Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week we welcome Dr. Tom O’Bryan to the show. He is a world-renowned expert in the field of gluten-related disorders, Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS), Celiac Disease (CD) and their link to other chronic conditions, including autoimmune disorders and diseases.
He is the founder of theDr.com which was created to educate the public about under-diagnosed and under-treated gluten-related disorders, which affect up to 30% of the population. He views the lack of recognition, diagnosis and treatment of these disorders as a massive public health crisis.
In this episode we discuss his new book You Can Fix Your Brain, enjoy 🙂
Audio Version
Questions we ask in this episode:
- What are the most common signs of a deteriorating brain?
- How can be best detect our current state of brain health?
- Please explain the term ‘leaky brain’.
Get More of Dr. Tom O’Bryan
If you enjoyed this, then we think you’ll enjoy this interview:
- Dr Dale Bredesen: The End of Alzheimer’s. Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline
- Do You Have Healthy Gut Bacteria? Find Out With This Simple Checklist – Dr David Perlmutter
- Dr. Tom O’Bryan – The Autoimmune Fix
Full Transcript
Stu
00:03 Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and welcome to another episode of the Health Sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long lasting health. Now, I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do.
00:23 Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of superfoods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show.
00:44 This week, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Tom O’Bryan. As an internationally recognised speaker focusing on food sensitivities, environmental toxins and autoimmune disease, Dr. Tom has just released a groundbreaking book called “How to Fix your Brain,” hence, this interview today. The book cover promises to unlock the best memory, productivity and sleep and provides a road map to diagnose prevent and repair neurodegenerative issues.
01:11 Now, this is a topic that’s really close to my heart as I have a family history of Alzheimer’s Disease, so I was particularly interested in hearing the latest science on this. With neurodegenerative diseases on the rise like never before, I strongly recommend that you put the kettle on, make yourself comfortable and enjoy the conversation. Over to Dr. O’Bryan.
01:35 Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome back Dr. Tom O’Bryan to the show. Thank you so much Dr. O’Bryan for appearing again on the podcast. How are you?
Dr. Tom
01:47 Very well, thank you. Very well. We just launched our new book last week.
Stu
01:54 Yes.
Dr. Tom
01:54 “You Can Fix Your Brain” one hour a week to the best memory, productivity and sleep you’ve ever had. I was telling you just before we went online here, I just reviewed the brain masterclass, I’m starting to review it, that I’ve been working on for over a year and there’s over 140 interviews and videos that I’ve done and there are clips of this that we talk about what is Lactoferrin and how does that help brain function. Then, we go over to what are Lipopolysaccharides and how do they cause a problem with brain function. I’m looking at this and it’s so great.
02:32 I’m so happy to see the book, right now on Amazon is number 1 in 10 categories and it’s a number 36 of all books on Amazon right now, which is just remarkable. I’m very grateful to all of our friends who have been telling their tribes, “Get this book.”
Stu
02:54 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
02:54 It really is a book that … It’s not about me. It’s about how do you learn how to take care of your brain.
Stu
03:03 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
03:04 We don’t know what to do. Everybody knows someone that had a heart attack and you know that if you have a heart attack and you survive, you change your diet, stop eating bad food, exercise a little bit and you’re fine.
Stu
03:17 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
03:18 Most of us know someone who, diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment protocols and is in remission and they’re fine. No one knows anyone diagnosed with a brain deterioration disease who’s doing fine.
Stu
03:31 That’s right, exactly right. I spoke to you just prior to the show and told you about my parents. I lost my mother last year to Lewy bodies disease at age 68, so, crazy young. My father is 72. He’s got Alzheimer’s Disease and to the best of his knowledge, it’s incurable. It’s a death sentence.
Dr. Tom
03:55 Right. As soon as you brought that up, let me say, you are the example of who I’m talking to in this book.
Stu
04:03 Yes.
Dr. Tom
04:04 It’s you, man.
Stu
04:05 Yup.
Dr. Tom
04:05 It’s exactly you. What do you need to do? Well, first thing you need to do is get the gene test to see are you an APOE-e4.
Stu
04:12 Right. I’ve had that. I’ve had that and I’m not. Yeah, fantastic. We’re going to talk about that as well. Absolutely.
Dr. Tom
04:18 You bet. You bet. Then, you look, “Okay, so I’m not genetically extremely vulnerable to this disease but I may be environmentally vulnerable because I grew up with my parents. I lived in the house, I may have been breathing the same mold. You can’t tell but that mold’s in your body, it’s causing inflammation.” The next step is, “Okay, what are the biomarkers that I need to look for to see, ‘Is my brain on fire right now?'”
Stu
04:48 Right.
Dr. Tom
04:48 “Do I have inflammation in my brain right now?” In the book, you see, “Here are all the biomarkers that you get and you just check them out because you need to know because there’s a family history. If none of those biomarkers are elevated right now, saying that your brain is on fire, with all the science that I know, you’re fine.
Stu
05:08 Got it.
Dr. Tom
05:09 Every year for maybe three or four years, you do all the biomarkers just to make sure and if they stay fine, then every five years, you do the biomarkers just to make sure.
Stu
05:21 Got it.
Dr. Tom
05:21 Because what are the biomarkers? There’s two ways to measure the temperature in the engine of your car. One way, the hot light comes on the dashboard. Big, red light and you’re, “Oh my gosh, what’s … Oh,” and you know that you have to pull over right away
Stu
05:36 Yes.
Dr. Tom
05:36 Because the engine’s about to blow up. That’s when you get diagnosed with a brain disease, big hot light. You just got a diagnosis. Where did that come from? Right?
05:46 The other way to measure the temperature in the engine of a car is temperature gauges.
Stu
05:50 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
05:51 They slowly start to climb when the engine’s over heating. 1986, my ex and I had a Chrysler minivan. We were driving back from Michigan. It was summer holiday to Chicago and it was a 90/90 day. 90 degree temperature fahrenheit. That’s very hot.
Stu
06:09 Wow.
Dr. Tom
06:09 And 90% humidity.
Stu
06:12 Right.
Dr. Tom
06:12 We’re driving down the high way 70 miles an hour, have got the air conditioning on, listening to some music, kids in the back playing and all of a sudden, I noticed the temperature gauge is starting climb. I’m watching it and within about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, it’s coming up against the red zone and I say, “Oh, no.”
06:33 My wife says, “What?” I say, “Oh, the engine’s overheating.” “Oh my God, what are we going to … ” “No, don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s okay.” But what did I do? I took preventive action and what did that mean? Turned off the air conditioning, slowed down to 55 to take a load off the engine, rolled down the windows, listened to the kids complain about how hot it was but we made it home okay because I took preventive action and the engine did not go into the red zone. It didn’t overheat.
Stu
07:02 Got it.
Dr. Tom
07:03 [crosstalk 00:07:03] right?
Stu
07:03 Yes.
Dr. Tom
07:04 That’s what biomarkers are.
Stu
07:06 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
07:06 Biomarkers are the temperature gauges that you catch ahead of time before your hot light comes on and you’re diagnosed with a brain deterioration disease.
Stu
07:16 Excellent. What might we be experiencing right now and I’m talking about signs of a deteriorating brain that aren’t going to be that obvious and in our 20s, 30s, 40s?
Dr. Tom
07:32 Yeah. Sometimes walking into the room and … Now, wait a minute. What was it that I was going to do? What was that again? Oh, I think, I hit one there didn’t I? Sorry, man.
07:45 But this is good for all of our listeners.
Stu
07:48 Yes, it is.
Dr. Tom
07:49 Because this is life.
Stu
07:50 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
07:50 This is life.
Stu
07:51 It is.
Dr. Tom
07:53 Where did I put my keys? What’s that person’s name? Oh my gosh, she’s coming towards me. I know her. I’ve known her for … What’s her name? What’s her name?
Stu
08:01 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
08:01 Just those moments. That means your brain’s not firing on all eight cylinders all the time the way it should be. Those are the subtle little things that you cover and then, the information, “Oh, what’s that word? What was that word?” Then, it comes to you a minute later or five minutes. “Oh, it was that word. That’s what I meant five minutes ago.
Stu
08:22 Got it.
Dr. Tom
08:23 Those kind of things.
Stu
08:24 Right. There’s no need to blame age for that, is there? Because we can be super sharp in our later years.
Dr. Tom
08:34 Oh my goodness, yes. Professor Michael Marsh, the godfather of celiac diagnosis at Oxford.
Stu
08:40 Right. Yeah.
Dr. Tom
08:41 When I interviewed him for the gluten summit, he was semi-retired. He was 76 I believe at the time and he had just completed his second PhD after retirement. He got two PhDs at Oxford after he retired.
Stu
08:58 My word.
Dr. Tom
08:59 Now, that’s a brain that’s like this.
Stu
09:02 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
09:03 Right?
Stu
09:04 Definitely.
Dr. Tom
09:05 Yeah. Our bodies age but all of the cylinders are supposed to be working. I’m a car guy from Detroit originally.
Stu
09:16 Right.
Dr. Tom
09:16 I was born and raised in Detroit, so I talk in car analogies, that we’re supposed to be firing on all eight cylinders all the time.
Stu
09:24 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
09:25 You can’t drive a car if the car is 60 years old, if you’ve got a historic muscle car, you aren’t going to drive it hard every day.
Stu
09:33 No.
Dr. Tom
09:34 Every once in a while, you put the pedal to the metal because it’s a muscle car, right?
Stu
09:38 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
09:38 But you don’t do it every day anymore like you would when it’s new. That’s your brain. Your brain should be able … You should be able to put the pedal to the metal when you need to. We slow down a little in general as we age.
Stu
09:52 Okay, okay. You spoke about the methods to detect potential issues with the brain.
Dr. Tom
10:01 Right.
Stu
10:01 We spoke about the genetic testing for the APOE-e4 gene as well. Outside of that because it’s very easy … If I’ve got a cholesterol problem, I go to my doctor and I’ll say, “Well, run my bloods,” and he gives us the data on cholesterol but brain just seems so much more complex.
Dr. Tom
10:18 You bet. You bet.
Stu
10:18 What sorts of tests are we looking at?
Dr. Tom
10:21 My wife and I, for our honeymoon last year, we spent six weeks in Costa Rica.
Stu
10:27 Right.
Dr. Tom
10:29 It was a wonderful time and I can be at work anywhere if I have internet.
Stu
10:34 Yes.
Dr. Tom
10:34 I was working there, right?
Stu
10:36 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
10:37 I read 93 research papers in six weeks-
Stu
10:41 [crosstalk 00:10:41].
Dr. Tom
10:41 Out of the blood-brain barrier on our honeymoon. It was great.
Stu
10:46 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
10:46 My wife always wanted to get dark, like really dark.
Stu
10:50 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
10:50 She’s sunbathing and strategically with timers as to how long on each side and all of that. I’m sitting in the shade reading research papers. I’m saying, “Honey, listen to this about herpes infections and what they mean for Alzheimer’s.” She turns her head and goes, “Oh, that’s nice dear.” I’m like in another world but because I did that, a test came out called the Neural Zoomer and it looks at 18 markers of inflammation in the brain.
Stu
11:23 Right.
Dr. Tom
11:23 18 markers. I’ll give you an example. Last count that I did, there’s 246 studies on the association of herpes simplex 1, that’s the cold sores that people get and Alzheimer’s. 246 studies showing the connection. If you get herpes outbreaks, meaning the virus is really dominant right now many your immune system can’t keep it suppressed, if you get an outbreak, very likely, those antibodies fighting the virus are getting into your brain.
Stu
11:57 That’s fascinating.
Dr. Tom
11:58 That’s one of the blood tests on the Neural Zoomer. One of the markers you look at. Do you have IgM antibodies to herpes simplex 1?
Stu
12:07 Right.
Dr. Tom
12:08 There’s 18 markers on that test and there’s good science behind every one of those.
Dr. Tom: 12:14 After that blood test, also in the book, you’ll read and the link goes to my website, thedr.com/smell is the smell test and the Association of Scientific American did a really nice write up of the association between smell and early markers of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and brain deterioration diseases. There’s a smell test that you can do and it’s a scratch and sniff, kind of like a lottery card, you take a coin and you scratch it.
Stu
12:48 Yeah.
Dr. Tom
12:49 But you scratch and, “Oh, that smells like cinnamon. Oh good, it is cinnamon. Nice.” The next one, “Oh, that smells like strawberries. Oh, it is strawberries.” There’s 12 markers on the scratch and sniff. The study that I read showed that there was a 96% correlation for accuracy between the scratch and sniff test and the very expensive university research test on smell sensitivity, the hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, 96% correlation with the scratch and sniff for 12 cents.
Stu
13:29 My word.
Dr. Tom
13:29 Not for 4, not for 8, but for 12. You go to the thedr.com/smell and you order the smell test. It’s 50 bucks.
Stu
13:38 Great.
Dr. Tom
13:38 You do that and you say, “Oh, my gosh.” If you score less than nine correct, you’ve got what’s called hyposmia. It means you’re losing your sense of smell. Why is that important? Because our ancestors, the nerves for smell, the nerves go right back into the brain, right on top of the memory center.
Stu
14:01 Right.
Dr. Tom
14:02 Why? Why? Because if our ancestors walk around a corner and they smell tiger, they better turn around and run right away. They have to remember what the smell is. The smell nerves go right back to the memory center, right back there.
14:21 When you’re losing your sense of smell, it’s not a problem with your nose, it’s a problem with brain deterioration, neurodegeneration. That’s a marker and when you see that you don’t score well on that test, that’s really good news because if you don’t score well, now you wake up. “Okay, where’s the inflammation? I really need to read this book or I need to take Dr. O’Bryan’s brain masterclass,” so that you understand the questions and you start dialing down because no doctor is going to do this for you. They’ll give you a drug or they’ll give you something to help for a while, but you need to find out where’s the inflammation coming from in my life that’s causing this neurodegeneration.
15:00 … from in my life that’s causing this neurodegeneration. Where is it coming from? Here’s an example. In the mid-90s, 1990s, every dog that they did autopsy on in Mexico City, every dog had Alzheimer’s. Every dog had beta amyloid plaque in their brain. Every one. In the mid 2000s, and towards the end of 2009, 2010, the urine test and the blood test came out to check children for the markers of inflammation. Every child that they check in Mexico City has brain inflammation.
15:37 Every single child.
Dr. Tom
15:38 Why is that? Well, earlier we were talking about our mutual friend, Dr. Dale Bredesen. He tells us that over 60% of Alzheimer’s cases are inhalation Alzheimer’s. It’s what you’re breathing, going right back up, right past the memory centers in your brain causing the inflammation. Your immune system’s trying to fight this particulate matter that you’re breathing that gets in the air and then you breathe it in, that creates the inflammation that takes out your memory center.
Stu
16:10 Crikey.
Dr. Tom
16:10 So you do the smell test and if you got a problem, “Oh. But, man, that’s too … Oh, really? I got a … Oh, gee. Okay. Okay, I got a problem. Good. What do I do? Then you start, check by check by check by check. Do I have this? Do I have this? Do I have this? Do I have this?” When you find what you’ve got … That’s what the book is about in the Brain Masterclass. When you find what you’ve got, you fix it. You wait six months and then you do another smell test and now you’re 12 for 12. You say, “Oh, right. Night. Oh, nice. High five.” Give yourself a high five.
Stu
16:44 Fantastic. The book, You Can Fix Your Brain, you were telling me before, it’s doing phenomenally well in the States at the moment, isn’t it?
Dr. Tom
16:55 It is. It really is. I’m going to look this up, so I can tell you exactly where it is. This will take me just a moment to bring it up because I wasn’t prepared for that, but I’m just so proud of it. It’s ranked number 36 right now in all of Amazon books, so that’s really great. Oh, that’s really incredible. It’s hard to imagine number 36 and overall so I’m really proud of that.
17:27 There’s another part … it’s so cool. Give me a moment while I … I’m not that tech savvy. You look at my site and it looks really good and you think, “Oh, he’s got this down.” No, he doesn’t.
Stu
17:38 Just got a good developer.
Dr. Tom
17:41 That’s right. There it is. There it is. It’s popping up now and … Where is it here? Come on. Oh, no, that’s not it. Oh, these are all the studies on smell that I sent over to someone, like sensory impairment and risk of mortality in older adults. What this one says, “When you lose your sense of smell, it’s associated with an increased risk of mortality, and it’s a 28% increased risk of dying within five years of something, if you are losing your sense of smell.”
18:16 But that’s not the one I was looking for. I was looking for the Amazon number one, but it’s 10 different categories. It’s memory improvement, dementia, Alzheimer’s, inflammation, cognitive decline, and I’m not remembering the others right now.
Stu
18:35 That’s okay. That’s okay.
Dr. Tom
18:37 [crosstalk 00:18:37] Yeah, but it’s really great. It’s nice to see the world and say, “Wow, look at this. This is a cool book.” And I’m very proud of it.
Stu
18:45 I am very, very intrigued to read it, obviously, from personal and family reasons as well.
18:51 I wanted to talk to you about the standard medical treatment right now for neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s, because that’s the number one, or the most common one, I think, that we’re aware of.
19:03 Now, I’ve experienced, through my parents, the treatment firsthand, namely, the prescription drugs, which seem to zombify them. It’s like, “Here’s a pill. You’ve got stuff happening, here’s a pill. We’re not going to ask you any questions about anything else. We’re not going to ask about your diet, your activity. We’re not going to ask about your environment, any of the above, but just take this pill.” What are your thoughts on the standard medical treatment for this right now?
Dr. Tom
19:33 Well, it represents what has been the direction and dynamic of the entire pharmaceutical industry is that one symptom, one pill, and we’re trained to think that way. We’re trained to think that the healthcare is to cut the symptoms out.
Dr. Tom: 19:56 But here’s how we have to look at it. You get diagnosed with a condition, let’s say memory impairment. It’s like you’ve fallen over a waterfall and you’ve crashed into the pond below. You swim up to the surface and you spit out the water and “Thank God I’m alive.” You’re trying to stay afloat in this pond of memory impairment, or this pond of diabetes, or this pond of recurrent miscarriages. Doesn’t matter what pond you’re in. When you get a diagnosis, you’re in the pond and you’re trying to stay afloat. But the water in the waterfall keeps falling into the pond, so the water is really turbulent.
Dr. Tom
20:40 Well, what does that mean, the water is really turbulent? You’re still living the lifestyle that’s created the problem, so you’re in the pond. You’re in the pond of whatever the symptoms are and everybody’s looking for a life jacket to stay afloat in the pond, and that’s really important to have a life jacket.
Dr. Tom: 20:59 You try for the natural approach first with the least side effects, but if it doesn’t work, you take the drugs. Don’t be foolish. You can’t drown, but you don’t stay in the pond. You don’t stay in the lifestyle. You swim over to the side of the pond, get out of the water, walk up the hill, and walk back up the river to figure out what fell in the river that carried me downstream and over the waterfall into the pond of memory impairment?
Stu
21:27 Got it.
Dr. Tom
21:27 So you look for heavy metals, you look for bacterial parasites, you look for lipopolysaccharides. You start looking to see what’s the trigger that set this off.
Dr. Tom: 21:39 When you talk about the pharmaceutical industry and how they look at things, I would love to be able to … Let’s see, Kent, it possible to share screen on Skype? I don’t know. I’m not a tech guy, but I don’t see an option down here that says share screen, so I guess I can’t, but I’m going to read to you. I’ve got three slides here I’m going read to you.
22:07 This is from the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Medicine. The workshop was called Therapeutic Development in the Absence of Predictive Animal Models of Nervous System Disorders. Therapeutic development, how are we going to develop therapies for nervous system disorders?
22:27 They said, “Compared with other disease areas, central nervous system,” that’s the brain and the spine, “central nervous system disorders have had the highest failure rate for new compounds in advanced clinical trials.” They have the highest failure rate of all. “Concern about the poor productivity in neuroscience drug development has gained intensity over the past decade, amplified by a retraction in investment from the pharmaceutical industry.”
22:59 I know of two pharmaceutical companies that have closed down their Alzheimer’s research departments and they laid off the scientists because they’ve spent billions and there’s no answer to this. As we know from Dr. Bredesen, there’s 36 things, holes in the roof, you got to fix.
Stu
23:14 That’s it.
Dr. Tom
23:14 There’s no one thing, right?
Stu
23:16 No. Exactly.
23:17 So they’ve closed down the Alzheimer’s research departments. They went into other areas.
Dr. Tom
23:21 The last slide, “This retreat by industry has been fueled by the high failure rate of compounds for nervous system disorders, according to the director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.”
23:40 So this retreat is because of high failure rate for drugs. The drugs don’t work for nervous system disease. You’ve got to go upstream to figure out what happened here, where did this come from? That’s what the book is about, is the step by step, how do I go upstream? What does that mean? How do we do that?
Stu
24:00 Yeah. Where do we start?
24:04 I’m going to be a little bit cheeky as well and use the term ‘quick fix’ or ‘low-hanging fruit.’ If you were to line up all of the causes of inflammation that could then lead to neurodegenerative issues, what things or what elements do you think are causing the most issue? It could be like, well, you could be gluten-sensitive, you could be in a moldy building. Where would we at least tick these magic three off and go, “Right. At least I’ve got those big three out of the way?”
Dr. Tom
24:39 Right. The big three would be the gut, the environment of your gut, what’s on the end of your fork and what you’re breathing.
Stu
24:50 Got it.
Dr. Tom
24:51 Those are the three. Mrs. Patient, when you go on vacation or a holiday for a week or two and you come back, do you have to open the windows to air the house out? “Oh, yeah.” You got mold in the house.
Stu
25:03 Of course.
Dr. Tom
25:04 That’s what that means. “Oh, no, no.” Yes, yes, yes. Well, at least you have a professional come in and you check the house for mold. You check it out. You just check, you just look.
25:19 You do the blood test to look for inflammation in the brain. You just check it out. You do the smell test. You just check it out to see. Okay, is this something that I have to learn more about and how to fix? If you come back negative on good screening test, good temperature gauges, forget about it. Forget about it. Go to the next one on the checklist.
25:40 Now, as you know, there’s 36 things on the checklist, 36 holes on the roof that you’ve got to look at.
Stu
25:46 Absolutely.
Dr. Tom
25:46 But the big three are your gut, what’s on the end of your fork and what you’re breathing.
Stu
25:53 Got it. Brilliant. I’m very familiar with the term ‘leaky brain’ and its use in this area as well. I wondered if you could just explain that term for our audience.
Dr. Tom
26:06 You bet. There’s a cheesecloth. Mrs. Patient, your intestines are a tube, tube is 20, 25 feet long, starts at the mouth, goes to the other end. If you had a doughnut and if you could just stretch out a donut, one big long donut, and you look down the center of the donut, that’s your intestines. You swallow food, the food is not in your body, it’s in the tube. It’s got to go through the walls of the tube to get into the bloodstream.
26:37 How does it do that? How does it get through the walls? It’s got to be broken down really small. Our enzymes act as scissors, snip, snip, snip, snip snip, to break it down smaller and smaller and smaller until … The inside of the tube is lined with cheesecloth so only really small molecules can get through the cheesecloth to get into the bloodstream. Big molecules can’t get through.
27:02 So that cheesecloth, when you get tears on the cheesecloth, larger molecules get through into the bloodstream than what should get through. Your immune system then says, “Well, I got to fight that big molecule, that macro molecule. I have to fight that. That’s not something I could use to build new bone cells or brain cells. I better fight it.”
27:24 Now you make antibodies to tomatoes if that was a macro molecule of tomato that got through the tear of the cheesecloth or to beef or to bananas. You do a 90 food test and you’re allergic to 25 foods. “Oh, my God. That’s everything I eat.” Well, of course, it is. Of course, it is. Your body is trying to protect you. You’ve got tears to the cheesecloth. That’s leaky gut. The technical terms is intestinal pathogenic, intestinal permeability.
27:54 You also have a cheesecloth around your brain. It works the same way. It’s called the blood-brain barrier. In the book we talk about what scientists call and I coined the term, capital B number four, B4. Do you have a breach of the blood-brain barrier, B4? The old [inaudible 00:28:16] is the test that identifies if you got B4. If have a tear in the cheesecloth of the brain, then molecules that are okay to be in the bloodstream, but not okay to be in the brain, get through the tears of the cheesecloth and into your brain.
28:33 We have four different immune systems in our body and the most powerful one is the one that’s in the brain. They’re called glial cells. Now in your bloodstream, you get antibodies. They’re special forces and they’ve got high-powered rifles going after tomato or whatever it is, bacteria or whatever it is they’re fighting. They’re going through the bloodstream and they fire these high-powered rifles to destroy whatever it is.
28:58 But in your brain, the glial cells, they fire bazookas. Boom. They don’t mess around. Nothing is supposed to be in the brain and so they just destroy whatever got through a breach of the blood-brain barrier. That’s a really good thing.
29:17 The problem is our lifestyles are contributing to constant B4, constant breach of the blood-brain barrier. So stuff is getting through there often, often, often and the glial cells firing their bazookas, boom, boom, boom, boom, every day. The collateral damage from all of that activity of your brain’s immune system trying to protect you, the collateral damage damages the tissue around the area.
29:52 Now you make more antibodies to get rid of the damaged tissue-
Stu
29:57 I see.
Dr. Tom
29:57 … and then you’ve got this cycle and more antibodies to your brain, more antibodies to your brain, more antibodies …
30:00 More antibodies to your brain, more antibodies to your brain, more antibodies to your brain, destroying more antibodies, and this becomes self perpetuating after a while. Now you’ve got an auto immune disease of your brain killing off your brain cells.
30:14 Oh boy, oh boy. Crikey.
Dr. Tom
30:16 And it all starts with B4. Like in the book I talk about three studies in the book that talk about casein the protein in milk that causes B4. When casein causes B4 these studies say “we wonder”, and they looked at it, and they worked with animals on it. We wonder if this is a contributor to the increase in sudden infant death syndrome.
Stu
30:42 Right.
Dr. Tom
30:43 You just go to Google, and you type in casein and sudden infant death syndrome. Here come the studies. Well, casein causes B4, it causes a tear in the cheesecloth of your brain.
Stu
30:55 Got it. Interesting, and you were speaking as well before we start the recording about colostrum as well and I’m very intrigued to hear your thoughts on that.
Dr. Tom
31:04 May I just continue for a moment. So, you want to check. Do I have antibodies to casein.
Stu
31:10 I see.
Dr. Tom
31:11 Does my body say, does my immune system say. See your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It’s there to protect you. There’s an army, an air force, a marines, there’s a coast guard, a navy, IGA, IGG, IGE, IGM. They’re all there to protect you, so you have elevated antibodies to casein. If you do, your body is saying “we got a problem with this thing. Stop putting this in here, we have a problem whether you like it or not.” Oh I love my milk. Well, we’ll put that on your tombstone.
Stu
31:47 Oh, I love it. Love it.
31:50 So colostrum, we were talking about that and I was intrigued to hear your thoughts.
Dr. Tom
31:56 Colostrum is mother natures way of healing a leaky gut, and leaky brain. Colostrum plays, there are many one note players that deal with inflammation in the body, many. Colostrum plays the entire symphony. It’s the only thing in the world that plays the entire symphony. It’s mother natures way of getting a healthy gut, and healthy blood brain barrier, so by definition when you heal the gut you heal the blood brain barrier. Same compounds work for both areas. There’s garbage colostrum there and really great colostrum. The colostrum on our website is the same colostrum that three countries of Africa licensed as the treatment of choice that they pay for when someone is diagnosed with HIV. They use this colostrum, it’s the same colostrum. Why? Because it heals the gut, and if it heals the gut it heals the brain. And this particular colostrum has less than zero point six percent casein.
Stu
33:07 Right, I see.
Dr. Tom
33:08 Most products have somewhere between two to five percent casein. This has less than zero point six percent, so you can’t say none, you can’t ever say that, but there’s very little. I say “misses patient, we just found out you’re sensitive to dairy. So get all the cheese out of there, get the milk, the ice cream, all of it, get it out of there, but I’m gonna recommend you take the colostrum for a couple of months.
33:35 Because nothing turns on more genes to heal than colostrum. This is the best in the world, grass fed, no antibiotics, no growth hormones, it’s the highest quality product. I know the guy that makes this, my friend, he owns the hundreds of millions of dollar company, everything.
33:56 He was a dairy farmer in New Zealand, and he learned early in life if you don’t give those calves colostrum they die. You can’t give them milk, they die. That’s true of all mammals.
34:13 Then he learned that sick humans. When they take colostrum they get better. So he decided he was gonna devote his life to making the best colostrum in the world. So what did he do? He went to Oxford, and got a PhD in mechanical engineering.
Dr. Tom
34:29 It’s like, what? So I said to him “Andrew, way to go Oxford. Way to go PhD. The best in the wold, but mechanical engineering, what?” And he said. “well Tom, I knew that I was going to make the best colostrum in the world, and no one was doing it. So if I was going to do it I was going to have to learn to build the equipment to do it.”
34:53 Eight years. Eight years of study. Really hard study to develop the thinking capability to build the equipment that makes the best colostrum in the world.
Stu
35:05 Okay, fantastic.
Dr. Tom
35:07 It’s just marvelous, though. But that’s colostrum man. It heals the brain. The journal of Alzheimer research has studies in there about proline rich poly peptides from colostrum, PRPs that stop Alzheimer’s in its tracks. It just stops the inflammation, it stops the production of beta amyloid. Why? Because they’re healing the B4, and they’re calming down the inflammation. It’s just remarkable. The products are remarkable. I go into it in detail in the book.
Stu
35:38 Great. Fantastic.
35:40 We will obviously link to all of this in the show notes as well, and we’ll talk about where to buy the book in a couple of minutes, but I had a topic that I wanted to touch on right now, and that’s sleep.
35:55 What are your thoughts on sleep quality versus a deteriorating brain?
Dr. Tom
36:01 Well unfortunately, I am suffering these days from not very much sleep. I put 40 or 50 thousand miles traveling in the last three months. So I’ve been in Stuttgart, Germany, and I flew to Stuttgart, and I flew to Boston. Two days later I flew to London. One day later I flew back to California. That was yesterday, or two days ago, and in three days I fly to British Columbia. Then I take the red eye to Washington, D.C. and then back here, because I’m wanting to get this message out in the book. I’m feeling the effects of not enough sleep, but in the book we talk about it a lot. It’s critically important. It’s one of the Dr. Bredesen’s top healing factors that you have to address. You have to get a good seven to eight hours of solid sleep a night.
37:04 What we talk about in the book is that there are four pillars to health. There are four different components you have to look at for any health problem including the brain. I use the analogy of a pyramid. There’s four sides to a pyramid. There is the platform or the base, then the three sides. So the base is your structure, and that’s the home of chiropractic, and massage, and pillows, and orthotics in your shoes, and car seats, and all of that; that can cause any problem. Any problem, maybe caused by structural imbalance. Any problem.
Dr. Tom
37:41 Then one of the sides of the pyramid is the biochemistry. What you eat, you drink, you breath. We all know the validation of that.
37:49 The next side is the emotional, or the spiritual. Critically important that you have a balanced lifestyle. Critically important.
37:58 The other side is the electromagnetic. Never before in the history of humanity have we had to deal with the electromagnetic pollution that we do now. So in the book we talk about “get the alarm clock away from the bed. Get it off of the night stand next to your head, and put it on the other side of the room. Turn off the wireless at night.” Some people need, their like mosquito nets that go over the bed that you sleep in, and it’s a screen that blocks out all of the electromagnetics.
38:29 If you live in a condo complex you check wireless. There’s nine different wireless networks that are pounding your brain right now. There’s no evidence that one of them by itself can cause tumors, but there’s lots of evidence that the accumulative damage that occurs from having a battery next to your brain all day like a bluetooth. People walk around with this thing on their ear. Are you kidding? That’s why I’m happy to see you got your headset. I’ve got my headset. You just want to keep the power away from the body. And I talk about tumors in kids, because they’re skull is thinner so the effect is much greater in kids than it is in adults. Attention deficit, and autism, and tumors in kids.
39:18 Everybody should, when you hang up from this interview everyone should just go on amazon, and get a Pong P-O-N-G. Its a case, an electromagnetic diffuser for your phone. I drive an Acura, and when I walk up to the car the lights turn on outside to shine down by the door handles, and the inside dome light goes on as I walk up to the car, but if I’m holding my phone with the Pong case on it in the same hand as my keys it doesn’t work. And the door handle won’t open. Oh God my key, and the Pong, it’s the Pong. It makes me happy to know this thing works. It reduces the amount of exposure you’re getting.
40:03 Sleep is one where electromagnetic pollution has a really strong impact factor, really strong.
Stu
40:10 Fantastic. Now that is good to know. No doubt there are a whole heap of strategies in the book that allow us to dig a bit deeper in there. Last question. Positive mindset, how important do you think a positive mindset is in the over all story of health, but also specifically in terms of a deteriorating brain?
Dr. Tom
40:39 Can I give you the secret to a happy life?
Stu
40:41 Yeah, go for it.
Dr. Tom
40:43 It’s a positive mindset. You listen to the expert, you listen to Oprah. She knows what she’s talking about right. And her message right now, and there’s so many people with the same message, and that is what you think is what you create.
41:03 Think positively, and you’re gonna get positive results, and there will be some obstacles on the way. Say “okay, ill deal with the obstacle.” And kind of leap over it to keep going.
41:13 The emotional side of the pyramid of health is all about how we look at the world. What we think of with the world. Critically important.
Stu
41:24 Okay. Now that’s good to know. We had a chat with Dr. Bruce Lipton a while back, and it was amazing for me, and a little bit of an aha moment when he actually explained that we can physically and biologically turn on and off hormones in the body by our thoughts. In terms of stress hormones and happy hormones, and that has a huge impact in the way that our health is sort of at the end of the day. It was the hugest aha moment for me. From that point forward you just think of course, it just makes sense.
42:08 You Can Fix Your Brain. New book, so where can our listeners go to purchase it and find out more as well.
Dr. Tom
42:16 Oh thank you. Thedr.com/books. You Can Fix Your Brain. When you click on it, it takes you to Amazon, or to Barnes and Noble, or Ibooks, or Bam books, whatever that is. There’s like five different options you have, but when you go through that there is also a ton of hand outs and downloads that you get. So you order the book then you come back to the site and you key in your receipt number. I don’t know how they set that, I’m not geeky in that way. I’m geeky in my world, but not that world right? So if you order through thedr.com there’s a bunch of hand outs and extra information that you get.
Stu
43:04 Great, fantastic, okay. I will spread the word across our tribe, and include all the details in the links et cetera, and today’s interview in the show notes as well. So thank you so much for sharing your time. You are clearly a busy man, and I cannot wait to delve into that book.
Dr. Tom
43:22 Thanks so very much. It’s really a pleasure to interact with you, because you really are exactly who we’re talking to. There is a family history that scares the hell out of you. You have a good outlook about it, and you don’t talk about that but obviously it would scare anybody. This is the plan here are the temperature gauges. You just monitor these for the rest of your life. You monitor these and make sure they’re okay, because at some point it may be one of them comes back. “Wow, how come now I’ve got antibodies now to my brain. Alright, I gotta go back and dial down what’s happened. Really I’ve got mold in my urine. I’ve got mold metabolites in my urine, really. Oh. That’s right there was that storm eight months ago and we had that small leak in the roof, and I thought we fixed it right away. I better check the house for mold.” Then you find it, and you get rid of it. It’s taking action. Taking positive action to protect your brain.
Stu
44:23 Fantastic. It’s a road map for the rest of your life. I love it.
Dr. Tom
44:27 That’s right.
Stu
44:29 Fantastic. Well look, I really do hope that we speak again in the future, because this has been fantastic.
Dr. Tom
44:33 I would look forward to that.
Stu
44:35 Thank yo so much.
Dr. Tom
44:37 You bet, thank you.
44:37 Bye.
