Hidden Infections And Toxins Affecting Your Mental Health

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity and a lot of people can resonate with being a wounded warrior. I mean I certainly didn’t grow up and say, okay, I wanna like run stool test on people like that wasn’t the plan or look at organic acids testing all day. It really just happened by accident. I mean I got really sick as a teenager and really the more that I tell my story, the further back it goes like I used to tell the story of hey, I had I B. S in college and then I go wait a second, but I was depressed and anxious as a teenager and then I go, but wait a second when I was a little kid, I had cold hands, cold feet and I had to sit by the space heater to keep my feet warm. So like what was the blood flow circulation problem there. And then I go wait a second when I was really young and I hung out at my grandmother’s house, her basement flooded and they never remediated, they just put box fans on it and it took two weeks for that basement to dry out. And I spent all my time down there in the summer as a kid playing games and being with my cousins. So like the more that you tell the story, it’s interesting how it evolves because we look at this inflection point and I thought okay, it was all college, like it was parasites, it was h pylori, that was it. And then I’m like, wait a second, no way. 

I’ve probably had some sort of sickness my whole life. So long story short I suffered, I went to various doctors to try to get help from my gut from my mood. As you know, conventional treatments. Pretty abysmal. It’s antibiotics, its proton pump inhibitors, it’s antidepressants, it’s Gabby energy, it’s like Lorazepam or something for anxiety and I didn’t want any of that. So I refused all the prescriptions. I never went on prescription meds and I found paleo. So then I started to get rid of grains and then I went as organic as possible because when I looked at the research on glyphosate and beneficial microbes in the gut and how even parts per billion of glyphosate could negatively affect the microbes in the gut and even in pristine areas like in Colorado you still see glyphosate showing up in rainwater. So I thought oh my God it’s all chemical related that’s what I need to do is go organic. So I did that and I got a little progress and then I found out I had crypto and giardia which are two waterborne parasites because I love lakes and rivers and creeks and streams and I was just the wild the wild child swimming in those and unfortunately a lot of the fresh water in the United States is contaminated with these pathogens and if you get enough amount and or your immune system is weak you can develop these active infections. 

So I had giardia at very high levels. I had H. Pylori which is a pretty contagious bacteria. About 51% of the population has it. It can be compensable but in a lot of you know common modern humans that are sick it becomes opportunistic where the levels are too high. And that was my case where I had burping. I had bloating, I had acid reflux and I was too young for that and I didn’t want to take acid blockers. So luckily I fixed all those using herbs but then I was still sick and then I got tick bites and then I had more mold exposure and I’m like Good Lord, I couldn’t get a break and luckily one of my friends, his name is Jack Wolfson. He calls himself the paleo cardiologist. Luckily after texting him one morning, waking up super dizzy, I said I’m waking up dizzy and my blood pressure’s skyrocketing randomly. What is it? And he text back one word in all caps mold. And that changed my life forever because then I started looking back at all the clients I was working with where historically I was focusing on the gut, deliver the adrenals, the lymph meditation, breathwork, sleep, E. M. F mitigation. I had no clue 90% of these chronically ill people. If not 95 they all had mold toxicity. 

And I thought holy crap, I was missing this because I wasn’t testing it. And so now what I do as I help people like me that have been to 5, 10 20 practitioners, they can’t get better. I run organic acids, I run mycotoxin profiles. I run stool testing to look at D. N. A. Of organisms and then sometimes we’ll do lime and co infection testing. But sometimes we just use herbs to poke the beehive and see if we get a response and I have good results and it’s not an overnight fix. I’ve learned that but I try to be the beacon of light where many people are at the end of the rope. They’re hopeless. I try to like tell them, look, give it one more chance. Let’s see if we can fully get you out of the woods this time.

Dr. Miles Nichols

That’s amazing. And it’s amazing how much overlap there are between our stories and like you, I also started with looking at my story with beginning with chronic fatigue in my early 20’s. But as I have looked deeper, I realized that wait, I had asthma and eczema as a kid. I had these big patches of gray on my elbows and my knees and that was it went away eventually. But that’s something. And then I realized that, oh, oh, my dad’s mom was very ill. My dad’s mom lived in our home and was very ill and smoked cigarettes and couldn’t go outside. And there was that going on. Even though my dad was aware of public health and had air filters and was doing his best. There was that exposure. And did that contribute to the asthma and eczema. And then just recently, a couple of years ago, I learned that my they’re the dogs in the dog yard had this tick problem and the vets were dealing with this said don’t have dogs for a couple of years to get rid of this tick problem that’s in the yard that I played in. And, and these things. I just didn’t see at the time. And I didn’t know about until really doing a lot of investigative work. It’s amazing to me how doing some investigative work and case histories with people. 

It’s amazing what comes up that I never would have thought for myself and that many other people wouldn’t have thought for themselves about the history of exposures and how many people have, I just read a paper that talked about 14.5% of the world population zero positive for Lyme. And that’s by conventional standards of interpreting that data which as you and I know and I think a lot of people watching probably know those conventional standards for interpretation of those tests are rather conservative and it’s only one species of borrelia burgdorferi. So fascinating that we have this similarity and overlap in both uncovering more over time aspects of our story, both having dealt with h. Pylori, both having dealt with Co infections and having dealt with gut issues and that’s amazing that we have that in common and both of us feeling like there’s not the good enough resources out there for being able to systematically work through this and putting together processes in our own work to help people who have been to 5, 10, 15 other people and both of us discovering mold and lime and other infections as part of our picture and being able to help patients with that as well.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah. And it’s all connected to the mental health too because during that, you know, you’re focusing on these infections but underneath the infections, you know, I had chronic anxiety, I was living in Austin, Texas for a couple of years. I took my wife down there that was before we had kids and I would just be sitting. We had a rental apartment at the time, it was like outside of the town. So we got to hear the coyotes at night. So like I felt like I was trying to tune into nature, but the city was so busy and the vibe there, it was so fast paced, you know, I just couldn’t keep up. So some of it was like environmental, but also I didn’t realize until I cleared the infections that my God, my nervous system was stuck in sympathetic overdrive just due to the infections alone. So the H. Pylori, that was a huge chronic driver of my anxiety. And then also Bartonella Is a massive driver of not only fatigue, but you could have joint pain, you could have bladder pain, you could have anxiety, you could have panic attacks, depersonalization d realization, you could have despair just deep dark in the hole, Very scary places with your mood and that could all be attributed to Bartonella. And we see this a lot in kids too. I’ve seen kids that 567, the pediatrician sends them to me because they don’t know what to do with them. And these kids are suicidal. These kids say mommy, you know, I want to kill myself and they’re seven years old. It’s like, my God, you often find Bartonella and these kids. 

So if you’re having anything extreme, any major mood swings where you feel like you’re crazy, someone says you’re crazy even if it’s a diagnosis like bipolar or schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder. I mean there’s so many different names now and some of that’s big pharma’s fault because you have to name things to be able to legally prescribed and sell drugs. So I try not to get focused too much on the diagnosis that someone’s had because to me that the label doesn’t mean much, I really look more like okay what’s triggering this? But once I cleared H Paulo right once I cleared giardia, once I cleared Bartonella Or at least I think I’ve made progress of Bartonella. And then of course the mold my nervous system even though I get hyper and and excited on these interviews and podcasts like overall I’m able to downshift now. Whereas before I was stuck on. And then of course that leads to insomnia and then you develop brain fog because you’re not sleeping well. So so people may look at anxiety and depression and they go okay I just need some type of Benzo Xanax to chill me out and then I need like X. Y. Z. Brand of antidepressant medication and that’s where it ends for your average American. But I look at it differently I think okay what’s driving this anxiety because usually it’s not just because you’re stressed about taking your kids to school. Like if you’re having panic attacks, merging onto the highway something’s not right.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yeah and it’s amazing that with Bart in L. A. I also have Bartonella history and that is one that has such strong research with neuropsychiatric symptom and it’s not just a theory right. There is actual research that looks at the Barton ella infection cross reacting with an autoimmune condition that can attack dopamine receptors in the brain turbulent lyssa ganglia side to where it actually does have solid research showing the why of when you get this infection how and why? It actually creates brain autoimmunity changes your brain chemistry changes dopamine levels changes the excitatory situation in the brain and can lead to hyper activation of the nervous system, mood changes anxiety, depression. And so this isn’t some theoretical thing that we just notice these patients having these issues is actually a research mechanism behind why and how this infection Bart nella and the same thing with borrelia with Lyman with Epstein Barr and with certain mold toxins as some of the same research that it can stretch of course has some of the same research that can cause this brain autoimmunities cross reactivity. So it isn’t just conjecture it isn’t just theory isn’t just noticing clinically that these things are associated. It’s actual mechanism we know why and how and how many people go to they’re psychiatrists or psychologists and they’re told about the possibility for infections playing a role or triggering this onset of nervous system dysregulation and brain chemistry change. 

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Oh man it’s like virtually none. I mean how many are gonna go hey you went to like a decline who went to Martha’s vineyard up there in the northeast corner of the country, went to a campground, tons of tick bites comes home massive panic attacks out of nowhere. It’s like okay it walks and quacks like a duck. Probably a duck. Sure enough we gave her lime herbs. Bartonella herbs she reacted very strongly to those, luckily we got her over the hump. Now one question I have for you just with your experience too is do you think you can fully beat something like Bartonella or is it just a matter of getting the upper hand on it? Because lime if you look at like autopsy research you’ll see the Spy Rockets are everywhere like brain liver, kidneys, adrenal. I mean it appears the borelli goes everywhere. So in the case of Bartonella maybe lime to do you think it’s you can fully beat it or is it just gaining the upper hand and then trying to get quality of life.

Dr. Miles Nichols

One of the most interesting research trials that came out pretty recently is a 2020 trial. It’s a Petri dish study so we have to take it with a grain of salt. Is it going to work in humans or not? I don’t know but in at least in a Petri dish if you put borrelia burgdorferi bacteria which is the bacteria that causes lyme. And then you apply certain antibiotics like doxycycline which is commonly used. It kills some of those spy rockets. But they do grow back which is really interesting. They grow back you let it sit for 21 days and there it’s almost as much or more than was there even before applying antibiotic into it. Now they also did several herbs and there was one herb that was found that when they applied it not only did it kill the stationary and mobile forms but after the 21 days it did not regrow. Now that’s evidence that there are some things that may be able to get at the per sister sell form the biofilm. Whatever the protective mechanisms are the round body form that are keeping this virulence factor that’s allowing this organism to survive antimicrobial antibiotic approaches. And so for lyme at least in the Petri dish there’s at least one er that can kill and can also make it so it doesn’t regrow which would to me signal that that’s a possibility for full resolution. The same is true for babesia has been studied even more recently than that Petri dish study and that there have been herbs that have outperformed the antibiotics in terms of inhibition and that have helped with flowing or even completely reversing the regrowth effect. 

Barton I’ve never seen a study like that for Bartonella had hoped that we get one along those lines for Bartonella that I have hope for that because I’ve seen in these other two infections that are very virulent that can and seem to mostly for people be lifelong things that we have seen non re growth in a Petri. So I have hope for that. And I am actively working on formulas, herbal formulas that are based on that research that have hopefully can help towards that full resolution. And so I have hope. Yeah. And so tell me, I know we’re in a similar world treating similar things. So infections toxins and people are wondering so, okay, you’re saying that infection might be a trigger for these mental health issues like anxiety and depression. I’m curious is there anything that you’ve not? I know you have a podcast, you have lots of information out that you’ve been interviewed on on summits and podcasts. I’m curious if there’s something you’ve not said on some of those things, but that would be interesting or important and and and that you’d like to bring forward, but maybe, you know, it’s not something that’s commonly talked about or that you think about all the time, but there could be a value to the audience here.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure. Sure. So, so ones like a clinical pearl and then one will be totally different. So I’ll bring to the table one is the issue of mold colonization. This is something I’m seeing a lot of people miss. So the issue of mold colonization means where and this is some of this is just clinical observation. Some of this is you know, proven stuff that Great Plains lab and some of these other labs that test these organic acids are saying. But what we’re finding is you hear a lot about binders, you hear charcoal and clay seal like Lorella, you know, pectin for the gas and all these different products that are being used to detox mycotoxins and that’s totally fine and it’s totally sexy to talk about binders. But the reality is a lot of people are missing the colonization piece. So what I’m finding is either their immune system was too weak. This is my assumption. Either their immune system was too weak or they were exposed to mold for too long and or it was just a great enough amount of mold to where they’re now colonized. A lot of people are missing that and they’re not even looking for it. So I’ve seen people that have gone to mold doctors. But then when we run an organic acid on these clients, we’re seeing that they’re colonized. So actually because we’re doing this on zoom, I could actually pull up something here which is a case study of a little boy who, his whole family came to me, they had five kids total and they had a foundation problem. And so what happened was every time it rained because the tree roots bust through their foundation every time it rained, they would get water in their basement. So all five of the kids are sick. The mother father of course had different symptoms. And so we tested an oat, This kid had supposedly been too bold doctors for treatment. But when we ran his organic assets test, this was April of 2021 you could see this guy, his name was Thomas, he was three years old. He was off the charts for these organic acids. So essentially these are the metabolites. These are the, to me, I call it like if you’re measuring the emissions from a car, these are like the emissions from our body to prove what’s happening internally. This guy had already been supposedly treated. But if you look here, his mold colonization for aspergillus was just through the roof and no one had talked about this and no one had tested this in him. And I’m like, my God, No wonder he’s not getting better.

You could do all the binders in the world, but if you don’t use and I’m not a medical dog. So I don’t prescribe. So my bias would be towards herbs if you don’t use herbal antifungal to fix this. This kid’s not gonna get better. Even if you gave a pound of activated charcoal today, he’s not gonna fix this problem. So that was in April of 21. So let me put together a protocol which did involve some of the custom into Micro Bills Antifungal that I use and then his 2022, this was in less than a year. We totally resolved and I was told by some medical doctors in the mold space, hey, you can’t do it without a console fluconazole. Some of these prescription antifungal, we completely eradicated the fungal colonization less than a year. Now I’m a little perfectionist. So you know, I wish we would have perfected this page one here. He still had a little bit of bacterial overgrowth evident, but the colonization, the candida problem completely resolved and this kid was totally different. So he was three years old when we first started, you see, he was four this year and this was the kid who was originally like biting kids at school or the daycare, he was in, the kid gets labeled crazy, right? 

Like he’s biting, he’s having emotional outburst, you know, he’s having urinary problems, which is probably from the kidney damage due to the mycotoxins. He’s having just complete instability of his mood to where basically the teachers want to kick the kid out of the daycare and the parents like, well I got to work full time, how do I do this? And so they were in a desperate spot. I’m like, okay, I’m gonna try to come in and rescue the situation. Unfortunately his mood turned around completely so much that the teacher started saying, what are you doing? What is this kid doing? Because we’re seeing other kids like him and this is an epidemic underdiagnosed problem. And sure enough parents start talking to the mom, they’ve got mold in their basement too and I’m like wow this is really how we get people better is figuring this out. But long story short, if you’re colonized you have to fix it. So this involves maybe some sinus work and then also the antifungal in the gut to if you’re just taking binders you’re likely not going to get yourself better.

Dr. Miles Nichols

That’s great. I had a six year old, she had severe seizures, her her levels came out so high. The great plains was very alarmed and also didn’t believe it could be done without antifungal. And we were able to utilizing herbals and a peptide bring our levels back to normal seizures stopped, which was phenomenal. And so tell me, what are some of your favorite of the antifungal on the natural side that are not pharmaceutically based.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure, so I use several blends as you and I both know you get a synergistic effect. So like Paul de Arco by itself may not do a ton but if you mix Paul de Arco with French tarragon and horse tail and time and I use olive oil like olive leaf. Sometimes we’ll add in some burberry in some barberry, some bear berry, some you see some of those blends are great Mastic gum, I’m throwing in if there’s HPai Lawry I’ll often throw in some D. G. L. If there’s HPai Lawry so I have them they’re called microbiome support. So number 12 and three I’ll cycle people through those depending on the infection. So it’s more gastritis inflammation. I’m going more D. G. L. Barbering type products. If it’s more parasites worms were getting more into like the wormwood a little bit more intense we’ll throw some deal in there for the bloating and then if it’s more fungal candida it’s more the Paul de Arco the all of the horse tail the time and the cool thing is you can stack all of them together. You’re rarely gonna quote hurt anyone with this. So there may be 10 15 different herbs you’re using at the same time and you’re getting different benefits from each plant. So if someone tells you that there’s this silver bullet antifungal it’s like oregano oil, the cure for everything. 

They’re probably wrong. Like it’s very rare that I’ll use just one single urban isolation. I really don’t put that much faith in one herb. I love certain herbs like that much but like Mother Ward I love mother worked for the heart for the nervous system for the grief that comes along with this mold journey but I’m never gonna use just mother wart like I might use other things with it. So so those are some of the favorites and generally what I’ll do is like 2 to 3 months I’ll run a blend and then I’ll rotate and then eventually as they get better then we’ll throw in some of the biofilm support so we may throw in Sarah peptase or we may throw in limbo kinase, especially if they’ve had the c virus, we’re gonna throw in something a little heavier duty like lumber tokens which is an earthworm derived enzyme. I personally take lumber because it really helps warm up my hands and my feet. And the cool thing is too, that people don’t talk about with with enzymes mixed into these herbals is that when you’re improving blood flow, you’re actually improving your protocol outcome too because now you’re able to vaso dilate better, you can deliver the nutrients, the herbs to the places you need to and that also helps with the brain fog. So if someone’s just massively brain fog like for me I quit driving for two years so that’s kind of scary. Like I didn’t talk about it much in the midst of it because I’m like I gotta make sure I can fix this first because this is crazy but I had such severe vertical like disequilibrium just off balance weird like visual perception issues. It wasn’t until I really started to hit the busy a hard, I find that bob is a really does that like head drunkenness, I don’t know what you say about it but be busy for me was a big smoking gun and then the mold too. So once I fix those, then I could drive again. So that was the second thing I was going to go into, which is that I think many people are, especially men, they’re just afraid to fess up that something’s wrong. I mean I have these consults with probably 80% women in the practice and then the 20% of the men who actually will admit that something is wrong. 

But so many times the call is a three way call where it’s me, the wife and the husband and the wife really just has the husband on the call just for justification. Like they want validation from the practitioner to say, hey, she’s not crazy. Like she really does have something wrong. And so I love being that person in the relationship. I mean, I’ve saved countless marriages with functional medicine lab testing because I’ve shown, hey, the reason she has no sex drive, the reason she’s depressed and anxious and she’s irritable and moody and she can’t get out of bed and she’s craving dark chocolate all the time. Look at her neurotransmitters, look at her mitochondria like this. This is the reason why and I don’t know what the deal is. But hopefully more men listening will listen to their wives. They will listen to their spouse and partner and believe them because there’s so much uh, beef between partners when it comes to health. if the woman is sick and the husband doesn’t feel anything like, well I’ve had tick bites, I’m fine. I lived in the mold. There’s mold everywhere, I’m fine. Why are you sick, honey? And so I think the long message short here is listen to your partner. They’re probably not crazy. Even if you think they are, they probably truly have a root cause that just has not been investigated and it’s likely if you push them to the doctor to fix you, you’ll end up with just an antibiotic, just anti psychotic. And that’s as far as it’s going to go.

Dr. Miles Nichols

And not only is it that their relationship struggles that emerge and conflict and challenge and communication around the feeling of one partner feeling like the other partner doesn’t get them or maybe doesn’t support them or maybe supports them. The questions whether it’s in their head or if it’s actually something physical, but I can’t tell you how many times when I have had a man come in and say I want just preventive. I’m good. I feel good. I’m just preventively proactively wanting you to take a look at my labs. I can’t tell you how many times I find five or six things that are pretty major going on and that are pretty significant. And the guys usually like, wow, I didn’t even know like I feel pretty good. Like, but then we do some treatment, it’s like, I didn’t feel that great compared to how I feel now. And it’s sort of like, like it’s easy to sort of habituate to create a new home, a static sense of that where I’m at is fine. Especially it seems for men more so where I’m at is fine. It’s like I feel good, like good just becomes what is and then there’s almost this forgetting about how great that’s possible or that was previously. And it’s all and we have this natural ability I think as humans, which is good to forget our problems in the past. I was talking to the patient and she had come in and I said, how are things going? She said nothing’s changed, everything’s just I still have this, I still have that, I still have that. And I said, well what about the migraines? And she said what migraines? And I said, well that’s the main reason you came in in the first place was the migraines. And she said, I haven’t had one of those in a while and she had forgotten that they were even an issue. 

And so we do this I think as humans and and we have this sense of forgetting how good things could be and then we resign and accept a situation especially it seems in men more so in women just anecdotally from my clinical experience and maybe yours too, that there is this almost sensor passively resigning to the way things are are just fine and that you don’t need to be as proactive to try to figure out what feeling great could be like or working through whatever might be going on. And not only the conflict in relationship, but actually want to circle back a little too when you were talking about Children and those Children having behavioral issues and those behavioral issues sometimes coming back to the parents getting blamed. Oh you didn’t parent well enough. And even if it isn’t said there’s a feeling sometimes the parents unfortunately they question themselves, they question themselves and they’re like, am I failing as a parent? Why is my child having these behavioral issues? What did I do wrong? And I think this is, I mean it’s just that I get a little sad when I think about this because unfortunately if the parent never discovers if the child never discovers that there are these triggers, there are these physiological things that have caused an environmental toxins that have caused this issue sometimes that really can affect apparent in their self esteem and their ability to feel good about themselves.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah. Yeah, of course. Well they may resent their kids too. They’re like, okay, you know, this kid ruined my life because of these problems and I’ve got to put this kid in like a special education class or you’ll see the parent, I mean years ago, I mean when I was a teenager, if I see kids acting up in a restaurant and say, oh man, they, those parents don’t have control of that kid. Look at that kid, he’s ruling them. You know, that kids just crazy. Those parents, you know, they need to, I don’t know what they need to do different, but they’re clearly not doing something right because the kids going crazy and now, you know, having Children of my own and I see even some of the issues we face with our mold exposures and tick bites and gut infections. My oldest daughter, summer, she had H. Pylori when she was two years old, I noticed some issues with her school. So luckily I tested her, saw it fixed it, it’s gone. Thank the Lord, I caught it because you know, these are the kids that grow up with nutrient deficiencies. Then they get failure to thrive, diagnosis is or their performance in school isn’t very good. Now you see all these tutoring classes everywhere, right? You see these like little pop up brick and mortar clinics of like math tutoring and reading. It’s like when I was a kid, we didn’t have that and now you’ve got autism. That was one in 10,000. Now it’s one in 15 depending on what state you’re looking at. I mean, this is scary, scary numbers and and parents really, they take a lot of the blame and they feel a lot of guilt, but like you really don’t have much time to sit there and feel guilty like you need to start investigating and figuring this stuff out. 

Now. I will tell you with confidence. I run probably more oats and I’ve actually talked to great Plains. I mean like the top five of the world of running more oats more Miko’s more toxic chemical profiles and hardly anyone. And I’ll tell you with confidence, the most toxic people on planet Earth right now. It’s Children aged 10 and below these are kids that are born into a world where there’s hundreds of millions of pounds of glyphosate being sprayed in the country per year. You’ve got massive amounts of heavy metals. You’ve got the new introduction of the newest generation of electromagnetic radiation. The kids are wearing apple watches there on iPad at school. They have cell phone towers that are on the playground at the school because the school gets paid by Verizon or whoever to put the tower on the school. So the kids are getting blasted 24 7, they’re full of heavy metals. The injection schedule is higher than ever. And and you look at these kids and they’re like zombies and it’s scary because I have 80 year olds that are cleaner on paper than seven year olds, like I’ll see 80 year olds that they’re relatively clean, like pesticide exposure, Mycotoxins, gasoline additives, ziolin Pilates like endocrine disrupting chemicals. 

They’re pretty clean. They grew up in an era most of their life where glyphosate wasn’t really used till maybe the mid to late seventies, it really started to come out to the market. So these 80 year olds, like the 1st 40 years of their life were grass fed organic. Whereas these seven year olds, their entire life if they grew up in, say Illinois, the suburbs of Chicago or the outskirts of somewhere in the Midwest St. Louis, I mean their entire life was surrounded by genetically modified soybean and corn. I’ve got clients that live where aerial spray happens where the kids get bombed. The mom just says, run inside. Here comes the plane and there’s you know, there’s spring dicamba 24 D. Glyphosate and these other toxic compounds. So, I mean if we want a future, we’ve really, we’ve got to focus on these kids. I mean, I’ve debated just working just pediatrics only because there’s so many kids that my heart just aches for the family because there was a paper put out that a child with pans or pandas, These are these autoimmune conditions where as you said, like strep could be a trigger in the case of pandas or low bartonella busy um old mycoplasma I mean, you could go on and on of the viral and other pathogen triggers that trigger pans. This is where the kid has sensory problems, they don’t like the way their pants fit, you gotta cut the tag out of the shirt, They don’t like the texture of food, they have food restrictions or food aversions, they may have chemical sensitivity, light sensitivity, sound sensitivity. Like these kids are in big trouble if we don’t start working on them now. I don’t know how we have a future. I don’t know how a society can continue to operate if there is truly a one in 15 kids on the spectrum now. So so like my heart and soul really goes into these kids. 

I really try to just pump them full of nutrients. Now. One like positive thing I could spin this with is that kids get better faster. So that kid that I showed with the organic acids, it was less than a year in an adult. Typically that would have taken me 2 to 3 years to do. But somehow in a kid we did it in a year. So I’m just hoping and assuming that the youth is in their favor, maybe the thinness is so large. That’s helping like there’s gotta be some some other growth hormone. Like there’s something in these kids that’s helping them get faster. So I do still think there is hope. But if I see a kid that is being fed a big old box of goldfish and drinking it down with like a Capri Sun like I did when I was a kid, I mean it’s hard for me not to want to go talk to the parents say hey go check out my podcast episode 3 27 where I covered, you know, food dye in A. D. H. D. Right? Like it’s hard for me not to implant myself into these entities occurrences.

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yeah and that’s I mean it’s a world that we’re living in that is toxic. Which does bring me to. There is a resiliency. The I’m amazed at how resilient the human body is to still function in the face of the immense amounts of exposures that are occurring in the world today that have never occurred historically before. I was reading some papers about microplastics and the average person Is secreted in their urine about five g of microplastics per week. Which is equivalent of eating a credit card per week of plastic like that. Yeah. Yes the equivalent of eating credit card per week of microplastics and a lot of that comes to drinking water and then a bunch of it comes through packaging and there’s many sources of how those microplastics are exposed but we know they’re full of endocrine disrupting chemicals. So the hormones are crazy imbalance as a result of that. And then when you compound infections and toxins I am amazed that people are functioning as well as they are. I do see some resiliency and I’m also there’s this sense of people do wind up when they are feeling bad sometimes especially with mental health. I see it more with mental health symptoms, anxiety, depression. Feeling like you’re off O. C. D. Sensitivities two chemicals until life I see people start to question themselves. I did it when I had chronic fatigue in my early twenties I started to question am I just not cut out Am I not just a strong enough person to overpower overcome this with my mind? The doctor did the regular blood tests. They can’t find anything. Am I just not good enough? And I started to question should I just give up on my dreams? Should I just stop pursuing such work? That would take so much energy? Should I just resign to kind of living my life in a way that would be less than I want to because of this. And luckily I had someone who helped me wake up to the realization that know that this isn’t something that I’m doing to myself in my mind to something that is happening due to some physiologic underlying root causes that I can identify in reverse. And that sent me on the functional medicine journey.

And on the flip side I simultaneously began to uncover that there are practices and value in looking mentally emotionally and working with and through things like meditation and brain retraining and breathwork and cold exposure and certain other things that are impacting physiology. It’s by direction. It’s like the physiology can cause the infections for example that we’ve been talking about and the toxin accumulation and the mold colonization can be what caused an autoimmune reaction that can create change to neurochemistry. What’s interesting that I’ve discovered and I’m curious if you feel the same is that it seems as though there’s also an access point on the mental, emotional spiritual side to where when someone starts to find purpose and clarity around something meaningful in their life all of a sudden immune function seems to improve and infectious load seems to go down irrespective of any physiologic treatment and that when someone starts to do gratitude exercises and brain re training exercises and meditation practices and breath work practices the nervous system calms and relaxes the immune system improves in its function. We see this infectious load and detoxification processes in the body naturally start to improve. Do you see that other side of the equation also in your practice?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, it makes sense, right. If you’ve got toxins like mold, your amygdala grows in size and sensitivity. So essentially your, your rolodex of fear gets heightened to where now that loud banging of the pan, your wife drops the pan in the kitchen, that freaks you out, That’s like an abnormal response. So yeah, my amygdala was like super hyper for quite a while, luckily it’s chilled out. The hard part is when you tell somebody to meditate, they really can’t, if the noise is too high with these infections in the mold. So like I tried for years like okay, I’m gonna sit down, I’m gonna put this guided meditation on and I couldn’t do it, I was like, I can’t, this is crazy and it took me to make enough progress with detox with the mold to be able to do that. So I encourage people like if you’ve tried the breathwork the meditation whatever you can’t get into it, it’s not your fault, this is your nervous system, it’s been hijacked by some of these toxins and we get addicted. Just like with the media you get addicted to the fear, you get addicted to your misery, meaning I did an interview with a guy, he’s awesome. Ashok Gupta program. He does these brain retraining meditations, it’s super cool guy. He was chronically fatigued, very ill as well in his twenties and came out of it. But he talks about this idea where we basically get addicted to our negative thoughts. So there’s this negative thought loops like I’m miserable, I’m never gonna get better and then you kind of get off on that. Like you get this cortisol bump from that like oh I’m kinda high on this misery. 

Like misery loves company, I’m kinda high on that misery. I’m gonna try to bring other people into that mystery and you feed off that. So it’s just this negative thoughts spiral that makes you even sicker. He’s like look you gotta you gotta reprogram, you gotta get out of that so when you catch yourself being negative you know you could do E. F. T. You could do tapping even though I’m anxious even though I’m irritable, I love and accept myself. So you could run through like a couple of rounds of E. F. T. To try to snap yourself out of it. But but initially a lot of people are too sick to do that if you’re like hey here’s this meditation, good luck, it’s not gonna work. So I encourage people to not beat yourself up. Try to find like a moving meditation that you can do. So like paddleboards, swimming, surfing, you know a sensory tank massage. Like try to find an active way to where meditation is a side effect of enjoying life. Like I love bird watching. I’ve got tons of binoculars, I’ve got bird seed and suet feeders. I love to watch and study birds. It was a big old sharp shin hawk and it was a red tail here. We’ve seen tons of osprey. I mean there’s like more osprey where I live than there are cardinals. So I just love watch and the ospreys dive into the water. 

Like when I’m doing that, that’s meditation for me, I’m totally studying quote the real life, you know cause I’m on a screen talking to people looking at lab testing. Like when you look at an osprey diving under the water, it’s like you’re not thinking about anything else besides how cool is that bird. So so find a way that your quote actively meditating, find a way that you can actively rewire that nervous system and then once your amygdala starts to settle down, maybe you’re doing academy and assisted psychotherapy. Maybe you’re doing psilocybin, like maybe you’re doing other tools, plant medicines to help with that. But once that brain starts to just then you can really get deeper. But for a while there was too much noise for me to accomplish that and I don’t know where you wanted me to go with that. But hopefully that’s where you wanted me to go and and the last thing I’ll say is to that just talk like couples don’t talk like how many times like it’s interesting you’ll be on these calls where the husband’s listening and the wife says something and the husband, I didn’t know you felt that way honey, it’s like you guys have been together 20 years. What do you mean? You don’t, you didn’t know she felt that way. Like you guys don’t talk about it. So my wife and I’m in our communication and is phenomenal. I mean I think that’s what keeps us together is the communication aspect, so knock out what I’m not jinxing our marriage, but the communication is key. So just talk, express your feelings. Hey honey, I don’t feel good in this restaurant. I think it might be moldy. I’m getting a headache, I’m getting dizzy, I don’t feel, can we leave the restaurant. Sure. But instead the wife will say, oh I didn’t want, I didn’t want my husband to be mad, he was hungry, he gets grumpy when he’s hungry, I didn’t want to have to force him to leave the restaurant. And I tell my wife straight honey, there’s mold on the ceiling. Let’s get the hell out of here. Like I don’t play around. So I’m ruthless when it comes to my health. Now, I don’t play around if there’s toxic people, toxic building, I’m gone. 

Dr. Miles Nichols

Yeah. I think it’s important to begin to create enough safety and comfort with your partner and your spouse and your family and your friends to be able to discuss fears and insecurities. That’s a lot of things, you know, people often conflict can be hard, it can be hard to discuss things that might not be positive. And and even thoughts that are negative people are afraid of in a sense. And and there’s this sense of I don’t want to talk about my negativity. I don’t want to talk about my fears, my insecurities. But I’ll say that what I found is that when you can for me it really worked hard to cultivate the ability to have the courage to speak about the things that are challenging in a loving way. And that’s the house for me, it’s how do I relate to and talking birds. There’s this very large bird out there. I don’t know what kind it is, but seeing it there. And so the how do we take this sense of how do I relate to what is in a way that even if it’s challenging, even if it’s a struggle, there’s safety enough to speak about it in a loving way, communicate and work through together almost like we’re partnering like you and I we’re partnering on working together to have this discussion to share with others. 

There’s so much we live in a world of competition of that fears conflict that wants to look and present themselves in a certain light to the public. And I think it it’s time for people to begin to work on cultivating a sense of courage to share fears and securities and things that are real things that are revealing our humanness and and even even being in this field and feeling like I’m so much better from having recovered from a lot of the chronic fatigue that I had and the symptoms that I had. I still get occasional migraines and I want to be transparent about that and say I’m still working on some things and they’re way better than they used to be. And it’s not perfect. This is a journey and I feel a lot better than I did and yet years into this. I feel this is a lifelong process. There’s always opportunity for growth. There’s always opportunity for increased communication. I made mistakes and I love that you’re encouraging that appreciation for the willingness to speak about the challenges with your especially partner and spouse,

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

We just have to get miserable enough to do it. I mean that’s the thing right? People usually have to get the rock bottom before they speak up. I encourage people listening watching. Don’t wait till you get the rock bottom. Like if you’re somewhat miserable now you have some issues now just talk about it now. Why are you gonna wait are you gonna wait until you’re so miserable? You can barely get out of bed. You know like just fess up talk about it now. I think society is headed that direction. I think transparency is happening probably just due to the internet like everything’s in everybody’s face. There’s still a lot of like fake heads put on like people are still putting on this perfect image of their perfect teeth and their perfect house and they’re perfect but and their abs like there’s still a lot of that imagery going out where everyone strives for perfection. But I think it’s more people do like long form podcast talks like this. You hear interviews with celebrities and other people, everybody’s got issues. So just it’s okay just talk about it like the faster we can let all this stuff out the faster we can all heal.

Dr. Miles Nichols

I love that message and I think that’s really an important thing that we can maybe emphasize to people as we’re cycling this conversation as we’re as we’re looking to to ramp it down. I wanna I wanna I wanna see how can we encapsulate what we’ve been talking about here. I know we’ve been talking about the fact that a lot of these mental emotional issues depression and anxiety and even O. C. D. Eating disorders, behavioral issues and kids and adults can have multiple root causes related to infections toxins and that mold. One of the things that’s missing there is that some people don’t find that colonization which I also do some antibodies in the blood and some organic acids and see that as well fairly commonly is that there are these urinary metabolites or antibodies that are suggestive that this yeast issue. 

It used to be in conventional Nus and they thought yeast was just immunocompromised people is where it would be taking over but that’s clearly not the case now. It’s very evident in our work and many others that immuno functional people can still have yeast overgrowth and can still have fungal and mold colonization. So with that with all those things that we’ve talked about and we’ve talked about the world today and how toxic it is and how many chemicals were exposed to. We’ve talked about some of the social issues around communication, willingness to share fears and insecurities to be able to talk about things where there’s some conflict, we’ve talked about the internal struggle that people have had and have with my parenting? Okay and I’m okay and myself am I good enough when dealing with these chronic health struggles and themselves or their Children. What kind of take home message or messages would you like to really solidify and deepen in for people as we’re winding this conversation.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. It’s been nice to get together. So I mean it’s easy, get the proper testing done, get the data. So you know that you’re not guessing. I tell people to test not guess because many of us have a supplement graveyard. That’s what I call it. Where you’ve got a tupperware or two or three or a whole closet or a whole pantry full of thousands of dollars of supplements, different herbs you’ve tried, you heard him on a podcast, It was gonna be this magical probiotic and it’s this soil based and this spore based this and this herb for that and this enzyme and you look at it and you’re like, am I really better with this or not? And a lot of people are just, I don’t know if we’re just stubborn as humans or what our problem is, but but so many of us are afraid to ask for help. We just want to try to piece it together where these do it yourself people. It’s like I’m gonna try this. I heard this, let me see if I can fix it. It’s like you’re gonna spend more money and more time doing that than just reaching out and telling someone that’s experienced, I need help and it’s a very humbling experience because I’ve been in that situation to where I’m asking practitioners to help me. 

And I you know I think those people for helping me get out of dark places but without the data you really don’t you don’t have the full picture. So maybe you assume there’s Candida because you’ve got a crush on the tongue and you’ve got sugar craving. Sure but but what’s driving the candida? Because we know that micro toxins even the labs will tell you this that mycotoxins promotes the overgrowth of bacteria like clostridium and candida. They’ll tell us that right there on the readout michael phenolic acid it’s an immune suppressant promotes claustrophobia and candida. So if you’re just going to the Candida guy and you’re just treating Candida and you haven’t gotten better. You probably missed something. So get your organic acid testing done, get your mycotoxin profile done. You can add chemicals. If you’d like to look at chemicals I would assume you’re toxic like most people. And the truth is the detox we create for metals and chemicals and the pesticides and mycotoxins is not much different. Like a lot of these are our broad spectrum support. So maybe you save the money on the chemical but at least get an oat get a maiko and then I would do a. D. N. A. Stool. 

I like the G. I map there’s other competitors. But at the time of this recording that’s the one I do well with because we look at gut inflammation, we look at parasites, worms, bacterial overgrowth. H pylori giardia, crypto blast. Oh all the big to me. The big smoking guns in the gut. Sometimes you run that and there’s not much there and you give herbs anyway and they still feel better. So no test is perfect. And then out of Colorado, actually one of my favorite things because Colorado contributes to the U. S. Is DNA connections. It’s a great lab. It’s not perfect. No lab is perfect line Bartonella babies via their stealth infections. They’re hard to find. So no test is perfect but they’ve got a good one. It’s a lyme D. N. A. Sample. So we’re looking for borrelia, we’re looking for tick borne relapsing fever and a plasma rick leah different types of Babesia different types of bartonella. You can see it all with urine, so exercise or sauna and then we collect it. I found it to be as good as the arm in labs. A lot of people talk about our men out of Germany, it’s like three grand versus this other test is less than 1000. So if I can get something on paper that is often worth a million bucks of these people because they’ve been discredited, made fun of, told that they’re crazy. So when I show that skeptical husband, hey, your wife has bart nella, this is why she’s acting this way. That literally changes the whole game. So sometimes I’m not doing the labs just for my sake to guide me in terms of creating protocol. Sometimes I already have a hunch and I’m like, I think it’s Bardella, I’m going to go after it. But let me see if I get it on paper and then if I get it on paper, I’m like, yes, I was right, okay, okay, good, good, good. Let’s keep it cool. Let’s present it to him. 

Okay, here it is. I knew it was here. But just that validation, it pays huge dividends. Just like you were talking about with the mental aspect of all this. If someone finally sees on paper that they have an answer that is so valuable to them because now they go to their husband, the teacher, the boss, all the people that made fun of them, the doctors that told them nothing’s wrong. They take that paper. They go, look, it was Barton, Ella. And finally someone help me. So, so the take home message. Get the labs like cancer diagnosis, very expensive new iphone. It’s more than some of these labs. Like I’m gonna go buy the latest iphone. Well maybe not. Maybe keep your current one and then go get some functional medicine labs instead. Let’s look at your mitochondria, you’re no transmitters, the B vitamins. Like there’s so much you can uncover this is where the fun is in life. If you want to have more fun in life, you need to optimize yourself. And as you talked about the guy who comes in and says, oh there’s not much wrong and then you fix him and he’s like, well crap. I didn’t realize how much more I could, I could gain. That’s the real fun. So like before you think I need the new car, I need the new phone, I need the new tv. Don’t divert your resources to that diverted to fixing yourself because this is the one flesh vehicle that you have on this planet. And if you don’t have health, you’ve got nothing. Like I’ve worked with people that are insanely wealthy and they’re the most miserable people because they feel so bad. They ache. They can’t get out of bed. They’re anxious and like all these tens of millions they have, it’s all useless. They prefer to be 10 times more poor but healthy. So don’t don’t guess try to get some data.

Dr. Miles Nichols

That’s so important. And and I’d like to just add a little to that which is that that there are some pitfalls that people fall into sometimes where they think that oh if I just change my diet if I just avoid all these foods and I kind I mean if someone’s on a standard American diet, yes, please change your diet as the first step before you go into all these labs, like do that first. If you’re, you know, eating a lot of sugar and processed foods and you’re really feeling miserable, That’s the first step of course. And some people, it’s like by the time they come to me, they’re only eating three or four foods and they’ve been told by another practitioner that their problem is that they’re allergic to this and sensitive to that and that if they get rid of all these things that it’s going to reduce the inflammation and the inflammation is the cause and I just encourage people look look upstream of the inflammation. Why why is that inflammation there? Is it because the foods that other people are eating, who aren’t inflamed or in your diet, does that make sense? And yes, you might have, you might have sensitivities to where inflammation is being created by these foods. But then why have you developed these sensitivities to these foods? And usually it is like you’re saying if you do a stool test, if you do infections testing, if you do a testing, if you look at some of the, I mean just to boil it real simple for people infections, toxins, gut dysfunction or dysbiosis usually also bacterial fungal or infections based and and cellular dysfunction which can boil down into mitochondria and methylation issues and these these core four are going to encapsulate a lot. 

They’re going to encapsulate a huge amount of the root cause for why mental health issues are there and this testing that your listing is looking at those. It’s looking at identifying what toxins are present, what infections are present, what gut dysfunction is present, especially on the infectious side and or bacterial fungal imbalance side and what cellular dysfunction is there. And by looking at those aspects, there’s a lot that can be done that doesn’t require the kind of restrictive diet that makes you not able to socialize. That makes you not able to be around other people that creates complexes of being unable to live in the world in a reasonable way. And I’m a big fan of elimination diet and reintroduction and getting rid of certain foods. And so I’m a fan of all that. I just caution people against stopping with just elimination of exposure to these things. We’re all going to be exposed to some extent and the body is resilient and when we resolved, I don’t know about you but I found that when resolving these major for key root cause areas that people can tolerate and withstand an off plan meal now and then that they can tolerate and withstand a little bit of mold exposure. I mean obviously you don’t want to put yourself in the situation that’s going to trigger immense issues for yourself, but you don’t have to live in a bubble. You don’t have to not go out and travel at all because of your illness that might be a time and a place for that. But I do want to encourage also this attitude of that. I think as you and I know we can figure this out to an extent, to allow people to live a life that’s varied and meaningful and resilient. Do you find that too?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

It takes time. I mean, I lived in a bubble for a while. I didn’t go in the local whole foods because it was moldy. If I was around a bunch of people with fragrance, I was reactive, so I was a bubble boy for a little while and you know, I’m okay with that. But yeah, now I have a lot more flexibility and that’s good because you know, you feel like a crazy person when you have to be so limited, I’m still not going to go out and eat garbage, but you know, if I, if I wanted to, I could, I could go eat some chicken wings covered in barbecue sauce and probably feel totally fine, whereas before that would have tore my gut up. So I see that the potential, you know, to play and, and maybe sometimes I dabble, but it’s always like a pros and cons list, you know, like alcohol. For me, it’s useless. I don’t touch it, even if you paid me like, here’s 100 bucks, take a shot and I’m like, nah, no thanks.

Dr. Miles Nichols

There is hope for resiliency and of course there’s also a time and a place for being extremely restrictive and going into a bubble, so to speak. If there, you know, if the issues are significant and to be able to come out the other end with some resiliency that there’s hope to be able to be tolerant to life experience presents itself for sure. Any last words, last summary, summarizing that you’d like to give to people as a summary or conclusion here to what we’ve discussed.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Get the day to get the data. Don’t give up. Don’t give up. That’s about all it takes.

Dr. Miles Nichols

To get the data, don’t give up and there’s hope.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yeah, that’s right.

Dr. Miles Nichols

So to, to feel good and to be more resilient in your life. So then how can people find out more about you if they wanna work with you? If you’re offering that if they want to find out more about what you’re putting out in the world, your podcast, How do people do that? 

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure. Just check out EvanBrand.com, E V A N, last name brand, B R A N D. Put out podcast every week for over a decade. And so there’s 500 or so episodes, 20 million downloads. It’s all free. There’s YouTube videos I’ve done, I’ve done probably 100 or 200 or so different summits and webinars through a combination of like doctors talks and 360 summits and health talks, which is now called health means. So there’s a lot of summits I’ve done and those are all free I’ve also done some practitioner education with great Plains lab where I’ve taught some doctors and other practitioners about some of the strategies I’m implementing on organics and mycotoxin profiles. So if you’re a practitioner, I do some of that stuff for you guys too, because we need more people doing this. I’m just one guy, you know, like I can only help a few people and each time block, you know, and so like my bandwidth is limited, so we really need more people doing this. We need every doctor on the street looking at this stuff and and understanding it. So just because the doctor runs, it doesn’t mean they know how to interpret it. So I try to like get people not only just run it, but what do you do with it? I see some doctors now that are mds that are going quote integrative or functional, they’ll run the oat for you, but then they don’t know what to do. So I try to coach these people and then I also have courses, so one is called better belly. That’s like my flagship, I’ve had gi docs take that and say it’s better than what they learned in medical school about gut health, which is scary. So that’s like about liver and gallbladder and infections and parasites and I’ve got a bunch of case studies like I showed today, so if you want to either a practitioner or just the health seeker, you want to learn how to run read labs, make your own protocols to fix yourself, You can check it out, It’s all on my site.

Dr. Miles Nichols

That’s wonderful. So Evanbrand.com, everyone for going and checking out the information that is freely available and also courses and podcasts. So much resource there. Thank you so much for putting that work out into the world. I truly appreciate that. And I also feel that treating one on one is good and it helps people, but being able to train practitioners and offer education to the public, spread this message far and wide. You’re really doing that. You’re doing an amazing job at that. Thank you so much. Evan. Thank you so much. Everyone who’s watching this is Dr. Miles. Take care and have a great day.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

See you. Bye. Bye.