Overcome The Survival Paradox: Your Trauma & Epigenetics Journey

When we experience trauma, when the body goes into a trauma response, that’s what I mean by when we experience trauma. When the body goes into a trauma response, it happens on three different levels. There are three levels of a trauma response. Are you ready for this? One is going to be the superficial level, the behavioral level. That’s what we see in terms of what are our actions. What are our reactions? What are we doing? That is one level of a trauma response. The next level of that trauma response you could say is emotional, but really refers to the body sensations. And so when we think of emotions, most people, not necessarily until they do the 21-day journey, at least they’re not thinking of where is that showing up in my body. What sensation is happening to my body that I feel anxious or that I feel overwhelmed, or that I feel this thing, this emotion but that’s actually where our emotions come from, is somewhere some sensation in our body and it is generating an emotional response. That is the next level of a trauma response. 

So we have a behavioral level, then we have the emotional or what I would consider the somatic level somatic referring to the body tissues. That’s why we do somatic work as part of a trauma-healing journey. But then you ready for this? There is a whole other level to a trauma response, and this is the level that most people are not aware of. Of course, most people, being other people who are not watching the summit because you being here, you know, about the biology of trauma. And that is that third level, that third level of a trauma response is a biochemical level, meaning there are changes that happen in our biology that can be measured. This is not something that just happens in our heads. This is not just something that we react to, that there’s a trigger and there we go again, reacting in the same way. No, when the body goes into a trauma response, there will be those three levels always. There will be the behavioral level, there will be the emotional or the somatic level, and there will be a biochemical level. There will be a cascade of biochemical reactions that are initiated when the trauma response happens in the body. And of course, in other interviews, we’re going to go into why that happens. I can go into much more detail than the trauma disease connection course. But what you need to understand is that that third level, that biochemical level, is where we need to bring our attention. 

We can’t just do trauma work at the behavioral level, which is what we try to do when we do more cognitive approaches like cognitive, behavioral therapies, everything that’s focused on changing our thoughts is focused on changing our behaviors. But what about the emotional level? What about the body sensation level? The somatic level? That’s why we have to bring in somatic work. That is why I start everyone on a 21-day journey. Now, there are reasons why I start with that and not the biochemical level, but we also can’t neglect the biochemical level. After the 21-day journey then we move into these other areas. We move into parts of work that does deal more with the belief systems and the behaviors, but we also have to address the biology level, and that’s what you’re going to start to learn more about in this interview what is happening at this biology level. We’re going to learn about a specific protein in this interview that is part of this survival paradox, that is part of this biochemical level that needs to be addressed. 

And as long as the body is in a trauma response, it will keep generating this biochemical response. It is like, we’ve got to go upstream. We can’t just be focused on the downstream symptoms, the diseases that we’re getting. I’m going to even say, more importantly, our body not being receptive to all the interventions that we are doing, so that if you are on a ton of supplements, if you’re on a ton of medications, or if you’ve done a ton of things and you’re still not getting the changes that you need to see in your health, it may be because your body is in that trauma response and it is so shut down, it is so on the defensive that it is not even open. It is not even receptive to all the interventions that you are doing. That is one way to know that your body is chronically stuck now in this physiology of a trauma response. 

We’ve got a lot of work to do. But the good news is that we can do the work. It doesn’t have to be confusing and there is a clear path forward. Let’s jump into this interview where we’re going to learn about this survival paradox and focus on this third level of a trauma response, the biochemical level and what is happening, and what we can do about it. Now for this interview, I am so excited to introduce you, to my friend and colleague, Dr. Isaac Eliaz. He is a leading expert in the field of integrative medicine, specializing in chronic conditions, which, if you know anything about the trauma-disease connection, you would know why he would be focused on chronic conditions as it relates to this survival paradox. He specializes in cancer, detoxification, immunity, and complex conditions. He is a respected physician. He definitely has my respect. He’s a researcher, bestselling author, educator, and mind-body practitioner. Dr. Eliaz partners with leading research institutes, including Harvard National Institutes of Health or the NIH, Columbia, and others to coauthor studies on integrative therapies for cancer, heavy metal toxicity, and others. He is the founder and medical director of Amitabha Medical Clinic in Santa Rosa, California, where he has pioneered the use of therapeutic apheresis as an adjunctive blood filtration treatment for detox and chronic degenerative conditions. Truly a leading expert in addressing this biology of trauma. With that, let’s jump in and learn about the survival paradox and this survival protein that we need to address for addressing the biology of trauma. You have done some amazing work around this survival paradox, and I love what you’ve done,  you’ve broken it down to the cellular level, the tissue level, which we know we need to go to for trauma healing. So what is the survival paradox? Maybe let’s just start there. What is the survival paradox?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

The survival paradox really offers a new paradigm in the understanding of health, aging, disease, and specifically, it relates, Aimie, to trauma and to the biology, to the driving force of trauma. What it offers is the understanding that what makes us survive, what is innate in every cell in our body is also what makes us suffer, what makes us age, what makes us not be happy, and what makes us sick. And because it is innate in us, it starts automatically. If something is innate, we can’t control it just like sometime in the beginning, trauma response before it is dealt with. In this sense, the sympathetic system comes into play immediately within a fraction of a second, and it goes either into a fighting mode or a flight or freezing mode. And if it is done a lot, if it is on alert, it starts affecting our life quality, our nervous system. But we can turn it off, taking a deep breath, relaxing, and being in nature. 

But within minutes the biochemical system turns on. In the biochemical system, is survival proteins. And once the biochemical system turns on, it doesn’t turn off as easily. And the biochemical system mirrors the sympathetic system. The fight of this sympathetic system is inflammation at the biochemical level. The flight and freezing on a biochemical level is isolation microenvironment and fibrosis, organ dysfunction, which is the key to nearby inflammatory diseases, of memory issues, of chronic degenerative disease, and so many other issues. The journey of recognizing this survival paradox and transforming it is a journey to our infinite healing potential. We have an infinite healing potential.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And, this is so aligned with everything that we talk about here in the biology of trauma because you’re right. We don’t know our capacity to heal because we’ve not really tapped into just how much potential we have. But you’re right. We need to look at what’s happening on the biochemical level, on the biology level. Give us more details around the survival proteins. You mentioned inflammation. What are some of the specific survival proteins that are part of this biochemical process?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

This specific protein that I’ve been researching for close to 30 years and made the discovery that blocking it, will reverse inflammation and fibrosis is called Galectin-3. And Galectin-3, also for many of the listeners may not be known unless they heard me in the last year or two. It has over 10,000 published papers and the Galectin-3 blocker-modified citrus pectin has over 80 published papers. So what happened? Galectin-3 takes the need to survive, the need to repair a dangerous process, it takes it to that target organ to wherever the problem is. It starts the cascade of response that eventually will affect the cells. That’s in general, the understanding. So,. Blocking Galectin-3 is probably the most important strategy from a supplement point of view, because  Galectin-3 drives every disease and just a lot of interest in Galectin-3. I myself have a very large NIH grant to study removal of Galectin-3 after resisting sepsis and acute kidney injury. 

But it is interesting for us, there is not, no matter what is the topic, I always talk about the biology of trauma and what it does to the cells. I feel like I’m home right now because I’m talking about what I talk about anyway. And I’m actually a cancer guy specializing in integrative oncology for four decades. If we take a step back and we look at what is trauma on the subtlest level and the subtlest level is where we move from, from psycho spirituality, psychology, emotions, to the biochemistry. When we have an experience in life and if the experience can vanish away with no, without giving a trace, nothing left, we will be able in the future to respond in a fresh way and right now respond without being affected by our past. 

I won’t get complicated and say without being affected by a future, a limited dependance easier to comprehend. So from a Buddhist perspective, it is called emptiness, impermanent, ever changing, quantum physics talks about it. The image in Buddhism is like a bird flying in the sky. The birds fly and there is nothing left. When we are very young. In you too for example, if we have an injury we repair without a scar, even babies, they get a scar, they repair. But as we age, our ability to repair without a scar goes down. And once we got the scar, once we get anything that is left over, it is going to affect our decision making all the way to our biology on an emotional, psychospiritual, psychological and physical level. 

Now, we, who is we? We say to us, we is Isaac and Aimie, we as a community, we as a planet, for example, the planet is in this survival mode. What does it do? It produces inflammation, which is called global warming, all the way to our cellular level. But we is also 50 trillion cells that have a relationship with each other, each of them people don’t know even doctors. 1 million reaction a second for every cell, we are a miracle that we are talking right now and there is a mutual support. And if the mutual support is well done, if the cells can trust each other and relax, we’ll get no more metabolism. We won’t get the fight and flight response, the abnormal glycolysis, the lactic acid, the stress hormone, because we feel safe. So now when we realize 50 trillion cells, 1 million reactions, if we look back 25 years for a generation, 2000 years, we were made from an infinite number of people. We have infinite influences on every part of our body in a different way. Some influences are random and don’t come often and some repeat themselves. And when they repeat themselves, they leave a scar. They leave a trauma. And as a result of the trauma, we create a method to survive the trauma, which leads to a habit. And here, two, people are having the same experience and one is bliss, and the second is totally traumatized. So this is a little bit I wanted to give this image to see how from a very subtle thing that happens randomly, we end up being who we are. You end up being who you are. I end up being who I am. And in my book I tell the story about my grandfather from the Holocaust and I’m named after him, my pain that went away, and the multigenerational healing if we have time and talk about it. So when we look at the biology of trauma that this very repetitive trauma of very strong trauma. Coming from Israel, there’s a lot of wars, a lot of trauma, Holocaust survivors, a lot of trauma. And these traumas will create a neurological response, a behavioral response, and the cellular response. 

I’ll close this out a little bit long, but I want to give you like a prelude. What is a cellular response? Just when, if you read my book, The Survival Paradox, if you read it, you will see that I treat cells like living, like human beings. For me, cells have personality. Of course, if they have a membrane, they have a boundary, they decide what comes in, they decide what goes out, and they can interact with the environment. That’s a living organism. So if we really understand it, the receptors on the cell going outward decide how the cell is going to respond. But the environment, for example, Galectin-3 is called to help the kidneys, it goes to the kidneys. It triggers macrophage to become inflammatory. We then excrete more Galectin-3. It creates a coating that creates an environment of hypoxia without oxygen, the receptors of insulin change because we in crisis we can take a deep breath. 

We need to get energy quicker. That’s an emotional response on the cellular level. Now, AMPK gets blocked into, one gets activated, mitochondria is shut down, we get fast and inefficient metabolism that we can survive on too long. What happens? All of this cascade reflects the way we face the world outwardly and we face the world inwardly. Inwardly, part of it is a cell facing the world outwardly through its receptors and the cells facing itself inwardly through genetics and epigenetics. This is why, true healing includes multi-generational healing, includes epigenetic even.. For me, Aimie, it is such a relief because I’ve been drawing these multigenerational diagrams past, present and future for decades when I teach meditation and healing and it goes a little bit crazy. 

But this was my insight, this was my experience, that’s what I see, that’s how I treat people. And I’m also a scientist, a bonafide scientist. And now with epigenetics being popular. Wow! It is such a relief because I feel at home. You remember I made this diagram? So the reason for describing this is that there is a profound optimism in it because everything is changeable, everything is doable. In my book I tell the story about a Vietnam vet pilot who got shot eight times and through meditation and some healing work. He went to a place where, so he was flying very low helicopters. What he would see is the eyes of the person that either shoot him or uses it to kill him. And he got to a place where he can see them. And instead of a trauma, he would feel compassion and love will surround him and himself with light and wouldn’t have this somatic experience. But to do it, we have to decide to let go of the habits. It is not easy because often they are scarred with illness and anything goes that can make the scar go away. And that’s why there are so many methods and there are no there’s not no one protocol. The only protocol I have is that they don’t have a protocol. The protocol is the person. The life story is a journey that’s a little bit in the drama context in a very briefly about the survival paradox.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

And what I love about this is that it does require that things become personalized because no person has the same body, no person has the same epigenetics, no person has the same life experiences. So it does require then that our protocols become very personalized to them and how to support the cells that are like human beings. Which is funny because I talk to my cells as if they were bodies too. I’m like, what can I do today to support my microglia? What can I do today to support these cells of mine? And what I’m curious though is, what triggers the Galectin-3 to turn on.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So Galectin-3 is our injury repair protein, it is our survival protein. So when we are embryonically inside the cell, inside the nucleus, actually, it helps us to create normal embryogenesis. What turns Galectin-3 on is this sense that something went wrong, stress, toxins of all kind, emotional, but we have, we can work on the best level psychologically but we may be exposed to heavy metals, to pesticides, to micro toxin that affects our gut lining, affects our blood-brain barrier, stimulates our microglia. So Galectin-3 comes to the play right away and how we does it is the best. It has a receptor called carbohydrate recognition domain that binds to different carbohydrates present in glycoprotein and glycolipid and it delivers them to the problematic tissue. And then it creates a Pentamer, it attaches to a Pentamer, to attaches to a Pentamer. So, biofilm, Atherosclerotic plaque, the isolated microenvironment around cancer Alzheimer plaque is 20 fold Galectin-3 compared to normal brain tissue. Galectin-3 disrupt blood-brain barrier and it is a major activator of microglia. 

But more than this, when we look at the nervous system which is so connected with traumas, we have a condition that is called a perfusion injury reperfusion, when we have a disruption of blood supply to the brain and then it comes back. So stroke, of course, TIA, but we can have minor events like this. It is another day stress that the day of the constriction. Immediately on the brain level tissue Galectin-3 gets excreted and start damage to the tissue and when you block Galectin-3, for example, with modified citrus pectin in a paper from 2022, you will reverse the process. This is why I made this comment that addressing Galectin-3 is a must because it goes up as we age. And interestingly, centenarians have lower levels of Galectin-3 than people in the seventies and eighties. So the people who survive to become centenarians out of the 78-year-old group are the ones with lower levels of Galectin-3. Galectin-3 to be on a biochemical level represents this survival response. And in this sense, inflammation is really not the cause of anything. Inflammation is the process which is a result of our survival drives and also how we let go for a survival drive. That’s a big spiritual journey because innately we self-identify with ourselves and with our experiences, but eventually when this identification dissolves, then there is the survival drive can actually be freed. And that’s where spontaneous healing happens. And in meditation, there are different strategies that allow us to change our response based on when where we are in our meditation training. And in this sense, mindfulness is very popular, but it is just a first step. So it is good. I’m so happy that it is becoming popular, but it is just the first step, and but our body is built to be able to overcome traumas and use the difficulty for growth, we’re actually built to do this. And if we have time, we’ll talk about the role of the heart in doing it.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

A whole other fascinating topic that we are actually built to use these experiences to make us stronger, not to scar us.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Right.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Can we actually measure the amount of Galectin-3 or activated Galectin-3 that we have in our bodies?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah. So it is really nice to see that activated which you cannot measure. But yes, Galectin-3 is an inexpensive FDA-approved blood test that is done by every major lab, and it was approved for heart failure. And in heart failure, people who have, let’s say people with heart failure with Galectin-3 under 17.8, one out of eight will die in a year, 12.5%. But if you’re over 25.6, not a big difference, 37% will die in one year. So but healthy Galectin-3 levels are much, much lower. You really want to be under 12 or 11. So yes, it can be measured, but some people will have higher or lower levels due to their biochemistry, and their MMP nine activities. It is a little bit complicated is the monomer and pentamer they’re the ones to complicate things and that’s why we have to block Galectin-3 regardless of the level. 

For example, in our multicenter trials on prostate cancer. Another unrelated, a patient over 18 months and 90% benefits 99, zero, and more. That’s just we presented just as could you but it wasn’t related to the Galectin-3 level. You have to block it anyway. That’s a simple gift that we have, the real journey that you and I are, of course, I’m interested in. Galectin-3. I made some other discoveries, but we are interested in a deeper way to use the energy of survival a paradox cellular response. The energy of trauma to create a change. In a retreat when somebody says, wow! I couldn’t feel my heart for decades. And then sometimes I suddenly have like you get start sweating, they get palpitations. Oh, my God. And then this warmth comes into their heart. And wow! The heart is warm again. Some people often say the heart is so protected that it freezes the breath. So the key to healing and the key to healing from trauma is connecting with our heart. And this is not a new age thing, not that you and our new age are, but the heart is the only organ in the body that functions differently than any other cell. Every cell in our body, every organ wants to take nourishment and puts out what it doesn’t want. Then so the survival, the heart is the only organ in the body that takes all the junk from all the organs without discrimination. In fact, it has to do it. It is part of its survival. But more than this, you and I talking about trauma, the blood, the dirty blood coming to the heart. It is the moment that it comes to the heart represents the past from the point of view of the organs. So all the trauma from the heart are coming from the body, are coming to the heart. Irregular cells like we discovered was in no way because they I am putting blockages they’re not coming in, the heart accepts. So acceptance is a transformative moment in healing; it connects with the universe through the breath because our drama is not as meaningful to the endless compassion and space of the outer space. 

And then the blood gets transformed. And then the heart gives blood without discrimination.  The artery is the rigid organ. It is a rigid artery. And only when the heart gives selflessly, it relaxes and it nourishes itself through the coronary artery. Again, it is the only organ that nourishes itself after it does its selfless work, but it is the first organ that gets blood. Self-love is part of loving others. So when we connect with this heart, what I call open heart medicine, my second book, which I wrote in Hebrew, but then COVID happened. I’ll probably put it out in English because there are some unique, innovative methods that are not available. When we connect with this, we connect with our infinite healing potential. 

We connect because the heart keeps flowing, the heart always flows. What is trauma? Trauma is holding to something that already happened. Who holds? Who analyzes? Our head, our ego. That’s a survival of the brain of the analogy. This is dangerous. The heart, it just flows the moment it holds, it did. The heart is our greatest healer. It is something, which is a bit esoteric but very practical because you mentioned that you were talking to cells. So this is a relationship between the heart who holds the infinite wisdom that comes from the universe. The molecule of air we breathe in the mouth is related to endless, infinite space in the past, in the present, and in the future. That science is, there’s no argument about it. Okay. 

The heart is this connection very quickly through the lungs to the heart, and then the heart offers these to the body. But the body needs to be willing to accept like you’re talking to yourself. Accept, relax, it is okay. The blood-brain barrier is doing its job. There’s no need to be on alert. The real work is to allow ourselves to accept, to relax, to feel safe. In this sense, as I mentioned, anything goes. If it is psychotherapy and emotional work, and acupuncture and healing, scar therapy, which I do a lot, which is remarkable, which is equivalent on a physical level to an emotional scar. But the magic happens when we connect our inner work with our ability to let go through meditation. I tell my story in my book that I had severe pain in the center of my chest since at age 10. And I knew Aimie, it is not me. I just knew and many people in psychics and these told me so anyway. It did, I knew it was really affecting me. Then I connected to my grandfather’s trauma to the Holocaust. He died at age 50 from stomach cancer because he couldn’t handle the fact that ten out of his 12 siblings got killed by Hitler. We were never told about it until we were standing on our grandmother’s grave. 50 years later, when I did my work, did my forgiveness work about the Holocaust. 50 years later, the pain went away in one second. Completely I have a normal thing. But what’s more interesting is that my mother, which I didn’t tell her about this, but we were very closely connected, could never see a movie or a program about the Holocaust, suddenly turned on the TV and started seeing things about the Holocaust. This is a multi-generational healing that’s a successful healing of trauma because when we work on trauma and we are self-focused, the benefit will be limited. It will be self-limited by the electromagnetic field of our heart is bigger than our body. 

It touches every cell in our body and it touches our environment and it keeps going, even if it is very weak. It is an endless movement. When we understand the interdependence between us and others, between the 50 trillion in our cells, in our body, between our body and the 100 trillion organisms and the microbiome, the gut-brain relationship, there is a lot of mutual support. We live in a world that the divisiveness with social media were different, we can see the other side, we can’t imagine the other side and we all fall into it. But as human beings, we have a heart, we have the capacity to touch this pure place, this divine place, even for a fraction of a second. And that’s why your focus on trauma these days is so much bigger. It would have been 20, 30, 40 years ago because everybody is traumatized. We have to realize that for us to heal our trauma doesn’t mean that somebody else is not allowed to heal their trauma. Healing is unlimited. It is infinite. And the more we realize, the more the motivation becomes bigger than us, the more ourselves feel safe. The more they feel safe, the more epigenetics changes. And then we heal and we really have a choice. That’s what’s so amazing about it.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

There are so many directions that I could take right now. What I’m going to ask is this connection with adverse childhood experiences and early childhood trauma. And we know from the studies that it becomes a chronic disease as an adult, that it becomes the cancers, it becomes the metabolic diseases, it becomes the diabetes, it becomes all of these conditions, heart disease. It becomes these things in adulthood. As we look at the rising chronic diseases and the types of chronic diseases, we’re still needing to have a conversation around trauma with those. With your view and understanding of Galectin-3 and the inflammation response that happens as a result of the process, how do you explain the link between adverse stress and trauma and these adult diseases like cancer and other chronic diseases?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

In one level it is so simple because the child went into a survival mode and there is a very important principle. We always do. The body always wants to survive, the body will always do the best it can. This idea about blaming something we have done doesn’t help. It is called the pro symptom. We did the best we could have done in that moment. We have to acknowledge it and embrace it. It is a problem that we don’t no longer needed. And because it created a habit that at the moment, helped us survive, it causes damage in us. And the ultimate example is one, cancer, because what is cancer? Cancer is a cell that doesn’t accept the sickness. When it manifests it does the role and then it just dies out, so apoptosis, he decides to survive. He doesn’t accept the impermanence of its nature. And how does he do it? By creating an isolation, a microenvironment. And then it gets self-identity and becomes aggressive and attacks the environment. A very similar process is autoimmunity when we attack ourselves and of course metabolic diseases. But we have this together with different toxins to see if we can. A chemical toxin, a heavy metals, pesticides, glyphosate. We are bombarded with pesticides that affect our gut lining, our blood-brain barrier causes an excitatory effect on the brain that causes restlessness and a survival-like response. 

We are bombarded by it and we have to put it off. We have to put it off and in a smart way and with patience. We never know when the last veil comes off and things totally transform. I know from my own meditation journey, I mentioned to you before the interview that I was a fanatic meditator for 20 years. I would spend two to three months a year in the mountains and I would meditate half a day for ten years and otherwise, three or four hours a day and I was stuck. But my teachers believed that I would. Things will open up. And finally, they opened up. It took many, many years. Once they open up is like, wow, your whole reality changes. But some people, it is easier for them. It happens quickly. It is a process and the process from a strategy we have to deal with the immediate issues. 

If you are bleeding, it doesn’t happen to think of it happened because of the trauma. When you have five years or got to stop the bleeding, you got to remove the toxins and then you have to be ready that when you open the drawers, you got to be able to eliminate and let go. And the letting go is a profound process. It has different levels. One level is that we start by an antidote. Whenever we get upset, we take a deep breath. The other process is we detoxify, but then we detoxify and then we can still create toxins. Very commonly, and it is to a lower level. Then there is a very profound step, the transformative step of acceptance. And acceptance. Is what the heart does when we have accepted, the heart accepts the dirty blood, and then comes the transformative effect. The heart doesn’t kill where the blood is coming from. It would to the fire of love and compassion and nourishment. 

And it is done physiologically, even if we are grumpy, upset, and angry, the heart is still nourishing the body because we have it physiologically. It is much easier to learn it emotionally, psychologically. So connecting with the heart with meditation is much easier than trying to get the mind to be quiet, as we all know. It is a process. Eventually, if we are very fortunate and we are able and we are trained in such a way, then there is a moment when we realize that everything is free, that nothing is solid, that there is no separation. And in this moment, the reality is the way we know it falls away, may fall away for a fraction of a second or for certain lucky people. It stays like this for a big part of their life. And then that’s what trauma has to get freed. So my experience was that I had this profound psychological experience, and then I just let it go. Then I send so many of my patients to the similar process and it didn’t happen to any of them. I couldn’t understand it. Listen, it is a letting go. It allowed this. There’s always a process of letting go and then when we let go, for one thing, it is so when you work so much with you, another thing comes up. So even if with amazing revelation and within you inside don’t hold to it is your new truth because it is still going to change the moment you hold to it and you fixated, you limit your possibility. You limit our possibilities. And that’s a great pitfall in meditation when people get attached to their experiences to wanting to feel quiet and having visions. 

If you have something happening to you and instead of getting angry, you feel compassion and it becomes innate. Wow, that’s a big change. And this will change your cells. And as we do this, we allow traumas to shed their way. And it doesn’t mean that for people who are traumatized sexually, it doesn’t mean that you accept that what was done was okay, it wasn’t okay, but you let go of the because what happened when we hold to it, we are constantly being violated and abused and injured. And when we just transform it, we end the process.  And when we use this energy and we help others, my God, that’s really putting wood into the fire. And that’s why trauma is the basis. And one of the questions was, is it trauma in your healing? You cannot heal without dealing with trauma. Yeah, it is impossible because we all have it in one level or another.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

You know what started my trauma healing journey was my decision at a crucial time in my life to have open hands, meaning I’m not going to hold on to things with open hands and open heart. And I don’t think that I knew what I was deciding, because then that has started this process that has never stopped. And you’re talking about this infinite possibility where you work on one layer and then it gives space for another thing to surface. And then as you work through that, then it allows the space for another thing to surface so that my decision to have open hands, open heart as I approach life, it started an infinite process that has had no end yet.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

It is very important. It has no end. The moment it ended. It freezes it is really between holding and just going like this. People can feel right when you contract and you just let go and exhale and that is so beautiful. Our body allows us to connect. For example, there is a natural gap between the letting go of the exhalation and the inhalation. Maybe if we emphasize the inhalation, no, the exhalation is the letting go and then it is the end is a small gap with no activity. And if we can just tune our mind to the small gap, it is enough, and then we can follow the breath. This gap is giving us a hint. There is the space where nothing changes. There is a place where nothing changes, the basic quality that is out there. But everything else just comes and goes. And the second you realizes on your own, it is profound, but most important that you realize it. I’m not holding to my achievements. I keep on unfolding. Sometimes I’m in my early sixties getting close to middle life and I like to meditate next to the ocean when they come and I see them. It is so amazing to ask myself. I’m 50 years, why wouldn’t you feel it 50 years ago? You’ve been doing this well, it keeps unfolding. It keeps unfolding. And if I held to it, it would stop. And that’s really the process of healing trauma. It is really, it is amazing. It is so I’m that’s why I was so thrilled. I mean, I do a lot of interviews. I really prepared for this interview because it is in the, it is the essence of my being in my work. So I’m so glad for being able to be part of this.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Oh, I’m so glad to have you here. This has been a great conversation. And I am still hanging on the edge of my seat for you to tell us. How do you block Galectin-3?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So you block Galectin-3 by using a supplement called. So it is very simple. It is a sophisticated fiber that I developed almost 30 years ago, and the full dose is 15 grams a day, and it has dozens and dozens of 80 published papers on different health issues. But part of it is that people will feel like a lot of autoimmune conditions get improved with this nutritional support. Those are people if you look at their memory. Memory is one of the key things is that because when we are locked in a trauma-based approach, then, you know, it really affects every part of our body. So it is the simplest thing to do that I think is essential and interesting. I just adjusted some cancer patients that came back from for other reasons after not seeing them for ten years. If I didn’t know they were alive and I looked at the program for 10 years ago and I wasn’t recommending modified citrus pectin to everybody because the research wasn’t known yet. And now it is my first supplement, not because I developed it, but because it addresses this basic, profound movement of inappropriate survival response. And within it, we have to do everything else. I mean, it is nice to do it. It is helpful. We have to do all the other stuff and understand the intricacies and the multi-discipline and disciplinary, multifaceted combinations that we all we know. This is a miraculous beings who are able to live and talk and feel and think and nothing is linear in this in our reality, unfortunately. So trying to get a medication that will do one thing in a linear way doesn’t fit with who we are.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

You had mentioned the process and kind of the order of the process, and you had mentioned that first, we have to stop the bleeding. We have to stop the bleeding. Would blocking Galectin-3 be part of stopping the bleeding or where does this fit into the order and the sequence?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yes. Great question. It will be. And you will keep on using it. How do we know the initial interest was in cancer and what effect it was taking, blocking in like and then I discovered is inflammatory issues about 2025 years ago so started the work but now my research is on sepsis. There’s nothing more acute in sepsis where we know that the person comes to the intensive care unit with sepsis with no preexisting condition, no kidney, heart disease, or cancer, the level of Galectin-3 will determine who is going to die in the ICU. And when we take in animal models and give them motivated respect and then we induce sepsis, we decrease mortality from 60% over 60% to 20%. It does stop the bleeding, of course, in an imaginative way. It has a great role in acute that we didn’t know until we started discovering with six, seven years ago. And now it is a topic of my age. Glad it is not on cancer, on chronic disease. It is an acute kidney injury.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

Which is huge, because to take the mortality from 60% down to 20% in the medical field.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

7 million people.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

That would be considered a magic pill.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

It is. And so now I have two works. We are just starting our safety starts studies in large animals and the ones that are successful. Hopefully, in a year or so, we’ll move to clinical trials in the ICU. So that’s part of my life. We talk about meditation. They do jewelry basic, basic research. It is this combination that’s what I express in the way I teach. And I treat people well.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

I just want to commend you for your work. I mean, you’re doing a lot of work. And like you say, for you and for me, we have this lens of this is all the same stuff. Like it is one body, it is one system. It is not like we can do medical work and not be doing trauma work. And it is not like we can do trauma work and not be doing the physiology work with our body. It is all part of the same system. And I just want to acknowledge and thank you for how much work you have done and contributed to the field.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

And I thank you enough. I hope for both of us to continue. And people to remember every time you exhale, you let go. Every time you exhale you can peel off every thought. We have a choice to make something different. Every thought it can be different. That’s how profound and quick transformation can happen and we just have to be patient with it. And then at some point, it happens.

Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH

There is so much that I got from this interview, I’m assuming the same for you. And just be able to see my heart, my heart as an organ in my body that is open. That is open. And it receives the pass with no judgment, no criticism, and intervenes with the light, intervenes with breath, intervenes with life and oxygen to change my blood cells and to give them then the oxygen that they need to take to the cells and rejuvenate, repair, restore them. It is a beautiful model for the trauma healing journey and for me, becoming an open person. Love that, love that. Now, I hope that you are taking down all these notes because this is important, valuable information. I do know that this is a lot. I hope that you will consider resourcing yourself with purchasing all of these interviews so that you can access them at any time. Because, as I said, I have already gone back and rewatched this interview because of all that was in this interview. This went deep. And I’m so thankful for Dr. Isaac for joining me for this interview and for this summit. I am your host, Dr. Aimie. We are attending the Biology of Trauma Summit 3.0, the trauma disease connection. And I will see you on the next interview.