We have A LOT of pregnant clients in our office right now, it's honestly crazy. Many of these women have diagnosed autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's or Rheumatoid Arthritis. Some of them have "undiagnosed autoimmunity", like positive ANA tests, but they have no "diagnosis" - - yet. Some don't have any autoimmune diagnoses, but they have Lyme disease or mold toxicity.....and yet others with no diagnoses who just came in for management of specific symptoms like migraines, bloating, or anxiety.

There is no special "formula" for pregnant women with autoimmunity - - we want to make sure you aren't deficient on any vitamins, minerals, or nutrients, we want to avoid toxins, we want to eat anti-inflammatory, we want to exercise, we want to minimize stress.......good advice for any pregnant woman.

The concern is that autoimmunity is known to flare around pregnancy., often presenting as an increase in inflammatory symptoms postpartum. We don't want that!!

This episode is filled with my knowledge and opinions around pregnancy that I have developed over the years of working with pregnant patients as well as my own experiences as a parent. In this episode, I talk about my wife and I's experience(s) with miscarriages, with hospital births vs. home births, with twins vs. singletons, with V or no-V, and our personal decisions and how we made those decisions. I also talk about all the important stuff like prenatal vitamins, genetics, methylation, and more.

As always I don't claim to have all the answers, but I hope my expertise, my opinions, and my thought processes help someone as they are trying to make these decisions for themselves, or I hope they help someone have a happier, healthier pregnancy!

Whether it's allergies, asthma, autism, ADHD, or autoimmunity - kids have a lot more health concerns these days - and those are just the A's!

I see a lot of kids (parents) from all over the world asking me to help them with their health problems. Sometimes they are easy and see great progress from the right nutrients, killing yeast, or supporting detoxification. Sometimes they are really tricky cases.

Many of the common childhood concerns of today have an immune component - recurrent infections, skin issues, allergies, autoimmune conditions, inflammation.

Many of the childhood concerns have a neurologic component to them - inability to focus, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, depression, anxiety, rage, inability to regulate.

Why have we seen such a rise in the incidence of childhood symptoms, diseases, and developmental issues? While there are many theories regarding the exact causes, the overload of environmental toxins, immune imbalances, infections, and gut dysbiosis are ALWAYS at the top of the suspected mechanisms, which are basically my specialties and the focus of my entire podcast channel - the drivers of autoimmune disease progression. Autoimmunity is often involved as a mechanism in children's health issues, but often isn't necessarily a diagnosed autoimmune "disease".

Throughout the years I have developed certain thought processes, opinions, and I have my favorite labs, supplements, and teaching tools - this podcast is basically an overview of all of it. I talk about everything from raising twins (mine are almost 10) and nature vs. nurture, Winnie the Pooh characters and neurotransmitters, I talk about some of my favorite supplements and their targeted mechanisms, and I talk about how each kid is just different and needs to be parented differently. I also talk about how I'm DEFINITELY not a perfect parent, and we all just try to raise the best kids we can!

SO - the title of this podcast pretty well summarizes what this episode is about - how I'm doing since suddenly losing my dad.

3 months ago, my dad died. He had been fine 4 weeks earlier. He had just turned 68, he was still working, he was an 8 handicap golfer, and he was perfectly fine. On December 19th he was told he had cancer, and he died exactly 3 weeks later.

In this episode, I tell the whole story of what went down, but I also talk about my experience afterward handling this grief and heartbreak. It's still new, and I'm not an expert, and I think the highlight that I want people to take away is that "there is no right way", but I hope my experience and perspective is helpful and valuable to someone. This episode is just me rambling about my personal story, and then I'll be getting back to educational content :)

Ok so, I knew Dr. K was awesome, but I didn't know he was THIS AWESOME.....

This is an interview with pediatrician Dr. Pejman Katiraei, DO from Santa Barbara, California. In this interview, Dr. K talks about how common it is to see mold involved in mental health issues for all ages, but especially in kids. We discuss how he evolved to where he is now regarding diagnosis and treatment and how mold and mycotoxins initially came onto his radar for these kiddos suffering from mental health issues - ADHD, OCD, anxiety, hyperactivity, etc - which I think is always interesting to hear how someone in the conventional medical field learned through experience and research how critical these mold (and other) airborne toxins can be to kids health.

This interview is seriously FILLED WITH GEMS. Most of this entire conversation we are talking about the connections between mold and mental health - mycotoxins are known to disrupt dopamine, they inhibit glutamate clearance, they are neurotoxic, they activate innate immunity and neuroinflammation, they drive histamine responses, and ALL OF THIS leads to neurotransmitter, mood, and behavioral changes....so the whole time we are talking basically about the problem(s) and the solution(s), which are both varied and complex, but our conversation includes topics like:

- Diagnosis or "suspicion" of mold in kids - in what kinds of cases are we (maybe) thinking mold?
- How do you KNOW if you have mold in the home?
- How do you KNOW if you (or your child) have mold in the body?
- What are (both of our) favorite tests and treatments or supportive supplements?
- How can we clean the air? HEPA filters, air purifiers, ionizers...

I think my favorite part about Dr. K is that his integrity shines through in our conversation, he clearly wants what is best for the patient's outcome, he considers realistic options and cost, and he is open minded and not trying just to defend his biases. I'd like to think we are really similar in those regards, I hope so, but I just know I had a GREAT time talking with him and have a lot of respect for him, and I think a lot of people will enjoy this episode!

Check out his website https://wholistickids.com/
Follow him on Facebook under Wholistic Kids
and on Instagram @wholistickids where he puts out GREAT CONTENT!!!!!

And - send this to 3 friends with kids, and leave a rating and review if you enjoyed it!

I see a lot of neurological cases that experience symptoms like dizziness, vertigo, lightheadedness, inability to tolerate motion, flashing lights, sounds, etc. Many of these people are not local to my area, and they are all wondering "What else can I do to help myself get better?" so I am always looking for new ways to help them.

While I focus primarily on looking deeper into underlying mechanisms, root causes, neurotoxins, pathogens, gut health, autoimmunity, etc, one thing that anyone who is experiencing these symptoms can do is VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION, so we have recommended VizStim kits to many of our clients.

My guest on today's episode is Dr. Ashley Contreras, the creator and founder of VizStim. She is a physical therapist who specializes in vestibular issues and vestibular rehab, and throughout her 15-year career has developed this amazing kit of exercises to help people retrain their vestibular system. It's an inexpensive, easy-to-use, at-home kit with a wide variety of different exercises, journals, and levels of difficulty designed to walk through your progress as you are retraining your vestibular system. I've used it with my kids, it's super easy to use, easy to teach, and as long as you are willing to do the exercises and put in a few minutes of rehab each day, it is AWESOME.

The vestibular system is a complex system in the brain that detects how your head and body are existing in relation to their surroundings - are your eyes level with gravity, are you moving, what position are you in, etc. When those signals get disrupted, from concussions, infections, neurotoxins, spinal subluxations and other injuries, etc, even the slightest miscue in signaling can make your body feel uneasy, unstable, nauseous, like the room is moving, or can fire to the amygdala and create a lot of anxiety or fear. When this system is disrupted, it can be retrained and rewired. I discuss the vestibular system quite a bit more in podcast number 47 (Brain Regions), and we discuss this much more in this podcast episode, so listen to the episode to learn more, and check out VizStim , and follow VizStim Recovery on social media for some great tips and tricks!

So many people in the functional medicine world, whether it be from their past adverse events, the pandemic, from Lyme disease, mold toxicity, from being gaslighted by doctors, or trying failed therapies, etc - - SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE SOME DEGREE OF PTSD, LIMBIC SYSTEM DYSFUNCTION, and now experience an IMBALANCED STRESS RESPONSE, DYSAUTONOMIA, and other debilitating symptoms.

So, we all know about stress. There is the mental stress that we all know about, but also physical stress (too much water is a stressor, too little water is a stressor, leaky gut, injuries, etc) as well as toxic stress (mold, mercury, pesticides, etc) - - and your body responds to stress as potential DANGER - you prepare to "fight-or-flight".

So, STRESS is your body's response to potential danger.....

DANGER is either real or perceived - you can tell someone they should be scared and they will be, or tell them they should NOT be scared and they will NOT be......but abuse is a danger, toxins are a danger, viruses are a danger.....

Your limbic system of your brain connects memories with experiences, and will "remember" these instances of danger and the stress response, and the limbic system includes regions like the amygdala (fear sensing), the hippocampus (memory), and the hypothalamus/pituitary (stress response).

Repeated exposure to (or perception of) DANGER leads to limbic system dysfunction, PTSD, and an imbalanced stress response.....your body begins to treat EVERYTHING as a danger.

All of this stress, true danger, and the perception of danger/stress triggers something called The Cell Danger Response, which is fascinating, I have a Youtube Video about it linked below, but your cells, your nervous system, your stress response system begins to respond to EVERYTHING AS A DANGER.

HOW CAN YOU REWIRE THIS RESPONSE???

This is gaining popularity in the healthcare world as an important piece to healing. It's increasingly being talked about at seminars and in practitioner circles as well as with patient stories, but there are a lot of different options, recommendations, programs, etc to choose from. In this podcast I go through 4 major "categories" you can work on for rewiring your nervous system, and within each of these categories I talk about many potential strategies, including:

1. Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve to decrease sympathetic dominance
   1. TENS Device
   2. Gargling/Gagging/Humming
   3. Coffee Enema
2. Challenge Your AUTONOMIC INPUTS
   1. Breath work
   2. Temperature - cold plunges, contrast showers
   3. HR - HeartMath or other HRV training
3. Challenge Your Visual and Sensory Inputs
   1. Vestibular exercises like VizStim (next podcast episode!)
   2. Chiropractic
4. Challenge Your Psychological Inputs
   1. Limbic System Retraining Programs
   2. Neurolinguistic programming - Gratitude/Affirmations

All that, and more, are discussed in detail in the episode. Give it a listen, give a 5-star review, and subscribe for more content, including my next podcast interview with Dr. Ashley Contreras talking about dizziness and rewiring the vestibular syste

Here are some of things worth linking to.....
VizStim
Gupta Program
How to Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve with a TENS Device
How to Use Binaural Beats to Shift Gears in your Brain
Why You Become Hypersensitive - Cell Danger Response and Limbic System Dysfunction

Alright it's been WAY TOO LONG since I released a podcast, so I am starting to do some interviews to keep having good content come out on my channel :)

This "interview" is a discussion with my friend and colleague Dr. Mark Su MD.

Dr. Su is well-known in many practitioner forums because he chimes in often with really insightful and helpful replies to fellow practitioners' queries, questions, and concerns when trying to help complex health cases, which is why I thought he would be a great person to chat with. In clinical practice, Dr. Su blends together traditional primary care medicine with "functional", or root-cause medicine, and he has developed a broad knowledge base with expertise in traditional pharmacology, but also in nutraceuticals, lab testing, resonance/muscle testing, Lyme and tick-borne illnesses, mold toxicity and environmentally acquired illness - - all the things I love to talk about on this podcast!

There really isn't a "topic" or "theme" to this interview, but I have a lot of respect for Dr. Su when it comes to dealing with chronic and complex diseases, I share a lot of his viewpoints, and really just wanted to get him on here and pick his brain about some things, and this is what came from our conversation :)

ENJOY!

Sinus problems are rampant. Americans spend over $1 Billion annually to treat sinus problems with over-the-counter medications, which is crazy. It's not just common in the chronic illness world and in the autoimmune world, and ESPECIALLY in the mold world, it's common in everyone.

Sinus inflammation is interesting. I have had really great success healing my own sinuses. I'm not recommending that everyone (or anyone) do what I did, but what I REALLY DID was I spent several years intensely studying deep immunology and the Ear, Nose, and Throat and Allergy literature, read 100s of studies, and used things like high dose supplements and essential oils to have really good success with nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis. I haven't had sinus issues for over 3 years. Here is a video of what I did to get rid of nasal polyps, it's crazy.

When I talk about sinuses, I'm also talking about ENT areas - ear infections, tonsils, sore throats, pharyngitis, which includes things like Strep and PANDAS, but most of my success was with the nose. The whole ENT region is a hotbed of infections and pathogens, and is right across the wall from the brain, and things like antibodies, histamine, chemical toxins, inflammatory cytokines, and mycotoxins from mold can ride the "olfactory elevator" (as Dr. Jill Crista calls it) right up to the brain - right to deep, midline areas like the frontal cortex (brain fog, etc), pituitary (hormones), amygdala (anxiety, fear, etc), hypothalamus (temp, dysautonomia, etc), neurological dysfunctions and more.

Sinus inflammation drives many immune mechanisms, including Th2 and eosinophilic inflammation, mast cell activation and histamine, and Th17 inflammation, which is tissue-damaging autoimmune inflammation and will drive autoimmune progression. THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF THE PUZZLE! One thing that can drive this immune activation are chronic biofilms including Strep, Staph (MARCoNS), and Mold/Yeast that are incredibly persistent and antibiotic resistant. Biofilm colonies, like in the gut, grow on sinuses, adenoids, tonsils (that's why they remove them!) and ENT surfaces - and when they adhere to a surface they are over 1000x harder to kill, and they are highly persistent and antibiotic resistant. THIS IS THE OTHER MOST IMPORTANT PIECE!

In this episode I talk about 4 levels of supporting sinus inflammation naturally:

1 - Breathe Clean Air!!!! Allergies are obviously an issue....You can't be living in mold....I talk about air purifiers, mold candles, HVAC filters, and more.

2 - Fix your Gut and Balance your Immune System - I talk about using things like probiotics, herbal killers, SCFA, vitamins D and A, glutathione, perilla, quercetin, luteolin, etc to support barrier integrity, mast cell activation, Th2 dominance.

3 - Break Biofilms and Kill Infections - Nasal Spray, Neti Pot, Nebulizer, Gargle - I talk about using essential oils, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, silver, propolis, aqualaurin, biocidin, etc to break up biofilms and help kill pathogens.

4 - Maintain - I talk about the importance of breathing clean air, doing regular nasal rinses, and more to maintain.

This is not medical advice, but many people have seen their ENT with very little answer besides antihistamines, antibiotics, or steroids, so these are just some of the things that people are doing out there, and hopefully it can help you solve YOUR puzzle!

I also mention this, my favorite newsletter and started by an amazing ENT surgeon:
www.sinusitiswellness.com