Join the discussion below
Eric Gordon, MD is President of Gordon Medical Research Center and clinical director of Gordon Medical Associates which specializes in complex chronic illness. In addition to being in clinical practice for over 40 years, Dr. Gordon is engaged in clinical research focused on bringing together leading international medical researchers and... Read More
Christopher Shade, PhD, founder and CEO of Quicksilver Scientific, continues to be the driving force of development and innovation. Dr. Shade’s vast depth and breadth of knowledge, passion for healing, and intuitive understanding of chemistry and biology are reflected in Quicksilver Scientific’s well-designed detoxification protocols, unique supplement delivery systems, and... Read More
- What is AMPK and why it supports a deeper level of detox
- What is AMPD and how it negatively effect detox and cardiometabolic health?
- Hidden drivers of AMPD
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Okay, welcome. Welcome to another addition of mycotoxins and chronic illness 2.0. And it’s really a pleasure to have a chance to talk to Dr. Chris Shade. He is the founder and CEO of QuickSilver Scientific. But what really excites me about is that he is a thinking man. I’ve always been appreciative of his creative insights and his real desire to help us bring biochemistry to you, to help people improve their lives and get a little healthier. And really a lot of people make supplements, but not many people really, I shouldn’t say because it’s not fair, but not many people think as deeply as you do about how to make it a little bit better every time.
Chris Shade, PhD
Thank you.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
So thank you. Thank you, Chris, for being with us. And today, not only I’m gonna have, what I’m excited about is I also get to learn something every time I talk to you. And I’m really intrigued how you’re gonna make today understandable for everybody.
Chris Shade, PhD
It’s all about glaciers. God damn glaciers. It’s the ice age.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Okay.
Chris Shade, PhD
Actually we’ll come up.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
We’ll come up, okay. Well actually, just in case, maybe talk a little bit about your background. I’ll give you two minutes because for the people who don’t know much about you, tell us a little bit how you started on your journey.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, it is a long journey and it goes way back. And I was originally, I was raised by academics. I was a sort of non-believer in things, a real reductionist guy. Dropped some acid in college, became not a reductionist guy. Then I was doing environmental science and I’m like all this is, is helping people who pollute think they’re not polluting. I don’t know if I really like this. I went and became an organic farmer. And then I got into systems thinking. And so that was all soil systems and ecosystems and stuff. And I started an organic farm, and I joked that I went outta business the year Whole Foods came around. And so I-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
I mean it’s everything.
Chris Shade, PhD
And so then I went back to school and I looked at agricultural pollution. And then I ended up looking at the global biogeochemistry of mercury as a pollutant, patented some testing around it, which and then instead of taking it into environmental testing, I brought it into clinical testing. I wanted to get back to people and health. And so I started testing metals in people. And then you gotta get ’em out. If you point out a problem, you gotta have the solution. So I started designing detox systems. First, I started taking chelators and they made me really sick. ‘Çause if your pathways aren’t open to get stuff out, they just stir the pot up. And so in the darkness, the dark night of my biochemical soul, I had the insight to start getting things out through the GI instead of the kidneys and made these binders specific for mercury in the GI.
And that really started opening up the paths out through liver. And then I got to know about glutathione and glutathione pushing things out of the cells. Then you gotta make glutathione. And that got me into liposome. So I started making a liposomal glutathione. Then I started making everything in liposomes. And then I started into GABA and CBD for the autonomic and neurological aspects of it. Then I started making stuff for metabolic health, immunological health, hormone health, all in these high end deliveries, these liposomes and nano emotions. And that brings us to today. And those are really the specialties of QuickSilver detoxification, cardiometabolic, immune, hormones and a whole longevity system that’s based on all those.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah. I think that, that’s the thing I always tell everybody, that if you really wanna learn about longevity medicine study people who have been chronically ill because-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, that’s where I started. And you know, I used to think of A forum I’m like, I’m just taking out the trash, they’re doing the sexy stuff. They got the exosomes and shit. No, enough to ampicate the stuff we’re gonna talk about is the foundation of healthy aging.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, yeah. No, that is the thing. ‘Cause you can give all the sexy stuff to people who think they’re healthy, but-
Chris Shade, PhD
Not do anything,.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
You’re wasting, exactly.
Chris Shade, PhD
Until you’re clean.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
I see that all the time, people have gone all to all these clinics, get all these stem cells and they’re not a whole lot different than they were. They get a little bump and then they’re back.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yep, yep.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
So it’s clean up. So tell us.
Chris Shade, PhD
Totally So you want me to roll with that?
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah you roll. ‘Cause people have been listening to me in between for too long. It’s time now to listen to you.
Chris Shade, PhD
So what I wanted to cover today is stuff around AMPK and NRF2. So last time we talked, we were talking about NRF2 up regulation for detoxification. So NRF2, define it inside the cell. There’s a pair of proteins outside the nucleus, KEAP11’s NRF2 and KEAP1’s holding NRF2 tethered there until something triggers it to be released. And it goes into the nucleus and it binds to all the genes that have a promoter region called the antioxidant response element. And these are genes for glutathione synthesis, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione transferase. The transport proteins, it’s all the chemoprotective stuff. And what are the triggers that turns it on, but oxidative or electrophilic stresses.
So reactive oxygen species, reactive nitrogen species. When you have excess oxidative stress or electrophilic stress is another word for oxidative stress, but it’s chemicals that aren’t really necessarily directly oxygen type of thing. So this would be mold toxins. This would be metals like mercury, carbonium, arsenic, lead. So it’s a stress sensor to chemical stress and it turns up the cleanup crew to get stuff out of there. Now that’s how I started all this development of detoxification. And when that cleanup crew’s not working, because it’s inducible and it also has a rhythm with which it turns itself on. And when you have that on, you’re cleaning all this stuff out of this system, stuff that would go in and have toxic effects, great mitochondrial dysfunction or mitochondrial dysfunction might put you into a senescent phenotype, all kinds of damage to the membranes and stuff. And when things are working, you’re pushing all this stuff away and out of the system.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
One thing I just want to emphasize from what you’re saying is to remind people that this is a system that’s made to be dynamic. And the stresses are good. You need a little of that oxidative stress to turn on that NRF2 system.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yep.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And so just don’t think that you wanna keep pushing it. It’s life its gonna add and flow and that’s what’s gonna make you stronger.
Chris Shade, PhD
You gotta roll like that. In fact, constitutively upregulating NFR2 brings problems with it, keeping it on all the time. And remember back in the eighties, nineties, it was always like vitamin C, just vitamin C all the time. Well that quenches so much oxidative stress. It’s actually a negative modulator of NFR2. So you’re preventing a lot of the things that are supposed to be happening. And so when that thing is up and running, when you need it to, it’s keeping everything clean, it’s keeping your genes clean, it’s keeping your mitochondria running. It’s getting rid of, so there we’re talking about stressors from the environment, but what about the stressors from our own metabolism? That’s where NRF2 dovetails into AMPK. And AMPK and its evil twin, AMPD.
So AMPK is what’s activated when you are fasting or carb restricted, exercising, ketogenic diets. That’s when ATP is used up and ATP becomes ADP, then it loses another phosphorus, it becomes AMP. And that’s when it triggers the AMP-kinase. So when it triggers the AMP-kinase and it goes down this pathway, it turns you from anabolism to catabolism. So you’re gonna stop building everything up and you’re gonna start breaking things down and recycling them. So mTOR is associated with this, mammalian target of rapamycin. mTOR has a forward direction and a blocked direction. And forward direction it’s turning on anabolism and it’s turned on by insulin branch chain amino acids.
That’s why a lot of those things like muscle milk and stuff, trying to be anabolic can build yourself all up. You’ve got proteins and especially branch chain amino acid, and sugars. So that makes you get all big. Now, when you do that all the time, you start accumulating fat in your liver, fat around the waist. You start driving the inflammatory situation. So in fact, the more you’re driving that you’re creating oxidative stress, that’s trying to create insulin resistance. Because it’s trying to make you gain weight. And then instead of going down this AMPK path, you go down the AMPD path which makes you-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Let me just stop you for one second.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Just because this is amazing, but I just wanna just tell the story simply for a second. So people don’t lose track because these are just,
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
They’re complicated concepts, but-
Chris Shade, PhD
Translate my English.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Right. Just basically you’ve gotta remember is that, we were designed to survive like all animals in times of not eating.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
We have 365 days, God bless, most of us get to eat.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And we weren’t designed for that. We were designed to go periods of time when there’s just no food, whether it be a day, two, even a week. And so all these pathways that were designed for our survival are now hurting us. That mTOR pathway is designed so when you got that fruit, when you got a whole lot of carbs to eat, you could build up that fat to carry you through. Because even today, the unfortunate thing is, is carrying a few extra pounds when you’re in your seventies or your eighties might keep you alive when you get really sick.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
You know people to be fair, those really athletic cloaks with BMIs of 20, don’t they die quickly? They die when they’re in their seventies if they get sick because they need reserves.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
That’s not too much. But anyway, so that’s what that mTOR pathway is designed to give you that body reserves, okay.
Chris Shade, PhD
Right. And that has with it, the AMPD pathway, that’s the put on weight, create oxidative stress, create uric acid, which creates some of that oxidative stress. And that makes you insulin resistance, which makes you fat. So when-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
That’s what you wanna do when food is scarce.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes, and that, that’s the glacier ice, you know, ice age thing.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Okay, yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
That was when that was developed and the only people who lived through the ice ages were the ones who had really strong dominance on those pathways. And so when we get sugar, we shift over into trying to store everything. So what we wanna turn on is AMPK, so AMPK blocks mTOR. And when that happens, we’re in catabolism, we turn into autophagy, self eating. So one of the things when we’re making proteins, proteins are very difficult to make, and they’re intricately folded. They’re like little origami swans. And if you don’t fold ’em right, then the swans, the wing is broken, then you just throw ’em in a pile in the back.
And so we accumulate all these piles of these misfolded proteins, and eventually they’ll cause the cell to self destruct. And so you need the unfolded protein response to go and take them, put ’em into autophagosomes, which are a little like vesicles, they’re like liposomes, it’s a sphere inside the cell. And you merge with a lysosome. And the lysosome brings the enzymes in to chop them all up into amino acids. So instead of building mass, you take all your broken mass, you break it down into amino acids and you recycle it, and that’s cleaning out instead of environmental waste, this is metabolic waste.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, well this is the true ecology of the body.
Chris Shade, PhD
It truly is. And then fat, you break it down, you make ketones out of it for energy. You mobilize glycogen, you mobilize stored sugar, you actually make more glucose transporters on the cell and you lower insulin resistance and you increase insulin sensitivity. It’s one of the beautiful things about fasting. And fasting can totally do that, but a lot of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals are really good at that fact. That’s what Metformin is, that’s why it’s used for metabolic dysfunction type two diabetes. It’s an AMPK activator. And then in the natural world we have a lot of these things, berberine, resveratrol and quercetin even silymarin, and DIM. We put all these together with a little cinnamon in this product that jams up AMPK, it’ll put you into ketosis really quick.
And so it’s really important that we swing back and forth, and that we have these times, and having the supplements and the ability to do a little intermittent fasting, some of these supplements and then at night have some carbs so that we sleep right. We have tools so that we can find what’s that best rhythm for us. And often, especially for women who are of childbearing age, fasting too much disrupts their cycles. And so we wanna bring in some of these nutraceuticals to keep them clean. But that’s the AMPK, is the clean burn. And it dovetails with NRF2 in that when AMPK is activated, it’s a piece of cake to get NRF2 activated. In fact, it like supercharges NRF2 activation, and they work together on things like the unfolded protein response, on mitophagy. And then the flip side of mitophagy is, so mitophagy, we’re gonna find the bad mitochondria and we’re gonna put them into the little autophagosomes, and break them all down. And then on the flip side, we’re gonna have mitochondrial biogenesis and we’re gonna build new mitochondria. And so those all work together, NRF2 and AMPK, and then for biogenesis, then you need sirtuin. So I always say what AMPK begins in clean burning cardiometabolic space, sirtuin codify into the system and build more depth and reserve around.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, now that is a beautiful way to put it. And I always like to think that the whole point of regenerative medicine is just that regenerate.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Recycle, and this is exactly, it’s a beautiful way to help your body to burn up the trash.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
I mean that is the problem. The cell gets loaded with garbage, and that’s why we can’t detox-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Right there in the beginning. And it’s so nice that you’re showing us the physiology and the biochemistry of this process.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, and it’s beautiful. And there’s a war to go one way or the other. There’s a war to go APD versus AMPK, and Perlmutter really turned me on that because down the APD path, which is the mTOR forward path, you make uric acid, uric acid comes along and blocks AMPK. So it’s like the further you get out there, the harder stuck you are into that. And then you get all the inflammation that’s coming with it, and you get something like nuclear factor kappa B, which is one of the inflammagons, the inflammaging culprits, the things that keeps aging going.
Well, nuclear factor kappa beta can block sirtuins, but sirtuins can block nuclear factor kappa beta. So who’s gonna get on top of the game. And the best way to start getting on, you’re gonna use your nutraceuticals and stuff to do this, but fast a little, and you can flip over and get back on top of it that way. And then as those pools build up, as you get cleaner, and you clear out all the inflammagons and a lot of the nutraceuticals you’re moving over there are taking away senescent cells. So the senescent cells are propagating the fields of inflammation, they’re propagating senescent itself. And so how are you gonna get rid of them?
There’s two ways to do it. We talk about senolytics, killing them and letting them die, but you can reverse senescence too. How do you do that? By clearing up the intracellular terrain with NRF2 and AMPK. So there’s a lot of ways we move down the good or the bad. And it’s just because we didn’t have so much food before, we were turned to using the inflammation to pack on mass, and then we were inevitably gonna run outta food and we flip around and clean up and recycle.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, no, I mean again, the environmental analogy is just so strong. It’s amazing. I mean, it’s just so totally. If we only could recycle, instead of just storing the garbage, we’d have a healthier planet, and a healthier body.
Chris Shade, PhD
I know. And like it’s funny, people are all on their high horse, I’m here in Boulder County. They’re all on their high horse about where you put the recycling, but they don’t know that 90% of it, is going in the freaking dumpster. It’s going the landfill.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Right.
Chris Shade, PhD
We still are not recycling, but if we were, everything would be so, so, so much better, Look at agricultural systems.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah. Because the body knows how to break the pieces down to then use the pieces to rebuild. We haven’t gotten that far. We just take the pieces, and yeah, and hide the garbage is the best we can do.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, that’s about what it is.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
So the cycle is what’s behind, as we say, chronic inflammation that often is the fodder for chronic illness. ‘Cause I mean, I have to want to emphasize is that, if you start off healthy and you get sick-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
You’re wind up stuck in this pathway.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And if you’re just an American or most people in the Western world, if you live to about 40 or 50, you wind up in this situation unless you really work at it. This is the natural history. Everybody puts on 10 pounds a year, 10 pounds a decade or so.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And by the time that they’re 50, their free ride is over and the inflammation is starting to pack on.
Chris Shade, PhD
Right, and now let’s look at what inflammation does to the systems that are supposed to clean it up. So what is the surest way to block detoxification? It’s inflammation. And why is that? So inflammation is pro-oxidant endeavor, that’s intended to go and kill things. and to work it turns down temporarily during acute inflammation, it turns down detoxification, which is an antioxidant thing, glutathione superoxide dismutase, all those peroxidases and stuff. So it turns this down temporarily to go, put the fire, shoot fire at something and kill it off. But then chronically, it’s chronically down regulating your detoxification.
So you’re chronically accumulating toxins. You’re chronically out of AMPK, which is chronically adding more layers of inflammation. That’s chronically breaking down all the barriers. That’s chronically creating leaky gut. It’s chronically creating leaky blood brain barrier. It’s chronically creating leaky vagina. We talked about that one yesterday in my webinar, but it’s just another barrier function break. And what are the keys to re… Oh and leaky liver. And then the liver starts getting fatty and then it starts getting fibrotic and it’s even worse at clearing things out. And what’s the antidote to all those things? It’s AMPH, NAD and sirtuins. That’s where the tight junctions seal back together.
And that’s where all these inflammagons stop leaking into the system. So, yeah, often once that gut’s open, you gotta go and repair that thing, clear it up. And the endotoxins in the system then, and that’s just keeping it going down and it’s going to the brain, it’s making neuro inflammation and it’s keeping you sympathetically dominant. But you see how all these things pile on to keep you in the I’m fucked pile. And then you wanna clear these things out and move yourself over and get yourself into the I’m clear pile. And then you get to the immune system with it. Soon as the glutathion’s down, your immune system totally disregulates.
All your interferon goes to shit. You start having a lot TH2, TH17 type inflammation. You can’t go in and kill things. So there’s that down regulation of it. Then AMPK, what we just talked about, autophagy, AMPK is a master of immune defense. Xenophagy is when you take the virus and you break open the virus and you use your autophagosomes to break the virus or the bacteria into parts and make your higher order antibodies against them. And in COVID, NRF2 and AMPK gets squashed by the virus. So there’s like a little award, you have enough to have it be a not bad COVID, but that’s how it becomes a really bad COVID, is it shuts, NRF2 is already weak, AMPK is weak and it just pounds those things down. And then it just takes you for that ride.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Well, inflammation, chronically, just getting back to, I think most, I know it’s an important point especially for our audience is how chronic inflammation keeps you stuck in a state that will allow fat to accumulate. ‘Cause that’s one of the things-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
that really I think, is so frustrating to so many people. I mean, besides being sick, they sometimes just gain weight, sometimes very rapidly and unable to lose it, despite all kinds of caloric restriction, and they just feel so frustrated. And again-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
we don’t understand that they’ve turned on a very ancient primitive, it’s in every known, I know in every mammal it exists. And probably even in other simpler or more elementary forms, we like to think of ourselves as higher forms.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
That this pathway for survival exists to-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
that inflammation as a signal to store fat.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Because it’s supposed to be temporary.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, yeah. And Bot Hatley turned me on the insulin receptors are dithiols. They’re highly reduced. And so as soon as that oxidative stress comes up, you just shut them off and you get insulin resistance, so you can get fat, and then when you run out of food, everything will upregulate on the other side and clear all that stuff out.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Right, if food is what’s, if we’re back into a more natural state where food is driving the problem, but when we have an issue where there’s a chronic infection or a chronic exposure-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
that’s driving in the inflammation, then we have a little more trouble in getting back to normal. And that’s where that we often need help. And so sometimes, like I tell people, sometimes you can remove the trigger and sometimes we just need a lot of support for the system.
Chris Shade, PhD
You need to crutch it up and help it.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, you need to help it.
Chris Shade, PhD
And that’s where when NRF2 is broken, vitamin C is your freaking wonder child. And you can just pour that stuff in and really cool things down. Post COVID that was a big thing. I was giving everybody tons of vitamin C and then slowly trying to get their NRF2 back on, quercetin is a big part of the repair. And so then that’ll start bringing NRF2 back, but post COVID a lot of CBD, curcumin and vitamin C just put the fire out and then you end up taking antihistamines and stuff, just crutching everything up while it flips over. And I know you as an MD have probably used a lot of pharmaceuticals in crutching people up until you can flip ’em back on.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Well that, yeah, unfortunately that I always call it bandaid medicine, but we do a lot of it because that’s what you need until-
Chris Shade, PhD
Because you need the vitality to come up, you need to the ship to drive straight for a while, get used to that. And then you can start to take the bandaids off and the crutches out. And you can flip it back up right.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Well, because it’s that inflammatory signal. We have to use whatever we can. And it’s nice when we can use nutraceuticals.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
To help flip that signal, to change the information. And that’s what’s so interesting about the products that you’ve put together, is because that’s what you seem have designed them for.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, yeah. I’ve designed them to hit these triggers, and then you have a laundry list of stuff you can use. And so you’re like, what am I gonna stack into this particle? Well, I would do want some liver support, this is AMPK, sirtuin and liver. And, I do want some antimicrobials, I’ll put that in there. And then how harmonious they are. And then there’s a little bit of shamanic activity, do those muscle tests well together? But it’s all starting from the pathway that we want to work with. And then you’re getting informed from either older medicines or any number of different things on, on how you’re gonna put the protocols together and what you’re gonna pair together.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, for that person. But again, I just wanna say it again, because I think it’s just so important for people to hear that what’s often gets you into trouble is your body’s mechanism for survival.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
It’s not this evil genie that’s come and gotten you. It’s just that your body has a well worn pathway that’s worked for millennium-
Chris Shade, PhD
It’s conservation of lives.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, to keep you alive and it’s just stuck on. And we just have to help create the situation where it knows that it’s safe to go back.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And to a healthier less inflammatory pathway, because remember, you turn on all those inflammatory pathways to kill bugs.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And you should stop though after a while.
Chris Shade, PhD
And so those are the inflammatory pathways, your like endotoxin and those sort of things. And some of-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Or even like metals that tie up the viles, as you’re saying ’cause the viles of the sulfur groups for those people that use English, we have to be careful, anytime you have two sulfur groups, you have lots of places in the body where these two sulfur groups stick together with a hydrogen element. And when they get separated, they change their function. And that’s when your glutathione stops working. And the thing I didn’t know, which is really cool, your insulin receptors depend on that program. But so much of the biochemistry in your body depends on those sulfur groups doing the right thing.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, and them being reduced So they have oxidized and a reduced set. And so a lot of people are just like, I gotta raise the glutathione but you need it over to the reduced side for your body to turn all these programs back on. I mean, this is probably a big part of the cell danger response, when the oxidative stress builds up, a lot of proteins that are active proteins, you turn them off by linking a glutathione onto their active sulfur group. It’s called glutathionylation. And it’s to protect that protein, so it doesn’t get destroyed by all this oxidative stress. So you’re turning off a lot of essential or more regenerative functions and it’s waiting for the coast to clear and the redox potential to become more reduced again. Then it’s gonna pick those all off and restart all those processes. So how do you get there though? You need glutathione reductase, which is under the domain of NRF2 to flip that redox environment back. And when the NRF2 has been damaged, like mold toxins can turn off NRF2, certain epigenetic things can turn it off. It’s hard to get it back on.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, and I don’t wanna kill the cell danger response talk about too much today, but just the simple, I mean the most basic form is that, it’s the idea that the ATP gets sent out to the cell membrane instead of being used just inside the cell and one of the channels that opens up is when glutathione gets oxidized. There’s a little channel there that allows the ATP to get to because it, again, when glutathione’s oxidized that’s the signal.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, so reduced glutathione is keeping it closed.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Closed, exactly.
Chris Shade, PhD
So it’s nature is open, and reduced keeps it closed. And then the reduced isn’t there and it’s open.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Open, and it’s signaling there’s inflammation. And then you got your immune system coming back at you, we, how do you say it, amplifying the danger signal. That is the thing, is that where our cells are a community, they operate inside but they dance a lot with what the information they got from every cell around them. And that’s what gets us up. But I just wanna swing for a minute because before we were starting, you had mentioned that you were gonna touch on the cardio metabolic effects and their effect on detox. And –
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, and this is that AMPK helps drive NRF2. So then APD is this, put on the mass, bring up the inflammation and shut down the NRF2. So you’ve got this switch that goes AMPK or AMPD. And so this is why high fructose diets are absolutely the worst thing that happens to us ’cause that drives us down AMPD and then at the end of that is uric acid, which is going back and knocking out AMPK. So you’re running that way, running that way, running that way, running that way. And so it’s like okay, I’ll take out the of fructose. And so whenever you’re down that, the inflammation is driving cardiometabolic problems and driving neuroinflammatory problems.
So how do you switch outta that? But there’s some triggers that we don’t always realize. And one of the guys who worked for me brought a paper to me a while back, and he said, “Chris, high salt diets create cardiovascular problems and, no create cardio metabolic problems.” I said, Bullshit, what are you talking about? Yeah, fructose does and carbs do that and all that, but fucken salt does it. So osmolar pressures that suck and that’s one of the ways fructose does this, is sucks water out of the cells, drive you down that path. And that’s how, I always wondered how alcohol does it. How does alcohol create cardio metabolic crops? And all people who don’t know about biochemistry say, cause alcohol’s a sugar. I was like, no, no, it was sugar. Now it’s alcohol, it ain’t fucken sugar. It is an osmolar thing that’s sucking the water outta the cells and driving you down the AMPD pathway. And so of course that drove me to make better anti alcohol damage remedy.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Ah, okay.
Chris Shade, PhD
And so now you use milk thistle, and quercetin and luteolin because there’s antioxidase blockers, that blocks the uric acid. So the uric acid’s not blocking all the good stuff. And some B1 and it turns out, well B-complex, but B1 is the co-factor for alcohol dehydrogenase but it’s also has antioxidase inhibitor and flips you over to AMPK. And the quercetin and luteolin are big AMPK drivers. So it’s keeping you from driving down the AMPD pathway and that’s how alcohol does that, it drives you in that, and that’s how salt does it, it drives you down that AMPD pathway.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, actually interesting article, basically that you can defeat the salt a lot if you just drink enough water. ‘Cause it is a diluant, but it’s interesting and that’s another talk for another day, is this how pivotal uric acid seems to be in pairing on this survival pathway. I’ve always wondered, like why uric? But it just seems to dance-
Chris Shade, PhD
It keeps ’cause it blocks AMPK.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
So it’s designed to be a forward modulator of AMPD and a reverse blocker of AMPK. And that’s why it does it. So Perlmutter’s got me all obsessed on uric acid. And so now I’m designing whole uric acid blocking systems, but they’re very similar. Most of the things that are driving AMPK are also blocking that, but we’re finding, we’re looking at all the constants for this antioxidase blocking and what the most important ones are. And so we’re gonna have a whole cardiometabolic system and then encourage people to get a uric acid meter, a blood sugar meter and a ketone meter, and then here are the supplements you take, and when this goes up, ’cause when that uric acid goes up, the ketones will go down and the sugar will go up. And so it’ll be this whole cardiometabolic thing to keep yourself on the right side.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, and one of the simplest things I have to offer people is lose the fruit juices. I mean they all know to lose the sodas, but please there is no good fruit juice. Okay.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
It is zero. If you wanna put a half an ounce of juice in your smoothie, probably not a big deal, but . Yeah, I mean is like not good, not good, not good unless you’re planning on fasting for the next two to three days-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, exactly.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
to get you back. And we’ve all been sold on it. I mean every juice bar, I mean, it’s all about health food.
Chris Shade, PhD
Oh yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
But it’s not healthy.
Chris Shade, PhD
I was just at a Biohacker event called Rungood and there was a two women partners there and one of ’em was way into juicing and the other one wasn’t so sure. And, Steven, oh God, who’s the big lectin guy?
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Oh, Philips, not Philips. Gundry.
Chris Shade, PhD
Gundry. All right, so Gundry was at this show. And so she grabs him and says, “Can I talk to you for a second? What do you think of juicing?” He goes, “Oh, juicing, yeah. Great, so you get your vegetables and your fruits and you get your juicer and you push ’em through there and you get all this beautiful juice and then pour that down the drain, take everything that’s left over and eat it”.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, excellent advice. I mean, ’cause eat the fruit, unless you’re gonna eat like a pound of grapes, grapes might be an exception. ‘Cause we managed to make them overly sweet, but eat the fruit.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
You’re fine. One apples fine, don’t eat three.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, and in the peels, like even an orange. Hesperidin is just rife all through the pith. And that’s an AMPK actor
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
and this anti oxidase blocker, and there’s all these phytochemicals there that kind of steer the ship for you. Make sure you don’t go too far down there, but there’s the juice itself is just like a rocket ship to the cardiovascular ward.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, and this is I think one of the great disservices of the food, of the FDA has, and the, what is it? Not so much the FDA, it’s the agricultural, I forgot that the, the people who supposed to protect us.
Chris Shade, PhD
Services division, where they make the food pyramid.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, well the food pyramids, but the people, you know the fact that the corn syrup, ’cause the high fructose corn syrup, which is in everything. I mean, people who buy tomato sauce have no idea that they’re buying a pretty much direct toxin.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
In their system. I mean that’s the people who can’t lose weight and they wonder why, well, get rid of anything with high fructose corn syrup, and you might begin to shift your body, but as long as you take that-
Chris Shade, PhD
And don’t replace it with fruit juice.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Oh, right, right, right, right. No, but I mean, this is funny. But it’s not funny when I think about it, it’s just how much a chronic disease is being driven by people who are home juicing. ‘Cause they said, if you’re juicing vegetable juice, you’re probably pretty safe. But so many people there’s a fair amount of fruit thrown in there.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, there is. They blend it all together and make it sweeter. It shouldn’t be sweeter to be like, ooh.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
It should be intense.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
‘Cause as you know your intestines can handle a small amount of fructose and metabolize it. It doesn’t get into your liver and drive this whole pathway.
Chris Shade, PhD
Then there’s the whole brain thing. That was Perlmutter’s whole thing is the people who had these inflammatory pathways 20 years ago all have Alzheimer’s now. And ’cause it’s driving the neuro inflammation and then it’s driving the type three diabetes, which is a brain specific insulin resistance. And those are the people who benefit so well from ketones. So know once you start driving down that path, you’re gonna have cardiovascular disease and you’re gonna have Alzheimer’s dementia. There is just no freaking way around it.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Do you live long enough? Unless you’re very lucky. Yeah, but-
Chris Shade, PhD
Some people just have the genetics to deal with stuff, but most people don’t. See now I look at my parents and it was like I have a tendency to high uric acid and I see what they died of and all their complications. I’m like they were high uric acid for sure. And so now it’s like, oh, this is great. Now when it goes high or low, I really feel that. And it’s like, oh.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, well that is what I think is, I have to admit it’s only in the last year that I really started to pay attention to uric acid and the, what do they call it, the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Not for a long time, I knew you shouldn’t lower the sugar load, lower the carbs and that will get better, but I didn’t really understand the driver that the fructose was and the uric acid component. And I think-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, I thought it was just all carbs-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
before just 24/7 carbs but specific carbs really lock it down that path. But we did, a guy named Cheng Ruan, MD down in Houston, did a fatty liver study had took 103 patients, did our push catch liver detox, which is NRF2, AMPK and binder, and you gotta get bio flow going with it.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
And bidders thing. He just did that along with one of two diets, anti-canadida or a mito health diet for mitofam. 82% resolution of fatty liver in one to two months.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Wow.
Chris Shade, PhD
Take the bad shit out, whack it over with the right nutraceuticals, catch the toxins that are coming out when you freaking pull the plug out of the drain. And it’s really amazing how fast you can reverse that.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And it’s amazing how many people are dying from this-
Chris Shade, PhD
It’s an epidemic at that.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, I mean this is a crazy thing. And that’s where I’m so upset about our public health is because this is a public health disaster.
Chris Shade, PhD
It’s a disaster. I had no idea how big it was ’cause I was hiding from the world. I didn’t have a TV for like 15, 20 years. And then I got a TV and I started watching ads, ’cause I started watching football games and I’m watching the ads and every other ad is for a diabetes drug. And the ones in our diabetes drug are other autoimmune conditions.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
And it’s just like, oh my God.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, well that’s right. Actually, my TV went away a little, but right. But two years ago I was watching a bit of TV and I was always amazed that how can you be selling so many drugs?
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
It’s all they sell now.
Chris Shade, PhD
Vast proportion of ’em are metabolic disease drugs.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, yeah. No, and the thing is that diet and the right supplements-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
will help most of this.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Here’s the thing is that, I spend my life with people to be fair that diet, because the inflammation is being run by an extrinsic factor, if you will.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
You know, either there’s a chronic infection that’s there, either the bug was there or it turned on the system in such a way that we have a hard time turning it off.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Often because there’s a retained protein or a retained signal, like the signaling device gets stuck on.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
But even with that, we can begin to move the dial if we clean up the diet because we can’t always get the antioxidant system to be working full time, but if we can just get it pulsing, we can begin to get the detox working and you begin to get a virtuous cycle going.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, that’s a really well said, because it’s a downward one, and then you get the the virtuous cycle and it really starts reinforcing itself. And you just gotta gently bring it back together. And the more the parts of the puzzle, the faster you bring the thing up. But if it’s just straight up metabolic alcoholic, fatty liver, that’s a piece of cake. It’s when there’s a big infection in the way. And like you said, and they
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Or you’re living in a moldy house. Yeah, if you’re living in a moldy house, this isn’t gonna help much because the prooxidant system is screaming all the time.
Chris Shade, PhD
All the time. And it’s downregulating all that stuff.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, and that’s why I hate having people having to move out of home, it’s my least favorite piece of advice. But I think that’s the nastiest part of mycotoxin illness is that it often is so disruptive to life because it’s your whole family, if you’ve got a line, we gotta treat you maybe other people in the family have it, but their line isn’t necessarily affecting you.
Chris Shade, PhD
But mold it’s-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah. And everybody’s gotta deal with it. It is a toughie, but still the stronger we can make the detox pathways, the more leg up we can give you.
Chris Shade, PhD
Oh yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
So if you’re using, I mean, I said using your products, where do you like to start? If you had somebody who you felt in an inflammatory, either a house that they couldn’t quite clean yet, there was still some exposure, and you can’t move too fast.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, so like our push catch, you have this liver sauce and binder. Now that’s a little too strong for some of those people where you can’t move too fast, so you have to deconstruct it. And what’s inside of it, BitterX, and almost everybody can handle that. It’s just moving bile because bile gets stuck and it’s a big block in the detox, the bile transporters are the toxin transporter. So you gotta get that going. There’s phosphatidylcholine. Phosphatidylcholine is part of thinning and fluidizing the bile. So you bring that in and that’s helping rebuild all of the membranes and stuff. And then it’s got some mast cell stabilizers, quercetin and luteolin.
Now they’re also NRF2 up regulators but they’re much more tolerated than the lipoic acid, and something like sulforaphane which is the most toxic of ’em, it’s the strongest but it’s harmonic toxin. So you wanna take that out and you’ll have your bidders, your PC, and then start, you use Hista-Aid is our product, that’s just quercetin and luteolin and DIM, and you start bringing that up slowly. If they’re really moldy a little bit more DIM, ’cause DIM can reverse a lot of the blocks on NRF2. And so the bitters and the PC, they can usually go right into that, and then you bring up these others, you might bring up the milk thistle. And if they’re really inflamed, you’re gonna have to crutch ’em up a little bit with vitamin C and then you’re gonna see how they respond to the glutathione.
Now the other tool that I use a lot in the really inflamed ones and tons in autism is CBD. So the CBD comes in and it lowers the inflammation, creates the window, where you can like open up the paths and dump some toxin out. So open up the window, dump, open up the window, dump. And like you said, the virtuous cycle, once that starts going, the more you get, the more you get.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
But when we started coupling the bio flow to the binder and the CBD that opened all the doors to get into the difficult cases, and then what else you add in there, becomes a little bit more individualized.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
But I think that is a very, I mean just that concept, ’cause the CBD by lowering the reactivity of the inflammatory system, ’cause that’s what it’s kind of talking –
Chris Shade, PhD
And it works at an immune level because there’s cannabinoid receptors on the immune cells, but really getting that neurological autonomic level because it’s that neuro inflammation is deactivated, oh, what’s the name of them? The immune cells in the brain.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
The microglia.
Chris Shade, PhD
The microglia fighting with the glutamate receptors and the neurons and the CBD goes and it calms down the microglia, and calms down the glutamate receptors. And that then gives you this autonomic break while at an immunological level, the cannabinoids are turning down them too. So the whole neuro immune thing down is great.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, that’s ’cause I said every, every immune cell as far as I am concerned is a neurologic cell.
Chris Shade, PhD
That’s great way to look at it.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
I’m just a big believer that this is like, hey, if your brain’s not happy, your immune system’s not happy. And if your immune system’s not happy-
Chris Shade, PhD
Your brain’s not happy.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Your brain’s not gonna be happy. And I love that. I think that’s a very nice, ’cause you see this is, people often get over ambitious when they first start trying to get healthy. And if you’re really inflamed, and you wanna do some at yourself work, I think that the CBDs, again, people are often afraid of CBD because they’re worried about they react badly to marijuana and they’re gonna get crazy and anxious but for most people, I said, CBDs are non psychoactive. They can make you sleepy occasionally, but they’re not gonna make you get really anxious. I mean, again, nothing’s a hundred percent. One thing I have to say, my caveat for everybody is I’ve seen one person react. I never want to guarantee anything.
Chris Shade, PhD
No, I think some people, if they had bad marijuana experiences have developed an allergy to CBD and those are the paradoxical ones.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Right, right, and that’s-
Chris Shade, PhD
In the absence of that, CBD has done so much for our ability to treat autism, Lyme, mold, any toxicity, just by taking that autonomic break and letting the body go, okay, I’m gonna dump some stuff out.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And, and remember, the beauty is that we’re using the cannabinoid system, is it rather complex system, that’s been anandamide and palmitoylethanolamide, these are all natural cannabinoids. So our body, was set up for this. We’re not adding foreign chemicals to our system. That is the beauty, this wasn’t a Frankenstein molecule that somebody came up with.
Chris Shade, PhD
No.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Your body can process this stuff. It’s not harsh. And I think that’s what we have to-
Chris Shade, PhD
And that’s the beauty of CBD, is it tones up your own formation and sequestration of your own endo cannabinoids. The CBD doesn’t hit the receptors, it makes your own stuff that hit ’em. A little bit of THC in there from the natural amount really helps hit the receptor. It’s much more efficient than even your own cannabinoid. So that’s why you want a little bit of THC in the CBD if you want it, that’s called full spectrum CBD.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
If you want no THC, ’cause you’re drug tested is really, unless you have psychosis, your apprentice psychosis or drug tested, that the only reason you wanna take the THC out, then that’s called broad spectrum CBD. And then you’ll never drug test or anything, and that’s the safest one, but it’s better to have just that-
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, no, no. That is something that we’ve been working in California with medical marijuana for a long time. And that’s something that the people who are experts have been telling me for years that, if you’re not getting anywhere with just CBD-
Chris Shade, PhD
Add some THC.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
tiny, tiny little bit in there, doesn’t have to be much a half a percent, just a little bit is enough to get that system to really open up.
Chris Shade, PhD
Totally, totally is.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
But getting back to there basic approach, is lower the inflammation.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yep.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Get a little bit of tiny binders in there because too much, you know, the whole thing is if you move stuff too fast and really sensitive people, you get into trouble, but the beauty is-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, and binders, you think they’re passive, but they’re not. They’re like magnets, they’re sucking. And if I take too much binder, I get a little nauseous. You take a shot of bitters and poof it’s gone. ‘Cause that’s opening up that bio flow. So coupling the bio flow and the binding together while you’ve calmed down the inflammation is what opens the door for the whole thing.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, that is a very nice, a kind of like first step gentle plan, and again, if you’re doing this at home, how do you say, when people have been chronically ill, if you kind of have to often take your own health into your own hands a little bit.
Chris Shade, PhD
You gotta feel it.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
But I don’t want you going out there buying drugs or taking like a ton of stuff. But if you try a drop or two of things and find out how your body reacts, you’re gonna be able to talk to your doctor and give them information. I’m a great believer in that my patients feedback is what can really guide me. And so I love when people come in, oh, I tried that and its something they tell me, I tried that, and it made me sick, it’s questions how much did you try? Or did you do it together? Because if you did it, you’re right –
Chris Shade, PhD
That’s where like lipoic acid, that’ll get cells to dump out, but it’s not gonna get the liver to process. It’s not gonna get anything to bind, and so that’s why a lot of people were afraid of lipoic acid, but once you couple it to the bio flow and the binder, then you’re good, but you never start with that. And that’s why I really love quercetin as a slow, it’s an NRF2, but not too strong. It’s AMPK so it’s bringing those two together and it’s a mast cell stabilizer and it’s uric acid blocker. It’s like working all over the place, and its a sirtuin activator, PGC-1 activator. So it’s working on mitochondria, but it’s doing it a little bit slower, a little bit more gently.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah, well that goes again, that’s where the nutraceuticals at the right doses are just so important-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
because it gives you a chance to find out what your body can dance with.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
without blowing you up if you use them gently. And that’s the thing. So don’t start off with a thousand milligrams of quercetin and say it didn’t work.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Anyway, I never like to talk too much about dosing one on these things because it is random. I have discovered that anything can blow some people up. And so we always wanna be gentle, but I think of just giving people the ability to start to realize that these are healing cycles. These are cycle of self protection that have just gone awry.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
nd that you’re not necessarily broken and it’s just that your body is functioning. It’s just the wrong message. It’s like having a fire department that old, that the alarms going off. So the guys are always running around-
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
and they’re spraying water and it’s not useful anymore. Now they’re just causing water damage.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yes, and then you get the mold from the water damage. Then you got a mold issue.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
You got a total mess. Anyway, I’m mixing metaphors there badly.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
But Chris, this has been a lot of fun as always. It’s just so cool to just talk about the amazing biochemistry of the body. It’s a magical system and the learning goes on.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
And I wanna thank you for taking the learning and bringing it to the next level of making products that we can use in creative ways. I mean that’s really cool.
Chris Shade, PhD
Yeah, it’s been wonderful. And the more you learn, and then we hear like, ah, you get bored until something new comes up and then you’re like, ah, now I can put more of the puzzle together.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Yeah.
Chris Shade, PhD
Just keep going.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
That is for sure. That is for sure. So I just wanna thank you so much for your time, and we’ll check in again and get another dose-
Chris Shade, PhD
Definitely will. Yeah, it’s been a pleasure, Eric. Thanks so much. I love talking to you in all these forums.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Go great. It’s same here. Looking forward to it. Okay, have a great one.
Chris Shade, PhD
Thank you, you too.
Eric D. Gordon, M.D.
Bye.
Downloads
Download Transcript
