assume it's gonna be at least a piece of the puzzle as dealing with that stress and trauma component. For some people, it would start, we could just assume it's going to be at least a piece of the puzzle, dealing with that stress and trauma component. For some people, it's a

big piece of the puzzle. For some people, it's a smaller piece of the puzzle. But I would say bringing in acts of stillness in your life is a good way to check in with yourself and start to like look at this thing head on. Maybe it's the first time you've ever looked at it. You know. Things like breath work and meditation can be very uncomfortable for people. Because they have never quieted their thoughts. They're so looped up and thinking that their thoughts and emotions

and not that observing presence of them, it's very scary. I mean, when you think of people closing your eyes and doing some meditation, creating panic attacks, that's, there's a reason why. Or than the average person, it may not be that extreme, but they may be doing some breath work and meditation and be really not good at it, you know? And it's the people that say,

well, meditation is not for me. They're typically the people that need to do it the most. Yeah, right. Because their nervous system is so disquieted, so used to being distracted and numb. They want to be scrolling the phone while reducing content on social media. They want to be numbing themselves with food. They want to be doing anything but being rooted in the present moment.

And that's a sign that that nervous system dysregulation is an issue. That you are avoiding what is within to heal it. And you have to, you know, that cliche of you need to feel it to heal it is very true when it comes to stress and trauma. And you've seen people that address stress and trauma have dramatic changes in their health outcomes. 100%.

Yeah, for some people that feelings part of gut feelings is a significant player. And I talk to people and they'll be like, oh, yeah Well, I I got the food down. I got the environmental toxin thing down, but I never dealt with this feeling side and for them That's a big catalyst and for some people it's the opposite right and they they've really dealt with the feelings part the mental emotional stuff They've done therapy. They've done EMDR. They've done trauma work, they've done somatic practices, but they have an unhealthy gut, they're eating inflammatory foods,

they have environmental toxins. So a both and not either or approach is how healing happens. However it's manifesting in your life, believe me, as someone that talks to people all day long, this is a human issue no matter who you are. Like you said, really wealthy, affluent people have these issues and very everyday normal people,

nine to five people are having this issue because we all live in the same dang toxic soup. Hi guys, Gary here. I wanna take a few minutes of your time to invite you to my ultimate human VIP community. This is a private community with front row seats to my most advanced health protocols, exclusive monthly Q and A calls,

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So don't miss it. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. So for people that, you know, not fully embracing the, you know, the therapy or meditation route, just like you said, finding time to just be still. And finding time to be present and silent, which I do every morning with breath work. You know, it's really interesting. I just had a free challenge that I do every quarter or so online, and it was an ultimate morning routine

challenge, and I invited some of the most impactful people that I do every quarter or so online. It was an ultimate morning routine challenge. And I invited some of the most impactful people in the world onto it. Lauren Reddinger, one of the few true female billionaires in the world. I had Mark Wahlberg on there. He called him from France and he was on a movie set. I had Stephen Smith on there from ESPN. The reason why I captured these people was because I wanted to show some of the most visible, very busy, like nobody would argue that, hey, Stephen A. Smith doesn't have a very, really busy schedule on ESPN.

He doesn't dictate his time schedule of games and appearances dictates his time, which actually adds a layer of stress. And what was really interesting, I found, that I had four or five folks on men and women both, all different areas of entertainment, sports, business. Every single one of them, without me prompting them, said that one of the greatest practices

that changed their mind was the practice of gratitude in the morning. And I will tell you, five, eight years ago, I would have been the first person to take issue with that. Even though I've been a Christian for a long time, a big believer in prayer, really didn't understand the impact of being silent, of being still, of being still,

of being present, and of just taking a few minutes for yourself, whatever higher power you believe in to be grateful, every one of them said that same thing, and then taking a few minutes to just breathe. And not a lot of time. It's had a huge impact on my life. And it really hit me on this challenge because I was like, here's people

totally different spectrums of the world, but all at the highest end of the socioeconomic spectrum for their field. And without prompting them, they're like, Mark Wahlberg says, first thing I do, I wake up in the morning, drop to my knees and pray. Yeah. Stephen A. Smith said, I find quiet time and I just say a little prayer of thanks for what, you know, what's going well in my life. Lauren Redinger, who just recently lost her husband, you know, very, very tragically, and her best friend, you know, said, I look in the mirror and I say, Lord, you're great. And the fact that that basic mindset

of being still and present in the morning, that small practice of self, you know, of gratitude, self-awareness, I think that does go lost a lot. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Gratitude is a powerful medicine. It's like, it should be prescribed in every PCP's office. And that's not to... Well, you don't see pharma go crazy.

What did you prescribe? You know... 30 milligrams of gratitude. 30 milligrams of gratitude. But the reality, and that's not making light of what you've gone through, right? If somebody like, just be grateful, just have positive thinking. That's not what this is about. This is about what really a present moment awareness

of just being surrendered to the present moment and looking at the good things within it, and then facing the dark parts and healing that through that. And I think intimately connected to gratitude and self-compassion. Like I saw a study that measured, they had people doing math and public speaking, two things that stress people out, right?

And they measured interleukin-6, two things that stress people out, right? And they measured interleukin-6, IL-6, which is an inflammatory protein. And they found that people that practiced the most self-compassion had the lowest interleukin-6 levels. Wow, and how do you practice self-compassion? It's so much connected to gratitude.

It's a gratitude practice. This is how you talk to yourself. Yeah, it's self-talk, exactly, exactly. Talk to yourself like you would a good friend. So many people are really harsh on themselves or this inner critic, and they're not really grateful, they're FOMO, there's a lot of, you know, comparing yourself to other people in your life.

There's not a lot of gratitude, there's a lot of self-judgment. And we have 30 trillion cells there, eavesdropping on our thoughts and emotions about ourselves and about other people. Yeah. And whether it's compassion to the world around us which that's a whole other level like there's so much lack of compassion to other people that think differently than us or vote differently than us or are differently than us we need to but that

so that compassion begins with yourself. Yeah, normally people that are really Judgmental to other people are really judgmental about themselves. Right, right. They're they're not Content they're not content. Yeah, they're content with them themselves. They're right. They're dysregulated right and it's easy to lash out Yeah, so but these things are more nebulous because it's easy and more prescriptive for me to say well these foods Do the xy and d or environmental toxins do this protocol. It is a lot more abstract It's a lot more nonlinear to say well like don't have that trauma or don't have that that ungrateful heart, right? Right. It's like you need to practice it and they call it a practice for a reason, right? We all suck at it Yeah, we all do.

That's why we need to do it. So whether you're in is breath work or meditation, whether you're in is prayer and really surrendering to God all the, the Bible says our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. So if you have any faith, it's gonna have some sort of similar concept. But like, how are we treating that temple, right?

And it's not just what we're feeding our body with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, like what are we feeding our head and our heart on a daily basis about ourselves and other people? And clean crap up, like elevate that temple because it's important because that shifts your biochemistry in a powerful way. I totally agree with that.

So, you know, back to the gut, you know, first of all, I wholly agree with you that, you know, finding a practice of gratitude or just taking some time to be silent or, you know, aware, breath work. I try to post every morning and I sort of do a, you know, play on words. I'm like, I'm taking my morning antidepressant, you know, and cost me zero. Or I'll say, you know, because I take a video of me doing the,

just getting natural light in the morning every morning, sunlight in the morning and doing breath work and I'll also often write down the side effects of improved mood, you know, better emotional stability, you know, clear memory. And no negative side effects. Yeah, no negative side effects at all. And it's free and if we would just realize the impact

that it could make, maybe we would actually make an effort to do it, you know, every day, because it's also portable and people can take it with them. And maybe the presence of that would be the absence of their SSRI or some of these other things. In fact, I actually saw a clinical study, Joe Rogan turned me on to about, you know,

exercises versus SSRIs and exercise had, I don't want to misquote it, but like a fourfold increase in the, you in the positive outcomes versus taking an SSRI. So, again, back to autoimmune, because I think the basis of autoimmune disease, and so many people listening to this either have an autoimmune condition

or they know someone that has an autoimmune condition. Every single one of us, every single one of us knows somebody suffering from an autoimmune disease. By the time you had thyroid and Crohn's disease and some of the big autoimmunes, it's everyone. And the fact that it could be this dysregulation from an emotional state, but also a dysregulation from the presence of these pathogens.

So let's pick one in particular, because we're in Miami, this is the mold capital of the world. I found out from one of the doctors I had on my podcast, I was like, oh great, I live in the mold capital of the world. We have a lovingly, when we have a telehealth patient from Florida, we're like, you're probably moldy. Yep, you're probably moldy.

Probably moldy. Where do you live, Miami? Yep, you got mold. Probably moldy, probably a piece of the puzzle. Yeah, so first of all, how do we test for it? And then what do we do about it? So remember, mold, the context around this is mold is everywhere, right?

So we're joking about Miami. It really can be any state. I have patients in very dry, arid place, and it's not, you know, in Arizona, for example, it's not the desert that's necessarily moldy, but it's their piping, their plumbing within their home. It's leaking behind the walls. So the more humid a climate is,

the more obviously it's gonna be conducive to growing more. But don't count yourself out. If you live in a dry, arid place and they go, I don't live in Florida, I'm fine. It really can be anywhere. It's just more likely to be in more humid areas. So how, and the other context is not all mold is toxic. So we have to understand what type of mold are we talking about? How much and how long have you been exposed to the mold?

And then what's your bio individual tolerance to that mold? That genetic, epigenetic puzzle, right? So all these variables matter. Because I think one accusation that we can get in functional medicine is like fear mongering around something like mold. But it's, people lose the context and the nuance. Like when I do a social media post, it's not a two hour consultation.

So forgive me if I give you statistics about mold and realize that, yeah, I don't want everybody to be freaking out But the reality is it is a piece of the puzzle and yes, we when you talk to people for a living It's something that's missed very often. So I wouldn't want to shout out like I just want to bring the awareness exactly like exactly So you answer your question pointedly just it's a blood a blood test Or your and or a urine test and I would say both are important because I want to look at the immune system's response to the pathogen whether it's a mold bacteria or virus and I want to look at if you can measure it when you

a lot of these things you can actually quantify the mycotoxins in the body so looking at the blood the immunological and the toxic burden of mold and then these other man-made toxins that can be exacerbating it. And a lot of these like Epstein-Barr virus and other things that can be reactivated are because of these other toxins. It's like the statistic is like somewhere like 90 some percent of people have Epstein-Barr virus antibodies. Right. 90 percent of people don't have reactivated EBV. So just because you have antibodies doesn't mean it's reactivated.

Yeah, yeah. There's IgM and IgG too. So you can see the difference between dormancy and... But I see a lot of people, they'll see like antibodies and then they'll automatically think it's a reactivated. Not necessarily, but it can be. And mold and manmade toxins can be something that's perpetuating these viral reactivations. So that's where you would start.

And then I would look at the genetic component because you almost always, it's gonna be this big aha moment. I'm like, oh, that's why I don't my I'm sensitive to mold, but my spouse isn't. There's a lot of like marital relationship gaslighting going on where it's like, they think they're a hypochondriac like the husband not to generalize, but the husband typically is like, yeah, she's hypochondriac. She's just making it up. But you measure, you run his genetics. He doesn't have the same methylation and HLA gene variants. So you could be in the home

and she's reacting very hypervigilant. Her immune system is very sensitive to it, but he's not. It's not healthy for the family. Our telehealth patients are typically that canary in the coal mine for family, because these things are carcinogenic. It's not healthy for anybody. So maybe the guy, it's just going to be this slow burner for decades

and it's going to be fueling cancer over 15 years, but she's having problems right now and she's going to save his life by getting that mold remediated. So good. So these are the type of things that it's not uncommon. Yeah. And you know, we see this with metal toxicity and other forms of toxicity. I mean, our bodies clear heavy metals, like they clear light metals just at a much slower rate.

Yeah. But you could have ten people sit down and eat the same amount of mercury-laden tuna fish, you know, over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah. And you'll have a component of them have, you know, critical mercury poisoning. Some have elevated mercury levels and the other don't look like they had any at all. So I think you're really on point, you know,

pointing out this individuality and how transulphuration and detoxification, glutathione pathways, all of these things matter in terms of getting waste out. And sometimes we don't think of the cellular waste, right? We don't think of this process of metabolism, cellular metabolism is a really kind of a dirty process and it creates a lot of junk that we have to get rid of

through transulphuration, through our detoxification pathways, glutathione pathways. So your genetics play a role because very often they predispose you to either healthy or slower amounts of waste elimination. And I'm talking about cellular waste. And so those people can, like you say, they can be more sensitive.

I was like that bucket analogy that I mentioned earlier. Like this, our patients typically have smaller buckets, right, because of the methylation detox, HLA gene variants. You can't change your bucket size. You can't change your genetic tolerance to handle stressors, but you can change what you put in the bucket. So maybe, I mean, the people that we're talking about here, they're like, I can't get away with anything, right?

It's like, I look at my friends and family and they're eating whatever they want. And I can't like look at a food and I'll have a flare up if I look at a food that doesn't light me back. So yeah, that's the epigenetic genetic interplay. And then, so then specifically, what did they do? Like if you found patients with high aflatoxins and mold toxicity and different variants,

are you activating their detoxification pathways like sauna, glythione, binders? First, I would say come to Gary Brekka's house. That would be seven steps. Come on over. Come on, I'm sorry. I've got everything here to get rid of mold. Oh, cat machines, hyperbaric sauna.

So I mean, look, yeah, I mean, what we do, if they have access to these biohacks and tech devices and therapies, yes, let's give it to them. But it starts with some basic stuff, right? It starts with, let's clean up the gut, let's lower inflammation levels in the body. Let's see how resilient you can be by just allowing your body to do what it was created for. Oh my gosh, amen. So it's like you, most people, yeah, like let's,

if we need to jump to hyperbaric, we will do that when we need to. But most Americans, they're not there. Like, let's just give, see how much of a needle moving capacity with the free and low cost and accessible stuff. I totally agree with that. And then from there, then we have in such, we live in such a blessed time where we do have access

to technology that our grandparents, great grandparents, all the generations before us never had access to. So, but yeah, so I would start with really, if we're saying 75% of the immune systems in the gut, really focusing on gut health. So we do a lot of souping and stewing, like things that are really gentle, calming to the gut, instead of lots of raw foods, being on very like a proverbial siesta for the gut. This

little break, this reprieve, this Sabbath, where you can allow, when you're brothing and souping, like just think having hearty soups for meals. And they could be bone broth based with lots of good meats in them and pureed vegetables or some soft cooked vegetables. And then when they have fruit, I even cook the fruit down, have people cook the fruit down as sort of a compote, like an inside of a pie. Because these people, their immune system is stressed. It's digesting even healthy foods is stressing

and already stressed out, got immune access. So by like boiling them down steaming them down to break up some of the hard digestible fibers Yeah, like that to to really Soften them release some of the nutrients and take them take the yeah Everybody has to start there But I'm talking about if you're you have to meet your gut where it's at and a lot of people are there because we've really Messed up microbiomes in our culture today. But, you know, carnivore, carnivore adjacent gaps,

there's a lot of different therapeutic food protocols that could be helpful to, from a clinical nutrition intervention standpoint, to calm inflammation, to untangle these inflammatory cascades. As far as like supplementation is concerned, like glutathione or some glutathione precursor like N-acetylcysteine, a great binder is going to be needed like activated charcoal, ZLA,

diatomaceous earth, modified citrus pectin we're seeing some great success with. And where do you fall in like sauna? I think we, it's a, I don't wanna say non-negotiable, but it's on my list of non-food, non-supplement protocol. It's one of the first things, if not the first thing that we recommend. So even if they don't have access to a sauna, like even a sauna blanket, like just getting the body sweat, get some exposure in Fred or traditional sauna.

And obviously there's a lot of, you know, better, better, you know, good, better, best when it comes to all of these things. But doing something versus nothing is going to move the needle. Most people aren't sweating enough. So yeah, supporting sweating detoxing is supporting detoxification pathways through sweating is definitely one of the first things we do. Ozone is another game changer. I totally agree with that too.

We were talking about the hawk and the... And how about fasting? I know that you've talked a lot, you've talked really extensively about fasting and why fasting works for some people, but not for others. Well, it's a hormetic therapy, right? It's subject to the law of bio-individuality, just like all these other things we're talking about, right?

It's like, for people that don't know, hormesis, it's the dose makes the poison, basically, right? And I've heard, I don't know if it's true or not, but the legend is, it was the concept of hormesis was a king in the Middle Ages that thought he was going to be poisoned and Thought his mom was going to poison him, which if you know anything about history, there was a lot of royal poisonings going on Oh, really? Move the older brother out of the way so I can sort of on the younger brother

Yeah, exactly. So this is the legend of Hermes is is that the the king took low doses of poison So if he was poisoned he would have built a tolerance to it. That's what fasting is, it's not poison, but all hormetic effects in the body, which cold plunge, hormetic. Sauna, hormetic. Fasting and fasting mimicking diets like the ketogenic diet, hormetic.

So the dose makes the poison or the dose makes the body more resilient, it's not a poison. Meaning that if you're always in a cold plunge, it frees to death. It's not good. But to say that cold plunging isn't good is it's losing the context of it. Same with with a sauna. You're not always in a sauna. You would die if you're always in a sauna. So intermittent fasting, fasting is still subject to that.

It's like, okay, who are we talking about? How long are we fasting? So the, the, the, it's the science and art of these therapies, right? It's pushing the body to be more resilient. It's tapping into what Paracelsus, one of the fathers of, he was the father of toxicology. He was known as the Martin Luther of medicine in the early 1500s in Switzerland. He called fasting the physician within,

which I think is a beautiful way of putting it. It's like an inner doctor that we can for free tap into. Some people need more of that inner physician, some people need less. So too much hormetic effect, just like any of these other therapies that I talked about, could impact thyroid hormones negatively, could impact a lot of things with putting too much stress on the body. But then to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is a horrible cliche,

but it is striking that balance where it is a needle mover is where part of my job is. It's like, okay, don't be all or nothing. What's the way we can bring this tool within your toolbox? And for some people, maybe they shouldn't do it at all, right? But I think a lot of people should, we should find a way to use it because it is a way to tap into these healing pathways, like increasing sirtuins, these sort of gate... I mean, it's pretty much nobody that couldn't just do a 24-hour fast, you know?

Yeah, right. Or even a 12-12. Yeah, not go too late at night. Just allow your body to fast through the night. Yeah. It's, I think we overcomplicate things. Back to our sort of addiction and dopamine, Or 12-12. Yeah, not go too late at night. Just allow your body faster than night. I think we overcomplicate things. Back to our addiction and dopamine, we're always wanting to consume, consume, consume, consume. So we're going to come up with all the excuses in the book to say why we shouldn't consume

for a day. Right. But the reality is most Americans could benefit from some time where we're giving the body a break. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And then we go down the road of, you know, we talked about mold, you know, mycotoxins, virals. Metals is another really, really big one. I actually accidentally got metal toxicity from a water machine

that I got from this doctor that convinced me that it was structuring my water. And I'm never that guy that just takes the device from somebody, he's like, oh, I'm just gonna start using it or give me your multivitamin and I'll just start taking it and see how I feel. I always am an incessant tester on things. We were talking about this before the podcast.

I started drinking it, it turns out, even though he's well credentialed, it was a modified welding machine that actually had lead welds in it, it was from China. So I got metal toxicity, and I've been very transparent about that with my community and how I'm walking myself out of it. You know, I did a provoked chelation test

and then eight hour urine, spotted the metals. What did you use for the chelator? Yeah then eight hour urine spotted yeah spotted metals what do you use for the key later yeah the MSO yeah and another one e gives you the second one so I take two okay take them orally 1 a.m. 1 p.m. chelation sauna detox yeah my glutathione use gut binders you know space them out between meals yeah and if I had dramatic drops and I do ozone on a regular basis I've got I use gut binders, I space them out between meals. And I've had dramatic drops and I do ozone on a regular basis, I've got, and I'm walking my way out of it

and I'm slowly in my VIP community, I'm posting about it so that people can see, are these levels coming down? Because I figure if I can get it, anybody can get it. And I think as we're wandering our way through life, and you've got these aluminum toxicity in the air, if you live in Los Angeles, just think about lighting a home on fire.

What kind of volatile organic chemicals and polyfluoroalkyls and bisphenols and all kinds of things, accelerants, leads, I mean, flame retardants. And so I noticed that they publish out there the particulate matter level. And I'm like, it's not the number of particles in the air. It's like, what are those particles? That's what matters is what are they particles of? Yeah.

Right. I mean, because if it's just like dust, tree bark, and sand, that's not that big of a deal, but if these are accelerants because of you incinerated, it's a structure which has all kinds of things in it, paints, and dyes and tar. That's a whole different ballgame. And so I think we're going to see a lot of, you know, unfortunately for people that were stuck in those environments, a lot of toxicity levels.

Well, the people are, it's analogous, I would assume, times, you know, exponentially more as 9-11. For the people that were at ground zero at 9-11, the things that they were breathing in, I mean, this is an entire metropolitan area of these toxic things that people are breathing in. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, so the final one is metals. So when we, and first of all,

testing for metals is tough because I actually did urine and blood and they were mediocre and then I did the provoked test and that, I mean they shut off the charts. Provoked means I did a chelation to pull them out of the tissue and then check them. That's common because they're stored in the fat tissue, they're stored in the body and it right, they're stored in the body,

and it's not in the urine just floating around all the time. It's not in the blood always floating around. The body's trying to protect you by storing it in the tissue. So you have to provoke, and put the lab in context if it's provoked, of course it's going to be higher, but that's in the body. That's not healthy.

It can just come from nowhere. Yeah, right. It's not like you are artificially spiking it. It's just being chelated out so you can measure it and see what is hiding from the basic tests. So urine-provoked tests for anybody where it's clinically appropriate, we should be looking at heavy metals

because it is an issue. So yeah, we have to, we ask. Once somebody finds out that they have them, where do they go from there? Well, look, I think the chelators, the binders that we talked about, the glutathione and glutathione precursors, sometimes more advanced chelation like the DMSL,

there's other chelation tools that we could do, but sometimes it's spirulina, chlorella, right? It's just like the basic food as medicine to be supporting. But yes, sometimes we need to be more advanced with chelation and detox. But I wouldn't start there if you've never done this. I would start with seeing have you had the issue, do the things that I talked about with lowering inflammation, allowing your body to be able to handle this stuff. And things like spirulina, chlorella can be great. Cilantro can be great.

The, I mentioned glutathione, liposomal glutathione, antioxidants like vitamin C can be wonderful. So, and sweating, right? A lot of the things we talked about with the biotoxins, making sauna, whatever you have access to, whether it's a sauna blanket, infrared sauna, traditional sauna and a gym, making sweat like at least six times a week, start off low and slow,

building up a tolerance to it if you're sensitive. But these are the things over time we can start getting that number down. The body's amazingly resilient if you give it the chance to do what it was designed to do. Yeah, I totally agree. Some people have more impediments than others, but we're not fear-mongering,

but you have to know what you're dealing with to do something about it. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around and say, yeah, we are sicker than ever before. And we're up against things that our ancestors, grandparents didn't have to deal with. Yeah, they did not have to deal with.

A lot of this stuff is post-World War II, and a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is like since the 1980s and 90s. So it's like, yeah, they were not living in the world we're living in. So of course we have to be talking about these things because we've never been exposed to more in such a short period of time.

What are some of the daily habits that are most contributing to the underlying cause of inflammation? I often say inflammation is the root of all evil, right? But you know, what are some of those daily habits where they're, you know, that are leading to increased levels of inflammation? Well, I would say we have to start with food

because food is something that people are doing every day, should be doing every day. What I call the inflammatory core four are gonna be the four food or food additive ingredients are gonna be the most problematic. And there's bio individuality, there's nuance in context to this, like there's always better for you versions

of all of these things, right? So it's not black or white. But I would say gluten containing grains would be up on my list. Now the interesting- Would you also say because they probably have the highest levels of glyphosate? Yeah, right. Is it the gluten or is it what we've done to it?

I think it's more what we... GMO. Yeah, right. Exactly. It's herbicides, it's sprayed with things. We are the soil microbiome. It's hybridized. So it's not like in biblical times, like ancient grains, einkorn. It's not what people are consuming now. But historically, grains stored well during times of famine. But now we're feasting on a famine food and we're not properly preparing it,

we're spraying it with tons of stuff, and we're over consuming it. So there's a lot of like, okay, it's not all or nothing, but it's something that a lot of people should look at because it is a gateway food because of the the clutid and zonulin, the leaky gut syndrome that can trigger then it clearly creates a cascade for lots of things I've never

heard of gateway food I've heard of gateway drugs but I guess a good good food I would say good gluten with glyphosate is a gateway food gateway food to more inflammation yeah exactly more food sensitivities etc yeah so number two would be of the inflammatory core four would be dairy. Again, it's what we've done to it, not the dairy. Right. Right. It's homogenizes, pasteurizes, denatured. The protein isn't what it once was.

The enzymes that help break down the lactose and the casein is beta A1, not beta A2. So humans would have consumed grass fed A2 raw dairy for thousands of years, but we've sort of, it's a shell of what it once was, what people were having. And so that would be number two. Third would be seed oils, which is a little controversial, but I- I don't know why it's so controversial.

It's being looped up in all politics, but it shouldn't be controversial. The overconsumption of omega-6, not enough omega-3s, the omega-3, six to nine ratio matters. Plus the manufacturing and processing of these things matter. Yeah, when you do you gum things with hexane and you deodorize them with sodium hydroxide. What could go wrong? My favorite thing is then the American Heart Association comes and puts a heart healthy label right on there. The average consumer is cruising

down the aisle and they're, you know, if I'm a mom and I'm getting this stuff for my kids and I'm cooking in the kitchen, I'm grabbing the heart healthy label. Exactly. Right? Yeah. So I don't think the jury's out on seed oils. No, I don't.

The jury's in on seed oils. Exactly. Well, yeah, it shouldn't be controversial. Now, there are, you could make the argument, I don't know if I would, but you could make the argument that there are probably better Versions like organic sunflower oil probably is better than a cold expeller press. Right exactly. So yeah, I'm not making blanket statements But you have to look at simplification and fourth would be sugar, right? Obviously even even the even the nicer sounding euphemisms like a gava nectar is a nut one That's like a lot of people within wellness are like, yeah

I'm having all these packaged foods that are healthy, but that's like a lot of people within wellness are like yeah I'm having all these packaged foods that are healthy But it's still a lot of added sugar and it if it looks like agave nectar It's it's almost greenwashed in a way where it's like somebody just squeezed the agave and poured it in the cup and it's so natural But it's still high fructose lacking fiber. So it's gonna impact blood sugar negatively, right? So that's the inflammatory core four, and then if I could add one, it would be alcohol, which I lose friends every time I talk about. Yeah, I mean, I've completely eliminated it.

I drank once last year, it was on New Year's Eve, and I regretted it. How was it? What did you drink? What was it? Tequila. But I was like, heark you drink? What was it? Tequila. Okay. But you know, I was like, harkening back to my old days when I drank.

I was like looking for that awesome, I was looking for my night was gonna go from a five to a nine and a half. Yeah, and it didn't. And then I would just suffer the next day and it went from, you know, it just stayed at a five and I still suffered the next day. Well isn't that interesting?

I mean that's a testimony, right? Because people's, it's so relative. If it went to a nine and a half, I would have been like, okay, maybe that night was worth it, you know? Yeah, right. You just need some methylene blue and some hyperbaric. Yeah, yeah, well I did, of course.

Then I punched myself and I was like, I did hyperbarics and red light in my whole circuit. You're getting the euphoria on things that love you back without the crash. And I think a lot of people, when I talk about alcohol or those foods, they think like, oh man, like that's a miserable existence. It's not. Like avoiding things that don't love you back

isn't restrictive. It's self-respect. So we need to get out of that sort of insane unhealthy relationship with things around us. Like, because continuing to eat things that don't love you back and wondering why you're still miserable, it's like staying in this toxic relationship and wondering why you're still miserable.

Like, get out. I call cold plunging my drug of choice because nothing makes me feel better for longer. If you've ever been high on your own dopamine for six hours, it's like you won't wanna do anything else and you'd start getting addicted to cold plunging. It's not about living, exactly. it's not about living this sort of ascetic monk-like life.

It's really, it's the best of life. Feeling great is a blessing. Yeah, well, I mean, Dr. Cole's been amazing. Thanks, man. I absolutely am bringing you back on the podcast for round two. I think you're doing amazing things in the world. I really deeply appreciate you coming on. You know, what we do now is I, for those that are part of my VIP community, we go into a private room and I allow the community to have some access to you because they they knew you were coming on and they're gonna can ask you some specific questions. So if you're interested in becoming an ultimate human VIP, just go over to the ultimate human.com and sign up to be one of one of my ultimate human VIPs. This is the community that I'm building to

change the world and I can't do it by myself, but I can do it with all of you guys. But before I end the podcast, we always ask every guest the same question. And there's if you've seen my podcast, you know, it's coming. There's no right or wrong answer to it. But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? It's being, it's having deep gratitude and it's living the life that God has called me to. And being, not thinking I have that entirely figured out.

Being open to not becoming overly identified with what I do, right? But just being a vessel for him in this life. That's what it means to me. Wow, that's amazing, man. Well, Dr. Cole, where can my audience find you? Yeah, thanks, man. Everything's at drwilcole.com.

The information about the telehealth clinic, the books, the podcast. My podcast is called The Art of Being Well. I'm about to be on it. Thanks, thanks so much. Yeah, but everything's there. I'm on at Dr. Will Cole on Instagram and TikTok and all that stuff.

Amazing guys. So we'll link all this stuff in the show notes and as always until next time, that's just it.