Transcription
So welcome back for another action-packed talk about organic acids testing. And I want to just start off with a little acknowledgement for all the mothers out there. So, it was recently Mother's Day. It's the true story, this is really funny. So, I took this picture yesterday, Mother's Day, and the quiz question for tonight. And whoever gets this right, if someone actually gets this right in the next ten seconds, I'll be like, so impressed. If anyone actually knows what flower this is and you text it to me in the next ten seconds, I don't know, I'll send you like, I don't know, a box of vitamin C or something like that. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay, no one knows.
Okay, so this is a very rare flower. This is a Mariposa lily. It only grows on Ring Mountain in Marin County, and it only blooms a couple, three weeks of the year in May. So, my mom is a real botany kind of person, and so is my younger sister, who's a science teacher, a, you know, high school science teacher. And so, this Mother's Day, my mom and my sister concoct this plan that we're gonna go find this rare and impenetrable and unfindable flower called the Mariposa Lily. Which, again, I gotta say, it only exists in one place in the world, on Ring Mountain, and it only blooms for a couple weeks in May, and it's incredible, you know.
So, anyways, we drive out there, we're hiking around, and this is like a mountain. This isn't like, you know, a plant shop, right? This is the mountain, and we're trying to find this one flower. Had we meet this other group of people who have found the flower, and it's his mom and her two teenage sons, and they're like, "Yes, we found one of the flowers." And so, we know it exists, and we know we could find it. And so, we're walking around this whole mountain trying to find this thing. And this is, again, you gotta imagine like a big mountain full of things, full of mountain stuff, and this one flower. And so, we're walking down this one path, and we're pretty sure it's somewhere around us, this side of the mountain. And I just think, I just see this trail. I just think, "I'm gonna just go over there." And my sister and my mom and all the botany expert people, they're all looking in this whole other area. And I'm just like, "I just wanted to take a walk, honestly. I'm not really interested in finding the flower." So, I just like, "I'm just gonna walk over here. This looks like a really nice trail." So, I'm walking along, and like five minutes later, I walk right in front of this thing, and I see it. And I can't believe it because, like, you know, obviously my mom shared the pictures with me before we went looking for it. And I just raised my hands up, I started screaming, "I found it!" And all the botany people from all over the mountains started running over, and it was pretty hilarious.
Anyways, very excited about that. The point of the story, though, isn't really reminding me of what it's like. So, you know, this is a problem with doctors, right? And this is, there's a point to this whole story. Is that, you know, doctors are like the botany people, and like my science-oriented sister, and they're full of knowledge, and they want to figure things out, and they're analytical. And they're like, "The most likely place for this flower is this one rock outcropping over here." And then we walk down the mountain, and we are too low, and up the mountain, we are too high. Anyway, all the logistical stuff. And if you just use your intuition, like I did, I'm like, "I'm just gonna go for a walk." Boom! Walked into the rare and difficult to find and almost impossible to locate Mariposa Lily.
So, oh, I know what we do. Any healing there's not based on logic, you know, it's based on intuition. And, you know, it just kind of balances out tonight's subject because tonight we're talking about organic acids testing, and it's pretty complicated, and it's pretty science-oriented. But I don't want you guys to think that, you know, we substitute science for intuition because you can have both. And I think really good practitioners, and equally so, really good patients, utilize both their intuition and their intellect to figure things out. And so, as technical as we get, and as into this, you know, lab testing as I am, we don't want it to be a replacement for your intuition. And hey, if you can go on a mountain like I did and walk right into the Mariposa Lily, you know that you're tuned in, and that your intuition is guiding you to the things that it should be. We can use the best of science and nature combined. Okay, so that's my story for today.
So today, we're going to talk about the digestive system portion of the organic acids test. And that's going to clarify the relationships between the good and bad microorganisms in your digestive tract when used. This is the most important part. When used in conjunction with very accurate stool testing. So, you never use the organic acids test for gut problems by itself. You use it in conjunction with stool testing. Let me say that one more time because it's the most important part of the whole talk. You can't rely on organic acids testing by itself to clearly lay out what's going on with a gut. You always back it up, or not even back it up, but combine it with stool testing. Okay, so it's not a standalone test in this regard whatsoever. Don't want you thinking that it is.
So, but basically, it's a pretty great technology that from a urine test, you can check for yeast and bacterial overgrowth. And that can trigger symptoms from sugar cravings to weight gain, to fatigue, to fungal overgrowth, mood problems. We all know now that the more inflamed the gut is, the more inflamed the brain becomes. We have neurological problems. You can have massive sugar cravings that just won't go away. Every time you eat sugar, you just want more and more of it. Okay, so this is a really important test to understand at another level of depth what's going on with your microbiome, and to understand how your digestive system plays a role in food cravings, and mood levels, and energy levels, and depression, and anxiety, in just about every condition you can imagine. You know, the gut, it's going to be involved. Basic tenets of functional medicine. So, cravings, yeast overgrowth. Let's take a look at the tests.
Here's me. You guys kind of know me by now. I've been doing this for a long time. And in practice, between a lot of doctors, spend a lot of time meditating. Try to get in two hours of meditation pretty much every day. Huh. Sometimes it's more. Sometimes I sneak into the meditation room at like 4:00 in the morning, and my partner, or girlfriend, love of my life, well, like, you know, stumble in like around eight and say, "What happened here? What are you doing here?" All these like, sitting there. Okay. Oh, sorry. I kind of lost track of things. But very important to meditate. Keeps us in tune with our spiritual side. But equally important to have some basic understanding of the science behind all the stuff that we do within functional medicine. And then you can combine these things, right? And so, I kind of, this is my vision for functional medicine, is that we have this combination of emotional and spiritual growth with all the science that's behind the work that we do.
And as you're trying to analyze your problems, your friends' problems, as you're trying to understand health in general, always want you to see that there's four different types of treatment that you could offer to yourself. You can treat symptoms. Nothing wrong with that. You can treat body systems. That's what the labs help us understand. You can treat the physiological damage that occurs from underlying causes. So, there's four different levels of treatment. And at any one time, in any given health program, you should really know where you are.
Now, a lot of people complain, understandably, about conventional medicine. And a complaint, one of the complaints would be, "Oh, it's just symptomatic oriented. If my blood pressure is high, I get a blood pressure pill." But no one told me that if I just dropped four pounds of body fat, my blood pressure might go down just from losing that little amount of weight. Or someone might have a problem with cholesterol and they're taking a cholesterol medication and they don't realize that if they change their diet over and start to eat more of a plant-based diet and basically ate more vegetables, you know, then things would really change just from the fact that they made their diet change. So, we don't want to get caught up in treating symptoms. But at the same time, symptom relief is really important.
So, if you're having sugar cravings, or brain fog, or skin problems, or autoimmune problems, or allergies, all of which are classic with yeast and fungal overgrowth problems in the gut, classic manifestations of those, then we want to treat the symptoms, as well as look at the body system, in this case, the GI system, figure out what's wrong, and how we're going to correct that. And then we're always bringing things back in functional medicine to the underlying cause of the problem. Is it emotional? I had a wonderful patient today who has chronic digestive problems that were triggered because of emotional pressure. Not the kind of normal emotional pressure, like emotional pressure in my family. My dad wanted me to get a PhD, and I didn't want to go and get a graduate degree in research. You know, that was like, "Kallish family pressure." But I'm talking about pressure where you have, you know, mentally ill parents, abusive parents, you know, really tough, tough chronic abuse type situations that people survive. So, that can be an underlying cause of a weakening of the immune system, a weakening of the GI tract, that could lead to brain fog, sugar craving, skin problems, and autoimmune disease that are resulting because of the yeast overgrowth.
So, that's the problem with functional medicine, as well as it's the benefit, is that everything can cause everything. And what we try to do within functional medicine is figure out what's the underlying cause of your problem, what physiological damage has that created, what body systems do we need to work with, and then ultimately, how can we offer symptomatic relief within this complete model? And it took me, you know, over 20 years to even just develop this model and to understand that the artistry in functional medicine is seamlessly moving between these four different treatment types, so that you are addressing the underlying cause and the symptoms, you are addressing the physiological damage in the body and the body systems. It's not that you're just going to deal with the underlying cause and not attend to symptoms, as and the same in the reverse, right? We're not just going to treat symptoms and ignore the underlying cause.
Okay, so anyways, that's the basic model that we're working on. And then you all, you know, as people, patients, people, you know, have pains and gains in life calls. You have things you want to get taken care of as a result of this. And so, a well-designed program takes all that into account. And then, here's where we are in this series of talks. We're getting into sugar cravings and yeast overgrowth based on organic acids testing. The next section, and the next month, is a winner. Don't miss this one. In fact, effects of environmental toxins. Now, we kind of saved the best for last. Environmental toxins, or toxins in general, or exposure to toxins, one of those sort of, I would say, the defining issues of our era. The one of the most critical things that's happening across the board to human beings, whether you're worried about children and the increase in autism, or you're worried about older adults and an increase in neurological conditions like Parkinson's. Environmental toxins are playing a role in the complete destruction of human species. And I think that we should try to reverse that before it's too late. So, again, saving the best for last. We're gonna get into toxins next session.
Now, let's think about where we're at today. Sugar cravings and yeast overgrowth. So, I want to talk about all the things they know about yeast overgrowth that I never have time to talk to patients about because I'm kind of constrained by like a half an hour consult. And so, I hope some of your patients of mine, this will kind of open up a dialogue that we can continue the next time we do a consult. For those of you that aren't patients, you know, hopefully you have another doctor you're working with that you know, you can kind of, again, get a little bit more of a background on on the doctor side of all this.
So, we want to think about like, how does this manifest in you? It could be as simple as constant sugar cravings. You're not supposed to ever crave sugar. You're supposed to enjoy sugar when it's around. I mean, I think that's just called being human. And I've never seen a kid that didn't like ice cream, you know, well, rarely, you know. But we're not supposed to crave sugar day and night. And if you do, and you can't resist those cravings, there's probably something going on. One of the more common reasons why we see sugar cravings and compulsive overeating of carbohydrate is because of yeast overgrowth. So, something to know about.
So, I want to talk about the lab testing assessments. And, you know, I was saying this in the doctor training program earlier today. This is like the year of functional medicine. We have several new lab companies that have just come into fruition in the last couple of years, and they are revolutionizing functional medicine in a way that I never anticipated it would happen in our, in my career. So, you imagine them. I don't know, imagine like you're a NASA scientist or something, and you already got someone to the moon, and you used to getting people to the moon, and it's not a big deal, you can do that. And then all of a sudden, someone comes along with the technology that says, "Hey, we could get everybody you feel like sending to Mars to Mars in like a week." And if you're a NASA scientist, you just freak out. You're like, "I can't believe that happened. Is that really possible?" Maybe, yeah, we could get people to Mars in a week.
Okay, there's new technology that's now available within functional medicine that's that kind of a leap forward. It's like going from a dial-up phone to a smartphone. I mean, there's some really incredible things happening. And I'm in regular touch now, and regular phone calls, emails, conferences, sharing patients, you know, with the lab directors of these new companies. And when we're done with you organic acids lectures, we're going to jump right into talking about these newer lab tests that are available, again, that are really changing functional medicine in a way that I never thought would happen in my lifetime.
So, back to basics. Now, we're going to talk about digestive health and the role that it plays in mood and energy. Now, the thing that is kind of more obvious now because there's so much research on this, but not so obvious in years past, is that one of the major side effects of having a yeast or fungal overgrowth in your gut is that you get tired all the time. You get a little depressed or anxious. You just don't feel very good when you have a little fermentation factory happening in your digestive tract.
So, what are these yeasts? Take a look at it. The main yeast that we usually think of is called Candida albicans, although there are other species of Candida, and there are other types of yeast like Geotrichum, etc. But oftentimes, the term Candida is used as just a general, if not entirely accurate, sort of summary term to refer to yeast or fungal overgrowth in the digestive tract. So, yeast, Candida, fungal overgrowth, somewhat interchangeable, even though that may not be the most super accurate scientific terminology, that's usually how people use them, use the terms. It's normal to have yeast overgrowth in the gut flora, but if it overgrows, it can be problematic.
So, one of the common things that most of us are familiar with is oral fungal overgrowth called thrush. You see this in little babies sometimes, you see it in older adults that have immune problems. Your mouth gets kind of coated with a white coating, and the tongue gets coated, and it doesn't look very good, it doesn't feel very good. And usually, it means people are pretty sick. And women, you can also have vaginal yeast infections that are similar types of organisms, although not directly related to what's going on in the gut. But when we talk about it in relation to the gut, we often refer to it as candidiasis or Candida overgrowth or yeast or fungal overgrowth.
So, what are the common triggers that would lead this to happen? Antibiotics. You could have taken an antibiotic 10, 20 years ago. You took it. Could have taken a lot of antibiotics when you were in high school for your acne. You could have taken, inadvertently, consumed antibiotics from the food that you're eating because in all our wisdom, we decided in the past generation to start to give antibiotics to the animals that we eat, not realizing that these antibiotics would eventually get into our systems as well. So, we have a really high exposure to antibiotics now in general in our culture. Probably one of the more, if not the most common trigger for yeast overgrowth. Of course, that can be also the yeast can also be fed by high sugar diets. So, antibiotics kill the good bacteria and allow the yeast that's present, present to proliferate. That's how that works, right? You kill the good guys, the bad guys tend to overgrow. High sugar diets are just like putting fuel on a fire. You're feeding the yeast, you're giving them the fuel that they need. And as they grow and grow and flourish, they release all these chemicals that are identical to the chemicals that are released when we consume a lot of alcohol. So, that feeling that people get when they have a hangover and they've drunk too much booze is the same kind of a chemical reaction that happens in the brains of people who have yeast overgrowth. And so, what's a hangover? If you're like, "I just don't feel like I'm kind of tired, a little depressed, well, exhausted, a little confused, my brain doesn't feel that good." Low levels of yeast overgrowth make people feel like they're hungover all the time. Mercury toxicity kills the good bacteria and leads to yeast overgrowth. Birth control pills, notorious for triggering yeast overgrowth problems. Low secretory IgA. That's a fancy way of saying the immune response in the gut isn't working so well.
Years ago, when I was working at one of these lab companies, it was like over 20 years ago. We, I don't know if we were bored, I don't know. It was before I had kids, so like, you have a lot of free time when you don't have kids. And so, I've, we're hanging out at the lab, and we're just thinking, "I don't know, what are we going to do today, guys?" And we ended up taking all the lab tests that had come in in like the last month or months that were the most gluten-sensitive people based on lab testing, and then we lined up with them their yeast overgrowth results on labs. And we found, lo and behold, the more sensitive people were to gluten, the more likely they were to have a yeast overgrowth. It wasn't exactly a research study, it's just guys messing around in a lab. But that led me to understand that the more sensitive you are to gluten, the more likely you can have a yeast overgrowth. And I think most of you will understand that too, just from personal experience. If you have trouble with gluten, there's probably going to be a problem with yeast.
So, again, symptoms of yeast overgrowth. Anything from thrush to PMS, joint pains, to hay fever, fungal infections in other parts of the body, it's, ear infections are kind of classic, food allergies, migraine headaches, foggy brain, we talked about that, kind of like the hungover brain feeling, muscle aching, gas, diarrhea, constipation, obviously digestive problems because it's all going on in your gut. And then very, very, very important, autoimmune issues. So, one of the things that yeast can cause is an overreaction and exaggerated reaction of your immune response. And one of the things that your immune response can do when it's overreacting is create an autoimmune cascade. This was very common for yeast overgrowth to lead to leaky gut, and for that eventually to lead to an autoimmune response. So, you could have something like Hashimoto's thyroiditis or rheumatoid arthritis, that's a straight-up autoimmune condition that after you can track it back far enough, was generated by yeast overgrowth. And there's some antibodies that attack the thyroid that are very similar to what ends up happening with yeast overgrowth. So, it's a really strong correlation between gluten and thyroid disease, and yeast overgrowth and an autoimmune thyroid as well.
Now, yeast overgrowth is something you can treat in and of itself, but it often means, more often than not, means that you need to look deeper into what's actually going on underneath the surface. So, yeast overgrowth is often secondary to other kinds of infections, to food reactions, I mentioned the gluten, to other kinds of problems. It's rare to see yeast overgrowth all by itself, unrelated to other things, although once in a while that happens. You'll see oftentimes in Giardia, that yeast is present. You'll find that patients positive on PCR, that's the genetic testing for Candida, are often also gluten-sensitive, right? So, there can be food reactions, there can be other digestive tract infections, it can just be emotional stress.
My favorite yeast patient of all time, and I don't know where these people come from, but I have a really interesting practice, and I always just love working with patients because I meet really cool people and I learn a lot of interesting things. Wow, that's one of my, one of my patients. And I've worked with this guy probably at least seven or eight years. Man, he's like my age, probably late forties, early fifties. He runs a hedge fund. Good for him, you know. One time, when the stock market was crashing, I was like, "Bam, is this a problem?" And he's like, "No." We, this was his subtle way of saying no. He's making tons of money. He said, "No, we, we do well with volatility." Basically, that was him saying, even though the market is going completely kaput and falling apart, he's still making billions of dollars. Anyways, this guy runs a hedge fund, he's got like 60, 70 employees, he's managing, you know, a little bit under a billion dollars. And so, it's a lot of responsibility, takes his job really seriously. He is wealthy, but he works like a dog, day and night, seven days a week. He worries a lot about the families of his employees. I don't know why, but he's kind of got a soft spot for like other people as well. So, he feels a real obligation to keep this whole train running, you know, and to make sure that this fund just keeps going. And what most of it's not his money, it's also other people's money. So, it gives him all that sense of sort of, grant, if things are not going to go well. Anyways, every year we do a consult, every year we test him, every year he has a yeast overgrowth. Every time he takes a vacation, the yeast overgrowth goes away, and he feels better. Okay, how hard is that to figure out that stress is a major component? But oftentimes, whether you have a spouse with Alzheimer's that you're taking care of, you have an autistic child you're taking care of, you're running a hedge fund, you feel responsible financially, whatever it is, it keeps us going. And emotionally stressed can be the major factor that keeps a yeast overgrowth going. So, you always want to make sure that you take into account the stress component.
Okay, now stool testing for Candida. That can be done. And most of the lab companies that we work with will run a test. It doesn't tell you the complete picture. But again, the whole theme of tonight is combining stool testing with organic acids testing. There's other kinds of testing obviously as well to get a more accurate picture of all the different bugs that are going on, including yeast. So, yeast overgrowth in general, we want to know not only is the yeast present, but how invasive is it? So, if you test positive for Candida or yeast overgrowth on a stool test, it tells that there's a major carbohydrate digestive problem going on. But the absence of yeast on stool testing doesn't mean that you are in the clear. Okay, it's very difficult to culture yeast in a lab when they're doing it from stool testing. So, the vast majority of yeast or Candida problems are not detected by stool testing. Let me say that again. The vast majority of yeast or Candida problems will be missed with the best quality stool testing. Okay, it's just a technological limitation. As I mentioned earlier, there's some new types of tests that are available that are more accurate. But even with the most accurate testing, it's very easy to miss yeast overgrowth.
So, on talked a little bit about the terminology. You understand the terminology. You're understand why it's so hard to find this stuff. So, there's a commensal yeast overgrowth. That means that the yeast is overgrowing inside the lining of the digestive tract itself. So, the lining of the gut is like a tube. It is a tube. The yeast can just be inside the lining of the GI tract. That's a problem. It can be invasive. That means that the gut is now leaky. You have leaky gut. And what's happening is one of the things poking holes in the gut, as making it leaky, are the yeast organisms themselves. So, they're sticking their little tendrils into the lining of the gut. They're now invasive because they're invading into the tissue of the digestive tract. Imagine a garden hose with a bunch of holes poked in it with an ice pick. You can imagine leaky gut, right? What's making those holes is the invasive nature of the yeast. Now, it's going up into the gut lining. It's leaving the lumen or the tube of the gut, and it's into the actual gut tissue, gut lining tissue itself.
Now, if you want to, now, as you like, you can imagine the donut, and you know, have you donut, I've ever eaten, anyways, you know, it's got a hole in the middle, right? Donut hole. So, having commensal yeast overgrowth is like yeast overgrowth just inside the donut hole. But that's not inside the donut. You can stick your finger in the donut hole, you're not in the donut. You know, invasive yeast is like sticking your finger in a donut hole and then jamming it up into the side of the donut where it would come into contact with like the sprinkles or the frosting or something. Okay, that's leaky gut, right? That's invasive yeast. The yeast is now up in the tissue itself, in the gut lining itself, not just in the tube.
Systemic yeast overgrowth is a medical condition. That's something that medical doctors treat with medications. It's very severe, it can be life-threatening. It's confusing because in natural medicine, we use these terms kind of interchangeably and a little loosely. So, systemic yeast overgrowth means that the yeast is traveling throughout the body. Can go to your brain. It can cause some pretty serious medical problems. If a person has a systemic yeast overgrowth, that's certainly not going to walk into my clinic. They're not going to be walking anywhere. They're going to be quite sick and in the hospital. Okay. So, commensal yeast overgrowth, it's limited to the gut lining. Invasive, it's starting to cause leaky gut. Systemic, means you're probably hospitalized and you're under medical care. And in general, in medicine, they don't treat yeast overgrowth unless it's hit this critical level. And in general, commensal and invasive yeast is purely treated by integrative doctors.
Now, when you're a young doctor in your first five years in practice, yeast overgrowth is really great to treat because you get a lot of benefit for patients, and it's pretty simple to figure out. There's medications, of course, they can treat it, but there's also natural anti-Candida compounds. If they're used alone without addressing the underlying problem, then of course, this lot can work that well. So, if you have Giardia and you treat the yeast, and the yeast comes back, not a surprise. If you have a stressful job, like my hedge fund manager, and you treat the yeast, and it comes back year after year after year, not a big surprise. If you're eating a ton of sugar, and you treat the yeast, and the yeast comes back when you start eating sugar again, not a big surprise. So, we're always combining these treatments with these other types of treatments to get a more complete solution. Okay, you want to work with hormonal programs, obviously, diet changes, stress management. All these things are components of addressing Candida. Never treat it by itself. So, we're going to address the adrenals, diet, lifestyle, stress, etc., to get a more complete solution.
Now, let's want to show you one thing here. It's not really part of our official agenda, but I want you to see this because it's pretty cool. And this is, though, the great world of science here. Science in action. So, here's a research study that we just published. May have talked about this in earlier talks. I was just published a few weeks ago in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice journal, "Evaluation of a Functional Medicine Approach to Treating Fatigue, Stress, and Digestive Issues in Women." Same exact things apply for men, but we were using women for the study. So, we did this research. Tsoo Cutshall from the General Internal Medicine Department at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. Larry Bergstrom from the Division of Consultant Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale. And Daniel Kalish, this kind of narrow do-well guy, who's in private practice in Oakland, California. Anyways, in the study, we're not going to get into this in a lot of detail, but we did a lot of lab testing, and a lot of gut problems showed up. And out of the initial group of women that we tested, we found 19 digestive tract infections, including a pretty significant number of them that had yeast overgrowth. And with the combination of diet, lifestyle, treating the adrenals, upon retesting, out of those original 19 infections that we found, 18 of them were cleared. Okay, 18 of the 19 GI infections were cleared with a combination of lifestyle changes, diet, supplements, etc. Now, on the retesting, if you read the study, which I'd be happy for you to read, you'll find that there were new infections that showed up on the second round of testing because, you know, it's not this one fix situation, right? What we're talking about, you could have Giardia and treat the Giardia and still have yeast. You could have yeast and treat the yeast and still have Giardia, right? So, oftentimes, it's multifactorial. But the general throw here's, we address adrenals, diet, lifestyle, all these things, reduce stress, we get rid of the bugs, and then ultimately, we're working to reestablish a healthy microbiome, which is where it's at.
Common problems that happen. Stool testing and organic acids can both miss the yeast overgrowth. Both of them. Bummer. Okay, so all the best testing that you can do can still miss it. There's more advanced testing. We'll be talking about later on when we do more of these free webinars, looking at DNA markers. There's also more advanced testing. Many of you have looked at, we've done yourselves, I'm sure, it's called SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. But there's more. There's always another step. It's like, if you hurt yourself badly and you're not sure, "Is my leg broken or my neck broken?" They may do an X-ray of your neck and then can't tell if it's broken or not. Maybe there's a herniation. They may then do an MRI. Often, then they do the X-ray first, looking for things, and they don't see enough, then they do the MRI. So, it's the same thing with functional medicine. If you've got a basic test, then you've done that, and it hasn't really revealed the problem, you can do a more advanced test. But in general, you don't want to do the advanced testing right away. You want to kind of follow.
Adrenal appointments available. This is me and my website. You can check it out, calluswellness.com. If you're interested in becoming a patient, we have international patients, we have people all over the place. And give us a call, check things out if you want to do some of these tests. Okay, now we're going to look at these markers. But I'm going to go through this pretty fast. Why? Because it's complicated, and you don't really need to know this. But it's just kind of, at the same time, for those of you that are science-oriented, kind of cool. And you can look these things up later when you have a lot of free time, if you do have any free time. But the markers are benzoate, hippurate, phenylacetate, HPA, and akin trigon. I don't know how to pronounce that one. Try, carbolate, like that. D-lactate, D-HPP, and D-arabinatol. Okay, these are the markers that we're looking at. And we're going to kind of group them together into categories. So, this makes a little bit more sense, and it sounds like something that actually is useful. Are there bacterial overgrowth problems present? Is there a Clostridium problem? That's important to differentiate. And is there a yeast growth? These are the biggies that we want to find out from this portion of the test. And remember, we're combining this with stool testing. And again, for those of you that are totally science-oriented and you know, love to know the details, these compounds appear in the urine. They're byproducts of bacteria. So, in other words, if certain kinds of bacteria overgrow, what ends up in the urine is the benzoate, hippurate, etc. If certain kinds of yeast overgrow, what ends up in the urine is D-arabinatol. So, we're not measuring the bacteria obviously directly. We're making this indirect measurement by looking at these organic acid markers. But again, the same, the thing, three things to remember are looking for yeast, we're looking for various forms of bacteria, and we're looking for Clostridium. Organism. These are the three biggies. Category-wise.
So, again, I'm going to skip through this quickly, but they're here if you ever want to go back. The slides are here if you ever want to review them. These are the back, there's bacterial markers. I'm just going to mention them by name: benzoate, hippurate, phenol acetate. And in this one as well, these are all bacterial markers. Indole is another marker that can also be related to protein assimilation. So, all the details. Another marker for bacteria. Another marker for bacteria. And then there's a yeast and Clostridium marker. D-arabinatol is sort of a special, extra special one because we're talking about yeast today. So, high D-arabinatol means yeast overgrowth. And that's a big thing to think about. That is a really accurate marker. Although, you could have a yeast overgrowth and still miss that, you know. So.
Oh, I'm just a reminder. Where the next talk is. Unique. We're going to talk about environmental toxins. Okay. So, let's look at a couple labs. I want to show you some examples of how all this plays out in real life. So, here's a test. This patient has an infection called Cryptosporidium. What's very common with Cryptosporidium, along with Cryptosporidium, is for there to be a yeast overgrowth. Here's another patient that has a parasite called Iodamoeba Bueschlii. Iodamoeba Bueschlii, and they have a light growth of Candida. But remember, this is a stool test we're looking at right now. And it's very easy for stool testing to be misleading. So, this patient that has the crypto, but no positive testing for yeast, might have a yeast overgrowth. This person that has the Iodamoeba Bueschlii and Group D Enterococcus, these two organisms here, this is a bacteria, once the parasite has a light growth of yeast. But remember what we said a little while ago, we don't know if that yeast is invasive, commensal. We don't know the status of it. So, picture this in a picture, you know, your intestinal tract lining, and you have a commensal yeast overgrowth. It's just in the tube. That might show up on a stool test. But what if the yeast has gotten into this invasive phase, and it's penetrated into the gut lining, it's causing leaky gut, but it's no longer shed in your bowel movements? That means you have a worse version of yeast overgrowth. It's more damaging, it's causing more problems, but yet, don't see it on the lab because it's not in the stool sample. You see what I mean? So, when you see yeast in the stool, it doesn't tell you if it's commensal, or it doesn't tell you whether it's invasive or not. And let you know it, yes, it's in this, in the stool itself, the digestive tract itself. But an invasive yeast overgrowth could miss detection with a stool test. And there's, doesn't matter how accurate the lab company is, you can miss it. Here's another example. Moderate yeast overgrowth. Again, we don't know, is it invasive or not? Invasive yeast is way more problematic, harder to treat, can cause a lot more symptoms. You can't tell from the labs. All right, so let me show you some other examples about how this works.
Now, from a practical standpoint, if you're trying to put all this into a context, and I think that's the hardest part of functional medicine, is having a model and having a context. So, I want to show you context that I've developed, and hopefully this will help you kind of create a framework. Now, one of the contexts we're going to skip to the beginning here, is this right here. Is that you should always know what type of treatment you're engaged in. You should know. And there's nothing wrong with any of these types. If you're treating symptoms, you just need to acknowledge, "Hey, we're treating symptoms here." This fatigue, anxiety, and digestive problem, we're going to relieve with some amino acids and some enzymes. And we know that deep down, there's a GI infection, or yeast overgrowth, or bacterial overgrowth, or Clostridium overgrowth, there's some kind of organism that's actually behind this. But we can treat symptoms, as long as we keep in mind the bigger picture, which is at some point, we need to deal with GI infections.
Now, the really strange thing about functional medicine, and I just figured this out like a year ago, is that when I first learned about functional medicine, well, first of all, when I was first trained, I learned how to treat symptoms really well. And then I learned about functional medicine. I'm, you know, in practice for five years, ten years, and I thought, "Oh, well, the whole point of this is not to treat symptoms, but to treat the underlying cause." And then you hit, like, and there's these pretty predictable phases for doctors. Like, from your first, from zero to five years of being in practice, you're just scrambling and trying to not screw things up. I mean, that's really all it's happening. You're opening the door, the patients on the other side of the door, and you're just hoping that whatever you concoct is going to work reasonably well. And then around five to ten years of being in practice, it's almost like kids, you know, kids from zero to five have certain problems and certain things they do that are great. And then from five to ten, and teenagers, you know, it's just, it's just like a developmental thing. From years five to ten, you know, doctors get a little cocky, or like, "Well, I don't know what I'm doing now. Kind of seen a lot of these cases. I sort of have a general understanding of what's happening, and I'm not completely afraid every moment that I'm going to screw things up. And actually, pretty much have a good understanding of how people are gonna get better." So, that's kind of like characteristics of a doctor in years five to ten. And then years ten to twenty, they go by pretty fast, you know. But you're really starting to learn in years ten to twenty. Years zero to ten, you know, you can just almost throw all that time away because you're just dealing with your own emotional baggage and stuff. But if you're a good doctor, and yours ten to twenty, you're really listening carefully to people. You're not scared anymore. You're doing the right thing most of the time, and you're just learning, learning new case, learning new case, learning. And then at the twenty plus year mark, which is kind of where I am now, you start to get kind of philosophical, and you start to put things together in a bigger picture context, you know. And, and then, you know, there's another big place I'm looking forward to this in the future, when doctors hit like 40 years of practice plus. So, I guess for me, this would be like when I'm in my seventies. They get really good. You can get your hands on a functional medicine doctor that's been in practice for 40 years. Go for it. You know, because at the forty year plus mark, you know, as long as they have, obviously retired yet, they're just on it. You know, and some of the best doctors, and I teach a training program for physicians, but we get a lot of older doctors. And I'll tell you, some of the best people have come through my training program are doctors in their seventies. They have just been around, they've just seen everything, they know everything, they're still learning, they're taking my class, they're still exploring, but they really have like a coherent model. So, I want to show you my model. I developed, you know, around the 20 year mark. 20, I'm in the 20 to 30 years old here myself. So, you could take all this with a grain of salt. All right.
So, one of the big things, and that I want to share with you, is that even though the underlying cause can be the most important thing that we want to treat in functional medicine, it is often not the first thing that we go after. And even though symptomatic treatment is not where we want to stop, and we don't just want to treat symptoms, in the beginning of a program, symptomatic treatment is really important to get people feeling better so they're motivated, they want to continue. So, if you find the underlying cause of your health problems, or a yeast overgrowth, or a bacterial overgrowth in the intestinal tract, that is great. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you want to treat that first. And everything in the world is screaming out to treat what you think is the underlying cause of the problem first. And in functional medicine, that can be a really critical error. And we do this in all kinds of human endeavors. We often treat things, we often do things kind of instinctively first that turn out to not be a great strategy in the bigger picture of things. We can think about anything from trying to solve world hunger or world poverty to social justice and problems with crime. You know, it's oftentimes not the best thing to just throw money at a solution that is involving extreme poverty. Oftentimes, it's better to actually get the community so that they can generate their own source of revenue and not be dependent on some organization like the World Bank. You know, it's just simple examples like that. We see these same things all the time.
So, now I'm going to show you the basic clinical model that we want to follow. And we're not always treating the most important things first. We generally going to treat in this sequence: neuroendocrine, GI, and then detox. There are many exceptions to this, but the general rule of thumb that we want to go with. Neuroendocrine, what does that mean? That could be adrenals, it could be thyroid, it could be neurotransmitters, could be sex hormones. GI refers to, we're talking about tonight, which is balancing out the microbiome, getting rid of pathogens, healing the leaky gut, getting all the damaging foods out. And then eventually, when the neuroendocrine and GI systems are working reasonably well, then we can start to detox people. Then we can start to work on methylation pathways. Then we can start to deal with nutrient replacement. Now that we've got a system that can absorb nutrients. It's very tempting with a toxic patient to detoxify first. It's very tempting with someone with a yeast overgrowth or microbiome problem to just attack that first. But it does work much better if we have a plan and a general sequence for structuring how all these things actually go down. Okay, and again, it's counterintuitive, and a lot of times people don't want to do it that way because we're impatient.
Let me show you some sample labs now too, so you can see what these things look like and get a little better appreciation for what the heck we're talking about. Oops, sorry, that was the wrong document. I'm going to blame myself for that one because that was kind of dumb. In a second, let's try this. There we go. Now we're talking. I like spared in it. So, now let's start by looking at the digestive section of this particular individual's lab. And let's think this through because.
One of the things that I think is critical is that, and this is why I'm doing these talks, it's not so that you know that bends away in the HIPAA radar these markers as meaningless and you probably forget that. You know, I probably already forgot that bends away in HIPAA radar these markers, let alone that that's going to be useful information. Probably already left your mind. You know, it's like when I met this real estate agent yesterday, as soon as she introduced herself and told me her name, I had already forgotten it. I felt so bad. As it was, I can't remember. Okay, so I mean, and the reason I forgot her name is because it didn't really matter because I had my own real estate agent. I didn't really want to talk to her anyways. But, you know, the things that we want to remember, the point of doing this is not the detail, but it's the thinking process that goes into determining how to sequence things, how to figure out what's wrong. And this is where I see we all need the most help. How to sequence things? What's the sequence gonna be? No, here it is. Neuroendocrine, GI, detox. Usually this sequence works the best. There's many exceptions. And then the thinking process that goes behind us. I want to show you right now with a couple of real-life examples.
Okay, so here's a real patient, James. Bacterial markers, we just talked about a little bit. There's three right here. So he has intestinal bacterial overgrowth. He's got bad bacteria overgrowing in his gut. He also has this D-Arabinitol marker, which shows that he has a yeast overgrowth. So now we're worried about James because he has yeast overgrowth and bacterial overgrowth. Let me show you what that looks like on the actual test. Don't see this section here. We go. Not too hard to discern. It says right here, compounds of bacterial or yeast fungal origin. Hip hip hooray. We talked about that. Hydroxy phenyl acetate, Indyk in. These are all the markers of intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So we know he has an overgrowth of bad bacteria in his gut that are harmful. And the D-Arabinitol marker, number 46 here, is elevated. So now we know he has a yeast overgrowth as well. Basically, with this portion of the test, a red H is a bad thing. A red H is a bad thing. It means a lot of bacteria or a lot of yeast. So right off the bat, we know James has yeast and bacterial overgrowth. And symptomatically, could be manifesting as depression, anxiety, brain fog, sugar cravings, weight gain, bloating, gas. Doesn't even really, we don't know from the lab how he's experiencing this. We can just see what's wrong. Now, oh, and this is a little preview for next time. Look at James's detox markers. Not doing good. Now, your body would be pretty toxic too. In all fairness to our fellow James here, if you had that much going on in your gut, your body would be pretty toxic too, right? And what's happening with his brain? That's not working that well either, is it? One marker low, couple markers high. So he's inflamed. He's got this Kynurenate problem. He's got 5-hydroxy acetate levels high. It's got low vanilmandelate. That means his brain chemicals are all over the map, up and down. That makes people anxious, depressed, mood swings, irritable, concentration problems, memory problems, OCD kind of stuff. When these markers are low and high, your brain is just scrambled in relation, partially, we know to what's going on with his gut. He's got a methylation defect. All these things are going on simultaneously.
We just got back from this amazing seminar, Chicon, that Dr. Ben Lynch put on. He was very gracious inviting me to speak. I gave two talks. Sarah, I met some amazing doctors. Anyways, you know, talked a lot about methylation issues. And so common for people to find a methylation problem and to treat that first. You know, not always the best move. Just go online, listen to Dr. Ben Lynch's videos. He's going to talk about that. You know, just because the methylation is the most important thing that's wrong doesn't mean you treat it first. So let's look at all the other things in the context of the other work that we've done throughout this series. Here's a whole bunch of energy markers. So this person is just exhausted and their mitochondria are damaged. This person has bacteria and yeast overgrowth, but they also have problems with their brain and with methylation. Where do you start? To have oxidative damage markers positive as well. Okay, so this is why we have a clinical model because it's confusing. Now, we just lay out what poor James is going through here. James has bacteria and yeast overgrowth problems. So there's problems with the microbiome. But he also has neurotransmitter issues, mitochondrial energy markers that are problematic, detox markers are a mess, and he's got oxidation and methylation problems all together. So now we're thinking, poor James, what should we do first? Should we treat his detox pathway at first? And then you think, nope, because that's the third of the three, right? So if we're going to set up a structure for James, and we're going to think, okay, how are we going to make sense out of all this? I want to show you here. So I got the wrong one here. Here it is. We're going to treat his neurotransmitters and his energy production issues first. Then we're going to start to handle his microbiome problems. Oops. And then eventually, we're going to use detox and methylation protocols to get everything else fixed. Now, am I saying that the neurotransmitter and energy markers are the most important? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I just said a minute ago, oftentimes the most important things, oxidation, the methylation, detoxification, happen last. But if we can upregulate his brain, improve his energy production, that's going to allow his gut and his liver to work properly, and it's going to get him feeling better all the same time. Get him sleeping better, get his energy levels up, so that he can start to heal. Then we can go after the correction of the microbiome, the yeast and the bad bacteria, do all the treatments for that. And once his gut is absorbing well, then we can detoxify, get the detox pathways working, get the antioxidant levels balanced out, get methylation working. So this sequence, neuroendocrine, GI, and detox, is the most common sequence that we follow. And it leads to a couple of different potential benefits. One is that you don't make people worse as often. The classic way to make someone worse, like James, is to aggressively detox him, aggressively give him tons of antioxidants and methylation products prior to his neuroendocrine and GI systems working properly. That often leads to a crash in making people worse. So we want to avoid things like that. Sequencing is as important as actually what we end up recommending in terms of treatments.
And let me try to draw this one more time in a slightly different way. And I'm going to stop in a couple minutes, you know, coming up on the hour here, but I want to try to do this in a color-coded way so you can see what the heck I'm talking about. So here's James again. Here's all his findings on his organic acids profile. And let's think about this in terms of, start with neuroendocrine. I'll circle the neuroendocrine components. So energy production, neurotransmitters, right? Red. Often we start with neuroendocrine, getting him feeling better, getting the energy production back in the body so he can detox, so his gut can function, all these basic things. Then we start to look at gut treatments as the next step. And we'll draw that in orange because I always use orange for gut. Then we start to look at bacterial treatments, anti-yeast treatments, like we're talking about tonight. That would be the next phase. Okay, that's starting to wind down. Then we start to think, well, we definitely don't want this guy walking around with a methylation problem. That would be, you know, inappropriate. And we certainly don't want him to have antioxidant problems and be at high risk for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. So now we're going to look at detox, oxidative stress. And there's one more on that list because he has a problem with methylation. Okay. So again, talking about sequencing. And hey, I don't even care if you don't like my sequencing. You use another sequence as long as you have a sequence that works. Okay? As long as you have a sequence that works. Now, did I make this sequence up? No, this is like what I was taught. Did I make up this PowerPoint? Yeah, I put the PowerPoint together. Okay, but this is like basic functional medicine as I learned it 25 years ago, organized with a bunch of colors. But what I find is that if you don't have a system of some kind, these kind of labs become overwhelming to doctors and patients alike, and people don't know what to do. So when I look at a lab like this, and this is the brilliance of having a very simple mind, you know, you got a picture. You know, me growing up, I grew up in Berkeley, California. My dad moved, moved the family up from LA when I was like five. It was 1969. Driving around Berkeley when you're a little kid, there was a National Guard Reserve, there's protests going on, there's a lot of stuff happened. Berkeley was a really cool place. Every, every child on in my neighborhood, there's maybe three block stretch of houses, and we're all kind of buddies. Every single one of those kids had a professor at UC Berkeley, whether they were in the astrophysics department or economics, whether they were like, you know, English professors or. I remember one of our friends, I won't mention their name, but one of my closest friends, both his parents were psychiatrists. And that, you know, among these little kids, you know, that was kind of like, oh boy, I'm glad both my parents aren't psychiatrists because we didn't know what psychiatrists were. We knew that we probably wasn't a really great thing to walk home and have both your parents be able to psychoanalyze you all the time. So yes, I grew up in a really academic, really smart environment in Berkeley. And not a stranger to academic achievement, that kind of stuff. But, and so it seems so sort of silly to color-code a functional medicine lab, but, you know, again, if we're going to talk for an hour and a half about benzoate and hippurate, your head will just pop off and it's not going to be that helpful. So I want to look at this from a perspective of body systems so you can make use of it. Carbohydrate metabolism, that has to do with blood sugar control, that's hormonal, that's neuroendocrine. Energy production, I have under neuroendocrine because we need the energy to run the brain. What's the most important organ in your body? Your brain. If you don't have your brain working, it's really not worth having your heart pumping if your brain is dead, right? Energy production is the most critical mitochondrial function to keeping the brain fueled, right? As well as glucose lines, I think. And then we have the neurotransmitter markers, again, neuroendocrine in red. Okay, that's one body system this test tells you about. Now, the second body system, quick review, is the gut. And this particular patient has everything that we're talking about tonight. The lab shows he has a yeast overgrowth, D-Arabinitol marker is high. The lab shows multiple markers for bacterial overgrowth in the digestive tract as well. So he's got GI issues. And then because the gut, when it's toxic for long periods of time, tends to dump toxins on the liver, and we end up having what are called endogenous toxins, right? So exogenous toxins come from the outside, and endogenous toxins come from the inside. So we internally generate our own toxic burden when we have a gut problem. Here's a perfect example of that. We have antioxidant levels that are damaged, and we have detox markers showing up left and right. Part of that is definitely going to be the yeast and bacteria dumping their load on your poor little liver, and your liver just struggling to try to handle that. Okay, so treatment-wise, we can work with the neuroendocrine system first, energy and neurotransmitters. We can get into balancing out the microbiome. And then eventually work with detox and oxidative stress and methylation. And if you do it in this sequence, you'll start to have clinical results that are consistent, and it's not as vague or complicated as it may otherwise seem to be.
All right, so I'm just going to mention one more time, we have a talk coming up next time, June 8th, on environmental toxins. If you're interested in doing some testing, you can contact my clinic and sign up and do some lab work. And I'm going to try to handle a couple of questions because we have a couple of last-minute things here before we sign off on the hour. I won't be able to get to all the questions, obviously. But um, oh, there are. You can use Nystatin and Diflucan. Those are treatments that medical doctors use to treat yeast overgrowth. You can use that in combination with or instead of natural products that are used for yeast overgrowth treatment. It's always just a judgment call among the doctors to decide, do you want to use a medication, obviously a little more extreme level, risky, or do you want to use a herbal product? Yes, yeast overgrowth can cause muscle pain. That is absolutely true. Does a stool testing have to be at the same time as organic acids? No. I mean, I test every new patient, all the tests are run right away, so you get the complete picture. But if you've done one, you can do the other later. We, yes, we are going to have all these recorded talks recorded, so you can listen to that later. Let's see. I can't either for a long time ago. Yeah, so it's in a complex case, if you have multiple health problems, it's never just a single one thing. You know, you always have to coordinate with the other kinds of infections that are going on. Oh, yeah, and here's the most important thing of tonight. That flower, that's the Mariposa Lily. Okay. The organic acids test is done from a urine sample, to answer that question. And you can go to the website, you can see what all the costs are to work with us. It might click. Okay. All right. And then I'm going to answer. There's a Mariposa Lily. One last question before we go, which is one that always comes up. Someone just asked it, so I don't mention it. So these markers here, there's something called SIBO, with his small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Can that's done from a breath test. This is a urine test, so it's different. This test does not tell you definitively if you have SIBO or not. So again, that's the point of, you know, how I'm your doctor is they should be able to figure out, do you want a SIBO test? Do you need a SIBO test? Are we going to do a stool test? Organic acids testing, figuring out what's the best testing profile for you overall, so that you get things covered in a way that's economical and effective. Okay. All right. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. Thank you for joining us. And tell your friends about this. We'll send out a link if you want to forward that to your friends, they can listen, and we appreciate that as well. All right, bye for now.