Delve Deep: Causes & Progression Of Parkinson’s

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Yes, of course. First, thank you. I am happy to be here. I think this is a critically important topic. People who are watching this summit have some interest in this topic. It is critically important for you. 

In 1979, my ex and I could not get pregnant. I was an intern at the time, and I called the seven most famous holistic doctors I had ever heard of. I asked them, What do you do for pregnancy? They all told me what they do. I wrote it all down. I put a program together. We were pregnant in six weeks. My neighbors, were in married housing, and we lived on campus. I have said, They were pregnant in three months. Now we are four months pregnant, just as happy as can be, talking to our friends and our friend’s sister who lived in Wisconsin, the schools in Chicago, we are in Chicago. She would drive down from Wisconsin because she had had three miscarriages and no one could help her. I said, Well, I do not know, but it certainly can hurt you. She got pregnant and had a healthy delivery after our baby. But that just got me into this whole world. 

There is not much in medicine; that is all or everything. But this was every couple that had any type of hormone-related concern. Whatever they were, every single one of them was eating foods that they did not know were a problem for them. They did not know because they did not get sick when they ate the food. But with gluten, as an example, for every person who gets gut symptoms when they eat wheat, eight people do not. They get brain symptoms, skin symptoms, or joint symptoms. They do not get gut symptoms, so they eat pizza and think they are fine, but they have activated their immune system, creating this inflammation that manifests somewhere else in their body, not in their gut. 

To give you an example of this gluten thing, we are going to talk about gluten today. But just to give you an example, Marios Hajidvassiliou. Professor Hajidvassiliou runs the Tertiary Neurology Center in Sheffield, England. A tertiary neurology center means you go to see your doctor; if you have some brain concerns; whatever they are, he recommends something. It does not work. You go back to him three months later, and you get on this medication, so four months later you go back to him. It is not working. He sends you to a neurologist. The neurologist does some exams and makes some recommendations, but it does not work, or it works a little bit but not very well. You go back, but it takes six months to get back in to see him again because of their schedule, whatever it should be. If it is a smart neurologist, they will refer you to a tertiary neurology center. 

Now this is the third place the patient has gone. These are the geeks of geeks; they love to explore and investigate. What is this this person’s got, and where is it coming from? They published a paper that said that when the cause of a person’s complaints is recognized and identifiable, the number of people who have elevated antibodies to wheat is 5% but when the cause of the present complaints is not identified by these guys, the geek of geeks cannot figure out what is going on. The number of people with elevated antibodies to wheat is 57%, and they put them on a gluten-free diet. They get better because the gut ratio is 8 to 1. For every person who has problems with the gut with wheat, eight people do not. 

The most common system of the body that is affected is the brain, which is why I am using this example here for the Parkinson’s Summit: it is just a fact of life. You have to be tested accurately to see if you have a problem with wheat because some people do and some people do not. But if you do not test properly, you will never know. The old tests that most doctors are using are inefficient. They are not comprehensive at all. A new era in laboratory medicine came out in 2016. Mayo Clinic has written several papers about this, and that test is very accurate. It is called the Wheat Zoomer, because you zoom in on the problem, and when you do the Wheat Zoomer and the Neural Zoomer Plus, which look at 53 different markers of inflammation in the brain, you do those two tests, and then you have a pretty good idea if wheat is a problem and how bad is the inflammation in your brain. 

For every patient that comes to us, I demand the Wheat Zoomer and the Neural Zoomer Plus, because brain disease is, as far as I know, the fastest-growing concern in our country today, and in the world, we want to identify and scare the hell out of people, excuse me, when you see these test results. These tests are very accurate. But I do not feel that bad. No, that is because you still have enough brain cells to not feel so bad. By the time you feel bad, you have killed off so many brain cells that it is much more difficult to arrest and turn this thing around.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Wow.  It would behoove everyone to get that test that you are describing.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Absolutely. The Wheat Zoomer and the Neural Zoomer Plus are from Vibrant Wellness. I do not have any association with the lab. I have spoken for them to teach doctors a few times because I have seen such great results. But I do not have any stock up. I wish I did. We do not.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Parkinson’s disease is climbing at an alarming rate. It is skyrocketing. 

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Faster than Alzheimer’s.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

What are your thoughts as to why?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

There is no question. If you read the science, there is no question at all about it. It was 2010 when we read the first paper on this concept, and it was mind-blowing. There are two primary mechanisms that every person can have some control over. There are two there. There are several reasons why this is happening, and what might be contributing to adding one and making it sound so simple? But there are two that people have control over and have demonstrated to arrest the symptoms of Parkinson’s. When you read the science, if you address these two things, you have a good chance of slowing down dramatically or sometimes even reversing Parkinson’s. 

There are two concepts. The first one is in this paper from 2010, which talks about what we have heard, and you will have many speakers talking about Alpha-synuclein. It is a protein that gets twisted, and it has been identified as a primary trigger in the development of Parkinson’s. This twisted protein in the area of the brain called the Substantia Nigra, and it caught this protein is in there, and the immune system trying to protect you fights this weird protein that is not supposed to be there, creating the inflammation that kills off the brain cells in that area, and you kill off brain cells, and eventually you kill off so many brain cells, you start to notice some symptoms. 

Where is this Alpha-synuclein misfolded protein coming from? Well, it was 2010 when I read the first paper on this free-symptomatic Parkinson’s. What? I have never heard of Pre-Symptomatic Parkinson’s. What is that? You read the paper, and they said the problem starts in the gut. When you have an abnormal microbiome, that means good bacteria and good viruses. There are lots of viruses, lots of bacteria, and the environment of the gut. When you get something called dysbiosis, and I do not mean to be geeky here, but it means too many bad guys in the gut, not enough good guys. When you get dysbiosis, alpha-synuclein in your gut gets misfolded and gets tweaked in such a way that it cannot function the way it is supposed to. They identified that the misfolded protein creeps up the nerve. It is inside the gut, but it goes through the walls of the gut, into the nerves of the gut, and then backs up the nerves neuron by neuron. Like, itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout? Neuron by neuron up the vagus nerve to the brain, and it has a magnetic attraction to the substantia nigra. That misfolded protein goes into the substantia nigra, creating all this inflammation in that area, which causes collateral damage, killing off brain cells, and the result is that eventually, you do not have good motor control anymore. 

It starts in the gut. That is why almost every Parkinson’s patient has a 20-year history of a bad gut. They get bloating, and they get constipation. Yes, I have had it for years, Doc. As long as I take my Metamucil, I have been okay. But that is not working so well anymore that they have had to do something for their gut, and nobody picked up on it. Nobody realized what was going on. Now we have the technology to do the tests to identify the environment of your gut and start to turn that around. That is part of the whole procedure when working with Parkinson’s patients: you have to build and rebuild a healthy gut microbiome. That is a critical component, but it is not enough. That is the first mark. I said there were two. That is the first mechanism that has been identified that contributes to the development of Parkinson’s. 

The second mechanism is the response of your immune system. Now remember that your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It is there to protect you. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard—we call them IgA, IgG, IgE, IgM, cytokines—different cytokines. They are just branches of the armed forces there to protect you. The question is: When you have inflammation, what is trying to protect you from? Where is the inflammation coming from? There are so many studies now identifying that these toxic chemicals that so many people have accumulated in their bodies are contributing to the fact that the number of people who have accumulations of these toxic chemicals in their bodies and develop Parkinson’s is sky high. It is just unbelievable how high it is. Many studies are showing this now. You have these accumulated chemicals. Well, I do not have any chemicals. You put nail polish on in 4 to 5 minutes. The phthalates are in your bloodstream from nail polish. If you are a guy putting nail polish on, then you are probably also using makeup and 162 chemicals that the average woman is exposed to every day they get in your system and this stuff. While there is no evidence that that is toxic to you. That is true.  

That is how the chemical industry gets away with all of this. They passed legislation in 1976 called the Toxic Substance Control Act, which says you have got to prove that the amount of chemical you are exposed to is toxic to humans. It is not; you get a little bit of phthalates in your bloodstream from nail polish. It is almost not measurable—just a little bit. But give me a five-year-old girl, this painting, her ten little fingers, and ten little toes once a week, and now she is 25 or 30 married, and gets pregnant. Now, in Chicago, 2016, 346 pregnant women are in their eighth month of pregnancy. They collected urine from them, and they measured five phthalate chemicals used to mold plastic. There are many, but they just measured five. They took the results, and they put them in fourths, with the lowest being the next, and the third being the highest. Then they followed the offspring of those pregnancies for seven years. When the kids turned seven years old, they did the Wechsler IQ test, the official IQ test. Now there is not much in medicine—that is, all or nothing. But just as I said earlier about couples and food sensitivities, this was every child whose mother was at the highest level of phthalates in urine during pregnancy. 

Although she was healthy and had no concerns, she had a healthy pregnancy. But if she had the highest levels in her urine, every child was in that category compared to the children in the lowest category. These children’s IQ was seven points lower—6.7 to 7.4 points lower—does not mean anything to anyone until you understand that a one-point difference in IQ is noticeable. A seven-point difference is the difference between a child working hard and getting straight A’s in school and a child working hard and getting straight C’s. This child does not have a chance in hell of ever excelling because his mom was the highest in phthalates during pregnancy. Then just go to Google and type in, phthalates and neurogenesis and nerve growth. Here comes the studies. The higher the phthalates, the greater the inhibition of brain cell and nerve growth. But the amount that you are exposed to when you go to Starbucks and you get a coffee cup with a plastic lid on it and you put this hot coffee up to your mouth with the water or the coffee hitting the underside of the lid and tapers out into the opening that you drink full of phthalates You get these minute amounts of phthalates every single day, and they accumulate in your body. But the amount of phthalates you get from a coffee cup with a plastic lid is not toxic to humans. 

That is how they got away with it. People, though the consumer groups have been screaming about this since about the 90s or 2000 because more studies come out, more studies come out. Obama in his administration tried to toot his horn that we have done this job, and now we have passed this legislation. There is now because, until that time, there were only five chemicals that had been forbidden in 1976—five out of the tens of thousands that we are exposed to every day. Obama comes in, and he toots his horns, what a great job they are doing to protect people. they rule. I think those 34 chemicals are now restricted to tens of thousands. It was all a marketing gobbledygook with no teeth to it, but it looked good on paper. Look good.  What we are up against is that we are exposed to these toxins every single day, and they accumulate in our bodies. Some of these toxins have been demonstrated. When you are high in these toxins, your risk of developing Parkinson’s, specifically, is much higher. It is unbelievable to see this.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

There are so many classes of chemicals. You just describe phthalates, but there are so many others. It is known that it is endless.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Let me give you one other example that does not relate directly to the brain, but it is jaw-dropping. You can easily interpret what it means for the rest of your body. This was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2019, and they looked at couples at assisted fertility centers. When you are at an assisted fertility center, you are spending tens of thousands of dollars to try to have a baby. These couples are so stressed out that they are trying everything they can to bring a child into the world and start a family. The editors of the journal American Medical Association commented, saying this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to demonstrate their point. Now, the editors of the journal, the American Medical Association, arguably the top journal in the English language, do not give good housekeeping stamps of approval very often. 

But they did. I saw that. This has got to be a great study. I cannot question this, whatever it is. I read the study, and they ruled out all of the factors that might contribute to success or failure in all the efforts that couples were making: obesity, alcohol, cigarettes, smoking, exercise, or lack of exercise. They ruled all those out in an elegant way, with sophisticated biomarkers. They ruled it all out to identify just one concept: how many servings of fruits and vegetables were the couples eating? Was the woman eating? How many servings per week? They put those numbers into fours, with the lowest being the next and the third being the highest. They look to see what the results are based on how many servings of fruits and vegetables you eat. We all think, Oh, the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the better. I am sure that is what we have been teaching for years and years. Well, the more fruits and vegetables, the better. It turns out that those women in the highest category consumed the most fruits and vegetables, which was 2.3 servings per day, which is almost nothing—not very much at all compared to those women who did not have many fruits and vegetables a day. Those in the highest category had an 18% lower likelihood of getting pregnant. If they got pregnant, they had a 26% lower likelihood of a live birth. They lost the babies on miscarriage or stillbirth compared to the women eating the least amount of fruits and vegetables. Now, that is mind-boggling. It is. Wait a minute, what did you just say? 

The editors of the journal, the American Medical Association, say this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to demonstrate their point. Do not challenge this study. But it is completely different from what we would think. But they also had a group of women, a subcategory of women who were eating organic, and they looked at those categories: the lowest, the next, the third, and the highest servings of organic. You were categorized as being organic if you ate three meals a week—not 21 meals a week, but three meals a week of organic. It usually means that if people are trying to be organic, they are doing other things for their health; they are trying to balance their lives out. If you were in the highest category of organic servings per week, it was the exact opposite—much higher success and much higher likelihood—of a live birth and a healthy baby. It was not the fruits and vegetables; it was the chemicals and conventional fruits and vegetables. I think arguably, and I have not found a study on this yet. I have looked, and I just have not found one. 

But arguably the most sensitive tissue in our bodies is the fertilized egg that is inside the uterus; it is just trying to get its feet on the ground. To say this little being to develop, arguably, I would suspect that is the most sensitive tissue in the body. I think the next most sensitive tissue is the brain. When we are talking about Parkinson’s, we are talking about the brain. I think that this example of assisted fertility centers on this elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers that say, the more conventional fruits and vegetables you eat, the worse the outcome, but the more organic you eat, the better. I think that concept would flow over to the brain, and the brain functions nicely. Very nicely.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Absolutely. That makes complete sense. The title of the summit is Parkinson’s Solutions, so I would love to hear your thoughts on some solutions. Let us say you have a diagnosis of Parkinson’s yet to make.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You cannot put your toe in the water. You just cannot. If there is so much damage, if your brain has been damaged to the point where you are having symptoms, you need to dive in. It is when I have a patient like that, I sit down with them and I say, Please excuse my language, but I have to read, too, from the book, The Book of Life. You do not mess with this. You have to do a deep dive. I know of no other way that you have a chance of arresting the development. Show me anything that has been demonstrated to arrest the progression of Parkinson’s. You have had some of the symptoms for a few months, a year, or two. Great. I guess that is helpful. But it is still progressing. It is still progressing. Shortening your life. I know of no other way except to have this in the world of functional medicine. You are a very strong part of leadership in that world, Sandy. But I think we both would agree if you listen to the giants in the field of functional medicine; they always say the same thing. At the simplest level, it is good to take the good stuff out and take the bad stuff out. Bottom line: that is it. 

In Parkinson’s, we are talking about the bad stuff, meaning all of these chemicals that we have accumulated. Now there are categories of chemicals, and in the big picture classification, they are called exotoxins and endotoxins. Exotoxins mean they are out in the environment, and you breathe them into the plastic blinds on your windows. You are inhaling phthalates. but endotoxins are toxins that have accumulated inside your body already. You have been exposed a little bit at a time, and it has accumulated lead poisoning. We know that it is extremely rare that someone gets a huge dose of lead, and now they have lead poisoning, but rather it is a cumulative over time in the water in Flint, Michigan, a few years ago of unfortunate tens of thousands of kids where it affected their brain development. However, the toxic compounds are in small exposures that our body is insufficient to get rid of. The result is that they accumulate in your body. Those are exotoxins. 

You have to learn how to clear the exotoxic environment in your life, meaning the world you live in. You need air filtration systems in your house, and if you cannot afford them, you go to my website. thedr.com/plants, and you download the handout from NASA of House Plants. There are 210-inch houseplants and two 6-inch houseplants in a ten-by-ten room that absorb over 74% of the toxins in the air. NASA, did all the work on that because their astronauts were going loopy in space and on the space shuttle. Could you repeat that, please? They would say, and I just looked at each other, and they never talked to the press about that, but they found out that the air was toxic up there from the amount of plastic inside the shuttles and the containers. The phthalates they were getting was causing inflammation in their brain. They financed the studies on house plants. It turns out that house plants absorb the toxins in the air and generate oxygen back into the air.

You read the handout and that is one little thing that you can do. You have eight rooms in your house. You go buy 20 little house plants there for ten bucks a piece. We show you which ones, and we put the pictures up. You say I see that all the time. That one? Yes, it does. For those who say, Well, I do not have a green thumb, they will die. Then you buy more. You cannot negotiate with this. You got to stop the exposure that is coming in, and you learn about foods, and you start moving towards organic as much as possible, and then you move towards finding out what foods are causing inflammation in your body: Gluten or dairy or lectins or eggs—what is it for you? If you avoid it and do not do it well, I could have a little oil once in a while. 

If your blood test comes back and says you have a problem with wheat. Well, no, you cannot, because with a single exposure, you have gotten over two months of inflammation. You cannot afford this. You cannot afford to put your toe in the water. You need to dive into the deep end. You need to be overwhelmed. You need a health coach to walk with you in this world. All right, okay, I buy this. You have shown me enough science. This makes sense. Nothing you are telling me is going to hurt me.  How do I shift my lifestyle to reduce exposure to more of these toxins in my life? How do I do that? You work with me, do not try to reinvent the wheel yourself because it is overwhelming and extremely difficult to do. Do you get a health coach? 

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Amen to that. 

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

That is the world of exotoxins. You have to learn. You have to stop your exposure because these exposures trigger inflammation in your body. 14 of the 15 top causes of death, according to the CDC, are chronic inflammatory diseases. You have to get rid of the inflammation. You have to lower your inflammation index. Well, I do not feel bad. Before I never had a symptom of Parkinson’s, I did not feel bad. Well, yes, but you were still killing off brain cells. That is called low-grade chronic systemic inflammation. You have to learn what the biomarkers are. How do I tell? What are the blood tests? What are the urine tests that identify, if I have this low-grade chronic inflammation going on? They are called antibodies. What tissue is my body fighting? That is why you do the Neural Zoomer Plus test because it looks at 53 markers of inflammation in the brain. Anyone who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s is going to have 20–25 markers elevated because your brain’s on fire. Well, it is on fire. Then, six months down the road, you do the test again; do not do it beforehand. It is a waste of money. It takes a while to calm down this inflammatory cascade once you change your lifestyle. 

Six months down the road, there are 12 markers elevated. Well, yes, but it was 23 months ago. Look, you are almost halfway down now. That is great. Keep up. You are on the Well, wait. Well, what do I do to get rid of them all? Get rid of all the inflammation. There is nothing that you can take. You have to change your lifestyle. All that is causing the inflammation then you take the anti-inflammatories that help, tumor risk, vitamin C, and vitamin D, and your coach or your doctor will guide you through all that. Do not try to reinvent the wheel. You have a life-shortening disease. You need expert help with this. You get my book, “You Can Fix Your Brain” I had argued with Rodale Press for two weeks about the title they wanted at a different time. I said, No, this is the title “You Can Fix Your Brain”, and it is number one in seven categories on Amazon. For brain function, I’m proud of that book. It is a great book. You just start learning all of these little things you do, and you work with your coach on this. That is the world of exotoxins. 

Now, what about endotoxins? The toxins that are already stored inside your body There’s a lot of work to do for that. Also, anything you do to start flushing out these toxins is going to be helpful. Anything. There are things like infrared saunas, modest exercise, and walking. The magic number for joining the American Medical Association is 9,826. If you walk 10,000 steps a day, you reduce your risk of dementia by 51% just by walking, not fast walking. If you want value, you can, but you do not have to just walk 10,000 steps a day because your lymphatic system is moving in, you are flushing all this stuff all day long, just a little bit at a time, and you learn about infrared saunas. But there is no evidence that this stuff detoxes your brain. There Is only one protocol now that has been demonstrated to detox your brain. 

The only one that I am aware of is called INUSpheresis. We have all heard of kidney dialysis, where these machines filter your blood to help your kidneys out. Well, that is it; the technology is many generations above that now. We have something called Plasmapheresis, and there are generations of that. But the highest generation is called INUSpheresis. You sit in a La-Z-Boy chair, and you have a needle in one arm that takes blood that goes into this machine and it gets filtered by three different sets of filters, and then the blood comes back in the other arm, and it goes for about 75 minutes or 90 minutes. You see this bag that is sitting on the machine there; it has this yellow-gold type of color to it, and that is toxins. You can measure that, and you can measure the heavy metals that are now in this bag, the toxic chemicals, and the organophosphates that are in this bag. You do INUSpheresis treatments, there are only, I believe, 12 centers in all of Europe. I do not know that it is here in the US at all. I do not know. I looked in a couple of months ago, and I did not see any here. 

They have different types of Plasmapheresis, but not INUSpheresis. It is I-N-U-S-P-H-E-R-E-S-I-S. INUSpheresis and a very famous doctor, who is one of the best in the world, in my opinion. He was on national television interviewing, and he said, This is the only treatment that detoxes the brain. There is a clinic in Switzerland that my wife and I had gone to before called Swiss Mountain Clinic, and they have INUSpheresis there. I have done these treatments, and I have looked at Holy Cow! Because it pulls out microplastics from your blood, pulls out heavy metals, and pulls out these organic chemicals. It was jaw-dropping to see all of the garbage. We live clean lives, but you are breathing the air from chemtrails. Do you think that is harmless? Then all the chemicals we put on our body every day—for women, 160, 263 chemicals per day, and for men, about 80—are the average between the shaving lotions and the amount of stuff that is in the shampoo and the toothpaste. Do you know that commercial toothpaste has a sign on the tube that says, if these symptoms occur, call Poison Control? Why are we putting anything in our children’s mouths that, if you eat toothpaste, they have to call the Poison Control Center? Don’t you think that is a bit toxic?

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Perhaps.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

You have to learn this stuff. You just have to learn. Swiss Mountain Clinic and I called them an hour ago. I had not thought about it before, but I called them and said, I am going to be interviewed at this summit for Parkinson’s. It is about how to improve when you have Parkinson’s. Are you willing to make some offer or anything and know, an incentive for people? Said, Yes, we have been talking about this in general, and please give them the code and make up the code and tell them 25% off on all your housing and your food. Now, in this center, there is no place like it I have ever seen in the world. You go to your room and you live there for a week or two weeks or three weeks, and when you open your room and you open the balcony doors, you just want to yodel because you are in the Swiss mountains and it is spectacularly beautiful. It is built on an ancient Druid Holy Site, with literally hundreds of years of history of this holy site. The water purification systems are the best in the world. They have walls now. They come from Germany. They generate oxygen in the air. They do IVs of different nutrients. It is the best clinic that I have ever seen, Swiss Mountain Clinic. 

The code is drtom because I am making it up. DrTom25. You use that code, and they will give you, not every meal there is organic and of the highest quality. The Chef there is a one-star Michelin Chef. It is unbelievable what he does with fruits and vegetables. It is just delicious. You can have fish if you need some meat. I do not know that they know that they do have beef on occasion. I do not think it is on the menu, but regularly. But you are there, and I have seen the worst. The reason I called them was because I was at the clinic this summer when we were in Europe. Marcy, I, and our son were at the clinic. When I walked in, this happened a lot. When I walk in, people sometimes drop their jaws a little bit because I have been to a lot of events, and so my white hair is noticeable, I guess, Dr. Tom? 

I was talking to this woman who was there. She has Parkinson’s, and she has a shuffle walk. You know, the shuffle walk is where her feet go. She cannot lift her legs or bend her knees. This was her. I think it was, I am not sure, her fifth time there. She has two INUSpheresis treatments when she comes. She was about to have her ninth treatment of INUSpheresis, plus all the IVs and other chelating detox protocols they do and all the testing they do. But she had the shuffle walk, and she said, But I’m going to get there. Doctor Klinghardt told me, I am going to get there. That is the world-famous doctor who talks about the value of INUSpheresis for brain function. I saw her two days later in the cafeteria, and she was walking normally; she was bending her knees, and she had a low, short stride, but she was not shuffling her feet. I looked at her, and I said, Look at you. She is. Oh, my God, yes. She said she started crying. She got out of the chair after her ninth treatment, and she started walking. It must have been; who knows what happened? But my thought is that it must have been enough that these toxins have been pulled out. The inflammatory index went down. What she left was enough that she could walk more normally. That was not being inhibited by the amount of inflammation in her brain. That is my guess as to what happened. 

I have spoken to Dr. Klinghardt, he told patients to go rent an apartment near the clinic. You stay there until you are better. Because people feel trapped, understandably, because there is not much out there. But you have to change your lifestyle to reduce the exposure to exotoxins. You need the proper protocols to reduce endotoxin exposure. You have to rebuild your gut so you have a healthy microbiome because that is where it all began. All disease begins in the gut, and I am not just making it up. This comes from Harvard Medical School. Our friend Professor Fasano, who is the Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the Professor of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, the Chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology at Harvard, the Mass General at Harvard, the Director of the Celiac Research Center at Harvard, and the Director of Mucosal Immunology, That is the lining of your brain. The lining of your gut and the lining of your lungs at Harvard Five titles. Five titles. One title is a lifelong goal for someone at the top of their game. He’s got five. We think he is going to win the Nobel Prize because it was he and his team that, in 1997, identified the mechanism by which this leaky gut occurs. 

They have been writing about it for 25 years. He is always careful about what he says. He is never misquoted. But this is the paper he wrote a couple of years ago by himself. The title: “All Disease Begins in the Leaky Gut: The Role of the Proteins Annually in the Development of Chronic Inflammatory Diseases”, This is what they are teaching at Harvard Medical School. Now you have to rebuild a healthy, diverse microbiome, and to do that, you need a coach who is going to walk with you on how to go shopping and what to buy and not buy because the pickles you bought are loaded with sugar, and you cannot do those. Well, here are some good ones. These are fermented pickles that help build a healthier microbiome. As an example. Now this is not the pickle diet, but I am picking something that is, so what? Because of mustard and ketchup. Open the door of your refrigerator. Every single thing in there. You are probably going to have to change if you have never read labels before. Yes, that is why you need a coach.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

These are things that people can start doing now. Those who might not be able to get to Switzerland to afford that state-of-the-art, do not have to be discouraged. They can say, I can do something, I can start now, I can just get rid of those exotoxins as much as possible, and I can eat the kinds of foods that can heal my gut and put that all together with changing my lifestyle, working with a coach, and having hope that there are solutions.

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Yes. There is no question that you can see improvement. My rule of thumb is three weeks. If you are not better in three weeks, I do not care if you have stage four cancer; you better notice that your energy’s a little better, you are sleeping a little better, or the pain in your hips is not constant. It is bad three times a day, but it is not constant anymore. You better notice there is a change, or we are missing something. You cannot put your toe in the water with Parkinson’s. You need to dive in, and you dive in on lifestyle. It will take you a few weeks of transition to do that. But you eat; you do not have time to mess around with this drug is going to fix this. You can suppress some of the symptoms, but that is false hope. 

Excuse me, but they will not tell you this. But it is false hope to think that there is a pharmaceutical that is going to slow down the progression of this, as far as I know. I am not a world expert in Parkinson’s, but I am in functional medicine. You need to understand the lifestyle change. Stop throwing gasoline on the fire. That means the air you are breathing. Get purifiers at home, get houseplants in every room, and get a health coach to help you figure out what to eat, what your family’s going to eat, and recipes that you are going to use. Start with those things. The world of exotoxins that you can get rid of starts with home detoxing, and working with a functional medicine practitioner. then, when you can, look for the more advanced protocols.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Absolutely. This has been a fascinating conversation, as always. Dr. Tom, where can people find you?

Tom O’Bryan, DC, CCN, DABCN, CIFM

Oh, thank you. Our website is thedr.com. The dr dot com, just do not spell the word doctor out, and get lots of handouts and videos. There are several different things you can explore. Look around for healthcare practitioners. We have an online education program that focuses on related disorders and the development of autoimmunity, and you learn the mechanisms of where autoimmunity comes from. All disease begins in the gut, and you learn how to test it and what to do for it. That is called the Certified Gluten-Free Practitioner program. You will see that on our site as well. But yes, there is a lot of information there. For those of you who are attending this summit because you or a loved one is concerned about this nasty disease, Godspeed to you on your journey to learn how to live a less inflammatory lifestyle.

Sandra Scheinbaum, PhD

Thank you so much.