Harness The Power Of Detoxification During Your Menopause Transition

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Thank you for having me. I’m really happy to be on this summit.

Sharon Stills, ND

Very welcome. As we were chatting before we came on, I said, “You’re the galectin-3 guy, aren’t you? I remember learning and studying from you years and years ago when I was early in my clinical practice.” I’m like a fan girl, super excited to have you here. For those who don’t know you, maybe just tell us a little bit about how you got on this path and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yes, so I’m a native of Israel, and I am in my early 60s, and I started my journey in the healing art as a teenager in Korea. My father was a civil engineer, where I learned TaeKwonDo and yoga and since then, I was interested in yoga and yoga therapy and when I went to medical school in Israel, I was already a yoga teacher. I was learning shiatsu and Chinese medicine and when I got my medical degree and finished my internship, I came to United States. I did a Master of Science in Chinese Medicine, so I’m also a licensed acupuncturist. Over the decades, I learned different medical and healing systems, what I call in a vertical way, each system, a few years. Classical homeopathy and herbs, et cetera. I also got very engaged in meditation. 

We focused on healing, very engaged meaningful 20 years. I would go away for about two months a year to meditate in the mountains. From there, in 10 years, I did a half-day retreat and half-day work, and I got to treat the most legendary meditation masters in the Himalayas. This altogether is expressed in my new book, “The Survival Paradox” where I finally put decades of experience and studies into this concept that we’ll talk about, very relevant for women’s health. In addition, I’m an active researcher. I have NIH grants around galectin-3, this protein that we’ll also discuss and how it affects every field in our health. My grant for example, on sepsis actually, which is very relevant for COVID, but on the cytokine storm. 

Within all of this, I was always interested in women’s health, treated a lot of breast cancer, hundreds and hundreds of patients for decades. Really recognize early on the need to treat women differently in different ages. I was just mentioning to you, we created the first gender age-based multi nutrient that was based on an herbal formula. One formula was more for nourishment, and production of blood, and energy in the childbearing years where women has to built a family, and there’s career, and a lot of things to do. The second formula is more about nourishments when estrogen level goes down. Even our supplements are built around this concept of understanding of the movement and the women are so attuned to movement and so sensitive and it’s hard to keep our rhythms in a world like ours these days from a demand point of view, or from a pace point of view. When rhythms get disrupted, then our body doesn’t like it and especially women’s health doesn’t like it.

Sharon Stills, ND

We are rhythmical creatures that’s for sure. I’m curious, what does this mean, “The Survival Paradox,” the title of your new book?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

“The Survival Paradox” is really a paradigm shift in our thinking about health and disease. We are all aware, especially in our field, that inflammation drives almost every disease, chronic and acute, but we didn’t recognize that inflammation is really not the cause of any disease, it’s an outcome. What causes inflammation is a survival paradox. What do I mean? We are built to survive. Every cell in our body is built to survive, every organ, every tissue, us as people, community countries, our earth, and as a result of this survival response which is automated within us, it is what causes us inflammation, struggle, and organ degeneration. 

Because it’s built within us, it’s automated. Our immediate response to the survival paradox is an automated autonomic nervous system response, the sympathetic system. we either fight creating inflammation, and the result, for example, in COVID is a cytokine storm, which is really what kills patients. Or we fight, or we flight. We run away, we hide, we create fibrosis, we create areas of micro environment. Areas of micro environment where cancer can grow, where biofilm can be built, and where there can be an area that the body is not in control very much where things can grow out of our control and the classical tissue for this, because it’s really a fat-based, is the best where things can be stored and hidden and then suddenly wake up one morning and there is breast cancer.

When we really understand this, then we can see, what does the inappropriate survival response do to us, and what can we do about it? And we talked about the nervous system. But within minutes, our body biochemically turned into survival response. The protein that drives it is galectin-3. Galectin-3 is the bus that takes different inflammatory compound, sticky molecules that get tumor cells to stick together, a molecule that’s suppress the immune system, and molecules that damage the brain and it drives them to the area of injury and it tries to fix things as part of survival. We always wanna do the best. When we are young, we can survive without creating inflammation. We get a cut, it heals without a scar. When we are older, we get a scar. When we heal, we produce more inflammation and we produce more scarring, which is a dysfunctional tissue. When we understand this, we understand that the real journey is to learn how to ameliorate the damages of the ongoing survival response, and then on the deepest level, how can we transform the survival response?

Sharon Stills, ND

A couple of things you mentioned that I wanna backtrack to for the listeners. First with galectin-3, could you just speak for the ladies listening, what they should ask their doctors for and what they should want their levels to look like so they can get that measured?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yes, of course. Galectin-3 as I said, is a carbohydrate binding protein. It has an amino acid, a peptide side, and it has a side that catches carbohydrate. It catches different ligands, like inflammatory ligands, it binds then create a and then it creates a lattice formation, a coating. The level of galectin-3 can change based on the population. Some people will have high levels, some people will have low levels. We don’t address galectin-3 based on levels because galectin-3 needs to be addressed for anyone who is breathing, especially if you are over the age of 40, because over time it will go up and it innately will cause survival driven damage. For some people because of their genetic predisposition or because they have an inflammatory process, a struggling process internally, a physical scar, an infection, an emotional trauma and multi-generational trauma which they’re trying to fix. 

They will generate more galectin-3 and these people will need more modified retrospecting. Basically, addressing galectin-3, it’s a basis of supporting longevity and it will enhance different treatments. If we look for example, in women’s health, we’ll see studies that modified citrus pectin is synergistic with Adriamycin, is synergistic with Taxol is synergistic with radiation therapy if we’re talking about cancer. Why? Because it allows us to expose the damaged tissue, the cancer tissue. It allows the immune system to respond better, and it reduces the damaging inflammation. This level happen on a cellular level, on a tissue level, and on an organ level.

Sharon Stills, ND

Women can just ask their doctors to run-

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yes.

Sharon Stills, ND

A galectin-3.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

It’s approved by every medical insurance, it’s inexpensive, and it’s formally used for heart failure because this is a FDA approval in 2008, since then the company who developed went out of business so they didn’t get other approvals. But the safe levels of Galectin-3 are much, much lower than what the test shows. The test is again for patient who already have heart failure, which usually have kidney damage and they are not clearing galectin-3 properly. For me, any galectin-3 over 12 is a concern already.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah, I’ve been running it at regular labs ever since I first heard you teach about it many, many years ago. And you mentioned modified citrus pectin, could you just elaborate on that a little, what that is?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Of course. Pectin is a low long chain of carbohydrate of a certain sugar, not glucose that is present in the inner peeling, the albedo, the white part of the citrus fruit. It is a very high molecular weight, it doesn’t get absorbed. It can be in the gut, it can help with the fiber, it can absorb some lipid, it can bind to some lipids. When we modified very specifically, and we create a modified pectin that can be absorbed and the specific pectin that had all the research, now 80 published papers, is called pectasol because of a lot of borrowed science over my work over the decades. It gets absorbed into the bloodstream and there it becomes a galectin-3 blocker, but it also removes heavy metals and it also regulates and enhances normal immune function. When you take modified citrus pectin, you will see the benefit in a very wide range of diseases naturally because inflammation and survival response drives every disease. For example, we just published a multicenter trial on prostate cancer, which has a lot of similarities hormonally with breast cancer. This is post initial local treatment, just like a woman removes breast cancer locally, and a men removes their prostate and then the cancer starts coming back, PSA starts coming back. When we give the modified citrus pectin, we see benefit in 80% of the patient age zero. Why? Not because it kills the cancer, because it changes the environment and allows the body to deal with the cancer. In this sense, we have a lot of women with breast health and breast cancer who have benefited from modified citrus pectin. 

I explain this as part of the simple supplement solution for the survival protein. The other deeper solutions is how can we reduce the survival response by becoming less toxic, by letting go of things that create a survival response. For us, the main one connecting back to our heart and from a physiological level, how can we remove different obstacles to normal metabolism, which is, so well, it’s critical for estrogen metabolism and it’s critical for thyroid metabolism, it’s critical for outcome of health. In this sense, in addition to the life pace, and the EMF, and radiation, and stress, and lack of sleep, we are bombarded with pesticide and toxins. Bombarded and we’re almost trained. It’s interesting. I was just recognizing it two years ago, and then I’m very active now in developing preparation for removal of pesticide and glyphosate very successfully. 

I just got the first subject from the clinical trial, amazing results, but I realized, wow, we have been dripped, we have been brainwashed to accept that a little bit of toxic material is okay because it’s only a little bit and I don’t think it’s okay. We really as part of addressing our wellbeing from when good hydration and good sleep, which is critical for women’s health because of the rhythms, these pesticides disrupt our rhythms. The xenoestrogen, the Organophosphates, they change the brain causing narrow inflammation, excitatory neurotransmitter take control. We don’t sleep as well and we know the relationship between melatonin and breast cancer and the good night’s sleep. It all comes together and there is the nourishing part that we can talk about soon that will be what every woman needs to emphasize, and then the cleanup to allow the nourishment to happen. That’s a dialogue we go through our life every single day. Every cell does it and we do it throughout our life. It’s an ongoing process between detox, nourishment, and transformation in between.

Sharon Stills, ND

Exactly and I totally agree with you about no amount of pesticides should be acceptable. I know a lot of the labs I work with, I run levels on patients and they say, “Oh, it’s fine unless it’s over the 80% or something.” I’m like, “No, no, no, we can’t normalize that it’s okay to have 80% toxins in our body. That’s just absurd to me.” 

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

But they expect, when in the same time they have a little bit of heavy metals and they have mycotoxins, and they didn’t sleep enough, and it all adds together and the cell is bombarded. People don’t realize we are made from 50 trillion cells. Trillion, not million, not billion, trillion. Each cell has close to 1 million reactions a second. Can you even imagine this ongoing movement? It’s really infinite number and we still function as one being, which for me, I love saying it, each of us is a walking miracle. How do we do it? By creating and recognizing that we are a community. As long as the cell realizes it’s part of a bigger reality, it accept that it’s gonna express itself, and it’s gonna die. When we go into a survival mode, when a cell goes into a survival mode and doesn’t want to die, it’ll create a micro environment driven by galectin-3. It will create its own environment, its own rules, its own metabolism, it starts growing fast. How do we call it? 

We call it cancer, or we call it autoimmunity. But cancer is a classical one. From this sense that breast cancer is a classical spot because it’s not really an organ that has metabolism like the stomach, like the liver, and it has such a percentage of fatty tissue it can store a lot of toxins. Interesting, even now 60 years after DDT has been abandoned in Israel, 60 years later, you find elevated levels in DDT in women’s breasts. Imagine glyphosate being sprayed every day in the ground, one pound per year per person. It bio accumulates so it goes into these areas that are bio accumulating and then at some point it becomes too much and it disrupts our metabolism. This idea of coming to harmony, the reason why I’m emphasizing it, because in Chinese medicine, this, we call it the feminine principle. Women have the ability to create community. Women have the ability to nourish. It’s a part of giving birth, mother earth, and this has been disrupted with a crazy pace with a xenoestrogen, with not sleeping. working at night, and sleep cycles. As a result, it has a major effect on women’s health, and specifically on women and estrogen related cancers, which are much more than breast cancer. People don’t know colon cancer has estrogen receptor, lung cancer has estrogen receptors, thyroid cancer has estrogen receptors, glioblastoma has estrogen receptors. Many cancers can respond to abnormal estrogen metabolism into hormones that relate to estrogen such as prolactin, and I don’t wanna get too technical. The basic thing is, we wanna come into harmony. The survivor understand this is a survival paradox in balancing galectin-3 is one important piece. Then also allowing us to metabolize estrogens properly, which so much of your work is, what does the estrogens breaking into? 

Are they breaking into good estrogens, or into cancer promoting estrogen? Well, this depends in some level to our genetic SNPs, but also to how loaded is our liver with other tasks? How backed up is the liver with toxins? I mean, if you gave people who have issue of liver detoxification, if you gave them a break for a month, whereas the toxic input would be minimized? They will clean the backup and suddenly they can do well even with partial capacity, but we are always in this struggle that we have to catch up and survive. That’s why survival paradox is a profound concept and in the book I explain it in a big way, and then I go into metabolism and I go into every organ and into immunity, and into the microbiome, and then I give the solution, of course, detoxification, how to transform our scout of survival and how to free the survival product which is really a meditative process that we are all capable of doing.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. 

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

But from a biochemical level, the reason why I feel that blocking galectin-3 is the most important supplement. I didn’t say this even five years ago, maybe five I already said, but 10 years ago. If you look at my health programs 15 years ago, not everybody got picked. Now I’m saying it because the research is overwhelming in kidney, in liver, in lungs, in heart, in brain, inflammation, in autoimmunity, in cancer, in sepsis. I published some very important papers because when the body goes into a loop of survival and cannot turn off, everything catches on fire, and when everything catches on fire, nothing stays fresh and nothing stays intact.

Sharon Stills, ND

Are you saying modified citrus pectin is something everyone should be taking preventatively?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Number one, if I had to take one supplement, it would be modified citrus pectin because we can get our vitamin and minerals from food. We can get a lot of stuff and there are a lot of great things. I take a lot of thing but we got to block galectin-3. It can reduce galectin-3 if we are more relaxed, if we have good hydration so there’s better communication, less inflammation, if we sleep well. But we have lost this world. Only few people can really keep to it. And in this sense, if we look at centenerians compared to people in their 70s and 80s, the centenerians which include within them in their 70s, 80s, the centenerians have much lower levels of galectin-3 which goes with age. Now, the people who are 70 and 80, as a few people who will make it to be over 100 years old. If we are surviving, if we are living by creating a stronger survival response, that creates more inflammation and fibrosis, it’s going to shorten our life and the beauty of it is that we know the biochemistry. 

We are not guessing because when you have galectin-3 coming outside the cell, or if you have inflammation and danger coming, the macrophage turn into inflammatory macrophage. Macrophages are the immune cells that clean the mess and when they become more inflamed, they excrete in the area of the problem more galectin-3. We then will block the insulin receptors and we’ll attenuate the normal metabolic function. It will block AMPK which produces normal energy. It will enhance MTO1. The cell is not getting oxygen out. Hypoxia inducing factor goes up. PDK for the people who know biochemistry, gets activated. Mitochondria gets shut down. We go into glycolysis, very fast, very devastating and then the root of cancer becoming more aggressive, autoimmunity, diabetes, et cetera. 

This is extracellularly. There are some compounds who can help intracellularly. , curcumin, is a very big one. But here we see how a systemic effect of galectin-3 is going into the cell and into our metabolism and in this sense, every cell including a cancer cell has a choice to turn into a normal cell. If we could get a cancer cell to take a deep breath and relax, and not feel in danger, and in my book, you will see I have a personal relationship with the cell and the psychology of the cell ’cause the cell is our smallest independent unit. The mitochondria also within the cell. But looking at the cell, it has a boundary. It decide what it takes in, it decide what it puts out, it decide what it wants, what it doesn’t want, and it is a relationship with environment just like we do. If we can get the cell to feel everything is okay, it’s gonna be okay, it’s not all on you. You do your job and then when a time comes, just like everything changes, your time will come. Now just relax. The cell takes a deep breath, the mitochondria opens up, there’s no more HIF, hypoxia-inducible factor. There is oxygen. We produce 36 ATP from one molecular of glucose. That’s the value of intermittent fasting. We give a break to this pattern of all the time struggling, and then some of these cells becomes normal. That’s a process of re differentiation, getting a cell to be, less cancer cell for example to be less aggressive often with post radiation, post chemotherapy, we get more stem cells, we get cancer cells to be more aggressive, why? 

Because they survived the treatment. We just talked about it. When you survive something, all your survival mechanisms are enhanced and the result is more inflammation, more struggle, more fire. It’s a dialogue that happens in the way we live our life, in the way we feel, we think, we treat ourselves, we treat others, and there are supplements and dietary changes. I’m sure a lot of them, your guests discussed, but I wanna offer you a little bit of a bigger model because we do have a choice. With every breath, with every thought, we have a choice. Are we going to struggle and fight and survive? I fall into this, you fall, everybody falls or we are gonna just realize everything is changeable and we just drop the reactivity. It’s really the final solution which is very hard to actually… 

The deepest way to transform the survival paradox is by connecting with our heart. I mentioned and why it’s not just like a buzzword because every cell in the body, every organ in the body takes nourishment and let’s go of what they consider toxin, what they don’t want. That’s what toxin is. I mean, one food for a certain animal, they love it and the other species, it’s toxic for them. This is why, because every cell wants to survive. The only organ in the body who’s survival responsibility is to take the toxic stuff from others, connect with the universe with a breath and then give without judgment is our heart. Our heart is built to take all the struggles and whatever comes to the heart from the perspective of the heart belongs to the past. It was already released by the cells before until it got to heart. The heart connects with the universe, what, for the universe, our drama is not so big. It’s seen a lot. Now when we say universe, it’s not a buzzword. If you think about it, the molecule of air in your mouth right now is connected with the whole universe. There’s no argument about it. We are totally connected that’s why we have to keep our environment clean. We don’t keep our environment clean, we lose our filtration system, our nourishment system, and then it comes back to the heart. The only thing the heart does, it offers blood with no judgment. The aorta is a rigid artery. Who does the heart nourish first? I love it. When I came to this recognition and said, “Wow, I got to share this with the world.” Who does the heart nourish first? It nourishes itself through the coronary arteries. Self love is part of loving others, not narcissistic love. Because what the other amazing thing about the heart? Very important for women’s health, because women have the capacity to connect with the heart in a very… It’s built in. Interesting, the heart doesn’t nourish itself unless it finishes its work. Every other organ gets blood and nourishment before. When does the heart nourishes itself? 

When it finished it’s work and it puts the blood out. This is the selflessness of the heart. Women principle have this a lot, the selfless mother, the giving, the nourishment. It’s built in and estrogen is a hormone that creates this nourishment. One of the ways that I like to look at it, in nature, I’m a beekeeper. I’ve been a beekeeper in a very early age and now I came back to it. I actually have some videos and I thought maybe I’ll share, but I don’t know if it’ll work. But if you look at the beehive, it’s a great example of women’s health. First of all, it’s a feminine driven kingdom community. It’s ruled by the queen. The main principle is to fertilize the queen. When the beehive gets weak, all the men gets kicked out. Every working bee is a female bee whose organs were not developed because they didn’t take royal jelly. 

The bee queen lays in the springtime eggs that are greater than her body weight every single day. When you look at the beehive, and I just stand next to my beehive it’s like magic, and you see the community, you see the harmony, you see the selflessness, every bee knows where it has to go to. How far? Is it getting nectar? Is it getting pollen? You see how community can work when it’s not under survival, under stress. In this sense, it’s a great, great analogy for women’s health and beehives are under existential threat and we all know or hear about it. They’re being… Last year 60% of beehives died. 60, six, zero, okay It’s really interesting. Last year I was giving different medicines to my bees and they died. This year, I’m treating them holistically. I’m giving them my medicinal mushrooms, I’m giving them probiotic, I’m giving them protein and they are doing so well because I’m supporting them. It’s a great image really. It’s a great image, the bees are great image for women’s health. In this sense, when our supply of estrogen is harmonized and when we break it properly, then estrogen are not damaging. The problem is that it doesn’t happen as often. That’s why certain compounds like DIM is so important in combating breast cancer.

Sharon Stills, ND

Beautiful, beautiful. I think you are a poetic biochemist. I love the visions and the analogies you bring in. They’re beautiful. So did you think breast cancer is really a toxic environmental genetic, I mean, environmental problem? Do you think it’s a genetic problem? What do you think is?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

I… Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it’s a combination. We know, I mean, American Cancer Society recognizes that the majority of cancers are environmentally driven, or lifestyle driven. In this sense, we do have the genetics and no, in Judaism there is a beautiful saying in Hebrew that says, . Which means, everything is predetermined, which is our genetic, but we have a choice, which is our epigenetics. We can decide which gene is going to express itself or not, including the BRCA gene. For example, there are studies on DIM showing that women with BRCA positive who take DIM, there is an improvement in the breast tissue compared to cancer risk and there is a reduction in the abnormal BRCA expression. 

Amazing. This is the epigenetic expression. In this sense, breast cancer because of the tendency of the breast to accumulate heavy metals like mercury, for example, and fat soluble toxins and organophosphate and pesticides, and because of other issues that are more lifestyle that relate to the understanding of the breast from the flow of digestion, environment plays a big part in breast cancer. But of course there’s clear familial tendencies and genetic tendencies. It’s often like I’m mainly a clinician and a healer so you can see it in the pulse, you can see a breast cancer pattern in a woman 

when she’s a teenager and the same pattern at some point will come as cancer more decades later and you can change the pattern. If you change the pattern, you change the driving force which is gonna bring the breast cancer. We know that it culturally, and geographically, the areas with less cancer, and then once certain population change their diet, the cancer appears in the same way. In this sense, breast cancer is very responsive to environmental manipulation and also needs to be addressed. The interesting thing for me, is that there are not a lot of supplements for breast cancer. It always blows my mind. They are zillions of supplements for prostate. BPA and MBs. I mean, there’s really though some ingredient. We did our work with BreastDefend. We started this, I think over 20 years ago, we were really in operation. We did in-vitro study, we did animal studies. 

We never got to proper clinical trials because it’s hard to get big hospitals to really engage in herbal-based. But the thinking behind the formula was very much the thinking that I’ve explained today and the recognition that women’s breast health needs to be addressed as a standalone issue in relationship to the total body health. For some reason, it didn’t pick up enough. There’s not enough attention into it even now. I think it’s critical and also for women to know that breast cancer when found early on, have a great prognosis. I mean, 93% of women, stage one with a small tumor will survive and will not die from breast cancer. But there’s no doubt that it’s driven by all this inflammation survival driven factors like we mentioned like pesticides, and micro toxin, and heavy metals, and stress, and abnormal sleep patterns. For women to really recognize menopause is a very sudden change for women. 

Men, testosterone goes down. For women there’s hormone and then boom. It really, it’s a major shift and we’re not always prepared for it, right women? Because it’s hard to prepare your body’s use. The preparation for menopause should really start in the 40s by understanding that at some point, this is going to shift. There’s gonna be less nourishment, estrogen drops, different other heat with low like heat, inflammation, hot flashes, a response is going to really happen there. We have to deal with it differently than during the years of fertility. But anything that can keep rhythms in women is critical because women have a lunar based monthly cycle. Yeah, I know, and even the moon, the moon is a… The moon is very important to recognize that lunar energy is very soft, it’s very feminine compared to the sun, which is very strong. Women often will be in tune with lunar cycle. Women in communities get their period in the same time. There’s 

a community element. Anything women can do to maintain the rhythm like waking in the same time, sleeping in the same time, sleeping in a real dark room. You really allow your melatonin to really go up. Having good hydration. Why is good hydration so important? Because hydration is nourishment. It bring moisture to the body and estrogen bring moisture to the body. Estrogen is a building nourishing hormones. It builds the endometrium. It builds it up. It has ability to create. When we are balanced, it will create healthy tissue. When we’re imbalanced it’ll create unhealthy tissue. Really understanding rhythm and what we can do about it. That’s why if you look at our herbal-based supplement and one of them is not there anymore because we’re not good in marketing. 

One is based on building blood and energy, early agents. The other one is built on building nourishment and fluidity in the postmenopausal. Different basic Chinese herbal formula. Duodenal one, leeway DIOC one, postmenopausal and , that it raises during years of fertility. It’s a movement and the more we can respect it, the healthier we’ll be. It’s a challenge now. It’s a challenge with the COVID, with isolation, with lack of diversity, with struggle, and opinions politically like COVID. Yes vaccine, no vaccine. Yes mass, no mass. I am right, they’re not right. It creates a struggle. The community sense is really weakened and it has a direct effect on women’s health.

Sharon Stills, ND

There are so many nuggets in there. I’d like to go back to a few things. So you mentioned BreastDefend, your supplement. What exactly is in that?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

BreastDefend is a really interesting supplement. It has six ingredients, but they’re not as obvious. The leading compound is DIM, which is a metabolized of I3C which has a very important effect in all kind of breast cancer cells . Estrogen positive, triple negative and HER2 neu. Our studies on this formula cell line in animals we actually tested on both estrogen positive and triple negative. That’s like the head of the pyramid. Then we have baicalensis Scutellaria, which is an herb studied a lot for breast cancer. Then we have quercetin and curcumin. Quercetin specifically prevent drug resistance to some of the chemotherapy drugs like Adriamycin, an anti-inflammatory and curcumin which helps circulation and normalizes the cell. Then we have astragalus. Astragalus is the immune supporting herb, but astragalus from an esoteric Chinese medicine herbology, it’s also a community herb. We give it this kind of to bring back the sense of community within strengthening of the immune system. 

Then we have three medicinal mushrooms. I’m big on medicinal mushrooms. One of them unusual, phellinus, which is not used often, which is specifically for breast health and Coriolus and Reishi. But we take this herbs and we grow them on immune enhancing, anti-cancer, adaptogenic herbs. We feed them botanicals which are good for breast health and for immunity and for circulation and the mushrooms potentiate these properties. Mushrooms have a way to ferment and potentiate ingredients. It’s surprising, though I created this formula and I created a prostate formula, prostrate formula has 33 ingredients, this one is only six. The breast even had amazing results as supportive nutritional, adjunct nutritional support together with hormonal therapy with AIS, motor inhibitors together with Tamoxifen. It has really been of great benefit and we show that it’s synergistic with modified citrus pectin, we published on it. There’s a synergistic effect.

Sharon Stills, ND

Fantastic.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

It’s very potent. Just for generally, breast health maintenance for women with no risk, one capsule a day will do it. Maybe one capsule twice a day. If you are dealing with an active issue and you won’t have the proper oncological nutritional support, you need to go up to three twice a day with food. Different dosages are geared towards different people.

Sharon Stills, ND

What do you think about women who are metabolizing and their two, 16 ratio is fine and giving them DIM, even if their ratio is fine?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

I think that DIM in general has a lot of other properties. I would still give them DIM, but if the metabolism is fine, I would give them like a lower dose. If we look at BreastDefend just two, twice a day and watch the change in the metabolism definitely. Again, metabolism of two to 16 is less significant enforcement of puzzle because the level of estrogen are very low.

Sharon Stills, ND

But if someone’s done BHRT, and you gotta be careful ’cause if you lower 16 too much then they’re at risk for osteoporosis potentially.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

You have to watch all of these. For us for example, I give this and then I give the Rhythm Gold to give the nourishment. They work…

Sharon Stills, ND

What is Rhythm Gold?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Rhythm Gold is a specific multi nutrient for women that we actually created almost three decades ago that we upgraded on a regular basis. It provides the nourishment to work with the BreastDefend and women’s will report that the hot flashes is better, their joint pains are better, and the memory seems better. But it’s more from a nourishment perspective. It’s not that we are treating a symptom, we are creating a more harmonized environment. It’s an excellent supplement.

Sharon Stills, ND

I love the name of it. You mentioned before, and I’m sure some women are stuck on this, you said there’s a pattern that you can detect in even young women that says they’re gonna have breast cancer. Could you speak a little more to that? I’m sure women are going, “What’s the pattern? How do I know?”

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

The pattern in the pulse, is the pattern of struggle. It’s a pattern of roughness. Often for people who know Chinese medicine, then when they look at the pulse, they look at the quality and they describe it. They say the pulse is rough. But how does a rough sensation come from the pulse when it’s supposed to flow in one area? It’s when it flows in two directions, there is a struggle. If you see the struggle along the stomach channels in this area, the area is under pressure. If it’s from a very early age, it’s probably, and the family has breast cancer, it’s a certain pattern. It comes also from a behavior or because often in general and in women, it can be more often the idea of self acceptance, accepting and loving yourself. I wanna be prettier. 

People don’t accept themselves. When we digest our food and we accept our nourishment, the energy goes down. When we rebel and we don’t accept, the energy goes up and the stomach channel is right along the breast. That’s where it meets. Now, when into it is built frustration, and anger, and traumas, the gall bladder and liver get involved and then you move to the side channels and then you get axillary lymph nodes spread. Based on the patterns, the cancer will be less aggressive or more aggressive. As long as we can clear the stomach channel and nourish the yin and the spleen and the earth element, we are clearing this pattern. For example, one area in the body where nourishment and community is very strong is between us and our microbiome. Our microbiome is 100 trillion organisms. Qhen the microbiome is healthy, we don’t get leaky gut, we don’t get systemic inflammation, we don’t get narrow inflammation that affects the whole body, and we get better digestive system, better immunity. 

We know in cancer, if you give immunotherapies and you disrupt the microbiome or the microbiome is imbalanced, it doesn’t work. Amazing, the microbiome is part of its supportive synergistic effect, supports treatment that help us. Because also the microbiome, if we die, the microbiome is not gonna survive. In this sense, the digestions and nourishment, the earth element, which is hard to really build, now for example, SIBO is an epidemic. Everybody has small intestine bacterial overgrowth, why? Because of lack of diversity, because of disruption to our community in the gut. Same principle, like what we talked today. In this sense, the nourishment, the acceptance, and the rhythmic movement, and the eating properly, they all go to the same place they all go.

Sharon Stills, ND

I appreciate that you bring up the stomach meridian and the connection because I always talk about the teeth and the upper molars that lay the breast tooth that lays on the stomach meridian. We see so many problems.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Huge. Yeah, I want to reemphasize this. Always for women with breast cancer, check your molars because you’ll be amazed. You have women who don’t know even if they have an abscess that only an eye kit wheel will show and you deal with it and suddenly they respond to the chemotherapy they didn’t respond.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yeah.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah, definitely lot…I’m glad that you are emphasizing it. That’s same ’cause these teeth will relate to the digestive system.

Sharon Stills, ND

Excellent. Well and community, I mean, I think that’s just so beautiful and so important. I have a dream post-summit of creating communities, red tent communities where women can come together and nurture and grow and be in harmony because tendon befriend, women do much better. It improves their immune system when we are in community when we have a sisterhood. 

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah, it’s really a lesson for… As a men I can say. If you look, for example, women CEOs are much more successful. Like in all our organization, they always put a woman in charge. But I’m smart, I mean, the principle of community is so important and the insight. We all have the ability for insight, but we lost the ability to take the time to really see it anymore. But for women it’s critical, they can’t afford to lose this part in them. It’s who they are.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Then once you push to the fighting mode and now there is work more for evening out inequality, but still it’s a struggle. The inequality is still there and you always have to prove yourself. It creates a struggle and struggle is counterproductive to nourishment, to just being receptive. The womb, they use the uterus as the receptive organ. This receptivity, this community, this nourishment, it’s very powerful and that’s why if we look at miracles in the clinic, most of them are women. If they are not women, they’re men who got connected with their female inequality and then a woman next to them. I think, I mean, you can see in the stories in my book of certain people who just let go and accept it. So in my book, I sprinkled different stories of patients because the patients is really who we learn from. We just have to have the wisdom to just sit quietly and watch.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes. Where is your clinic located?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

My clinic is in Santa Rosa and when I say that I’m a pioneer in therapeutic apheresis is in this concept of filtering the plasma. In United States it’s very limited. It’s used mainly for high cholesterol genetically, but I use it for inflammatory conditions, a lot with cancer. I’m considered what you call in professional language, the disruptor on a global level and that’s why I have this NIH grants. The idea that you treat the person outside their body, because you are filtering the plasma outside the body, it’s bigger than us. There are no side effect. It’s a complex process. It’s similar to dialysis, but a little bit more specific and very, very safe and it really reduces inflammation for Lyme disease, for long haul COVID, and of course, for cancer together with treatments because it’s…

Sharon Stills, ND

So…

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah.

Sharon Stills, ND

Is this like INUSpheresis? ‘Cause one of the clinics I work with in Switzerland does INUSpheresis.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yes, so they also do this, but their apheresis is not as selective. They’re very good in removing for example, antibodies, but they also remove your albumin and other proteins so you feel very tired. When the apheresis is more selective, you don’t feel tired because you are moving specifically the inflammatory part in the plasma.

Sharon Stills, ND

Are you the only one doing this in the country?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Well, yeah, I started now there are a few people. I’ve been doing it for a decade and I’m literally speaking of the big international conferences, I publish in it, I’m a researcher in it. Now some people are developing. But yeah, I can comfortably say that I am the apheresis guy in the United States.

Some people were hearing about it, but it’s a specialty. I really focus on it now. I look at every bag, it’s a focus, it’s not another thing somebody does because you really need to know it’s a powerful treatment. Yes, I work with many doctors and patients who do their care and then they send me patients for the apheresis and on the way if they want, they get a little bit of my decades of understanding and insight, which is sometime useful.

Sharon Stills, ND

How do you have time to do research, clinical practice, take care of bees? 

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Well, I’ll tell you how, I feel like I’m always on vacation because I love what I do, and I take care of myself. For example, I spend some of the year in Hawaii where I work. Right now I’m in Hawaii, I work very hard. I start my day at 6:00 but for some reason at 7:30 there are no more meetings because I got to jog to the ocean. I swim a mile, I meditate, I come back, I work the day, and then when it’s sunset here, it’s already late everywhere else. I go watch the sunset, meditate again, I come back, I can do some calls internationally. I always feel when you come from your heart and you’re excited about what you do, and you’re making a difference. 

For me, the reason why I’m suddenly on the summits, I was too busy treating and researching, is because I’ve been in this almost 50 years. I really distilled some insight with some of my crazy connections and the people I learned. I feel like on a mission to share it with people, just to share as much as I can. In Israel I teach a lot on volunteer-based meditation and healing ’cause I really wanna show that the mind can really heal anything. The mind can heal anything, but we need to help it sometime with the right food, with the right environment and it really works. I do have time. I somehow manage. Yeah, based on our conversation today, I will create a compilation of certain important chapters for my book about survival paradox and detox and how to deal with galectin-3. I do recommend people read the book because it’s not a book about what to do. There is 80 pages of protocol at the end. It will create a paradigm shift about how you think about life. Because our life journey is to transform our survival paradox and our heart is built to do it. It does it anyway, so it’s easy to connect to it because physiologically we’re doing it. We just don’t know it. We just have to connect our mind, and our conscious, and our intention into what is happening anyway.

Sharon Stills, ND

Amen for that. Thank you for being here and contributing and with your poetic biochemistry. 

I’m sure you all have a lot to take in but there’s some real beautiful nuggets in here. Be well, everyone be blessed, and we’ll be back with another interview.