YouTube Livestream Q&A Transcript, September 10th, 2024

Question

“I’m doing the chelation IV treatment. Would this have a positive effect on my memory and word recall? I don’t seem to have to search for my words since using this treatment and just wondering if there’s a correlation. Thanks!”  [0:02:30]

Answer

Thank you very much for asking this question and giving us an update on your state of health and well-being. The answer is, indeed, yes. Chelation therapy is a means for improving the microcirculation, not only to your arms and legs and heart cardiovascular system, it also includes the circulation to your brain. And when you have better perfusion, you'll have better cell membrane repair to all of your central nervous system, and this will enhance your recall, your memory, and your sharpness. I'm in my seventies and practicing full time and I have to stay up on a lot of things. I also think being better hydrated, being on natural hormones, getting good sleep, doing exercise, eating a low carb diet, eating a diet that is the whole food, avoiding processed food, not eating late, all these various things and in fact, Systemic Enzymes with certain nutraceuticals helps with your memory as well. But indeed, that is a benefit that we see, and I've seen for decades with EDTA chelation. We have patients who came here with the chief complaint of memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer's, who were already on medications like Aricept and certain other memory-promoting medications. We have done all the things I suggested in my statement so far, along with chelation therapy two to three times even a week, and we have had these people turn around and not lose their jobs or not lose their ability to function. I suppose if it's terribly far along, there's a point at which there's no return. But the vast majority of people with early onset dementia, and Alzheimer's, are starting their medications, these are the people who especially should be doing EDTA chelation therapy. That's ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, and we use the calcium disodium EDTA. 

Question

“I'm confused about which probiotic I should be taking. There is the regular probiotic and then the Probiotic 100. I do have Crohn's, so would one be better for me than the other? And how many do I take? Thank you!”  [0:05:31]

Answer

It's a little more difficult to say without knowing more about your state of health, just to say you have a history of Crohn's. We would want to look at someone who has done a complete digestive stool analysis. That's where they do this broad evaluation of the digestive factors, the short-chain fatty acids, the predominant flora, the dysbiotic, the imbalance flora, the yeast, the white blood cell, and the inflammatory components. We would want to look at your blood inflammatory status, your biomarkers, any other comorbidities, your blood sugar levels, insulin, and your total white blood cell count. We would want to look at many things such as this, along with then making a decision about what probiotics, and what prebiotics to take. In general, bifidobacteria, and lactobacillus, these need to be significant in the numbers in your blood count, which are screened on a complete digestive stool analysis. And as we learn more and more about the thousands and multi-trillions of bacteria and flora that are in the contents of the bowel, we're starting to see that bifidobacteria, when it's too low, that's we saw studies by Dr. Sabine wrote the book, ‘Let's Talk SH’T.’ That's the title of her book. Dr. Sabine. And she noted that during the alleged COVID time period, those that had low bifidobacteria were the ones who were susceptible. So in a family unit, for instance, if someone was diagnosed with COVID and they got their stool sample, they would be low in bifidobacteria. But those in the family who, let's say, had high bifidobacteria, did not succumb to the infection. 

So these and other probiotics we're learning are very, very important. So, we like to pick a probiotic that's rich in bifidobacteria, of which Ortho Molecular's Probiotic is rich in that, as well as the lactobacillus and some other strains. The Probiotic 100 is just a higher dosing really of these, as far as billions delivered per serving. There are other probiotics out there. Dr. Ohhira’s Essential Probiotics tends to have some of gram-negative strains in it. And then there are other probiotics that are spore-forming, Ortho Spore IG is another one. 

So, we want to look at where you're at in your Crohn's disease to come to a decision. If you're doing well and you're just pondering this without any severe symptoms, I would suggest that you take one of the Ortho Biotic because the company matters, the people who make this, you have to have high quality. This is a difficult thing to produce. So, Ortho Molecular has high standards, and they put out their Ortho Biotic called probiotic, and then they put out the Ortho Spore IG. I would take it one of each and that would be my maintenance. If you have any exposure to antibiotics or illness, I would maybe double or even triple the dosing during a period of stress in your life, and the only time I would take Ohhira’s Essential Probiotics is if we found that there are some of the gram negatives that seem to be diminished as well. Hopefully, that helps you. 

Question

“What studies have been done regarding the effect of having bypass gastric surgery and having an effect on chronic fatigue syndrome, if any?”  [0:10:51]

Answer

I don't know if I could call to mind a study in particular. I'm very familiar with gastric bypass surgery there have been modifications to the type of gastric bypass surgery over the years, but essentially, it's doing surgery on the stomach and making a much smaller pouch for food to come in so the volume of food is severely restricted, you cannot take the volume of food in that you had before. And then this deletes a certain portion of the volume of the stomach, and it then, so to say, skips over some portion of the digestive tract. When that happens, you can have certain mineral and nutrient malabsorption syndromes. There's a thing called the dumping syndrome. There also are problems with scarring or adhesions, partial or complete obstructions, and the need for redoing surgeries. 

So, if anything that I've seen over the many decades that I've practiced, and they've been doing gastric bypass surgery, at least to my experience, since the 1980s, my suggestion is that it is the nutrient vitamin malabsorption that is associated with the fatigue that often and how often would that be? I'm going to say my knowledge of this is in general that most people maintain their weight loss, at least about 50 percent keep weight off to a significant degree. So, the majority tends to be successful as far as weight loss. 

The number two thing is maybe 15 percent to 20, maybe 25, suffer a syndrome of some kind of fatigue, and that I usually attribute to the poor nutritive absorption that the patient suffers from the decreased volume, the difficulty trying to get in a good nutrient absorbable amount in such a small pouch for a stomach. In particular, it's very difficult to get phospholipids from meat, chicken, fish, pork, and other foods, but especially meat, one of the most nutrient-dense foods. Then the blood type matters because the secretion of digestive enzymes and acids and then the need for those acids and the production of intrinsic factors for certain B vitamins and absorption becomes diminished. So, you can see a cascade of problems develop. I would give my patients a methyl B complex, rich in thiamine, the multivitamins. Our thiamine has 50 mg of thiamine in it, in our TLC Methyl B Complex or Ortho Molecular’s Methyl B Complex, also has 50 mg of thiamin. So, a very good dosing of the B vitamins.

Then I would probably supplement with some amino acid powder, like Perfect Aminos, with the branch chain amino acids, and I would have them take a Digestive Enzyme with it. I would also have them use the IVs to get an IV of nutrients that bypasses the stomach as well so that they recover quicker, they get their energy back, they get all the B vitamins. 

We just had our clinician's meeting today and I brought up the fact that Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, he was a medical doctor from Cleveland Clinic, a pediatrician, was practicing since the 1940s, I would say, 1940s or 50s.  And he just died, I guess, a few weeks ago at 100 years old, and he was very popular in the study of B vitamins and energy production in the human body. He promoted, especially the knowledge of thiamin. Thiamin is vitamin B and thiamin is a co-factor in many of the steps that it takes for foods the byproducts of digesting fats and proteins, amino acids, and glucose to get into the cell engine, the mitochondria. You have to have thiamine as a key cofactor in the transport of these energy elements in our diet to get into the mitochondria to go through the tricarboxylic Krebs cycle pathway to generate ATPs. And there are many sites that are needed. So, if you are low you may not know that you are vitamin B1, vitamin-deficient to a severe degree to be diagnosed with the disease, Beriberi. But you may be suffering pre-clinical symptoms of Beriberi as chronic skin rashes, seborrheic dermatitis, anxiety, palpitations, male digestion, reflux, constipation, diarrhea, and what else?

Tingling, paresthesias, mood, anxiety, all the things that are associated with a diagnosis of a real thiamine B1 deficiency, which is dementia, dermatitis, and diarrhea. The three Ds of a thiamine 1 deficiency. And you don't have to have all those, and your doctors may not even think of this at all, no matter what specialty, if you're seeing a cardiologist for palpitations or you're seeing a dermatologist for your skin, or you're seeing a neurologist for your tingling, or you're seeing a psychiatrist for your mood and anxiety and your mood swings. All that can be precipitated with maldigestion, and this is not infrequently from post-surgery from gastric bypass. 

So, I would try and find a good functional medicine doctor who understands these principles and can get you with a nutrient-producing facility like Ortho Molecular, there are probably others, but over the years, I have visited several times Ortho Molecular. I know the owners and the scientists there. Very highly moral, ethical people, and their quality is very, very good. Therefore, I use their Methyl B Complex, and we have our TLC Methyl B Complex, and I would be taking that, along with a Digestive Enzyme. When I eat, I would take the Perfect Amino Acid Powder. I would take the mineral TLC methylated Albion amino acids. I would take the D with K2, fat-soluble vitamins, and that would be my beginning prescription for someone on a gastric bypass with chronic fatigue syndrome. Why? Because if you can't get energy out of your mitochondria, and remember, I think I've spoken in the past couple of visits about the infrared red light therapy or the rising morning sunrise, long waves of light that go through right through our skull and our bones, our eyes and our clothes to reach the structured water enveloping every cell of our body, to increase that exclusion zone that hugs every cell membrane, which is a negatively charged water area that has a positive proton layer next to it that creates a polarity for energy in the human cell, the plant cell, and the animal cell. So, we have both water and sunlight and healthy mitochondria all to help us make good energy. You need to work with doctors who have a multidisciplinary approach to the concept of why are you tired. Hopefully, that helps you, Barbara. 

Question 

“Is there any downside to using creatine as part of my daily diet?”  [0:21:29]

Answer

And my answer is no. I've been around functional/natural nutritional medicine for decades now, and I know people who have taken hefty amounts, 10 grams a day for years and years and years, and they've done well. If they had kidney disease or liver disease from some other cause, I'd probably watch them more closely, but even those who have challenging comorbidities have done well with extra creatine to build up muscle mass because, look, you're not going to get well if you don't move and exercise your muscles. So, I'm going to say there's no downside to my knowledge of using creatine as a part of your daily diet for years and years and years, and I can specifically say 10 or 12 grams easily should be fine for long-term use.

Question

“Hi Dr. E. Dr. Meric and my integrative GI are treating me for SIBO & SIFO. Just confirmed mold in my home and need to remediate. Can you recommend an integrative pediatrician to help detox my kids? Would you recommend chelation for mold mycotoxins generally? Any other advice is appreciated!”  [0:22:41]

Answer

No, I don't know of any integrative pediatrician, sorry. You have to remember, from my point of view, ever since I was 7 years old, that's 64 years ago, I have been around EDTA chelation people, and I started receiving EDTA chelation when I was 16. So, I am going to tell you, that I have such tremendous respect for what calcium disodium EDTA does for microcirculation, aeration, the reduction of acidity, the reduction of oxidative stress from heavy metals, allowing the immune system recovery and better performance to get rid of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and molds. And so, I am trying to remind you also that the exposure to heavy metals when a mother gives birth to their child, if we take a sample of the cord blood from the placenta, the concentration of serum lead or serum arsenic or serum aluminum or serum mercury will be almost 50 percent higher in that cord blood. So the baby has become something that mothers detox into. So every mother will shed her heavy metal burden to some degree into the child, which means the beginning/start level of exposure to heavy metals is in birth and development/conception. So, I really believe that pediatricians need to take this seriously and look at the amount of heavy metals at birth in the cord blood track the blood levels in the child, and look more seriously at any proposed injections that have aluminum or mercury in them to add to the burden the newborn or young infant or toddler or child is being asked to be exposed to, because those are immune-depressant and disruptive associated with chronic disease, and this has to be followed. We need funding for this. We need informed pediatricians and obstetricians to start tracking this. Again, mothers will detox into their babies. Cord blood therefore is known to be much percentage-wise higher than in the serum blood of the mother at the same time. This is a study that needs to be tracked and done, and then this is associated with a poor immune system, which puts you at risk for mold and other immune disorders as well. 

So, I'm in favor of childhood detoxification with EDTA chelation. Of course, we gave it to the little children at Cook County, Chicago Hospital who ate lead-based paint chips and became GI and neuro-intoxicated, even some to the point of death. We gave them that wonderful chelating simple agent and then they survived. I think a nice way to do this for children is with a suppository and can be easily done. Getting away from all processed foods and on a real food diet. I believe in breastfeeding as long as possible. And of course, mothers should eat a rich, healthy, real food, non-processed diet, and be well hydrated. 

And so, these are the directions I would take a child and work with them on their exposure to what we see today as far as challenges that make them more susceptible to the environmental challenges that we all are facing every day. 

Question 

“Hi Dr. E! In April you increased my estradiol and in August Dr. Kaur increased my progesterone (all to help eliminate continual bleeding!). Now, I feel like my clothes are fitting tighter. Is weight gain a side effect of either of these changes?”  [0:28:01]

Answer

Well, then, I would ask the question back to you, is aging associated with weight gain? Is there a trend for people with age to get mid-life bulge? For age to be associated with muscle loss. Aging is associated with weight gain gaining weight, and the use of hormone replacement therapy is wrongly lambasted as the blame for this. If anything, hormones should make you feel more vital, more energized, and have a better metabolism, helping you with your normal repair and regenerative processes, so that if you exercise and you do weight resistance training, and you wake up in the morning with more vitality, this would resist weight gaining. So, I am going to put a negative to the suggestion that hormones cause or are very much correlated with weight gain. Rather, I would say aging and the stress and the cortisol of aging are associated with that and our loss of muscle mass with aging. 

Question 

“Do you think SuperBeets supplement is good for someone who wants to wean off of high blood pressure medicines? He had the AFIB ablation surgery 5 years ago, is male in his 50's in super great shape, and works out 5-6 times a week. I told him to start with eliminating his gin martini every day and weekend indulgences before taking super beets.”  [0:29:50]

Answer

SuperBeets have nitrates in them that are associated with making more nitric oxide, and nitric oxide production is associated with vasodilation, and vascular perfusion and performance is always a healthy thing. But it is not something isolated. I am not saying any one vitamin. It's the whole plethora of a healthy lifestyle functional approach, where you drink enough water, you wake up with the sunrise, you get outside, you let that morning sun penetrate your being for a few minutes, and you let your feet be in the wet grass and you earth or ground with the negative ions of the earth. And then you eat a low carb diet and you eat a diet that, you're made of protein and fat, so you eat plenty of protein and fat, and control reduced compared to the average American trend where nearly 70 percent of the calories of the diet every day are from carbohydrates processed foods. So, we have to seriously look at that. Of course, it looks like he's handling the exercise.  

We have to understand, you know if you have alcoholic beverages, and you think about it often, or you're planning your day around obtaining it, or you're not able to walk away from it without feeling loss or withdrawal, then addiction patterns are becoming a concern, a dependency. And we can do that with carbs and worry about where are I going to get my treat and making plans and driving late at night to get your pint of ice cream or we can make plans for all kinds of things that can have addictive patterns. So, alcohol is just one of many things we all have to look at how we are dealing with it. It is a toxin, and if it's a daily thing and more on the weekends, I would be cautious with that because that is toxic it will impair liver function and it will be associated with cardiovascular and cardiomyopathies and potential other hazardous exposures. 

So, I would say be gentle, loving, and modest in pointing this out to your friend, and I would not say the beets and their carbohydrate exposure, because it usually comes as a beet juice is a good way to deal with things. Exercise in and of itself is a great nitric oxide progenitor, along with a healthy volume of water consumed every day. So, I think that SuperBeets probably is more hyped up as a supplement idea than anything else. You know, there's L-citrulline, L-arginine supplements. I would say most of this is just making sales to get nitric oxide. I would exercise. I would do both aerobic and weight resistance training at least three to four times a week, and I would drink plenty of water go to bed on time, and eat a low-carb diet, and you'll probably do just as well. But you see, there'll never be these paid studies, and it’s too hard to follow lifestyles and people's secret lives and cheatings that we do, and we lie to ourselves about being I'm a carnivore or a hundred percent low carb or no carb. And in fact, we are so forgiving to ourselves and we cheat, and then we really are not biochemically having the impact of what we claim to be our true carnivore, our very low-carb diet. We're humans, and we’ve just got to love ourselves and encourage each other to be the best we can be and the kindest we can be to each other for our health benefit. 

Question

“Will you please explain the difference between the FDA-approved bio-identical hormones vs the compounded non-approved FDA hormones?”  [0:35:06]

Answer

I don't think there are non-approved FDA hormones. I think…well let me just tell you my take on hormone replacement therapy. You can't patent estradiol. It's a natural biological entity, and we cannot patent it. So the pharmaceuticals pretty much will have nothing to do with it. Therefore, we can get true female human estradiol. But many years ago, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, we were largely using a marketed pharmaceutical equine or horse-derived female hormone. So that was in Premarin if you recall those old tablets, Premarin and Provera, which was a synthetic copycat with modifications in the molecule to make it progesterone-like. The birth control pills are just full of this synthetic modification to claim patent ownership of the molecules that mimic female hormones and the estradiol mimics the progesterone. But there is only estradiol and progesterone. Women do make a dimer called estrone and a very little bit of estriol, but these pretty much are not an issue. It's the female bioidentical estradiol you want, and that's readily available, you can get that in a pill form called Estrace as a 0.5 mg or 1 mg and 2 mg tablet. And you can get the patch with, there's various names of the estradiol patches in various strengths. And then you can have estradiol itself mixed into creams or mixed into pellets that would be injected under your skin, which I never recommend pellets, and these are all human bioidentical. It's the progesterone that really the Women's Health Initiative of 2002 came out in July 2002, that used Progestin as the fake progesterone. Interestingly enough, in that study, they did have an arm with natural progesterone in it and it was Progestin, the synthetic progesterone, that was associated with breast cancer prevalence. That Women's Health Initiative really didn't do anything to challenge the safety of natural hormone replacement therapy. 

And a study that came out in 2022 by the author of the book Estrogen Matters, I don't recall his name, but the doctor wrote the book ‘Estrogen Matters’ and he did a retrospective mental analysis of all of the human studies on women who had had breast cancer and then went on natural hormone replacement after breast cancer surgery from 1980 until 2021. There were about 24 studies that were in the literature, and none of them, to my knowledge, after I read the article, not one was associated with an increase in the recurrence of breast cancer or any increase in mortality. We have to understand how valuable the wonderful molecules estradiol and progesterone are to our whole body economy, our mind, our sleep, our skin, our heart, our bones, and our immune system. And so, hormone replacement therapy in itself has been inappropriately been harmed by uninformed physicians, let's put it that way, or maybe backed by the pharmaceuticals who need people to maybe be sick because there's no profit in being healthy, or a physician anyway. 

Question

“Would Bi-Est 50/50 with progesterone be a suitable option for a healthy 50-year-old perimenopausal woman with no history of cancer, or blood clot, and following all recommended TLC good health protocols? Thank you!”  [0:40:20] 

Answer

Well, yes, Bi-Est is safe and decent. I have it. I do use some of it. I tend to like just straight estradiol and separate straight progesterone because I can adjust each one. When you put them all into one thing and Bi-Est would represent estradiol and estriol and then progesterone added to it. Then you would have three components in one delivery system, and it would be difficult to manage to adjust it when you have it all mixed together, especially starting out, but I'm all in favor of supporting natural hormones.

Question

“I was a patient of yours about 10 years ago. I moved to Colorado. I have a thyroid condition (hypothyroidism). I take Armour. I also have osteoporosis. Should I be taking Magnesium for my osteoporosis? I do not want to take Fosamax. I know I need to increase my exercise and weight-bearing exercises. Are there other supplements I should take?”  [0:41:24]

Answer

I'm going to say, in general, the number one mineral that's deficient in humans is magnesium. Magnesium is a tremendous cofactor, like thiamine, and so many other things, but we see dramatic help with various physiological functions with supplemental magnesium and multi-B vitamin supplements and that would also go for bone building. 

And I'm happy to say I have one patient who is a very learned woman who actually teaches biochemistry as a professorship at the university. And she is my patient, she has breast cancer. She is not going to take natural hormones. So, all over the many, many, many, many years I've dealt with her, she did the stomping with her feet on the ground, cement or hard surface, wearing moccasins to get that shudder up the legs. She pounded her wrist with a rubber hammer to shake the wrist bones. She took a high dose of vitamin D with K2. She kept her vitamin D levels somewhere around the 80 to 120 range. She stayed on a low-carb diet, so she wasn't acidic. She drank adequate water, half her weight in water. She did her, of course, weightlifting as well as resistance, weightlifting, stomping, and hitting with a rubber hammer or a hard surface, and she has done this for more than 10 years, and she, even without hormones, didn't lose any bone, none, zero, and she's, I think, 74 now or something like that, 75.  

So, it can be done. And those who can take natural hormones are going to only do much better and probably move into the normal range. So, yes, make sure you're getting a high-quality D3 with K2, and make sure you're getting your blood tested so your blood levels are up in the 80 to 120 range, and you're doing all those other things, eating a low carb diet, and I think you should do very well. 

Question 

“My granddaughter, age 18, has a tentative diagnosis of Cushing's syndrome or disease. I would like her to come to TLC. In the meantime, what can we do? Her diet is not good.”  [0:44:50] 

Answer

My suggestion is to go on a low-carb diet, ketogenic diet, to start weight training three times a week, and to get on progesterone from day 15 through 25 of the menstrual cycle. To use DHEA 25 mg is my protocol for cushingoid or adrenal gland cortisol dysfunction. Only eating really breakfasts and lunches, trying to omit dinners, so you start learning to do some intermittent fasting. A protein-rich diet, a ketogenic diet. Taking vitamin D at least 10,000 IU a day with K2, using water half the weight in pounds as ounces every single day, and never eating late. Doing that, along with, let's say, taking a good multivitamin mineral like TLC Energy Core, the progesterone cream, or you could get the balanced progesterone cream and use like two or three pumps just over your skin anywhere on the body from day 15 to 25 and take those supplements. And along with the ketogenic diet, this should turn around rapidly and quickly. But hopefully, she can get to a good functional doctor. Hopefully, the lower carbs, the water, the exercise, the intermittent fasting, the time-restricted eating range, the vitamin D, the progesterone, and the multivitamin-mineral will all help her. And that's what we would do. That's our kind of standard approach for anyone with that cushingoid. Again, I'm not trying to practice medicine over YouTube but that's my approach in general, but she has to be watched and managed by a functional and her regular doctors/endocrinologist, and hopefully, it's not cushingoid.