Recently, I interviewed Dr. Tom O’Bryan, and he explains why autoimmunity and cognitive decline don’t start overnight and the early patterns for detection He also encourages how specialized tests like the Total Toxin Burden and Neuro Zoomer can uncover root causes that aren’t always obvious, especially when traditional labs come back “normal.” . If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here [1].
Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am super excited to chat with Dr. Tom O’Bryan. We are going to be having a comprehensive discussion on how you can fix your brain. Very excited to talk about this. Let me dive into Dr. Tom’s short but sweet bio.
Dr. Tom O’Bryan is considered the Sherlock Holmes for chronic disease and teaches that recognizing and addressing the underlying mechanisms that activate an immune response is the map to the highway toward better health. He holds teaching faculty positions with the Institute for Functional Medicine and the National University of Health Sciences. Welcome, Dr. Tom.
Dr. Tom O’Bryan:
Thank you so much. Pleasure to be with you, Dr. Eric.
Dr. Eric:
I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I think the first time I saw you was at the Institute for Functional Medicine many years ago. It might have been in 2015/2016. You have been doing this a long time, even before then. We are both chiropractors. Again, you really dive deep into autoimmunity. What led you down this path to write your books and doing what you’re doing currently?
Dr. Tom:
It started when I was in my internship. My wife at the time, we couldn’t get pregnant. I called the seven most famous holistic doctors I had ever heard of. I called George Goodheart, Jonathan Wright. Any of the famous doctors that I had heard of. I asked them all, “What do you do for infertility?” They all told me what they would do, and I wrote it all down. I put a program together. We were pregnant in six weeks.
Dr. Eric:
Wow.
Dr. Tom:
We had housing on campus, and my neighbors asked if I’d work with them. They’d been through artificial insemination, and nothing had worked for them. I said, “I don’t know if it will help, but I don’t think it will hurt you.” They were pregnant in three months.
We’re now four months’ pregnant, and we’re hot to trot. We’re telling the world how excited we are and what we’re finding out. One of our friends would have a sister in Wisconsin. We were in school in Chicago. She would call and say, “Can I drive down and see you please?” I wasn’t seeing patients, but I couldn’t say no. They’d come to my dorm room, and I was treating patients out of my dorm room.
The president of the college called me in one day and said, “We can’t do this.” I said I understood, and I kept doing it. I was hot to help people.
We helped a lot of people with pregnancy issues, whether it was infertility or recurrent miscarriages or a history of premature births. We found that consistently, time after time, every single one of them had some common links.
First, we had to make sure that all the parts were working, that there was nothing organically that made it impossible for pregnancy. Then there was one consistent mechanism that was always there. Every hormone-related problem.
At the time, I was realizing everyone has hormone-related problems has inflammation. They have lifestyle habits, which where they live, if they live in a moldy house or are eating foods that are triggering inflammation in their body, or they have high levels of arsenic or lead or some other toxin in their body.
When we would address those triggers of inflammation, then they always felt better every single time. Most of the time, surprisingly, within a few months, we’re getting a call, “We’re pregnant!”
That started me off. I opened my practice, already practicing functional medicine in 1980. I happened to be in Dr. Jeff Bland’s first talk ever in Chicago in 1978. I had heard these concepts about functional medicine. As I was learning all of the technical things about being a chiropractic physician, a nutritionist, I was absorbing them from the ideas of functional medicine, which means identifying the triggers of inflammation and getting those triggers out there. Watch and see if the body starts functioning better. The results have been just miraculous over the last 40 years. It’s a long time.
That got me into all of this. My entire career has been based on understanding the principles and investigating to see what are the triggers of inflammation for each individual patient that comes in? They’re always different. There are some common ones, but it’s always unique to the individual. There is no shotgun package approach that you can do.
That’s what the book You Can Fix Your Brain is all about: understanding there are so many triggers to the inflammatory cascade in your brain. Here is how you identify them. Here is what some of the clues are as to where to look. That’s what the brain is about, with 36 to-dos for the brain.
I will just give you one example here. There are a number of studies now that show that when women have high levels of phthalates in their body—phthalates are chemicals used to mold plastic.
I will give you an example of a study. 2016, Chicago, 136 women in the eighth month of pregnancy. They measure their urine for how many phthalates they have in their urine. It’s the residue from plastics. We have all heard about microplastics and now nanoplastics and how they are a big problem.
They measured in the urine how much plastic chemicals they have. They put the results into fourths. The lowest amount in the urine, the next lowest, the third, and the highest amount. Then they watched the offspring of those pregnancies.
When those children turned seven years old, the researchers reached back out and said, “Hi, it’s time now to do the Wexler IQ test,” which is the official IQ test. There is not much in medicine that is “all” or “every,” but every single child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates in urine during pregnancy, compared to the children whose mothers were in the lowest category, every single child in the highest category, their IQ was seven points lower. 6.7-7.6 points lower. Every one of them.
That doesn’t mean anything to anybody until you understand a one-point difference in IQ is noticeable. A seven-point difference is the difference between a child working really hard, getting straight As in school, and a child working really hard, getting straight B-/Cs in school. This child doesn’t have a chance in hell of ever excelling. Their brain never developed to its genetic potential in utero.
When you learn that, and there are many studies that give that kind of information, looking from one way or another, when you learn that it’s the toxicity in Mom and Dad that has a huge contribution to babies’ brain function as they grow up, years and years after being in the womb, then you understand why I say every couple of child-bearing age that wants to start a family needs to be tested first to see how many toxins do they have in their body right now? If they’re high, you need to take the time to get those out of there before you try for pregnancy.
I will give you one more example. About 16 months ago, a paper came out of men at infertility centers. They found that the glyphosate level, which is a chemical used on genetically modified foods, in men’s semen was 400% higher than the glyphosate levels in their blood. You mean the semen that is made in the testicles, the concentration of glyphosate is 4x higher than in the guy’s blood? Yes, it accumulates in the testicles in men.
The result is that the DNA gets damaged because of glyphosate. There are studies that show all that. The DNA gets damaged, which then damages the sperm that is in the semen, and the semen carries the sperm with ejaculation into the woman. The pregnancy, if it’s from a damaged sperm, puts the child at risk that they never develop to what their genetic potential could be. People don’t know this.
Don’t believe me. Read my book. Look at all the studies. There are 346 studies in that book. “That can’t be true! My doctors, the experts at the fertility center,” who are charging you tens of thousands of dollars, never check this stuff. They don’t see it. They want to make sure the woman’s fallopian tubes are open, and she has the eggs and enough hormones. That’s all good. But that’s technology from 1990 that is not cutting-edge. You have to see if this couple is so toxic that the levels are accumulatively putting them at risk for damaging the sperm and damaging the eggs. We have never had a couple come back normal on a first test.
Dr. Eric:
That was my question. I was going to ask you that. You said if they’re high, treat it. My question to you was have you ever done a test on a couple where it looked good?
Dr. Tom:
No, never. These tests are highly accurate. This world we’re living in today is more toxic than ever before in history. People are accumulating more toxins at earlier ages than ever before. Humans do not have the detoxification mechanisms to deal with all of these chemicals.
Our immune systems are designed by what allowed our ancestors to survive. We carry the genes of our ancestors. The ancestors who survived and reproduced and produce the lineage that we came from now, their immune systems were designed to handle specific things that were risk factors to kill them: bugs, parasites, viruses, mold, fungus, and bacteria. That’s it. We don’t have any aspect of our immune system to deal with lead poisoning. We don’t have any aspect of our immune system to deal with red dye #42.
When we get exposed to all of these things, the immune system operates in the only way it can when there is a threat. That means the immune system produces inflammation. The inflammation tries to kill this thing, but you can’t kill red dye #42. It just sits in your cell. There is not more inflammation; the damage is the cells around that.
We know now from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. It’s always inflammation, whether it’s cognitive decline, dementia, diabetes, atherosclerosis, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases. They all are inflammatory diseases. It’s an immune system that has been activated to protect you. The immune system isn’t going crazy; it’s trying to protect you.
The question is what is it trying to protect you from? This is basic 101, common sense stuff that always has to be addressed. There is no profit in this, so it’s not taught in medical schools. I’m not challenging the students who went to the school and then became doctors, but this is what they have learned. They have learned that you do these tests to identify what they’re checking for, and then you write a prescription. Or you’re doing some other invasive therapy. But they’re not taught these basic 101 principles, so they just don’t know.
That’s why you have such a successful track record working with infertility couples when you include this approach. I’m not saying only this approach, but you include this approach. You always test for this first. “How toxic are you, Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so?” When the test results come back, and you do an “Oh my god, I had no idea,” then you tell the patient, “Do not get pregnant until we get this stuff out of your body. Then you have a better chance of baby developing to their genetic potential,” whatever their potential is. You’re not going to put the emergency brakes on their development.
You ever back out of a driveway, and you say, “What’s wrong with this car? It’s moving, but it’s not moving fast.” The emergency brake. You let go of the emergency brake, and you back up just fine. Toxicity is a huge emergency brake on brain function in general, which is what this topic is, but on infertility. It’s a huge emergency brake that you just have to rule out.
You just have to do the right, simple tests to rule it out. A simple urine test will tell you, do you have too many toxins in your body? The urine test is called the Total Tox Burden. It looks at 87 different markers in one simple urine test. It’s just remarkable. It’s a highly accurate test. If you’re clean, great, go for it. Let’s figure out what else might be inhibiting you having a successful pregnancy. We don’t have to pause on your attempts right now.
Dr. Eric:
I like to play devil’s advocate. I’m going to ask you something, and I’m pretty sure I know what the response is.
Dr. Tom:
Sure.
Dr. Eric:
Since everybody you tested for tests positive for toxins, why do the testing at all? Why not just jump into detoxification?
Dr. Tom:
That’s a really good question. The answer is, you can do detoxification to begin with, and people start feeling better pretty quickly. If you don’t know that you had 24 different toxins, and now after your detox protocol, you have seven left, but you feel great. You still have this stuff going on that is not contributing to the lousy way you were feeling.
You have a baseline. If you don’t have a baseline, you’re shooting in the dark. I call it “shotgun medicine.” We know detox always helps, so let’s just put everybody on a detox program. If you want, I guess it’d be hard to argue with, don’t try and get pregnant, do the detox program, then we will do the test and see what’s left. It is always better because you’re asking people to change their lifestyle, their basic food selections, living environment sometimes.
You’ve heard now recently that the polyethylene materials in many of these athletic clothes that people are wearing, the gym shorts and bras, cause all kinds of hormone problems for people. But you don’t feel bad when you put on a pair of gym shorts, and you go out for a run or exercise, and you’re sweating. You’re opening up your pores, which means these polyethylene chemicals, toxins, and phthalates are coming in through your testicles or breasts. You don’t know that’s happening. You can’t feel that.
If you don’t have a baseline, and then you recheck 2-3 months later, depending on what your detox protocols are and what your starting point is, you’re shooting in the dark.
Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. You get that baseline, and you can see exactly how many toxins you have, the levels they’re at. After addressing that, you can see the improvements. Hopefully, they will be greatly reduced, within the lab range. But you don’t know unless you retest. Maybe you have a few dozen. Makes sense.
Inflammation essentially, for those who aren’t taking this approach, it’s really starting in the womb, it sounds like.
Dr. Tom:
It really does. It starts pre-conception. My new book that I’m writing now, it will be a year before it’s out. The working title is Healthy Conception, Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Delivery, Happy Baby. You have to deal with all four categories. This world we’re living in today, the statistics of the percentage of our children who not only are obese, but the percentage of our children with ADD or autism or on antidepressant or antianxiety medication is going through the roof. Only in the U.S. In other countries, it’s not as bad; it’s bad, but not as bad as in the U.S. It’s startling to look down the road and see what’s happening with our most precious treasure, our next generation, our children.
Dr. Eric:
We will have to bring you back on once you get that book released in 2026.
Dr. Tom:
Yes, thank you.
Dr. Eric:
When these chemicals affect the brain, they also affect other areas, including the gut. Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the blood-brain barrier and the gut barrier?
Dr. Tom:
The blood-brain barrier is the most tight of any barrier in the body. Some things can get through, but most things can’t. That’s the blood-brain barrier.
The gut barrier is the same. This is how you think about it. Your digestive tract is a tube that goes from the mouth to the other end. One big, long tube. 20-25 feet long. The inside of the tube is lined with cheesecloth.
When you eat food, think of proteins like a pearl necklace. The acid in your stomach undoes the clasp of the pearl necklace. Now you have a string of pearls. It’s your digestive enzymes in your mouth and your gut that act like scissors to cut the pearl necklace into smaller and smaller pieces. They’re called peptides. Each piece gets smaller and smaller until you are down to each pearl of the necklace. That’s called an amino acid. We know those as the building blocks for new muscle cells, new bone cells, new brain cells. The amino acids are raw material to build new cells to keep us young and strong and healthy.
When you eat a hamburger, most of us take 3-4 chews, and then we gulp down. We should chew it 15-20 times, but we don’t. We gulp. There is no way that ground meat can get into your bloodstream. There is no way. If it does, you might die. It’s not okay. It has to be broken down into each pearl of the pearl necklace down to the amino acids. Then they fit right through the cheesecloth and get into the bloodstream.
Your bloodstream is just a highway. Everything is going in the same direction, but it’s like bumper cars going in there. They are all bouncing into each other. These are the raw materials to make new cells. That’s the job of the cheesecloth, is to restrict so only certain-sized molecules can get through.
When you get a tear in the cheesecloth, that’s called leaky gut. Now bigger molecules, called macro molecules, get through into the bloodstream before they should be able to get through. There is nothing wrong with them. It’s good food. They have to be digested down to each pearl of the pearl necklace. If you have tears in the cheesecloth, some of those macro molecules can get through before they have been digested completely.
Now, they’re on the highway, these big clumps of meat in this example. The immune system says, “Whoa, what’s that? I better fight that.” You start making antibodies to beef or chicken or tomatoes or bananas. It doesn’t matter what the food is. if you have a leaky gut, and these molecules get through into the bloodstream, your immune system is trying to protect you from this threat and will make antibodies to fight that food.
Those are the people who do 96 food panel tests and come back sensitive to 25 different foods. “That’s everything I eat!” Of course, it is. It’s your immune system trying to protect you from these macro molecules. You heal the gut, and two months, six months from now, whenever you retest, you are sensitive to two, maybe three foods. Those are the ones you stay away from forever. That’s the leaky gut.
The same thing happens in the brain. You have a cheesecloth around the blood vessels in the brain. Your brain is so important that about 2% of the body weight is the brain. At any time, the brain has 18-20% of the body’s blood inside it. There are thousands of tiny little blood vessels in the brain. They all have this cheesecloth on the inside of the blood vessel to make sure nothing gets into the brain tissue that is not supposed to.
When you have a leaky brain, that’s why checking your brain for inflammation is so important. I can’t find any science to validate this, but now I am telling you this is my opinion. Everything else I am telling you is not; that’s what they are teaching at Harvard Medical School. But this is my opinion: that’s why as a doctor, as a clinician, when you identify the inflammation in the brain, you’re identifying one of the earliest organs that is being damaged by too much inflammation.
I’d like to show you a few slides if I can. It might put this in perspective. Would that be okay?
Dr. Eric:
That would be awesome.
Dr. Tom:
Perfect. Here we go. I am going to get geeky with you for a minute. This is Melissa Arbuckle. She works at the VA. She looked at one VA center for the number of people that were diagnosed with the autoimmune disease lupus, systemic lupus erythematosus. She found there were 132, I think it was, people in this one center.
If they are in a VA center for treatment, they’re veterans. If they’re veterans, they were in the armed forces. When they were in the armed forces, when they were healthy in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, they had their blood drawn many times over the years for one reason or another. What most people don’t know is the government has been saving and freezing most of that blood since 1978. They have tens of millions of samples of our servicepeople’s blood.
Dr. Arbuckle knew this. She asked for permission to look at the frozen blood of the currently diagnosed lupus patients when they were healthy in the armed forces. She got that permission. What did she find?
As she wrote here in the New England Journal of Medicine—there are seven antibodies for lupus—all seven antibodies are elevated years before a person has a symptom. They have no symptoms. They feel fine. I call it the “I feel fine” syndrome. “I don’t need to test anything; I feel fine.” The antibodies are elevated.
By definition, when you have elevated antibodies, you’re killing off more tissue than you’re making. Every cell in your body regenerates every seven years. Some quick, some slow. How does that happen? Your immune system has to get rid of the old, damaged ells to make room for the new cells. That makes sense.
How does it do that? The process is called autophagy, which means getting rid of the old, damaged cells to make room for the new cells. Antibodies are a part of that.
You have a normal level of antibodies to your thyroid. I will use that as an example. In most labs, it’s about 36 antibodies. That’s normal. When you have elevated levels of antibodies, you’re killing off more cells than you’re making. By definition. That’s what elevation means.
Every single lupus patient had all seven antibodies elevated years before they ever had a symptom, killing off tissue while they felt “fine.” She did this graph. The zero line is not zero antibodies; it’s the normal level. You see all seven of them elevated five years before they ever have a symptom. Some of them were elevated 11 years. All of them were elevated at least five years before they ever had a symptom.
Then they hit that peak of killing off cells for 5-11 years. Then they start getting symptoms. Within a few months, they get the diagnosis of lupus.
She put this drawing together. She just made this up. She said, “You have a normal level of antibodies.” Getting rid of old cells to make room for new cells. Then they have what she called benign cells. There were no symptoms, so she called it “benign.” Then you have pathogenic, meaning you are getting some symptoms now. Then you get diagnosed with a disease.
It started way back at normal, going into benign. That is when it started. Right there in what we call the prodromal period, which means before symptoms. That is where it starts. I want you to remember that word “prodromal,” before symptoms. Here you see, and you understand, during this benign period, we are killing off cells. You don’t have any symptoms, so you feel fine. Yes, okay, that’s called the prodromal period.
Let’s get to the brain. Back in 2017, most front pages of newspapers around the country said Alzheimer’s will bankrupt Medicare. This is a real problem. The numbers were really scary. They put a commission together of the world’s leading scientists for Alzheimer’s and said, “Figure out what we’re going to do about this.” Two years before they wrote their report.
They published their report way back in July 2019. No one paid any attention to it whatsoever. This is when the virus came out that scared everybody and was on the front page every day in the newspapers. This never made any headway at all.
I jumped up and down when I saw the drawing they put in here because it explains so much. Here it is. Notice there is a prodromal period in the development of Alzheimer’s. It goes for 20-25 years of elevated antibodies, killing off tissue, while you are in the “I feel fine” syndrome.
Then it moves into the “Where did I park my car in the parking lot?” Short-term memory loss. “Where are my keys?” That goes on for 5-7 years. Now you’re 25-30 years into inflammation in your brain killing off tissue. Then you get diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s, as if it came on yesterday or in the last couple months. It’s been occurring for 25 years. You just never knew it because it was in the benign period of killing off cells before you killed off so many cells that the tissue couldn’t function right anymore.
This comes from a Blue Cross/Blue Shield study in February 2020 that nobody paid attention to because of the virus. They said, “We have a problem here.” In a four-year period, there was a huge increase in claims for Alzheimer’s. This was the one that really scared me. A 407% increase in claims for Alzheimer’s in 30-44 years old. 407% increase.
People are getting sick, inflamed in their childhood because there are so many toxins now. Nobody pays any attention to it, killing off brain cells. You get diagnosed with depression or Alzheimer’s. They give you medications for that. Nobody identifies the inflammation in the brain. Where is the inflammation coming from?
This is the pandemic that no one is talking about. This is a test. It’s a simple blood test. You do this test, and it looks at 53 markers of inflammation in the brain. You pay $500 to do this test, and you find out if you have inflammation in your brain right now. It’s not good, but no one comes back normal on this test or on the toxin test.
They don’t come back normal because everyone is being exposed to all of these toxins, and blood pools in the brain. The inflammatory markers are in the blood, sitting in the brain, causing more tearing of the cheesecloth. The leaky brain that is getting these macro molecules into the brain, activating the immune system, producing the antibodies that we’ve got.
I’m hoping everyone will watch this once again. I know I just overwhelmed the hell out of you. I know I did. This is Ph. D level stuff. If I can get across to all of your listeners, Dr. Eric, that this is a basic, 101 concept, that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are inflammatory diseases, that inflammatory molecules sit in the brain longer than anywhere else in high concentration, and you can measure the inflammation in the brain, how many antibodies you have in your brain tissue that are elevated beyond normal levels, then you understand, “I really need to find out how I am throwing gasoline on the fire, causing all of this.”
When you explore that and understand that, then you start noticing your brain is functioning better. You redo the test in about a year. Don’t do it beforehand because it will take a while to get the fire extinguishers to put the fire out.
The first step is stop throwing gasoline on the fire. You have to figure out how I am throwing gasoline on the fire. A year later, you do the test. The first time, you had 19 markers elevated. Now, you have four. This means you’re on the right track. Keep it up. You’re doing great. No simple pill will ever fix this.
That’s why I know of two drug pharmaceutical companies that closed their Alzheimer’s research departments. They realized they spent billions, but they will never find a pill to fix this. You can’t. It’s all of the different toxins and triggers. You have to identify all those and get them out of there.
That’s functional medicine. That’s the work you do in your practice, why you have this thyroid podcast, so people can understand this stuff. What we’re talking about today is the real pandemic about brain function.
There is a way to get through this. There is a way to identify where is the trigger, and what do we do about it?
Dr. Eric:
That was a pretty in-depth presentation. It was short, but still very detailed. The prodromal stage, that applies to all autoimmune conditions? With Hashimoto’s, they have that silent autoimmunity phase that could go on for 10-15 years.
Dr. Tom:
Every autoimmune disease goes through this spectrum. It’s called the spectrum of autoimmunity. Professor Yehuda Shoenfeld, one of the greats in the field, in Tel Aviv, Israel, he runs the immunology department at Tel Aviv University. 26, the last count that I know of, of the folks who received their Ph. D from him chair departments of immunology in medical schools in hospitals around the world. They’re his students. This is the godfather of all of it. He calls it the tautology of immunity.
An easier word to understand it is the spectrum. It starts with normal levels of antibodies; benign levels; pathogenic levels; and the diagnosis of the disease. Every single autoimmune disease that they have examined goes through this same pathway. It’s no mystery anymore.
Dr. Eric:
I want to clarify or reinforce what you mentioned. Your goal when it comes to auto antibodies isn’t to get them to zero, but to get them ideally within the range. If there are some antibodies present-
Dr. Tom:
They’re supposed to be there. They’re part of the autophagy process, to get rid of old, damaged cells. When you stop making new cells, you can’t make new cells unless you get rid of the old cells, or else you will blow up like a balloon. When you stop making new cells, you start aging really, really quickly because the old cells are dying off. You have more dis-ease.
Dr. Eric:
As far as who should do the testing. You mentioned with the toxin tests, anyone looking to conceive. Should everyone who has an autoimmune condition like Graves’ or Hashimoto’s also consider testing for toxins? Is that what you recommend in your practice, for everybody to do the total toxin test?
Dr. Tom:
Correct. I just saw a woman this afternoon with Graves’. I see one patient every two weeks or so by Zoom. I want five years of their health history before I ever talk to them. Every patient I see does a minimum of four tests. These are not specific just to your symptoms; these are specific to the inflammatory cascade; 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. Doesn’t matter what you’ve got. It’s always inflammation. That’s the root mechanism.
Doctors sometimes talk about root cause. We did a genetic test. You have this gene, which is the root cause of your problems. No, it’s not. Genes are important, but they are not the cause. Activation of the gene is the cause. There is one root mechanism.
What you want to do, Mrs. Patient, you have the gene for Alzheimer’s. That doesn’t mean you’re getting Alzheimer’s. Genes operate on dimmer switches. We want to dim that gene down, so it doesn’t express itself. We want to turn up the genes for anti-inflammatory brain function.
For example, we knew back in the 1990s that one cup of blueberries a day in three years, your brain is working as well as it was 13 years earlier. One cup of organic blueberries because of the toxicity in today’s world. We knew that a long time ago.
You turn up the genes for antiinflammation, and you stop throwing gasoline on the fire once you identify what foods and toxins you have in your body. You get those out of there. You give the foods to turn on the genes for antiinflammation and regeneration. People get better.
Six months from now, you go to church and haven’t seen somebody in a long time. “What happened to you? You look like a million bucks.”
I’ll tell you what happened to me. I found out that I had all these phthalates in my urine, and I had arsenic poisoning, and I was sensitive to gluten. I got rid of all of that stuff.
I got rid of nail polish that doesn’t have phthalates. Phthalates go in your bloodstream in 4-5 minutes, which is what makes the nail polish hard.
I got rid of all my plastic storage containers, and I got glass storage containers. My book tells you how to do that. Here is three URLs for glass storage containers.
I got plants in my house. We got rid of all of this stuff. My kids are better in school. They’re doing great. They’re happy. I’ve lost X number of pounds. My energy is up. My husband is sweeter than ever. My life is great because I took the time to learn all of this stuff that I had no idea about. That’s what happens to most people if they focus and do this.
First thing you have to do is test and identify how are you throwing gasoline on the fire? The four tests I recommend are a Gut Zoomer, the Neural Zoomer Plus, the Wheat Zoomer, and the Total Tox Burden. Those four tests will identify if you have a leaky gut, a leaky brain, inflammation in your brain, a sensitivity to wheat, and the toxins that you’re accumulating. Is it mold? Phosphates? Petroleum products? That test looks at 87 different markers of inflammation: chemicals and toxins and heavy metals. You do those four tests. As a matter of fact, Dr. Eric, is it okay if I say this?
Dr. Eric:
Yes, we were chatting before about me looking into doing the Total Toxic Burden test.
Dr. Tom:
When I’m on stage, talking to doctors, I always challenge them. I say, “There is nobody’s health better than your own and your spouse.” You know them better than anyone else. Do these tests on you. You’ll be surprised and startled by what’s going on in your brain and what toxins you’ve accumulated. Now, you learned what to do about it. In six months to a year, you redo the test, and see, “Wow, I feel so much better. This is gone. This is gone. Normal. Arsenic is a little high but much better than it was.” You’ll see.
Dr. Eric and I were talking before we turned on the recording. I said, “Eric, why don’t you and your wife do these tests together and invite all of your followers to do the tests? I’ll come back on in a few months, and we’ll interpret the tests. We’ll talk about what to do.” What was your response to that?
Dr. Eric:
My response was, “I don’t know if I want to see what the tests look like.” Again, I do a lot. I do sauna three times a week. I try to eat organic. It’s just one of those things where I know no matter what we do, there will still be a toxic burden.
Dr. Tom:
Right. That’s very human. “I don’t know if I want to know.” You think you’re stuck. You’re not stuck. You’re missing something. For example, mold in your house. It might not be seen. You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. You’re breathing it in every day over the course of many months.
I had one patient come in. He was the president of a bank in Chicago. His staff called me. This is when I lived in California. They asked me to fly to Chicago to see Mr. so and so. “I don’t want to go. He can come here.” He and his wife decided for a holiday to fly out to Los Angeles and drive the coast and see California, from San Francisco to San Diego. I lived in San Diego. I don’t have an office when I lived there. I meet people by Zoom. I met them at a coffee shop, and we are sitting there talking. It took me about three minutes to ask.
His problem was his brain wasn’t working anymore. He couldn’t focus. He had to take a leave of absence from his job because he couldn’t focus. He had been to the world’s best clinics. They tested everything. They could find nothing. MRIs, CTs, photo scans, everything that they did, they could find nothing. He had sent me those test results beforehand, so I could see from the provisional tests they had done, there was nothing.
It took about three minutes. We’re sitting there, and we had just gotten our coffee. I said to him, “So, when did your basement flood?” He went, “How did you know my basement flooded?” “Well, when did it flood?” “About a year and a half ago.” “When did your symptoms start?” “About eight months ago. Could that have something to do with my symptoms?”
I’m originally from Chicago, and he lived in Chicago. Sometimes, you get rains and basements flood. His basement had flood, and they brought a crew in to clean it all up. They put dehumidifiers down there. The drywall had absorbed the water up the wall aways. When they cleaned the carpets, they pulled them, but the drywall.
If you go home and drill a little couple holes in your drywall, have a professional come in to do it. You will find there is black mold in the walls. And there was. When they remediated the black mold, when they got out of the house, I told them not to go back in the house. If he wanted to go to work, he needed to live in a hotel until it is remediated. Do not go back to the house until then.
He was back to work in a few weeks. His brain was working better. They remediated the house, and he was fine.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have, and you see the world’s best. They’re not trained in environmental toxins. Mayo Clinic, they are not trained in environmental toxins. It’s rare. Sometimes, you will find a doctor who has gone through the functional medicine training, and they know this stuff and are starting to deal with it. It’s just not commonly taught.
Dr. Eric:
I agree. I’ll take you up for that challenge by the way. I don’t know if my wife will agree, but I definitely will run that by her. Either way, I will.
Dr. Tom:
Marvelous. I suggest you send an announcement out to all your followers. Tell them you will do the test, and if they do it, they will get a free interpretation from Dr. O’Bryan. You can find out. I promise you, it doesn’t matter what you find. It’s all reversible. The more problems you have. I’ve known this concept for a long time.
When I had my office, people would come for their first exam. They’re nervous of course. We run some tests and make a general recommendation of a general diet to follow. Come back in two weeks. The test results will be here. They come back and are always very nervous. They will sit down, and I am looking at the results.
I say: I have some good news for you. You’re a mess. Look at this. This is out. This is out. This is out. I’m smiling. This is so great. Now we know why you feel the way you do. Now we know. Now we’re going to fix it. This will take two weeks. This will take 4-5 months. This one will take a while, but you should feel better within a few weeks. It won’t take long, but you will have some relapses in there most likely as we’re working because you’ll cheat. You’ll go out to eat something you shouldn’t eat. You will feel sick as can be the next day. You will call me, and I will say, “Good, I’m glad you don’t feel well. Now you know. Don’t eat that stuff.”
Dr. Eric:
Agreed.
Dr. Tom:
This is functional medicine. You have to identify how you are throwing gasoline on the fire. When you do that, and you start to address that, you change the lifestyle.
As clean as your lifestyle is, you’re still scared of what you find. That’s true. That’s true for all of us. When you find out, then you will put the time into learning what I do about it. Then you will start changing it.
Dr. Eric:
Before we wrap it up, can I ask you one more question?
Dr. Tom:
Of course.
Dr. Eric:
You mentioned glyphosate earlier. You also mentioned the Wheat Zoomer. A common question people ask, and I’m sure you get this all the time, too. And you’re in Italy right now. I heard it’s fine to eat wheat/gluten outside of the United States, but not in the United States. Maybe because of the glyphosate that is within the United States. Especially with autoimmune conditions, but I know you recommend everyone to avoid gluten. Does it make a difference as far as gluten?
Dr. Tom:
I understand the question. Happy to answer it. A couple of things. First, I never recommend everyone give up wheat. What I recommend is if you have a health issue, just test to see if your immune system is fighting wheat. Do the right test. It’s called the Wheat Zoomer because you zoom in on a problem. That’s the first thing.
Secondly, glyphosate’s here in Italy. That’s not it. The reason people go to Italy or Europe and eat wheat and don’t have the symptoms they have when they eat wheat in the U.S. is primarily one reason. It is the FODMAPS, the fermentable carbohydrates in wheat, that cause the bloating, gas, abdominal cramps, and pain. When you eat wheat, you feel it. It’s the FODMAPs, not the gluten.
Only 9% of people who have gas, bloating, and abdominal pain from wheat have a problem with gluten. 93% have a problem with FODMAPs in wheat, not the protein in wheat. The immune system fights the proteins. You may get the migraines. You may get the psoriasis. You may get the Hashimoto’s. But you don’t get the gut symptoms from the gluten. You do activate the immune system from gluten, but it’s the FODMAPs that activate the bloating and the gas in the gut.
The wheat in Europe is lower in FODMAPs, but it still has the gluten. When you eat the wheat in Europe, you still activate the immune system and get more thyroid antibodies or brain antibodies or skin, whatever your vulnerability is. You still get all of that regression and activated immune system, but you don’t get the bloating. You think it’s fine to eat wheat in Europe. It’s not.
That’s one of the kinds of detail that I have in my Certified Gluten-free Practitioner course that is online. When our doctors and health coaches take the CGP course, they have it down. They understand all of this. Here are the studies; here is the science. They get it.
I recommend every healthcare practitioner take the CGP course. I always tell them, if there is anything you don’t like about it, if it didn’t give you more information than you ever could have found in the past, we’ll give you a refund. It’s okay. We have never had a request for a refund.
That one answer I just gave you will answer for so many people this concept of it’s safe to eat wheat in Europe. No, it’s not. You will bring back your MS symptoms if you eat wheat in Europe.
Dr. Eric:
Thank you, that makes sense. Thank you for this conversation. Looking forward to having you back after I and many of my followers hopefully do the testing to have you help with the interpretation. Where can people find out more about you, Dr. Tom?
Dr. Tom:
The website is TheDr.com. Don’t spell the word “doctor” out.
Dr. Eric:
Wonderful. Easy enough. Thanks again, Dr. Tom. This was great. I’m sure the listeners learned a lot, and so did I .
Dr. Tom:
Thank you, Dr. Eric. Great to be with you.