Food, the Gut, and Toxicity Guest: Tom O Bryan, DC, CCN, DACBN

Transcription

1 Food, the Gut, and Toxicity Guest: Tom O Bryan, DC, CCN, DACBN The contents of this presentation are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This presentation does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Dr. Minich: Hello, everyone! This is Dr. Deanna Minich, detox expert and author of Whole Detox. I m so thrilled to welcome you to this very special interview of The Detox Project. It s almost like this is education for me, too. And it s so inspirational to be listening to all of these people who are experts in their field. So today, I certainly do have an esteemed expert in the field of numerous things. We have Dr. Tom O Bryan. And we re going to talk about a number of things as they relate to detoxification so don t be surprised if we take you for a tour around many different topics. Things like autoimmunity and gluten and food sensitivities we re going to cover it all as much as we can. So let me first read to you a little bit of a bio about Dr. Tom O Bryan and all the wonderful things that he s done. Of course, many of you already know him. His name precedes him. So you see him on summits. He s the world s authority on so many different topics, especially gluten. And I would say that he really started us on this whole trajectory of getting information out to the masses through these summits when he did his gluten summit in, I think it was November And I m going from memory there. Actually, it was probably 13 or 12. But he s a forerunner in the field. So he is really an expert in non-celiac gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, autoimmune disease. And he and I really connect because we like the science TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 1

2 side. We like to know what all these studies are saying. And we just marvel at what has been done and what has been published. And then, how do we bring it into our everyday lives. So his website is And that s TheDr.com. And his other website is TheGlutenSummit.com, which really refers back to his incredible work doing The Gluten Summit. So hello, Dr. Tom! Welcome to The Detox Project! Dr. O Bryan: Oh, thank you so much. It s always a pleasure to be with you. Whether on phone or in person, it s just a joy talking to you, Dr. Deanna! Dr. Minich: Oh, and I just love listening to you. Before we started this call, we were visualizing that we were going to be sitting in a café somewhere just having this casual conversation and just really going back and forth. And so I m really going to savor this experience. Dr. O Bryan: Oh, well, thank you. I d be embarrassed in a café. I d love to do it. I d be embarrassed because you would see me put a natural brown sugar cube in my cappuccino. Dr. Minich: No! Dr. O Bryan: Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Dr. Minich: Well, you ve got lots of healthy food choices where you live. So you can balance it out. I m sure. Dr. O Bryan: Yes. Yes. I ve got this opinion that you don t have to be perfect, unless you have a current disease that you re dealing with. But you just have to be consistent. Every forkful of what we put in our mouths, as far as I know, every forkful is, either inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. There s no neutrals, except for healthy water that our body is going to respond to everything we put in there. And so the vast majority of it needs to be anti-inflammatory in nature. Dr. Minich: So it s been said I m glad that you mentioned inflammation because it s been said, especially within the whole arena of functional medicine, that inflammation is the bedrock of diseases of all kinds. And I m just curious. What would be some of these anti-inflammatory foods that we would want to be thinking about to incorporate into our everyday life as part as an ongoing lifelong detox approach? TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 2

3 Dr. O Bryan: Oh, my goodness! The one that comes to mind immediately of course, there are many but the one that comes to mind immediately is blueberries. That when I read the studies that if you have one cup of blueberries a day, one cup of blueberries a day for an adult, reverses cognitive decline that s how well our brains are thinking and processing information reverses cognitive decline to take you back to where your brain was 13 years earlier. One cup of blueberries a day for three years, and you ve reversed cognitive decline of up to 13 years. Dr. Minich: Why is that? What is it about blueberries? Aren t they full of sugar? Or don t we have to be concerned about the fruit content and the sugar content there, as well? Or what is it about blueberries? Why would they be marvels? Dr. O Bryan: Well, that s a really good question. And the first part of that question about shouldn t we be concerned about sugar and too much? And the answer is yes because of how we ve lived our lives and all the Twinkies and doughnuts and Ho-Ho s we ve eaten in our lives, our blood sugar can be very sensitive. So it takes less of an irritant to throw us out of balance, just in general. And because of that, I think most of us in our culture today need to be conscious about not having too much sugar. But in terms of the sugars we can have, in my opinion, some of the very best sugars to have besides vegetables, because there s carbohydrates in vegetables, so the carbohydrates are sugars are the berries. But in terms of fruits, the berries across the board, they re much higher in compounds that are anti-inflammatory that puts the fire out, much, much higher. So if you were going to want some fruit as a little treat in the summertime, then it would be healthier for you and less likely to be an irritant if you had a cup of berries compared to if you had a cup of watermelon. And watermelon s really good for you. I m not saying anything against watermelon. But certainly, it has a higher sugar content than what you d find in a cup of berries. Dr. Minich: Mmm. And so is your preference blueberries for their antiinflammatory activity or are there other berries that you like, too? Like, are strawberries also pretty potent? Dr. O Bryan: In the studies that I ve seen, the list was blackberries no excuse me raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, black raspberries, strawberries, in that order of the most common berries that we have access to. And then, there is the unusual ones like goji berries or acai berry. But they are much more difficult to get a hold of compared to the standard berries that TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 3

4 are across the nation and easier to get. So strawberries, which are the most common, I think, berry sold in America today I m not sure about that, but I think so they are still of value. But they re lower on the antioxidant and antiinflammatory scale than some of the other berries that I ve mentioned. Dr. Minich: Good point. And when I think of strawberries, I also think of how they re lacquered with pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides. And they re one of the highest contaminated fruits that I know of. Dr. O Bryan: Oh, that s exactly right. Unfortunately, it s one of the Dirty Dozen out there. And so I do not eat strawberries. Unless I know that they are organic strawberries, I just won t eat them. Dr. Minich: Right. Perfect. Perfect. So let s look at the other side of the coin. I know that you ve done a lot with food sensitivities, food reactions. And you ve really dipped into the literature quite extensively on looking at all the things that food can do to us, even in the acute state. I think many people think that they have to eat like a certain way over their whole lives in order to see an effect. But based on what I heard from you before, it seems like there are some of these foods that provoke inflammatory toxic responses in the body in a very short-term window. So maybe you could tell us a little bit about that? Dr. O Bryan: Sure. The overview category is adverse reactions to foods. That if we have an adverse reaction to food, obviously that s not going to be good for us. And there are two divisions under that main topic of adverse reactions to food. There s when there s an immune system reaction trying to protect us for some reason are attacking that food that we re eating. And then, there is a non-immune reaction. And both of them are important. And some studies say that the adverse reactions to foods or non-immune adverse reactions to foods are more prevalent than the immune reactions to foods. Which, most of us in clinical practice, we focus on the immune reactions. We do blood test to see, Do you have a sensitivity to this food or that food? And there are different blood tests you could do. And perhaps, we ll talk about some of that. But there s also the non-immune that many of us clinicians, we forget about or we haven t had as much information available to us. There is a study that came out just over a year ago by Shupan and his team at Harvard. And they did this thing called confocal endomicroscopy, really big words, big Scrabble words. But what it was, was they put a camera down in the intestines of people. And they looked at the cells. And it was almost like electron TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 4

5 microscope in terms of the magnification, that they could see the borders in between cells. And they were looking at the cells and the borders between the cells. And then, they exposed the intestines to different foods. They did wheat, dairy, soy, and yeast. And what they found was that if a person had a reaction to that food, it occurred within five minutes. Within five minutes, you would see gaps between the cells. And they were just gapped open. And then you would see on the borders of the cells that they get tears in them. And the contents inside the cells were leaking out into the tube of the intestines. And then, you d see that there was an increase in the immune system cells to protect you called intraepithelial lymphocytes. So three different things happened within five minutes. That s the important thing. Mechanical things happened within five minutes. First, you had these gaps between the cells. That s what we call pathogenic intestinal permeability or the leaky gut. Second, you had tears in the cells so that there was leakage coming out of the contents inside the cells. And third, you had an increase in the number of white blood cells called IELs, these lymphocytes, to start producing inflammation. All that occurred within five minutes. And that s a non-immune mechanical response. And the authors wrote and it s unlike them to write like this. They said that the observations of the gaps between cells was obvious to every investigator as intestinal permeability. They just acknowledged it. While we re seeing intestinal permeability and the slang term is the leaky gut and we see that within five minutes. It was startling to see that. And they actually, Dr. Minich, they actually included videos. And so you can see the videos of this happening over the course of five minutes when you see the cells just start gapping and gapping and gapping and then leakage of the dye that they had been injected with coming out into the lumen. What all that means, what all that means is that if you re exposed to a food that your body does not like, if your intestines do not like it, for whatever reason, they don t like it if you re exposed to this food, and we can t say every food. The only ones we can say are wheat, dairy, soy, and yeast but if you re exposed to these foods, it causes intestinal permeability within five minutes. Now, what s the importance of that? Intestinal permeability is known as the gateway into the development of autoimmune diseases. That it s one of the criteria that s been identified that often is there that sets the stage for type 1 TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 5

6 diabetes or Alzheimer s or rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis or Parkinson s. That this intestinal permeability sets the stage. And then, years down the road, you eventually have the symptoms of that particular disease. But this seems to be a contributing component to where it all begins. Dr. Minich: Gosh, I have so many questions about the study design. I haven t actually read the study. But I m curious. So here are my questions and see which you d like to answer. I m curious if there was one food that consistently provoked this response? I m also curious if everybody, I don t know how many people were in the study, but did everybody respond similarly and were they healthy? And then, I m also curious because we don t tend to eat huge boluses of wheat, dairy, soy, and yeast. And typically, they re in a mixed meal. And I m curious. I don t think that they did this in this study. But what would happen if you were to have some vegetables with that wheat or vegetables with that dairy? How does the matrix of food change that dynamic within the intestine? So I don t know. I don t know if you re able to comment on any of those. And how soon does it take to repair that? If they watched within five minutes, how soon before the gaps closed and the immune leakage started to recover and repair and was no longer leaking? Dr. O Bryan: Those are really good points. And they did not follow through to see how long it lasted. In this particular study, they showed it happened. And that s as far as they went. Dr. Minich: Okay. Dr. O Bryan: And in terms of the foods, what were the percentages of the foods? Wheat was the most prevalent. We know that. And I think it was Oh, gosh, I m not remembering. I m going to look it out while we re talking so I can give you the exact numbers. I won t tell you off the top of my head trying to remember that. So I ll get you the exact numbers in the next couple of minutes. What was the other questions that you had on that? Dr. Minich: Well, was this a healthy population or did they already have autoimmune disease? Dr. O Bryan: Oh, no, these were patients with irritable bowel syndrome-- TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 6

7 Dr. Minich: Ah! Dr. O Bryan: Who had been failures to every treatment in the last year. So the prerequisite was that one year of treatment that they all qualified by the Rome criteria. Rome III I think was the criteria for irritable bowel syndrome. And they all had been failures to treatment. That they all were suffering dramatically, and nothing had worked. So they tried this with them. And what they found was that those results occurred within five minutes. And when they put them on a gluten-free or a dairy-free or soy-free or yeast-free diet, whichever ones they were reacting to, that they all, every one of them reported that they were better. And none of these changes occurred in the 10 healthy controls that they also checked this on. Dr. Minich: Oh, fascinating. Dr. O Bryan: So they used 10 healthy and then 10 people No, not 10, there were 34 people who had been suffering for over a year. Dr. Minich: Got it. Wow! That s fabulous to see that change. That shift in this particular patient segment. And I m curious, because with irritable bowel syndrome, what we also know is that there s this leakage of serotonin. And I m curious as to that serotonin immune interface, too, because we tend to think serotonin s a good thing. But when it s produced in the gut, we might even classify it as a toxin if it s released in extreme quantities because it s going to change the physiology of the cell in the gut. Dr. O Bryan: That s a really good point. You re absolutely correct on that. And could it have been that was not referenced at all in this particular study. But that s a valid line of thought to go down. Dr. Minich: Mmm. So anti-inflammatory foods, this is what I m taking away from what we re talking about: the power of foods, food is medicine. I know one of the other food categories that you re really passionate about in fact, you did a whole summit on it is gluten. Would you actually say that gluten is a toxin? Would you go as far as saying that we should be looking at gluten intolerance and really seeing that as a toxic burden or an indicator of toxicity in somebody? Dr. O Bryan: The answer is absolutely yes! Absolutely! There are papers written on that that our immune system responds to gluten. When you have an adverse reaction to gluten, the immune system responds as if it s fighting TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 7

8 pathogenic bacteria. It responds exactly the same. And they outlined every step in the process of that occurring. But in the overview about gluten is that gluten is a mild toxin, at best. It s one of those irritant things that the immune system looks at as it s coming down through the tube of the intestines. It looks and says, It s just gluten. It s not a big deal. That s called oral tolerance. But at some point, it may be when you re two years old, 22 years old, 62 years old, at some point, you can cross that imaginary line. And the straw that broke the camel s back happens. Now, your immune system says, Hey, this is more than an annoyance. This is an irritant. Let s get rid of this. Now, your immune system gets activated. And now, you ve got a problem. Then that whole inflammatory cascade begins. So the problem is not necessarily the exposure to wheat or rye or barley; the problem is our ability to tolerate this annoyance in terms of how our body reacts to it. That s the problem. It s called loss of oral tolerance. And that s the bigger picture that I d like to dive in with you on. But before I do, I just want to answer that previous question about how many people. And it was, of the 36 people that they tested who were failures to any type of treatment protocols for irritable bowel syndrome, 22 of the 36 showed immediate and dramatic mucosal response. That means the lining of the intestines responded within five minutes 22 out of 36. And nine of them were to milk, 13 of them were to gluten, six to yeast, and four to soy. So gluten was the most prevalent response. A 13 out of the 22 that responded. So that s more than 50% of the people that had a failure in all treatments that they had tried at Harvard for irritable bowel syndrome. Over 50% of them got better when they took wheat out of their diet. Nine of them got better when they took milk out of the diet, six for yeast, and four for soy. So that s the numbers on that. Dr. Minich: That s great. Thank you for checking into that for us. Dr. O Bryan: Yes. Dr. Minich: So, Dr. O Bryan, let s go back to oral tolerance and what you were talking about there because I m curious. Oftentimes, we look on the outside. Especially when we re talking about toxins or detox, we re looking on the outside. Where is the offender? But maybe it s more about balancing and nurturing and fortifying our own reserves inside. And I m curious how oral TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 8

9 tolerance fits into this whole picture of food intolerances and reactivity. Is there something that we can do within our locus of control on the inside? Dr. O Bryan: I ve got a big smile on my face right now. I m like a Cheshire Cat from ear-to-ear on how wonderfully you framed the questions. So thank you for that because you re absolutely right that if there is one takeaway that all of our listeners get from this particular talk right now, if there s only one takeaway, the takeaway is you have to keep the big picture in mind. There is no one pill. There is no one food. As far as I know, being in practice for 30 years, there is no one protocol that s going to fix when you ve lost oral tolerance. And it really is the big Kahuna picture is loss of tolerance. And you start getting these adverse reactions to food. So if you ve lost oral tolerance, how does that occur? It occurs because of the environment in the intestines no longer having the capability to tolerate. So you ve lost tolerance. So if it s the environment of the intestines that no longer has the capability to tolerate, how do we work with the environment of our intestines? Well, when you want to work with an environment, the first thing you have to keep in mind is whatever you put down there is going to have an effect. So that automatically rules out Coca-Cola, right? Dr. Minich: Yeah, absolutely, 100%. Dr. O Bryan: Automatically. You really can t like put garbage down there and think it s okay to have a little once in a while. If you re trying to change your environment, I don t think you need to be fanatical, I think you need to be educated so it makes common sense to you. And if you have the overview that it s going to take me six months to really learn how to change the environment of my gut you change the environment of the gut in one day by what you eat. But it s going to take me six months to really learn about this in detail for me and my family. What that means is that every week what I suggest to my patients is that they allocate one hour a week to learn about a particular topic. And if you want to do more, do more, of course. And if you re diagnosed with Hashimoto s, you want to learn about it right away. And so you study Hashimoto s. But on this big picture, you can t like focus all of your attention because you have a life to live and a family to be with and all that. But if you at least give yourself one hour a week to learn about, How do I balance my microbiome? And that s the environment of the intestines what you ll learn is that there s no one pill that s going to do it. You can t just take probiotics TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 9

10 and think, All right, I ve done my job. Now, I can go out, eat a little not great food once in a while. No, you can t do that. You really have to take a look at this and see that it s a comprehensive overview. And there are many steps in the process of recolonizing the environment of your gut with the good bacteria. There are many, many steps in that process. Dr. Minich: I m hearing you. I think that everything you re saying is very practical to take it step-wise and to start to become much more educated and knowledgeable about the body. I feel like many people s universe has become the gut. And as I listen to you speak, I m hearing a lot about the gut, a lot about the gut microbiome. Do you think that really the best way to be eliminating toxicity and fortifying the body is through the gut? And, if not, what are the organ systems or do we just have to look at the body in a totally different, more cohesive systems way? How would you recommend that somebody listening to this, how do they really focus on their whole self? What would be the approach? Do you work on one? Just like you re saying. You work on the gut microbiome this week and maybe the next week, you work on something else. Is it related to the gut or is it related to the liver? How do you chunk apart your body? How do you really figure it out? Dr. O Bryan: Right. That s a really good question. And there is a couple of levels of answers to that. The first one is that if you have a functional medicine doctor or a comprehensive integrative medicine doctor, someone you re working with who s talking to you about detoxification, and if they re saying, Oh, look, here s some markers that tell us that your liver is not working quite well and let s give you something to take to help your liver, well, that makes a lot of sense, of course, to always address any obstacles that have been identified, any biomarkers that have been identified in your detoxification pathways. Or if you happen to do the genetic tests and you see that you re vulnerable to not having one particular detox pathway work very well, then you make sure that you support that pathway a little bit more to make sure that it s going to function, as well as possible for you. So when you get this more investigative information by doing specific functional tests, you always want to address those particular topics. But the big Kahuna picture is where does toxicity come from? Where does it originate? And the vast majority consensus is that it originates in the gut. The leaders in the field of more comprehensive healthcare for generations and TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 10

11 generations have been saying look to the gut. Hippocrates said, Look to the gut for your health. Metchnikoff, who won the Nobel Prize in I think it was 1905 by identifying the good bacteria in the gut said, Death begins in the colon. So we ve heard and we ve read of these thought leaders. From generations and generations of thought leaders who keep coming back to this one message that we must remember and not forget. And that is primary attention on the gut, on the environment of how your gut is functioning, on the environment of how what kind of good bacteria you have there. Do you have too much of the bad bacteria? I think if there is only one thing a person could do to really enhance their detox pathways, if there was only one thing, it would be to support your gut, to get the healthiest gut that you can. Dr. Minich: And so what are some ways that you would recommend doing that? So you mentioned about the gut microbiome. Let s just first talk a little bit about what I would consider an internally generated toxin. And that would be stress. If you have any studies or research in mind as it relates to maybe oral tolerance, food reactivity, stressful situation versus not, or just how much of a role do you think that stress plays in the health of our gut? Because I think that we think about all these supplements and we think about fiber and we re thinking about food. But then, we re missing the obvious. Which, in traditional medicine systems, they acknowledge the gut as being the seed of emotions, too. So I m curious to get your take on that. Dr. O Bryan: Well, that s really good. And there are a number of studies, of course, that talk about stress and its association with food sensitivities and food allergies. But I think the most authoritative impact in my life, in this particular arena of discussion, was our mutual friend and mentor, Dr. Jeffrey Bland. And I heard a talk by Dr. Bland not too long ago that said that he s been looking at his gut microbiome on a multi-times a year basis now for some time. And he sees how consistent it is and when there s slight changes. And his diet s very similar. And he had an extended period of stress. There was a crisis in the family. And so there was an extended period of addressing that particular stress in his life. And his microbiome changed. Dr. Minich: Mmm hmm. Mmm hmm. Dr. O Bryan: Nothing else changed in his life. Just the stress that he was TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 11

12 under. And if there s anyone who is clear-headed, geek-oriented, going to get the data, and come from the data, it s Dr. Jeffrey Bland. Dr. Minich: That s so true. Dr. O Bryan: So when he talks about his personal experience, that s good enough for me. I don t need to research that one any further right now. I ll research other topics. And I ll just accept that stress will impact on your microbiome noticeably and trigger different functions in your body just because of the stress hormones and what they do to your microbiome. Dr. Minich: Yeah. Wonderful. And we all know that. It s all common sense, too. We don t need research. But I just think it s something that we have to pay attention to in conjunction with all of the other external modalities. I think we have to really learn to work with what s on the inside of us. And that s typically not so easy. It s a challenge. Dr. O Bryan: Well, most of us are in survival mode in life. And we re in a stress response called sympathetic dominance just almost all the time that it s very rare for us to take a walk in the woods for an hour or two and leave your cell phone back home and just notice how you feel. And we say, Wow! That feels really good. But that s such an exception. It might be one time every week or one time every month. Or for some of us, one or two times a year that we have that feeling of inner peace. Just physiological inner peace that we re just calm that most of us are running my term for it is You re on the highway of life in second-gear floored. And your transmission is screaming. And when you take a walk in the woods, you shift to fifth gear and the other car is purring. And you can go the same speed. But you aren t screaming. Dr. Minich: Exactly. And you know, I love the fact that you re using the metaphor or analogy of walking in the woods because there is actually research on forest bathing. All the research from Japan talking about how when we breathe forest air, when we re in nature, when we re grounded, it just really, it changes everything about our physiology and primarily, our nervous system function. So it s great that you mentioned that. Dr. Minich: Love it. Dr. O Bryan: Yes. Yes. TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 12

13 Dr. Minich: Before we come to a close, I just want to see if you want to say anything. I know that your next frontier and what you ve been doing all along in conjunction with working on gluten is really giving a strong focus to autoimmunity and all of the things that we ve mentioned thus far. Whether it s inflammation or whether it s leaky gut or whether it s oral tolerance, I feel like it all ties into autoimmune conditions. And then, I start thinking about metals and plastics and exposure to pesticides. So is there anything here before we leave the discussion that you d like to bring up in the way of toxicity and autoimmunity that you believe needs to be heard? Dr. O Bryan: Oh, well, thank you! Yes! Autoimmune diseases, we now know are a primary cause of getting sick and dying in the world. That when you add up all the people diagnosed with cancer in a particular year here in the U.S. and all the people diagnosed with cardiovascular disease here in the U.S., there are twice that many diagnosed with autoimmune diseases every year-- Dr. Minich: Wow! Wow! Dr. O Bryan: Every year. But people don t know that they... Either, they don t know they have an autoimmune disease or they re taking their drugs and just assuming that s the way it s going to be in life. And they re suffering. They re suffering dramatically. And their quality of life is very compromised. The medications which help to suppress some of the symptoms do not reverse the autoimmune disease that the person s been diagnosed with, whatever that disease is. Whether it s Hashimoto s thyroid disease or lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, and people are suffering so much. And that what we find is that when you address the bigger picture, when you take a look at the environment of the intestines, the things that we re putting into our mouth, every forkful is inflammatory or anti-inflammatory, when we start looking at those things and we start seeing how some of our lifestyle choices up to now likely have contributed to or are fueling the fire of the autoimmune disease we have. When you start getting that kind of a realization and you start making some changes, what many people notice is that their symptoms start to go down. And sometimes they go into complete remission. Dr. Minich: Yeah. Mmm hmm. Dr. O Bryan: And when you find that happen, my recommendation to all of our patients is go back to your doctor that recommended the initial protocol to you, say, Thanks very much, it really helped me. But you know, I ve changed my diet. I m starting to exercise. And my pain s all gone. Can you wean me off TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 13

14 of this medication right now safely because I don t think that I need it anymore? And every doctor is receptive to reducing the load of medication you have to take, as long as you do it safely. And that way the doctor gets to see that this approach that you ve studied and learned about that s helped you. They ll say, Well, how did you do that? And then they ll say, Well, I went to Dr. Deanna Minich s detox summit. And I learned all of this. And I tried a few things. And they ll say, Wow! Where was that at? So hopefully, we can see the traditional, medical community of doctors who haven t had a chance to read the studies that you have read or I have read or all the other guests on this summit have read because you can t read everything. Our doctors are just trying to do the best they can to keep us all healthy. So this whole dynamic of autoimmune disease, a primary cause of getting sick and dying. Alzheimer s is autoimmune. Cardiovascular disease is autoimmune in its initiating phases. That these diseases that we think are separate and we treat them separately, the mechanism that contributes to them and fuels them is very similar. And that mechanism is what we re talking about here. How do we make sure our bodies are less toxic? How do we clear out the crud so that our bodies can begin functioning more the way they re supposed to? So you have to clear out the bad and put in the good and stop putting the bad in. Dr. Minich: Yes. Absolutely. Dr. O Bryan: So you have to, as soon as you identify what the adverse reaction to food is that you have, get that food out of there. And one of my common statements is, You can t be a little pregnant. You cannot have a little gluten if you ve been identified as sensitive to gluten. You cannot have a little because one exposure, you stimulate that inflammatory cascade that may last as long as three to six months. From one exposure, you ll have ongoing inflammation like a bonfire for up to three to six months. Dr. Minich: That s a long time just for a small exposure. Dr. O Bryan: It certainly is. Dr. Minich: It s not worth it. Well, I want to say that I was going to ask you to do your takeaways. And I will do that. But I ve also been taking notes as you ve been talking. And I would love to share my takeaways, if I could? TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 14

15 Dr. O Bryan: Please, go ahead. Yes. Yes. Dr. Minich: And you can tag on to whatever you feel I ve missed or things that you really want people to walk away with here. But what I really love, Dr. O Bryan, is that you brought in so many practical nuggets for everybody. And those are where my ears are tuned into is what can people do after they listen to you. So here s number one. And you just repeated it just a little while ago. Every forkful that we take in our food is, either inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. And to remember that we want the cooling foods. And one of the examples that you gave us was that of blueberries. And it was one cup for adults on a daily basis was helpful for reversing cognitive decline. And that s one of the biggest concerns that people have these days, of course. So that s number one. Dr. O Bryan: Yes. And I use organic blueberries. I buy them frozen. I buy ten bags and then just throw them in the freezer. So I ve always got some around. Dr. Minich: Yeah. And the studies have shown that frozen is as good as fresh, believe it or not. It s one of those rare instances where frozen does the trick. And for other foods like broccoli, you can t do that frozen. So it s great to think that blueberries, which are so healing, we can have them at our fingertips at all times. Number two. Start with the gut and start small is what I wrote down. You gave us so many of these pearls of focusing on the gut microbiome, focusing on fortifying, helping the body to reduce inflammation, seeing a functional medicine doc to get functional tests done, genetic tests, but starting with the gut and starting small. All right. Number three. I think that this is a head turner, if I might say so. Because again, I think many people think, Oh, you know, I won t get sick until I m in my 60s or my 70s or my 80s. So I can eat however I want. But what you re telling us is that we have acute reactions to foods. And this happens in a moment-by-moment way. And so we really need to be tuned in with where our body s at our level of reactivity, our immune system because ultimately, this can lead to things like autoimmune disease, which you brought us full circle into. Dr. O Bryan: Yes. Yes. Exactly right. And on number two, I would say the one thing I would add is patience. Just be patient with your education process. It s TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 15

16 going to take time. If it takes you six months to really understand how to build a healthy microbiome, who cares? For the rest of your life, who cares? We re a society that we want it all now, right now, but be patient with yourself on that. And the other thing that I would add as a takeaway, this is something I ve been recommending. Since before I started my medical education, there was the guy who got me into all of this was an 84-year old chiropractor when I was in my early 20s. And he saw something in me and asked me to come back and watch him work. And I had long hair. I lived in Ann Arbor. Dr. Minich: You?! Oh, wow! Dr. O Bryan: I did. I see pictures of that. And I go, Oh, my gosh! Who is that? Who is that guy? But he would say this to me. And he had this very calm voice. And he would say, Tom, every day start your day with two big glasses of water in the first five minutes. Just start your day there. And your body will always say thank you. And I was like, Oh, okay, Dr. Swanson. I m a 22-year old guy. Okay. But I started doing that. And it makes such a difference. And I say that to all of my patients. When you wake up in the morning, first thing most people do is go to the bathroom. That s the first thing. After that, drink two big glasses of water right away, not sipping, just get it down and then go start your day. And you ll notice within three or four days, you re looking forward to getting that water because you just feel better. Dr. Minich: Yeah. Oh, my gosh! Dr. O Bryan: You re just ready to go. Dr. Minich: I agree. There s something really I think that we think that we ve figured water out. But we haven t. There is so much more about water, structured water, different types of water that we need to really get into. But we can start by drinking it just like you said. I love that pearl. Dr. O Bryan: Yes. Yes. The best quality water that you can get. If tap water is all that s available, drink the tap water. It s better than pop. And the coffee that they make is from tap water, so drink the water. Just get the best water you can. Dr. Minich: That s great advice. Dr. O Bryan, it s been a pleasure talking with you. Again, you re such a leader in everything that you do. You re always a TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 16

17 forerunner. And it s been a delight to have this conversation with you about toxicity, immunity, inflammation. I feel like we covered so much ground here. So I just want to mention again your website so that everybody can check your websites out for more information on you, And it s TheDr.com. And also, of course, your famous TheGlutenSummit.com. We always want to refer people back to that because it just had so many layers of great information. So thank you again. It s been a pleasure having you as part of The Detox Project! Dr. O Bryan: Oh, thank you so much! It s really an honor to be supporting this project and to be working with you. Thank you! Dr. Minich: Aww, thank you! TheDetoxProject.com. All rights reserved. 17