The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 270. Dr. Tania Dempsey: Mast Cells, Chronic Fatigue, & Hidden Inflammation

Starting point is 00:00:00 Right now, in my practice, 100% of patients with PCOS have Massel activation syndrome. Up to 17 to 20% of the population may have Mass Cell Syndrome and not know it. It mimics dozens of other conditions, allergies, IBS, anxiety, chronic fatigue, skin issues. Massile activation syndrome, it's a chronic inflammatory, multi-system condition. Everyone has mass cells. Mass cells are your front line of your immune system. They're helping us, but they can also damage us. They're chemical messengers and when their system is faulty, they can chronically secrete these without an invasion as if one was occurring.

Starting point is 00:00:37 Let's look at the root and understand, you know, that the mast cells are affecting the motility. They're causing inflammation in the gut. They're making it more difficult to tolerate certain foods. This is such a fascinating underserved area of medicine where we start really looking at root causes and how symptoms don't necessarily link back to the pathology that people are diagnosed. with, it may be something even deeper. But also, I want to give hope because I think there's so much that we can do. And that's why I do the work that I do, because I help people every day. For someone that's watching this, what would be some of the category of potential symptoms or

Starting point is 00:01:11 ailments, right, that they would be suffering from, where you would say, this might be at the root of that. I always think about it as three themes that we see very commonly in people who have this. One is in... Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Breka, where we go down the road. of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. Today's podcast is going to be one of those in-betweens.

Starting point is 00:01:47 I'm so excited about this guest. I was actually first turned on to her because of my VIP community, my most loyal followers that are part of my subscription program. It's an amazing community. And I let them know who comes on the podcast before I bring them on the podcast. And I also ask them for suggestions on guests that they'd like to see on the podcast. They find some of the most innovative people in all of modern medicine. A lot of the guests that have been on here, MDs, PhDs, researchers,

Starting point is 00:02:13 the people that are really moving the needle for humanity, but don't yet have a voice, have landed here because of my VIP community. So I just want to give a shout out to you guys. Thank you so much for finding Dr. Tanya Dempsey. I am so excited for this podcast. I'm excited to be here. Because I believe that your expertise

Starting point is 00:02:31 and you're board certified in internal medicine from Johns Hopkins, but you're also an integrated medicine specialist, which I find that it's like being an artist and an engineer. Like they usually don't exist in the same, you know, person. It's very, I think it's the ultimate use of the left brain and the right brain, you know, because medicine for so many decades has been so algorithmic, right? Like, if this, then that, if this, then that, you know, get to a diagnosis just slot it into one of the 38,000 categories.

Starting point is 00:03:06 that exist for us to define pathology and disease. And very often, you have to zoom out and look at the whole person. And, you know, as I did the preparation for this podcast, I pulled Malia aside my podcast manager and I was like, this is going to be one of the best guests we've ever had on. Oh, gosh. So I'm really, I'm super, super excited about this. I'm honored to be here.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Yeah. And I'm honored to have you. You know, you have a core competency in something called mass cell syndrome. And I'd love for you to give my audience a, you know, a little definition of what that is. But what's fascinating about it is it's underlying so many of these other conditions that people are suffering from, but just can't put a finger on. Yeah. So what is mass cell syndrome? Yeah, mass cell activation syndrome. It's a, it's a chronic, inflammatory, multi-system

Starting point is 00:04:02 condition. It's a syndrome, right, not a disease. We have to be clear, but there's a, it's a huge spectrum. The way I think about it

Starting point is 00:04:10 is I like to start at the biology level. Let's talk about the mast cells because everyone has mass cells. Mass cells are your front line of your immune system. So anybody faced with an infection, strep, flu,

Starting point is 00:04:24 whatever, their mass cells will fight, will help fight. They get into gear and they call in the rest of the soldiers to help them fight off the infection. So everyone has them. They help us deal with the environment.

Starting point is 00:04:41 They help us deal with our external environment, our internal environment. And they're pretty much everywhere. They're in every organ of our body. They're in our skin, in our brain, in our stomach, our lungs, our respiratory tract, just basically everywhere. Kind of waiting to protect us.

Starting point is 00:04:56 They're our front line. They're part of that primitive immune system. that just fights. And the way they fight is they manufacture these various chemicals, we call them mediators, and they will explode and release these chemicals in attempt to fight what they see as far and as bad, as danger. And when they release these chemicals, they not only affect what they're trying to kill, but they actually affect the tissues that they're releasing these chemicals in. Okay, so there's the good side of the Masso and then the bad thing.

Starting point is 00:05:30 side of the mass cells. So they're helping us, but they can also damage us. So in mass activation syndrome, what happens is the, so again, everyone has these, but in the syndrome, these mass cells are already dysfunctional. They're not just waiting for the next attack. They're actually constantly sensing that something is wrong. So at baseline, they're leaking these chemicals out, causing a baseline of inflammation. And that inflammation could be anywhere in the body in multiple places in the body, but most people will know that they always have, let's say, gut issues

Starting point is 00:06:03 or they always have joint issues or muscle issues or, you know, they usually know that there's a specific area where their inflammation is, but sometimes it's very subtle. And then what happens with mastole activation syndrome is those mass cells that are already primed, they then, when they see a foreign attack on them,

Starting point is 00:06:23 they explode even more. And then they basically go into this, state of continuous activation, constantly releasing these chemicals, causing more and more inflammation. So everyone was talking about the cytokine storm during COVID, that's partially due to the mass. So these are cytokines, histamines,

Starting point is 00:06:42 other inflammatory factors? Over 1,200 different chemicals actually have been identified that mass cells can make. Everyone talks about histamine, because histamine's an easy one to talk about. Yeah, but histamine is sort of a category, right? There's a number of histamines. Cytokines are kind of a category too.

Starting point is 00:06:57 is not just acetylachine. Correct. So these have, they're chemical messengers, and when their system is faulty, they can hypersecrete or chronically secrete these without an invasion as if one was occurring. But then, but then there are invasions. There are triggers in the environment.

Starting point is 00:07:18 It could be mold on the outside. It could be other chemicals, toxins. On the inside, it could be hormones. Basically, the way I think about mass cells is that they're really, they're monitoring change, changing the environment on the outside, changing the environment and the inside again. And again, they're supposed to help us.

Starting point is 00:07:36 But in mass-electivation syndrome, they become dysfunctional, they overreact, and then they start to react to things that they really shouldn't even react to. Normal people who don't, well, people who don't have mass-electivation syndrome would not even notice a particular scent, a particular chemical that, or toxin that,

Starting point is 00:07:55 yes, all toxins are, are potentially dangerous, but this is a level beyond what others would feel. And unfortunately, then it leads to this sort of multisystem inflammatory state where they are, you know, again, constantly in this inflamed position. Some of them have allergic type symptoms or allergies. You don't have to have. You can have asthma highs. IBS, those kinds of things.

Starting point is 00:08:22 Correct. But you don't have to have allergic type phenomena to have. to have mass activation syndrome. I always think about it as three themes that we see very commonly in people who have this. One is inflammation for sure. And then we say plus minus allergic phenomena. So some people have those obvious signs of allergy.

Starting point is 00:08:40 And some people have, they feel like they have allergies to pollen or food or whatever, and they get allergy tested. Very often, it's all negative. And the allergist doesn't even know what to tell them. Like, what's the reason that they're reacting, right? The reason is because these mass cells are dysfunctional. And they are involved in allergy

Starting point is 00:08:55 in some patients. But in this case, it's an allergic phenomenon very often. And then the third thing that we see quite often, which is a theme, is what we call dystrophisms or abnormal growth and development of cells. So we see things like tumors. We see things like cysts. We see things that affect the connective tissue, things that are affecting any growth or repair.

Starting point is 00:09:19 So even things like sarcomas and... Potentially. Really? Potentially. What is the... What is the condition with the fatty deposits under the skin? Well, there's lipidema. Lipidema.

Starting point is 00:09:30 Yeah, which is actually pretty clear that it is a mass cell-driven phenomenon. Right. Yeah. So, you know, my daughter was diagnosed with pot. Now, this positional orthostatic tachocardia syndrome when she was younger. She's 27 now. But when she was in her early 20s, she would have issues. And, you know, it's positional orthostatic, but you know,

Starting point is 00:09:55 she didn't have to change positions to feel this like hypotensive episodes, right? I mean, she would just feel faint sitting in a chair like we are right now. Sometimes it would happen when she changed positions, you know, and eventually we went down the rabbit hole. She was later diagnosed with Ellers Danlos. So she was, you know, hyper-mobile. And so this connective tissue issue led to all kinds of consequences because when you have hyperlaxity in your joints,

Starting point is 00:10:22 you also have another connective tissue. So, you know, mouths are hyperlux, joints are hyperlux. So this causes gut disruption. That's right. And, you know, I didn't really ever subscribe to the fact that she had this pots because even though she had some of the symptoms, I refused to believe that it was just idiopathic positional orthostectarkey. Right, I agree.

Starting point is 00:10:45 Cardia syndrome. So we just embarked on a massive journey to clean the tank. Right? You know, when a fish get sick, we clean the tank. When humans get sick, we don't do anything to the tank. We mess with the human. We worry. We worry about the fish. Right. Yeah. And so there was heavy metals. She had a mold mycotoxin infection. She's been very public about this.

Starting point is 00:11:10 We've talked about it on some of my detox challenges. And she had the MTHFR gene mutation. So we began supplementation, methylated multivitamins for that, red light therapy. But after we cleared the mold and the mold, and the mycotoxin infections, fungal infections, and reduced her heavy metal toxicity, it all went away.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Now, she still has hypermobile joints. God issues have cleared up, recurrent sore throats have cleared up, skin inflammation, you know, has cleared up. And I wonder if what we inadvertently did was fix a mass cell activation syndrome. It may have very well been what was going on with her. Yeah, what you did was you taught

Starting point is 00:11:52 the mass cells, that there isn't anything to fight anymore. The mycotoxins are gone, the heavy metals are gone. All those things are making the mass cells more reactive. So now they're quieter. Mass cell activation syndrome probably doesn't go away. Right. I think that's like the unfortunate thing that people don't want to hear sometimes. It may still be there.

Starting point is 00:12:09 She may still be susceptible. But they're quiet. Yeah. And she can live a full life. Yeah. Boom. I mean, you know, red eyes coming back from L.A. Or, you know, when she doesn't,

Starting point is 00:12:22 doesn't get, you know, sleep or she's in a high-stress state for a period of time, like when she's going through nursing school, we would see these conditions coming more frequently. They pop up because you know they're there, but there's so much you can do. And this is what I love about the work that I do, is to give people hope, right? Yes, there are these unfortunate things that can happen to the body, but there's so much you can do when you recognize what you need to do to keep your body healthy and how to keep your muscles safe. It takes time for a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:12:52 It's not as quick a journey because they don't know the stuff that you know. Thankfully, you're in the business. You sort of understand. But a lot of people don't know, right? And they're suffering and they're reacting and they can't leave their house. But no one has been through it with them to understand, you know, maybe the house that they're in, that they're sick and that they can't get out of is actually full of mold. Maybe that is, you know, maybe if they left or they were able to remediate, then they're massive. would settle down and they would, you know, recover and some of the things.

Starting point is 00:13:24 What would be some symptoms that somebody could be suffering from right now that's watching this podcast? As a lot of people watch this podcast for answers to questions they haven't been able to get. And by the grace of God, you know, some of the guests I've had on here have really changed a lot of lives. And so for someone that's watching this, what would be some of the category of potential symptoms or ailments, right, that they would be suffering from, where you would say, this might be at the root of that. Yeah. So really starting from like the top of the head and all the way down, headaches, migraines,

Starting point is 00:13:58 underappreciated basically due to mass cell activation syndrome most of the time, at least in my practice. You can see a number of different symptoms related to the respiratory tract. You know, people who have chronic post-nasal drips, people who have chronic respiratory issues, sleep apnea even. I would maybe even put in that same category. gut issues for sure, you know, this term irritable bowel syndrome is a ridiculous term. It really is. Just a category. It just takes all of the symptoms and gives them one name.

Starting point is 00:14:29 Yeah. Instead of giving it's not even a thing. It's not even a thing. It's just gas bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability and cramping. Yeah. And here's an antidepressant to help you. This is sort of like what's provided, right? But let's look at the root and understand, you know, that the mast cells are affecting the motility. They're affecting, they're causing inflammation in the gut. they're making it more difficult to tolerate certain foods. So, like, you know, that's a condition IBS that I think that we need to just stop calling it

Starting point is 00:14:54 IBS and think about it as a mass cell-driven phenomena. And again, I can go all the way down, hormonal issues for women. You know, we often see women have more symptoms around puberty. That's a sign of, there may be some of an MCAS-related issues. PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome as a mass-cell-related. Oh, wow. That's a huge one right now. Huge. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:15 You know, when I started my practice or when I started practicing, medicine 30 years ago, I was really interested in women's health. And so I saw a lot of women with PCOS. So I was really passionate about it. When I figured out MCAS, I realized that they're actually the same thing. And I would say, and as a doctor, you always have to be careful about saying anything is 100%. But right now, in my practice, 100% of patients with PCOS have mass el activation syndrome. Wow. So it is actually the same thing. Wow. That is phenomenal. So is there a definitive test for MCAS for Massel activation? There is. There is.

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Starting point is 00:16:30 Sleep chemical free. Visit theultimate snooze.com and use code ultimate for 10% off. Now let's get to sleep. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. It is challenging to test, okay? I'm lucky because I've set up a lab in our office where we can do the testing that's necessary. What we're looking for to diagnose it is we're looking for those chemicals that they're releasing. And now they release 1,200 chemicals.

Starting point is 00:16:56 We don't have tests for all 1,200. We have a couple handfuls of mediators that we can measure, and we can measure it in the urine. We can measure some in the blood. But the samples have to be so carefully taken care of. They have to be refrigerated at all times. The lab has to process them properly. So what we find is that in the community, a lot of people are trying to get a diagnosis and they're told we can't find anything. There's nothing there.

Starting point is 00:17:20 We have a little bit better luck because of the equipment that we've invested in in our office to be able to do the testing. But, you know, in a sense, it's a clinical diagnosis, and I always tell patients this, you know, if you have these, you know, a set of symptoms and we know that you have an inflammatory multisystem condition and we don't have any other explanation, most likely it's this. It would be great to test. We actually published a paper called The Consensus 2 Criteria for... I saw that. You've actually published a number of papers, not just that one. You've been a busy woman. Very busy woman.

Starting point is 00:17:52 I really think, because the work that I do, while I'm in the integrative functional medicine world, I also come from that, you know, conventional world. And I understand what publishing really does. Like, it really gives me credibility in the work that I do, right? I'm not just, you know, pushing supplements for no reason. I'm not just doing the things. I'm doing it because I'm studying it. I love that.

Starting point is 00:18:12 Now, you're talking about the publication 2026, diagnosis and management of patients with mass cell syndromes. It was 2020. Oh, yeah, I've got another one here in 2020. It's a consensus. This is a very accomplished young moment, by the way. Yeah, 2025. She did the utility of GOP1 receptor agnes in Massel activation syndrome,

Starting point is 00:18:32 which is an area. We should definitely talk about that. I'm also very, very interested because, you know, these GLP ones now, especially, read a true tide are being kind of implicated in their ability to reduce a lot of these inflammatory disorders and neuroinflammatory disorders and hormone balance and cognitive function. You know, I'm reading a lot of, they're not well, I think the conclusions are well authored, meaning there is certainly an impact.

Starting point is 00:19:02 They always say you just need further research. But they seem to be consistently pointing towards support. supporting a lower inflammatory state. I don't have the expertise to know what the causal link is between those. Maybe you do. Well, I can tell you why I think it's helping mass el activation syndrome. What we did for the study is we looked at 47 patients. It was a case series, essentially.

Starting point is 00:19:30 And which GLP did you use? Actually, we included both semaglutide and terseptit for that study. Okay. So Red at True Tide, we don't have the research yet. We don't have enough patients on that. And of course, it's not, you know, fully FDA approved yet. But I can tell you my anecdotal, you know, experience with it. But in that study, we just pulled in patients who were both on semaglutide or terseptide.

Starting point is 00:19:51 And we looked at, you know, before and after, basically, whether symptoms were before, whether symptoms were after. We included only patients who met this consensus to criteria for mass electivation syndrome. So they had to have a formal diagnosis. They had mediators that we found. So we knew that they had mass activation syndrome. And what we found was this incredible improvement across so many different, you know, parts of the body. And what we understand is that the mast cells, this is what's so fascinating about the mass cell,

Starting point is 00:20:19 the reason they are, you know, basically monitoring the environment is because they have receptors on their surface. So not only they make these mediators inside, but on the surface, they have these receptors that are like, I think of them as like satellites. They're basically scanning the environment. and things can bind to these receptors and send a signal. Well, mass cells have GLP1 receptors on their surface. They have GIP receptors on their surface. So these drugs are literally binding to the mast cell.

Starting point is 00:20:51 Wow. And sending a signal, you know, basically all is well. Nothing to do, calm down. Right. So it's basically stabilizing the mass cell. Now the mass cell is not releasing all these cytokines and chemicals and inflammatory mediators. and now the body can start to heal. And that's what we're seeing.

Starting point is 00:21:10 So it's a direct effect on the mass cell, which is really fascinating. That is super fascinating. You know, and I think so many of these chronic low-grade underlying infections, lime, mold, mycotoxin, fungus, you know, there's a whole class

Starting point is 00:21:23 of allopathic physicians that think that mold is completely nonsense. And, you know, I've been smirched for that too, that everybody has mold, mold exists in our body. It's been around for centuries. mold's not the issue. I would take the polar opposite side of that coin. Miami happens to be the mold capital of the world.

Starting point is 00:21:42 So congratulations, Miami. I have a lot of patients from Miami who come up to see me and they don't know why they're sick. Your clinics in New York, right? Yeah, we're in New York, yeah. In... We're in Westchester County. Westchester County, yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:54 Okay. So, and you have this lab in there, and you do blood, urine, saliva? Just blood and urine. and look for these mediators. We do all this, you know, we do these other kits that are saliva kids. We know, we do a lot of different things.

Starting point is 00:22:08 But the mass cell stuff is blood in urine. But a really good, reliable test is something you should probably do in office. Yeah. Right. So that you get the proper treatment of these things. I like to make a diagnosis because it opens up treatment options, right?

Starting point is 00:22:21 But sometimes you just can't. And, you know, I think like you have to treat the patient, not the lab work, right? And that's the problem that, with medicine in general, right? Everyone looks at labs and they say, oh, yeah, your thyroid looks normal. it's in the normal range and this is in the normal range, right? And we have to be careful, the same thing with mass cell activation syndrome.

Starting point is 00:22:38 If I'm measuring 10 mediators and they're negative in this patient, but there are 1,200 mediators that their mass cells could make, but I can't measure all of them, but they have all those signs and symptoms of it. I have to treat the patient. Yeah. So what's your frontline defense? Like, where do you start on a course of treatment?

Starting point is 00:22:59 So do you then, once you decide that they have mass cell activation, syndrome, do you then start looking for the villain? Like, now are you going on a dive for metals, for mold, for mycotoxin? Maybe an underlying Lyme virus is just probably the most mismanaged virus in all of modern medicine. It's probably the most pissed on, misunderstood, yeah, the bacteria, the parasitic co-infections. And how tricky the virus is itself, dorsal recanglion, you know, hiding in the dorsal reganglion, it's capacity to undulate, you know, go asymptomatic for periods of times and then be symptomatic. I think it doesn't behave like a normal viral infection. Well, Lyme is a bacteria, but you mean viruses in general? The virus is in general.

Starting point is 00:23:42 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when, so when, so now that you have somebody with Massel activation syndrome, what's the next course of action? Exactly what you said. We have to identify triggers. I always say step one is you need to know why they're reacting this way. Now, there are definitely going to be people who had triggers years ago and their mass cells just never stopped. And so I can't find any current triggers. That's a small number.

Starting point is 00:24:12 Generally speaking, we find, you know, chronic... They might say, oh, I had Lyme 20 years ago, I was treated. I don't think that's the problem now, and then I test them, and they have chronic Lyme, chronic Bartonella, chronic Babesia, chronic Epstein Bar, you know, et cetera, et cetera, right? Epstein Bar is another one that, for, I don't know for what reason, maybe it's...

Starting point is 00:24:30 long COVID, maybe it's related to the, you know, everybody emerging from the pandemic and having weakened immune states. But these, even the level of titers in dormant, what we were considered dormant EBV are off the chart. Yeah, I've never seen so many positive PCR tests for Epstein-Barr. Neither have I. Pre-COVID, we would, you know, make some assumptions if they had something called an early antigen antibody,

Starting point is 00:24:59 we would say, maybe it's reactivated, you know, it looks like, you know, but now we have PCR that's showing that the virus is actually replicating in the blood and one after another after another, I've never seen so many. Yeah. And that's proof. And recurrent, and dormant and dormant and I mean, and these cycles go on for years. Exactly. And they just wreak havoc on their daily life. I mean, they're exhausted. They've got brain fog. It interrupts their sleep patterns. It disrupts their hormones. It gives them non-viral symptoms that seem to be like mood and mental disorder kind of related symptoms, exhaustion, vertigo. I mean, the number of symptoms that I've seen come out of these patients that have these reactivations of Epstein virus is probably just as broad as mass cell.

Starting point is 00:25:50 But it's the virus, the symptoms are really, I think, through the mast cell. Because all All those symptoms- just the virus triggering the mass cell, the mass cell triggering the vertigo, the fatigue, and all these others, because all those symptoms are actually caused by the mass cell. Right. So I think it's the infections that are constantly spurring them on, spurring the mass cells on, you know, just like,

Starting point is 00:26:13 please, you know, just keep going, keep going, keep fighting. And so these people in this, you know, inflammatory, you know, soup constantly, yeah. Yeah. And do you see this on their like CBC? Do you see it on their white blood cell count? And where do you find this chronic loagate in? inflammation?

Starting point is 00:26:29 It's a good question, right. So, again, like these mass cell tests that we do, you know, we can identify, you know, we'll look for histamine, we'll look for metabolize of histamine in the urine called methyl histamine. You know, so there, those are inflammatory mediators. But sometimes you have to look elsewhere. You have to look at other, you know, inflammatory markers. Interestingly, a lot of mass cell patients don't have elevated, let's say high sensitivity,

Starting point is 00:26:55 C-reactive protein, for instance, right? Sometimes it will be elevated, but I'm surprised at the level of inflammation some people have and they have normal CRPs. Sometimes you'll see a little bit of like the sedrate, ESR, you know, maybe that will bump up a little bit. But still, the level of inflammation that they feel and have, it's not always so detectable in the blood.

Starting point is 00:27:17 You know, there are other markers. Sometimes I'll look at a VEGF. That's an interesting marker that can sometimes tell us a little bit about mass cells actually release VEGF. Some people believe Bartonella also makes the body release VEGF. Wow. So we can kind of use some markers as a gateway to understand, like, what are the things we have to look at? That's kind of how I, how I...

Starting point is 00:27:38 So what would be the typical villains that you would start to test for as soon as you saw, as soon as you confirm the MCAS diagnosis? So what I usually do, you know, when I see a patient, I'm not only thinking about MCAS, I'm also always thinking about the triggers and the other things that could be in that soup in them, right? So, you know, I take a history, and if there's any history that suggests exposure to animals, exposure to cats, exposure to fleas, or ticks, or lice, or, you know, there's all these questions that I ask, I make an assumption that they could have a vector-borne infection. And so I'm sort of testing almost simultaneously.

Starting point is 00:28:12 I'm saying, you know what? I think you have mass activation syndrome. Let's prove that. But you have risk factors for vector-borne infections. So let's test, you know, Lyme, Babi-Bi or Bartonella, maybe some other infections. you have fatigue, you have some of these other things. Maybe they have a history of a feeling worse after COVID. Then I'll do all the viruses.

Starting point is 00:28:30 Epstein Barr and CMV and H.HV6, many of them are reactivated. And so I'm kind of like casting a pretty wide net because I know that these patients are not going to, it's not going to be a simple process of like identifying MCAS and treating it. I know that there's all this other work that I have to do. I'm also going to concentrate and help put them on things to calm those mass cells. down, but I know that I won't achieve that until I get rid of this other stuff, right? The toxin load.

Starting point is 00:28:57 The mycotoxins are always, I get that history of, you know, were you ever exposed to mold? Do you have water damage? Do you have any, you know, evidence to believe that you might be exposed? A lot of people will say no. Mm-hmm. And you have to, you have to dig. Sometimes you have to show them the test to prove that they have something for them to go the next, you know, the next step.

Starting point is 00:29:19 But it's, you know, because people don't want to believe. Yeah. And also, mold doesn't always show up. It's not like... It's not always that pungent smell of mold. No, sometimes it's no smell. Because that's usually bad, bad. Right, by that it's bad.

Starting point is 00:29:31 But it could be in the HVAC system, you know, blowing in. You don't even know it. That's the most commonplace, right? So you have a beautiful house, brand new, no water damage, but it's in the HVAC system because it hasn't been cleaned properly. And it's literally blowing throughout the house. And now, making you sick. And again, people don't recognize that because they don't know what to look for.

Starting point is 00:29:51 So what do you do when you, I'm always curious about how you address EBV. These are current EBV infections. Yeah. Because I'd love to talk about EBV and Lyme specifically. So in, you know, an Epstein bar is not really a virus that you caught. It's sort of one you've had for a long time. And it can be mono being, you know, showing up as Epstein Barr later in life. So what makes it reactivate and is that a weakened immune state?

Starting point is 00:30:20 is it, you know, it doesn't necessarily need to be a full-blown autoimmune deficiency, but just a weakened immune state that doesn't allow the, you know, the virus to stay dormant. I mean, there's a lot of replicatory cycles. I mean, and I think, you know, a few people realize this is actually wound into your DNA in us, right? I mean, the virus is in there. And every time it's zipping and unzipping, it has a chance to raise its ugly head. And so it... It potentially cause cancer and other things, too, which people don't appreciate.

Starting point is 00:30:50 I think so too. I mean, there's a whole thread of evidence now of, you know, viral links to cancer. Because all cancer, regardless of its form or its origin, was at one time a healthy cell. So something caused the metabolic shift, right? It could cause the metabolism of that cell to break down, and now you have a cancer cell. So the question is, what broke the machinery, the metabolic machinery of the cell? But when you see these recurrent EBV infections, you know, I've used, a lot of these homeopathic remedies, eight week EBV remedies with some level of success. How are you addressing those chronic viral reactivations? Yeah. So, you know, so just to give a little background, right?

Starting point is 00:31:35 So most people, by the time they're an adult, have had mono, auto nucleosis, right? Some people remember it. Yeah, everybody's out of EVV. Right, but some people don't remember it, right? And so they say, how the cat can this be? I don't remember ever having mono. Right.

Starting point is 00:31:48 It could be a very mild, respiratory infection, you think is a cold, right? Some people have it more severe. Some people have it more mild. So you have it. And then these types of viruses, Epstein Barr is part of a family called the herpes virus family. These herpes viruses reactivate. You know, people who have, let's say, herpesy virus, you know, herpes simplex one or two. You know, they get cold sores or whatever, right?

Starting point is 00:32:11 They reactivate. They go quiet and they come out. Epstein Bar is the same way. So they're supposed to just sort of sit around and, and, and, and, you know, and, and, you know, sit in the cell and not do anything, right? But as the body gets stressed, as the immune system gets dysfunctional, if the immune system is trying to fight something else,

Starting point is 00:32:27 it's trying to fight Lyme, or it's exposed to mold, or you have a really, you know, really traumatic event or stress in your life, or you're not sleeping, right? There are all these different factors that then allow the Epstein bar to start replicating and leave the cell.

Starting point is 00:32:42 And once it leaves the cell, it activates mass cells and it activates other parts of the immune system. So actually the immune system becomes more dysfunctional, right? This is the problem. It becomes a vicious cycle of immune dysfunction becoming worse and worse

Starting point is 00:32:57 with more and more of these infections kind of taking hold. And so I always think about Epstein Bar and Lyme and all these other infections as really the weight to get to it. We could talk a lot about protocols and things that I use, but the reality is what I say to patients is that you're never going to kill

Starting point is 00:33:13 all the Epstein Bar. You're never going to kill all the Lyme. You're never going to kill. you're all your Bartonella and all the stuff in your body. It's there where we carry it all through our lives, even strep, by the way, which is interesting. You never really get rid of it. It can live in your gut.

Starting point is 00:33:29 But the key is to build your immune system up so that it can handle the infections. So how do we do that? So we think about, I think about, because, you know, my lens is the mast cell, so I'm a little bit obsessed about the mast cell. So I'm, no, I love this. I mean, it just explains so much.

Starting point is 00:33:45 Oh, I'm glad. Yeah, I mean, it really, it really does. One of my favorite biohacks outside of breathwork, by far is mineral salts, Baja Gold, sea salt. It's got all of the trace minerals that the body needs. You know, most of us are not just protein deficient, meaning amino acid deficient or fatty acid deficient. We are mineral deficient. So a quarter teaspoon of this in water, first thing in the morning will make sure that you get all of the essential minerals that you need. It tastes amazing.

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Starting point is 00:34:33 So, you know, I think about it as if I can stabilize the mass cell, then I'm going to also help the immune system handle the infections better. But I also have to lower the load of the infection so that the mast cells and the rest of the immune system can recover. So I think of it as a dance. You know, so we have to do a little bit here and lower the load. We're not going to kill all of it, but we've got to get them back into hiding. But we also have to work on that immune system so that it recognizes that it just can keep it at bay, right, so that the body can recover and heal. Right? So that's really like my approach to all infectious diseases at this point. Sometimes we have to lower the load and we have to go at it with, let's say, antivirals.

Starting point is 00:35:12 Yeah, we can use medication antivirals if we're talking about Epstein-Barr. we have herbal antivirals. We can do homeopathic things. We can do a variety of different types of IV therapies that we use that have antimicrobial properties. Ozone, you know, IV ozone. We use a couple of different ways that we do it. That is, it's a, it's a, you know, disinfectants, essentially,

Starting point is 00:35:34 so it kills. We, you know, we can use other things to help, again, the immune system recover by lowering the load. and that's, you know, that's what we do. Now, the other, one of the, one of the treatments that I'm really excited about that I think is, really has a more holistic kind of way of approaching this, but also a really molecular, scientific way is to use a technique called supportive oligonucleotide technique or SOT therapy. It's also now called Q Restrain.

Starting point is 00:36:05 And it's basically a lab that's able to create an RNA to match the DNA. of the virus or the bacteria or the parasite or whatever you're trying to focus on. Wow. And you actually can directly bind to that infection and cause it to stop multiplying and actually they die. That's my favorite treatment actually. So it's like a trained MRNA.

Starting point is 00:36:29 Yeah, essentially. Wow. And they make this synthetic MRNA. To match specifically the infection that you have. Where do they do that? Well, I do it. You do it. Come to New York, yeah. Yeah, you're like the Elon Musk of viruses over here.

Starting point is 00:36:45 Well, I have a lab that I work with, you know, I'm not the only one. But this is like, to me, really exciting because it's super exciting. It allows me to avoid a lot of anti, you know, microbials, a lot of medication, especially in my patient population that they're very sensitive. Yeah. Even to herbs. And a lot of, there's very little in the way of targeted immunotherapy out there in the world right now. I mean, there are a lot of blanket immunotherapies.

Starting point is 00:37:08 Right. but nothing that is targeted like this. And do you ever use things like peptides like Thimason Alpha to build the immune system? Love. Love. That's my favorite one. I'm a big one too. I'm a huge peptide. By the way, I'm working to get the FDA to allow that back on the bulk list.

Starting point is 00:37:24 Yeah, awesome. Marty, if you're listening. But, you know, it needs to be accessible because peptides are a game changer for so many patients. So you put some people on thymus and alpha, you know, there are different ways to dose it sometimes, you know, twice a week. but it just, it really does allow, you know, their T cells to come online, for the body to start working.

Starting point is 00:37:46 And sometimes I even see people feel their fatigue get better just with thymus and alpha, which is not specifically supposed to help fatigue directly. No. But the immune system is recovering. It's indirectly good. You know, it's interesting. I got to ask a really introspective question on a stage talk a few months ago. Somebody asked me, they said, if you were to put the top 50 experts in the world,

Starting point is 00:38:05 top MDs, PhDs, researchers in longevity and aging in a room, and ask them to agree on one theory of aging. What do you think that theory would be? It's like, wow, that's a really good question. I think we would all agree on the theory of immunophatee. You know, this, I'm not saying it's the only theory in aging, but a slow progressive overwhelming of the immune system, you know, back to the fish in a tank analogy,

Starting point is 00:38:31 little algae grows in the tank, fish is a little tired, fish is doing just fine. You know, you had two drops of chlorine, he's fine, and then you had four drops of chlorine, and then you had a little bit of bromide, and then you clog the filter. And, you know, eventually this micro-toxicity overwhelms the immune system,

Starting point is 00:38:50 and the tank, the environment, is too dirty for the immune system to properly function. And now... I love that analogy. You may use that freely, if you'd like. Yeah, no, I've heard you use the fish tank before. I love that. It's just to get people to start thinking about their environment

Starting point is 00:39:06 and toxicity and like, you know, I'm a big fan of a lot of these new blood filtration technologies in use for resists. Therapy Plasma Exchange, we're doing it in my office. Are you? You just do everything. I know, that's why my kids. My kids are always, like, oh no, what's she gonna come back with?

Starting point is 00:39:24 I go to another. Her kids are off camera, but she always been the mad scientist. Like, I can see you guys growing up and like mom's in there with like the chemistry set, you know. Pretty much. And they were. Back to the future movie. Yeah, and they were my subject.

Starting point is 00:39:38 They've tried a lot of things. They look pretty good though. They're pretty healthy. Yeah, they're healthy. I mean, he's got a little bit of a foot coming out on the side of the head there, but I'm sure, okay. No, but I think that, you know, finally the frontier of medicine is opening up. And we're actually starting to believe more in what God gave us than less than what man makes us. Meaning like the best defense we have to live a long, healthy, happy life is our God-given immune system.

Starting point is 00:40:05 And when it gets run down and disabled, or disabled, it not only can't protect us, it can't police us, right? I mean, because it does a lot of functions internally to regulate cellular autophagy and cellulosin essence. And so this really is like, you know, as a single source, healthy immune system is really our best defense against all cause. Yeah. Mortality and infection to disease.

Starting point is 00:40:32 So you have a patient that's positive for MassHealth syndrome. you begin to start looking for the villain. You find Epstein Bar, maybe underlying lime. A lot of people had Lyme years ago. They did the doxycycline for whatever, 21 days. They felt better. And they're like, okay, I don't have Lyme anymore. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:40:53 Right? Just like when I get influenza and I'm down for a week and then I'm back up, I'm like, okay, I don't have the cold anymore. Not realizing that you may still have it and be asymptomatic. And it may just be waiting for its opportunistic moment for the immune system to get run down again. we can again rear its ugly head. So these therapies of walking somebody out of these syndromes,

Starting point is 00:41:14 I want to read some of the links to this mass cell syndrome because up to 17 to 20% of the population may have mass cell syndrome and not know it. It mimics dozens of other conditions. Allergies, IBS, anxiety, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, potts, skin issues. And this is why patients kind of, ping-ponging around to different specialists because medicine is hyper categorized.

Starting point is 00:41:42 You know, you're going to a neurologist for this. You go to internal medicine for this. You've got infectious disease for this. And nobody's actually looking at the whole picture. And so for these people that find themselves in this myriad, where do they start? What other conventional therapies are you using? You're using things like sauna, gut binders. Do you look at diet, gut microbiome?

Starting point is 00:42:04 Is this all apart? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, great. This is all a part of. It's all a part of it, yeah. But I think it also has, what I love about, you know, my center is called AIM Center for personalized medicine. So it's all personalized, right?

Starting point is 00:42:16 So not everyone is going to be able to tolerate a sauna. You know, mass cells can be very heat sensitive. Right. So I have a subset of patients, interestingly, that do really well in sauna, but I have a lot of patients who don't do well in sauna, right? So maybe some of them just need to work up, you know, to it. So we have to start slower. Sometimes we'll never going to be able to get them into a sauna.

Starting point is 00:42:36 So we have to find other ways to detox. And so we're always looking at ways to, again, approach the toxicity load that we have to deal with, right? Because the reality is we're all constantly dealing with this. No question. Yeah, I mean, this is the life we live. And so a lot of people will say, well, why do you need all these technologies? Like, why do you need to do all this stuff? And it's because even if we're as healthy as we think we can be, even if we eat perfectly,

Starting point is 00:43:01 even if we sleep perfectly, even if we do all those things, right, we still have to fight against what we're working. to fight against what we're constantly breathing in and being exposed to, right? So I think like people should know that even healthy people still have to have to keep up with, you know, our bodies. But for people who are sicker, obviously it's a little bit more advanced, a little bit more complicated. So yeah, so I do all those things. What I love is we do a red light therapy.

Starting point is 00:43:25 We have a red light bed. I saw that you have a red light bed as well, right? So for a lot of mass cell patients, that has actually been really, really helpful in reducing inflammation, helping my end up. Interestingly, that was, not to cut you off of it, that was one of the biggest things that we implemented for my daughter when she had pots.

Starting point is 00:43:41 And which, the more you're, the more I'm talking to you, the more I think it was Massile activation syndrome by far, and we just inadvertently calm them down by getting toxicity out of everybody. And, and then, you know, I pointed to the mold and the metals

Starting point is 00:43:57 and, but really those were just the triggers, not the actual issue. Not the root. Not the root. so I didn't go deep enough into the soil. But red light therapy was amazing for her. Yeah, yeah, and it is for a lot of patients. So that's why I bring in all these different modalities

Starting point is 00:44:13 because I have to figure out what's going to be the easiest way, right, to get to the root, to all the roots. I love therapeutic plasma exchange as a detox. I know it's a little bit aggressive. It is aggressive, but I'm... Have you tried it? I've done it twice. And I've also done inus phreasis where they return the plasma.

Starting point is 00:44:31 So they filtered the plasma. was fascinating to me. So my wife and I did it for our anniversary. I mean, talk about nerd. That's definitely something I would do too. Hey, babe, I got you something great for your interview. You're going to love this. We're going to over to this clinic and we're going to get these dual canylus put in

Starting point is 00:44:49 and we're going to, but we have side-by-side beds and they'll play nice music. But we did it in Dubai and, you know, unfortunately you can't get the innes phrasis here. Not yet. It's coming. Yeah, I hope so. No, no. They're working on it actually. Oh, really?

Starting point is 00:45:01 I really hope so. because this whole idea of subtractive medicine to me is very fascinating, right? Not adding anything to the body removing. Removing. Removing what it's dealing with. You know, that's why, you know, sweat, stool, urine, detoxification, binders, you know, therapeutic plasm exchange, anisphoresis, EBO2 ozone with filtration. And I'm always fascinated by how much stuff comes out of that collection tank.

Starting point is 00:45:30 And you know what we did was we sent it to the lab as urine. Okay. Oh, right, right. So we collected in there. And because they actually wouldn't run the sample. They won't run it. Yeah, they won't run it. So hopefully the labs aren't watching this.

Starting point is 00:45:45 But so I sent it as urine. It shows you're in kidney failure. So you have to ignore that part because it's not actually urine. But the list of toxicity that comes out of those ebu treatments that ends up in that collection tank tank and causes all that bone and everything. Sometimes the top comes right off and it's foaming out of there. That has got to be good for you to take it out. And the same with the plasma.

Starting point is 00:46:14 We're still trying to find. I have a lab that I think is going to help us test the plasma that we're getting out of people. But you could see sometimes. That's really good too because right now they don't do it. Like Switzerland does it. Yeah, we don't do it. But I have somebody who may be interested in doing a study with me.

Starting point is 00:46:27 Wow. But you could see the color of the plasma. And the more you do, the treatment of the TPE, you'll see the plasma starts to get clearer and not as cloudy. But we're doing blood and urine analysis on patients pre and post. And actually, so we may not be able to directly test the plasma yet, but we will, but we can test the body and we can see the level of toxins go down. You know, BPA comes down, PFS, forever chemicals.

Starting point is 00:46:51 We're doing a study right now on forever chemicals. And it looks like, you know, it is removing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks like it's removing it. That's so good. That's what's amazing. Yeah, it's exciting now too because you can actually test the levels of microplastics too.

Starting point is 00:47:06 Yes, that's what we're doing. I've been reading a lot about the presence of microplastics in these fibrinogen bonds that are in these atherosclerotic plaques that are causing hardening, narrowing, soft blacking in the arteries. And biofilm for people who have long COVID

Starting point is 00:47:21 and some of these other infections and I can't get rid of it, everything is sort of like clumping together in the blood. And what do you do for those kinds of things out of kinase. Balaki, lumber kinase. So all the kinases, you know, great.

Starting point is 00:47:35 And, you know, therapeutic Plasma Exchange actually does pull out some of the biofilm, which is really, I think, exciting too. Because some of them are just really resistant. So I love the supplements. I love being able to break them down, but they don't, sometimes doesn't work. Sometimes we have to use anticoagulants, actually.

Starting point is 00:47:52 Like a heparin? Like heparin or eloquist. There are a bunch of different ones that you can use. Sometimes you have to just really kind of thin, the blood out as much as possible to get the bugs out of these biofilms. You know, I think of biofilms is like a spider web. It's just, you know, holding on to everything.

Starting point is 00:48:09 And until we can get them out, all the treatment in the world, all the ozone and all the, you know, anti-microbials, even this SOT therapy, like nothing is going to work if everything is in this, you know, kind of fibridogen, you know, platelet. It's just a soup. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:48:28 And a lot of these, a lot of these pathogens are attracted to heparin. You know, they, you know, I mean, heparum binding sites, you know, there are filtration technologies, one called Xterra, which I've also done, and they use heparin binding sites to draw out certain pathogens,

Starting point is 00:48:44 fungi, mold and mycotoxins, certain viral pathogens, even CTCs circulating tumor cells that are, that like to bind to these heparin binding sites. It doesn't put the heparin back into the body, but they do clon, around these heparum binding sites.

Starting point is 00:49:01 Isn't that interesting because mass cells make heparin? Okay. It's the one cell in the body that actually releases and manufactures heparin. Really? Yeah, that's one of the mediators that we can actually test for. So then it makes me wonder, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it does make me wonder too. So you see elevated levels of heparin in the blood.

Starting point is 00:49:23 Yeah. Because these mass cells are. Yeah, that's how we identify. Which makes a lot of sense because you don't want, you don't want clumping and clotting if you have pathogen, right? You don't want to wall it off or seal it in. You want to actually... Presumably.

Starting point is 00:49:37 Yeah, I mean, you wonder like why the mass cells make all these things, right? So maybe that's part of it. But what I think, where I think it manifests very often, not to get too off topic, but I think about women who have really like heavy menstrual periods. High estrogen, you said, can activate as well. Yeah, and can activate, exactly. So I think with the mass cells, what's happening at the level of the uterus is they're releasing heparin.

Starting point is 00:50:01 And so these women are like hemorrhaging. They're having these really, really heavy periods because of mass cells, which are being, yes, are being triggered by changes in estrogen levels or other hormone levels that are releasing hebrin. Now that blood is thinner and it's coming out faster, yeah. So they have these menorrhate. Menorrhagia. It's such a hard word to say. Yeah, yeah. Aminorrhea, amenorrhagia, whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:50:23 But lots of bleeding for, you know, during their menstrual sites. Again, so fascinating. I mean, especially given the percentages of the population that may have muscle syndrome. Yeah, like 20% is tremendous, right? Think about that. It's like one in five. And that's probably more.

Starting point is 00:50:41 I think there's more than 20, but, you know, that's the study was like 17%. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. but my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this.

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Starting point is 00:51:38 This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at the UltimateHuman.com forward slash VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. So for folks that have this things like thymusin alpha, binders, saunas, obviously cleaning up the diet, testing for metals, mold, microtoxins, viruses and parasites, these panels that it will actually look for things that could be hyper-exciting the immune system.

Starting point is 00:52:22 and therefore these mass cell syndromes, that's kind of the place to start hiking. Yeah, that's a good starting place. So we do a lot of stool analysis, we do microbiome analysis, we do parasite testing in the blood and in the stool. And yeah, parasites are actually quite pervasive. They're pervasive and they're very real.

Starting point is 00:52:43 In fact, you know, I was reading a study on multiple sclerosis on this parasitic theory, they call it the clean hands theory, where the over-revasive sanitation and reducing the healthy parasitic colonies. Right. Maybe causing the immune system to hyperactivate to some of these cestodemotodes and these helmuth parasites in MS patients.

Starting point is 00:53:08 And at least this one study that I looked at, which was post-mortem autopsies, they found similar or identical deficiencies. And I want to misquote the study. I'll actually put a link to it in the show notes in case I misquoted it. They found similar or are identical colonies that were vastly missing from these patients with MS.

Starting point is 00:53:33 And they hypothesized that this overstandization, you know, where you actually don't have the healthy parasitic colonies were actually causing the immune system to have this autoimmune reaction to myelin. And they found corkscrew parasites in some of the locations. where the immune system was attacking.

Starting point is 00:53:54 Because if you think about it, you know, why the immune system can dissolve myelin or attack myelin, why isn't it sort of uniformly attacking it everywhere? Why does it seem to be taking rifle shots? Oh, that's interesting. Seemingly randomly around the body or maybe concentrated in areas of the brain. I mean, there's myelin covering all of our nerves. So why is it not affecting or evenly dissolving this? And I thought it was very, you know, very interesting that there could be a bug thing.

Starting point is 00:54:21 theory behind it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm one of those people, I think there's a bug theory behind almost all the chronic diseases we see. I disagree with you at all. I just, I just every single patient, every single patient I test for who has Parkinson's or Parkinson's-like infections, or I mean conditions, Alzheimer's, you know, I can look at different manifestations of mental illness, OCD, anxiety, depression. You almost always have gut issues. Yeah, all of them. Almost all test positive for vector-borne infections. I find parasites in them, and I find Bartonella almost across the board.

Starting point is 00:54:58 Yeah, our clinic director had a Dr. Carey Sarda. She had a patient she was treating that came down to see her for Parkinson's. Been six years diagnosed with Parkinson's, completely unresponsive to traditional therapies. Neurologist, couldn't figure out what was going on. The mood collapse, the dystonias, the dysthytico-cannesias, the whole sequence of events. and when she did the viral testing, it was one of the highest, not Lyme titers, West Nile titers, that the lab had ever seen.

Starting point is 00:55:30 Oh, wow. And ironically, he had an office in South Beach and was commonly visiting South Beach when the largest Zika mosquito outbreak in South Beach. It's coming back 12, 13 years, 11, 12 years. There was a period where even, Even customs was not allowing pregnant women, you know, that were coming through to go to Miami Beach because the Zika mosquito was so prevalent. They got it under control.

Starting point is 00:55:59 But that's what carries the... But it also carries West Nile. And it was one of the highest titers that they'd ever seen. It was active. Never tested for it. And so she went after the, you know, the virus. And I won't say all of the symptoms went into remission, but I would say it's... 75, 80% improvement in his symptoms because he didn't have Parkinson's.

Starting point is 00:56:23 He had Parkinsonisms from the viral infection. And a lot of these viruses seem to have very similar etiologies or at least presentations to things like Parkinson's, which are very often diagnosed by observation. Well, it's an inflammatory response. It's just I think that there's a vulnerability. I always think of it, like people will say, well, why did I get this condition, Parkinson's light condition and somebody else got, you know, different, you know, got Crohn's or colitis or got, you know. So I think there's a vulnerability

Starting point is 00:56:53 that people carry. Maybe it's genetic. Maybe it's hard to find. But then there are these, you know, infections or triggers or toxins or whatever that then triggers that genetic vulnerability to come out. Right. And it's presenting in this way. And so you have to, you know, alleviate or remove the triggers. You might still have some symptoms left because some of that is maybe even genetic to some extended. It got already turned on. You mean like methylation pathway issues or poor waste elimination or things like that? Yeah. Like some things you're just never going to be able, let's say the damage is done. I'd like to think that I can reverse all, you know, all damage in everybody, but it's impossible, right? Right. So some damage is already done. But if you

Starting point is 00:57:34 remove, let's say that infection, maybe you can heal a lot of the damage. Right. That's the, yeah, calm them down, boost the immune system. Because immunodisregulation, you know, the consequences of that encompass all of the things that we've talked about so far. And it mimics so many other pathologies. These poor people are just literally running around the country or running around the world sometimes trying to figure out what could be causing this. And I would disagree with you at all that I think, you know, the bugs are related to a lot of these issues. Let's go into the gut for a minute, if you don't mind.

Starting point is 00:58:12 how important is gut dysbiosis, the gut microbiome, you know, that single-cell layer of protection that we have on the luminal wall of our gut, sort of separating our inside environment from our outside environment. What can we do to care for it? And how often do you think that there is a gut-related anomaly in Massel syndrome? I mean, again, I don't like... You're probably going to say 100%. Like, yeah, I was, right, I was going to say like 99, 98 or whatever. You know, there's a, and it's interesting because I do have patients who swear they have no gut problems at all. And the gut is not their problem.

Starting point is 00:58:54 They have all these other neurologic and other other systems involved, right? And I go, really? You have like, no, nothing? Like, I almost never see it, right? So then I'll have them do a test, you know, I'll do some stool testing, right? And I'm like, well, you actually have it. I don't know why you don't feel it, but there's definitely something going on there. and that's where the bulk of your immune system is, right?

Starting point is 00:59:14 70%, yeah. So it's hard to imagine. There's so many mast cells that line the entire GI tract. Oh, yeah. So, you know, you have to think like if they have a mass cell condition, the mass cells in the gut are involved on some level. Maybe some people are more sensitive to feeling it and some aren't, right? But I think it looks, and in the toxic world we live in,

Starting point is 00:59:33 it's very, very difficult to maintain, you know, a proper digestive system. I would agree with that. Right? the food that you eat, you know, the pesticides on the food, the toxins, the glyphosates, things like you could be so careful and still get exposed to things that are going to eventually like break down that but layer. Early antibiotic use, you know, as children, right, frequent strep infections very, very commonly will cause a dysbiosis, right?

Starting point is 01:00:01 So people may not notice anything until it's sort of like the straw that breaks the camel's back, right? So they're living with some dysbiosis, they're not, you know, they're not, you know, they don't have a lot of symptoms yet. But there's usually then something that then brings it out fully. They get into the course of antibiotics or they get, again, they have a stressor in their life. They get, you know, they get COVID. They get something. And then all hell breaks loose.

Starting point is 01:00:28 And then now they have major gut, gut issues. And so, you know, it's about, you know, feeding the good microbiome there, right? So a lot of them, a lot of the good stuff is gone. There's a lot of bad stuff, right? So it's actually finding that balance between killing some of the bad and getting more of the good, right? And so there are a lot of tools. What does something like that look like? What does a typical protocol look like?

Starting point is 01:00:55 I know it's not a one-size-fits-all. I mean, and in terms of gut testing, are you doing GI maps? Are you doing like a Viome stool test? I'll do like gut sumer from Vibrant wellness. I like that one a lot. Sometimes the GI map, I don't want to say anything bad about it. I've just found some inconsistencies with their testing. You've got to be really careful with the testing,

Starting point is 01:01:18 and they're actually, I know several people who are trying to do comparison studies between the different labs to see, you know, why some labs are picking up parasites and some labs are not picking up parasites and the same samples, right? Wow. So we're just trying to, we're trying to...

Starting point is 01:01:34 So the testing is actually in some ways a little bit rudimentary, but I've, I've been, you know, pleased with some of the GI tests that we've, we've tried. Yeah, I'd use vibrant a lot. Yeah, but they have, they have a lot of good panels. They have a lot of good panels. They have a detox challenges and things. Yeah, and the, and we use their urine test for the total talks.

Starting point is 01:01:52 Yeah. Before we do the therapeutic plasma exchange, you know, and after, right, so we like a lot of their stuff. So, so customer could be a good, a good place to start. I love doing parasite-specific parasite testing. I don't rely on, you know, anyone lab to pick up the parasites, because parasites are really hard to find.

Starting point is 01:02:09 They are, yeah. I think of it, I use this analogy with patients, right? I think of parasites like they're like Spider-Man. They have, like, suction cups on their hands. They don't have fun. But, you know, like, imagery. So they're, like, sticking to the wall of the intestine. And so when you have a bowel movement,

Starting point is 01:02:27 they may fall into that stool. They may not. Right. And so you may not find it until you test and test and test. So I have a lab that I really like that has been really good. at finding a lot of these parasites. Wow.

Starting point is 01:02:39 And I am really shocked at what we're finding. And not to go too off topic, but you know what's really interesting to me as a, when I was doing my residency at NYU in the city, we saw a lot of HIV patients, patients with that type of immunodeficiency, immunocompromised states. And they used to have this, we used to find this parasite in them all the time called Cryptosporidium. And I was taught that Cryptosporidium is a, is a parasite. that only infects people with really suppressed immune systems,

Starting point is 01:03:10 cancer patients, HIV. I see it probably in 75% of my patients. Wow. But they're not HIV or cancer patients, right? So that tells me that part of this mass activation syndrome and all the other things that I'm seeing is suppressing the immune system so much that we're seeing parasites that should not be in relatively healthy people.

Starting point is 01:03:30 Wow. And are you doing regular frontline things, is ivermectin, van benazole, menendazole. Okay. Elinia. Alinea and all the, yeah. I usually do a sequential type of protocol with them. I find, listen, I love herbs and I love natural stuff, but for parasites.

Starting point is 01:03:50 Yeah, I've heard the same thing. You need the drugs. You got to bring the big, you got to bring the guns. So again, so when I'm approaching a patient, if they have the parasites, I'm going to do a parasite protocol. If they don't have parasites, you know, maybe I'm going to start with some other stuff, right? I'm working on the diet. A lot of the patients have low short-chain fatty acids, you know, so I may use a buturate. Sourcrowd, even fermented vegetables.

Starting point is 01:04:10 Sometimes, but some of my Massel patients can tolerate it because it's high in histamine. So, you know, so it's, again, very personalized. That's a good point, yeah. We're a little challenged because we like things that we think are good, may backfire. So, so, but we have to, you know, kind of inch towards that. I have a patient right now who is able to, had really bad massel stuff, but like started to be able to introduce sourcrow and stuff. So that's amazing, right?

Starting point is 01:04:35 Like, wow. For the free fatty acids. Yeah, yeah. But we can use buterate. We can use some other things. We can, you know, again, it's about balancing the gut. We can use immunoglobulins like, you know, like an IGG type of product that has, you know, it's basically bovine serum immunoglobulins.

Starting point is 01:04:52 You can use colostrum if people can tolerate dairy. All these things, I mean, again, there's like, there's no perfect way to do it. It's just defining it the right way for the patient. Yep. So it's about balance and it's about. killing sometimes and then it's about quieting those mass cells down in the gut directly so that the immune system is not constantly in this kind of cycle. Hyperinflamatory state. Yeah. Dr. Dempsey, this has been absolutely fascinating.

Starting point is 01:05:19 I really hope you'll come back on the Holt of Human Podcast because I want to follow this. All right. My VIPs are so excited for you in the VIP room. They've got a whole litany of questions for you. And I appreciate you too, also agreeing to stay today. to speak to them in a live format. This is such a fascinating, I think, underserved area of medicine where we start looking at, really looking at root causes

Starting point is 01:05:47 and how symptoms don't necessarily link back to the pathology that people are diagnosed with. It may be something even deeper that has caused this immune system, mass cell activation, but caused the immune. system be so run down that it's, you know, essentially can't protect itself anymore. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:06:09 And it's more pervasive than we can imagine, right? This is the thing. I think the more people, the more toxic our world gets. Yeah. The more COVID and all these other things that people get. Or the more like, you know, weird infections, like this winter was kind of crazy with a lot of, oh my gosh, monkey pot. I mean, you name it.

Starting point is 01:06:25 Yeah. So the more that immune system just gets revved up and revved up, you know, unfortunately, I think this is like really a pandemic in a way of mass electrivation. syndrome. And so, like, I think everyone really needs to know this, right? Because the thing is, like, people listen and say, well, this doesn't apply to me, you know. I do all these things and I'm healthy, but it may apply to somebody that's close to you. Yes. And it may apply to you eventually, hopefully not. Right. But also I want to give hope because I think there's so much that we can do. And that's why I do the work that I do, because I help people every day.

Starting point is 01:06:55 Yeah. This is so fascinating. For my audience who wants to know more about you or can, where they can find you. Where can they find you? Okay. So my center, AIM Center for personalized medicine. My website, DR. Tanya Dempsey.com, Instagram, DR. Tanya Dempc, MD, Facebook, D.R. Tanya, you know, like all that stuff. I have YouTube. I put all that in the show. That's for you. Yeah, I'm trying to think what I'm missing. And then, and then my podcast, Mass Cell Matters. I saw you have to, you had a podcast Mass Cell Matters. I love that. I'm going to have you on that. I would love to be on there. Yeah. We see eye to eye on a lot of things for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So absolutely fascinating.

Starting point is 01:07:32 guys, please, I'll put all of that in the show notes below. I'll put the study that I referred to earlier in the podcast. And until next time, that's just science.

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 270. Dr. Tania Dempsey: Mast Cells, Chronic Fatigue, & Hidden Inflammation

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