An Introduction to Organic Acid Testing Part 2

I still have a webcam, and I'll share that in a sec. Dr. Dan here, super happy to be back doing the organic acids talk. And, uh, we're just going to jump right into it. I mean, this is part two. Most of you probably know who I am, so we don't do a big introduction. Um, we do lots of trainings. I just got back from Vancouver. We were at this fertility seminar, which was really a lot of fun, and, um, learned a bunch. Um, I really enjoyed hanging out with these acupuncturists up in Vancouver. It's a great crowd, and, um, I always enjoy doing professional lectures. And if you have any gigs for me, you know, um, I met a bunch of people in Vancouver. We're going to probably go back up there and talk at the naturopathic college. Anyone that's interested in functional medicine stuff, I'm really happy to go out and do talks and get people turned onto all this stuff. And, um, you know, we're again, we're going to skip through the introductions because you guys heard this one last time. If you don't know who I am, you can go back and listen to part one. Um, but there is something super exciting that's happening right now, and I just want to share this with you before we get into the regular talk. Okay?

And, uh, the good news is, uh, I was going to draw this on the board, but we can just look at it on the screen here. So we've been talking about this all week in classes, and, uh, getting great responses from the practitioners. So I want to just throw this out there as, uh, something for you all to think about in terms of, uh, functional medicine and how we look at functional medicine and, uh, the biases of a profession and the good and bad of all that stuff. All right? So right off the bat, you know, at least the way that I was trained, uh, was to control symptoms. You know, and so my first many years in practice were all about symptomatic control, using, um, you know, natural medicine, using basically clinical nutrition, is what it really was. I was trained by naturopaths, chiropractors, medical doctors, a whole big group of people that were training me in how to relieve symptoms related to, uh, all kinds of chief complaints, but with, you know, clinical nutrition rather than with drugs.

And then when I discovered functional medicine, after being in practice maybe three, four years, I was like, "Wait a minute, this isn't any good. We're going to go over to this side of the equation. We're going to do root cause treatments." You know, and I got super into, like, this whole root cause thing. And so into it, you know, how people are when they get to extremes. I was like, "Oh, the symptomatic thing is bad. You know, we're not going to treat symptoms because functional medicine avoids that. You know, it's not a good thing to relieve symptoms." And so, you know, I went on this long journey learning how to do functional medicine, figuring out years to figure this out, right? What are the different root causes? And I just threw a couple up on the board here: gluten, parasites, emotional trauma, that could be physical abuse or sexual abuse, environmental toxins, which we're all exposed to, poor diet, which you have some control over, blood sugar problems, addiction. I just had a patient today, uh, yesterday actually, um, both her parents are alcoholics, and she's an alcoholic too. Really hard to overcome that. Sleep-related problems, people who are in, uh, pain, people have head injuries, people have structural problems, epigenetics and genetics. You know, these, you know, getting into this whole functional medicine thing and figuring out what are the underlying causes that are really driving the various health complaints and then trying to fix things and treat things from this side, okay, versus treating things from this side, which would be the symptomatic side. Okay?

Now I've come full circle. You know, so a bunch of years of just treating symptoms, a bunch of years of thinking I could just do the root causes and ignore symptoms, and now realizing that really, we should be treating all these things, and we should be good at doing all these things. You should know how to treat symptoms and absolutely relieve symptoms quickly so you can get people motivated to do more work with you. You should, if you're interested in functional medicine, be able to figure out the underlying causes of problems, and you should be able to tie in these underlying root causes with the various results that they lead to, right? So gluten causes inflammation in the body. Most people that we're working with are chronically inflamed. They might also have infections that are driving inflammation in the body, or oxidative stress, or any of these different, uh, you know, bigger picture system breakdown problems that we have. I didn't put them all on the board here, but just to get you thinking about this, right? What are the big picture results of these underlying causes? And you can do treatment number two also. You could just treat for inflammation. That is a totally legitimate thing to do. And you could treat also on a body systems method. And this is how I look at it in the Kish Institute when we're teaching these classes, is in terms of body systems, whether it's GI or adrenal or thyroid or liver, but really focusing in. And to me, this is kind of the heart of functional medicine, is learning how to do lab assessments to fix the various body systems. All right?

But my revelation in this last couple months of studies, and I've been studying a lot in the last few months on my own, is that we should, with the highest level of mastery of functional medicine, is being able to treat any one of these categories, being able to run a treatment for symptoms alongside a treatment for the underlying causes to relieve inflammation and these bigger picture physiological systems that get shut down, as well as being able to treat adrenal, GI, brain, liver, detox. And that a really good functional medicine practitioner knows where they are in this map, right? And can explain this to patients so that we can say, "Hey, you got, um, fatigue, weight gain, and a hormone imbalance, and some GI problems, and depression." Those are symptoms, and we can give you this one program to relieve your symptoms so you feel better. We're also going to look at the root causes of it, and maybe we'll work on, uh, your oxidative stress all at the same time. You know, so that we map this out and lay this out in a way that's going to be more comprehensive. Okay? And that's kind of the goal that we're looking for here. So anyways, that's sort of a the latest, uh, version of how I'm addressing all this. All right?

Now let's get started, and, um, in this context, right now, okay? Let's look at this in the context. So what we're going to talk about tonight, we're going to talk tonight a lot about things like oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, and tie that into, you know, these organic acids tests. But I really think it helps to know where you are in this process. And for me, now, I'm doing it all. Like, I can design a really good symptomatic relief program because that's how I was originally trained. But I can also find underlying root causes. And if I want to do an oxidative stress protocol, I could do one of those and combine it with an adrenal program all at the same time. So being able to move seamlessly between these different areas, it seems to me like a really key skill set for all of us to have. Oh, and one more thing before we start. I'm going to share my webcam. I got to get the right camera up here because people are always asking me this. Uh, and so I thought I would just share with you my latest purchases from Amazon. This is a great book, "The Elimination Diet." I love this guy. He's really great. Tom Mal, Tom Alter. "The Elimination Diet" just came out. Excellent book. And then another book that we're talking about in the training program, everyone's really into this book in the training program. So I picked it up. It's called, uh, "Understanding Histamine Intolerance and Mast Cell Activation." Not a very great title. It doesn't sound very exciting, but a very exciting book and a really exciting concept. And a lot of the doctors in my training program are applying this histamine idea. So I highly recommend this book. Again, "Understanding Histamine Intolerance and Mast Cell Activation." Very practical books, both of these, "The Elimination Diet" and that one. That's what's on my desk right now that I'm reading all the time. So let's take a look now. And you can make the camera bigger or smaller depending on how you want to do it. Okay?

So we're going to talk about, um, how to effectively use the organic test, and we're going to focus more on patient cases today and how you can start to apply this so you get a sense of how this can work. All right? And, um, acquire the basic skill set of being able to see that there's different types of patients, and there's many, many different ways you can apply this test, and then being able to successfully communicate the value of the organic acids testing so that people can understand how it works in their program. And, you know, when I was doing these tests originally, um, for the first, I don't know, 10, 15, 16 years of doing these organic acids, I would pick which patients I thought needed to do the test. Now we're testing every single new patient in my clinic with an organic acids profile, and I can't tell you how much more exciting and fun my practice is. I mean, really. I mean, I would almost pay for the test just because I would want everyone to do it. Unfortunately, patients are willing to pay for it. But the level of information you get, the depth of understanding you get, I really almost now would say, you know, because this is a typical question in the training program is, "Oh, you know, should I run an organic on this patient or that patient?" And my answer now is, "Just run them on everybody." Because it's an amazing lab and it gives you this whole depth of understanding that you might not otherwise be able to grasp, right? And, um, I also can't tell you how, um, uh, how much specificity, I don't know if that's the right word, but how specific to each individual patient these labs can be, and how sometimes one lab finding on an organic profile can completely change your reaction to a case, all right? Just completely change it. And and and completely change the, what would you call it, um, the, uh, the, um, completely change the outcomes of of what you're, your programs are going to be doing. Okay?

So, um, we're going to talk a little bit about the oxidative damage and antioxidant markers. And so, um, you can do, uh, this in a whole bunch of different ways. But basically, oxidative stress, free radical damage, right? That can be an early warning sign of the potential long-term damage of oxidative stress that you would associate with chronic degenerative diseases. So again, this, these kind of markers could be a clue about potential cardiovascular disease, or cancer, or even diabetes, right? Really important that we understand if our patients are under oxidative stress, or, and if they are, how bad is it? What are those free radicals actually getting in and damaging? It could also be the result of exposure to pathogens or toxins, especially heavy metals, chemicals, right? They're going to generate oxidative stress. You can also have professional athletes. I've seen this many, many times. You know, a marathon runner, a triathlete, a tennis player whose massive amount of exercise is generating massive amounts of oxidative stress on their system, and their need for antioxidants could go far beyond what they could ever consume from their diet. Okay? So even if they have a pristine diet, professional athletes often have this oxidative damage going on, and it's really not a good thing in terms of affecting their energy levels and their mitochondria. And the long-term effect of this, you know, is that basically premature aging. And I'm not really into this whole anti-aging thing. I mean, I'm 50 years old now. I figure, you know, I like getting older. And so I'm not trying to prevent getting older, but we definitely want to prevent, you know, like degenerative diseases that could take you out of the picture. Okay?

So in addition to that, we have oxidative stress. So that's a big picture item, right? And so when you think about it, there are all these free radicals being generated that could damage tissue. And a major source of oxidative stress for all, all of us is going to be the fat-soluble toxins. Water-soluble toxins, we're not so worried about. You can deal with water-soluble toxins by drinking water. And I try to drink, I don't try to drink, I do drink, you know, a lot of these every day. You don't want to overhydrate either, but most people that I work with are dehydrated, chronically dehydrated. So they may have a lot of water-soluble toxins built up as well. But we flush those out with water, and then we're stuck dealing with these fat-soluble toxins. Okay? And these could be the metabolic end products or byproducts of drugs or alcohol. It could be, I was just on my bicycle, you know, an hour ago, you know, sitting behind a bus, breathing diesel fumes from a bus. It could be from pesticides, herbicides, anything you can imagine that we're exposed to in terms of toxins. And what your body then does is it runs step one and step two to break these toxins down to make them water-soluble so you can flush them out of your body. And then eventually, they come out through the kidneys and the urine. They may come out through the gallbladder, the bowel. Right? The gallbladder dumps them into the bowel through the bile, and you can sweat them out through your skin. So you've got sweat, stool, and urine as exit routes for these toxins. But before they can get flushed out, you have to make them water-soluble. And so there's a whole long list of nutrients that are required for this process to happen. And if you look at them, it's pretty straightforward: B vitamins, folic acid or folate, methyl folate is maybe a better way. We should probably update this slide. It's kind of like a more, you can tell it's a little old. Modern terminology, probably put methyl folate there. Uh, folate, uh, glutathione, antioxidants like milk thistle, etc., carotenoids, vitamin E, vitamin C. And then those are the nutrients that are required for the first step. Make breaks it down to something that's, um, you know, less, what do you call it, uh, easier to, easier to flush out, right? It's an intermediary. And now, and then you run phase two or step two on it, using amino acids like glycine, taurine, cysteine, sulfur-containing compounds, etc. So if you don't have these nutrients in great amounts, then toxins are going to build up in your system, and you're going to have a big problem. And we're actually measuring these exact nutrients with an organic acids profile. That's how cool this is. So let me just go back and tie it together. We're measuring, I'll show you the markers in a minute when we get to the labs, but there's specific tests, two parts of this test that measure oxidative damage. They see how much oxidative damage is going on. And then there's other specific portions of the test that measure the nutrients that are required for the detox pathways. So just that alone would make it worthwhile to do this lab. And this is a pressing problem I often see with all kinds of patients that have symptoms, everything from, uh, depression to chronic fatigue. Now, and we're going to go through a bunch of labs in a minute so we can try to tie this together for you guys, okay?

So there's also the bacterial markers. Now, this is no substitute for a stool test, and there's no substitute for testing for SIBO, but it can be used very, uh, helpfully in addition to those. So in my practice, we always test the hormones, we test the gut with the stool test, and then I use the bacterial markers on the organics profile as sort of a backup way to look at good and bad bacteria in the intestinal tract. So again, not a substitute for a stool test, doesn't always correlate with stool testing exactly, but really helpful markers as a backup because sometimes you'll find, and you guys know this well, um, stool testing will miss an obvious infection, and you may catch it on an organic acids profile. And that happens to me all the time. I'm probably, since I started running organic acids tests on every new patient, I've probably doubled the number of GI treatment programs that I'm, I'm doing. You know, I'm really catching a lot more things that would have slipped through the cracks because I was so kind of obsessed with the parasite testing for so long. Now, this is an overwhelming slide, and this is just to demonstrate how confusing and complicated this test is, right? So these are actually all the markers that are, are measured on the organic acids profile. Um, now let me just kind of highlight some of these for now. You know, studying each one of these individual markers would be like going back to doing a year of biochemistry at a university. So rather than talking about adipate and succinate and the pathways for ethylmalonate, I think we can just break this down into big picture kind of stuff. Okay? And this is also, if you're doing patient consults, people really are not going to even be able to pronounce for-mimino glutamate, did I say that right? For-mimino glutamate or Figlu, you know, let alone really care a whole lot about what it does. But I think the big pictures are, are really worth considering. So fat burning, everybody cares about fat burning, that's a big one. Carb burning, everybody cares about carbs. Blood sugar stability, sweet cravings, energy production. This is an absolute favorite part of the whole test. So I'll just keep circling it until you can't see it anymore. Energy production markers. I mean, every single patient I work with wants more energy. Okay? So this is like, just a beautiful section of the test. Again, I would run this whole panel just if all they have with the energy production markers. It's so helpful to see that on people. Um, B vitamins, equally good to have. Methylation, all the rage right now. Good to know if people are methylating or not. Has profound implications for detox in the brain. Neurotransmitter metabolism markers. Note, it's not neurotransmitter markers, it's neurotransmitter metabolism markers. They're not measuring serotonin and dopamine and epinephrine, norepinephrine directly. They're measuring homovanillate, vanilmandelate, hydroxyacetate, etc., right? These are markers that give you indications of what's happening with the neurotransmitters. The antioxidant markers that we just mentioned, the detox markers, and then the GI section here. Okay? So there's nine or 10 different sections, depending on how you want to slice it. And then when I think about it again, in a big picture kind of way, fat, carbs, and energy, that to me, they're kind of all linked. I don't really care that much about the B vitamins because I always give everybody B vitamins. Okay? But methylation, neurotransmitters, antioxidants, and detox, those are kind of all linked in a way because you've got the brain and liver and all that. So I think of this as brain, liver, brain, liver, brain, liver, energy over here, brain, liver, brain, liver, brain, liver, right? Detox, brain, detox, brain, liver, brain. And then gut. So in my mind, that's how I divide this test up. I'll do that one more time. And this is, this is enough, by the way. It doesn't have to be. This is energy production, right? Carbs, fat, and energy production. This is over here, brain, liver, brain, liver, brain, liver, brain, liver, brain, liver, brain, liver, right? Detox, brain, detox, brain, liver, brain. And then gut. Okay? So you can just divide it up that way too. Just want to keep it simple. And I'll show you now when we apply this to patients, what I mean by that. And then there's individual supplements associated with each one of these. And again, you know, this, this kind of list to me is almost completely useless because, you know, it just doesn't tell you exactly what to do. And I'll tell you, I spent years trying to follow this list, and it was really not that helpful. So I'll just give you a clue about what I mean by that. Like, for example, if you see energy production markers show up on a lab and you see that the person needs desperately CoQ10, and you give them CoQ10 by itself, it really doesn't work. Okay? It really doesn't work very well. And so we have to look at these not as individual micronutrient deficiencies, but in a big picture kind of way as systems that are shut down. And once you start to look at this from a systems perspective, it makes so much more sense. First of all, it's a thousand times easier for you. You don't have to carry a million, million different kinds of supplements. Right? And second of all, it's a thousand million times more effective clinically. So, for example, if you have, uh, carnitine show up and two or three of these energy production markers, there's a single supplement you can give someone that covers all of that stuff for mitochondrial support. You can do it all with a single supplement. And then all you have to do is figure out how you're going to dose the person. So again, you don't have to break it down as the labs kind of look like you should, to individual micronutrients. I found, I've never found that to be effective for anybody in my practice, and I've never met a doctor who's come up to me and said, "Yeah, you know, I give those individual micronutrients, and that really works. Like, that one patient's whole health per, you know, problem turned around when I gave him B2." I mean, it's just not the clinical reality here. Ever. You can't treat an individual micronutrient deficiency on a complicated human being that's got all kinds of problems. So you want to start to, in this one, I'm trying to talk about tonight because the way the lab is sort of presented to you in a lot of different contexts, um, you know, by the lab company and the lab report, and a lot of maybe even some of the books and stuff that we look at for these labs, it looks like we're just looking at micronutrient deficiencies. But from a clinical perspective, it's really not going to be very effective to look at that way. Okay?

Um, okay, I'm going to talk about the class for a minute, and then we're going to get back to the lecture. And I'm super excited about this. And let me just, uh, you guys a couple things here. So, um, we have this burgeoning community, and if you haven't seen this yet, you should check it out because it's pretty amazing. So if you sign up for one of the classes, the six-month training program is the, you know, the main one most people start with, you get access to our community. And in the community, we have people, couple hundred doctors, we have acupuncturists, chiropractors, medical doctors, pharmacists, osteopaths, naturopaths, physical therapists, nutritionists. It's a huge range of people, and they're all chatting with each other. And you can see people post things and they talk about stuff and they ask each other questions, kind of like Facebook would be, right? And that's amazing. And it's wonderful to have a community of people you can ask questions of. You also see our classes in here. So you sign up for a training program, you get assigned to a group, and you have your class materials in here, which is nice. And then we have a ridiculous amount of content. So at this point, I think we're up to like 700 case studies or something like that. So, you know, each week in class, we review the labs that you sent in and go over all the questions that you may have. But then also, I'll, I'll just type in, for example, here, "organics." See what shows up. You can search for a subject like "organic profiles," right? So for then, there's case after study. Here's like, here's one. Here's just a random case study, and you can listen to the case study, you can read the text that we transcribe of the case study. And if you want to study organic acid, you could spend a couple days just listening to the library of case studies that we've accumulated, going over antioxidant, going over, um, oxidative, uh, stress markers, going over anything to do with your organic profile. Okay? Here's another good one. This was a really good one. This when I came back from New York, um, I did a lecture on, uh, organic acids as well. So anyways, it's an infinite amount of information in the community. There's classes, there's case studies, and then we have the live calls as well. And then another feature of the class too is that we do, um, you know, we actually have the content of the course itself, right? And this is kind of nice because we have a really well-organized presentation now, which I'm very proud of. We have a wonderful IT team, and they're really dedicated to making this stuff work well. And let me just show you that real quick here too. And we're constantly updating this. It seems like almost every day because there's always feedback from students, and we're getting more and more, uh, adept, I guess, at at posting massive amounts of information. So within the class itself, you have all these various lectures. You might go, like, for an advanced adrenal class here. The modules are broken down, and you can see there's individual lectures within each module. You can listen to, watch the videos, there's assignments, reading assignments, and tools. There's little homework things to get you stimulated and get you interested in all the work. And so it's a, it's a pretty comprehensive training program at this point. And I think people, the things that people say they like the most about it are, number one, the community because they like interacting with other doctors that are smart, and everyone in this group is super smart and knows a lot of stuff. And that's not just about me teaching classes, but it's about you reaching out to other people that are also in the community that are taking the class at the same time with you. And then, um, the other thing people really like are the live calls that we do every week where we go through labs and go through case studies. Okay? And, um, we're into it now. We're on a roll. We have a really good thing going. And if you guys are interested in more training in functional medicine, you can check it out. Okay? We're starting another class next week. So if you're interested, you can set up a phone call with me. I'll be happy to talk to you about the course. Person, if it's appropriate for you. And, um, the people always ask me this one question, which is, "How is your class different from the other training programs?" The Institute of Functional Medicine. I'm going to their, uh, yearly meeting in a few weeks. An amazing group of people, and everyone should go to IFM because they're the founders of functional medicine. They created this whole profession for us, and they're very, uh, diet, intellectual, research-based. And to me, highly intellectual stimulating courses. And the reason why I'm doing functional medicine is because of IFM. I first went to my first IFM conference over 20 years ago, or Jeffrey Bland conference. I don't even know if they called it IFM back then. It was a Jeffrey Bland class. So that is kind of like the pinnacle of functional medicine education. Uh, uh, there's other courses like Functional Medicine University, which is a really great online course as well. And my class is different. My class is a whole different niche. This is all about clinicians learning how to do this with other clinicians in a clinical environment. And we don't do that are complicated or about research. Everything is patient education oriented and clinical application oriented. That's how the classes that I teach are different. Okay? And it's very much a mentorship. I'm the only one that teaches all the classes, and we just step everyone through. I've been doing this for a long time. I've trained over a thousand doctors. I've gotten pretty good about how to do this and how to get people's practices going because what I find is often a hitch in all this pro, in this process of you guys getting your businesses going is not necessarily the clinical side, which we cover, but the business side. So we put a big emphasis on making sure that we do all the things that we can to get your business going and to get you so that you can start to get an income from this because I believe that, you know, we have a social responsibility to to earn a profit, to make a good income from this, so we stay in this game and do this practice for a long period of time. Okay? So you have the live calls, the weekly interaction, and we're starting. He and you get $500 off if you say that you did this class if you're interested in signing up. Okay? All right. Oh, and you can schedule a free call with me. I talk to everybody before they do that, the class too. Okay?

So let's get back to organic acids. And oh, by the way, this is a confusing thing. Is the training program is a little different than these free calls that we do like tonight because the training program is more a small group of doctors talking and going over labs, as well as lots of lecture materials. Okay? I'm going to try to save some time tonight so I can show you a little bit more about how the class works, um, by going over some cases so you can see what it's like. Can you imagine you're on the phone with 10 or 15 doctors looking at slides and looking at labs? That's kind of what the class is like for an hour. It's really stimulating for people. Okay? So now we're trying to take this lab and boil it down to like a reality-based thing that's happening with the patient in front of you that's tired and overweight. And then how are you going to take all this amazing information that's on this lab and then apply it to this patient that's tired and overweight? How's that actually going to work? So the only way that I've seen to do this is to break it down into something simple so you see where the key aspects of the lab are that you want to apply to that individual patient, and you see or you are able to create a protocol that's doable, that they can actually implement, that's not going to be overwhelming, and it's not individual micronutrient based, right? It's systems based. That's the most important thing you could take home from tonight is that we're not thinking about individual micronutrients, we're thinking about systems that are broken, and the lab shows you what systems are broken and where you may want to focus. Now, if someone's overweight and tired, clearly we want to look at the fat metabolism markers, the carb metabolism markers in terms of blood sugar support, right? The energy production markers, that's the mitochondria, and the B vitamins. Now, in terms of individual supplements, you might use carnitine for fat burning. There's many good quality carb metabolism or blood sugar support products that combine all the nutrients you need for blood sugar. CoQ10 for energy, but not by itself, in combination with other nutrients. Magnesium for energy, but not by itself, in combination with other nutrients. Free form amino acids can be incredibly effective, and those are indicated whether they are needed or not in the lab. And of course, extra B vitamins do a lot of B12, folate, B5, B6, stuff like that. Okay? And we're going to look at some labs in a minute to try to tie this together for you all.

There could be a digestive patient. What if you run on a stool test and there's nothing wrong on the stool test? Ah, you're like bummed out. And you did a SIBO test, and the SIBO test is normal as well. And you're thinking, "I'm not sure what could be going on with these particular labs." You see a whole bunch of other stuff. Okay? You'll see whether they need HCL or enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics. You'll see how inflamed their gut may be. They, you'll be able to tell, do they need a yeast or bacterial protocol that might not have shown up on the other testing that you're doing, but all of a sudden shows up really clearly on the organic acids profile. So again, this test has saved me so many times in the last couple years with chronic, you know, GI people who I would have missed it otherwise. Okay? So super helpful.

Now, my absolute favorite part of of everything in my practice these last maybe 10, 12 years has been working with the brain. And I think I just got, I did so many adrenal labs for so many years, I just got, I didn't, I got bored of it, you know? And I could do an adrenal protocol on my sleep. Uh, I, you know, it's just not stimulating to me anymore to fix adrenals. So I spent the last 10, 12 years really studying the brain. And now I'm unifying these programs together for patients, which is even more fun. You know, adrenal and brain programs together, neuroendocrine programs, really what they are. So this lab shows you some insight into brain patients. And what are brain patients? Are you thinking about anxiety, depression, ADD, people who have been on or are right now on, um, antidepressants, people who have been on or now are on amphetamines, um, people have a history of cocaine use, messed their brains up with ecstasy, alcohol, um, people that were just born depressed, you know, so many patients have told me that, "When did the depression start?" "I don't know, I was in kindergarten." That was one of the saddest stories I've ever heard. This this woman said, you know, "My first memory is being like four or five years old and looking around at all the other kids on the playground who are laughing and wondering why what was wrong with them." Like, she didn't understand happiness. She couldn't get her mind around happiness. She's just depressed since the day she was born practically. So anyways, these programs can be really, really helpful for people with all these kinds of brain-related problems. And I think we're all seeing very clearly an increase in brain-related disorders in our patient populations, right? Everything from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's to autism, ADD. Clearly, the human brain is not doing very well with the current environment of environmental toxins that's assaulting us, right? So there's different sections. There's a section on neurotransmitter markers, right? Not neurotransmitters themselves, but the markers for them, the the breakdown products of the neurotransmitters, and the inflammatory markers that show you have neurotransmitter issues. There's detox indicators. Why is that important? Well, if you have a lot of toxins, many of the toxins are neurotoxins. And so what they do is they get into the brain, they damage the brain. So important to flush neurotoxins from the body so they don't continue to damage the brain. Methylation, very important for detox and for making brain chemicals. Also, if D, M, E, is kind of a design flaw. Um, I don't really want to criticize the design team too, too much because in a way, maybe the body is perfect, but not really. Because methylation just stupid. Why would you set up one process that controls the production of brain chemicals and also helps you with detoxification of neurotoxins? So if you can't methylate, you're just in serious deep trouble, right? Because you can't flush out the toxins that could damage your brain cells, and they will get in and kill and destroy the brain cells. And then you can't even make the brain chemicals either. It's a really, uh, it's a flaw. It's a flaw in the system. If you can't methylate, you're in serious trouble. And then, and we can break it down also to individual supplements, you know, and, you know, developing the skill to use these various products: tyrosine, 5-HTP, Macuna, uh, the, the stuff that's related to methylation, B12, folate, and B6, and then sulfur compounds. Okay? And again, the sulfur compounds are real interesting, right? Because some of them have this crossover effect, and that they're very effective for, um, detoxifying phase two detox, but they're equally important for the production of catecholamines. So you see this kind of brain-liver tie-in on so many levels that, um, I think it's kind of fascinating. And this lab shows you just in black and white how much of a problem this is. I had a patient today, uh, you know, young guy, he's like 26 years old. If you looked at his case study history thing that he filled out, you know, his complaints, you would have just said, "This is the most obvious adrenal, um, GI person on the planet" because he had all the adrenal symptoms and all the GI symptoms just that you could possibly imagine. His labs come back, and his adrenal hormones are normal. And then we're just like looking at each other, "Wow, that's shocking." And all the gut testing totally normal, right? And so you're thinking, "Oh, maybe we should order more gut testing." Are freaking out because you don't see what the real problem is. It doesn't correlate at all. And then every single one of the brain markers just completely trashed. Okay? So he's a situation, he's in a situation where he's got this massive catecholamine problem. Somehow his adrenals escaped unscathed, and all the GI stuff is coming from imbalances and serotonin and dopamine as well. Okay? So what an amazing thing to learn that you're going to be able to fix his gut and brain simultaneously with amino acids. And I put him on a really great program. He'll be off and running. He'll be doing well soon.

Another class of patient that we have would be the catabolic patient. I see people like this every day. I'm sure you guys do too. Someone who's just tired, they're kind of whiny, they're just not feeling that great, maybe they're depressed or anxious, maybe they can't sleep very well, they're not digesting really great, you know, they just got all these chronic low-level problems. They're just in this constant breakdown state, right? And we can measure, and this test does measure all these various aspects of the, uh, Krebs cycle. So here's your Krebs cycle. It looks at the burning of protein, carbs, and fat. So you can see if there's blocks there. Maybe you're going to use some free form amino acids and boom, their energy comes back. Maybe you're going to use the Krebs cycle nutrients and boom, their energy comes back. Maybe use some carnitine, boom, their energy comes back. Okay? And so you can, you know, really kind of hone in on what may be blocking that person's energy production with this test as well. Super helpful.

Toxic patient. Another profile that we see all the time. And you know how that this person is, right? All these, the same. They come in with like three bags of supplements, and none of them are, you know, they're taking like 80 different things, and none of them are really working, and they're really sick. They react to all kinds of supplements that you try to give them. You can barely get them to take anything. They have detox system, you know, symptoms constantly. They have this long history of all kinds of wacky things, whether they were an alcoholic, or they worked in a chemical plant, or whatever it was that they had some massive toxic exposure, dental work, whatever it might be. And so within the test, there are all these sections we mentioned earlier that really get into the analysis of toxicity and a way, you know, antioxidants, detox indicators, again, methylation, B vitamins, right? It's all from the same lab, right? You can do these workups for all these different profiles of patients, all from the same labs, and it'll let you know with your toxic patient, how high do you want to dose those antioxidants? You know, what, which exact sulfur compounds and how much of them do you want to use? Do you need to use a ton of methylating stuff, B12, folate, and B6, or a little bit? Can you dose them really high on lipoic acid or not? You know, what's kind of be the, in that's going to get that person's toxicity to balance out. So again, when you look at this same lab test, right? You could apply it to an overweight and tired person. You could apply it to a GI case. You can apply the same lab to a messed up brain person whose major complaint is depression. You could apply it to this catabolic person, that kind of "my joints hurt, I'm tired all the time, I can't sleep, everything's wrong with me" kind of person. And you could apply it to someone who's clearly got this toxicity thing that's just through the roof. It's a wide spectrum of application here. All right?

Now, this is full disclosure. This is my test that I did recently. And we did, uh, I started an advanced class for people that have done the basic six-month training, and we got a group of 23 people together last fall. It was really fun. And, and one of the things that we did, just to be like, cool, is to, we gave everybody a free organic acids test as they started the class because the, or the advanced class was about the organic acids profile. So I was figuring, I mean, I was buying all these test kits for everybody. It's like being at a bar, you buy drinks for everybody, you just buy a drink for yourself. So I bought a kit for myself. I ran it on myself too. I hadn't run one of these in a while. Um, probably my first one of these was like 20 years ago. And, um, my very first one of these was totally clear too. I, uh, I dig that out someday, show you guys. Um, and I don't know, now, 20 years later, looks like I'm a little messed up, doesn't it? But let's look at my test and kind of give you guys a context for this. And then I want to show you some of the supplementation stuff that you can do. Um, so hang on one second. We look at this from a, a practical standpoint, do a little program design. And this is, you know, imagine that this is kind of how the classes roll out. So imagine that we were in class right now, and, you know, someone submitted this test, and then we all kind of get on the phone and we're like, "Okay, what are the patient's main complaints, and how are we going to treat this person? What are we going to do?" That is the question. So let's look at the various sections here. Sorry, let me get my, my screen clear. There we go. Let's look at the very SE various sections here. And then remember I told you there's about nine sections, but let's just look at the ones that are messed up on me. Okay? So I got this fatty acid metabolism marker. There, ouch. Not good. Energy production markers. Look, I got three in that category. Double ouch. Not good. I'm proud to say my B vitamins are good. I'm methylating. Unlike most of America, I am methylating. My neurotransmitter markers are clear. I'm not depressed. That's true. I'm not depressed. Am I anxious? Not really. My brain works pretty well. Um, I've been depressed in the past, but I'm not depressed now. Um, oxidative damage, nothing there. Why? I eat a lot of vegetables. I eat a ton of vegetables every day. And then, oops, detox marker. Now I'm blaming that on the occasional martini. Occasional martini. And I switched from vodka to gin recently, but apparently that didn't help very much because I still have one of these markers positive. Okay? But that could be me riding my bike every day and and, you know, inhaling all the nasty exhaust of all the automobiles in Oakland, California. I don't know. Or it could be, I have, you know, probably, I don't know, two, three martinis a month, something like that. That may be it. It's probably more the air pollution, right? Who knows? Anyways, I'm not going to stop the martini just because my markers are positive. But I did end up putting myself a little bit of a program. So let's think about this from a programmatic standpoint, right? I'm not super fat, so I'm not going to worry about the carnitine too, too much, although you can also use carnitine for energy production. Okay? Um, so I'm pretty sensitive to carnitine, though. I don't like to take it, so I'm going to kind of ignore that. Now, if someone has a weight loss problem, that can be a, like, the key component to your whole protocol. If they need to burn off some body fat, then that can be like the most important nutrient, okay? The carnitine. Now, under energy production, we talked about this from a system standpoint, right? Rather than giving individual bottles of arginine and CoQ10 and trying to break this down, using a combination product that's going to address the whole C cycle can be incredibly effective. And I highly recommend doing that. And then under detox indicators, remember we looked at earlier, there's phase.

And Phase 2 detox. Now, this is a Phase 2 marker that shows I need sulfur-containing amino acids. But you never want to treat the liver by itself like that with just one supplement, right? Because, again, we're looking at the liver as this pretty complicated organ, and you want to treat a couple of different versions of it. I'll show you what I mean in a second.

So, here's the breakdown of the lab. You know, they show you all the different little individual findings, which probably aren't too important for what we're doing tonight. And then at the end of the report, they show you what the nutrients are. I spent a lot of years doing this. Um, the way that they tell you here, like, "Oh, I'm going to give this person Arginine, Carnitine, CoQ10, Glycine, and N-acetylcysteine." And I'm not exaggerating. People would walk out with an individual bottle of Arginine, Carnitine, CoQ10, Glycine, and N-acetylcysteine. That's five bottles of stuff, right? And I would try to do it in just the right dosages, and honestly, it was just completely ineffective.

So, you want to look at this by systems, okay? So, let me go back and let's look at my lab and think about my lab in terms of systems. So, what systems are messed up? Okay, well, there's a system here that's not doing that well: detoxification indicators. "Dan needs to detox." What would you say to him? You would say, "Okay, stop the martinis, don't stop the bike riding." Okay, maybe should stop. So, stop all the alcohol for a couple of months. And in fact, in January, I stopped drinking completely for a few months, um, around the time when I got my test results back. And then, um, so detox as a system, right? And then what else are we going to do? Uh, here, this system, energy production, as a system. Energy production as a system. Okay, I can't say that enough times. Energy production as a system. And in fact, if you look at my lab carefully, look how tricky, tricky this is. So, you're, you're looking for the markers that the computer flagged. You see the red hashes there? There's three markers that the computer flagged, but you're also looking for patterns. Dr. Timmons taught me this 20 years ago. I can remember sitting down in my office and him teaching me this. There's a pattern here, right? Okay, there's three markers that are elevated, but look, there's a fourth one that's almost there as well, just right on the edge. So, clearly, this system is not working very well in my body. My energy production system is not working. Now, now, maybe I'm over-exercising. Um, I don't think it's diet-related because my diet's pretty clean. I don't know why it's happening, but it's happening, and I want to do something about it, right?

So, now, rather than break this down into individual, itty-bitty supplements that are all used individually, all right, you can go in a more general way and, uh, and treat this. And I'll show you. Now, a lot of companies will have this. You don't have to use this exact brand. I just happen to really like Designs for Health a lot. I like the company, I like the people there, I like their products. I find them to be very reliable. But you will find if you have other favorite companies like Ortho Molecular or Thorne, they're probably going to have a really similar product. You can use that, okay? You don't have to be attached. Just, um, but the version, the name of it in, uh, Designs for Health, mine is called, um, Mitochondrial Energy. All right, Mitochondrial Energy. And what they did basically was put together all the nutrients that the Krebs cycle needs to operate properly. How clever is that? So, then when you're looking at a lab, you don't have to go and give five or six different bottles of individual stuff. You can give one bottle of Mitochondrial Energy. And then all you really need to kind of think your mind around is what the dose should be, okay? And how many of these you're going to need to give. And that makes it a whole, whole, whole lot easier, okay? And I'll show you the label here. Um, you can see what's actually in this stuff. It's basically like, um, obviously a who's who of, [Music] um, of, uh, mitochondrial support, right? Every single nutrient that you need to run the mitochondria. And that is so much easier than trying to do this a different way, okay? So, I strongly suggest you do that, and, um, you'll find great results.

So, with the Mitochondrial Energy, then all you need to figure out is how many of them do you want to do a day, right? Do you want to do two a day or four a day? Or what's the actual dosage that you're going to use? And, you know, my practice, usually I'll do them, uh, two twice a day. Some people, if I really depleted, I'll do as many as four twice a day if I really feel like they're hurting, they're not doing well, okay? Again, so that's Mitochondrial Energy from Designs for Health, and it's everything that you need to run the mitochondria, all in one bottle, super easy, okay? And just use any company that you, but if you see a marker like that, just get a general marker that's covering the whole citric acid cycle.

Now, when we're going back to my other thing that's positive here, and anytime you get a lab, you're, I would suggest applying these same principles, right? So, we've got this other marker here. We're worried about pyroglutamate, which indicates that I'm not getting enough of the sulfur-containing amino acids to detoxify. We look at some of these other markers. We're looking for a pattern here. These other three don't look, look that great either. They're a little on the high side. So, you know, maybe I have something going on with my liver, okay? So, what do we want to do about that? Well, let's go back to the system part of this, and I'll show you. Go back a few slides, sorry, scrolling forever here. There it is. Now we're right back here. Now, we want to treat this system. We don't just want to treat with a sulfur compound. We want to get this whole system working. So, what does that require? Requires some B vitamins, folate, antioxidants. Get step one cranked up a bit for sure. We know the lab indicates that we need glycine, taurine, cysteine, we need the sulfur compounds, give an extra dose of that stuff, get that going, right? And you may even want to use a binding agent. A binding agent that would bind up and remove the toxin in addition to drinking water. You may want to use, we're talking about it in class this morning, diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth. It's cheap. You can buy it by the ton, practically. You buy a big bag of it for $10. Do a tablespoon of that in some water or juice or something, chug it down, and that'll bind up and remove toxins and help flush them out through the stool, okay? So, again, you want, if you see step two messed up like mine is, you don't just want to take those sulfur compounds. You want to support phase one a little bit, support phase two a lot, and maybe even use a binding agent like diatomaceous earth or there's some other kind of it, maybe use a fiber product like psyllium fiber, apple pectin fiber, whatever you feel like, okay? So, again, you see a marker positive, you're thinking systems-wide, and you're not just going to treat an individual nutrient.

When we see the, um, energy production markers positive, I'll show you that part of the lab again. We're not going to just treat that one marker. We're going to treat the whole system. Here it is, energy production markers, right? We're not breaking it down to individual nutrients. We're going to use that Mitochondrial Energy that has all the nutrients required to make energy inside itself, cell for the Krebs cycle to work well, right?

So, now you can also use the organic acids testing for really complicated patients. I want to show you a couple of case studies of that. You know, as much as I always advocate keeping your practice simple, we always end up, all of us, I know, with complicated patients. And, um, I couldn't even imagine navigating a complicated case without this test because it gives you so much information. Take all the guesswork out of it, and you just can target all the stuff that's messed up so specifically.

So, here's a couple of quick case studies for you. You can see how this kind of would roll out. Uh, 45-year-old female, fatigue, heavy menstrual cycles, divorced, quite overweight, fatigue and low energy, can't lose weight, super heavy periods, uterine fibroids, you know, bloating, constipation, gas, digestive problems all the time. We ran all our basic tests on her. This is a stage three adrenal burnout. We're not really talking about that tonight, but just kind of see that we always run these labs together. That's pretty messed up on the cortisol side, okay? Low cortisol, low DHEA. And here's her organic acids.

So, now let's just look at this systems-wide. What's going on? Carbohydrate metabolism problem. Maybe she's on a Paleo diet. Paleo diet could explain that. If she's eating carbs and she's not on a Paleo diet, then she's just got a blood sugar problem, okay? So, it could be dietary, it could be blood sugar. Energy production, alpha-ketoglutarate. Now we know we can support that system. We're not going to give her an individual supplement like just some lipoic acid. We're going to support that whole system. B vitamin markers, same thing. We give her all the B vitamins together. And then you can see some dysbiosis markers showing up here. So, what do we have? We have an energy problem, we have a carb problem, we have B vitamins, and we have, uh, some gut work to do.

Now, the way that I try to break this out, okay, is to look at it, uh, as an integrated program. I'll show you for some program design stuff in a sec. Now, here, let's look at the lab itself, okay? So, here you can see the GI portion of the lab. Three markers flagged. You know, that's a problem. Want to work for their gut a little bit. Sorry, I'm flipping around the wrong way here. Um, B vitamins, and, uh, on this last page here, uh, the carb metabolism marker that's super important, right? Because we're always worried about blood sugar control. It's a major factor. And then alpha-ketoglutarate, which is a marker for energy production, okay?

So, now, how would a program look for her? We're talking about these major areas, right? And so, let me just show you what a, a protocol design thing would look like. So, here's a basic protocol kind of thing that we do all the time. Stage three adrenal fatigue. Uh, this woman doesn't have a parasite, she has bacteria. So, let's just switch out to bacteria. But basically, there's an adrenal program running, there's a gut program running, and then she needs some detox support, right?

Now, in her program, we would take the standard adrenal protocol, we'd modify it, and we'd give her some blood sugar support because that marker showed up. So, now, a really important part of her adrenal program is going to be the blood sugar support because the carb marker showed up. Why is it in the adrenal program? We got to put it somewhere, right? I'm always doing these three system programs: adrenals, gut, detox. And, um, cortisol is a glucocorticosteroid, right? It's a blood sugar stabilizing product. So, you may want to pull out a few things, like pull out some oral adaptogens and put in the blood sugar support instead because you show on the lab that that's a major issue with her. Nobody can take all these pills. So, you can customize or, or even, you know, refine an adrenal program using your organic acids results. And I find that it's much easier to have a place to put all these supplements within a program design context, so, you know, not just put them out in thin air there, okay?

Now, in her case, she needs a bacterial cleanse. That would be a second protocol. So, again, we're generally either treating bacteria, yeast, or parasites, okay? You can use various supplements for that. You might need to do some leaky gut repair with her, right? And we go back to her lab, just as a quick refresher here. Remember, now we're incorporating the carb metabolism marker in with the adrenal part of the program, right? She also had the energy production marker that showed up. I don't want to forget about that. And then she had the, uh, GI markers, right? So, we go back to her protocol again. I'm showing you how I integrate this in with my other programs. She had the, um, energy markers, so I would put that Mitochondrial Energy in here as well. Why do I put it in the adrenal program? Because the adrenal is kind of for energy boosting, right? And this is also a way for you to place all these things. Mitochondrial Energy, let's give her like, I don't know, two of those twice a day, okay? So, now we've got the energy part of the program wrapped into her adrenal protocol, the blood sugar support part of her program. And now we've really beefed up her adrenal program and targeted it specifically for her based on the labs. And if you want to make her just like soar with energy and bliss, like, just double the dose, just give her like four of those twice a day, okay? You know, she needs the support there. You want to really make her feel great, just do that. Now you've got her blood sugar nailed, secure. You got your energy cranking up in the mitochondria. You got your DHEA and pregnenolone for the adrenals. And all of a sudden, you're flipping around someone who's in a stage three adrenal exhaustion and just zazing up their life, giving them the energy that they need. Why? So that they can get out there and start to exercise and eat healthier. It's pretty hard to eat well when you're in a stage three adrenal burnout and you've got energy problems and you've got blood sugar instability problems all over the place. That's just a formula for, you know, obsessing on carbs and not being able to get off carbs. So, I definitely see these supplement programs as a way to get the person feeling better enough that they can start to eat well and exercise, which is our ultimate treatment in functional medicine, is to make the, um, transition over, right? So that the person is focusing on their, um, just focusing on their lifestyle changes.

And then I just going to show you real quick, uh, I think we have time for maybe one more lab. We have one minute. One more lab, just so you get, I know you have to look at dozens of these before you even start to get them. I know that. Okay, a quick case study here. A housewife, four kids, taking a bunch of supplements already, um, stressed out of her mind, basically. So, sick parent, etc., etc., and, uh, heartburn, abdominal pain, menopausal stuff. Okay. Now, just to show you the differences in these labs. Now, we've got a brain person, this, right? Vanilmandelate is a marker that shows that she's got catecholamine-related problems. She's got oxidative stress. Her ADH-HDG markers are up, and she's not detoxing well, okay? Totally different reason for her to feel crappy than the last person. Her brain is messed up. She's got tons of oxidative stress, which means tons of inflammation, and her detox pathways are trashed. She's a brain toxic person. Remember that slide we showed a little while ago, the brain slide? This is classic. We need to flood the brain with neurochemicals. We need to get these toxins out of her body, and we need to just jam up her antioxidant levels, and she's just going to feel like a million bucks when you do that. Now, that's completely different than the last case, and yet these two patients could have, you know, almost identical symptoms, but the way you're going to approach it is going to be completely different based on the lab.

All right, so I love these tests. I mean, I don't know how else you would get this information without this, without the lab work. You know, we don't, and sorry, I skipped to the wrong slide there. Now, if I go to the end summary here, okay, complex, highly effective tool. The organic acids allows you as a practitioner to see a whole variety of your patients' body processes. We're just skimming 1% of the surface of this tonight. This is just to get you excited about the labs, okay? Um, the depth of this is really quite incredible. It's going to provide the foundation of knowledge behind designing. For me, in my practice, you know, half of my treatment programs are probably oriented around this lab. It's incredible. And also, like with these couple examples I gave you, it gives you a direction too. Like that, the last one we looked at real quick with the brain problem, now you're thinking, okay, you could just throw the test out and not give her any supplements and just try to figure out why she's so toxic, right? So, I mean, this lab is showing you this woman's got toxins, she's got oxidative stress, and that's messing up her brain. So, you all of a sudden have a lane to take with her, you know, okay, this is a toxic patient, seeing on the lab, you might want to get her out of the nail salon that she's been working in for 10 years, or maybe she's a hairdresser and she works with dyes all the time. I mean, it might be an environmental exposure or work-related exposure. Maybe she's a bus driver and she's like around exhaust all day long, okay? So, it gives you a lane to pick. It gives you a direction to take with other things, not just the supplements, but other recommendations you're going to make, right? It's a foundation for so many of the programs that I design.

Now, I also really advocate trying to keep it simple and viewing the results in simple ways. I tried to show tonight, you can, you know, if you're doing three body systems like I do in my practice, you know, hormones, gut, detox, try to fit the results of the organic profile into that. Remember, we took that carb marker and we put it as part of our adrenal program. We took the, um, energy marker and put it as part of the adrenal program. So, it's not so overwhelming for patients or for you as well. You might take the GI markers and put that into your GI program. And then you can also use this test for chronically ill people. You can use it for patients that just want a wellness program and they just want to see, hey, you know, I wonder if I'm healthy. Let's check out my overall nutritional status. My family dies of heart attacks when they're young, and I just want to make sure I don't have a lot of oxidative stress, you know? There's literally, literally dozens of ways you can apply this test, right? So, um, I hope this is getting you excited about it as I am. And, um, it's funny that I've been doing this for so long and I'm actually just figuring out how to do this after 20 years, but I'm pretty good at interpreting these labs now. And, um, I'm, I'm happy to stay on the line for a little while and answer questions. Okay, we're at our one-hour mark. So, I know some of you might need to take off and and do something in the real world, okay? So, let me just look at questions that have come in. I'm going to go through these and, uh, see. First question, uh, what company do you use? So, there's two main companies. Um, there's Genova. It's a Metametrix test, but as you all know, Genova bought Metametrix, and that's through Genova. The, and I use the Comprehensive Organic Acids profile. That's the one that you'll see on, um, these markers here. There's a, a wonderful other company called Great Plains. Great Plains also has an organic acids test, a little different variation, but it's kind of like just slight variation between the two lab companies. I, I've always used the Genova one, so that's just one I'm more familiar with, but I don't think it's better, okay? You can use either one. And let's see, other questions, um, oh, and what about SIBO testing? In my, I don't do SIBO testing in my practice. Um, I, I refer out all SIBO testing because that's just not a specialty of mine. Um, next question here from David, what's the most specific marker or group of markers for impaired phase one detox? Oh, let me read that again. That's complicated. What's the most specific marker for impaired phase one? You know, that's a good question. I would say, let me show you here. I would say this one, for sure, 8-OHDG. 8-OHDG, number 29, okay? 8-OHDG. So, if you guys have access to this, if you've heard of, uh, Dr. Walter Kian, who's kind of the founder of environmental toxicology, right? He's like one of, what the original doctor that's been talking about environmental toxins for decades, and he's an amazing speaker. He's really, really, really funny. I love doctors that are smart but are really funny because he makes his two-hour nightmarish lectures on environmental toxins entertaining, and that's not an easy thing to pull off. But anyways, I was in New York recently, and he did a whole lecture for like an hour and a half just about this one marker, 8-OHDG. And I would, if you're curious about this, as David is, it just asked a question, I highly recommend you Google 8-OHDG. It's 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine, but they just abbreviated it as 8-OHDG. Tons and tons and tons of research, more than you could ever read in a, in a year, on that marker in relation to cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, just goes on and on and on. It's a, it's a classic marker for oxidative stress, and, uh, put, if it's elevated, it puts us at high risk for all those diseases. That's a really great marker. Um, Brad's question, oh, how would you treat the patient with the catecholamines? That is a good question. So, again, I'm, I'm kind of doing this from Designs for Health land because that's sort of the company that I'm most familiar with their products, but I'm sure you could get the exact same stuff from somewhere else. So, now, if someone has catecholamines, now remember, they've got, she had both sides of the equation, right? She had the toxin buildup, so we know we need to support phase one and phase two. I use Amino Detox and Detox Antiox from Designs for Health for that purpose. That might be a too high dose, though. I might cut that back for her. Might use a little methylation support as well, right? And then we want to dose her way, way up on tyrosine, say a 500-milligram capsule, and I'm not sure how much she would need, you know, but anywhere from probably two to three of them to start off with and get her way, way up on the tyrosine. Sometimes it can go even higher on tyrosine. So, tyrosine is a precursor to all the catecholamines, okay? So, now, what are we doing here, though? We're supporting phase one and phase two because she was toxic. We're getting those neurotoxins out, and then we're cranking up her dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine with the tyrosine and doing a little bit of work with methylation as well, okay? Because that's important for detox. Amber's question, for the brain issue in the last case, would you just use single nutrients recommended by labs? Okay, here's the answer to that. It would be more this, this would be the protocol, okay? And then if that doesn't work, just see, you know, there's another amazing product out, it's called Dopa-Boost. You should all know about this one from Designs for Health, and that's got an herb in it called Mucuna, which is an herbal form of L-Dopa. If you're ever struggling with a dopamine case and they're just not really getting there, or someone with epinephrine or no epinephrine problems, just get out the Dopa-Boost. It's really powerful, okay? It's a good supplement. Um, let's see. Jim asked a question, what treatment protocol would you use for the toxic brain patient? Okay, so now, the more toxic they are, the higher you can go with these dosages. So, like with the phase two support, sometimes they'll go this high, but then we also want to crank up phase one, and you probably want to put in some kind of fiber product to bind up some binding agent like fiber, okay? So, someone who's toxic, forget the brain thing for a minute here, you know, you can do some kind of a program like this where you're really boosting up the antioxidants, you're boosting up the phase one, phase two stuff, right? And you're giving, uh, the binding agent. And then I always do this with a multi-pack because you always want to have minerals and vitamins and all that stuff, right? I use a multi-pack for that purpose. Uh, see Karen's question, I don't, no, I don't have any experience using the organic acids test from US Biotek. Um, and, uh, let's see, and let's see, yeah, so the protocol, so the protocols are always an integration between what the labs say and they give you indicators about what the person needs, and then how sensitive the patient is, how toxic they may be, how damaged their brain may be. So, we're always trading dosages up and down, right? The lab just gives you like the ballpark starting point. You might have a patient who, who needs three of these three times a day, but can only handle, I mean, this happens to me all the time, I'm sure to you guys too, they can only handle one. You know, you want to give them nine, the lab indicates nine, that's what it seems like they need, but they can only handle one. If they take two a day, they get really sick. So, we're always working within a context of what the patient can handle, okay? And then last question here from Terry, what multi-pack do I prefer? I'm again, like addicted to Designs for Health now, so I just use their multi-pack. Um, prior to that, for a lot of years, I used the one from Ortho Molecular. Those are great. If you guys don't know Ortho Molecular, they're a great company. Use them all the time too. And, um, I was using Douglas Labs for like 20 years, but they kind of had a little meltdown, um, and they're a little harder to work with now. They got bought by some company, and Douglas got a little sketchy there, so not using them as much as I used to, which is kind of sad because they've been around for a long time. But sometimes when these companies get sold, they, you know, the new ownership doesn't do as well as the old group did. All right, gang, so that's it for organic acids. And, um, I'm going to wrap up for tonight and want to thank you for joining us. And, uh, if you're interested in the classes, give us a call, let us know. We have room in the class that's starting next week. I'd be happy to talk to you about it. And we'll have some more free webinars too, coming up. Um, we're picking topics now, ones that'll attract a lot of interest. This, this one did. And so, I mean, I, I was kind of thinking we could do more on organic acids too, if you guys are interested. Be happy to do a couple more of these. You can always email us with feedback on what you want to hear me talk about. And, um, I hope you have a good evening, okay? Take care, everyone. I'll talk to you soon.