The Autoimmune Doc Podcast w/ Dr. Taylor Krick Taylor

Ok so, I knew Dr. K was awesome, but I didn't know he was THIS AWESOME.....

This is an interview with pediatrician Dr. Pejman Katiraei, DO from Santa Barbara, California. In this interview, Dr. K talks about how common it is to see mold involved in mental health issues for all ages, but especially in kids. We discuss how he evolved to where he is now regarding diagnosis and treatment and how mold and mycotoxins initially came onto his radar for these kiddos suffering from mental health issues - ADHD, OCD, anxiety, hyperactivity, etc - which I think is always interesting to hear how someone in the conventional medical field learned through experience and research how critical these mold (and other) airborne toxins can be to kids health.

This interview is seriously FILLED WITH GEMS. Most of this entire conversation we are talking about the connections between mold and mental health - mycotoxins are known to disrupt dopamine, they inhibit glutamate clearance, they are neurotoxic, they activate innate immunity and neuroinflammation, they drive histamine responses, and ALL OF THIS leads to neurotransmitter, mood, and behavioral changes....so the whole time we are talking basically about the problem(s) and the solution(s), which are both varied and complex, but our conversation includes topics like:

- Diagnosis or "suspicion" of mold in kids - in what kinds of cases are we (maybe) thinking mold?
- How do you KNOW if you have mold in the home?
- How do you KNOW if you (or your child) have mold in the body?
- What are (both of our) favorite tests and treatments or supportive supplements?
- How can we clean the air? HEPA filters, air purifiers, ionizers...

I think my favorite part about Dr. K is that his integrity shines through in our conversation, he clearly wants what is best for the patient's outcome, he considers realistic options and cost, and he is open minded and not trying just to defend his biases. I'd like to think we are really similar in those regards, I hope so, but I just know I had a GREAT time talking with him and have a lot of respect for him, and I think a lot of people will enjoy this episode!

Check out his website https://wholistickids.com/
Follow him on Facebook under Wholistic Kids
and on Instagram @wholistickids where he puts out GREAT CONTENT!!!!!

And - send this to 3 friends with kids, and leave a rating and review if you enjoyed it!

I see a lot of neurological cases that experience symptoms like dizziness, vertigo,  lightheadedness, inability to tolerate motion, flashing lights, sounds, etc. Many of these people are not local to my area, and they are all wondering "What else can I do to help myself get better?" so I am always looking for new ways to help them.

While I focus primarily on looking deeper into underlying mechanisms, root causes, neurotoxins, pathogens, gut health, autoimmunity, etc, one thing that anyone who is experiencing these symptoms can do is VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION, so we have recommended VizStim kits to many of our clients.

My guest on today's episode is Dr. Ashley Contreras, the creator and founder of VizStim. She is a physical therapist who specializes in vestibular issues and vestibular rehab, and throughout her 15-year career has developed this amazing kit of exercises to help people retrain their vestibular system. It's an inexpensive, easy-to-use, at-home kit with a wide variety of different exercises, journals, and levels of difficulty designed to walk through your progress as you are retraining your vestibular system. I've used it with my kids, it's super easy to use, easy to teach, and as long as you are willing to do the exercises and put in a few minutes of rehab each day, it is AWESOME.

The vestibular system is a complex system in the brain that detects how your head and body are existing in relation to their surroundings - are your eyes level with gravity, are you moving, what position are you in, etc. When those signals get disrupted, from concussions, infections, neurotoxins, spinal subluxations and other injuries, etc, even the slightest miscue in signaling can make your body feel uneasy, unstable, nauseous, like the room is moving, or can fire to the amygdala and create a lot of anxiety or fear. When this system is disrupted, it can be retrained and rewired. I discuss the vestibular system quite a bit more in podcast number 47 (Brain Regions), and we discuss this much more in this podcast episode, so listen to the episode to learn more, and check out VizStim , and follow VizStim Recovery on social media for some great tips and tricks!

So many people in the functional medicine world, whether it be from their past adverse  events, the pandemic, from Lyme disease, mold toxicity, from being gaslighted by doctors, or trying failed therapies, etc - - SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE SOME DEGREE OF PTSD, LIMBIC SYSTEM DYSFUNCTION, and now experience an IMBALANCED STRESS RESPONSE, DYSAUTONOMIA, and other debilitating symptoms.

So, we all know about stress. There is the mental stress that we all know about, but also physical stress (too much water is a stressor, too little water is a stressor, leaky gut, injuries, etc) as well as toxic stress (mold, mercury, pesticides, etc) - - and your body responds to stress as potential DANGER - you prepare to "fight-or-flight".

So, STRESS is your body's response to potential danger.....

DANGER is either real or perceived - you can tell someone they should be scared and they will be, or tell them they should NOT be scared and they will NOT be......but abuse is a danger, toxins are a danger, viruses are a danger.....

Your limbic system of your brain connects memories with experiences, and will "remember" these instances of danger and the stress response, and the limbic system includes regions like the amygdala (fear sensing), the hippocampus (memory), and the hypothalamus/pituitary (stress response).

Repeated exposure to (or perception of) DANGER leads to limbic system dysfunction, PTSD, and an imbalanced stress response.....your body begins to treat EVERYTHING as a danger.

All of this stress, true danger, and the perception of danger/stress triggers something called The Cell Danger Response, which is fascinating, I have a Youtube Video about it linked below, but your cells, your nervous system, your stress response system begins to respond to EVERYTHING AS A DANGER.

HOW CAN YOU REWIRE THIS RESPONSE???

This is gaining popularity in the healthcare world as an important piece to healing. It's increasingly being talked about at seminars and in practitioner circles as well as with patient stories, but there are a lot of different options, recommendations, programs, etc to choose from. In this podcast I go through 4 major "categories" you can work on for rewiring your nervous system, and within each of these categories I talk about many potential strategies, including:
Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve to decrease sympathetic dominanceTENS DeviceGargling/Gagging/HummingCoffee EnemaChallenge Your AUTONOMIC INPUTSBreath workTemperature - cold plunges, contrast showersHR - HeartMath or other HRV trainingChallenge Your Visual and Sensory InputsVestibular exercises like VizStim (next podcast episode!)ChiropracticChallenge Your Psychological InputsLimbic System Retraining ProgramsNeurolinguistic programming - Gratitude/AffirmationsAll that, and more, are discussed in detail in the episode. Give it a listen, give a 5-star review, and subscribe for more content, including my next podcast interview with Dr. Ashley Contreras talking about dizziness and rewiring the vestibular syste

Here are some of things worth linking to.....
VizStim
Gupta Program
How to Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve with a TENS Device
How to Use Binaural Beats to Shift Gears in your Brain
Why You Become Hypersensitive - Cell Danger Response and Limbic System Dysfunction

Alright it's been WAY TOO LONG since I released a podcast, so I am starting to do some interviews to keep having good content come out on my channel :)

This "interview" is a discussion with my friend and colleague Dr. Mark Su MD.

Dr. Su is well-known in many practitioner forums because he chimes in often with really insightful and helpful replies to fellow practitioners' queries, questions, and concerns when trying to help complex health cases, which is why I thought he would be a great person to chat with. In clinical practice, Dr. Su blends together traditional primary care medicine with "functional", or root-cause medicine, and he has developed a broad knowledge base with expertise in traditional pharmacology, but also in nutraceuticals, lab testing, resonance/muscle testing, Lyme and tick-borne illnesses, mold toxicity and environmentally acquired illness -  - all the things I love to talk about on this podcast!

There really isn't a "topic" or "theme" to this interview, but I have a lot of respect for Dr. Su when it comes to dealing with chronic and complex diseases, I share a lot of his viewpoints, and really just wanted to get him on here and pick his brain about some things, and this is what came from our conversation :) 

ENJOY!

Sinus problems are rampant. Americans spend over $1 Billion annually to treat sinus problems with over-the-counter medications, which is crazy. It's not just common in the chronic illness world and in the autoimmune world, and ESPECIALLY in the mold world, it's common in everyone.

Sinus inflammation is interesting. I have had really great success healing my own sinuses. I'm not recommending that everyone (or anyone) do what I did, but what I REALLY DID was I spent several years intensely studying deep immunology and the Ear, Nose, and Throat and Allergy literature, read 100s of studies, and used things like high dose supplements and essential oils to have really good success with nasal polyps and chronic sinusitis. I haven't had sinus issues for over 3 years. Here is a video of what I did to get rid of nasal polyps, it's crazy. 

When I talk about sinuses, I'm also talking about ENT areas - ear infections, tonsils, sore throats, pharyngitis, which includes things like Strep and PANDAS, but most of my success was with the nose. The whole ENT region is a hotbed of infections and pathogens, and is right across the wall from the brain, and things like antibodies, histamine, chemical toxins, inflammatory cytokines, and mycotoxins from mold can ride the "olfactory elevator" (as Dr. Jill Crista calls it) right up to the brain - right to deep, midline areas like the frontal cortex (brain fog, etc), pituitary (hormones), amygdala (anxiety, fear, etc), hypothalamus (temp, dysautonomia, etc), neurological dysfunctions and more. 

Sinus inflammation drives many immune mechanisms, including Th2 and eosinophilic inflammation, mast cell activation and histamine, and Th17 inflammation, which is tissue-damaging autoimmune inflammation and will drive autoimmune progression. THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF THE PUZZLE!  One thing that can drive this immune activation are chronic biofilms including Strep, Staph (MARCoNS), and Mold/Yeast that are incredibly persistent and antibiotic resistant. Biofilm colonies, like in the gut, grow on sinuses, adenoids, tonsils (that's why they remove them!) and ENT surfaces - and when they adhere to a surface they are over 1000x harder to kill, and they are highly persistent and antibiotic resistant. THIS IS THE OTHER MOST IMPORTANT PIECE!

In this episode I talk about 4 levels of supporting sinus inflammation naturally:

1 - Breathe Clean Air!!!! Allergies are obviously an issue....You can't be living in mold....I talk about air purifiers, mold candles, HVAC filters, and more.

2 - Fix your Gut and Balance your Immune System - I talk about using things like probiotics, herbal killers, SCFA, vitamins D and A, glutathione, perilla, quercetin, luteolin, etc to support barrier integrity, mast cell activation, Th2 dominance.

3 - Break Biofilms and Kill Infections - Nasal Spray, Neti Pot, Nebulizer, Gargle - I talk about using essential oils, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, silver, propolis, aqualaurin, biocidin, etc to break up biofilms and help kill pathogens.

4 - Maintain - I talk about the importance of breathing clean air, doing regular nasal rinses, and more to maintain.

This is not medical advice, but many people have seen their ENT with very little answer besides antihistamines, antibiotics, or steroids, so these are just some of the things that people are doing out there, and hopefully it can help you solve YOUR puzzle!

I also mention this, my favorite newsletter and started by an amazing ENT surgeon:
www.sinusitiswellness.com

Not everyone gets well in functional medicine. There are a lot of people sick and suffering in the world, and not everyone even becomes aware of the direct connection between diet, lifestyle, toxins, environment, stress, and other exposome factors as drivers of disease, but still sometimes even someone who seemingly does everything right still doesn't get great results. What separates those who DO HEAL from those who DON'T HEAL?

One of, if not THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, is a HEALING MINDSET. There are many big picture things that I discuss in this podcast about a successful healing mindset, using some actual examples, and some personal rants, but talking about things such as:

- Do they understand the big picture - that toxins, foods, infections, stress, other exposome factors cause dysfunctional  processes on a cellular level, that lead to disease processes expressing over time?
 
- Are they connecting these mechanistic dots - this leads to this leads to this? You don't need to be an expert, but understanding the mechanisms helps understand the solutions.....

- Do they have the discipline necessary to make dietary restrictions, lifestyle changes, and stay the course? It's not about perfection either, it's about progression.

- Are they a "dabbler" and have they bounced around different practitioners, tried dozens of supplements? This is a red flag!!

- Are they committed financially? Do they even care about their financial investment?

These questions are important for practitioners to ask when attracting the right clientele, but also important for patients to ask about themselves, their motivation, determination, discipline, and mindset.

HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART - - MINDSET CAN BE TRAINED!!!

It's so important to train this growth mindset with your health and constantly remind yourself of your goals, targets, intentions, motivations to stay the course. It's ALSO really important to retrain your cells and your Limbic System, and in this podcast I talk about ways to do this, including constantly filling your brain with thoughts and words of Safety, Gratitude, Epigrams, Affirmations,  I talk about Limbic System retraining programs like DNRS and the Gupta Program, and this youtube video about Cell Danger Response and Limbic System Dysfunction.