How to Test for Cell Danger Response and Chronic Illness

Now, once you have Epstein-Barr, your IgG antibodies stay high forever. It means nothing. Eh, totally wrong. I've tracked enough people for 25 years checking their Epsteen-Barre antibodies to see that when they feel horrible, their antibodies are out of control.

When they fell good, they're antibodies lower. Hi, and welcome to The Balancing Point. functional medicine and integrative health simple, practical and fun so you can restore balance, boost vitality and enjoy a healthier life every single day.

Hi, this is Dr. John Needers and I'm back with another episode of The Balancing Point. And I certainly want to thank you for watching this, listening to this however you're accessing it.

And today is part four of a part five series. I've been doing a series on cell danger response. The reason for that is mostly I treat very complex chronic illnesses.

Anything you can think of that's complex. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, ME-CFS, long COVID, et cetera, these are conditions that I regularly treat. And so at the root of many of them, probably most of then, but at least many them is a concept called cell danger response.

Now I say concept because there's a big explanation around it. But that it exists, I have no doubt, because I've treated hundreds of patients with these problems.

Through trial and error, largely. and also looking at the work of the ancient Chinese medical doctors, I've been able to figure out a very clear way to cut the tape in this very complex condition.

So today is number four, and this is about testing that one can do. And so I'm going to go through some tests in order, a particular order that you could order yourself, or you can have me order or have your doctor order, however you want to go about it, that can help pinpoint exactly what the problem is.

Now, in Chinese medicine, they've spent over 2,500 years figuring ways to heal, to treat all of these conditions without lab testing. So it can be done.

But sometimes if you get a very, very clear deep look to start with, there's less trial and error involved. So today, I'm going to do a PowerPoint on cell danger response and testing.

There are four basic phases. Now sometimes we don't have to go through all four phases, sometimes there is a little more, a fifth phase, but I am going through the four basics phases and again, phase one, terrain preparation.

You've got to restore gut integrity, digestion, absorption, and assimilation capacity. And my favorite Chinese doctor in 1249 AD, wrote this out in great detail.

He said, there's no point in doing everything else if you don't repair this first. And so this is critical. Now, again, in a few people, the terrain is OK.

But in most people you must restore the gut integrity. That means get rid of the leaky gut. Digestion, that means can they actually absorb the nutrients that you're putting into them.

and the assimilation capacity. Is it really getting into their bloodstream? Phase two, you hit the core nutrient repletion. Now, this often gets overlooked.

If you look back on my prior cell danger response video, I had a picture up there of the Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle. And you'll see that in blue are the nutrients that are necessary to go from one step to the next in the Citric Acid cycle, and then in red are things that can block the uptake of those.

So these are basic, basic things. Iron is involved in many of these translations. We've got magnesium, manganese, And many of the B vitamins are also critical in getting around that citric acid cycle so that we can make approximately 30 units of ATP rather than just two.

So you'd have 15 times more cellular energy. These are core. Now, why don't we do those first? Because if you don' t fix the terrain, you can't absorb iron.

Iron is very difficult to absorb. Vitamin B12 is very difficult to absorb and the other B vitamins are somewhat difficult To absorb so you fix the terrain first now you can overlap these that's fine but you've got to get those critical deficiencies that are disrupting the citric acid cycle and Get them balanced out now phase three is where you kind of get into the heavy lifting and And this is mitochondrial and detox support.

So heavy metal clearance, you've got to activate the detox pathways of the kidneys and liver so that you can get the gunk, the bad stuff out of your system.

You've gotta get heavy metals out because they'll block everything and you need to open the kidney and the liver detox pathway. Phase four, you address then specific organ and energy imbalance.

So we're looking at the adrenal glands, the vagus nerve, gotta balance neurotransmitters, et cetera. And that's phase four. If you jump immediately to the adrenals, which I've seen many people do, it doesn't really work.

It just makes people more stressed and more anxious, but it really doesn' help their healing very much. Of utmost importance, Everyone's an individual with their own set of imbalances.

And that's one of the things that separates functional medicine and traditional Chinese medicine from mainstream medicine. In mainstream, you see a lot of protocols.

If you've got a headache, take this. But in Chinese and functional, everyone is seen as an Okay, so phase one, the terrain preparation. Now the basics.

You do a Chem 14. That's 14 chemistry tests. And by the way, when we run that, it's $7. A complete blood count or a CBC, that's five dollars. So these are not, you know, break the bank sorts of things.

Then a hemoglobin A1C to see how your blood sugars are. Hemoglobulin A 1C is a three to four month history of how your blood sugars have been. It's the amount of sugar that's coating your red blood cells, which live for three to four months.

And then a complete thyroid panel. You'll see many, many HMOs. We'll run a TSH And if that's out of range, it will revert to a T4 test. The problem with that is a very high percentage of people do not do good T-4 to T3 conversion.

So doing T 4 does not give you a complete picture. Also, you should be checked for auto antibodies. That can throw everything off. If you've got antibody problems to thyroid, well, if you don't fix that or at least address it, your in deep trouble.

Then more advanced. A stool test, now this is not something that you would get from your HMO. With the stool tests that they do, they're just looking for parasites, basically, protozoa, et cetera.

Now, with a good stool testing, and there are many of these now, fortunately, you're looking inflammation. It can test you for leaky gut. I mean, very clearly, there's a test called zonulin, which is the test for leaking gut, looking information.

You can look at calprotectin and a few other tests for inflammation, Digestive enzymes, you can tell that too on a stool test. And also then you're looking at imbalances in the microbiome.

Do you have too much of one type of bacteria? Do have to few of another type bacteria. You have fungal overgrowth, et cetera. Then a zoomer test for wheat and celiac problems.

People think that often that If they don't have celiac disease, which, by the way, now is about one in every 60 people, is the estimate. But if they do not have that, then they are good to go.

Not true. In the wheat zoomer, the last time I looked, it tested for 28 different problems that can exist with wheat. If you eat wheat, any number of these things can act up and cause gut inflammation.

So that is phase one, terrain preparation. Phase two, core nutrient deficiency. So here we'd analyze the matrix of the CBC and chemistry 14. And again, I say the Matrix, typically in a Western setting, doctors will only look at a test if it comes in with an L for low or an H for high.

And even often then they say, oh, that's OK. It's not too bad. So in functional medicine, if you're outside the Western medical ranges, you are way, way out of balance.

We want much finer, much tighter ranges to make sure that you've in good health. And so we're looking at the matrix. For example, there are six different tests that right off the top, You can see if your leaning toward different types of anemia, even though you in a quote, in normal range, end quote.

Also, you can tell if you're B12 and or folate deficient on one of the CBC blood tests. So it's a great test for five bucks. It's amazing. And then you should do an iron and ferritin panel to make sure that your iron stores are high enough, that you storage form of ferretin is high so that we're sure we are going to be making the Krebs cycle or citric acid cycle works.

Then more advanced. organic acids test, the OATS test. And there are about 70 tests of elements that affect the mitochondria and the citric acid cycle.

So no guesswork. These are all elements, that are going to show up as metabolites to see if you're actually able to use the neurotransmitters. It will show metabolite for serotonin, melatonin and all other neurotransmitter.

This is an amazing test And then an oligo scan. Now this we do in our office. Oligo Scan is unbelievable. So whenever you get a test from your medical doctor, not whenever, but most tests are measuring specifically what's not in your cells, right?

A urine test. Measures what's in your urine, not what is in yourselves. A serum blood test measures what in you serum, but not in what your cells. So the oligo scan measures intracellular levels, which is what important of vitamins, of minerals and toxic heavy metals.

So it gives you a very clear path of what you need to improve and what do you to delete from your system. And again, we do that in-house. It's a great test.

This was a test that was actually There was a doctor in the 1930s, brilliant, guy, who predicted this test. He said, we don't have the equipment now, but someday in future we will be able to test intracellular levels of these.

Okay, phase three, mitochondrial and detox support. So again, basically we continue to reanalyze and in this case, we'd probably reorder a chemistry panel and a CBC, again that's $12 to see kidney, liver and gallbladder capacity.

We need to make sure that those are wide open and that your toxins can get out of your system as they need too. More advanced, we do a raglan's test. We'll do that at your first appointment generally, but then we'll repeat it to determine adrenal function.

And so this is just a blood pressure test where we're testing you from lying down to standing up and then, We do more tests while you're standing. So it's very effective, very quick, no cost.

Then a Dutch test, talk about a great test. This determines circadian cortisol patterns. So the Western tests for cortisol are a one-time blood draw, extremely ineffective, totally ineffective.

And so, I mean, you'd have to be suffering from a horrible disease for that to show out of range. But with the circadian cortisol pattern, it's actually a dried urine test.

You catch some urine, you put a piece of cloth in it, let that sit out and dry, and you do that four to five times a day, depending on which test we order.

and you mail that in and they will send back a complete circadian cortisol pattern. And it's really the pattern that makes the most difference. An absolute test, one time a day, nearly worthless.

I mean, except to see if you have a life-threatening disease. It also checks levels of metabolites of the sex hormones, progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, etc.

Sex hormone precursors, right, androstenedione, DHEA, neurotransmitters to determine dopamine, serotonin, melatonin. and many other hormone and transmitter levels.

So I don't know if you can tell, but the Dutch test is my favorite test. It gives massive amounts of extremely useful information. And it's simple and easy.

You can do it at home. Now, phase four, this is where we get a little more specific testing. We might do these tests earlier, But to really get you through phase 4, we need to test you for viruses, Epstein-Barr.

Doctors, at least historically, have said, no, once you have Epstein-Barr, your IgG antibodies stay high forever. It means nothing. Totally wrong. I've tracked enough people for 25 years checking their Epsteen-Barre antibodies to see that when they feel horrible, their antibodies are out of control.

When they fell good, they're antibodies lower. So a very valuable test. HHV6. This is a big one that's overlooked and causes so many problems. I'm going to do a whole episode on HVH6 soon.

Cytomegalovirus, which tends to run in a pack with HB6 and Epstein-Barr. Herpes type 1 and 2. And Parvovirus. Now, one of the things to remember is every one those viral tests that I've mentioned If you have it and it's untreated, increases dementia risk.

Herpes type 1 and 2, they've had huge correlations with increased dementia risks. Then bacterial testing. So Borrelia, Lyme disease. Well, I put Borrelia there twice.

Bartonella, which is actually often a co-infection with Borrelia. What I didn't put there, and should have instead of the second Borrellia, is Babesia which has a big effect on the brain.

And then Ehrlichia. These are all things that are often transmitted usually from ticks, but there are about 25 other vectors that can pass this on. But ticks are the most dangerous and they pass more of this one.

So if you get Lyme disease, it's very likely that you have these co-infections. And then we'd want to check the urine for Klebsiella, Proteus, etc. Make sure that they haven't taken up shop in your kidneys, and then fungal.

You know, it is grossly, grossely underestimated in the medical community how severe mold problems are. It's a massive problem. So we do a microtoxin panel, Maybe get a mold inspection with Bagel the Beagle, who's with the nose control.

It's a dog that comes out and they'll sniff out mold where other inspectors can't find it at all. And they're very, very accurate. But anyway, a mode inspection and then gut testing for fungus.

If you have Candida in your gut, most people have some, but if it's an overgrowth, you're going to be zapped. Your energy is just going plummet from having to deal with that constant infection, which is what cell danger response causes.

Okay, so next we're going to do number five, and I'm going do specific products for each phase. Not general products, in most cases. There are a couple that I'll do more generally, but mostly specific product that's I recommend for every phase, these are all products that we have used in the clinic for decades.

We know they work, there's really no guess work. It's much different than just picking something off of Amazon because it sounds good. You want it to be tested by someone you trust.

Okay, and we'll give out detailed suggestion for each phase. Efficacy is everything. So, how was the product extracted from the plant or whatever else it's extracted form?

What's the concentration percentage? You know, we have some herbs that are a 5 to 1 concentration. We have something that's 12 to one concentration, so big, big difference in dosing and are the individual components of the highest quality.

And there are a lot, I mean a LOT of counterfeits out there on the market. So we're very, very careful about efficacy. I want to thank you for watching and or listening.

Please tune in next week where we'll have presentation number five, which is specific products for each phase. And so for now I wanna thank and I say bless you.

Be happy, be healthy. Bye bye. Thank you for joining me on The Balancing Point. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the show, share it with a friend and leave a review.

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