Calming Body Inflammation: Start With Your Brain First

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Thanks for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We’re really excited to hear from you because you’ve been around the block a few times and you’re a certified functional neurologist. You’ve written a lot of books including Stop Fighting Cancer and Start Treating the Cause, The Three Phases of Lyme, and The Seven Phases of Detoxification. You’ve got courses for patients on cancer, RIFEs, Lyme, autoimmune disease, genetics, and more. Before we even started this hit record for this interview we were talking about what functional medicine oftentimes is missing. So I’m really excited to get into this conversation. Today, we really want to uncover for our audience and highlight about brain inflammation, and how that actually affects the whole body not just the brain. So could you jump right in and unpack for our audience why we need to address inflammation in the brain and why that’s so important as it relates to the whole body?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, I think most of your listeners will understand that the brain controls everything. So here you have different lobes of the brain that function differently. And if you have inflammation of the brain, it’s going to affect those areas. So a lot of people overlook that. It seems so simple. Right? Well, okay, I get that but it seems so simple. You hear people with have a diagnosed with chronic Lyme or chronic mold or something like that they may have peripheral symptoms. Maybe they have knee pain, ankle pain, or inflammation in different parts of their body. They may be going to a practitioner that’s trying to decrease inflammation at that site. Maybe they’re getting PEMF on their knee or they’re getting laser on their ankle. A common scenario is if you’re going to a chiropractor or a physical therapist or something like that they’re working on the site of injury.  Well, it’s easy to overlook the fact that our symptoms, no matter where they are in the body, could actually originate in what’s called your upper body neurons, in the brain. So if you have, let’s use that example. 

So if I have inflammation of the brain for a reason, we’ll talk about those reasons in a couple of minutes. And let’s say that inflammation is in the parietal lobe of the brain that’s the sides of the brain up here. Your parietal lobe is really your major sensory part of the brain. Meaning that all the sensory input from everywhere in your body goes back to the parietal lobe and so if you smash your big toe. Let’s say it’s your right big toe and you smash it on the dresser in the middle of the night going to the bathroom. Where do you feel the pain? Well, in my right big toe but really that pain that you smashed your toe is a receptor, and that fires the nerve through it all the way back to the chord and crosses the chord back up to the brain. So, you actually feel at the opposite side of the brain’s parietal lobe that’s really where you’re really sensing the pain. The injury might have been at the big toe but your sensory pain of the opposite side of the parietal lobe. 

Well, it could go both ways so if I have inflammation of the opposite side of the parietal lobe, which has the neural map to my big toe, I could actually have throbbing to my big toe that is actually originating from the sensory part of the parietal lobe and that’s not that uncommon. You hear that with like chronic Lyme or chronic mold patients. Like, I mentioned they’ll have pain that will move around. Their knee was so bad and it was really hurting, it even swollen feeling, that they could hardly move their right knee and then two days later their right knee was just fine then their left ankle hurt or their hip was hurting and this is just too weird. How could this possibly be this pain just kind of migrates around the body and that’s a sign that really it originated in the brain and that’s the real issue that’s taking place.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Now, I know some of our listeners right now are having an aha moment because they have this classic migrating pain that we know occurs with Lyme. And they probably worked with people and they’ve been told about this migrating pain but I doubt anybody’s ever connected that it’s originating from the brain.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yeah, and people have kind of given Lyme this kind of esoteric thing that’s a symptom of Lyme. Well, it’s really not. It’s a symptom of any damage in the brain that can cause this inflammatory response that’s happening in the brain. You can have, more people probably experience inflammation of the frontal lobe or the prefrontal cortex and never related to brain inflammation because the prefrontal cortex is the executive function of the brain it’s not the sensory function. So it has to do with how we feel, and how we are thinking. We could get cloudy thinking, it could affect the deeper parts of the brain from the prefrontal cortex so we could get anxiety and depression. And how many people are on medication for these types of symptoms that they think that they have a neurotransmitter imbalance, they have an imbalance in serotonin, or they’re in the uptake of serotonin, uptake inhibitor, or something like that? But it really is you’re not getting to the source. So again, you and I had this discussion of functional medicine doctors could make the same mistakes as conventional doctors in that they’re just treating the symptom and not digging deep enough to find the cause. If you don’t find the cause you could chase symptoms with supplements, too. Are you really helping the patient by just trying to raise the symptoms? We have to get to the cause if we’re really going to solve the person’s problem.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It sounds like what I’m hearing is if you’re working with a natural medicine practitioner which our audience mostly is. People are watching this conversation right now are they already pretty savvy about functional and natural medicine options. And it sounds to me that if you’re working with a practitioner who say, supporting your gut health or helping you detox that your practitioner better be lacing in your brain support and trying to work on and identify what could be going on from an inflammatory perspective in the brain. That’s what I’m hearing like this better be a pretty central part of your recovery process.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, I think it has to be because look at the percentage of people and their symptoms, all that everybody’s symptoms could be tied to inflammation of the brain. I’m not saying it is, but you have to at least investigate that. And there are so many causes of this great inflammation that you need to dig through.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, I want to get into those causes and really give our viewers some great take-home pearls of information today in the time we have together. Before we move into the causes of brain inflammation is there anything else that you wanted to shed light on about that needs to address the inflammation in your brain or are we in a good spot to move on to what the causes are?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

I think we do have to address just a little bit of neuroanatomy for understanding. And what I got to tell you a lot of your functional doctors are going to have to explain this to you. So in your brain, you have neurons. The neurons carry that communication from one area to the next in the brain down the chord and outside the brain to the rest of the body. And then you have these other cells called glial cells. The glial cells are separated into several different types of glial cells with different names that have different functions. Most both your listeners probably heard of the blood-brain barrier. That’s a barrier that actually asserted glial cells make the astrocyte glial cell that makes that blood-brain barrier. So astrocytes surround the blood vessels in the brain creating a barrier so that large molecules of chemicals don’t get through. It’s to protect the brain so that when you consume glyphosate when you consume heavy metals, toxins, chemicals, and pesticides, hopefully, you have it intact enough blood-brain barrier that astrocytes wrapped around the blood vessels that will not allow those things in. 

Now, the problem is those could become damaged through the consumption of a lot of these things I just talked about and through radiation, through all sorts of things could damage that blood-brain barrier, and then things get through, heavy metals get through, chemicals get through, bacteria get through, and viruses get through. Then if those things get through, a third type of glial cell has to deal with those, those are called microglial cells, a totally different type of cell. A microglial cell is kind of like a macrophage in your body. Everybody, if you take an eighth-grade biology, remember seeing a video of a macrophage that engulfs a bacteria through the process of phagocytosis, dissolves that bacteria gobbles it up and it was really cool video if you remember something like that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Those things are like Pacman that are going around.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Kind of like that. Well, that’s what microglial cells do in the brain. They’re very active. They’re like little pocket octopi that are swiveling around in the brain and they’re grabbing onto things. They’re getting rid of things. They move around a lot. They’re active cells that will move around and grab onto bad guys and get them out of the brain. So those are the microglial cells and those are so important. Active microglial cells are so important to keep your brain clean and keep the inflammation down to the brain. And unfortunately, it’s when we have insults to the brain, it’s damage to those cells that cause further insult. And that’s the thing that’s often overlooked in I would say dysfunctional, medicine, general medicine is that is a major cause of damage to microglial cells and that’s what causes ongoing chronic inflammation.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So I know that the burning question of everyone watching right now is what’s causing the damage and what’s causing as a result of that inflammation so let’s unpack those things. I know there’s probably a long list.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, there is a long list and really everything I’m talking to you about has been extremely well researched in the last few years when, I don’t know if you remember a few years ago, the National Football League had this great big giant lawsuit about concussions.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Junior Seau dying, right? Right around that. I’m a San Diegan, and he’s a legend and a beloved person in our community and I remember when he died.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yeah. So that really sparked billions and billions of dollars going into studies about post-concussive syndrome. And all the things I’m telling you are what came out of that. So they found that people with concussions that they found deeper even people that were not concussed clinically but had multiple head traumas over years ended up with the same type of syndrome. And that the deeper studies that continued to be funded they found that it wasn’t just concussion patients. It was people that had chronic viruses. Anything that again, you had damaged blood-brain barrier you could get things cross the blood-brain barrier so you got pesticides, chemicals, heavy metals that could cross the blood-brain barrier and get in there and they could damage these microglial cells. So concussions multiple, you know, pre-concussions, if you want to call it that, and any insults like chemicals, viruses, and bacteria if they cross the blood-brain barrier, they could damage the microglial.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. So we’ve got a lot of chemicals and toxins that can get in there. I think people are not really understanding how common this is in our environment and how common it is in our modern world. So it’s not just about getting a hit on the head. It sounds like it’s pretty easy for us to get damage there to the microglial cells.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

And most of your listeners will probably go, oh, yeah, I remember when I fell skating or skiing when I was 10 or 12, it can happen years later that you end up with these issues. So if any of these insults happen and you end up with these damaged microglial cells, now there’s a level of damage and there is a level of, I guess you know, a curve that could worsen over time that worsens with other insults that are happening. I could give you some examples.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. Well, we’ve got just over five minutes left to unpack some of that. So let’s also work on giving some solutions here for people, too.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Okay. So I talked about damage to microglial cells. So in the neurology world, a damaged microglial cell is actually called a primed microglial cell. So the microglial cells are primed that means it’s damaged. So I said that normally it swivels around like an octopus looking for things to grab onto and engulf and get rid of it. It’s very active and healthy. Well, a primed or damaged microglial cell now loses that ability. So it just kinda sits there. It still could have some activity if it comes across something, but it just sits there. So it’s not doing its job, cleaning the brain. It’s not doing its job of getting rid of bacteria and viruses that you may be exposed to. And in that primed state, it gets worse. In that primed state, it can either be at what’s called an M1 state or an M2 state. This is important Even if you don’t want to learn neurology, the M1 state is a pro-inflammatory state, so it’s just sitting there spewing out inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. In the M2 state, it’s least in an anti-inflammatory state. So it’s spewing out anti-inflammatory cytokines. So it’s helping decrease inflammation. Now what they found with people that had injuries is that they would either be in the M1 state at a different time and then the body could shift to the M2 state. So it would be anti-inflammatory, but then further insults like another concussion or another virus or another, you know, you need a food allergen or another, you know, exposure to glyphosate could push it back to the M1 state and it increases the inflammation again. So try to make this not confusing, but our goal in brain health is to keep any damaged microglial cells in the M2 state. That’s what our goal is. If you could think of that. I try to tell my patients they already know you have damaged microglial cells. Our goal is to keep that in the M2 state. So they’re at least anti-inflammatory.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

You can’t fix them, though. You cannot reverse. 

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

They’re not fixable.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Can you regenerate Microglial cells? Are you born with or have the amount that you will have your whole life?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

After about the age of three, you will not really regenerate any more microglial cells.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, wow. Okay, so what is one to do to keep it in the M2 state?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, interestingly what they found. They tested all these drugs. Of course, this is medical research, right? So they’re waiting to test all these drugs. Steroids would be the first thing to test, of course, steroids are going to decrease inflammation, but only acute inflammation. It will only get rid of the inflammatory cytokines. It does nothing to push M1-primed microglial cells to the M2 state. The only thing that they found was flavonoids.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Naturally, you can find those in food.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yeah. So, I mean, it was a big boost to the alternative perspective to alternative doctors that were paying attention. But there weren’t many that were really reading these studies. There’s a lot coming out and it was really interesting because it proved everything that alternative doctors as far as take this to decrease inflammation and there are a lot of supplement blends out there that are anti-inflammatory. They all have flavonoids because it’s been proven in other tissues. The flavonoids, the curcumin, the boswellia, the green tea extract, resveratrol, the quercetin those kind of things that are what push M1 primed microglial cells to the M2 state and the only things that will keep it that way. No, there are some lifestyle things that we could talk about too, but definitely, it’s the flavonoids from a nutritional supplementary perspective that will work to help decrease that inflammation.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is really enlightening. We’re going to continue this conversation. I’m going to pause this right here and I’m going to thank everyone who’s watching for joining us today. If you found our conversation insightful and engaging, and if you’re a summit purchaser, stay right here because we’re about to dove even deeper into this discussion. If you’re not a summit purchaser, you can click on the button below or to the side and get access to all this information and get ready to keep reclaiming your health. If you’re watching this, thank you for being a valuable member of our community and we’re going to dive right back in. So, Dr. Conners, I want to keep going with this discussion right now. So we just got done talking about bioflavonoids being a solution to keeping those microglial cells in the M2 state this is so fascinating. And we and you talked about some of the foods that people can eat. Now, a question that comes to mind is how much of this do you need to eat every day? How often can you even do this with food or do you really need to bring in supplements? Do we know the doses or what should be?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yes and No. The answer, really has to do at the end here really has to do with so the more symptoms a person has that are related to this, the more as far as more I know number of prime microglial cells. There are billions and billions of microglial cells. If they were all primed, you’d be dead. Probably right? So that’s never taking place. But the more primed microglial cells you have, the greater amount of symptoms you have. And where do these primed microglial cells exist? Remember, they don’t move around anymore. So if they exist in the parietal lobe, and they’re spewing out inflammation, you’re going to have chronic inflammation of the parietal lobe. And the symptoms that you’re going to have are going to be like pain, tingling, numbness, and weird feelings. And they’re going to be you know, they could move around at different times because that inflammation is going to move around in the brain and it’s going to affect different neural centers. But it would all be in the parietal lobe. If a lot of these microglial cells are in the prefrontal cortex, you’re going to have emotional changes and personality changes. This is what you see with these professional athletes. They might have married their college sweetheart and had this wonderful relationship and here he’s getting multiple concussions. His personality is changing. Now, he’s becoming abusive, angry, flying off the handle. And this is not even who he really was before that because it’s affecting his prefrontal cortex his personality is literally changing, which is how he handles stress and change. He can’t handle it as well. He’s got this chronic ramped-up, microglial imprinted going on and this spewing out inflammation constantly deleted buds after the last concussion or years after the last concussion.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Can I just ask a question? Is this similar to what happens in our, you know, beloved family members with dementia or Alzheimer’s? And they start to act completely different like you have a patient, kind, loving, family member who then becomes angry and, short-tempered and mean. Is that part of what’s going on or is that?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

It’s very similar but a different mechanism with dementia. So in dementia, you have tau tangles blocking these neural pathways that change a person’s personality with the microglial part, probably you got inflammatory microglial cells that are just sitting there spewing out inflammation. So a different mechanism but really similar outcomes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

How interesting. And then another question that comes to mind is how does one determine how far down the path they are here, how much cellular damage has occurred? Can you measure the difference between M1 and M to microglial cells? And, you know, just some more information on that. I think people are wondering, oh, my gosh, how do I figure this out?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, what question they might have is, can I do a test for this? Is there a lab for this? Unfortunately, there isn’t really. Unless you’re going to donate your brain and they’re going to dissect it, put it on a, nobody’s going to want to do that. You just have to go off your symptoms. So the greater amount of symptoms is that you could assume that you have either a greater amount of primed microglial cells or a higher percentage of your primed microglial are in the M1 State. Okay.  But it could change so you can go between M1 and M2. So let’s say I felt I had. Okay, here’s a perfect example. I had a doctor called me a few months ago about his daughter. She had Lyme disease years ago, like 10 years prior, really bad emotional things, really bad anxiety issues. I don’t know, the whole set of story. But then she slowly recovered. How does somebody slowly recover? Because your body’s trying to heal. So as inflammation is coming out of the brain, the M1 cells might have shifted to the M2. This person is a natural doctor so probably had her out a lot of inflammatory things not understanding this pathway. There wasn’t any information on it at that time. And so now they stated this M2 state. 

Now, this person, something happened and it could have been another exposure to a virus or bacteria like Lyme disease, could have been I got COVID, could have had I got head trauma, I fell down I hit my head on the side of the wall. Could have had anything else that could either push those M2 cells, and M2 microglial cells back to M1 or create more primed microglial cells. It was a bad enough trauma and now her symptoms just like all came back that nobody could figure it out. So just in our conversation hearing her history. I literally explained to my doctor friend what was probably going on and I have a video on all this information. So I sent him the video, and he’s like, oh, my gosh, this answers every question I thought.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m like, having an aha moment right here as we talk, I can think of one particular client I worked with in his thirties and we worked for about a year, shaping up his gut health, working. He had parasites, he had all kinds of things we detoxed and then he had a head injury about a year into it and it’s like he went backwards. All his symptoms that had been resolved and he was doing so great. And he called me up one day and said, You know, Laura, I’m back to where I was. I had this head injury and now I’m all those things that we solved they’re coming back.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Okay, so we’ll talk about how to get the person back. But let’s first talk about what could be contributing factors to keeping these cells in the M1 state.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, let’s talk about that.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

So what are the things that they found in this study? The biggest thing that they found in the studies was alcohol.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, well.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

So alcohol, I mean, if you had people with primed microglial cells they have stopped drinking alcohol, period. They just can’t drink alcohol. Alcohol just pushes things and keeps these microglial cells in the M1 state. And here’s the issue. You got these football players. What’s the big thing? Partying like crazy, right?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Hitting their head and they’re drinking afterward.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yeah. So worst, absolutely worst thing you could do. So alcohol has got to come off the list now, having a little bit of wine once in a while. Maybe the person could tolerate a certain amount of that, but most of the time no. So, that is if you have a person that says I got worse when I drink alcohol? You know. Yeah, you should just think do they have a food sensitivity to something in that alcohol? Maybe it’s the histamine reaction? Maybe. Many times people think they get this hyperhistamine reaction but it’s really stimulated M1 primed microglial cells.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I just want to pause on this for a second so people who think that they have a full histamine reaction could actually be having a microglial cell reaction.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Wow. Okay, keep going. 

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Other things that are overlooked, but many times functional medical doctors touch on them are food sensitivities. So if you’re running labs where you’re finding especially gluten and especially dairy because you have casomorphin receptors in the brain and gluteomorphin receptors in the brain from the gut. And if you have gliadin sensitivity, meaning you have antibodies to gliadin or its peptides and you’re eating gluten. It’s going to fire those receptors on the brain and it’s going to push microglial cells to the M1 state.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

And then you feel?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, you’re going to feel wherever those are. So again, your symptoms are going to be based upon where those primed microglial cells are physically sitting.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So this would explain why when people have food intolerances it might manifest as joint pain or it might manifest headaches or it might manifest as a skin flare or something that’s kind of unrelated to the digestive tract, because where it’s whatever part of the brain is influencing that part of the body where it’s showing up. So this is huge aha. moments right here for people-watching. This is incredible. So I like to unpack it and restate what you said.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Oh, that’s good. It’s good. It’s good that I’ve spoken about this so often. I just go too fast sometimes.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

No. Right. Well, we have a mixed, you know, community of people watching us. There are practitioners watching us and there are consumers of health care watching us. So we want to make sure everybody gets everything they can out of this. And I don’t know, as a practitioner, I like it when people speak in real common terms, it helps my brain pick it up faster.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

So another thing that they found that makes things worse is over-exercise.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, my gosh. Go there.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Okay. So over exercise does the same thing as alcohol. And unfortunately, this is just a, you know, a giant picture for athletes here. You got athletes who had been concussed. They have primed microglial cells. They’re drinking alcohol on a regular basis with their bodies. And they are pushed really heavily in the exercise spectrum because they have to stay competitive. So they’re doing everything wrong. And this is where their lives are falling apart. Their personalities changing. Now, they’re abusive to their spouse. They got in trouble with the cops and they used to be really good kids. What’s the matter with this person? And then their career is shortened because of injury, because of this the same inflammation of the brain. So, there are things that will make it worse as we kind of touched on some of those. 

Now, let’s try to shift to how you actually get this person better. You feel like their life is falling apart because again, physically, where these microglial cells are sitting is going to affect that person’s symptoms. It could be that, it doesn’t have to just be of the cortex. It could be the deeper part of the brain called the midbrain. That’s where it houses your memories. That’s where it houses your autonomic functions. So it could send a person into sympathetic overdrive. It could send a person,  they could end up with other organ issues because you’re in your midbrain and your autonomic functions control all your organs. It could manifest in so many ways, depending on where these microglial cells are damaged. So, let’s concentrate now. So how do you fix these people? So, first of all, you can’t test for, what is there a test for microglial damage? Can I just do the test? I want to do the test. No. There’s not a test for it. Now, we could just have to make some assumptions. I think it’s right for a functional medicine doctor to clean up the diet, to do food sensitivity tests so that you’re not dealing with food anti-bodies. You get them off to alcohol and make sure that they’re not over-exercising because some people think that’s the solution, especially if they’ve been an athlete from the past. Some exercise could be beneficial it’s been proven in these studies, but they have to really be careful on crossing over. 

Some people that have been really, really sick for a long time and have an exercise, some exercise might mean they’d literally walk you to the mailbox and back is what all they need to do. So you have to go very slow with these people and go just to tolerance because you could tip them over really easily or that it takes a few days to get back to where you were before. So looking at those dietary parameters, making sure that they’re not eating foods that they have antibodies against, clean it up that, clean it up possible mycotoxins and mold environment. Environmental sensitivities that they’re dealing with are really important. But getting them on a fairly high dose of flavonoids is really important. There’s just no way you can get this in your food. You have to be taking this in a supplemental form.  have to. And remember that flavonoids are found in foods. That being said, they have a fairly short half-life. So that means you have to take them throughout the day.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, so not just one and done.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

It just really can’t be because you know you take a hundred milligrams of resveratrol in the morning by noon it has really gone out of your system..

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Two or three times a day.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

These people have to be diligent and set an alarm, three times a day is the reality you know, or even more where they’re really sick really splitting it up to really flush their system with this stuff to help pull that out of the body.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Is there any particular bioflavonoid combinations, mixtures, brands, or anything that you want to share that you have found works?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

We use different ones with different people. Curcumin tends to be maybe one of the more important ones. I’m a little picky about the green tea extract because all of the green tea extract supplements come from China and a lot of it is tainted. So I have some specific companies that I like with that because they really are able about testing it. The Boswellia is really good for the brain and gut inflammation. And Resveratrol is really important. Quercetin is really important. Different people will respond to higher doses of different things. Some people will go, oh, I take this quercetin nettles from this company, and my gosh, it made me feel just completely different. I just take just straight curcumin and that just has changed my life. So everybody’s a little bit different in how their body chemistry works with that too.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Is there anyone who shouldn’t? So what I’m thinking is I mean I want to get back to the client I was telling you about who hit his head and everything returned. I want to go back to him in a minute, but I’m thinking about my own daughter. So she had a syncopal episode, so for if you’re wondering what that is, viewer, that means she fainted and it happened at school in the heat where she was standing in a line and she just fainted and nobody caught her. So she hit her head. She was 13 years old. Now she’s 18 and you know, she’s young. And is there, you know, somebody like that who’s had a one-time head injury, should you just automatically, like you probably should be on something to support that lifelong, or is there anyone who shouldn’t take it?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

I would say, yes, you should. Now, the only people that probably should it is if you do like a really good food panel, like say Xyresan array 10 or so they will test for a lot of flavonoids, in our foods. Right. So you want to test to make sure you aren’t sensitive. You could be sensitive to turmeric and you don’t want to take curcumin. So that would be the only people that really shouldn’t.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So, if you’ve done a food test and find that you have antibodies against certain bioflavonoids, that would be the only reason not to take it.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Correct.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yeah, yeah. For instance, my daughter rides horses competitively. She’s really good, she has fallen off horses. Banged her head even with the helmet, she’s taken this stuff.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This must scare the heck out of you as someone who studies this and understands it, to have your beloved daughter riding horses, it must be like, oh, gosh, gosh, please don’t fall.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, it is. But we do if they’re going to fall and we’re going to have these things. And it’s not just concussion. You know, you’re exposed to chemicals all the time. And, you know, you don’t know if you ought to get to the controversy of the VAXs but that was, those are even worse because those are micro-aluminum which crosses even an intact blood-brain barrier. So it’s even worse. So they may tell, oh, it’s safe. It’s this really small small dose of aluminum. The problem is it’s a microdose in a micronized size, therefore, it crosses into cells and can damage the nucleus in a cell and be a cause of cancer or cross the blood-brain barrier and be a major cause of brain inflammation and microglial problems.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What’s the main cause of those microaluminum particles?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

You mean source? Do you want me to say it? Vaccines. Of course. Yeah. So you got to be careful to say it because they’ll be pulled by YouTube videos all the time. Every week I get out of this YouTube video has been removed so well, which one today.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah. So we’re getting sprayed aluminum is being sprayed on us for me. I mean it right everywhere.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Ghettoized particles of toxins that are easily absorbed and easily cross the blood-brain barrier. We are being systematically murdered like that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, I agree. And I think one of the big takeaways here today is, you know, people are thinking about watching this interview. They’re thinking about the times that they’ve hit their head or their loved ones have hit their head. I mean, I’m sitting here counting like, okay, I got in a car accident. I got in a ski accident. I got in a lot of, like I’m counting that. But don’t forget to count that you’re living and breathing on planet Earth. We’re living in a first-world country where we’re exposed to toxins and infections constantly. So it’s not just hitting your head. I don’t want people to forget that right now.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

How do we fix it?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yeah, what do we do?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, taking flavonoids is going to be your biggest thing. That’s going to be your, it’s going to be your literally your number one thing which is taking flavonoids. Stay away from food sensitivity, so getting a food sensitivity panel from your good functional medicine doctor where you’re going to test for peptides of gliadin peptides of different things, cooked in raw foods, and try to stay on that. You need a good variety of different foods is going to be important too. Try to stay on an anti-inflammatory diet, and try to stay away from pests. I mean, we live in this little world. There’s no way you could I mean, I’m certainly not perfect. We go out to eat and it’s not all organic. I mean, you just got to do your best to trust God for the difference at some point in your life. But knowing these things can be helpful. I take flavonoids on a daily basis just because, you know, I played sports all my whole, you know, my high school career and everything. And I, you know, hit my head a lot. So besides it being obvious in this conversation, I’d have to go constantly stay on flavonoids to stay healthy. So it’s, we, that’s the biggest thing. And that getting sub-exercise. Exercise to tolerance is really important too. Do not over-push it, don’t over-exercise. That’s important as well. And then as far as other things that you could do to really prevent it is just to get a good workup from the good functional medicine doctor that’s going to test for, you know. You could, other things you could test for are mycotoxins, glyphosate, and heavy metals in your system. The more you can keep yourself clean, the better off you’re going to be. So that’s the way you’re going to be able to heal your blood-brain barrier. You know, that’s another thing you can talk about, too, using things like ginkgo and huperzine. That could have been shown to actually heal astrocytes, which are the blood-brain barrier. So that could be helpful.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is such a good talk. I could keep talking to you for another hour. So we’re coming up on an hour or so. We got some more time. So while you have our audience’s attention, what other pearls would you like to share with them?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, I hate to say it, but you could actually get one step worse with brain inflammation. Well, after what I’ve always said it’s like, oh, my gosh, I have primed microglial cells in M1 stare. Well, I’d say that’s just not good. What am I going to do? Well, it could get worse because if these insults occur like this over and over, one step worse, when I believe that primed microglial cells are you end up with antibodies to their own tissue.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

The autoimmunity sets in.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

That autoimmunity sets in and that’sworse and that’s really what is the cause of M.S. and other debilitating diseases. I think it can be a co-piece of the dementia. I think for sure sudden onset dementia in my mind is probably has it ought to be tied to it. Slow onset dementia which is both those that you see out there probably it doesn’t necessarily have to have an autoimmune tie. So, understand for listeners, autoimmune disease is when you make antibodies against self-tissue, so you have your immune system which is supposed to just kill things you have two sides of that immune system. The acute immune response is to kill a bacteria or virus and you have the B-cell response which then searches out and makes antibodies against said virus or said bacteria. So that by TH1 acute side can then go back and kill it and fight and kill it. Well, when that cycle goes on over a period of time then the B-cells can start making antibodies ferociously against self-tissue because it can’t find that thing which the immediate immune system is trying to kill.

So when it makes antibodies to self-tissue, now we have a problem because every time we flare an immune response like flaring up an M1 primed microglial cell,  every time that happens not only do you get inflammation of the brain and you get all these weird symptoms, but you get further destruction if you have autoantibodies to neuronal tissue. So if you have antibodies to your myelin sheath cells in the brain, those are the myelin sheath cells are different microglial cells called the oligodendrocyte that surrounds the neurons and it makes the neuron communication go super fast. So when that starts to well you have antibodies to myelin sheath cells now every time you flare an immune response like drinking alcohol when you have primed microglial cells, every time you do that, you spew out all these inflammatory cytokines. It’s going to cause a destruction that which you have antibodies against first, which is going to be the myelin sheath cells, and you’re going to destroy your more myelin sheath cells. You’re going to get more debilitation, you’re going to get more symptoms of debilitation because those neurons are going to be able to fire as well. You know, you can move your arm as well and your MS is progressing.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, so there’s a step worse. So this is really a call and a plea to everybody watching that you really take care of your brain. And, you know, I was thinking as we were talking, you know, some people might be listening to this thinking, well, the damage is done. You know, what can I do about it? But it sounds like there’s a lot that can be done and you can stop progression.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Yes. And that’s the key takeaway to this. You don’t have to remember all the neurology of everything I just talked about. Oh, I already forgot what I wanted up to our category. It’s just all goulash in my brain. But you have this proinflammatory side. They made it that spewing out inflammation and these damaged microglial cells, you have to squelch that. You have to squash that. You have to move it to at high non-inflammatory state. Or it could get worse. If that’s taking place time after time after time, you’re going to develop antibodies and neuronal tissue. And now those don’t ever go away.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

There’s no reversing that.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

There’s no reversing it. All it is. So you got somebody with M.S. that comes to you. You already know that all these things that I just discussed don’t take have taken place. Your whole purpose is to go. How do you fix that again? You’re going back to it. You got to decrease the inflammation. So we’re going back to build, exercise tons and tons of flavonoids, make sure that they’re healing their blood-brain barrier with different nutrients, make sure they know their food sensitivities, clean up their mold sensitivities, clean up all that stuff. You got to just cut it and then be cleaned, work at other detox pathways, working on their gut. It’s just a long process.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I want to point something out here that and, you know, I try to get this across to my community as well. Healing your gut and detoxing is not a one-and-done. This is something that is ongoing and you’re going to consistently be exposed to toxins. You’re going to consistently be exposed to microbes that get into the body and set in and cause problems. And so this is what I want you to take away from this is, you’re learning the strategies to keep yourself healthy in this world that has a million different ways to kill us. 

Like, let’s just say it, you got to be on top of that. You got to be smarter than that and you have to have strategies. So that’s what I want you to take away from this strategy. This is one of many strategies that you’ll be hearing from all the incredible speakers that have spent a lifetime figuring this out and helping people. So this has been an extraordinary interview, Dr. Conners. This is so eye-opening. I have my homework for me. I’m taking notes of all the things that I do. I love this.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

That’s good. So I love the way you talk to your patients as well. I mean, it is a lifetime. You know, that’s why I wrote The Seven Phases of Detoxification to combat that idea that people are going to do this box detox and know that they’re going to be done. It’s like if your rate of detoxification does not exceed your rate of toxification, you are getting toxic. And so it’s just a simple, you know, mathematic analysis there. It’s something you need to be working out on a daily basis because, you know, we’re exposed to things that our ancestors never even heard of.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We are. And those of you who are watching this to the end, you’ve got a leg up on the rest of the population that isn’t getting this information. And we’re at a point in history where you must take your health into your own hands. Nobody is coming to fix it for you. And if you stay in the Western model, which I worked in for 20 years before I shifted teams, they are not going to solve this for you. These types of discussions that we’re having right now are not things that I learned in my Western training or in all those. And so you must take your health into your own hands and align yourself with people like Dr. Conners, like me, like the other speakers that you’re seeing here. And Dr. Conners, if our audience would like to get in touch with you and would like to learn more from you, how would they do that? Can you share that with us here?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Sure. You can find us on all the social media things until they take all our channels down. But definitely at our website we have a very secure website, connersclinic.com.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Say that one more time slower.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

CONNERS clinic that’s my name, and we have a ton of stuff there. You’ll see that we mainly are focused currently on taking care of cancer patients, but we have, you know, a history of taking care of autoimmune patients. My first book was on autoimmune disease.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Lyme Disease.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Lyme Disease and a lot of cancer. So we have courses on autoimmune diseases that are all inflammation and we take care of patients. Anybody that comes to us, we believe we have to take care of them.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Thank you so much for what you do in the world for sharing your wisdom here and for just this small snippet of time that we had together. I know this is going to be a favored talk. I can already tell you that. So thank you for saying yes to this and sharing with us today.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Well, thanks for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Until next time, everyone. Take good care. Bye, now.