The Survival Paradox: Mastering Biochemistry to Reverse Alzheimer’s

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

Amitabha.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Amitabha, that’s beautiful. Amitabha Medical Clinic and Healing Center in Santa Rosa, California, welcome.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

Thank you, thank you so much for having me in this really important summit.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Thank you for spending the time, it’s just really a pleasure to be here. I was telling you that everyone who has interviewed you, everyone who knows you speak so highly of you. And so it’s really just a privilege to get the opportunity to interview you. I have to admit I was just leafing through it, but I started getting into “The Survival Paradox”. I haven’t had a chance to read all of it, but I was sharing a room at a conference with a friend who had a copy, and so we were talking about your book and she was just singing your praises like I mentioned, and “The Survival Paradox” is the title of that book. Would you please explain what exactly is this, what does that mean when you say survival paradox, and how does it relate to health aging and longevity?

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

Yes, of courses so “The Survival Paradox” is really as it sounds, it’s a paradox because we are built to survive. So, this concept is really for me, it’s really a paradigm shift that I wanna offer, which is a combination of decades of clinical work, studies of multiple medical discipline being a Chinese doctor, a Western doctor, and some other systems and meditating for decades. So, what it is, is we all recognize our drive to survive, which is built within us. Heather, it what keeps us alive, but the same drive is what drives inflammation, is what drives fibrosis, it what drives organ degeneration, it what drives the cytokine storm that affects us in COVID and it what drives narrow inflammation, including dementia and Alzheimer’s. So, it’s important to recognize that the same thing that is built and present in every cell in our body, is actually what drives our aging and every chronic and acute illness. So, in this sense, it’s really important to understand it and to comprehend it, and then of course, what can you do about it?

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Most importantly, what can you do about it? So, “The Survival Paradox” specifically impacts neurological health and this progression of neurodegenerative diseases, go into the details there.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

So, when we really look at our, at the survival paradox and how it operates, if it is innate in us, it has to be automated, we can’t really think about it. And it’s automated through the autonomic nervous system, through the sympathetic nervous system. So, we respond immediately, either with a response or fighting, the cytokine storm inflammation and it’s damaging effect or through running away flight which is either we just desert the area or we hide. So, we hide under certain coating, we create certain micro-environment. This is really what is in the basis of fibrosis of biofilm, of a micro-environment where cancer grows, infections grow, atherosclerotic plaque, you can see every disease. So, we have the automated system, but then our biochemical system also respond within minutes. So, there are certain proteins called alarming, I call them the survival proteins that sounds the alarm, and the key ones, the one I’ve been researching for almost 30 years now is galectin-3, that is close to 10,000 published papers. So, galectin-3 start the survival response, which systemically will affect our immune system, our macrophage. 

In the nervous system, the equivalent of the macrophage are our microglia, and astrocytes in a relationship. So, we will trigger an overexpression of microglia that will create narrow inflammation that as you know so well it is the root of every neurological disease. So, it’s so fascinating when you look at Alzheimer’s patients, the concentration of galectin-3, this protein, in their brain tissue is tenfold compared to controls who don’t have Alzheimer’s. 10 times as high and in the plaque itself, it can be 20 times higher. So, we have this inflammatory driving protein that is really a survival response. So, we really want to see what will cause the body, what will cause our being to create a survival response, and then what we can do about it. And that’s why often, regardless of where the problems come from, some of the methods will be similar while some of them will be more specific and it’s very relevant in general, and it’s very important in Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

So, you’re talking about something that’s basically a marker for inflammation. So, the question I always wanna know, once we’ve discovered that there’s inflammation present is what cause the inflammation?

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

It’s a great question and that’s really the contributions that I’m trying to make. So, galectin-3 is not a marker, it’s actually a culprit and I’ve published two very important papers on sepsis actually, showing that when you block galectin-3, you don’t get the cytokine storm, doesn’t go up, kidneys doesn’t get damaged. We showed it in patient in the intensive care unit, we showed it in animal model. So, what causes inflammation? That’s a great question, why? Because we in the integrative holistic field have identified inflammation as a culprit for decades. Now, finally, a lot because of the COVID, Western medicine realizes wow, inflammation drives everything, but inflammation is not the cause, as you say, what causes it? What causes it is this survival drive, anything that puts our cells in survival. So, if we look at our brains, if we look at ourselves, what happen if we don’t take a deep breath? We hold our breath, at some point we start feeling the tension, the anxiety, we move into an anaerobic metabolism and finally we take a deep breath. So, a survival response is a response when we don’t have enough oxygen, when our metabolism is not functioning normally. So, if we really understand it, then we understand anything that will change the survival drive and will balance it, will affect narrow inflammation. And it’s very fascinating, if you look at patients with or people with dementia, with Alzheimer’s on any of us when we age, what happen when we get stressed? We can’t remember words, we forget, right? Suddenly a name and then we take a deep breath and suddenly we remember, why? We went into a survival mode, we changed our metabolism into an emergency survival metabolism. 

How do we call it, glycolysis? We moved from normal aerobic metabolism using the mitochondria into glycolysis, why? In glycolysis you can produce energy hundred times faster, but extremely inefficient as you know, two molecules of ATP, for one glucose compared to 36. And what are the byproducts? Acidosis, hypoxia, which fuels the whole mechanism with mTOR-1 and other HIF and other factors I don’t wanna focus too much on. So, this micro-environment drives the survival response, drives narrow inflammation, drives inflammating. How do we get it in the brain? In two basic ways, one, we have too much oxidative stress. We can’t utilize oxygen properly. So, one approach is we got to reduce inflammation, we got to reduce oxidative stress. So, these are the people where there is not good antioxidant support. So for example, if we use the , we are reducing the oxidative stress, people’s memories gets better. The other one, so basic, there is not enough blood getting to the brain. So, these are the two basic highways. Both of them are driven by galectin-3, both of them. Both of them are driven by survival drive, one, everything is on fire, we have too much oxidative stress. Two, we don’t have air, we go into hypoxia. The response is the same response, it’s an abnormal metabolic response and an abnormal microglia response. 

And we get fibrosis of the brain, the brain stops functioning. How do we say it in an Alzheimer’s block? Galectin-3 skyrockets. I mean, we say lightly twentyfold, but twentyfold not increased by 20%. Now we have to understand, galectin-3 is an upstream culprit, a small change in galectin-3, let’s say galectin-3 in our studies went up by, it even didn’t double, it even didn’t double in patients, yet Interleukin-6 went up a thousandfold, Heather, because Interleukin-6 is downstream. Dealing with cytokines is like putting a fire down in the middle of a dry season in California. Dealing with galectin-3 is bringing rain, it’s very different, there’s no fire, right? Everything is being nourished. So, this is the difference, but in the plaque, it is so evident that it goes up 10 to twentyfold. It shows you the severity of the condition. So, anything that changes this through the mind, through habits, through diet, through certain activities and physical exercise, through supplements and the key thing to make it all work, we got to block galectin-3. And that’s why Modified Citrus Pectin, a proven galectin-3 blocker with a number of papers specifically on level inflammation is an essential supplement, it’s really what will make everything work better. 

And I’m saying it not because I developed it and not because there are 80 published paper, actually, yes, because they’re 80 published paper, but because I’m recognizing its effect after decades, if you look at my charts 15, 20 years ago, I used MCP, I used in most people, not on all of them. Now it’s the first supplement, why? I’m addressing the leading protein that drives aging, that drives inflammation, that drive narrow inflammation. So, that’s on the supplement level, but the other thing that we often ask ourselves, we should ask, why is Alzheimer’s such an epidemic? It’s really right, I mean, it’s truly an epidemic. And interesting I’m trained, I’m heavily trained in Chinese medicine. I’m a licensed acupuncturist, but I also studied certain alternative lineages in the ’90s when I was into studying Chinese classics, et cetera. And in our study groups in the ’90s, it’s almost 30 years ago, we identified Alzheimer’s as the epidemic of the 21st century. And why did we do it? Because we could see how the earth is getting weaker. The place of nourishment is getting weaker. And now we know the God brain connection, but it’s very basic to Chinese medicine. We also saw that with the computers coming in and phones coming in, the human communication was weakening. And what is the brain? The brain is the most amazing communicator, stronger and more powerful than any computer on earth. So, when we lose this communication, when we don’t get nourishment, nourishment that we get through appropriate sleep, through distressing, through exercises, through having time to rest. Now, by now, we are only 24/7, right? Then it puts heat, it puts inflammation into the system. So, we were anticipating this and as part of it, I was studying how to prevent it and how to help it. And I’m so thrilled about your summit and some of your presenting materials, because I’ve said for decades and I got in trouble with it, Alzheimer’s is a treatable condition. 

I see it in the clinic, it’s a treatable condition. Now that it’s clear that there are no pharmaceutical solution, we are finally being listened to and it’s good, I’m glad we are. At least some people listen to us, but the idea that, how do establish the communication? So, what galectin-3 does, why is galectin-3 so devastating? Because it’s a carbohydrate binding protein, so it binds to inflammatory compound, to growth factors, to hyperviscosity factors and it deliver them in different parts of the body. So, let’s say it deliver them to the brain, only a monomers so it can penetrate, it’s very small. And then through all these links, it creates a pentamer, five different one, and it creates a lattice formation, a shield. And under this coating, you get micro-environment, which doesn’t have oxygen, you get heavy metals, you get pesticides, you get mycotoxins, they all come together, they’re packaged because of the lipopolysaccharide that are oxidized and heavy metals come to. So, when you break the lattice formation extracellularly, and on the cell membrane, suddenly insulin receptors can work. Suddenly AMPK is working, you produce normal energy, you shut down the hypoxia, so initially, most of the work was done on cancer, and I’m a cancer guy, but when we were doing research on cancer, some of the feedback was my memory is getting better. 

Now, as a holistic doctor, we don’t need 50 patient to make a conclusion. If we see a trend, there is something to it. Suddenly joint pains were getting better, suddenly blood pressure was going down, that’s why I figured a little bit ahead of the curve, about 10, 15 years ahead, that actually galectin-3 is fueling the basic inflammation in fibrosis. So, that’s one of the important approaches in the extracellular level. Now, what also does it, anything that creates communication and creates movement. So for example, everybody talks about Ballroom dancing, anything will do it, tai chi, qi gong, but why is dancing so good? Either is the coordination, it’s fun, we get nourished and it’s done in a community, you’re not isolated. So, it’s about having a community. How do we get good community? By drinking enough water. So, there is nourishment between the cells and the last deepest part, which is really the essence of my book, “The Survival Paradox” which, I think it’s a good book, I do recommend it. It gives this message about how we transform the survival paradox. And it’s very big with Alzheimer’s and dementia, by connecting to our heart, by creating a mutual respect and mutual support between all the body systems, between every cell in the body. And I don’t have time to really elaborate on it, it’s really how we tapped our infinite healing potential. But what happens, every cell is a survival drive, every cell likes to take nourishment and puts out toxins, the basic, and then tissue does the same, organ does the same. 

The heart is very different. The heart takes out all the junk from all the body, it doesn’t say I don’t want blood from the liver, I don’t want blood from the brain, it connect with the universe, with the breath. Our drama is insignificant for the universe, we take clean oxygen, and what does the heart do? It gives it without judgment. And the first organ the heart nourishes, it nourishes itself through the coronary arteries. It nourishes itself as part of nourishing others and in order to nourish others. So, that self love is part of loving others. It’s not in our point of view and it’s fascinating for me. In fact I am amazed that nobody saw it, the heart also is an interesting organ, it nourishes itself only when it finishes its job. Other organs have, right arteries coming in, the heart doesn’t do it until it finished giving up everything, only then it has done it’s selfless work, it takes care of itself. So, when we connect with this through meditation for example, so there are studies as you know well, UCLA did a great study years ago, brain tissue, the get preserved based on how many hours a day you meditate, how many years you have meditated, and how good is your meditation. So, my biggest passion and unique training in decades of meditation and healing that I teach this on a volunteer basis, and when we connect with this, then anything and everything is possible. So, I think when we realize that we can snap out of the survival paradox, and that everything that happens falls away, what is survival, Heather? Survivor is holding to something that is supposed to go away. If everything changes, then also every disease can change. And that’s the power of our infinite healing potential when we connect to this principle. 

So, how do we do it? By opening our heart, by opening our mind, by changing our lifestyle, by taking the right supplements. And then we also have to take care of the intracellular environment. We have to make sure that the mitochondria is working well. And one of the fascinating supplements, a compound that have done a lot to bring in United States to the forefront, a lot in cancer, but in other areas is Honokiol for Magnolia, ’cause Honokiol is a gift from nature. Honokiol recognizes when a cell is normal, it becomes an anti-inflammatory an antioxidant, very powerful, and it opens and regulates the mitochondria. When it sees that the cell is a cancer cell, it will cause oxidative stress and will attack the cell. So, it can differentiate between the cells. So, naturally Modified Citrus Pectin with Honokiol, becomes a great combination in brain tumors and there are a number of papers on this and of course, in Neuroinflammation. And what Honokiol does, it also moves us from glutamate to GABA. It enhances the movement from an excitatory damaging effect into GABA. So, I know I get a little bit carried away, it does happen to me, but please ask me other questions because there are a few more things I would like to say.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

I love it, I love it. So, I think many of course, providers, but also many of our listeners are very highly educated. And this idea that blocking galectin-3 is sort of like inhibiting inflammation at some level. And we’re familiar with things like NSAIDs and your Tylenol, aspirin, Advil, that kind of family of things. And then also familiar with corticosteroids, right? Your cortisol shot even cortisone injections or taking hydrocortisone or something like that. And cortisol also does this in a natural level that are endogenous cortisol. And when we look at those cascades, like blocking acid cascade or something like that, there are usually these side effects that happen, right? If you take aspirin, it can create issues in your gut, Tylenol can create issues in your liver with cortisol or exogenous cortisone, you can end up with bone issues and of course it affects your adrenals. And so with blocking galectin-3 with what you’re describing, can you explain how it’s different like are there side effects that we might need to think about or is it more modulating in a way that’s protective and supportive?

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

That’s a great question. It’s really between an artist that slowly, slowly fix their things compared to throwing a nuclear bomb, to damage one thing and everything get burned, that’s what steroids are. So, galectin-3 is needed in the first few minutes, and it’ll always be there, because the body will still excrete it, it’s what happen afterward when it stays on, it starts like a scale of events, of changes in cytokines, in inflammatory processes, much earlier, much quicker than the changes in and in all the other markers and in the hormones, that’s much, much down the road. So, galectin-3 modulates, what it does, when the body needs to be able to repair and let go. So, galectin-3 is really our injury repair protein, but what happen, it doesn’t stop it. So, in this sense, how does it do it through inflammation and fibrosis? So, we can see how in sepsis it’ll bring, initially it’ll start the process, but then it will block fields. It’ll create a cytokine storm. It’ll create a spike in interleukin-1β, in interleukin-6, interlock-10 in TNF-alpha, and NF kappa beta. It will drive the process. So, know galectin-3 is the modulator, the only side effects, for example, in our prostate cancer study. The side effects of a patient who used it beyond like just for their digestion, getting used to the high dose of 15 grams, where the people’s memories got better, their energy improved, their joint health improved, so, the only side outside benefit.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

I love it, that’s kind of how we describe the side effects of our approach to cognitive improvement, is the side effects are that your blood pressure normalizes, your blood sugar normalizes, you have less of a fall risk. It’s exciting when you’re supporting the system, you see all of it get better every cell, and it sounds like your approach does a similar thing and we need to potentiate them by combining them. Your therapeutic approach to enhancing and protecting cognitive function, I know you’ve already described a bit of this and I just love that imagery of, and I’ve had the good fortune of having the opportunity to dissect a body and see what a human heart looks like and I had never made that connection about how we’re nourishing, the heart is nourishing the body, and yet also taking care of itself. And so many caregivers are here joining us, and I think that that image it’s very potent for me. And I hope for all of the caregivers here listening that, there are these ideas like put your own oxygen mask on first and you can’t serve from an empty vessel. And yet our heart, our body is even divinely designed in this way to share this message, of taking care of ourselves as we care for others, no martyrdom here, there is balance.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

It’s so true, it is divinely designed. That’s really like in Judaism, it’s the Tikkun, the fixing, in Buddhism, it’s the same, we connect with our heart and heart mind. We have the heart that pumps blood, this is it’s ordinary daily work and we have our heart as a divine healer. Definitely both of them work in the same time, even if we’re not connected to it, the heart will still give blood, but for example, talking about galectin-3, galectin-3 can cause heart failure, but which kind of heart failure? Ejection preserved fibrotic heart failure. It will make the heart stiff, not communicate, not share, that’s the worst kind of heart failure. So, you can always see, I like to really see the imaging. So, when we look at what to do with the brain, how we see it from the survival paradox, we need to look what is causing cell damage? What is causing oxidative stress? So, we talked in general about circulation, oxidative stress, but one thing, I’ve done a lot of work with heavy metals, I’ve published and modified to respect in heavy metals. I mean, I gave the same presentation in in 2001, when I got the first data and then I published in multiple journals, but because MCP is a very strong chelator of heavy metals, but what I didn’t recognize, I recognized what I kind of took for granted, it’s affected with or bombarded with pesticides. Yes, there are a certain level of pesticide, you can’t avoid it. There is a very low-level abnormal. There’s no such thing like a little bit of poison. Poison is poison. So pesticide, especially glyphosate will drive narrow inflammation, will drive excitatory brain. You take this with mycotoxins, with heavy metals, with EFM, EMF, with EMF, with stress, and you put it as a package and you got yourself something that is not going to end up good. 

So, as part of it, we need to cleanse we need to detoxify the body from pesticides, from heavy metals, from mycotoxin and they all relate to each other. So, we do it in the gut and we do it systemically. And it’s interesting, one thing about, again, about the role of Modified Citrus Pectin is the powerful chelator of heavy metal systemically, and it binds to different mycotoxins, but we also have to address in the gut and we have to respect our microbiome. Microbiome is part of our community. And we know when we get stressed, infections get triggered, immediately lime, the spinal cord wakes up when we are stressed. People at COVID, other infections wake up, so why? Same response. We are not the only one who want to survive, the virus want to survive, the bacteria want to survive. And it’s fascinating when we look at the spike protein of the COVID, what does its structure resemble? Well, simple guess, it’s almost identical to galectin-3. Amazing, right? This was already published in June of 2020, and yet I couldn’t get a clinical trial because of the politics, but yes, so if you block the spike protein, you will block the attachment, we will block the inflammatory response.
So, it’s interesting the virus itself is part of its survival response, it’s using the similar mechanism. So, part of the strategy in general health, in immune health, which is so relevant right now, we can just say, let’s talk just about that time, nothing about anything else, and talking about brain health, it’s about having a more efficient system, having a good response and balancing, modulating, harmonizing, the next inflammatory response. And we can look, and in my book I talk about the image of a bird flying in the sky, it’s the Buddhist image. If you look at a baby when they are born and they get a cut, the cut gets completely healed, there is no scar, right? They don’t use inflammation and fibrosis, their system can let go, just like for people who are parents, your child goes to the kindergarten or to school, they have a big argument with another child, they come home, they tell you, wow, we hold it for weeks. I’m gonna call this parent while the child already forgot about it five minutes later, similar process. We hold two things, same thing, survival holding. So, we lost this ability to repairing this way. And that’s part of our challenge. That’s part of rejuvenating the bodies to be able to actually do it.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

So, rejuvenating and healing, especially with Alzheimer’s disease is a little different from those who are just looking to optimize and haven’t already gone down the path of having cognitive decline. How does your approach differ when you’re supporting someone who’s looking for optimization versus reversing disease?

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

Well, optimization has a preventative element in it and has a maintenance element, so everything is done in a milder way. So, you wanna make sure that you are balancing oxidative stress, that you’re improving circulation, and you know that you are shifting from the survival drive, inflammatory, inflammaging, and it’s a journey, I know my own. I was like an optimal health in March. I spent some of my year in Hawaii, I was swimming for two months, my blood marker was the best. I was in my best space in 10 years. I was about to teach meditation in healing in Israel, 150 people in the hall, Israel, nobody was wearing masks. I got diagnosed with COVID, 45 minutes before it started. Now it’s a great lesson in letting go. All the volunteers waiting for me for two and a half years, I just let go, everybody let go. It was the most amazing healing for everybody. I mean, I did use Paxlovid but in 48 hours I was antigen negative. I was able to teach on the third day, but it’s affecting my health, I have more inflammation. I can see it in my blood test. So, now I’m moving into a more active regimen. So, I’m doing therapeutic for example, which is one of my unique specialties where I filter the blood. So the idea with a patient with Alzheimer’s already in dementia is the intensity has to be higher, but the guiding principle, which is so much fun to see the literature, recognizing it, everything is changeable and everything can repair itself. So, one of my favorite saying is not everybody’s gonna be a miracle, but anyone can be a miracle. And we never know, the idea is that we got to let go of our fixation, a brain that doesn’t function well, a brain doesn’t get blood supply, a brain that is plaques which are solid, is a brain that doesn’t let go, a brain then becomes fixated. 

So, when we can let go, when we can release, when we can relax, things can happen, for this we need nourishment, oxygen, so we don’t feel like we can’t take a breath, that’s what happen for a cancer cell, right? The cancer cell goes through aerobic glycolysis, there is oxygen and it can’t breathe, it goes through this, and that’s what happen to the brain if it doesn’t get enough nourishment, but the brain is an alternative, a metabolic pathway because it needs to be protected. So, anything that changes this with the understanding that brain function can change, there was an International TV, Health Station, I don’t know, they did some programs on my patient with cancer years ago and one of them had severe Parkinson, but also stage four colon cancer that burst open. And we have a video of him 12 years later, he is break dancing. You can see his refined motor movement, because he believed he can change. So it’s really, my approach is about empowering the patient. Also when I teach meditation and healing, I’m an okay healer, I can do some good things with people, but my main passion is in empowering the patient to connect with their infinite healing potential. And we now know that this whole concept is the brain doesn’t change and cannot rearrange itself and cannot rejuvenate itself, we know it’s not true. It just a more challenging journey, but the only thing we can do is keep going, the only thing that matters.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Let’s understand more about the type of meditation, that we’ve said throughout this summit, that our mind space, our brain space and our mindset is so important to preventing and reversing cognitive decline. And so we’ve had several experts on to discuss that. And I’d love to hear what’s worked for you and your patients and what you teach.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

So, my teaching is a little bit complex because I’m a little bit unusually trained, I’ve trained for decades just to give you a sense what I’m in and usually for 20 years I would spend about two to three months a year in the mountains meditating. And for 10 years I meditated half a day and worked half a day, and then one day I would sleep in the forest, we had a cabin. So, that’s kind of a little bit crazy, but I did gain some insights. So, the basic principles, the first, we have to create spaciousness, openness. So for example, mindfulness helps us ’cause it’s very popular, but even mindfulness has it’s effort because we are mindful of something. So, even mindfulness have to be let go, mindfulness is a very good first, second, third grade tool. If you really wanna progress, you gotta let go even of the concept of mindfulness, because who is mindful of what? So, we totally create this openness, openness, openness, openness. It’s like cutting the ice to small pieces, but then we have to melt the ice, and we melt the ice by connecting with our heart. People right now will put their hands on their chest, they can just feel the heat of their heart. And you just let this heat go everywhere, you can let it specifically go to your head. You can fill that the brain is relaxing. So, we combine this principle of openness with the warmth of a loving heart, and then the trick is how do we deal with obstacles? So, we have our own habits, we have our own traumas, we have our own genetic tendencies and our own epigenetic tendencies. So in my work in meditation, I’ve developed very unique methods on how to peel off our epigenetic and genetic tendencies multi-generationally and people experience it, and a lot of it is by recognizing the interdependence between all of us. If we look at each other right now and you look back 1500 years, you have had infinite people create you. 

If every 25 years is two people, 1500 years is two to the 60th power, you go 2000 infinite number. There is no way that we never had some kind of a parent or relative sometime in the past, it’s mathematically impossible. So, we are all connected. Some are very strongly connected, thousands, millions of relatives, some are a little bit connected. When we recognize this, then we connect with our heart and our heart the electromagnetic field of the heart gets to every cell in the body. It’s a hundred times bigger than the electromagnetic field of the brain. So, when we are with people, first of all when the heart is happy, it’s opened, we get to every cell in our body and we get to other people. It’s interesting for me, I mean, I’ve worked on this for decades, I mean, nothing came easy for me, but it doesn’t matter when you find gold, it’s gold. If you find it either away or you work hard, but something about even in the last incidence of the letting go of the retreat, something melted in my heart. So here I am, a lot of things going on in my life and I’m like ridiculously happy. I like, I see optimism, people say, I feel it to other people, I feel it towards myself, certain health habits and problems I had for decades just went away, it’s a choice we have, we can be happy, we can be unhappy, but to be genuinely happy, we got to do our work. We got to do our appealing and Heather the same feeling that we have, multi-generation is in every health. 

So in the brain, it’ll have a certain habit, if we have a family habit of dementia and Alzheimer’s, we can tap, then we are more susceptible, right? But if we choose a different highway, it doesn’t happen to us. So, we always have a choice, it’s very important. I do a lot of work with death and dying. And even at the moment of death, people have a lot of choice, ’cause the moment of this is this amazing moment when you really see you letting go. So, with every breath, with every thought, we can let go. And when we let go, when we feel relaxed, what happen? The survival drive falls away, then we get less inflamed. Now for me it’s fascinating. I have chapter in my book about level inflammation, and at the end I tell my story. I have a family pattern of not remembering names of people. It’s multi-generational and it’s interesting how it happened, part of it I come from a Holocaust survivor family, but there’s something about being a well-off family, I think, and maybe they didn’t pay attention to everybody. And when I was treating myself, suddenly I was remembering names better than I ever remembered in my life. Now it’s not that I got back to my baseline, I was transcending my baseline, how is it possible? Because I was peeling some of the epigenetic and genetic tendencies. So, for me this was one example, each one has their own examples, but it’s just to really, to inspire people. 

And also to understand our journey in life is a journey where our regular memory goes down normally as we age, but our wisdom goes up and the wisdom you can’t cut corners. I’m very somatically oriented. I did Taekwondo with the Korean National Team when I was 15, because I lived in Korea and I was a yoga teacher since my teenage. And here I am early ’60s and I lie down, and I get this like a sensation of my body, I say, wow, Isaac, how come you didn’t get to these levels 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago? It takes time, it takes time to unlearn. Unlearning is very different than learning, for the doctors, for the health providers, you can’t make shortcuts, you got to study. For me personally, I study vertically, I don’t like, I’m not a conference type person, I studied Yoga, I studied Shiatsu, Chinese medicine three years while going to medical school, then Master of Science in Chinese Medicine, then classical on myopathy, but I kind of took my time, I decided to do this, not an easy journey. But then when you get all this knowledge, and then there were a period when I went to the mountains for months and months, we were gonna stay there for years, but it didn’t work out, then it’s a process of unlearning. You let go of what you learned and that’s where you connect to a deeper insight, and that’s the gift of aging and memory and mental capacity really helps it. And it’s interesting that the research now showing that the brain gets to its best balance in the ’70s, in the ’80s, what is it? It’s this wisdom that come through us and we can tap it for healing, it’s amazing.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

So, I’m noticing in myself and I’m sure there are lots of people listening, having this experience of kinda having a tiger by the tail of, I hear you. And I’ve been in the experience of a meditation retreat or some place where there can be this allowing, this letting go, this acceptance, and yet when we’re in the rat race of our lives and especially for caregivers listening, they might imagine if I let go like something awful is gonna happen, my loved one is gonna disappear, they’re gonna run off, they’re gonna eat the wrong thing, they’re gonna burn the house, whatever it is, if they let go of some of that vigilance. And so what do you say to someone who’s having resistance come up when you describe this process of allowing and letting go?

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

In addition to being a busy doctor, I’ve cared or cared for a family member non-stop for the last 13 years. So, it’s not like, it’s a certain level, not, I mean, it’s with the problem, but I’m always the caregiver, so I’m used to it. So, you start by taking small, you create small space by creating small pieces of time. You wake up in the morning before you start, you sit in bed for five minutes, you breathe, you just, you exhale and feel your mind and your heart opening, two, three minutes, you do the same before you go to bed, and you find this moment of relaxation. And then what happens and this part of really training and my real passion, and I hope to do it in 2023 is in the summit format, I mean, I’m doing a Cancer Summit in February, but later on, I wanna do a week like this as an offering for people to go through their experience. It’s an experience. So, what happens, then suddenly you have this moment you’re relaxed and you have a moment that you get lost. 

So, one of the big secret in meditation from a Buddhist perspective, Tibetan Buddhist perspective is we meditate with open eyes. So, as I’m talking to you right now, and I’m engaging in mental practice, I’m totally meditating. And if you’re trained enough, it’s no different than if I’d be sitting outside in nature. There’s no difference. So, then suddenly and slowly, it’s not easy. It’s a lifetime of work, but it’s doable. You are doing and you undo it and your non-doing becomes one. That’s a big secret of healing. That’s the big secret of being a healer with no effort, not easy to teach, some of the meditation masters or my teachers claim that I can’t teach this, I don’t agree with them, but I’m also Israeli, I don’t give up easily, is that there is a way to integrate it, when you in action and you are doing stuff, yet something in you is opened inside, and this is why, when the mind is in this way, everything is easy even if it doesn’t seem easy, and when the mind is not in this way, nothing is easy even if it seems easy and that’s really the journey of meditation and healing.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

That’s beautiful and yes, manifesting is for all of those listening and for myself and for you and everyone involved. I love that idea that everything has this ability to have ease and easefulness around it, even when it feels extremely challenging. I think this is such a critical message for anyone dealing with dementia or cognitive decline. And there’s so many practical pieces to what you’ve just described. Dr. Eliaz, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your time and wisdom and expertise. This is really just been a beautiful and profound conversation, thank you.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

Thank you so much for having me, I really enjoyed it.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Such a pleasure. I wanna make sure that people can find out more about you.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

So, they can go to doctoreliaz.org or to “The Survivor Paradox”. I really recommend to read this book. This book was really upgraded by my daughter who’s an ordained Buddhist clergy, Lama unusual for women and she’s a great editor. So, there is the quality of love and caring in this book and it shows you a way, first it opens your eyes to, wow, now I understand what’s going on, and then there is a way to change it through detoxification, through healing our scars of survival, and then through freeing ourself from the survival drive.

Heather Sandison, N.D.

Wonderful, thank you so much for this contribution, both you and your daughter and for sharing really, really important work. Thank you.

Isaac Eliaz,  MD, MS, LAc

Thank you very much.