Summary:

Dr. Tom O’Brien, an expert in gut health and functional medicine, was interviewed on the Wellness Your Way podcast. He discussed the importance of understanding the role of the gut in overall health, stating that all disease begins in the gut. He also highlighted the dangers of wheat and gluten, and the importance of a gluten-free diet for those with autoimmune diseases. Dr. O’Brien also discussed the impact of environmental toxins on health, including the harmful effects of chemicals in food and everyday products. He emphasized the importance of organic food and clean water, and the need for accurate testing to identify health issues. He also mentioned his upcoming summit, The Inflammation Equation, which aims to provide information and guidance on reducing inflammation and improving health.

Full Episode:

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Transcription:

Megan Lyons:

Thank you so much Dr. Tom O’Brien for coming on Wellness Your Way. I am truly excited to have you here.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Megan Lyons:

Of course. Well, like I told you before we started recording, I have seen you numerous times in person. I feel like almost every conference I go to you are speaking for, which I’m very grateful. But for the audience who doesn’t know you yet, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Sure. Let’s see. I guess what’s important is that I’m on the teaching faculty, the Institute for Functional Medicine. I have been for almost 12 years now, and my area of expertise is teaching doctors about the gut and the role the gut plays. And it’s just so cool when you start to learn this, it becomes obvious what you have to do to be healthy. We know that for every one message from the brain going down, telling the gut what to do, there are nine messages from the gut going up, telling the brain what to do. So who’s the boss here? Right? It really is. All disease begins in the gut. And research papers out of Harvard are saying that now, and that’s actually the title of a paper by the Chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology. All Disease begins in the gut, in the leaky gut. So that’s my expertise is teaching about the gut.

And I started off teaching about the dangers of wheat and gluten, and it was 11 years ago that we did the gluten summit. It was the first online summit ever, ever. And we just made it up. We didn’t know what we were doing, and I just went around the world interviewing the greats. My first interview ever was Professor Michael Marsh at Oxford. And if you’re a gastroenterologist and you order an endoscopy biopsy, I mean a tube goes down with a camera and is looking around in your gut, the report will say, marsh one, marsh two, marsh three, this was Marsh, this was the godfather of all of it. And it was my first interview and he was just so kind and took me around Oxford arm in arm and said, Tom, that’s where I stood on stage in 1962 and received my medical degree. I said, that’s wonderful, professor and things like that.

But we put this thing together and we had 118,000 people that attended, and my friends called and said, how did you do that? I mean, mark Hyman and Deanna Minnick and Isabella Wan, how did you do that? I said, I don’t know. We just made it up. I don’t know. My team would call and say, we have a problem here and here. And I said, well, I don’t know what to do about that. That’s why I hired you guys. Figure it out. And they did. They did. And so my team came to me and said, doc, your friends all want to do summits. We should start a company. And I said, no, no, no. It’s not my passion, but you guys go ahead. I mean, if you want with my blessing, you go ahead. That was the start of a company called Health Talks Online, and they have hosted the vast majority of summits in the last 11 years, and tens of millions of people have been helped.

And I feel really good that we had, we kind of started all of that. And so lots of people have been guided on their way, but I’m not a professional videographer and documentary and it’s not my thing. And so now we’re doing another one, and this one is called the Inflammation Equation, decoding the Path, the Optimal Wellbeing. And it took me three months to come up with the title because I didn’t know how to get the point across in the title. And it’s a geeky title. I know it’s a geeky title, but there are so many things that we should be doing. We all know we should do this and we should do that, and people don’t know where to begin and how to start. So we’re decoding all of that, trying to put it into simple everyday language. And the bottom line is that the Center for Disease Control tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases.

Everything except unintentional injuries is a chronic inflammatory disease, meaning it’s been around for a long time before you ever have a symptom. When you think you’re fine, you’re not, and well, no, I’m fine. No, you’re not. And when you do the proper testing to look and see what’s not functioning right, it’s an OMG again and again, people just don’t know until you see the evidence and then it’s, oh my God, I had no idea. Wow. So this could cause problems when I get pregnant. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so we’ve interviewed now over 60 of the world leaders. I mean, I’ve gone to Israel and Spain and England and Italy and Brazil interviewing the world leaders in this research about where does inflammation come from? And so we’ve put it together in a way that I think is really understandable and not just a download of gloom and doom, but rather, what do you do about it? How do you get started? How do you ask the questions as to, do I have a problem with inflammation? And then if so, what do I do about it? How do I deal with this? So that’s what we’re doing now, and you’re kind enough to have me on today to talk about that it affects every single person. And when you know, understand, let me give you an example.

Chicago 2016, a research paper came out where they looked at 326 pregnant women, and they did urine tests in the eighth month of pregnancy, and they measured phthalates five phthalates. Now, phthalates are a category of chemicals used to mold plastic, and the one that most of us have heard of is BPA, bisphenol, BPA. They check B, p, a and four others. I mean, there are many, many, but they just check five. And what they found was that, well, they put them into fourths, the lowest fourth, the next, the third and the highest. Then they followed the offspring of those pregnancy for seven years. And when the children turned seven years old, they did wexler IQ tests and the official IQ tests. And it was startling because it was every child, and there’s not much in medicine. That’s all or every, but this was every child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates and urine and pregnancy, which meant that the phthalates are in the bloodstream, they’re in the amniotic fluid baby who’s swimming in this soup inside of mom’s tummy is the amniotic fluid that the phthalates are there.

Those in the highest category, their IQ at seven years old was seven points less, 6.7 to 7.4 points less every one of ’em. Now, that doesn’t mean anything to anyone until you understand a one point difference in IQ is noticeable. A seven point difference is a difference between a child working really hard, getting straight A’s in school and a child working really hard, getting straight C’s in school that this child doesn’t have a chance in hell of ever excelling. Now just go to Google and type in phalates and neurogenesis brain cell growth, and here come the studies. The higher the phthalates, the more inhibition for your brain cells to grow. So when mom is high in Phalates, baby is at risk. Now, every child whose mom was in the highest category, baby’s at risk of their brain’s not developing completely to their full potential, whatever that potential might be.

And so, okay, moms, whoa, I don’t have any pH really, do you? Out of plastic bottles, we just learned recently, a study came out four weeks ago, new technology, laser technology, and they’ve identified, so we’ve all worried about microplastics in our food and in our water, in our air, but now they can identify nanoplastics, which is much, much, much less. And they found in the three major brands of water in one liter of water, the average amount was 240,000 nanoparticles of plastic in one liter. And we’re supposed to drink two to three liters a day. And if you’re trying to be healthy and avoid the bad water coming out of your tap, you buy bottled water. And if it’s in plastic bottles, you’re getting poisoned. And those nanoplastics go into your brain and they cause inflammation in your brain. They go into your kidneys, they go into your lungs, and they cause inflammation wherever they go.

So that’s one source of phthalates that affect mom’s level and baby’s brain development nail polish. It’s phthalates that make the nail polish hard, and they’re in your bloodstream in four to five minutes when you apply nail polish. But there’s no evidence that the amount of phthalates in the nail polish is toxic to humans. There’s no evidence of that. But these phalates are cumulative in your body. And over the years, give me a five-year-old girl painting her 10 little fingers and 10 little toes for 20 years, and now she’s 25, 30 years old, married, gets pregnant, hopefully has a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery, and a beautiful baby. But baby’s brain didn’t develop properly. And so that is just one example of many, many examples of we talked to the scientists and then we talk about how do you get phthalates out of the body? And so we’re giving the big picture so people get startled, OMG, I didn’t know this. Wow. But then we tell you what it is you can do and go back to your healthcare practitioner and ask ’em to do this test or this test, which is not common because insurance won’t pay for it, but insurance doesn’t pay to keep you healthy. Insurance pays to get you out of the hospital as quickly as possible, so their expenses are low. Right.

Megan Lyons:

Oh my goodness. So many great nuggets in that information. And I’d really love to go back to some of these root causes, but I know the audience is chomping at the bit for two things. First thing is water. You said very clearly tap water is not the goal. Plastic bottled water is not the goal. I have my own preference on where I get my water and the glass that I drink it out of, but I’d love to hear how you source your water.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Well, I’d like to ask you, is that a plastic straw that you’re using?

Megan Lyons:

No,

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Exactly. Glass.

Megan Lyons:

Yes, exactly. You can blink it.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Exactly. It’s the little things you do that make the biggest difference, the little things you do, our water, we live in the jungle. We’re in Costa Rica, and so it’s groundwater. And so we have full house air water filtration system, and then an extra water filtration system on top of that under the kitchen sink. So we’ve got the spigot that comes out. So we get our coffee, water, and our cooking water, drinking water from the extra spigot, but our shower water, our toothbrushing water is also being filtered.

Megan Lyons:

That’s next level. I like that. And is it a reverse osmosis filter or what kind of filter?

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Yeah, it’s reverse osmosis, charcoal granulation, and two micron filter.

Megan Lyons:

Oh, love it. And then are you adding back in minerals when you drink it?

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Because the reverse osmosis takes out the metals, the heavy metals, and also takes out the minerals. Your water becomes mineral deficient, but you’re not supposed to depend on water for your minerals.

Megan Lyons:

Okay, good

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Point. It’s supposed to becoming from your food. So yeah, we take some multivitamins that have minerals in them, but it’s not a concern. In my book, because we’re eating organic, we have the opportunity to eat all of our produce organic, so I know that we’re getting lots of vitamins and minerals from the variety of foods we eat. One of our recommendations for people is called the gluten-free Mediterranean Diet. And if you just Google gluten-free Mediterranean diet, the research paper comes up with the drawing of the pyramid in it. And this is the pyramid in general, we recommend to people, some people do really well on a paleo diet, some on a carnivore diet, some on a elimination diet. But in general principles, a gluten-free Mediterranean diet at the bottom of that pyramid of the food pyramid with the gluten-free Mediterranean diet, excuse me, at the very bottom of it is water.

Megan Lyons:

Ah, I like that.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Isn’t that like you? You’re nutritious. You went, oh,

Megan Lyons:

Yes, I was sure you would say vegetables, which is the bottom of every pyramid that I’ve drawn, but now I will change mine to have water at the bottom. That’s fantastic.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Exactly. That’s what I did too when I read this study that came out of Italy, said, oh my gosh, of course. How did I miss that? But I did. Yes, fantastic.

You had the same response. So we both had that same startling response from it. And how much water should we be drinking? Well, it depends. It depends on what we’re doing that the concept of the water is in general principles, a third of an ounce per pound body weight, a third of an ounce per pound body weight. But if you are sweating a lot because you’re doing infrared saunas or steam saunas or saunas in general to help with detoxification, you’re losing more water. And so for those people it goes up to, or if you’re exercising a lot and you’re sweating, it goes up to a half ounce per pound. So if you weigh 150 pounds, that’s between 50 and 75 ounces of water a day. So that’s between six and eight, almost 9, 9, 6 to nine, eight ounce glasses of water a day six, not one, not two.

I drink a lot of water doc, I probably drink two glasses a day. No, no, no, you’re dehydrated. And if you want to know if you’re dehydrated, just grab the back of your skin, pinch it, and if it doesn’t flop right back down, right away, you’re dehydrated. It’s just a simple little thing you can do. But water is critically important because it escorts out the bad stuff. And it’s not just that we have to put the good stuff in. We have to take the bad stuff out. And if you can’t get rid of it because you are dehydrated, well, I’m not dehydrated, I feel fine. Really pinch your skin.

Megan Lyons:

Or start drinking water. And then you’ll realize after, oh yes, I didn’t feel great that afternoon energy slump. I didn’t need to have those cravings, that dry mouth, that whatever. I didn’t need to have all that. That’s exactly right. That’s what happens most times to me. When people say they don’t feel it, then they realize after.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

That’s a really good point. Really good point. So in the pyramid above the water, the next is as you thought, fruits and vegetables and they have to be moving in the direction of organic, they can’t be. Well, I eat fresh fruits and vegetables, unfortunately. So in the generally American Medical Association, they published a study in 2019 of couples going to assisted fertility centers. Lots of people in your age bracket are doing that now. And as you may know, if you’ve had some friends do that, they’re spending tens, thousands of dollars to try to have a pregnancy and a healthy pregnancy and a delivery and start a family. It’s a beautiful thing. They’re spending a lot of money. Well, they published this study from Harvard, and the editors of the journal said, this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to prove their point. Now, the editors of the Journal of the American Medical Association don’t say that very often.

They don’t give stamps of approval like that, right? So, okay, this is a really good study. They ruled out all of the known risk factors for success or failure with implantation, alcohol, cigarette smoking, exercise, no exercise, socioeconomic class, race. They ruled all of that out in an elegant way, and they looked at one thing, how many servings of fruits and vegetables is the woman eating a day? Well, we all know the answer to that, don’t we? No, we don’t. Because they divided those women into fourths, the lowest, the next, the third and the highest. And those in the highest category of fruit and vegetable consumption compared to those in the lowest category of fruit and vegetable consumption, those in the highest category had an 18% less likelihood of successful implantation. Wait, what? The more fruits and vegetables I eat, the less likely I’m going to be successful getting pregnant.

That’s true. And if they did get pregnant, they had a 26% less likelihood of a live birth. They lost the baby to miscarriages or still births 26% more often than the women that ate very few fruits and vegetables. That’s like what? And this is in the journal of the American Medical Association, and the editors of the journalist said, this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers. You can’t argue with the study. And it came from Harvard. You can’t argue with the study, but here’s the good news. There was a subgroup of women eating organic, and in that category, it was the exact opposite. Yes. The more fruits and vegetables you ate, the better the outcome. Yes. What does that mean? It means it’s the chemicals on the fruits and vegetables that we’re all eating today. Every time you go to a restaurant, if it’s not organic, then there’s pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, antibiotics on these foods.

And now this, what I’m about to tell you is my opinion. Nothing else I’m telling you is my opinion, but this is, I think the most sensitive tissue in the human body is a fertilized egg. It doesn’t have a defense its own. It’s dependent on the mother. But if mom is so toxic with chemicals in her body creating inflammation, the immune system trying to protect you is fighting these assault of the chemicals in the carrots that you’re eating or in the tomato sauce that you’re eating for the pasta, then that fertilized egg is the most sensitive tissue. Yes. And here’s the good news in all of this. Those women were put in the category of eating organic. If they were eating organic three times a week.

Megan Lyons:

Oh wow. That’s not very much

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

At 21 times a week, three times a week. Interesting. And probably it’s because if you’re eating organic, whenever you can bought organic shampoo, you’re using organic soaps at home, you probably are on the path of moving in the direction of more organic.

Megan Lyons:

That’s fantastic. And I don’t refute at all the idea that the organic people had better outcomes, first of all. And the more vegetables that they ate, organic vegetables, the better. What surprises me about the study is in the group that was not eating organic, I would assume what they were eating that was not vegetables and fruit was wheat-based products sprayed with glyphosate and a bunch of other who knows what artificial ultra-processed foods. So I feel like it’s a trade-off between two things that are harmful. What do you think about that?

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Well, that’s an interesting premise, and you’re right. For those women that were not eating organic at all, what were they eating? Or for those that were not eating fruits and vegetables very much, what were they eating? They’re eating fast food, they’re eating packaged food, they’re eating convenient food, which there are so many problems with that. And you’re absolutely right about wheat. That is the most toxic food for every human without exception, every human fight. Sweet. Whether you feel it or not, there are 36 centers in Italy designated by the government as centers of excellence for wheat-related disorders. Meaning if you go to your doctor in Italy and they think you’ve got a problem with wheat, they send you to one of these clinics and you go there for confirmation because if you are confirmed from one of these centers of having a wheat-related disorder, your food’s a tax deduction.

Megan Lyons:

Oh, wow.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

So there’s 36 centers around the country, mostly gastroenterology and some pediatric and some psychiatric. And they as a group, they looked at 5,000 patients who had been referred to them. So that means these people had a problem. They went to their doctor, their doctor couldn’t fix ’em or recommended they go see the gastroenterologist, the gastroenterologist or a pediatrician. But they went to these centers, these centers of excellence, and they got the diagnosis there of a wheat-related disorder. So those people, 7% of them were celiac, 93% were not. They were non-celiac gluten sensitivity, which means you can’t determine celiac or non-celiac as the factor that says whether you have a problem with wheat. It’s not true. Of course, Celiac’s very important to test for. And if you have celiac, you’re squeaky clean with wheat for the rest of your life. Absolutely. That’s necessary. But most of these people, they didn’t have celiac, they had brain symptoms or skin symptoms. They had psoriasis or they had Hashimoto’s thyroid disease. And when they go on a gluten-free diet, they get better. They get better.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. And I’m so glad to hear you say that. And of course my selection of guess is biased towards that, but it will never not be frustrating to me when I have a client with diagnosed Hashimoto’s or ulcerative colitis or you name it something where I am certain that a gluten-free diet will help them. And then their gastroenterologist says, no, your ulcerative colitis has nothing to do with what you’re eating. It just still blows my mind that we’re

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Still in that place. Right. That’s pretty archaic. And those doctors just haven’t embraced the science. There’s hundreds of studies, professor Yehuda Schonfeld from Tel Aviv Israel, one of the people we interviewed that I interviewed to get a sense of who this guy is, when medical doctors go back to school to get their PhDs in immunology, Tel Aviv University is one of the famous places in the world that they go to. They’ve had hundreds of doctors who have graduated and got with their PhD in immunology, 26 of them chair departments of immunology in medical schools and hospitals around the world. They’re his students. They’re SHAUNFELD students. This is the godfather. He published a paper in March of 2022, benefits of a gluten-free diet in non-celiac autoimmune disease. And he looked at 28 autoimmune diseases, Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, cardio myositis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma 28 diseases. And he did a literature review and looked at over 80 studies, and he said that 79.5% of the people got better on a gluten-free diet. These are non celiacs. And this was confirmed in 63.5% of the studies. So not every study and not every person, but more than half the time, they get better on a gluten-free diet. And this is from the godfather of autoimmunity. You can’t argue with this. There are just too many. Well, you can if you want, but you’re

Megan Lyons:

Very interesting

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Climbing up the wrong tree.

Megan Lyons:

Yes. So we have this information about organics. We have this information about gluten. When we’re going back and thinking about your summit as inflammation kind of as this big topic, what are one or two other root causes that you see contributing to inflammation?

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

The number one. Well, first you have to understand inflammation is not bad for you. Excessive inflammation is bad for you. Inflammation is just when your immune system gets activated, this is what happens. It creates inflammation and Mrs. Patient, your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It’s there to protect you. There’s an army, a navy, an air force, a marines, a Coast Guard. We call ’em iga, IgG, IgE, I, gm, cytokines. They’re just there to protect you. Different branches get called out depending on what the threat is. But when you have excess inflammation, the million-dollar question is what is your immune system trying to protect you from? I mean, it’s just so basic and so simple. It’s not the immune system going crazy and you have to shut it down, which sometimes you have to reduce symptoms. You need to take some short-term action to reduce symptoms.

Not saying that you don’t use medication when it’s needed. Of course you do, but it’s not a deficiency of the medication that’s causing the problem. So why is your immune system activated? It’s the million-dollar question. And the most common source activating inflammation, the most common environmental trigger activating inflammation is what’s on the end of your fork. Almost always that because we don’t feel bad when we eat a food, we don’t think there’s a problem with it. But we know the science is very clear. Like with Celiacs, the ratio is eight to one for every one celiac that has gut symptoms. Well, wait. This is a disease of the gut, isn’t it? Well, yes, but for every one patient that has gut symptoms, there are eight that do not. They have psoriasis or eczema or acne. They have hair loss, they have thyroid dysfunction, they have ulcerative colitis.

They don’t have gut symptoms, they don’t get bloated, they don’t have gas, they have joint symptoms. They have ms. So the ratio is eight to one. So if you think because you eat a food and you don’t feel sick in your stomach after you eat it, that it’s okay and it’s safe, wrong, unfortunately. Sorry, but wrong. So you have to do the right kind of testing. So in the inflammation equation, we talk about the different tests that are out there and which ones are the really good ones that you can count on and which ones are not, and why not? How come you can’t count on? Because doctors don’t know this. They believe that when they order a test from the laboratory or from the hospital, this is going to tell us the truth. Well, unfortunately, those tests, the sensitivity and specificity on most of those tests is somewhere between 70 and 85%, meaning it’s wrong, 15 to 30% of the time. Completely wrong. But new technology has come out, and we talk a lot about it, the new technology, and I love this analogy. If I were to say to you that Megan, back in 1990, I think you were born in 1990. I was five, yes. Okay, good.

So I couldn’t really say this to you in five years old, but I think you understand what I mean. If I were to say in 25 years or so, 30 years, I’m going to have this little black thing in my hand, kind of the size of my wallet, and if I just run my thumb across it, and I can tell you within five seconds that the air particulate matter in Chicago today is 24. That’s pretty good. It’s a good day to exercise outside San Diego’s 26. But look out San Antonio, Texas is at 78. Do not exercise outside today in San Antonio. In other words, I’ve got the information of the world in my hand, and I can pull it up in seconds. If I had told you that in 1990, you would’ve thought I was watching too much Star Trek. Yes, we couldn’t. It’s beyond our scope of imagining what we have today compared to the cutting-edge technology of 1990.

That same concept is true in laboratory medicine. And the tests that your doctors are ordering are from laboratories that have been in operation for many, many years. And many of these tests are from 1990s, the early two thousands, they’re okay tests, but the technology has changed so much that they’re outdated and they’re wrong two or three out of 10 times. Completely wrong. Well, the new technology called silicone chip technology is right on the money every single time. So you do these tests better called the Zoomers because you zoom in on the problem and you get accurate information about what’s going on in your body right now, independent of how you feel. Because remember, 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. They’ve been around for years. And you never knew. You never knew. So that’s right. We talk a lot about the tests and depending on the condition, what tests are a really good tests to do, and here, download this information about the test, take it to your doctor, ask ’em to order the test for you because these are the tests that are much more accurate. Then you see what’s cooking inside, right? So that’s our goal.

Megan Lyons:

I’m so glad you’re doing this because I run the Zoomers out of my practice as well, and they’re great tests. It’s just that people don’t know about these things, and your platform is so large, you’re going to open people’s eyes to all of these tests. Hopefully bring the price down in the future and make it more accessible and make it so you don’t have to jump through 18 hoops to get these tests. That’s really fantastic. So thank you for that. I appreciate it.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Yes, thank you. Yes, it’s really a pleasure. And when these tests came out, Mayo Clinic’s first article on them was in January of 2016, and I was jumping for joy. I said, what? 97 to a hundred percent accuracy? It’s called sensitivity and specificity. Really? Where is this? So I called the lab. I found out the name of the lab that Mayo Clinic was writing the tests about, and I said, I need to speak to the president. So this guy gets on the line and he says, hi, this is Dr. Tom O’Brien. He said, the Tom O’Brien. I said, I don’t know if it’s about gluten, maybe. Yeah. Okay. Yes, yes. How can I help you? Is this your test? Yes. Is this accurate? Yes. I need to understand this. Oh, please, come visit. Please, doctor. Please come visit. So the next week, I went to Silicone Valley to look at this laboratory now was blown away. You have to put a space suit on, literally a spacesuit to go in the lab because it’s dust-free, it’s silicone chip technology, and you can’t have anything. And they can check 6,000 markers with one blood draw.

Megan Lyons:

Oh my goodness.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Now they don’t. They don’t, but they could. And the accuracy is like nothing before in history. So finally, we’re able to get accurate information about what’s cooking in someone’s body. That’s great. Now, Megan, I want to tell you, this is so important, and I’ll tell you why. Blue Cross Blue Shield published an article in February of 2020, and they said, we got a problem here. But because that virus came out at the same time, no one paid attention to the Blue Cross Blue Shield article. But in the previous four-year period, the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s went up 407% in four years, in 30 to 44 year olds.

Megan Lyons:

Wow. Oh my goodness.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

That’s you.

Megan Lyons:

Yeah. That is me

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

And your followers. It went up in a four year period, not 10%, not 20%, which would be bad enough. Every autoimmune disease is going up four to 9% a year every year. And that’s really bad, but 407% in four years. Why? Because your generation was born from moms who already were getting really toxic like no one before in history with these accumulated chemicals in their body. And then as your generation grew up, you’re accumulating more of these chemicals and they get stored in your body. You have to test for this. The test is called the total tox burden by the same laboratory. And when you do these tests, you go, oh my God, I’ve got so much mold in my body. Mold metabolites. Where did that come from? And then you check and you have an expert come in and your home’s full of mold, and then you learn how it affects your brain.

And that 30, no, wait, wait, 60 to 65% of all Alzheimer’s is inhalation Alzheimer’s. It’s what you’re breathing that’s going right up your nostrils directly to the brain, causing inflammation in the memory center of your brain, which is killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells, kaling off brain cells. So if you’re living in a moldy hollow, you have a little mold on your shower curtain. Oh, it’s not too bad. It’s not too bad. I’m a guy. I’m a 27-year-old guy. Yeah, there’s a little black stuff there. And that’s not too bad. It doesn’t bother me. Well just wait a few years. And after you’ve killed off enough brain cells, it’s like, wake up guys and gals, wake up, wake up this world. It’s not fair that this is the world that you’ve been brought into. You’re supposed to have been brought into a pristine planet earth, not a toxic planet Earth, but it’s toxic. And those chemicals, the last time the government published on how many chemicals are coming into the country, every year was 2010.

And when they published that, the journal Pediatrics wrote an article said, this is a big problem. We have failed our children. And there was a lot of hullabaloo about this report from the EPA because they told us it was 27 trillion pounds of chemicals being manufactured or imported into the United States every year. So I took that number, 27 trillion, and I divided it by 365 days and by 350, well, whatever the population is of the US 350 million. And that’s 247 pounds per person per day. Wow. So that means the flame retardant chemicals on that chair, that’s just to your right behind you. Yes. The formaldehyde on the desk if it’s not solid wood and pressboard is soaked in formaldehyde. The flame retardant chemicals in the clothing that we all wear and the sleeping clothing we wear, and in the sheets and the blankets we put over us and they’re outgassing, flame retardant chemicals in the air all night long.

And you’re breathing it in. You can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, but you’re breathing this stuff in and it just keeps accumulating and accumulating and accumulating. And so your generation is at the highest risk of any generation ever in history. And unfortunately, the World Health Organization now tells us that children born today have an expected lifespan two years less than their parents’ expected lifespan. Kids will live two years less than you will because of all of these toxins that were surrounded by all the time. Just think about the artificial insemination study that we talked about. The more vegetables you eat conventional vegetables, the worse the outcome, the more miscarriages, the more failures of implantation. But you’re eating lots of fruits and vegetables, which is supposed to be good for you. Yes. But what you’re eating is not fruits and vegetables. They’re Franken foods. They’re damaged, they’re loaded with chemicals.

That’s why you have to go organic. Or if you can’t get organic, you go get the spray wash to wash your veggies with and truly free the company. Truly free is great. Their products. You buy conventional broccoli, it looks green, it’s okay, but you spray half of it with this veggie wash and you dip it water and shake it one time and lift it out. All of a sudden, the sprayed part is just bright green. And you see, oh, this other part’s got wax on it. I didn’t notice the wax before because the whole thing was like that. And you see this stuff, and then you start to understand what we’re up against. So we don’t want to overwhelm people. So every day we’ve got eight or 10 experts. So six minutes of this expert, four minutes of this one, nine minutes of this one.

And then we’re asking the question, so what do you do about this? What do you do? And then we talk about how do you detox? What foods do you select? What kind of a environment, why houseplant are so important in your house? And so we want to give you the guidance first. We have to wake you up. We have to wake you up. So you say, oh my gosh, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. Oh, I didn’t know this. And then it’s like, what do I do? Well, here’s what you do. Here’s the handout on glass storage containers, because plastic storage containers in your kitchen for leftover food, the phalates are in the food. The next morning you put chicken in a leftover storage container in the refrigerator. The next day you take chicken out.

It’s got phalates on it. Didn’t have phalates yesterday, but it’s from the plastic. And so we give you the URLs for glass storage containers so you can go get glass storage containers, just all these little things that we all have to learn. Here’s three organic nail polish companies and cosmetic companies so you can find safer products. The average woman better than I do is somewhere around 160 to 180 chemicals a woman too many putting on every day men’s, about 120 between the shampoo, the deodorant, the shaving cream, the soap and the conditioner. We’re putting all these chemicals on us. They get absorbed into your body. And because they don’t make you sick when you’re using ’em, we think they’re okay.

Megan Lyons:

Absolutely. You’ve painted the picture so well for the uphill battle that we’re facing. And I am 100% sure that everyone will want to go to the link in the show notes that we’ll put for the summit. I would love for you to tout the summit just one more time as we close. But before we do leave the audience with one bit of hope, what’s one thing that you do every day that feels fun to you or a food you like, or something that really helps reduce inflammation that can be uplifting for the audience?

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Oh, sure, sure. Well, I’m traveling right now. We’re finishing the interviews. I just interviewed Fran Drescher yesterday, the nanny, I don’t know if you know the show. The Nanny? Yes. She’s wonderful. And she got cancer. She got uterine cancer. And she realized that what she said, why I was like, why I got that New York accent of hers. And then she laughs about it, but she’s a 22 year survivor now. Wow. Amazing. And that’s unheard of for that type of cancer because she cleaned up her home and I was laughing. We came into her home and her assistant welcomed us and gave us little blue booties to put on our shoes to cover our shoes so you don’t bring the toxic outside world in her house. And when she sat down and I gave her a hug, we’re friends. And I said, Fran, you are the only person I know other than me that gives anyone who comes into my house booties.

I either give ’em some slippers to put on or we’re barefoot in the house or booties for their shoes if they want to keep their shoes on, except workers. I don’t give workers booties, little slippers or something. I give ’em the blue covers to put on their boots because they got these tie up boots and all that. And I said, you’re the only person other than me that I know that does that. She goes with that laugh of hers. But you learn the little things that protect you and protect your family. So I am in Traverse City, Michigan right now. And last night we went to a Restaurant for dinner, a nice restaurant. And I looked at the menu and I know it’s all conventional produce. There’s no organics here. Right? Okay, so what am I going to do? Ah, I’m going to order, let’s see.

What did I order? I ordered, not muss scallops. I ordered scallops, but a side order of Brussels sprouts and a side order of broccoli, because Brussels sprouts and broccoli have the ingredients that support your liver’s detoxing, breaking down chemicals. And so I ordered some foods that, I mean, they’re good foods, they just have these chemicals on them, but these foods help your liver to break down these toxic chemicals that we’re exposed to. And so did I balance it to zero? I don’t know. I don’t know. But I know that I helped minimize the potential toxicity of this beautiful food I was eating by doing these little things that I had learned. And what we emphasize in the event is that the goal is progress, not perfection. It’s progress. And whenever I sign a book, it’s always the same. I ask ’em their name and I write their name down, and then I say, base hits, win the ball game. Everybody wants a home run. Oh, I’m going for the home run. I’m going to lose 20 pounds in three weeks and whatever. But it’s the consistent things you do every day. Just a little bitty things that over time cumulatively and the language from the scientists is arrest and reverse your autoimmune diseases. So

Megan Lyons:

I love it so much. I could not think of a better way to close us out. Thank you so much for that. And one more time, the name of the summit is

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

The Inflammation Equation, decoding the Path to Optimal Wellbeing.

Megan Lyons:

Amazing. We will have that link in the show notes. I hope everyone goes down there and signs up today. I know I will be watching every single session. And thank you one more time for the work that you do and for coming on our show today.

Dr. Tom O’Bryan:

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

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