YouTube Livestream Q&A Transcript, August 19, 2025

Questions
"Hello! What causes LRP (Laryngopharyngeal Reflux) and would you use PPIs (Proton Pump Inhibitors) for six weeks, or is there something else?"  [0:03:44]

Answer
Well, Jackie, there are all kinds of trouble with the digestive system of Americans because of the corruption I just referred to. We have the genetically modified organisms, GMOs. As an example, one of the biggest ones in the late '50s was the dwarf wheat plant to generate more pounds per acre. So, that genetic modification has been picked up by the human digestive system and is known to produce increased reactivity, autoimmune, gut lining injuries, and cause leaky gut. But the medical industry doesn't care because we make money off of your injury, and we just push you along the chain with drugs and scoping and interventions, and all manner of pharmaceutical profit is made off of your injury from the corrupted food chain. We take all those profits and raise up medical school training programs that become dependent on these pharmaceutical government buy-offs and train up your doctors to only have a drug, an interventional surgical scoping protocol. Now, I've been involved in functional medicine for 40 or 50 years, my father being involved in food research since I was 4 years old in the taste testing labs at Armour Food Research in Chicago. And there I heard with my own ears, even as a child, that they would laugh. The men would laugh in the taste testing chambers, that they could put enough salt or enough butter flavoring or enough sugar, carbohydrates to cover up the corruption of the food from their manipulation, and basically make us eat dog feces, dog shit. I heard that. Even as a preschooler, I heard them talk like this about you and me and our loved ones and our children. And my father was furious. Eventually, he left that company, and he became alarmed and worried, and he became very aggressive since my oldest sister contracted polio back in, I think it was 1950 or 1948. She was a toddler, or you know, before she was a kindergarten kid, she had it. 

And so, he went on a crusade around 1950, working as part of the scientific team that was involved in Armour Food Research with Johns Hopkins. Dr. Hopkins was the local PhD man/scientist there that I remember. And he was committed, my father was committed to looking at the corruption of industrialization of the food systems and how they're harming us. So, by the time I was born, 1954, my father had learned a lot, and by the time I was there as a child, 1958, he was involved in hydrogenation of the fats, so that they would be less reactive with oxygen, so they wouldn't taste so rancid to preserve them in the TV dinners. And he would talk to my mother, I remember, about the corruption of the food and how we had to stay with natural lard, beef tallow, and butter, natural dairy, and avoid the grains because they were genetically modifying them. 

So, all that goes on to say that you're growing up on this injury to the whole whining of your gut from your mouth and your gums and your teeth, all the way down your throat, into your stomach and intestine. This inflammation generates an irritation, and that inflammation from the injury irritation creates a reverse peristalsis. So, if the food is supposed to go downward, you know, just the pumping to go down, sometimes an irritation can generate an impulse to go forward, and you get these refluxes, the gastric slowing down of emptying of the stomach, and this fluid acidic burping up. You listen to your cell phones and your TV commercials, triggering you to go out or send someone out or call a DoorDash for drop-offs of this junk, processed, genetically modified, glyphosated, insecticide, pesticide intercalated foods with high fructose corn syrup, full of chemicals, and you eat it. And then you're eating it too late at night, and it's sitting in your stomach, shutting off growth hormone, repair hormones that should take place in the evening, and that acid seeps up your throat as you lie down, and it inflames your larynx and your hypopharynx and all over the place, it's a disaster. 

So, would I use proton pump inhibitors for six weeks? I am not going to say not to because I'm not treating you. But in general, if you went immediately on a program where you would stop eating all food at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and you would go to a carnivore diet, which has the phospholipids and protein amino acids that we are able to digest easily, whereas plant food was not designed to be digested easily at all. It'd have to be a cow with all the multiple stomachs to have microbiomes in each of the stomachs of a cow to help your microbiome break down the plant foods she eats to turn them into mammalian useful products. We only have one stomach, and we only have hydrochloric acid, protease protein digestive enzymes, and lipase lipid-digesting enzymes for our one stomach. And so, the desirable food for a human being and mammals is meat, fish, chicken, eggs, and dairy. So, if I were someone with this as a challenge, I would not eat after 3:00 in the afternoon. I would go on a carnivore diet. I would find a good functional doctor. I would get some additional digestive enzyme that has hydrochloric acid, proteases, and lipases. I would take it every time I eat, and I would only eat between roughly 7:00 AM and 3:00 PM. And I would raise the head of my bed 15 to 20 degrees. I would drink half my weight in water every day, and I would exercise with weightlifting three times a week and walking briskly 20 minutes a day. That would probably be the most healing thing I've ever seen happen to patient after patient, decades and decades of experience. I would find out your blood type. If you're a blood type A, A's are the type of human beings who have the lowest amount of hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes. It's just a pattern we see in that blood type. So definitely, if your blood type is A, you are at a higher risk for all these problems, and I would take the digestive enzyme. Ortho Molecular makes a wonderful product. It's called Ortho Digestzyme. We use this, nd we relabeled it Digestive Enzymes to try and give it to you a little bit cheaper. 

So, that's what I would do. And whether or not to use PPIs, you have to work that out with your doctor and communicate. If you're going to try to do a natural thing, you should see the benefit within two weeks. And if that does help you, that's an argument for you, maybe of whining proton pump inhibitors. They have long-term damaging effects. And so, short-term use is only recommended. One of the other things you could do is also maybe take, along with your carnivore diet for a month or two, you could use L-glutamine powder, Glutagenics, or Ortho Molecular makes something called GlutaShield. It helps give you the proteins you need to heal the injured protein phospholipid lining of your gut. But if you ate a carnivore diet, it's rich in phospholipids and protein. So, that's the direction I would head that way. 

Question
"What do you think of using nicotine to treat autism?"  [0:14:18]

Answer
I am not an expert on autism. I'm a general practitioner. But I will tell you, I am familiar with a body of research that is developing, talking about how our cells all have receptors for either muscarinic or nicotinic receptors from our brain, especially down to our toes everywhere and how nicotine is found in food naturally, like nightshades, potatoes, and green peppers, and tomatoes and stuff. Nicotine receptors on these sites are associated with better neurologic-cognitive functions. And so, I would just remind you, you should know, if there's autism being discussed, find a good functional doctor who knows how to check the blood type of the child. A, B, O, or AB type blood. The A and the AB, these children need a lot of protein and fat to build up the lining of the cell membranes and the nerve myelin sheath, and therefore, they will have calmer and better cognitive function for the templates of nerve transmission, one nerve to another. But that would be the direction I would go. I don't think you're going to bring harm to a child because nicotine is naturally found in food. I wouldn't know the dosage. I would say an adult, 150-pound adult, is well supplied with a chewable gum, anywhere from 2 to 4 mg, 6 mg a day. So, if you're talking about a toddler, I certainly do not know of any studies that have looked at this, although I have heard episodically in the literature anecdotally. In other words, these aren't studies or these aren't recommended science articles that I've read. Rather, they're anecdotal, where the child was allowed to have gum to chew with maybe 1 or 2 mg of nicotine in it, and they seem to perform much better. 

So, that's the best I can say. I'm not against it because nicotine is a naturally occurring substance. We eat every day, all of us do, in our vegetables, and it's in tomatoes, tomato paste, and tomato juice. But nightshades also have certain antinutrients in them that are inflammatory. So, I don't know that I would promote eating tomatoes, potatoes, green peppers, or eggplant for that reason. So, it's a mixed bag of information, but I am familiar with it. And I do use nicotine myself. I take it because of the research that I have seen on this against the ACE-receptor angiotensin converting enzyme receptor on our cells that have been attacked by viruses such as the Sars-CoV-2, generating the COVID challenge. And so, the smokers with nicotine did very well as an observation. And so, those of us who take nicotine lozenges, this bottle has 4 mg per lozenge, and you can suck on one of these. I get this at Walgreens, and I usually use one a day because I'm in my 70s. I'm 72, and I have people here all the time coughing and sneezing on me. And so, I want to protect my nicotinic and muscarinic receptors, so that these ACE receptors are not challenged. And that's the best I can talk to you about my familiarity with that. There is a chiropractor out there by the name of Dr. Ardis. He has a YouTube series, Dr. Ardis, on nicotine and other nutritional topics. So, he's the most well-cited on this, and you might look to him for it. There are some other independent biochemists, and I believe cardiologists, who are looking into the application of this for cardiovascular and pulmonary benefits because we did see the smokers do very well during the alleged pandemic. 

Question
"Hi Dr. E., is it possible for TSH to get elevated (TSH 5.12) in a healthy teenager after an illness? She was not fully recovered when we did the lab, but no elevated WBC. She is still recovering from a swollen side in her throat on the right side. Tonsils were removed a year and a half ago. Seeing the ENT soon."  [0:19:25]

Answer
Is it possible for Thyroid Stimulating Hormone to get elevated (5.12) in a healthy teenager after an illness? And the answer is yes. Yeah, I would not make any clinical or lifestyle decisions based on a Stimulating Hormone. On a random sample, fasting thyroid-stimulating hormone of a 5.12, that's just too potentially within normal ranges that I wouldn't get worried about it. 

Question
"What causes chronic yeast infection-like symptoms, where the only thing that helps is miconazole. But then the symptoms keep coming back, and it almost seems systemic. Recent GYN said buy online test C D to figure it out because their testing was limited."  [0:20:22]

Answer
Well, the answer is because it likely is systemic. The number one thing you have to do is find out what your fasting insulin level is, and you cannot go by the lab ranges because they are lying to you. They are lousy liars because vaginal yeast and all immune dysfunction are associated with an average higher blood sugar range, and therefore, insulin will be higher on average. If you're looking to compare yourself with a population, you're comparing yourself with a population that's getting more cancer, more heart disease, more diabetes, more degenerative mental disorders, more cardiovascular problems than any other population here in America. So, I don't think you want to look at your lab ranges at all as a reference range. You have to try and find a doctor who understands that and does the personal homework to try and find out what normal ranges of blood sugar, and yes, insulin back in the 1950s were, and we could do those assays. Then I would get the book by Dr. Yudkin, who wrote the book Pure, White and Deadly, when he was pointing out that the cause of heart disease is likely the sudden wealth of American lifestyles and the availability of processed foods more easily, such as chocolates and sugar, and confectionery, not butter and meat. So, yes, you have to understand that an insulin level that's above 4 fasting is on the higher side. A blood sugar fasting above 85 is not good, a triglyceride level above 75 is not good, and a hemoglobin A1C above 5.2 or 5.3 is not good. 

Now, all the standard doctors are going to say, Oh, Dr. Ellithorpe is way too picky. She's too narrow. And yet, I don't get the cancers, the heart attacks, the Alzheimer's, and the diabetes. I don't get these diseases here in my patients as a general rule. I can't even think of one. When I do see it, it's someone who's already come from an older lifestyle into our presence that has developed it. It'd be extremely rare; I can't think of one. Anyway, you just have to understand your doctors have been raised in a biased box to support the medicine paradigm, the big pharma, the big hospital industry, they have no concept or capabilities of thinking of their own private practice and living on their own hard work and their own business. So, that's where the problem is. You have to get people involved in their own private practice where they put down roots to make a commitment to a population of people, where they will nurse and watch over those people for decades, and that's a great deal of accountability. Because if you're in a place, even for 10 years, you're going to see people who either say thumbs up on your advice or thumbs down on your advice. When you're there 20, 25 years, like I've been here, or more, then you start seeing generations, and then you start seeing real impact. So you want to find a doctor who has put their shingle up in their private practice and they've put their roots down in a commitment to your community, your health, your future, and your families. That's the only doctor I would go see. Nothing from the hospitalist system or the mega-pharma hospital industry. No, not those people at all. Because when they're tired of their salary or some little dispute, they'll move. They'll move on. They'll forget about you. I go home at night, often thinking about and making home visits not infrequently to my patients. Why? Because they are like family to me. And all that was over the yeast infection issue. 

So what is it? You probably have a systemic excess of carbohydrate, insulin, triglyceride, hemoglobin A1C, and that is suppressing your immune system, and that is allowing the sugars and the hypoxic, poorer blood supply in a person with higher average sugars, which your corrupt medical system calls average or normal, and that feeds the yeast growth. So that's the direction to head. Find a good functional doctor who will hold you accountable and help you learn how to avoid all processed packaged foods. Stop eating late. Try to learn to stop eating around 3:00 in the afternoon, if you're younger, no later than 5:00 PM, to do exercise regularly, drink enough water, and stop using the mouth as an entertainment hole. Anything that goes down this throat has to be fun and exciting and tasty and full of flavor. Well, sorry, that's not what the mouth was meant for. 

Question
"I'm 71 and have what I think are hot flashes, or I'm just hot. Hysterectomy in 2018. Could I take estrogen? What test would indicate what is wrong? This is crazy. Thank you!"  [0:27:04]

Answer
Well, most likely you could. They don't know the exact cause of hot flashes, the climacteric symptomology of menopause/postmenopausal symptoms. They don't know the cause. They think it's a vasoactive reflex of the blood vessels. And I know of no reason that you couldn't take natural human bioidentical estradiol with progesterone because God always meant for the two to be together. And if you're a healthy woman, see your local functional doctor. If you are obese, overweight, have high blood sugar, high insulin, high triglycerides, and high hemoglobin A1C, then you're not as healthy. And the old research on synthetic estrogens and horse equine estrogens that were used in the '50s and '60s that were associated with so many bad side effects and blood clots, these are the same old wives' tales that are being carried through now 50 years later into risk for blood clotting and cancers that really are not fair to ascribe because the original warnings side effects were based on these synthetic horse equine estrogens. But the thing that makes a woman have a higher risk for heart disease is usually associated with a loss of her natural estradiol and the increased average blood sugar, average insulin, average triglyceride, hemoglobin A1C, obesity, inactivity, lack of drinking water, lack of enzymes with aging, and staying up too late at night. These things, and eating too late at night, are associated with inflammation. Inflammation generates platelet aggregation, clotting, and then strokes and all manner of diseases for everyone. 

So, if I see a woman, I always ask, How much water do you drink? Are you taking your enzymes? Are you exercising? Are you eating late? Are you drinking? Are you eating a low-carb diet? We check these things, and we give natural bioidentical, human bioidentical estradiol and either cyclic or continuous progesterone. We monitor it within a few months, a couple of three months, to make sure these are being tolerated, that the woman is using systemic enzymes so the inflammation markers are lower, because when you start hormones as an adult woman post-menopausally, your breasts are mature and full-sized. When you're a little girl and you're developing breasts, you have tiny little breast buds, and as estradiol and then progesterone start cycling, there's very little breast tissue. And so, the tenderness, and what we call breast pain (mastalgia), is very minimal in a young girl. But in a woman starting it after she's been around it, she'll be having breast tenderness. So, she has to drink plenty of water, be low-carb, exercise, and use systemic enzymes like my Vitalzym, Vascuzyme, or what we call Systemic Enzymes on a fasting stomach every morning or every evening or both to get you through the startup of natural hormones, and it takes about three months. So, yes, I think that's the direction that you should go. So find a doctor who'll help you do that. 

Question
"What would you recommend to treat varicose veins that are bulging? I have them mostly on only one leg, and more have appeared recently. The new veins have caused sharp pains sometimes."  [0:31:56]

Answer
I am going to make a bold statement and say, I think you're having a vitamin C deficiency. And I don't go by the ranges that the standard, which I think is a corrupt medical system, calls deficiency. You need vitamin C to help the elastin collagen locking, the locking in of the fibrin and elastin to make your blood vessels strong, your skin strong, and your aorta and all your blood vessels healthy instead of them falling apart. You need to eat a rich protein diet, low sugar, plenty of water, regular exercise, not intense exercise but regular strength training, and some aerobic, protein-rich, and you need to supplement with vitamin C and systemic enzymes, and that would be my recommendation. In the meantime, I would use support socks. But vitamin C is what we call localized scurvy. In fact, there is a doctor, Dr. Thomas Levy, both a medical doctor and a lawyer, who has been promoting intravenous high-dose vitamin C for decades. I know him, I don't know him on a personal basis, but I have talked and been at lectures where I've both lectured and he's been lecturing, and I have spoken with him. I've read his book on antioxidants, and he promotes high doses of vitamin C. I take vitamin C here on a routine basis. Either I go once a month minimum for a high dose vitamin C with chelation, or/I take my vitamin C buffered C capsules, little capsules, and I unscrew them and then I open them up into my mouth. I'll do that before I go to bed tonight, and I'll take that with the second half of my Juice Plus dosing, along with a lot of water, so that I don't develop varicose veins and that my skin support and wrinkling will be minimal with aging at age 72. So that's the direction I'm going to go and say that you need your hormones, you need your vitamin C, the healthy protein, the low carb, and that kind of program. Hopefully that's helpful. 

Question
"I had chronic yeast infection when I ate a high carb (I ate only healthy carbs), but when I switched to whole food, low carb keto, no more yeast infection."  [0:35:03]

Answer
There you go. Now, you could say, What is a highly complex carbohydrate? That is a type of vegetable where you get your carbohydrates from the plant kingdom, but it's got so much fiber in it, it doesn't pack in starch like a potato, a yam, a beet, peas, or corn, cooked carrots, or cooked beets. These are all mostly root vegetables, jam-packed full of starch, which is essentially just polymerized chains connected link after link of glucose sugar that you break up, and you get the high sugar dosing. So, a complex carb would be something like broccoli, asparagus, green beans, Brussels sprouts, and some greens like spinach. But in general, I eat very little of this. I eat largely eggs, bacon and ham, beef, chicken, and some fish and eggs, lots of eggs, and raw dairy. That's largely what I eat so that I keep the sugars down. And that's exactly what you're describing. You kept your sugars down, and it turned out that the yeast infection went away. I have to say, praise God. I've never had a symptom/problem like that ever in my life. But I was raised by a father in food research in a meat-packing company, and I largely ate meat, fish, pork, and eggs all my life.

Question
"If I am going to do the carnivore diet, should we be doing our Juice Plus also?"  [0:37:19]

Answer
I do the Juice Plus with my carnivore-largely diet. For instance, when I put a roast in, I'm always going to cut up onions to kind of sit on top or, you know, put my beef chuck roast on top of the sliced onions so it's not sticking to the pan or the roast base, and I'll wind up eating some onions or some mushrooms that way. I'll have a few bites of broccoli or green beans. But essentially, if I'm eating anything, it's largely the onion, and I'm largely carnivorous. So, the sugar, fruit sugar, and starches in Juice Plus have been taken out, and you're just left with the polyphenols, the antioxidant plant phytonutrients, as the condensation left over after the water has been evaporated out and the sugars. So, that's the good thing about Juice Plus. So I get all the plant, you know, phytonutrients that I need, that are associated with such good research on anti-aging.

Question
"Do you take Juice Plus as two doses or all at once in the morning?"  [0:38:59]

Answer
I use it in two doses. I use one at night. You know, the more we're researching antioxidants and cell metabolism, God didn't create free radicals, reactive oxidants, species as all bad. For instance, your lysosomes are inside of yourself. They're kind of like an "acid factory." And when your white blood cell phagocytizes and eats up a bacteria, it eats it inside of it by digesting it with these lysosomes that have all that acid and free radical products in it to kill off a bacteria or something. So, I am not against free radical species. I'm against living a lifestyle in which you generate so many radical species from an inactive, dehydrated, high-carb, late-night eating, processed food, glyphosated, genetically modified pesticide/herbicide, heavy metal contaminated lifestyle, and you're angry and bitter all the time. These are then excess free radical-generating activities, and that's what's harmful if you don't control them. 

Question
"So if I'm doing the carnivore diet, should we be doing our Juice Plus also?"  [0:40:53]

Answer
I would say yes. Yes. Yes. I do it. That's the answer. 

Question
"A dear sister in Christ is dealing with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). She is 65, maintains a healthy diet, avoids sugar, drinks plenty of water, limits her carbohydrate intake, and exercises. Her recent angiogram shows 30% stenosis. Can you offer any suggestions for additional care?"  [0:41:07]

Answer
That's a mouthful for a disease. That's just the names of the guys who were part and parcel of giving it a symptom complex identification, and then all three men, their names were put together to identify it. And all this is usually an age-related neuropathy, a nerve disorder of the peripheral nerves, and our extremities get the coldness and the last pump, the last amount of oxygen to the tip of your finger before it comes back as a vein. And so, you're going to get more free radical generation, and that is going to generate more microscopic cell membrane hits of damage, and your myelin sheath surrounding the lining of your nerves will be injured. And those breaches to the lining covering every nerve are like the insulating wrap on a wire to your lamp, and if it's broken, it can generate damage, burn your house down. So, these damaged nerves are usually associated with the hand and foot, like you have a higher arch foot, like, you know, you look like you're more in a high heel all the time with your foot. And then, what you have to do is understand if the nerve sheath is made out of phospholipid fats, then you better eat a diet rich in phospholipids, but your corrupt government, your corrupted medical schools and pharmacies have generated a teaching protocol that ignores all this, and tells you to eat their food pyramid foods, that dam meats and egg yolks, and they are the richest source of helping provide cell membrane health so that the intracellular metabolism and activities last longer and healthier. So, you're going to have to switch to almost a carnivore diet for healing for your sister. If she were seeing me, that's what I would do: immediately put her on a carnivore diet, because we're made of fat and protein. We're not made of fruits and vegetables. All of this is protein and fat and water I'm squeezing. Yeah, there are some minerals and there are some micronutrients there, but structurally we're made of protein and fat. 

Then the next thing I would find out is her blood type, because if she's a blood type A, and if she's already 65, she's going to need help with digesting food, as all of us with age need to help with digestion because it slows down with aging. The transit time slows down. Gas, bloating, reflux, inflammation, heartburn, aspiration pneumonias, erosion of your dental, and receding gums, all of this happens with aging. So, find out if she's a blood type A, because clearly, she needs to find that out and needs digestive enzymes. Then the next thing is she needs a rich, more carnivore-like diet. Stop eating at 3:00. Sleep with the head of the bed elevated at a 15 to 20-degree angle from the plane of the bed, and use systemic enzymes on an empty stomach when she awakens in the morning, last thing when she goes to bed. Put her on antioxidants to try and sop up all the free radicals that her poor lifestyle and the corrupted foods that have been marketed to her to eat have damaged her with. She has to drink half her weight in ounces of water. She has to do exercise, stretching, and weight resistance/weight-bearing exercises. Whether it's uncomfortable or not, she has to do it, stretching and resistance training, to build up the muscle tone, to help the signals reactivate the muscles in the feet and the hands, and the whole body. It helps the immune system, it helps the circulation, it helps healing, and it helps remove waste material. She'll need to be on a good vitamin D, a methylated B complex, and an excellent multimineral, usually with chelated minerals that are from Albion. The company that makes the best absorbed minerals is Albion. She needs a multimineral with selenium, magnesium, and calcium, and these items are in it. And then she has to consider using EDTA chelation, which will help reduce free radical damage, improve microcirculation, and improve the circulation through the stimulation of nitric oxide production. Those are the directions that I would head her in. Find a good doctor who can do that for her.

Question
"I'm reading that calcium supplements can cause kidney stones and heart calcification if not taken with K3. Most doctors don't advise calcium supplements for osteoporosis! What supplements do you recommend for postmenopausal women who have bad DEXA scans? Can Osteoporosis be reversed with these supplements alone? Thanks!"  [0:46:54]

Answer
I have never ever in my life recommended supplemental calcium. Well, thank God they're finally catching up with physiology. Well, I would supplement them with their bone-building signals, such as estradiol and progesterone, weight-bearing exercise, or weightlifting resistance. I would recommend the high-protein, low-carb diet, drinking half her weight in water. You hear the redundancy? See, God knows how to fix everything. He needs these building blocks to do it. And since we're made out of amino acid proteins, fatty acid fats, we'd better be eating fatty acid-rich, amino acid-rich proteins and fats. We better exercise, we better drink water, and all these are naturally occurring in animal products and water, and we should not eat late. 

Can osteoporosis be reversed? Absolutely. I have 80- and 90-year-old women who have normal bone densities, without any drugs. Vitamin D with K2. But you can't accept the corrupted levels that they tolerate. Gradually, I'm seeing that all doctors have been saying this without changing our stance at all, and now, finally, doctors are admitting that levels of 1000 IU or 2000 are way too low. Instead, they should be outside, getting some exercise, weightlifting, taking more like 5,000 to 10,000 IU, and I have many women on 20,000, including myself. 

Question
"Hello, Dr. E. What do you think of using Curaderm BEC5 cream for: basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas? Thank you!"  [0:49:11]

Answer
I know it's largely an aspirin-type product topically, and often they'll put salicylic acid on anything. Especially if you've ever seen horses and their hooves and their infections there, you'll see them put this white powder there, that's salicylic acid, and it helps dissolve away the bad scarring and malformation of the foot hoof and helps to be an antiseptic/antiviral/antibacterial. So, this is largely applying aspirin, but I know there's something else in there. These are a type of biochemical plant extract that are associated with inhibiting cell rapid division. And so, this is where it gets its additional alleged anti-cancer effect, by disrupting either the sugar metabolism of the rapidly dividing cell and/or tubule, microtubule formation, I believe. I think it is what it is. This is, you know, long over in my head, but that's what I think Curaderm BEC5 is. I've had patients bring it in. 

But again, you have to ask the question, why did you get it in the first place? So, what's your vitamin D level? What's your insulin level? What are your triglyceride and your fasting blood sugar levels? Hemoglobin A1c? If you're taking food and a diet that is packing in the insulin and blood sugars just short of the diagnosis of diabetes, well, you have all this insulin-stimulating growth. So, why use this when you're eating/firing the engines of growth to your skin and other tumors with your highly processed convenience diet of fast food that's promoting all this bad cell growth? So, I'm not going to endorse Curaderm BEC5 until I see someone discipline their mouth to take personal responsibility for how much water, how late they're eating at night, how much starch, bread, pasta, rice, beans, carbs they're eating, let alone sugar, crackers, and all that kind of stuff, ice cream, candies, chocolates, whatever. First, you do that, and then you can bring up some exotic plant extract of which there are all kinds God has put in the world to help inhibit abnormal cell excess, rapid division. A good night's sleep helps stop excess cell division. Exercise stops excess cell division. 

Question
"What supplements affecting estrogen receptors are safe to use for someone not allowed to use bioidentical hormones? Have you heard of Pueraria Mirifica (0:53:08)? Are there others that are safe to use without spiking our estrogen?"  [0:52:54]

Answer
Well, these are phytoestrogens. These are plants that have estrogen-like behavior. Part of their molecular structure has part of the imagery three-dimensionally of estradiol, estriol, or estrone. Those are the three human female hormones. And so, you're basically taking a plant that is generally considered to have a mild stimulation on the estrogen receptor. And how they identify mild needs to be better quantified or described in the scientific literature, because basically, you know, if you drink alcohol, wine, you're going to get far more estrogen produced by your body than you probably want. And eating soy and flaxseed and various plants is going to have these plant phytoestrogens, with soy being the most noteworthy. Dong Quai, Black Cohosh, flaxseed, these are various types of estradiol-mimicking plant molecules that we call phytoestrogens. Now, I don't buy into the argument that estrogen is causative for cancer. I buy into the fact that our lazy, under-hydrated, dehydrated lifestyle, insulin-stimulating rice bean, cracker, coffee, oatmeal, bagel, pizza crust, sugar, fruit sugar, juicing, starchy pasta, sandwich, crepe, bagel-type diet stimulates insulin and hormone, far, far more powerful in stimulating fat and tumor growth than any estradiol ever has been known to do. But if we were to get money from our tax dollars, if that's what you want done with your tax dollars, then maybe we could finally get some nutritional research done where it really matters, instead of all the pharmaceuticals that make a few handful of men and some women filthy rich on their pharmaceutical patents. 

So, what supplements are safe to use for someone not using bioidentical hormones? You know, I think the best thing to do is be a carnivore if you're afraid of any estradiol effect, because a lot of plants have phytoestrogens in them. I don't know of any one "safe" because you have to extract all the complicating factors of how much sugar. What's your insulin, what's your triglyceride, what's your hemoglobin A1c, what's your fasting glucose, you know. That's much more significant, and certainly alcohol. 

Question
"When considering minor surgeries and the recovery sounds much worse and riskier than the procedure itself, would you live with the condition? E.g., recovery from a hemorrhoid being cut under anesthesia. The recovery, possible infection, and long healing. Maybe better just to live with it? I am healthy, 72 years young."  [0:56:49]

Answer
Absolutely, especially the older I get. If I'm not going to die of something, I'm probably not going to do anything about it because it's harder to heal, and the downtime of the surgery will steal from me valuable muscle volume while I'm incapacitated from doing my weightlifting and training. The surgical anesthesia and the drugs, and typically the antibiotics they give you, all these things add up to potentially having more effect on you than something benign that you're not going to die from. And so, you need to weigh that, and ask your doctor what studies look at doing nothing. What percent of those who did nothing suffered any significant adverse effects compared to your surgical recommendation? And of course, they won't quote that because they don't ever study that because nobody makes money on that kind of data. But ask them anyway, just to put egg on their face. 

Question
"I read that extremely low testosterone promotes osteoporosis in men. I have osteoporosis, very low testosterone, and prostate cancer. Not a desirable combination, right?"  [0:58:05]

Answer
That's correct. Then you have to ask, at your age and with your comorbidities or whatever your situation is, you have to ask your doctors, what scientific data can you quote that testosterone usage will be known to aggravate my history of prostate cancer, because there's many doctors that will say testosterone, many urologists and oncologists are starting to say, and an increasing amount, that its usage with prostate cancer is valuable and helpful to the quality of life of the patient at hand. So, ask your doctors that question. 

Question
"Hi, Dr. Rita. Do you have an opinion about regenerative "PRP" (Platelet-Rich Plasma)  therapy for stenosis in the spine as an alternative to surgery?"  [0:59:06]

Answer
Stenosis of the spine. So, every vertebra on top of one another has to have some holes. Like, see right here, there's a hole right where my little finger is, that's where a nerve will come out of two vertebrae with a spinal cord running. And let's say that nerve comes out and with age and rubbing and lack of water and calcium deposits from microinflammation, from a high carb diet, lack of hydration, staying up too late, alcohol use, all these kind of things, calcium deposits there, so that that hole that needs to be right there where the nerve will come out gets kind of stuck with a lot of calcification, called central stenosis/spinal cord stenosis. Is surgery valuable? I would immediately go on a carnivore diet, lower the sugar, inflammation, drink half your weight in water, systemic enzymes five or six times a day on an empty stomach, stretching, and modest weight training regularly done three times a week. Don't eat past 3 o'clock. Take your Clinician's Preference Oil, parent omegas, and your vitamin D with K2 and multimineral. And do some chelation therapy with high-dose vitamin C. Bring inflammation, insulin, sugar, triglyceride, hemoglobin A1C numbers, Hs-CRP, SED rate checking, watch these numbers all improve, and see if your pain goes away. 

The angiogram showed 30% stenosis. Well, you know, you can probably improve this. Of course, they won't do any studies with lifestyle changes because it's multifactorial, and nobody might make money on it. But only those patients who do those things that get great, they just call them anecdotal. But I've lived 45 years of practicing functional medicine, and they all do better. 

Question
"What are your thoughts on coffee, caffeine, and the matcha tea trend? Thanks."  [1:01:42]

Answer
That's green tea. Green tea has EGCG in it. It's a powerful plant polyphenol antioxidant associated with many systemic benefits. Caffeine is in the green tea matcha as well. Coffee ground beans, good ones, are also associated with many health benefits. I don't see that there's a conflict between the two. I think using one or the other or enjoying both would be just beneficial. 

Question
"Hello Dr. E., do supplements made of actual food like fruits and vegetables, such as Juice Plus and others, have the lectins, phytic acid, oxalates, etc. removed from them? Thank you!"  [1:02:22]

Answer
Yes. In general, the vegetables I know in Juice Plus are essentially the meat of the food. I mean, the bulk, the pulp of an apple, a peach, and an orange, and all these things, these are the structural proteins that are the lectins of the vegetable. Usually, it's the vitamin C in the juice of the lemon, the lime, or the orange that we want, the vitamin C phytonutrient. These are the phytonutrients that we extract when we get the dehydration and the pulp and fiber removal in Juice Plus. So the lectins are removed.

Question
"Alternative to allopurinol and arthritis medicine."  [1:03:23]

Answer
Well, if you have gout, you know, you would need to be with a good functional doctor who will check your weight, your blood type, how much water you're drinking, half your weight in ounces, what time you stop eating, insulin, triglyceride, hemoglobin A1c, fasting blood sugar, and uric acid level. And the phytochemicals in cherries are associated with reducing uric acid production. But I'll tell you, the fructose and the high-fructose corn syrup in all the American foods flavoring, the high-fructose corn syrup is in everything. It promotes uric acid production in all cell metabolism. So, you'll get a higher fatty liver production, higher triglycerides, higher insulin, and higher uric acid production. So that's why the treatment really should be more of a functional doctor-monitored uric acid, extremely low diet, avoiding all fruits and fructose diet. That's the direction I would go. Of course, taking plenty of water and probably taking systemic enzymes.