Recently I interviewed Elizabeth Yarnell, as we chatted about how parasites can be a potential trigger of autoimmune conditions such as Graves’ disease and Hashimoto’s If you would prefer to listen the interview you can access it by Clicking Here [1].
Dr. Eric Osansky:
With me, I have Elizabeth Yarnell, and we will be discussing parasites. Elizabeth, since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, has been busy studying how to manage autoimmunity naturally as a traditional naturopath and certified LEAP therapist. She has worked withhundreds of people with MS as well as other autoimmune sufferers in her nationwide clinic using unique, personalized natural therapies to empower them to reclaim their health. She is a TEDX speaker and an award-winning author whose cookbook has sold more than 60,000 copies. She is a patented inventor and has been featured on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Good Housekeeping, Health, Martha Stewart Living Radio, and many other outlets. Welcome, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Yarnell:
Thank you, Eric. I’m so excited to be chatting with you today.
Dr. Eric:
Same here. Before we chat about parasites, I’d like for you to give a little bit of your background story and how you started helping people with MS as well as other autoimmune conditions.
Elizabeth:
My journey into the world of health started one night in 1999 when I went to sleep as usual, and I woke the next morning blind in my right eye. It turned out I had multiple sclerosis. At the time, all MS doctors would say is, “We don’t know why you got MS. What we do know is that it is a degenerative autoimmune disease that affects the nervous system and results in increasing levels of disability over time.” In fact, I learned that 80% of MS patients experience so significant disability within 10 years of diagnosis that most of them are in a wheelchair. That was a huge motivating factor for me to try to figure out what was going on in my body and what I could do to make my future better and keep myself out of a wheelchair.
That is when I started studying the connection between what we eat and how we feel. I went on to develop a whole theory about whole foods versus processed foods. Then I wrote a cookbook because I became an accidental inventor of a unique cooking method for preparing whole foods really quickly and easily to improve your diet any night of the week.
As I continue forward in my journey with multiple sclerosis and learning more about natural health and recognizing over time what the role of parasitic infection is in causing chronic conditions like autoimmunity, I have come to believe that hidden parasitic infection is often at the root of so many chronic and autoimmune conditions.
Dr. Eric:
I mentioned your cookbook, but I didn’t say the name. What is the name?
Elizabeth:
It’s called Glorious One-Pot Meals. It uses a cast-iron Dutch oven. It’s all whole foods. You just layer them into your cast-iron Dutch oven, and dinner is ready in about 45 minutes.
Dr. Eric:
Where can they find it?
Elizabeth:
Amazon. That’s a great place to get it.
Dr. Eric:
Wonderful. As you mentioned, you found that parasites are a big key when it comes to helping people with different types of autoimmune conditions. Elizabeth and I met recently at a conference, and we were chatting about this. When I help people with parasites and other types of gut infections, I do like to test. Admittedly, there are limitations to testing. I know based on our conversation that is a big reason why you don’t test people for parasites.
Elizabeth:
Unfortunately, testing for parasites is notorious for false negatives. That is well-known in the world of medicine. As much as medical doctors even think about parasites, which admittedly is not very much at all, and not enough, I think, as they should be thinking about them, because it is so easy to pick up parasites.
One reason parasite testing is so faulty is if we are relying on a stool test, maybe that particular stool sample might pick up a parasite if that parasite lives in your bowels. A lot of parasites don’t even live in your bowels. You could have liver flukes that live in your liver. You could have trichinosis that lives in your heart. You could have T. gondii that lives in your brain. You could have Chagas, a tropical South American parasite, which lives in the bloodstream and is only visible if you use a specific medium on the slide with the blood under a certain microscopic enhancement. Only two labs in the entire United States even look for something like Chagas. It is admittedly not that common in the U.S.
But that is just an example as to why parasite testing is so faulty and unreliable. I don’t like to use it because we go through all the trouble and expense and wait of testing to find out.If the test comes back positive, fantastic. We 100% know that person is infected with a parasite. But if the test comes back negative, there is still a 50/50 chance that person is infected with a parasite. The last thing I want someone to do is have a false sense of confidence they aren’t dealing with a parasite. There is only so much better you can ever get if you have parasites without addressing them directly.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. Do you have any concern about treating for parasites if the person weren’t to have any parasites?
Elizabeth:
The protocol I use is a 30-day herbal protocol. It’s super gentle. I have used it on hundreds of people, including toddlers when moms find worms in their diapers. My nine-year-old daughter did it when she weighed 45 pounds. I have done it myself as a person with an autoimmune disease four or five times. It’s so gentle. Most people tolerate it very well. The most commonly reported side effects are deeper sleep and more vivid dreams.
Dr. Eric:
Good to know. It sounds like you’re not just focusing on parasites in the gut. I was going to ask you, which you might not know the answer to, if you think the main relationship with autoimmunity to parasites is that autoimmunity has the leaky gut connection. If parasites affect the gut, they can potentially cause that increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut. But it sounds like you’re not just concerned about the gut parasites but parasites outside of the gut, which is one of the limitations of the stool testing.
Elizabeth:
That is one of the limitations, yes. A doctor who is basically considered the father of Celiac disease, he and his team have done thousands of bowel biopsies over the past 20-30 years. They have discovered that chronic inflammation damages the digestive tract in the gut. Wherever those parasites are, our T-cells, which are our body’s defense soldiers, notice there are foreign invaders. Typically, foreign invaders in a human body are viruses and bacteria. The T-cells can handle those pretty well. They can create antibodies against bacteria, and they have heat and inflammation they use against viruses. None of those work at all against parasites. The T-cells are going to see the parasites whether they are in your gut, heart, bloodstream, it doesn’t matter, and they are going to set off that inflammatory response over and over because they keep seeing them over and over, and they don’t go away. Any time you have chronic inflammation, it damages the gut and contributes to that intestinal permeability or leaky gut that you were mentioning.
Dr. Eric:
How about the impact of other gut infections? Do you just focus on the parasite?
Elizabeth:
I believe in the terrain theory more than the germ theory. Oftentimes, people say, “I have SIBO or H-pylori.” Then they want to take out antibiotics to wipe out those bacteria. The problem is now the whole reason those bacteria, which are always in our gut anyway—H-pylori is in everybody’s gut as part of our normal gut microbiome. Then we take antibiotics and wipe it out. Now we have a void, a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. What is going to go in to fill that void? Other bacteria. How do the H-pylori get out of control in the first place? The whole terrain, the microbiome, was out of whack. That can often be from parasites. But there was an opening that the H-pylori moved into and expanded, more than they normally would in a healthy system.
I believe it’s better to address the entire body holistically rather than try to use a shotgun to kill one little mosquito and get all the collateral damage you will get.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. Even with the parasites, you want to get rid of the parasite, but it’s important to focus on the whole body. With the gut, make sure the person has sufficient hydrochloric acid, and maybe probiotics, digestive enzymes. I am not sure what specific approach you take. It’s not all about the parasite.
Elizabeth:
If you try to eradicate the parasites using pharmaceuticals, those pharmaceuticals are less discriminatory. They will wipe out all the flora and fauna in your microbiome while they are trying to go after the parasites. If you use an herbal approach, the herbs are more focused. They will only affect the parasites. They won’t wipe out the rest of your flora and fauna in your microbiome, so you don’t have to be that concerned about other things as you’re going through it because it will only affect the parasites.
Dr. Eric:
I know some of the medications they give for parasites could be harsh, like Flagyl,metronidazole, which affects the…
Elizabeth:
Ivermectin. We’ll bring that one up. Eric, can we pause just as second here and go back to talk a little bit more about how people might have picked up a parasite?
Dr. Eric:
Yes, go for it.
Elizabeth:
Oftentimes, people feel a little defensive. “I don’t have parasites. I have a clean home. I’m a hygienic person.” That has nothing to do with it. It is super easy to pick up parasites. You can pick them up from swimming in a lake or a river, or even a public pool or a water park. Chlorination does not necessarily eradicate all of them. Every summer, I see notices on the news that they discovered an infestation of giardia in a heavily chlorinated public pool. That doesn’t work.
You can get them from eating sushi, eating undercooked pork, traveling, playing with your pets, like your dog or cat from cleaning out the kitty litter box; that is how T. gandii spreads into the brain. The CDC believes there is a long-term infestation of Cyclospora that has been coming in through fresh cilantro. How frequently have you had fresh cilantro on your plate in restaurants? Remember in 2018, when there was an outbreak of Cyclospora in McDonald’s restaurants around 13 states in the Midwest. It was coming across in salads there. In the 1990s, the entire city of Milwaukee was infected with cryptosporidium through their municipal water supply. It can just be super easy to pick up parasites. It has almost nothing to do with you. You can get them walking barefoot. There has just been an outbreak in Texas of parasite strongyloides, which can come up when you walk barefoot across dirt, grass, and sandthrough the soles of your feet.
I have had parasites no fewer than six or seven times in my life. The first time, when I was about eight years old, and my family was in Israel, we were at this spring outside of the Dead Sea, the site of Masada. The spring is called Ein Gedi. It’s very prominent in Biblical times as a spring. We were swimming in the spring, and we all picked up a parasite. It’s just super easy.
One of the most recent times I picked up a parasite was when my fiancée and I were traveling in Asia. We did a two-week horseback trip across the eastern Tibetan plateau. We were on horseback for two weeks. We were camping. It was an amazing trip. When we came down off the plateau into Chengdu,China, in a big cosmopolitan city, we all gathered for a celebratory feast. There were 15 of us at a four-star restaurant. We met at 6pm. By midnight, 12 of the 15 of us were worshipping the porcelain gods. It can happen that fast.
Sometimes you may have been infected at a time when you think, “You know what? I had food poisoning or a 24-hour bug. I was traveling, and I got diarrhea, and it lingered on for a little bit.” If you think back on it, you may realize that you never totally regained yourself after that, even though you were able to move forward and live your life normally, but maybe not with the same vitality and energy you used to have. Maybe you had different bowel habits.
After I drank some water in Sofia, Bulgaria when I was 21 years old on a three-day train trip from Budapest, Hungary to Istanbul, Turkey, we stopped in Sofia and had run out of water, so we ran in and grabbed some. I had tremendous diarrhea for awhile. In fact, I had diarrhea for the next 10 years. Every morning, that is what I thought was my normal: either diarrhea or constipation. I didn’t really think that much of it. This is how my bowels are. It wasn’t until after we returned from Tibet when the diarrhea had continued, and I went to a GI doctor that time. He took a stool sample, and it made its way over to the Center for Disease Control, who actually picked up the phone and called my apartment and said, “Where have you been? We found five parasites in your poop. Is there an outbreak in Denver, Colorado where you live?” Yes, it can be very easy to pick up parasites.
The symptoms can be really random. It can be diarrhea or constipation. It could be fatigue and lack of energy. Could be headaches and migraines. One of my husband’s big symptoms was vomiting. He will randomly vomit when he is infected. Also, fainting. One night, we were watching TV in the living room, and he got up to get a drink out of the fridge. All of a sudden, I heard a thump. I walk into the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open, and he was flat on his back on the floor from fainting.
Dr. Eric:
When people think about parasites, they think about loose stools. They don’t think about other symptoms, such as constipation, let alone fatigue or fainting. I quite frankly haven’t heard of that associated with parasites, so that’s interesting. If someone isn’t experiencing diarrhea, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a parasite. Is it safe to say if someone has no digestive symptoms that they could also have parasites?
Elizabeth:
Not at all. It affects people in different ways. What I feel is that it doesn’t matter how things are manifesting in the body, but more that there is something there, and inflammation is at the root of it. It could be body aches. There are almost unlimited symptoms for parasitic infestation. If you are someone who has been to lots of doctors and haven’t been able to figure out what is causing your symptoms, or even if you have started to have new symptoms, like you never before were lactose-intolerant and now you are. You never before were gluten-intolerant, and now you are. You never before had blood sugar issues, and now you’re pre-diabetic without other symptoms. Even if you have chronic issues with weight management, either keeping on your weight or being able to remove excess weight, those could be signs of parasites, too.
Dr. Eric:
Good to know. I have a quick story to shareof a past patient with parasites. Keep in mind in the past years I have done testing not just for parasites, but for other things as well. I had a patient 7-8 years ago who symptom-wisewasn’t doing too bad. He was a Graves’ patient. No digestive symptoms, regular bowel movements. I didn’t suspect a parasite, so I didn’t do any testing. Long story short, he stopped seeing me. He went to another practitioner. The practitioner did do a test, and the test happened to find a parasite. The only reason I know was because I followed up with him a few months later. He got into remission by following a protocol for the parasite. His antibodies, his thyroid stimulating immunoglobulins normalized. It taught me a lesson that you can’t just rely on symptoms.
In your situation, of course, you wouldn’t have done the testing. You would have just put him on a protocol, which would have done the job. Either way, it’s something that at the time I overlooked. It did teach me a lesson. I knew the answers as I was asking you the questions: Do you have to have symptoms? I have had patients that didn’t have symptoms yet had parasites. I’m glad you brought up symptoms.
Elizabeth:
They did have symptoms, but they weren’t gut symptoms. He was coming to see you for thyroid issues, right? So he had some symptoms. They weren’t classically what you would consider parasitic infestation symptoms.
Dr. Eric:
Correct. No gut-related symptoms. I was thinking at the time no gut symptoms, probably no parasites or any gut infection. Lesson learned.
Elizabeth:
Sometimes skin issues can be parasitic. I have had clients where the parasites are coming out of their skin, and they make little bumps. If they break the top off the bump, they can sometimes see movement before the parasite dematerializes, kind of like Avengers Endgame when people disintegrate. Parasites are anaerobic. Sometimes they will literally disappear upon exposure to air, which is another reason that testing can be so unreliable. Sometimes the parasites aren’t even there by the time they reach the lab.
On top of that, my brother-in-law is a pathologist. He tells me that he is taught to look at a slide and identify all the structures that he recognizes on the slide. There might be 30 structures on the slide, out of which he probably recognizes 10-15 of them. The others, he is taught to ignore. Some of them might be parasites, but he can’t identify them because he has not been trained on them.
Dr. Eric:
One thing you mentioned about getting parasites is you can get parasites anywhere, not just internationally. You mentioned the salads. In the literature, one of the parasites, Blastocystis hominis, there is a new case study showing its association between Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. They can also be transmitted by eating a salad. You’re right. It’s not just drinking contaminated water or being overseas. You can get it having a salad somewhere.
Elizabeth:
Once I picked up parasites at a salad bar in Trinidad, Colorado at a Pizza Hut. Another time, my entire family picked up parasites after eating at a very upscale restaurant in Escondido, California.
Dr. Eric:
That’s scary. That’s a big reason why parasites are so widespread and why we are having this conversation.
Elizabeth:
And unrecognized. Let me give a little bit of story about that restaurant experience in California. We had gone out to a very lovely restaurant. When we came back that night, it started with my husband. I look at him as my canary in the coal mine. He started vomiting and explosive diarrhea about midnight that night. That continued for him through most of the night. The next morning, my son, who I think was around 12 at the time, had a migraine. That was part of his symptomology. That is how it manifested for him. About a week or two weeks later, my daughter, who must have been 10 at the time, said, “You know, Mom, I’ve had diarrhea since we were in California.” I looked at her and said, “You know what? Me, too. I think we all got infected.” We all went on the herbal protocol. It all cleared up.
Dr. Eric:
That’s a bummer, but it’s great that you knew what to do and cleared it up. In some situations, you might have gone to a conventional doctor, like if you didn’t know any better, you would have gone to a local doctor. Maybe they would have suspected parasites, but maybe not. They may have given you other medication to deal with the symptoms.
Elizabeth:
Probably not. We had only been in California. We hadn’t even been out of the country. We hadn’t been eating street food or something you would consider to be less hygienic. We hadn’t even gone swimming on that particular vacation because it was in the winter. It can be really easy and deceptive to pick these up.
I did have one client who while I was working with her had had a colonoscopy. Her GI doc, who was performing the colonoscopy, saw the parasites move while he was doing that, which doesn’t normally happen. He had a little freak-out, which I thought was very unprofessional.
Dr. Eric:
I haven’t heard that story about a colonoscopy.
Elizabeth:
Some parasites are visible to the naked eye, like many worms. Some are microscopic. Some are sub-microscopic.
Dr. Eric:
I do hear stories where some people follow parasite protocols…I don’t know if you commonly see where once they have their first bowel movement, or a few movements later, after the protocol, they will see parasites in the toilet. I never heard of it during a colonoscopy.
Elizabeth:
I ask of all my clients when you start the parasite protocol to watch your stool, watch your toilet bowl. If you see anything, snap a photo. That is the most reliable way to capture anything. I have had clients who get disposable chopsticks from Chinese restaurants that they can use to fish around in the toilet bowl. Sorry if I’m grossing anybody out here. This is my life, so it doesn’t gross me out at all. But they fish around and can find- I remember one client who said, “It looked like a piece of poop.” As soon as she poked at it, she could tell it was poop on the outside, but on the inside, it was a nest of worms.
Dr. Eric:
It’s okay for me. With my background, it takes a lot to gross me out. Again, if that was me having a bowel movement, who knows. Maybe I would have been grossed out. Fascinating. I find it very interesting.
When it comes to the herbs, you recommend an herbal protocol. I don’t know if you use some of the common herbs like wormwood or black walnut or clove and/or other ones.
Elizabeth:
I do. I use all three, and I also use neem. The important thing is that sometimes I see combination products where they might have 30 ingredients that are all kind of anti-parasitic. They aren’t in large enough quantities to make any kind of effect.
My protocol I work with starts slowly. Even one drop and one capsule. Then you go up to where you eventually are taking something like 30-40 capsules a day. You really need large quantities to saturate the tissues sometimes. Some parasites lay 2,000 eggs a day. If you only get the adults, you will have a repopulation, and you will be right back to where you were in just a couple months.
Dr. Eric:
I know some practitioners will take breaks. They will go 10 days on, 10 days off, 10 days on. Do you take that approach, too?
Elizabeth:
I don’t. I do a 30-day protocol because that covers all the phases of the lunar cycle. Parasites are lunar beings. They do become more active during the times of the full moon. Additionally, they have consciousness. They can actually affect the actions and behavior of their hosts. They can be an influence on you for acting to eradicate your protocol or not acting to help yourself.
Dr. Eric:
Do you find that some people need more than the 30 days? After 30 days, they’re a lot better, but they’re still not completely in the clear? Then you put them on another 30 days?
Elizabeth:
100%. Some people repeat. Immediately, they feel so much better afterwards, but they feel like they are not done. They continue and repeat the whole process for the next 30 days. A lot of people stay on a weekly maintenance dosage so that they continue to kill off anything new that is coming into their bodies. Still others need to progress on a second step parasite protocol that I will bring in if the first month hasn’t provided the results that I was looking for.
Dr. Eric:
That sounds good. Thanks for sharing. I warned you that I also wanted to talk to you about the MRT. We are going to get into that. Even though the focus is on parasites, I wanted you to take a few minutes to share that. Before we switch gears, any last words you want to say regarding parasites?
Elizabeth:
Let me give a segue. Part of the problem with parasites is that the job of a parasite is to find a host, take up residence, and multiply. That is the job of a parasite. A job is not something that is ever beneficial for the host. If it is a beneficial relationship, that is a symbiotic relationship, where both the host and the bugger benefit. That would be like a probiotic, where bacteria helps us, and they benefit because they have a place to live. But there are no benefits to parasites, or else it wouldn’t be called a parasite; it would be called a symbiote. Parasites are never helpful for the host.
When they are in your body, they are not super nice and well-behaved. I used to think of parasites as promenading very orderly through my intestines like a Bridgerton episode. The truth is they are much more like one of those ant farms or worm farms we had in kindergarten behind glass, where they just burrow through your tissues and make their own pathways and leave you perforated and pockmarked and scars all over. That contributes to that leaky gut and digestive issues and lack of complete digestion, which can manifest in all kinds of deficiencies and cause problems. That is why I prefer to follow up a parasite protocol with an anti-inflammatory diet. The best way I think to design an anti-inflammatory diet is using the MRT test. How is that for a segue?
Dr. Eric:
Sounds great. We had a conversation because I’m not a big fan of food sensitivity testing. Most practitioners use what is called IGG food sensitivity testing. I can’t say I never use it in my practice, but it’s one of those things I use as more of a last resort.
I start people off with an elimination diet. A big reason is because I haven’t found the IGG testing to be accurate. If I knew it was accurate, it would be much easier to have people do the testing and not have to go through an elimination diet.
We were chatting about your success with MRT.Can you explain how that differs from traditional food sensitivity testing? Some people might get confused. It is more of a food sensitivity test. There is allergy testing, which is IGE-mediated, more of an immediate response. There is food sensitivity, which is a delayed response. MRT uses more mediators. I will let you take over. You will do a much better job of explaining it than I.
Elizabeth:
Those are all good things to talk about. That’s what people hear about. Food sensitivity testing. Now, they are offering take-home food sensitivity tests you can do. They are super unreliable. I would not recommend wasting your money on those, specifically because they are looking for the IGs, the antibodies.
There are four types of hypersensitivity reactions. Type one hypersensitivity reactions cause anaphylaxis. Those are the people who will die if they eat a peanut or a shrimp or something like that. That is usually pretty quick afterwards. They definitely create antibodies, IGA antibodies, I think.
Dr. Eric:
IGE antibodies.
Elizabeth:
But type two and type three hypersensitivity reactions may or may not create antibodies and may or may not correlate with symptoms. I like to think of type three reactions as more like intolerances. They may be enzymatic deficiencies like lactase, not able to digest lactose in milk.
Type four hypersensitivities are mediator controlled or related. Mediators, the most famous mediator we all know is histamine. If we have a bee sting or poison ivy encounter, and we take some Benadryl or another antihistamine, we can get some relief from the pain that is being caused by the inflammation from that encounter. Histamine is only one of 80 or more mediators the bloodstream can release upon exposure to what it deems to be a threat.
The MRT, the Mediator Release Test, is quite unique. Most doctors don’t know about it, so you won’t usually find out about it in your doctor’s office. In fact, they might try to steer you away from it because they haven’t learned about it in medical school. It looks for how your blood reacts specifically to 150 foods and 20 or so chemicals in our food environment to see if your blood will release these mediators. It doesn’t look to see which mediator of the 80 or so because they all cause inflammation. They all become systemic. Because they are part of your bloodstream, they go everywhere your bloodstream goes. They may manifest differently in different people, but they are actually systemic. Because all mediators that are released cause inflammation, that is what we are focusing on it.
I don’t care how it manifests. I don’t care if it manifests that you have a headache or sinus issues or high blood pressure or asthma or heart issues or arthritis or fibromyalgia or gut issues or stomach pains or acid reflux. All of these are indications of inflammation.
The MRT gives us a really good road map on how to remove and reduce the inflammation in your body because what we get back is a bar chart of every single one of those 170 items that are tested, telling us exactly how reactive every single item is. Instead of saying, “You know what, A, B, and C turned up high on your test. Go back and eliminate them,” which is a classic elimination diet and not very helpful because people will say, “Wow, that is what I normally eat. What am I supposed to eat then?” They may go off and choose other foods that are also reactive, and thennot experience any improvement.
Instead of that, we look at the test very specifically. We cross-correlate botanical food families and identify X, Y, and Z, the foods you are least reactive to. Then we design a restricted, customized diet for you. “I only want you to eat these foods, and there are 40 or so that we know 100% are not inflammatory for you.” Usually within a week or two, people experience marked improvement. Within six weeks of dietary therapy, most of their symptoms are gone oftentimes. People literally deflate in front of my eyes as inflammation moves out of their body. Men lose jacket sizes. If you need to lose weight, it’s a great diet to do because you don’t have to limit your calories or food intake. We don’t look at macronutrients like proteins and carbs. In fact, we only look at which foods are inflammatory for you and make sure you are only eating foods that are not inflammatory for you based on the MRT. There is no guesswork. Sometimes those test results are really surprising. For me, when I eat lettuce, especially lettuce together with avocados, I get MS symptoms.
Dr. Eric:
Not only do you get symptoms, but those did show up positive on your MRT?
Elizabeth:
Yes, those were indicated as reactive for me. Who would have guessed lettuce and avocados? Avocados are so good for your brain and nervous system. For MS patients, they are very highly indicated. I agree with that for the general population. If you are ok with avocados, avocados are very healthy and helpful for maintaining your nervous system. For me, for some reason, my white blood cells have decided that avocados are a threat. So is lettuce. And other things, too.
For my son, when I tested him when he was six years old, three of his most reactive foods were some of the things we thought were most healthy for him: broccoli, garlic, and lemon. For him, they were making him constipated, vomit, giving him such terrible acid reflux that he couldn’t sleep through the night, keeping him as a bedwetter as six years old. As soon as we removed the foods, he stopped wetting the bed like literally the next day.
Dr. Eric:
Is this a test that you eventually retest? With food sensitivity testing, like IGG, the goal is to eliminate the foods. When your gut heals, you might be able to reintroduce those foods six months later. Is it similar with MRT, where you want to test again after a certain period of time?
Elizabeth:
It is unfortunately not inexpensive to do the MRT. Most people don’t need to retest for at least six or seven years. I teach every client that I work with how to challenge themselves on foods as they go forward and discover if they have recovered their tolerance thresholds enough to be able to tolerate them, or not.
Most importantly, what I teach them is how to recover when you are accidentally exposed. Regardless of how careful you are, there will be times where you accidentally eat something that causes you to flare up. A person who is suffering chronically to see you or me, they are probably walking around at 80-90% inflamed every day. When they eat something that causes them more inflammation, maybe shoots them up to 85-90%, they might not even notice it because they feel crappy all the time. It’s not that big of a difference. But when we bring you down to 10-20% inflamed, and then you eat something that shoots you up to 85%, wow, do you notice it.
Dr. Eric:
I bet. So many questions I have about this. I might have to interview you again. The main focus of this was to talk about parasites. The plan was to take a few minutes, but we could get into a lot greater detail when it comes to this test.
Let people know where they can find you if they are interested in MRT testing or getting help for MS or other autoimmune conditions. Is your website ElizabethYarnell.com?
Elizabeth:
Yes, that is correct. At the bottom of every page, there is a link to book a complimentary naturopathic health assessment, which I am happy to offer all our listeners today. It’s risk-free. We can talk about what’s going on with you and see if what I offer might help you. Specifically for parasites, I do have a little quiz. If you go to ParasitesAndAutoimmunity.com, there is a quiz you can take to see if maybe parasites might be at the root of your problems.
Dr. Eric:
That sounds wonderful. Visit Elizabeth’s website and the parasite quiz website. Thank you so much. It was great chatting with you about parasites and MRT testing. I appreciate you sharing this information. We will need to continue talking about MRT in a future interview.
Elizabeth:
Perfect, I look forward to it.