The Hidden Cause of Brain Inflammation Doctors Miss | Dr. Pejman Katiraei

[00:00:00] How is mold impacting a child's behavior? 

The foreign alien landed in your child's brain and then literally start taking over the controls. And then your sweet child who was kind, playful, social, and smart starts changing, and now they're irritable, angry, impulsive, and they can't regulate themselves.

What if the root cause of a child's symptoms has been overlooked? Board certified pediatrician, Dr. Pejman Katirai- 

Is helping families uncover new answers for autism- 

mold related illness, and complex behavioral challenges. 

We pay attention to our foods. We pay attention to even the water that we drink.

What kind of everything. Very few people pay attention to the indoor quality of their air. 

What else in the indoor environment is causing the immune chaos? 

It's the chemicals that we- 

A big question that parents have is could my child's diet be affecting their behavior? What do you think about that? 

100%.

It has been now documented in the [00:01:00] literature that specific food dyes in particular can cause mast cells degran- degranulate, which then releases a bunch of chemicals, which can then cause all kinds of odd behaviors. 

Mm-hmm. There's a lot of people who will say, "Food dyes have never been shown in the research to affect children's behavior.

Therefore, your observation is false." What do you say to that? 

A lot of times people look at things as I need a conclusive study that says if you give food dyes to X number of people, it will produce this result. These studies don't look at biochemical individuality, right? Because someone can eat a food dye, like my wife, and she could be fine.

If my son eats a food dye and he will go completely off the rails. And when you look at how food dyes behave immune cells, which then influence behavior, and you can type in food dyes and mast cells. 

Well, let's talk about that, 'cause what you're talking about is histamine. So, uh, we know that histamine is not just about the immune system, it's also a neurotransmitter.

There was an [00:02:00] interesting study done showing that some individuals have a genetic variation in which they just can't break down histamine, and it was those individuals, which is around like 10% of the population, that are absolutely sensitive to food dyes, and we do see these symptoms. But it's not just about our genetics, as we know.

Processing histamine can be because of other issues in the body. Yeah. So can you speak more to that? 

Yeah. So I see genetics as a very small part of what we are seeing now. So when you add the total toxin load, right? You add COVID, you add all the pesticides and all the chemicals, and the area that I've become really focused and concerned about is indoor contamination.

And with indoor contamination, everyone thinks of that as mold, which I think is a big disservice, a misnomer. So when there's in- indoor contamination, you get mycotoxins, a bunch of mold toxins, right? You get bacterial endotoxins, you get other types of gram-positive toxins, [00:03:00] and then all of these particulates.

Those in combination, when added to all of the other toxins, disrupt the immune system at a systemic level, and especially within the gut. And with that, whatever enzymes that we may have had working To degrade, uh, histamine. Ultimately, all of those enzymes stop working, so you get this environmentally induced histamine intolerance, which then causes a host of problems.

Mm-hmm. And when you're talking about indoor toxins, so a lot of people think mold. I always think Glade plugin. What else in the indoor environment is causing b- basically immune chaos? 

So I mean, it- it's the chemicals that we spray to clean, right? There could be a host of other things. The volatile gases, right?

You buy new furniture. Sadly, most of the time it's releasing compounds. You paint the wall. That's releasing compounds. So there could be a host of other things that contribute to it, for sure. 

Mm-hmm. And so, you know, from your clinical perspective, how important is it that we tend to [00:04:00] our indoor air quality, and what kinds of tips do you give to people for that?

I think it's an area that is grossly overlooked and underestimated in its potential, right? We pay attention to our foods. We pay attention to even the waters we drink, you know, what kind of shampoos we use, what kind of, you know, everything. Very few people pay attention to the indoor quality of their air.

Mm-hmm. 

Right? And you know, an analogy I give to parents is, would you ever allow your child to be around a smoker, right? Would you ever allow your child to be around secondhand smoke? And it's like, no, right? And then if you take that conversation a step further and say, "Well, would you allow your child to ever be allow, uh, around secondhand smoke that could have biotoxins that were used in biological warfare?"

And then at that point, it-- the obvious answer is absolutely not, right? Who in their right mind would let that happen? Yet, especially in the US, because of the drywall and construction techniques, at least 30% of h- homes have contamination, and [00:05:00] we don't even talk about it or look at it because the way we test people, the way we test the environments completely misses it.

So it's all of these things that when you look at it from the standpoint of just logic, it's like, of course I wouldn't want my child around this. 

Mm-hmm. 

But then when it comes to the medical side and just environmental side, it's something that we don't even talk about. 

So this all sounds really scary.

So for people listening right now, what are some things they can do to mitigate indoor air quality? 

Well, it, it's just, it starts with awareness. 

Mm-hmm. 

And why I say that is you can have the fanciest air purifiers in the world- And if you have a significant indoor contamination problem, that fancy thousand-dollar IQ Air whatever is not enough to actually mitigate that exposure.

So the first step a lot of times really boils down to asking the question of, is there a problem here? You know, and with that, if the child... [00:06:00] If your child has had a bunch of ear infections, back-to-back ear infections, you or your child are getting sick all the time, right? It's like you get sick, you get sick again.

You've-- Now as an adult, you have a sinus problem. You just got a pneumonia. Your kid is having other issues. That's when you need to stand back and say, "Hmm, this is really weird. Like, this shouldn't be happening. What is going on?" And through that, then you can start asking, okay, is there a problem? How do I find the answers?

And so forth. 

Mm-hmm. So are you... I, I know someone's gonna come in the comments- ... and say, "Is he saying not to use an indoor air purifier?" 

I'm, I, I'm all for air, uh, air purifiers. We have it at the office. We have it in our house. I think they're great, and they serve a purpose. 

Mm-hmm. 

But the purpose of these air purifiers was never intended to combat significant contamination that comes from water damage.

So that-- in those cases, you have to find the source, eliminate the source, and then the air purifier can do its job in just purifying the air further. 

Mm-hmm. [00:07:00] And so when it comes to mold, how is mold impacting a child's behavior? 

If a foreign alien landed in your child's brain and then literally start taking over the controls, and then your, your sweet child, who was kind and sweet and nice and playful and social and smart, starts changing, and now they're irritable and they're angry and they're impulsive, and they can't regulate themselves.

It's like their emotions have been taken over. That could be a sign of this contamination triggering the immune system, and the immune system literally has now hijacked your child's brain. 

Mm-hmm. We are talking about behavior. What's normal childhood behavior, and what is a red flag that parents should pay attention to?

I love that question. When children are in control, that is normal. And when you look at children, like, [00:08:00] they may act out, but there's a reason why they're acting out, right? They're wanting your attention. There, there, there's an intentional manner in which why they're acting the way they are, right? When children are inflamed, it is a completely irrational set of behaviors and actions that they don't have control over.

Mm-hmm. 

And why I think this question is so important is right now in the psych- psychological domain and, and frankly the medical domain, we don't differentiate these two, right? We think all behaviors are psychological purely, and that's all there is. And there is no place to look at what happens when the immune system goes completely sideways, and what happens when the human being frankly loses all control of their behaviors.

And why I think this is such an important conversation to think about is a lot of times p- parents don't realize that. 

So I wanna talk [00:09:00] about how we start to differentiate that, but I think maybe a better place for us to go is back to the gut-- Mm-hmm ... and talk about how can a child's gut health influence their behavior.

It 

has everything to do with it. 

Mm-hmm. 

Right? Through direct and indirect mechanisms, the gut can ultimately influence our behavior. So when the gut is inflamed, that inflammation through the vagus nerve can directly travel into the brain and cause activation of the immune system, cause the release of histamine, cause the microglia or immune cells in the brain to get activated.

But one of the things that's really fascinating is when the gut is inflamed, you also get all of these microbial toxins and compounds, right? You get lipopolysaccharides, you get all of these things that then go into circulation. The blood-brain barrier is open. They go into the brain. And if you just think about it logically, like our immune cells are programmed that when they [00:10:00] see something that has to do with bacteria, they freak the hell out, right?

Mm-hmm. And if that's happening in your brain because stuff from your gut has now made it all the way up here and now it's triggering alarm signals in the brain, and it's like sirens going off everywhere, right? Red lights flashing, red lights flashing, danger, danger, danger. And through that, that immune activation then causes this constellation of really odd behaviors that we see in these kids a- and I'm sure in adults as well.

Mm-hmm. So what are the odd behaviors that we're talking about? 

So the first and foremost thing is there's this brilliant concept that one of my mentors and friends, uh, uh, coined, which is- When there's immune activation through the microglia and these mast cells, it changes our limbic system, specifically the wiring within our amygdala, and it changes our fear response.

Mm-hmm. 

So literally [00:11:00] how we perceive what is dangerous in the world gets completely distorted, completely distorted. So you get a set of kids that some of them are on the spectrum, some of them are not, that just everything in the world is a threat, which shows up as weird phobias, which shows up as kids constantly freaking out, uh, constantly getting overwhelmed, right?

The anxiety that comes with that. And a lot of times we give superficial labels like, "Oh, your child has an anxiety disorder. Your child has this or that." But when you distill it down and you ask like, why is the child acting this way? And I would say, why is the individual acting this way? It has to do with the fact that they're just fearful.

Mm-hmm. 

Now, in other individuals, depending on their constitution, it can show up as anger and aggression because what are anger and aggression rooted in? In fear. When we're afraid, depending on our chemistry and constitution, [00:12:00] some people will act in an aggressive fashion. So you can get a pattern of fear, you can get a pattern of irrational anger and aggression, and it turns out that some of this was actually happening in my mind and I didn't even know it, and that then changes part of our behavior, and that's just one of many things.

How did you recognize this was happening in your own mind? 

So through some of the kids that I was treating, uh, I started treating them with this anti-, uh, fungal called itraconazole. 

Mm-hmm. 

And I started seeing all of these remarkable changes on the behavioral side, but also their gut completely changed.

Like, kids with years of chronic gut issues, diarrhea, constipation, whatever, all of a sudden within sometimes weeks they got better. And I looked, I'm like, "God, that kinda looks like me, right?" You know, if I eat perfectly, perfectly, perfectly right, not a smidge of gluten, no alcohol, you know, like, everything is meticulously perfect, my gut is fine.

The second I deviate, everything would fall [00:13:00] apart. I'm like, "God, that's me." Mm-hmm. So I tried it on myself and it was the craziest thing in the world. Within three weeks All of a sudden, like all of these weird fears and paranoias, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if this person does this?

What if, oh my God, right? Constant. Mm-hmm. And like, I was meditating, I was doing all of these mindfulness techniques to try to calm down that noise, but it's like having this buzzing noise always there that you just learned how to deal with, and then all of a sudden the buzzing noise was gone. And then the other thing that was so fascinating is I had always just thought of myself as, well, I'm just kind of a nervous, shy person, right?

It was just how I had come to know myself. And I, I remember I'd be To, uh, to dinner. One time it was with our dear friend Elisa Song. You know, we were having dinner, and there was a group of people, and the conversation started going into the [00:14:00] medical side, and they were talking about something that I, I had, like, studied and had a lot of expertise in, and literally not a peep out of me until Elisa's like, "Pejman, isn't this your area?"

I'm like, "Yes." You know? But it was all, all this fear, all this constant obsessive thinking that, that was always there. And then after this antifungal, and I've done other things now, like, it was just gone, and this sense of freedom, and with this, like, courage that, that I'd always strived to get, and I'd done all of these talks and mastery courses and, like, everything you can imagine, right?

And it just shifted. 

Mm-hmm. 

And that was because itraconazole actually happens to have really powerful immune modulating behaviors and properties. So un- unknowingly, like, all of a sudden, I changed my own immune response, and since then, like, hundreds upon hundreds of kids, uh, I've witnessed the same thing in.

Kinda neat. 

And I'm curious, like, is it, like, you took a two-week [00:15:00] course of this, and then, you know, y- you were like, "I'm a different person," or was it the more gradual over time? 

It's been gradual over time, but the changes were pretty obvious for me within a few weeks. 

Mm-hmm. 

And for some of the children who are really in the right place-- So you throw this into the wrong child, right?

They're exposed to contamination. Their diet is a mess. Their gut is a mess. Like, you might as well just throw them u- under the bus. Yeah. Right? They do not do well. If someone is ready, their body is ready, they're, they're not in contamination, e- et cetera, et cetera, sometimes it's like a switch, and within a few weeks, everything starts changing.

The immune system resets. 

Yeah, I think that's important for people to hear because, you know, a desperate parent will be like, "This is the one thing," but, you know, often in functional medicine, we are guiding patients and talking them through the layers we have to work on, and I'm right there with you. If gut function isn't optimized, anything that starts to [00:16:00] kill or starts to push detox can actually cause more problems and more flares, because we have to tighten up that gut barrier.

So I'm interested to hear from you. You know, if a parent's like, "Okay," or maybe they're, like, thinking of this for themselves and they're not a parent, how do we know that my gut is something that needs to be addressed when we're looking at behavior? 

So it could be twofold. One is, is your child's bowel movements and, or your gut, right?

Are the bowel movements, the consistency of the bowel move- digestive functioning either healthy, right? Normal formed stool once a day, as gross as this is, or not, right? Uh, is, is there gas? Is there bloating? Is there pain? Are there skin issues, right? A lot of skin issues, eczema, rough skin are related to the gut.

A- and then with that also, like, do small amounts of foods, right, like a bite or two of gluten cause everything to fall apart? 

Mm-hmm. 

So [00:17:00] to me, these are all kind of bellwethers on how things are in... Especially if a child has, you know, a lot of gut issues and they're eating a cruddy diet and so forth, like, first you take care of those things to then get them ready.

Mm-hmm. And if a parent is looking at how can I support my child's gut health, where do you start? Do you start with testing? Do you start with making dietary shifts? What does that look like? 

So I, I do start with some testing. Um, one of the things that I see commonly overlooked is parasites. 

Mm-hmm. 

You know, especially if the child has gone...

You know, every year they go to Montana, and the child goes swimming in a lake, right? Uh, there... And these parasites are commonly missed on the commercial labs, so all of the fancy 3 to $500 stool tests commonly miss it. I look for how much inflammation there is in the gut. So for instance, there's two antibodies, I'm sure you're familiar with them, the anti-saccharomyces cerevisiae [00:18:00] ASCA, right, which they use classically to diagnose Crohn's and colitis.

It turns out, like, if you ask what the heck is this thing, right, it's antibodies against fungi and yeast, right? Mm-hmm. So if those antibodies are elevated, then it's like, well, shoot, you've got leaky gut, you've got gut inflammation, and you've got a fungal imbalance, right? Mm-hmm. So, like, this standard test actually gives you some useful information.

I run, uh, gliadin antibodies, 'cause it turns out that fungus and wheat look a hell of a lot the same, right? So yeah, sometimes it can pick up celiac, but it can also look to see if those other imbalance is there. So I kind of gauge how much inflammation there is. The problem with diet is, at least many of the kids that I take care of, their Highly aggressive, highly anxious, totally dysregulated, and they're eating a total of four foods.

Mm-hmm. 

Right? Chicken [00:19:00] nuggets, mac and cheese, and whatever. And their sensory aversions are off the charts. So for some of these kids, my first goal is, like, let's get them off the sugar. Let's get them off the heavily processed foods. Let's get them off the food coloring. But a lot of times I see people dive straight into, "You gotta get rid of the gluten, dairy, all of these foods," and those are harder to do with these kids.

Mm-hmm. So how do you address picky eaters then? You, you know, this is what people term them as. "Oh, you just have a picky eater." How do you help them to start building a more robust diet? 

I start by asking, why did this child become picky in the first place? So when you look at where does picky eating come from?

Yeah, I mean, like, kids sometimes get picky because th- they, they discover, oh my God, there is this food, right? And oh, it's so good. So they'll be- they'll push back, but in those cases, kids will still eat these other foods. They may just have had a preference for [00:20:00] these other things, and with a little bit of nudging, you can bring them back.

Then there's the other population, which are, you know, the kids with neuroinflammation, PANS, PANDAS, the autistic kids, kids with other issues. And it turns out in these kids, their sensory experience of food is completely distorted. 

Mm-hmm. 

Uh, a analogy that I came up with was imagine the most delicious meal you've ever had in your life, right?

And the smell of the food, the look of the food, the taste of the food is just amazing, right? Now imagine if there's a time you open your fridge and there's a container that somehow got missed and it's been sitting there for like three weeks, right? Has that ever happened? 'Cause- 

Oh, yeah. Of 

course. Okay, okay, okay.

So you know, you know-- So you open it and just like, "Ugh," right? Just the smell and look of that, that what used to be food, is just so absolutely disgusting that you [00:21:00] just wanna gag, right? What if that uber delicious meal that you had, if your sensory experience was distorted, may have been no different than that pile of moldy mush that just came out of your fridge, right?

We don't ever think of it that way. Mm-hmm. But the kids that can express themselves have oftentimes said, "Yeah, these foods are just gross to me." Mm-hmm. Right? "Steak is gross. Salmon is gross. Vegetables are disgusting." But they're not being facetious. They're not being a pain. They're-- The, the experience of eating these foods, the texture, like salmon is a little slimy.

We think it's delicious, right? But for kids who have sensory distortion, so the way food touches their mouth and tongue is distorted, the smell of food is distorted, the taste of food is distorted. The delicious, healthy foods that we think are so great, for these kids might as well be, "Okay, son, here, here, [00:22:00] here's the mush from the back of the fridge.

Eat it now, please," right? Mm-hmm. He's like, "Hmm," right? We don't ever think of it in this way. So this is a very long-winded way to say one of the things that I first do is bring down the inflammation in these kids. 

Mm-hmm. 

For some kids, it's natural supplements. Other kids, I'll go to pharmaceuticals like ketotifen or cromolyn that actually calm down the mast cells in the gut.

I've used peptides. I've u- anything and everything you can imagine I've used, depending on what the child needs. And usually within a few weeks to a month, what happens is these kids are calmer, they're more rational, their appetite opens up, because histamine also changes appetite, and their sensory intensity of aversion starts calming down.

And what's so cool is a lot of times kids will naturally, as you do this, start becoming open to trying new foods. So I've had families where [00:23:00] they're at a restaurant and, you know, the dad is eating the burger, and the kid that, that wouldn't touch a lick of anything outside of mac and cheese, chicken nuggets, and maybe pizza is like, "Can I try that, Dad?"

You know? And everyone's like, "What?" You know, kids that wouldn't touch anything are now eating salmon and broccoli. But innately, because their texture and smell preferences have changed, that delicious food is now less of the moldy, disgusting mess and more the delicious food that they look, they're like, "Oh, that's kind of appetizing.

Let me try that." 

Mm-hmm. Mm. Do you ever see nutrient deficiencies playing a role in this as well? 

Yeah, 100%, and, and they're rampant. Zinc deficiency, iron deficiencies, copper deficiencies. Yeah. Hm. Along with a host of fat and protein and yeah. 

Yeah. 

100%. 

The other thing that... So I, I have-- my oldest will eat literally e- everything and anything, and he's the one that, like, seeks out...

Like, we go to restaurants, he's like, "I want the ant- ants," literally bugs, tacos, and, "I want the crickets in my guacamole, [00:24:00] and I wanna eat bone marrow." And my youngest is, like, the, like, the super archetype of, like, a picky eater. However, like, him and I are on the same wave. Like, broccoli's always our safe food.

Like, if that makes sense. But something that I, in, in reading on, like, how to support him that I came across is that, you know, my husband does not like the kids to eat with their hands unless it's food that you eat with your hands. He comes from a very British line- lineage, everyone. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I'm like-

Latina and I'm like- ... "Of course you eat a taco with your hands. What are you doing?" Like, so touching your food though, letting these kids touch and explore the food, so whether it's with the food prep or before it goes into their mouth, them actually touching it prepares the brain for what's coming and actually can help them start to modify the experience before it ever enters their mouth, because they've prepared for it as well.

And so it's a very tricky thing though, 'cause my youngest also doesn't like it when there's food on him. So- But he'll pick up something and I'll see him touching it, and then he'll take a bite of it. And I'm like, this is something [00:25:00] that's necessary. And I think etiquette-wise we're always like, "Don't eat with your hands," and yet it's that tactile sensation that preps the brain to prep the mouth for what is actually coming.

Yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. I love it. 

I wanna talk about, you know, how parasites are contributing to behavior, and how are you picking up, uh, parasites on testing, 'cause you said, you know, those fancy tests are not catching it. 

So and if you go to, like, the CDC website Uh, endolimax, blastocystis hominis, like those are so common that the CDC calls them normal.

Mm-hmm. 

And chances are with the more sensitive tests, and th- there's one test called parawellness.com, it's a pathologist that does his own testing that I've started using and trusting, and his sensitivity is far higher. But like if you take 100 people and you test them, like everyone has b hominis, everyone has some endolimax, et cetera, et cetera.

So one of the things that I think happens oftentimes is when things [00:26:00] deteriorate the gut health, right? The gut barrier, disrupt the immune system, disrupt the bacteria. Now you've got an environment that's hypersensitized to everything, right? That, and an extension of that are all the food sensitivities, right?

If you've got 15 food sensitivities and there's more foods you can't eat than you can eat, that's because your gut is hypersensitized. 

Mm-hmm. 

And in this scenario, the gut also starts reacting to these common benign parasites that may not be a problem. So a lot of times people focus on the parasite and miss the bigger picture of like, well, why is the gut reacting this way, right?

Mm-hmm. Now, every now and then you also will find hookworms, roundworms, you know, giardia, pinworms, things like that, and those can become very irritating and, and inflammatory to the gut regardless of where the gut was. So if-- I guess a way to look at this is there's the nasty worms and parasites that by themselves can trigger horrendous amounts of [00:27:00] inflammation and take the healthy gut and make it fall apart, and then there are the common parasites that once something else has disrupted the gut, now these parasites could become a problem because the gut itself is a mess.

Is the answer to your child's gut health doing the parasite cleanses you see online? 

I'd say 70% of the time those parasite cleanses create more problems than they solve. 

Mm-hmm. 

Because you're using botanicals or herbals or, you know, in some cases pharmaceuticals that actually end up disrupting the gut even more.

And if your child's gut is sensitive enough, you know, the benign botanicals that for you and I would never be a problem, literally a drop or two of that in a child whose gut is sensitive can cause them to go completely off the rails. Half the time families come to see me with-- and their kid is already on a laundry list of stuff, and I'm the one like, "Oh, they probably shouldn't [00:28:00] be on that, shouldn't be on that, shouldn't be on that."

And literally a family stops and they're like, "Oh my God, my kid is so much more calm." You know, we were trying to fix the parasites, but in the process of fixing the parasites, we were triggering so much inflammation, causing the child to feel so much worse. 

So if parasite cleanses aren't the approach, what is the approach for dealing with parasites and addressing your child's gut health appropriately?

It's understanding what created the problem in the first place, right? What caused all of this to fall apart? And first recognizing that, addressing whatever that was. And the thing-- You know, call me biased, uh, the thing that I see commonly is the indoor contamination. 

Mm-hmm. 

Because the mycotoxins in particular, but also some of the bacterial endotoxins are highly disruptive to the gut, so they cause the intestinal barrier to fall apart.

And, you know, early on in my practice, I had a bunch of kids that I would just look [00:29:00] at them like, "Why is your gut such a horrible mess? Like, what happened?" Because they were eating organic foods, families were living in super clean environments, no artificial chemicals, anything, right? Uber, uber clean living, yet the kids' guts were falling apart.

And that is when I started piecing it together, and I realized that this indoor conet- contamination was what was degrading the gut, which then caused these children to fall into this susceptible place. And the thing that, that's so fascinating is when the gut starts getting to a certain place of inflammation and dysregulation, the molds that are in the environment actually set up shop inside.

Mm-hmm. 

So you become moldy from within, and the overgrowth of these fungi and molds actually cause more and more inflammation, which then causes everything else to become a problem. So h- half the time what I'm doing now is making sure the environment is clean, using antifungals, nystatin, itraconazole, to [00:30:00] reset the, the m- fungal makeup of the gut.

And I'd say seventy percent of the time, that allows the gut to reset to a healthier place, and then we go after the parasites, we fix the diet, do a lot of other things to take it all the way home. 

Mm-hmm. When you say clean indoors, I wanna clarify that because we know that if you're too sterile indoors, that can negatively impact your child's immune system, their gut health.

So when you say clean, what are you referencing? 

So it, it's really just indoor, uh, I call it biotoxin contamination. Mm-hmm. So indoor m- mold, uh, in, in heavy amounts. That, that to me is, is one of the biggest things that sometimes is, is the key determinant from a child recovering and healing and doing well versus being stuck and constantly getting sick and constantly having issues, including within the gut that just can go on for years.

How big of an issue do you think indoor mold is in the United States? 

Way bigger than we realize. Way, way [00:31:00] bigger than we realize. If, if a home has been flooded, so in parts of the US and, you know, frankly around the world where there's flooding, 50% chance that there's mold. Without flooding, in arid regions, California, Arizona, I'd say 25 to 30% of those homes have mold.

And you know, you, you, you think about it, like we did something not so smart 50 years ago in the US. We decided to line every single home with paper, right? And then you ask, "Well, why is that a big deal?" Well, what does paper have embedded in it? It has mold spores, right? Mm-hmm. So you have children that are so fragile to begin with, and then when you add this contamination to that fragile system, a lot of these kids don't have a fighting chance.

Mm-hmm. I do think as much as people thought they were doing the best thing that they could in locking us all down, that was the worst uncontrolled experiment that we put generations through, but children especially. And I see [00:32:00] so often online teachers talking about like, "These children today, like their parents are so lazy.

They're two years behind, and, and they're always..." All these teachers are saying, "They're two years behind. They're two years behind." I'm like, because they got locked down for two years. Their parents were not lazy. Their parents were expected to be teachers, for which they are not- Yeah ... in a, in a very- Yeah

stressful environment. And we know that based on the research that's come out, a disproportionate amount of labor fell on women, because they, some of them still had their careers or, you know, whether they were stay-at-home moms. But they had to take on parenting and schooling and navigating how to get food when you're locked down- Yeah

and then also emotionally regulating the household. And so I think that the, there's so many layers to what... It wasn't just a virus. 

No, it's, it's huge. It's, it's for sure huge. And you know, one of the things that I love about my mentor, Dr. Neil Nathan, is he has literally dedicated almost an entire book to that.

Mm-hmm. 

[00:33:00] And I think addressing psychological trauma, past trauma, just getting your psyche in a healthy place. And you know, everyone that deals with chronic disease, one of their number ones is like you cannot be in a psychologically traumatized state, right? You have to get your men- mental state in the right place to be able to heal.

Mm-hmm. 

So obviously, and 100% I agree with that. One of the things that's so fascinating though is I look at adolescents on up as acting more like adults. So adolescents, teenagers, and older pick up psychological trauma and thoughts and emotions. The, the thing that I love, I think, about little kids is there is a psychological purity to them, where minus, heaven forbid, some kind of abuse or some kind of horrific loss- Emotionally, psychologically, they're still so pure that they don't develop the [00:34:00] same psychological patterns as we do.

Mm-hmm. 

And in the kids, the little, little ones, I oftentimes find you, you address their physiology and literally like a new human being snaps into place three weeks later. Whereas in the older kids, adolescents, teens on up, you have to address the psyche, get rid of their trauma, and address their physiology for them to heal.

Mm-hmm. Well, I wanna ask you, you know, when someone has inflammation in the brain, how does that change their personality and how they're actually experiencing the outside world? We talked a little bit about the fear, but I'm sure you have more to say on this. 

Sure. We don't- Oftentimes really look at how our entire experience is ultimately influenced by our chemistry to some extent, and right now we think chemistry is number one, and I would argue that's actually not the case.

So our immune system is, is essentially pulling our puppet [00:35:00] strings and influencing us. So we talked about the amygdala, the fear response, and with that, the anger and aggression. But if you ask, like, where, where, where... Glutamate, right? It's, it's the number one kind of neuroexcitatory chemical, right? Mm-hmm.

When we drink coffee, what brings us-- wakes us awake? Glutamate, right? The caffeine triggers glutamate, which then causes us to become awake. For those poor people that are addicted to speed, right? Amphetamines trigger glutamate, which is why you get these people that are like that. The most important source of glutamate in our brain is our microglia and their cousin cells called the astrocytes, which are still a type of immune cell that literally regulate the c- the volume or amount of glutamate that is released in the brain.

So when there's inflammation, glutamate levels just shoot through the roof. And there are a lot of families that are like, "Oh, I give my kid magnesium [00:36:00] and GABA and melatonin," but they still don't sleep, and they still aren't calm down. Why? Because you've got this just flood of glutamate into the brain which cannot be countered by these other things.

So a lot of times, what you need to do is actually calm down the immune system to get rid of the glutamate to allow things to work. Glutamate isn't just an excitatory compound. Glutamate also changes our sensory perceptions. So it-- like if, if there's a knob in your brain that, that's like a volume control, right?

It's like on a speaker, right? You turn up the volume, it gets a little too loud, you turn it down. Glutamate can literally crank up the volume of sound in how our brain perceives sound, which causes sensory overwhelm. It can influence touch and how our brain processes touch. But glutamate doesn't work by itself because when there's inflammation between the microglia and these cells called mast cells in our brain, they release histamine.

And then [00:37:00] you ask, "Well, what the hell is histamine?" Everyone's like, "Oh, well, histamine's the allergy thing," right? Histamine actually is one of the most important chemicals in our brain that works like glutamate to influence our state of alertness So glutamate and histamine influence sleep. So for those people that can't fall asleep, they wake up at 2:00 to 4:00 o'clock in the morning or they get up at the crack of dawn, that's histamine and glutamate going wonky in your brain.

It influences appetite. So for these kids that are picky eaters, when you look at them, they're not just picky in the sense that they're picky about food. A lot of times they're eating like little squirrels, right? They, they eat a little bit and they're done, right? They eat a few bites and they're done.

They eat... That is actually histamine causing appetite suppression. Now, histamine In concert with glutamate literally completely distort our sensory experience of the world. It can distort how we process and experience sound. But we don't [00:38:00] ever differentiate these things. We say, "Oh, well, that person is just anxious," or they're highly sensitive, right?

We give these labels to these people without asking why is this human being struggling, right? The same thing shows up in kids when they go to school and c- classrooms or recess is too loud, right? What do these kids do? Oh, they g- they, they go off to the side. Why, why is this sweet child, right? Because all children want to be social.

There's no asocial child. So when a child can't be social and they're off on their own playing at the side of the playground, it's because there's some kind of change in how they're experiencing their environment. It influences sense of touch, right? So, like, sometimes kids only wanna wear certain clothing, or commonly in the kids that I take care of, like, hair washing is not fun for them.

Mm-hmm. 

There, there are some sweet kids- 

Or just wet hands. 

Wet hands. 

We don't wanna be wet. 

Yeah. 

But 

these are all [00:39:00] signs that there's something going on with how our brain is perceiving the sensory information. And then a lot of times with this, between the immune activation and these chemicals, you get weird patterns of OCD.

Mm-hmm. 

So I see it in the kids commonly where it's just constant just regurgitation of the same thought, and I had this before. Like, there were times when if I didn't eat well, you know, before finally figuring out what to do with myself. Like, it was just this constant recycling of the thought over and over and over and over again.

It would drive my poor wife absolutely nuts because she's like, "Stop," but I couldn't. So imagine if you've got this mind that is fearful, the entire world is a threat. Your sensory experience of the world is completely off, right? So you're, you're scared of the world, but the world is overwhelming. You've got this constant overthinking that's going on and on top of [00:40:00] that, you can't sleep, your appetite is off, your, your entire experience is off.

And a lot of times if you look at the core reasons why certain people behave the way they do, put a- put aside the labels. Like I tell my families, "I don't care what label your child is given. I don't care anything, uh, in terms of what you've been told. I wanna understand who your child really is- And why your child is experiencing life the way they do.

And if you just translate that into adults, it's the same thing, right? There's the real us, the, the person who's kind and smart and loving and social and wants to connect and do these things, and then there is the other version of, you know, the children that I see where they're anxious and they're struggling.

You know, some of them are struggling to learn, et cetera, et cetera. And through this, we, we, we create a differentiation and we say, "Okay, well, th- these are all the stuff that are going on. What's behind [00:41:00] this stuff? How do we get rid of this to allow the real version?" And, you know, the coolest, the coolest, coolest, coolest, coolest thing in the whole wide world is, uh, there, there's one mom that I just got a message from, uh, yesterday.

Her son was diagnosed as being on the spectrum, had PANS, and th- they had horrible mold exposure a while ago, and he was angry and aggressive and dysregulated and anxious, and would attack his sibling to the point where they had to put him in a boarding school- Mm ... 'cause he was so unsafe. Like, no regular school would take him, so they had to find this special boarding school for kids like him.

We started treating the inflammation, et cetera, et cetera, and the mom was like, "It's crazy. He's a different kid. He- e- not only is he thriving at school, he came home for spring break. He was loving to his brother," to the point where the mom and the dad were just like What the hell is going on? You know?

And, like, it, it just, [00:42:00] it gives me so much joy because that's who these kids always are, right? That that's who these human beings are. They just couldn't be who they truly are because of all of the stuff that's happening to 

them. Mm-hmm. Uh, can you explain PANS for people? 'Cause that's different than being, uh, autistic, and I think some people, they would be very interested to know the difference between PANS and PANDAS, 'cause certainly sometimes a child is misdiagnosed as autistic when in fact it's just an extreme ex- form of inflammation happening in the brain.

Yeah. So PANS is pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome, and I, I wish I could remember everything that PANDAS stood for. I've- 

Oh, pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep. Thank you very much. Because my child had PANDAS. 

Oh. Yeah, so one of the things that I find oftentimes is with PANS, right now the conversation is predominantly around strep, some viruses, [00:43:00] mycoplasma, a handful of infections, and Lyme and Lyme co-infections.

And I don't discount any of that. Obviously, those are all true. One of the things that I commonly see, and again, call me biased, is there is a pattern that sometimes shows up prior to this. So all of this is basically inflammation, right? It's, it's like someone pours-- I hate to use this example, but it's like someone pours kerosene in, in a sweet little child's brain, lights it on fire.

You get this explosion. All of a sudden, the child changes. Mm-hmm. Right? Which sadly you saw. And as that pertains to autism, I find there's huge overlap, right? Because a lot of kids that are acting as if they're autistic, right? They can look at you, they can talk to you, but they've got this weird constellation of stuff.

That's all inflammation. Whether you call it PANS or not, it's, it's inflammation. And what we know is pretty much every single study that's been done on individuals with autism, so specialized [00:44:00] neuroimaging postmortem, so poor person passes away, they look in their brain. Every single study that's ever been done has definitively shown that inflammation is a part of autism.

Now, we ask how does this take place, right? So yes, these infections and all of these things could be, but one of the things that I commonly see that is overlooked is the child has recurring ear infections, and they had pneumonia, and they got a bunch of antibiotics, and they were sick often. And there's, there's like this preceding set of events that we don't associate with the PANS or autistic regression, and oftentimes I find that that is actually the biotoxins eroding the immune system, eroding the gut, causing the susceptibility.

The system falls apart, immune system crumbles, and now all of these other chronic infections and problems, uh, enter into the picture. 

So I shared with you before we started recording [00:45:00] that I'm, uh, publishing a book this year on- Mm-hmm ... ADHD and women. And there is a huge chapter that is gonna probably feel cumbersome to some people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I apologize, but I'm explaining the immune system. I'm explaining, uh, how it affects neurotransmitters. There's a section, I put this box in there about PANS and PANDAS, and my editor was like, "I don't feel like this really fits in a conversation." And the book talks about autism as well, 'cause it's very common to see co-occurring ADHD and, um, autism happening.

But my editor's like, "This doesn't fit." "What does PANS and PANDAS have to do with having ADHD?" And I'm like, "Well, then I didn't explain it well enough," because it is very much been my experience, what I have seen clinically, and when you look at the research, children who are diagnosed neurodivergent, that neurodevelopmental condition created an immune system vulnerability, and so they tend to have more inflammation.

Like, I like to make jokes of, like, you look at our immune system wrong, and it's [00:46:00] like, "I'm angry now." Like, now, now I gotta, like, pop off here. But this, I think also, you know, when you look at these children, they tend to have less gut dysbiosis, which is likely due to eating habits and p- possibly having a neurodivergent mother who also had restrictive eating habits and didn't have as much microbial diversity.

I'm not blaming moms. We're just tracing a pattern here. They tend to have more intestinal hyperpermeability. And when you look at all of that with a dysregulated immune system, it makes sense when an insult comes in. And, like, you'll see families where they have mold, and everyone else is, like, kind of okay, but that child who's neurodivergent is far from okay.

And it's because, you know, it's not just genetics. It's the interplay of the epigenetics in our world that, you know, contributes to the manifestation of symptoms. And I'm trying to be very clear in these words because oftentimes people will hear something and run with it and say, "Well, this is the cause of autism."

Genetics [00:47:00] laid down the, the, the autistic wiring, and the environment came in, and this is, you know, what I believe and many experts believe, the environment came in, and that is the expression that you see of the behavior and where somebody is on the spectrum. And that's where, you know, what we're talking about here, you can actually intervene so that they have a better experience as a human, not trying to erase them and their experience as a human, but trying to give them a better experience as a human.

I love it. Hallelujah. Yes. One of the things that I, I explicitly spelled out in my book, uh, that, that's coming out hopefully next year, is I think we have miscommunicated what autism is, right? And, and when we say treating autism, a lot of people are like, "You're gonna change my, my kid." And it's like, no, because I'm neurodivergent.

I land somewhere on the spectrum. And depending on how healthy I am, I'm essentially two different people. [00:48:00] The, the beautiful part of human beings, right? Their neurodivergence, how they think, how they process the world, how differently they experience the world, that is the magical part of the human being.

And frankly, I think even if we tried, we couldn't change that, right? That's just part of their genetic wiring and how they're made. 

Mm-hmm. 

To your point, these individuals who are also usually highly sensitive individuals, highly intelligent people, are genetically super vulnerable. Their mitochondria are vulnerable, their immune systems, their gut, right?

All of these things. When these individuals start falling apart They become a different person with all of their challenges and struggles. And I think what we have done a disservice with is calling both of these autism, right? Which I, I think is, is frankly incorrect, right? Neurodivergence is the beautiful part of the human being.

The, quote-unquote, [00:49:00] autism are all the challenges and struggles and the overwhelm and the anxiety and the anger and the aggression and the attacking and all of those things. And what we wanna do is take away what is causing that so this human being can become who they truly are. Because I think, like, that's the thing that people don't realize, right?

When all of these struggles are there, the true essence of the human being can't show up. It's like multiple dark curtains that have been pulled in front of them, and there's this thing that is now in front that's ch- having all these challenges. But as we pull away the curtains, reduce the inflammation, we reduce the toxicity, get the gut health in, the curtains pull away, and then the real human being starts showing up.

And the person who was, you know, level three autism, angry, attacking, disconnected, I, I have certain kids now within 6 to 12 months are now going up to other kids at the park. [00:50:00] They're still non-verbal, but they're going up... Same kid that was attacking the kids at the park, totally overwhelmed, is now going up to the kids, smiling, giving them their toy- Mm-hmm

because they want to play. That is the real child. That is the real beautiful human being. The challenges are their challenges, and we need to differentiate that. 

Well, and I think that the problem with autism diagnosis as well is that they-- we've seen a lot of well-meaning people who don't actually understand autism starting to pull in other diagnoses and calling it autism, so intellectual disability.

So we know in women who are autistic, they report over 90% having PMDD, which is premenstrual dysphoric disorder. It's a extreme form of PMS that actually leads to suicidal ideation. And you see that cyclically happening once a month, and people are like, "Well, that's the autism." We're, we're not, we're not treating the right thing then if you start just [00:51:00] grouping all of these things together.

And I think that's a lot of the issue as well, is that we have to be, you know, pulling back the layers of what is what here. Because you will always be autistic, but that doesn't mean we leave PMDD to, like, be something that you struggle with cyclically. And that Is also something, you know, it's been looked at as years of being a hormonal issue.

We now understand it's not about hormone levels, it's about receptor dysfunction, and my hypothesis about that is it's brain inflammation leading to receptor dysfunction, and that allopregnanolone can't dock on the receptor in the way that gets GABA to chill things out, and instead we see this push-pull of hormones doing a push-pull with the immune system in the brain.

Yeah. Yeah, and then if you add all of the other secondary factors that are causing additional inflammation, right? So it's like the system is already on fire, and then you get this surge of estrogen. It's like the house is... already has a gas leak and someone came along and poured, you know, 1,000 gallons of [00:52:00] gasoline and then the house explodes, and everyone's like, "Why'd the house explode?"

Because you poured 1,000 gallons of gasoline on top of the gas leak. 

Yeah. 

Right? And I, I think, like, this is the biggest problem with our current medical model, that w- with good intention, right, obviously, but with good intention we're normalizing a lot of the challenges that people face because we don't know what else to do.

Oh, that's PMDD. This is autism. This is a learning disability. And, you know, with learning disabilities it's like out- outside of, you know, babies that are born with horrific birth trauma because something horribly wrong w- you know, and they have neurological damage from day one, take that aside, are babies born with learning disabilities?

Or are learning disabilities something that start taking place because something is happening to that child's nervous system in those first formative years that then causes them to have the learning disabilities? Mm. Right? We, we don't, we don't look at things in this way, the same way as the [00:53:00] PMDD, right?

We just say, "Oh, that child has a learning disability. This child has this, this child has this, this person has this," right? We've gotten so good at labeling things, and by labeling it, I think we're doing a disservice because now we're normalizing, "Well, this child is just learning disabled, and this is their course in life."

Mm-hmm. 

And I find that to be highly inaccurate. You know, can all children have totally normal neurological functioning? Maybe not, but if you look at going back to the microglia What influences our neuroplasticity? What influences how we form proper neural circuits in those first few years of life? The microglia.

Literally, the microglia are like the gardeners that are going around selectively snipping, you know, a little shrub here, a little branch there, you know, keeping the entire garden perfectly manicured, right? And as we develop, they are the ones that go around, they're like, "Oh, we don't need that circuit anymore.

Clip." Right? "We [00:54:00] don't need that circuit anymore. Clip." And they start forming our neural circuits that allow us to become who we are in terms of how we can function, right? Et cetera, et cetera. If our microglia have a psychotic break, right? If your gardener literally one day had a psychotic break, and now they take the chainsaw and starts hacking your, your shrubs, right?

And next thing you know, you're like, "What happened to my garden?" Right? A similar phenomenon, I believe, happens in many of these children, where they have such intense levels of neuroinflammation that that neuroinflammatory response literally causes the microglia, and this is all in the literature, causes the microglia to start disrupting the neural circuits to such a profound point that now you start getting all of these learning disabilities.

Mm-hmm. 

What's really cool is in, let's say, 60, 70% of kids, you know, minus those that are severely affected, you bring down the neuroinflammation, you [00:55:00] heal the gut, you bring in the right fats, you support the mitochondria, do all of the things the brain needs. I've had kids that were supposedly learning disabled, failing school, struggling to learn, couldn't learn a lick of, you know, math.

All of a sudden, their brains come online, and a year and a half later, they're, they're now one of the top students in school. 

Mm-hmm. 

Right? So we don't question these things enough because we think that these are static, permanent things that have happened. But then when you ask, "Well, where do the learning disabilities come from?"

"Woo, woo," right? It's like, "We don't know. They, they just happen." You know? Like, things just happen. And if we get away from that and just start becoming curious, right, and just questioning everything, which is what I do, which annoys my wife, right? But if we question everything, right? 

This is how I know you're part of the neurodivergent tribe.

Somehow I ended up marrying one of the most socially intelligent human beings, and we're like, we're the perfect balance. [00:56:00] Anywho, uh, but we don't ask these questions We don't ask these questions and, and we're okay in just giving labels to people. And, you know, if a diagnosis helps someone get services, if a diagnosis helps someone find the right medication which helps them feel more comfortable in life, hallelujah, right?

I, I, I am the one that sometimes encourages families to think of medications. I have nothing against any of that. But when we stop there and we have no further curiosity or insights That is when I think we're doing a huge disservice to, frankly, our entire society, to mankind. 

Mm-hmm. 

And that's what I have a problem with.

Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of people listening, we know that one of the largest populations being diagnosed with ADHD and autism are middle-aged women currently. Hmm. And I think for a lot of them, you know, there's a very real phenomenon of feeling grief after your diagnosis because you look back and you look at [00:57:00] how hard you struggled, how much energy you put into masking, how many accommodations you could have had to have helped you, and you feel a lot of grief for how you went through your life.

And I think that having the diagnosis is important for you to see that you're not inherently broken. Like, you- you know, the way I explain it is that you got a different operating system. Everybody's got the iPhone iOS. It's compatible with everything. It's very intuitive, and you've got the Android. And the Android d- is not compatible with everything.

There's a learning curve to it, and most of society's just not made for it. And so understanding that, like, it's just different. It's not worse. It's not broken. But in that difference, there's areas that need to be addressed. So I agree with you. I think the, the diagnosis is important, and I think also addressing your needs is important.

So as we've been talking about in this conversation, the propensity towards gut dysfunction and having gut infections, the propensity towards being [00:58:00] more environmentally sensitive, not just to sounds and texture, but also to the environmental toxins, the, you know, the mold exposure, all of that impacting your system.

And when you know this, you can work with it. And, you know, we've been talking in the context of children, but there's a lot of adults in my audience that this applies to because I've been open about being late diagnosed. I was late diagnosed with ADHD, then endometriosis, then autistic, and I was like, "These things are connected."

And I've only found two studies showing that women with ADHD are twice as likely to ha- or, or autism, to have endometriosis. Hmm. And what is endometriosis? A systemic inflammatory condition that keeps you constantly under the burden of inflammation, and the cytokines that those lesions produce, they can sometimes cross the blood-brain barrier.

They can sometimes break down the blood-brain barrier. They can sometimes hit the blood-brain barrier, light up some prostaglandins, and activate the microglia. And then what do you [00:59:00] have? You have these co-occurring anxiety, depression, uh, seeing PMDD. Even though we don't have literature on that yet, there's enough women reporting it to say we should be- Pay attention to this.

So we start to see all of these mood symptoms coming up as well. And so you really have to start piecing out, like, and ask the question of... 'Cause that was my question, "Why the heck do I have these things?" Like, there's a- Mm-hmm ... there's some- they have to go together. And it's like, yeah, it's probably, like, embryologically speaking, in that time of development, cells with endometriosis ended up in the wrong place, but also my brain did different things as well, and they probably have shared genetic pathways that were laying that down.

But that's not where the story ends, right? Then there's the environmental aspect. So I wanna ask you about, you know, when working with autistic, ADHD children who have especially a high degree of sensory sensitivities, you know, what are, what is the method? What are the, what is the starting place for parents of, like, what [01:00:00] do we look at first, and how, how do you actually go through the layers of that?

First of all, I, I love everything you said. And as, as you were talking about this, you know, it just brought up how much overlap there is in terms of your work and my work, and how it's all kind of rooted in the same thing. How do parents look at the sensory sensitivities and ultimately the ADHD and autism and so forth?

So first thing for me, and I tell this to all the families that I work with, you look at the amount of sensory sensitivity your child has as essentially a barometer of how much inflammation there is. 

Mm-hmm. 

And in my practice, I have seen a pretty much a direct correlation between the intensity of sensory sensitivities and the amount of inflammation there is.

And also, as we bring down the inflammation, and sometimes it happens in real time within a month or two- Mm ... the, the families will literally see the, the sensory sensitivities calm down. So for me, the first thing is, how do I calm down this inflammation to bring this child [01:01:00] into a comfortable place? And that could be through supplements and, as I mentioned, pharmaceuticals, et cetera, et cetera.

Once we've done that, the next conversation then becomes what is the source of this inflammation, which in these kids could be the biotoxins. It could be, you know, Lyme, strep, mycoplasma, parasites, gut. And then we go after those things to further c- address the root cause of it. But as parents start stepping back, and I think as individuals start stepping back, and just start looking at, like, my God, like, my child is completely overwhelmed by sound.

They're completely overwhelmed by touch. They're completely overwhelmed by these things. That is suggestive that there's a lot of histamine and inflammation. How do we address that? 

Mm-hmm Yeah, and I think that's helpful for people to hear, especially like I'll say if you're a mom. So I have certain times of the month I don't like to be touched.

I'm pretty good at controlling things, but round [01:02:00] ovulation, estrogen has to spike, 'cause that's what it's supposed to do, and that's usually the time when I'm like, "Please stop touching me. I don't want to be touched." And it's, uh... So, you know, for moms, you may ha- be having a similar experience, because we know that there's a high genetic connection.

Like, if you're autistic, you'll probably make an autistic child. If you have ADHD, you'll probably make an ADHD child, and you may be having similar experiences. But it's interesting, because women's hormones actually allow them to mask a lot of the time, and to, like... And society has trained us to be very different.

But I think when you start recognizing these things in your child, you start seeing them in yourself as well, and it's really helpful to understand that, like, this isn't necessarily that, like, you don't like people or you're withholding affection. It is that it's too much sensory input because the system is overloaded at the moment.

Yeah. W- well, uh, literally this morning, uh, when my wife and I were sitting there having coffee before we came [01:03:00] here, I told her, like, if there's one wish that I, I hope for with this book, it's just to give people a sense of understanding and compassion. 

Mm-hmm. 

Because I think w- what really makes me sad is how often children and their parents are judged Because, and I, I'm sure it's carrying over to what you are saying, how often these individuals, child or adult, are judged because of things that are happening, right?

It's the thing that is happening to the person causing them to behave in whatever ways. But as society, we say, "Your child is acting out. You need to control them. Your child is acting aggressive. You need to control them. You need to parent them better." Or the child themself is getting disciplined, right?

There, there's one dear child that I c- uh, I'm thinking of. Child is very much on the spectrum. You know, he, he has the flapping, he can't control himself, and, you know, the parents don't [01:04:00] understand it well enough, so they're like, "Stop doing this"- 

Mm-hmm ... 

to, to this child who has no control over his emotions.

And like, when I see these things and, you know, there was another time, uh, just last week I was on a call with this amazing family, and their child is on the spectrum, and the dad is like, "I'm going to parent him and discipline him and tell him that he needs to stop doing these things because he needs to stop."

He doesn't have any control over these things. He, he does not have any-- Like these, these kids, these individuals, they don't have any control over what's happening to them, right? And especially with the kids, when we reprimand them, we blame them, we crush their spirit. And I, I have so many kids that come in and they're like, "I'm bad."

Like, "I, I'm just a bad kid. I, I'm mean." Like, they have these adjectives that they have to describe themselves, and it's the saddest thing. It, it's [01:05:00] the same thing with the neuroinflammation learning challenges, right? "I am dumb. I, I hate learning. I'm stupid." You know, they, they, they call themselves these things, and they internalize these things.

And part of what I hope is that we get to a place where we say, "You're not dumb. You're, you're smart as hell. You just have stuff that keeps you from learning. You're not mean. You're s- you're loving, you're kind. You're, you're, you're wonderful. You just can't be that way right now because things are happening to you."

Mm-hmm. Right? Which is what you have said in terms of how these women are affected. And, uh, I think if, if anyone took anything away from this conversation, they just got to a place of understanding that and having some grace and compassion with where these people are, right? And, and we s- get to a place in our society where we say, "Okay, something is happening to this sweet kid.

Who, who and how this child is behaving and how they [01:06:00] are is not who they are. It's how they're becoming, how they've become because of something, inflammation, right? Kerosene in the brain, brain is exploding in fire. How do we get rid of that fire to help that child become their real self?" And that's something that I don't see h- discussed often enough, right?

It, it's, it's not part of our regular communication- Mm-hmm ... which I hope changes. 

Yeah. And, you know, it's... I think it's also a common misunderstanding that, like, a lot of these behaviors, they're actually how a child's regulating their nervous system. So if you see hand flapping, that's a dysregulated nervous system trying to...

The pendulum has swung, and it's trying to come back. And so I think that's the other issue, is that a lot of people interpret the behavior, because it's outside the norm of what society expects, that, that it's dysfunctional and it's wrong, and they don't actually just get curious and they, "Well, why? Why are they doing this?"

I wanna ask you, in line with what you were saying, how do you help parents [01:07:00] distinguish between honoring a child's unique wiring versus ignoring something harmful and treatable that is happening in their body? 

So with their normal innate wiring, I would look at that as, again, that is part of the magical part of who they are, right?

Could they be more sensitive to the world? Yeah. May they not wanna be the social butterfly that goes clubbing and, you know, goes to loud restaurants? Sure. When a person is in a place where their experience of life is overwhelming They are struggling to be in the world, right? They're struggling to function.

Everything is overwhelming to them. They're constantly overwhelmed by anger and anxiety, depression, et cetera. That is not their innate wiring. That's the inflammation and toxicity that is layered on top of it, and I think that is the important piece to differentiate, and I see this [01:08:00] all the time in, in the kids that I take care of.

Mm-hmm. We talked a bit about gut testing, but in your book you've talked about how lab work, routine scans, even some of like the functional medicine tests, they miss things in children. So how can a parent know what is the best testing to pursue? So, you know, we've talked about PANS, we've talked about behavioral issues, talked about ADHD.

How does a parent know what's worth investing in? 

Yeah. It, it, it's a huge challenge and th- there's a whole chapter that I'm dedicating to that. One of the things that I don't think we do often enough in our holistic functional medical community is talk about the failures of our tests, right? And I think some of that has to do with, unfortunately, the amount of influence that the companies have in our medical community, right?

Between the sponsored conversations, you know, if, you know, you've been to conferences, and there's a whole lot of companies- I get, 

I [01:09:00] get paid for sponsored conversations. Full disclosure. 

But, but, you know, you, you tend to be very objective, but th- there are times that I've gone to conferences, and some very well-known doctor who is clearly tied to a company is like, "You need to do this test because this test finds this answer."

And I'm like, "No, it doesn't. I've used that test. It's failed 60% of the time," right? But we don't talk about this, right? Because there's no money to be made to say, "Well, this test actually fails X percent of the time in these cases, and it will give you a false negative because- Mm-hmm ... it doesn't simply have the capacity to detect what is there."

And I think especially when it comes to biotoxin illness and biotoxin exposure, this is one of the biggest challenges. Well-intending people, first on the environmental side, hire an inspector. This inspector comes and looks at the house, says, "I don't see any obvious leaks. Your, your ceiling is not about to collapse."

And then they, they check some, [01:10:00] you know, moisture readings. There's no obvious moisture problem, and then they plop one air trap, this little vacuum device, in the middle of a room, right? And then it sucks in air for about 10 or 15 minutes. They say, "Oh, well, the outside of your home has mold, more mold than the inside of this room, therefore there's no problem."

Except when you ask how do mold spores behave, well, mold spores, like, let's say this wall, this beautiful wall right here, had a water problem, right? 

It's concrete.

Oh, oh. It's not drywall. I don't live in drywall houses. 

So, uh, drywall, when it gets wet, let's say there's mold there, right? Guess how many inches mold spores would travel from the site of, of that contamination. Wild guess. 

Oh, I would say, like, 12 feet. 

Four inches. 

Okay. Four inches. Four inches. 

So Berkeley did this study.

They just look at the, the fluid dynamics of mold spores, which are kinda heavy, and they, they wanted to see, like, in an un- undisturbed [01:11:00] environment, like, how far these mold spores would go from the area. Typically about four inches. So if you plop a device 10 feet away from that mold source, would you expect that device to pick up the contamination?

No, definitely 

not. No, right? The laws of physics, like the mold spores are not gonna be like, "Oh, there's a device. I'm gonna start flapping my wings to go to it." It doesn't happen. These devices don't check for the actual mold toxins, biotoxins, bacterial toxins, et cetera, et cetera, so environmental testing misses it.

On the patient side- Right now with the tests we have, looking for subtle signs or subtle patterns of inflammation in the brain is basically impossible. 

Mm-hmm. 

Minus specialized, you know, spe- uh, PET scans, right? So specialized neurological scans. You can't see it. You don't see it on a CT scan. You don't see it on an MRI.

You know all of that. You don't see it on regular blood work, right? You don't see it on any of the testing that we do, so it gets missed. And part of [01:12:00] why I'm saying this is a lot of times what I do is I teach the parents to look at their child's signs and symptoms as a barometer on the neuroinflammation.

Mm-hmm. 

Now, with the gut testing, little bit different. There are some tests you can do, like there, there are these stool chemistries, right, where you can check calprotectin, lysozyme, et cetera, et cetera, which are decent at picking up, you know, the more severe patterns of inflammation. But, like, one of the things that I see commonly missed are the fungal imbalances Uh, I see this as a rampant thing in the kids that I take care of.

And just as an example, when we use just simple nystatin, which is a basic antifungal that gets rid of candida, 20 to 30% of the kids calm way the heck down and their digestive issues improve, and they're now finding more and more that this is tied to presentations of autism. You don't see the candida on stool testing.

I've tried every single stool test out there, and in kids [01:13:00] that I know have frank imbalances in all of the fungus, it doesn't show up on the stool test. The urine testing, the urine organic acids, which basically check the biochemistry, right? Little footprints of living organisms, 50% of the time miss it. So it's one of those things where right now it's almost like you have to be borderline paranoid, which a lot of my families are like, "Dude, what's wrong with you?"

I'm like, "I have to be this way." 

Do you ever check, uh, like candida antibodies? 

I do. Uh, and one of the labs called Cyrex came out with this mycobiome and microbiome burden, uh, and I was super, super, super stoked to, to start using it, and then what I ended up finding, and I've talked to Dr. Vojdani who created that test, it turns out that one of the things that seems to be happening in these kids is that they actually have a defect in their humoral immune response.

Mm. 

So the way they can mount an antibody response to the fungal imbalances in the gut is actually, uh, suppressed. [01:14:00] So a lot of times when I run the antibodies, like all of-- not all of them, the vast majority of them come below the detectable reference range. And one of the hypotheses that I have right now in terms of what this biotoxin exposure illness is, is actually an error in how the immune system is able to regulate what happens in the gut- 

Mm-hmm

which then allows everything in the gut to go sideways, which then causes all of the other issues. Because I'm, I'm sure you've seen and know, like the immune system is what ultimately controls the health of our microbiome, right? It like, it like goes and picks off like, "Oh, there's some Clostridium. I'm gonna get rid of you," right?

Candida, no. Right? It's like just comes and snatches it, right? Uh, through the production of these, uh, immunoglobulins and so forth. So when that immune system is like half asleep and it's, it's like blind, it doesn't see what's going on- All of this dysbiosis can start taking place, which then causes [01:15:00] everything else.

Mm-hmm. So because of that, I know in adults these antibody tests are highly accurate, but I've run probably 50, 60 of them now in the kids, and it's like the same freaking pattern over and over again. 

Yeah. Cyrex, I, I like Cyrex Labs testing. I think they, what they offer is really unique and insightful, but they're not cheap.

Yeah. And I usually will run immunoglobulins, like, first, so I just wanna see what is your immunoglobulin status? Because if those are already low, so everyone listening, these are your antibodies. If I already see your immune system is low, it tells me it's probably taking care of business somewhere else, getting used up.

But also, I'm not gonna run this really expensive antibody test, 'cause odds are I'm not gonna find what I, what I'm looking for until we get the immune system built up. And the other part about candida is that it can be SIFO. It can be small intestinal fungal overgrowth that you're dealing with, and so you're running this stool culture, and you're like, "Well, there's no fungus," but then you've got a white coat on their tongue.

And you're like, [01:16:00] "Well, no- There's something there ... there's something." And there's the other, uh, aspect that I also see that people will treat the gut over and over and never think to check oral health, and that is something where I think always having a functional-minded dentist as part of the team is so important.

Because I have seen patients where you're treating candida, and you're treating candida, and I'm like, "Mm, we're not like, you know, you've had this candida treated the multiple..." Whenever people treat things multiple times and they're not getting results, I'm like, "Okay, Albert Einstein's definition of insanity, we're not doing that anymore."

Like, let's check if you're swallowing candida. And now we've got these oral microbiome tests, which we didn't have a decade ago, but I used to send people to dentists, and they're like, "Yeah, like, we've gotta do a deeper cleaning. Like, there's a whole regimen we have to do." And what do you know? Their gut starts healing up, because they were literally just re-inoculating themselves every time they swallowed, which is, like, a billion times a day.

Yeah. You're just shoving more of these organisms down there, and so we have to be looking [01:17:00] at the full tube. I wanna be a little controversial. What lab testing do you think is just not worth starting with in kids who are, whose brains are on fire? 

I think every test has value. What I see happening often is people go on a fishing expedition, right?

They order these $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 tests, right? Because th- they, they recognize, okay, your kid is inflamed. I'm just gonna go throw a big net out there, see what I catch, and I treat what I catch. I don't think it's so much an issue of this test is horrible, you should never use it. I think there are limitations as we discussed to certain tests and people need to recognize.

Like I still, despite the false negatives, I still run organic acids all the time because I think they're cheap, they're easy, and they provide meaningful information some of the time, right? But I don't hang my hat on the results of that test There are [01:18:00] times for just about everything. The one thing that I typically don't do, and families like are like, "Hey, should we run this test to check if my kid has inflammation?"

And it's a $500 to $1,000 test, and I won't name names, but- 

Now I'm intrigued. I'm like, what test are we talking about? So- '

Cause 

I would run a CRP. Well, 

so CRP is just checking for systemic inflammation, 

right? It- Yeah. Usually I run a HSCRP because I'm working with a lot of people who have, like, the sneaky, the sneaky kind of- Yeah

inflammation going 

on. 

No. 

And, and some of the kids, the HSCRP comes back positive because their systemic inflammatory response is so far off. I've also found 50% of kids have normal looking even HSCRPs, but their neuroinflammatory response is off the charts. But you know, for instance, Vibrant has their Neural Zoomer, as one example- Mm-hmm

which I think Vibrant is a great company. But for me it's like, do you need a test to tell you the sky is blue? Just look [01:19:00] at the sky, it's blue, right? Mm-hmm. If your kid is totally anxious, and they're angry, and they're aggressive, and they've got phobias, and they're- they've got all kinds of weird sensory issues, and they've got restrictive eating, and they've got sleep issues, you don't need a $1,000 test to tell you they've got inflammation, right?

So there are times that I see us, or us as providers, having families direct resources to things that may not necessarily be that dramatically helpful. And I also sometimes see cases where the provider misses something like the contamination in the indoor environment because the family tested their home, "Oh, we don't have mold," right?

So the provider's like, "Okay, they don't have mold. They told me they don't have mold. I'm gonna move on," right? Mm-hmm. And then they go checking for Lyme, and they go checking for all of these things, and then they give the kid one antibiotic after another, despite the kid having a fungal dysbiosis to begin with, right?

Antibiotic after antibiotic, kids kinda gets better while they're on the antibiotics, right? Because of the [01:20:00] anti-inflammatory effects, it's suppressing the bacteria which are driving the inflammation, right? Second kid comes off the antibiotics, everything goes sideways. So it's really understanding the bigger picture, and then understanding when do we use what test to precisely help us understand what's going on, given the significant limitations of all of the stuff that we have.

Mm-hmm. And the Neural Zoomer I think is a really good test. And often what I will find is that when people want that, it's 'cause they have to have data to believe they actually need to do this work, right? 'Cause this works- Yeah, yeah, yeah ... to heal from chronic conditions. It's work. Mm. The other thing that, um, you know, my colleagues who treat children, it's often- the dad who has to see the evidence that we really do need to change our lifestyle, we really do need to change the diet.

It's not usually the mom who already got her online PhD- ... in this child's condition because, like, she has literally gone all in. 

Yeah. 

And she's, like, the master of every PubMed, like, publication that's out there. And it's the [01:21:00] dad who's like, "No, I wanna see the testing before I believe this." And so, you know, sometimes, like, the, the proof, right?

The, the data, uh, and the evidence is what it takes some families and some people to be like, "Okay, change is actually needed." And I'm right there with you. I mean, the- I... You know, my book, I go through, like, so much detail of, like, what is it? What do your neurotransmitters, like, do when you're under inflammation?

And then what does it look like in terms of behavior? And, and then I do give a big list of labs with the caveat of, like, uh, we can test systemic inflammation, but it doesn't really tell us much about your brain. But for those people who are like, "I have to see the data, I have to see the evidence," like, there are testing options.

But what I'm hearing from you is if you've got the symptoms, we just need to figure out what the cause is. 

Yeah, yeah. And, and sometimes for these families, what I will do is actually use my treatment as a way to gauge, right? Because if you give a child an anti-inflammatory, and over time I've learned to gauge [01:22:00] which child needs what, right?

There are times I'm like, "Here, give your kid these supplements. Let's see how they do." And the parents are like, "Oh, my God, you know, they're 40% better." And then there are other kids I'm like, "Your kid needs the helicopter fire drop, and that's what this pharmaceutical is for." 

Mm-hmm. 

But a lot of times, I actually now use my treatments as a gauge.

And then, you know, when the parents give the supplement or pharmaceutical and they're like, "Oh, my God, sh- he, she, he or she is less sensitive and less aggressive and sleeping better and pooping," whatever else, right? The, that then becomes the data for them to say, "Oh, my God, like, this was real." 

Mm-hmm. "

This was real, and this was affecting our child.

And then what do we do?" 

Yeah. And you know, I, I think the... a good question and might be on a lot of people's minds is, you know, how do we know what the right starting place is? So you've talked about, like, there's times where I choose a pharmaceutical, there's times where I choose, you know, a supplement. The...

It would be great if [01:23:00] everyone could work with you, um, and get your book in their hands immediately. Books take time, y'all. Um. Mm-hmm. But you know, if they're going with a practitioner, how do we educate patients so they know what to expect, but that they also can advocate in a healthy way? I 

mean, the first, I, I think the first part of that is, is just becoming more informed.

Uh, there's a Substack that I wrote sh- almost a year ago now that was kind of the first iteration of this conversation, which had to do with a protocol essentially. So it was a big kind of diagram of like, if your child has X, Y, or Z, go in this direction, do this. Uh, what the book will have is, is a much more expansive version of that.

Mm-hmm. 

Because I, I realize that not everyone can come to see me, and that, that, that wouldn't ultimately help every family. So it's how do we help as many people, including providers, become informed enough where they can look at s- at something and say, "Oh, I get this. I get why this is happening. I get what are the [01:24:00] pieces, and now I've got a roadmap to figure out where to go."

Because it doesn't have to be that complicated, right? And I'm sure for you, like at the level that you're not now, like you can look at a problem and be like, "Oh, that's obvious," right? It's not obvious to other people. 

Mm-hmm. 

But that's because you and I have learned how to identify patterns in a different way.

And now it's how do we, just like with your book, right? How do we help other people identify these patterns more easily, more effectively to then figure out where to go? 

Is there a supplement that everyone thinks is great for inflammation or great for behavioral problems that you actually see can make things worse?

Yes. Uh, quite a few of them. Probiotics, and I learned this the hard way. You know, five years ago, like, yeah, a little bit longer, maybe six, eight years ago, I was pumping every kid full of probiotics, right? Mm-hmm. First go, right? Because probiotics heal the gut, they can calm down inflammation, blah, blah, blah.

It turns out that especially things like Saccharomyces, [01:25:00] uh, boulardii, right? Some of the probiotics have Streptococcus in them. A lot of these probiotics actually can become triggers to the immune system. Postbiotics, which sometimes have fungal beta-glucans, can actually be massive triggers to the immune system.

And it's not to say probiotics can't be helpful, but it's like if your house is about to explode, right? It's not just that it's about-- It's not just that it's on fire. It's about ready to explode. The last thing you want to do is add any fuel to that. So- Don't be 

throwing your gas tank in there. 

Do not be throwing your gas tank in there.

No cans of kerosene. No, no. Uh,

so I try to really simplify things. Curcumin, fish oils, a lot of the things that we typically think are helpful actually can be pro-inflammatory. Curcumin can actually ramp up, uh, monoamine oxidase, so the catecholamines can increase. So I-- A lot of times with the kids that I start with, minus some supplements that the parents are like, "This [01:26:00] was absolutely helpful to my kid."

It's like, "Okay, great." Right? We don't touch those. But outside of that, a lot of times I take away things that are questionable. Just put them on magnesium, zinc, D, and then whatever anti-inflammatories. Another thing that, that I learned the hard way is most of our supplements are filled with citric acid.

Mm-hmm. 

Citric acid is a derivative of Aspergillus. Literally, they make citric acid from Aspergillus. So to our immune system, when the immune system is hypersensitized, if it sees enough citric acid over time, and it's been hypersensitized to fungus and yeast and molds, it starts freaking out. And I've had some kids that were doing fine, doing fine, and then all of a sudden they, they go off the rails, and the parents are like, "She's freaking out, and she's having panic attacks."

I'm like, "What happened?" "Nothing." I'm like, "Something happened." "Well, we did start this multivitamin." And it's like, "Okay, what's in the multivitamin?" One of the first things, citric acid. 

Mm-hmm. 

Get rid of the multivitamin that, that [01:27:00] would have been perfectly helpful for anyone else, and then like a week or two later, the kid calms down.

So it's being mindful of things that could be generally helpful to the population. It may be helpful for your kid down the road, right? Their gut immune system has calmed down. Their gut is healing. You've g- you've detoxed. You've gotten rid of the fungus and everything. Now the probiotic can come in. The Saccharomyces boulardii can come in, and now it works wonders.

Mm-hmm. What's your issue with omega-3s? 

I'm not sure why. Uh, I know with certain things, like for instance, choline- Choline in certain fats, because it enhances the absorption of bacterial endotoxins. Mm-hmm. So if you've got a highly inflamed gut, the trillions of bacteria that are there are producing toxins and various other compounds.

It seems that certain fats may help enhance the absorption of these toxins- Mm-hmm ... because these are lipophilic, right? They're, they're, they're fat loving, so when they clump onto fat, [01:28:00] it helps them absorb. The studies that I read suggest that omega fats don't do it, but what I find in a lot of kids, again, in that early stage when they're inflamed, the omegas, which generally are fabulous, too early on cause them to go bonkers.

Mm-hmm. And the best theory that I have is somehow the fats in those omegas are enhancing the absorption of these toxins from the gut. 

I'd be curious, so I was actually just reading research- Okay ... on this yesterday, that so many children's supplements and supplements that are made for ADHD people, neurodivergent people, they tend to be higher in DHA, but the research does not support DHA as actually having a positive effect in these instances.

It's actually that you need higher EPA, and you do need the DHA as well. So everybody knows DHA, that's what we always think about for- Yeah ... brain health, but the EPA is what is i- anti-inflammatory and helps with modulating the immune system. And so, uh, you know, I would just be curious if it's that you've been using children's supplements and they're higher in [01:29:00] DHA, and what really they need is higher EPA.

Anyhow, I just, I found it... Because I, I, I'm very perplexed that we know how beneficial omegas are for the brain, for inflammation, and yet the ADHD research is usually like it's not that big of a game changer. And as I got into deeper, it's like, well, the ADHD research actually says it is a bit of a game changer if it's EPA higher, but most supplements, because they're like brain condition- Mm-hmm

or child, are, are having a profile much higher in DHA. So I would just be curious. I don't know if you have an answer now, or you can come back to me. 

Well, uh, as you were saying that, I was kind of scanning the back of my brain in terms of which of the fish oils, and I think it was across the board early on.

Mm-hmm. 

Uh, so early on it seems that whether it's kind of the ones that have more of an EPA versus DHA or the other way around, they seem to be a problem. Mm-hmm. Now, one of the things that you touched on I think is, is so fascinating to think about. If you're experiencing ADHD because of a [01:30:00] lot of inflammation, right?

Y- your gut is off, you've got tons of inflammation in your system. Would you expect the fish oils to really work? Not really, right? Because you've got to bring down the inflammation, get the gut to heal. But one of the things that's so cool is I find in the kids where those, those kind of foundational pieces are addressed, and then I start flooding their system with the fish oils.

One, they don't have the same issues that they would have had before, and two, cognitively, between that and the phosphatidylcholine and all these other happy fats that the brain needs, start really enhancing cognition, so attention, focus, processing, working memory, a lot of these things start clicking into place.

One of the other things that I find, and I don't know if you've seen this in the adults, is I'd say probably tw- 20, maybe 30% of the kids that I have are actually low in cholesterol. 

Mm-hmm. 

So cholesterol is obviously an important fat for the brain on top of the adrenal glands, and I have kids when I check them, [01:31:00] their total cholesterol is 110, 120, 130, and there's this wonderful talk that, uh, this, a friend of mine, Dr.

Shaw, William Shaw, gave at a conference where he's like You need to have a total cholesterol of at least 160 to have adequate cholesterol levels for brain function, adrenal function. You start breaking down like, "Holy crap. Oh my God." Like, and I had totally missed it, and then I started going back. I'm like, "Oh my God, that, oh, there's another one.

There's another one." So recently, uh, over the last year and change, I've started supplementing with cholesterol. 

Mm-hmm. 

And in some of the kids it has been a game changer. Literally just some cholesterol, some anti-inflammatories, boom, the kids start, uh, calming down, so on. 

Yeah. Well, there's been new emerging research, um, I think it just came out 2025, 2026, about, um, nutrient metabolism is actually altered in ADHD individuals.

There's no reason to think that [01:32:00] it's not also altered in autistic individuals. And so their need for omega-3 fatty acids is actually much higher because of how they metabolize it. But we also see that, uh, it's not just fat metabolism, but protein metabolism as well. And so now there's a hypothesis if, you know, everyone's saying like, "Get 100 grams a day," of like, well, actually, if you're a neurodivergent it m- m- be more like 120 because the way you're actually metabolizing things, so, um, you're not getting the protein levels that you actually need.

And, you know, gut dysfunction can be part of that, but there's actually alterations in the fatty acid metabolism pathways. So it's really interesting that you're seeing that cholesterol component as well, and then it begs the question of like, well, what the hell is going on with the liver? Like, why is the liver not doing its job- Yeah

in making cholesterol? Yeah. And it could very well be going back to the top of this with you talking about biotoxins because we know as environmental toxins, biotoxins, the immune system is bogged down, the liver is going to have to pick up the pace on all of that. 

Yeah. Yeah. And, and I see [01:33:00] probably about 20% of the, 20% of the kids have elevated liver enzymes.

Mm. 

And I, I look at that as a direct cause, not to the environmental biotoxins. I see that as oftentimes being from all the bacterial endotoxins, right? Because when the gut falls apart, one, you've got this revolving door of all the environmental toxins just constantly recirculating, but now we've got the second load of all of the toxins from within us that should have never been entering our circulation entering circulation.

And a hypothesis that I have is the moment of autism regression that we see in these kids-- And th- there's a pattern that I've, I've now seen just- Over and over again. Kid, uh, is born into the world. These are usually kids that are born into these contaminated environments. Kid is born, sometimes they get jaundice.

Usually they get colic, and it's not like, "Oh, my baby cries for an hour." It's like three, six hours a day constantly holding, [01:34:00] rocking, bouncing, driving, et cetera. They start developing reflux. So the colic is the first sign of neuroinflammation- 

Mm-hmm ... which 

I didn't know until, like, I started looking at them like, "Oh my God."

And then I had some kids that were still, quote-unquote, "colicky," and they were like seven, eight months old, and the mom's like, "Please, God, do something because I'm about to lose my mind," kind of stuff, which I would too. Uh, so I, I actually put the babies on natural anti-inflammatories through the mom. Mm-hmm.

So I just gave her a bunch of supplements. I'm like, "Take this." And then sure enough, like two, three weeks later, the colic calmed down. So the colic, first sign of inflammation, the gastric reflux being the gut starts to disrupt, right? You've got, uh, gut disruption causing that. Then they start developing some food sensitivities.

They start developing some eczema. Things are okay, right? Nothing terrible, and not to say to the audience, like, this is for sure a sign that your kid is gonna develop autism, but there's like a march. Then the kids start getting ear infections, right? [01:35:00] Sometimes as early as a year. Antibiotic, antibiotic.

Their sleep starts getting disrupted. They start becoming more sensitive to the world. And if you look at-- I, I don't know if you're familiar with this pediatric autism screening called the M-CHAT. 

Mm-hmm. 

So it's something we do at 15 months to see literally if... Is, is the kid hypersensitive to the environment?

Do they have issues in other areas? And then you say, "Well, what the hell is that?" That's neuroinflammation, right? So there's neuroinflammation, there's gut inflammation all starting, and then what I see oftentimes is there's a breaking point, and it could be something that got injected into them. It could've been a virus they had.

It could've been an antibiotic, and then all of a sudden the child changes. But why I bring this up is right now we're so focused on that moment of change, but then if you look, like, these kids did not have an easy breezy kind of history. There were all of these other things that were like, oh, some kids get colic, some kids get reflux, some kids get ear infections, some kids just [01:36:00] have sleep issues, some kids are just sensitive, some kids...

You know, it's like, again, going back, we just normalize all this stuff. But if we step back and say, "How does this march-- why does this march go forward? What is it telling us?" And I believe, like, if we got to a point where we could identify these things, and I'm not saying this happens for every kid and I'm 100% right.

But if we can start identifying these kids and say, "What is going on in this child's system? What do we need to do to support them?" And through that, could we get to a place where, for instance, I mean, the ch- the in- the individual is neurodivergent. Again, we're not gonna change that, but could we prevent that moment where their nervous system catches on fire?

And I think that moment that the nervous system catches on fire is when the gut loses integrity, and then you've got this secondary flood of bacterial toxins, right? So you've got all of the other toxins, all the inflammation, gut falls apart, and it's like there's a dam. The, the, uh, imagine the, the Hoover Dam or whatever dam, right?

Big [01:37:00] dam holding back a lot of water. Crack here, crack there. Dam is still holding. All of a sudden, dam gives way, gush of water, trillions of gallons pouring through. Those are the bacterial endotoxins now going into circulation, causing a secondary, more massive neuroinflammatory response, which then causes the brain circuits and everything else.

Mm-hmm. 

And what we call the regression. 

Yeah, you just explained my child, my, my firstborn's regression, minus the antibiotics. We did not do antibiotics for ear infections and whatnot. But it's interesting 'cause as you describe all of this, like, he never got screened because the way we thought about autism 14 years ago was very different.

He started talking at six months. 

Mm. 

And I was like, "Red flag." Like, this is not normal that I'm driving a car and he's being like, "Mama, look." I'm like What did you do? What is happening? And his pediatrician's like, "He's just really smart. He's really smart." He is really smart, but we thought about autism very differently.

[01:38:00] And so, you know, the thought was he had to be non-verbal, not hyper-verbal. And for him, you know, he ended up developing PANDAS, which is strep-mediated. Everybody, you know, on the internet is always like, you know, "It, it had to be something else." I'm like, "No, we tested. There were strep antibodies. Like, we tested the gut.

There was strep there. We, we treated strep and things got better, but it wasn't just strep. I just want everyone to understand it was a lot of LariAm gut healing, a lot of bringing down neural inflammation, and then the moment I went really hard on the mitochondrial health was when- Mm ... like everything turned, and that's when I, like, started developing, like, my hypothesis of this, like, you know, immune, neuroendocrine, and the mitochondria get, like, caught up in all of that.

So I think that's gonna resonate with a lot of parents, but when, when you talk about that regression, this is where I think people get confused, where they're like, "Oh, were they instantly turned autistic," or what actually happened there? 

So I believe what [01:39:00] happened there is your immune system, it, it's the kerosene that landed in the brain.

Mm-hmm. 

And it's when the immune system's activation went from mild, colicky, a little irritable, a little, you know, sleep disturbed, to full-blown, uh, a analogy that I give in the book is imagine if the microglia in the brain, right, these immune cells, are like Steve Bannon and the Hulk, right? Steve Bannon, nice guy.

You know, he, he's got an edge to him, but super nice, right? Don't mess with Steve Bannon, because if he freaks out, he turns into the Hulk, and the Hulk, as those of you that have seen the movies, like, they just go... It, it just destroys everything. Mm-hmm. Like, "I'm the Hulk." Right? What if the microglia in the brain are like Steve Bannon?

And normally they're calm, they're nice, they're, they're peaceful. 

I like Steve... the, the idea of Steve Bannon in my brain. Right? That's why I'm smiling. Like- I'm a huge Marvel fan. 

Me too. But, but if, if [01:40:00] the microglia turn into Hulk mode, and now they're smashing and bashing and, and literally if you look at what does microglial activation do to the brain, it literally disrupts neural circuitry.

And then, well, what happens at that moment of autism regression? It is a full-blown disruption of neural circuitry. 

Mm-hmm. 

Now, depending on how f- how advanced it gets, how long it takes place, what are the factors driving it, you know, that you get different outcomes. But if you look at, like, what happens, because kids aren't...

Like, kids are born neurodivergent, but a lot of parents will say, "My kid was talking to... My, my kid was babbling to me, was... They were happy. They were making eye contact. They were social. They were engaged. They were... And then something changed I believe that that moment of change is when the neural circuits become disrupted because of this microglial activation.

And if that is the case, then we address microglial activation, the mitochondria, cell membranes, et cetera, how much good could we do to help a lot of individuals [01:41:00] start feeling better- 

Mm-hmm ... 

and doing better? 

Yeah. Well, this has been- Mm ... a fantastic conversation. Do you have a name of your book yet? You all, I got, like, early sneak preview-

of the book, but does it have an-- have you titled it yet? 

We haven't. Okay. We, we haven't. We're, we're batting around ideas, uh- 

TBD. Yeah. 

Yeah. But- 

Well, thank you so much. We will link-- I want that, uh, that Substack article on your algorithm, so I can put it in the show notes for people, and we will link everywhere that you're found so people can follow you and learn more.

But thanks for taking the time to sit down with us today. 

Oh, it's my pleasure, and thank you for having this conversation and, you know, bringing this information into the world, because it's definitely needed, as you know. And, uh, I hope this helps a lot of people start understanding what they're going through, what their kids are going through, and if nothing else, have some hope in just understanding.

 

Yeah.