 Welcome to another episode of Resiliency Radio, your go-to podcast for the most cutting-edge insights in functional and integrative medicine. I'm Dr. Jill Yourhost, and today we're diving deep into the heart of healing and personal transformation. We're here to explore the frontiers of health from the intricate workings of the gut to neuroscience and today specifically, inflammation. My guest today is a dear, dear friend, someone I love and respect so much, and we have no problem finding things to talk about. And today will be no different Dr. Tom O'Brien. When it comes to getting healthy, Dr. Tom O'Brien's goal is making it easy to do the right thing. As an internationally recognized, admired, and compassionate speaker focusing on food sensitivities, environmental toxins, and development of auto-immunity, Dr. Tom's audience discovered that it is through a clear understanding of how you got where you are that you and your doctor can figure out what it will take to get you well. He's considered the Sherlock Holmes of chronic disease and teaches that recognizing and addressing the underlying mechanisms that activate an immune response is the map to the highway towards better health. I am so excited to have you here again with me, Dr. Tom. Welcome. Thank you, Dr. Jill. It's always a pleasure when I saw on the schedule, oh, it's Jill Karnan. Oh, great. I know. I guess the fun, like coffee with a friend, right? That's right. And I'm hoping to observe all the whatever, hopefully thousands of people will get to observe this. Yes. Yes. Hopefully so. So we're just decoding the path to feeling your best. And one of the things we want to really emphasize and talk about and at the end we'll give links is you have a new doctor series coming out called the inflammation equation and what's the subtext? Decoding the path to optimal well-being. Perfect. So we're going to dive in, kind of give a framework and a little bit of a teaser for this that's coming out probably shortly after this will go live. But let's go back a little bit, Dr. Tom. Many people have heard your story, but I kind of want to know for the people who haven't met you, haven't heard you, how did you get into medicine? How did you get into a really good root cause, functionalists, and tell us just a bit about your story. Oh, my goodness. Let's see. My first week in my medical education, the very first week, I knew absolutely nothing. I was in Chicago, the strange environment, you know, classes were overwhelming. But I saw that there was going to be a talk that Wednesday evening by Dr. Sheldon Deal, Mr. Arizona. And I thought, oh, okay. So the guy's a bodybuilder. He's going to be healthy. I'd like to hear. I was a marathon runner and a triathlete at that time and, you know, so I'd like to hear what he had to say. So here's a room full of people and he had a color television on a stand turned on, but the volume turned off. This was 1978, January, 1978. Color televisions were still not the norm. So it's kind of cool to see one over there, you know. He walks over to his briefcase, opens up a briefcase and takes out a bar magnet the size of an iPhone. And he holds it up like a police flashlight. And he walks towards the television. The picture turns upside down. And he walks back and the picture goes right side up. And he walks towards the television. The picture goes upside down. And he walks back and it goes right side up. And he says, that's what electromagnetic pollution does to your brain and nervous system. It's called neurological switching. People say right when they mean left. They write the number three backwards. They put the E before I, you know, I before E except after C. They do things backwards and it's neurological switching from electromagnetic pollution. And at that time in 1978, there was no such thing as cell phones. He was talking about the battery in a watch. And that battery on your skin can have a negative impact on sensitive people. This was my first week in my education and it just expanded my horizons immediately that there was so much more than what I would be learning in the textbooks. And it kept going from there. In that same year, I heard my first talk by Dr. Jeff Bland, 1978, his first talk in Chicago. I was there and it just opened me up that. And as you know, our friend and mentor, Dr. Bland, he gets on stage and he shows you this study. Well, this doctor in the New England Journal of Medicine four years ago said this. And this doctor in the Journal of the American Medical Association nine years ago said this. And Dr. just last week in the British Medical Journal said, do you see how they're connected and Jeff would always tie different pieces together, encouraging us to see the big picture. So my entire education from day one has been on doing my best to see the big picture. That's why in the introduction, thank you for reading that introduction. And it really is. My goal is to show people the map. This is what your life has been so far. This is your history. This is the map of your biomechanics, your biochemistry, your metabolic picture. And if you want to get to health over there, you have to be able to read the map and then make adjustments on the road and take a turn here, a little bit of a detour over here. I brought in a consultant one time and it was a lot of money to bring him in for the day, but I really wanted a focus for our team. And I know you've done things like that. I mean, your team is so remarkable. I've been in your office and hung out with you guys and it's just fun, fun to see how they all work together, you know. And I wanted to bring more unity to our team. And so the day was about really dialing down, what's our vision? What's my vision as the head doctor? What's the vision? And what is it that we all want to represent? And it really is making it easy to do the right thing. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to do the right thing. And in order to do that, if the right thing and people that come to us want to be healthier, so the right thing is being healthier. So to do that, you have to understand where you've come from, what your body history is, and you are just the master at that. You sit with people, you get their history and you repeat it to them in a way. And I know that you've shared this with me, that sometimes, and this has happened to me too, people just start tearing up that you're the first doctor to ever really hear me. You're the first doctor that ever really cared enough to ask these questions. And then you know that they know they're in the right place, that you're going to do your best for them. So my entire career has been in one way or another, trying to make it easy to do the right thing. I love that line, because we can actually jump just for a second, because so often we can talk real practical, inflammation, environmental toxicity, all these EMFs, all these things that are affecting. And it can be doom and gloom for the first lectures of King Bob, our colleague and friend Bob Roundtree. And you talk about the, you know, toxicity and doom and gloom. And we'd all be like, oh, this is terrible. What are we going to do? We're all going to die. And then he'd bring in the humor, right? Right, right, the Krispy Kreme donut. Yes, yes, yes, the caramelization and all the mallard reaction. And anyway, but doing the right thing, I want to take a little side note because part of this is our environment. They've shown with studies that 80 percent of our success is not our willpower, because over the lifetime of a day, we lose willpower every decision that we make. But it's our environment. And there's this thing I learned from Marie Forleo called mesimplas, which means set up your environment for success. Let's just digress quickly on this of like, like, why does it matter? What's in your pantry? Why does it matter the way you set up your sleep schedule? And you're, and for me, the night before that mesimplas is literally setting up, I might set a bull out for my organic grain free granola, or I might set up the coffee pot, or I might set out the band so that when I walk into the kitchen, everything is set out for success. So let's just diverse, digress a little bit about why does making it easy for success matter? And how can patients actually actually do practical things that will make it easy for them to succeed? This is jaw dropping. This was in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2019 and from Harvard. And the editors of the journal wrote a comment. They said, this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to prove their point. Now, you know very well, Dr. Jill, the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association don't say that very often. You know, that I mean, you publish in JAMA. I mean, that's a feather in your cap. But they gave that stamp of approval, if I can use that term for this study. And they looked at couples at assisted fertility centers and those that were successful and those that weren't. And they ruled out all of the known factors, exercise, no exercise, alcohol, no alcohol, cigarette smoking, socioeconomic class, race. They ruled all of that out and they looked at one thing. How many servings of fruits and vegetables is the woman eating a day? And they divided them into fourths, the lowest, the next, the third and the highest. And the results were just shocking. Of course, we know the more fruits and vegetables, the better. No, no, those women in the highest category of fruit and vegetable consumption compared to those women in the lowest category of fruit and vegetable consumption, those in the highest category had an 18% less likelihood of successful implantation at assisted fertility centers, 18% less. And if they did get pregnant, they had a 25% less likelihood of a live birth. They lost the baby to miscarriages and stillbirths. The more fruits and vegetables you eat, the worse the outcome. What? Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. What? You know, in paradigm shifting, but there was a subcategory of women who were eating organic. And in that category, the results were the exact opposite. The more fruits and vegetables you were eating, the higher the success rate for a healthy pregnancy, healthy implantation, healthy pregnancy, healthy delivery. And this is the really good news, because people get overwhelmed thinking about eating organic and how hard that is to get. Because they're just not familiar with how to set themselves up for success. But this is the good news. Women were put in the category of organic, vegetable, fruit and vegetable consumption if they were eating three servings a week. Wow. Not 21 servings a week. If they were just trying three times a week, they were put in the category and they had much greater success. Now, how could that be? Well, I've got two theories on that. Now, everything I'm telling you is pure science, but now I'm going to tell you my theory. If a woman is eating organic three or more times a week, she probably bought organic shampoo and organic dishwashing detergent. She's probably a little more conscious, trying to do better. And she's learning, she's on the learning curve. She's not completely organic, you know, but she's moving in that direction. That's the first answer that I think as to why just three servings a week made such a dramatic difference. And the second is that I believe, and I haven't found any science on this, I haven't really looked, but I think the very most sensitive tissue in our bodies is a fertilized egg. It has no immune system. It's totally dependent on mom or protection and mom's uterus barrier, like the blood brain barrier. These protective are no barrier. Exactly right. So the more fruits and vegetables you're eating, conventional, the more pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, antibiotics, glyphosate you're getting. And as that's in your bloodstream circulating, your body produces inflammation to protect you from these toxic chemicals. And so the inflammation is in the amniotic fluid, along with every other tissue in mom's body. And that inflammation impacts on the success of the fertilized egg implanting. So I think that's what that's all about. But the good news in all of that geeky science stuff, the good news is just three servings a week. You know, you're just moving in the right direction and you get really good results. I love that because that highlights another habit thing, which is just simple, simple, small, tiny things that are doable and not overwhelming are the best way to make new habits. So love that. Now, let's take a step back because you've got the inflammation equation coming out soon. And it's all about inflammation, which is really the driver of everything bad that we see in chronic complex disease. But let's talk really basics. What is inflammation, Dr. Tom? And then we'll talk about some of the core things that we have an ability to do something about. You bet. Inflammation is not bad for you. Excessive inflammation is bad for you. Inflammation is the response of the immune system. Mrs. Patient, your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It's there to protect you. There's an army, a navy, an air force, a marines, a Coast Guard. We call them IgA, IgG, IgE, IgM, cytokines. Different branches of the armed forces there to protect you. And if we didn't have a well functioning immune system, we wouldn't be here because we're exposed every single day to so many things on planet Earth that can be toxic. That our immune system protects us from bacteria, viruses, parasites, microorganisms, all day every day. We're exposed to these things, molds and fungus in the jungles. I live in the jungle in Costa Rica and we're exposed to that all the time. That your immune system gets activated when it recognizes a threat and it tries to protect you. It produces inflammation. Now, your immune system can only respond to six categories of insult. Bugs, parasites, viruses, mold, fungus and bacteria. There's nothing else that has a selective response. Everything that your immune system determines is a threat. It's going to respond as if it's a bug, parasite, virus, mold, fungus or bacteria. That means lead or mercury in tuna fish. Your immune system will respond as if it's a bug, parasite, virus, mold, fungus or bacteria. That's all it can do because we have the exact same immune system as our ancestors thousands and thousands of years ago. We have the same kidneys. We have the same liver. We use our brains more, so we've got comfort and housing and food production. But we have the same bodies. They function the same. And our ancestors had to be protected from those six categories of insult that could make us sick and kill us, right? So when you're exposed to red dye number 42 in some red pop that you're drinking, your body looks at that. And if that red dye number 42 accumulates in your body and you cross a threshold of how much the immune system will allow before it says that's a threat, it's going to respond as a bug, parasite, virus, mold, fungus or bacteria. That's all it can do. So when and that inflammation designed to kill something is what protects us all day long. Now, the problem is we have in our current world today so many insults that we're not aware of. Nail polish. You put nail polish on your fingers and within four to five minutes the phthalates of the nail polish are in your bloodstream. What? Yeah, that's what makes the polish hard or phthalates and they're in your bloodstream in four to five minutes. But there's no evidence that the amount of phthalates they get into your bloodstream from applying nail polish is toxic to humans. There's no evidence of that. You store leftover food in plastic storage containers in the refrigerator. The next day you take the chicken out. It's got phthalates in it because the food touched the container, the plastic of the container and the chemicals in the plastic material of the container leech into the food. But there's no evidence that the amount of phthalates that leech out of plastic containers into your leftover food is toxic to humans. There's no evidence. But this stuff is accumulative in the body. That's how the chemical industry got away with this. They passed the legislation that you have to demonstrate that the amount of chemical you are exposed to within 24 hours is toxic to human cells. It's not. It's called the Toxic Substance Control Act. And the senators were paid off. The representatives were paid off to pass this legislation. And consumers at the time said, you can't do this. This isn't right. But they ignored all that. The lobbying industry spent millions and they spent millions every year to make sure nobody touches TSCA, the Toxic Substance Control Act. I mean, how is it possible that we have toothpaste for your children that says on the label, do not eat this if swallowed, call poison, the National Poison Control Center. And that's on the toothpaste you're giving your kids. And we think it's OK that we're being protected. No, we're not. So it's this world of toxins, Dr. Jill, that we are exposed to all day, every day that we don't know about. It's overwhelming to think about that is activating our immune system, producing this chronic low grade inflammation that's there all the time. One more fact. The CDC tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. It's always inflammation, except for unintentional injuries. Everything else is chronic low grade inflammation that just kills off a few cells and kills off a few cells. And you feel fine while it's killing off a few cells and killing off a few cells. And you feel OK while it's killing off a few cells and killing off a few cells. And you feel you feel pretty good and killing off a few cells. You feel how you do it. I'm not bad and killing off a few. In other words, your vitality is going down and down and down and down. Like the frog boiling in the pot, right? That's exactly right. Exactly right. Until you finally have dis-ease, meaning you don't feel good. You go to the doctor and then you get diagnosed with a disease. And you think that this just happened to you. No, it happened years ago. One more point that should wake people up. Blue Cross Blue Shield published in February of 2020. And nobody heard about this because that's when the virus came out. But they said, we've got a problem. In the previous four year period, there was a 407 percent increase in four years of 407 percent increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 30 to 44 year olds. Wow. In four years. Wow. Because all of this inflammation that young people have now because they've got more chemicals in their body than ever before in history from birth, because mom had more chemicals than her mother had with pregnancy and more and more chemicals. And now these young people are so loaded with these toxins. This is the primary reason, in my opinion, why so many brain dysfunction dis-eases and diseases are occurring, whether it's depression or anxiety or schizophrenia or autism or Alzheimer's is because the brain is especially susceptible to these toxins getting in. Once in your bloodstream, they go right through the blood brain barrier into the brain, activating your immune system, trying to protect you from these chemicals. And the collateral damage is killing off brain cells. And you have a 407 percent increase in Alzheimer's in four years in 30 to 44 year olds. Hey, everybody, I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, Unexpected, Finding Resilience through Functional Medicine, Science and Faith, is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming life-threatening illness and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein Bar and mold and biotoxin related illness. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy, stop by readunexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine in finding resilience. Now, this is a little depressing and scary, but it's so relevant because if people don't know, I always call this the elephant in the room. It's one of my favorite topics. Dr. Tom, as you know, is the environmental toxic load. So we have established and just given just a couple examples, there's a hundred more and the truth is we are all swimming in toxic soup. And this can, like I said, this can be so depressing and overwhelming. Let's shift to some practical ways that people can actually take control because the truth is all of us, even if we're super careful like you and I, Tom, are going to get toxic exposures. Right, right. In a certain threshold, our bodies are created to detox. So there is this mechanism built in that we were born with that allows us to get rid of that. But what we're talking about is in the last decade or two decades, we've really outpaced our own capacity to detox. So we must, if we want to live healthy, incorporate. I always say the 21 day January detox is great, but you must not. Just think of this as like a spa day on January. You must incorporate daily habits and things and choices that decrease your toxic load. And I'm sure in your document, you talk about this, but let's talk about some practical ways that people can have control of their toxic load. You bet. You bet. It's essential that, see, once people understand the overwhelm of all this and how dominant it is, then reality is it's essential that every day you put a little bit of tension on how am I detoxing today? And that example I gave you from the Journal of the American Medical Association is such a good example, three servings a week because these women are moving in the right direction. They're just and such great results. They have healthy babies, you know, which is what they went there for in the first place. So that's a really good point. If you hang on to that study, the message of that study, you don't have to be perfect. And the theme of our event is progress. Not perfection. Love it. That's all, you know, you just move in the right direction. So the first thing in toxicity and helping to reduce the level of toxicity is you have to have your four lane highways wide open, able to carry an escort stuff out of the body. You know, one of our mentors, Dr. Sid Baker says, you know, the whole thing about functional medicine is get the bad stuff out and put the good stuff in. And he's absolutely right. And most people don't have enough. Their highways, their four lane highway is blocked out, is closed down to two lanes and sometimes one lane. What does that mean? It means everything's backed up and you can't get it out moving properly. Well, what does that mean? You're not drinking enough water. Just take the back of your hand, pinch the back of your hand. And that pinching should go down immediately flat. If it doesn't, if it sticks up, you're dehydrated and you need more water, you know, you just need to make sure. And how much water? It's a third of an ounce per pound body weight is what we recommend. And if you're sweating a lot because you're doing saunas, which are a great thing to do or you're exercising to the point of sweating a lot, it goes up to a half ounce per pound body weight, but a minimum about a third of an ounce per pound body weight. And you have to drink enough water so that your highways can escort the bad stuff out. That's a really important first step. You don't want to try to mobilize everything if your four lane highway is down to one lane, you know, or the highway is closed and everyone's being shunted off on an exit and you got to take the side roads. Tom, if I can quick comment, I've always talked about mobilization versus excretion. And you have mobilization is actually quite easy. What you're talking about is mobilization. But if our excretion, the highway pathways are not there, we can mobilize all day long and we actually feel worse. We become worse because we're not excreting. So those two pieces are so. Right. We used to call those pathological detoxifiers because we really didn't know what was going on. Right. Right. Right. That's that's exactly right. So the first thing is just make sure that you're hydrated well enough. You know, that's critically important. And then mobilization, you know, the magic number, 9,840, 26, 9,826 steps a day that if you walk 9,826 steps a day, you reduce your risk of dementia by 51 percent. Now is a study looking at tens of thousands of people. So that means walking. You don't have to be out there being a jock and running marathons. I mean, if you want to do more, you certainly can. But you don't have to. You just need to move it. You need to mobilize. You need to get it going. So we talk about that and we talk about foods that are helpful with supporting your detox pathways, you know, the cruciferous vegetables and the idea of sprouts. One of our experts is a Sprout expert. Oh, wow. Powerhouses. And they're just powerhouses, you know, when and it's so easy to make sprouts. It's a great family project. So your young kids feel like they're contributing to food in the house with that one. So our event is about not just crying wolf. I mean, we've got the world leaders. I mean, I traveled to seven countries. Wow, interviewing for this. None of them are online. And I think one of the best ones that one of the ones I enjoyed the most was Fran Drescher. Oh, Fran. I do too. She's so great. You know, we went to her house and I congratulated her because Fran's the president of the Screen Actors Guild. And, you know, she was the one in charge of all the negotiations for the strike that the screenwriters had recently. And they won. The AI is not allowed to be used in writing scripts. And I said, Fran, so you must have had a team of lawyers that were working for you. He says, no, a few as well. Wait a minute, I'm sure the movie studios had the most expensive lawyers in the country. And, you know, these, how did you deal with all of that? She started laughing and she said. I would only talk to them in my nightgown in my bathroom. I go, what, what? And she showed me her lounge chair in the bathroom. And that's where she would sit in her lounge chair, drink her tea and talk to these people on Zoom meetings, you know, and negotiate with these high powered attorneys. And I'm telling you that because her message in the inflammation equation, you must take care of yourself. You must do the little things that make you feel better so that you are of value to the world around you. If you don't take care of yourself, you're no good to anyone. And Fran, just in her loving way, you know, she's a 22 year survivor of uterine cancer. And she said, you must take care of yourself. That's why she founded Cancer Schmancer. And that is the nonprofit that we're donating to with this event is to Cancer Schmancer because she does such a great job. And her primary emphasis is on educating people about the toxic environment that we're all living in and how it causes mutant cells when you don't take care of your body well enough, when you're eating the wrong foods and too much stress. Then we had Jeff Bland, the father of functional medicine, tell us that a negative thought is just as powerful at activating stress hormones and inflammation as exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Wow. And that's from Jeff, who does not exaggerate. No, has founded research on every statement. That's right. That's right. And so we learned that negative thoughts. And then here comes Fran talking about how you have to take care of yourself, the little things that you can do to take care of yourself every day. It comes back to this because it is so easy to be number one, doom and gloom. Toxicity, environmental toxicity is one of the most depressing topics in the world. But the truth is we do have choice. We do have ability to make change. And it really, really does start with getting our nervous system in a good state of feeling worthy and loved and having those thoughts of gratitude and those things. And the science supports it, right? It's not just spouting this off. When we look at like the heart rate variability data, the things that most profoundly affect a healthy heart rate variability are the emotion of love and gratitude. Amen to that. That's exactly right. Every morning when I wake up and we talked about the doctor, Pedram Shoja, I talked about this in his interview. And see, when you wake up before you even open your eyes, when you're coming to consciousness, what are three things that you're grateful for in your day, you know, coming today? And for me, it's that my son is laying next to me. He sleeps with us. He's three, three years old. And I'm grateful for my son. I'm grateful for my wife, this incredible partner I have. And I'm grateful to be doing the work that I do in the world. So that's how I started my morning today. And then I open my eyes and there's my beautiful son sound asleep next to me. You know, so I love that you're sharing this because this is really the core of healing way more. Exactly. Exactly. It's these little things that you do for yourself, you know. And as you know, Joe, we both have our ways of doing this. When I sign books, I always ask the person their name and I write down their name and I sign it base hits win the ball game. Love it. It's the little things you do over and over again. Like you started off by saying about the exercises that you're doing that they accumulatively set the stage for you to be healthier. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is so exciting. And I can't wait personally to watch the inflammation equation. Let's just leave people with one take away. We could we could do a hundred. And I know you have so many sound bites talking about what would be your one takeaway for people suffering with chronic illness or inflammation. Give them just some pearl to leave to end on. Oh, it's really great. Thank you for that. And there is absolutely no question. There is so much science to prove this. And this is the language that the researchers at Harvard use. This is their exact words. You can arrest and reverse the development of chronic inflammatory diseases. That's the message you can. It's not drugs. It's how you live your life. When you when you realize that how you've lived your life to now has gotten you to where you are in your life. Some things got to change if you want your health to go in a different direction. And our job is to show you the different categories of what what you can work on, what you could change. And it's base hits that always win the ball game. So if you go to the inflammation equation dot com forward slash Dr. Jill, we're here waiting for you and we will show you how to do this. Come join us. We'll show you how I'll be there, Tom. And I am so excited you always do such quality productions. And we've been waiting for your next project. So thank you. It's been eight years. Yes, it is an absolute delight and pleasure to call you colleague and most of all friend. We appreciate the work that you do in this world. And thanks today for coming on Resiliency Radio. Thank you so much. A real pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Resiliency Radio. I hope you've enjoyed the show. Stay tuned for more empowering episodes with this episode and new episodes being released each week. You can find them all on iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube or wherever you watch or listen to podcast. Please stop by, leave us a review. You can also find transcriptions of all videos on my website, JillCarnahan.com and on my YouTube channel. Thanks so much and we'll see you next week.