Repair Your Brain-Immune-Gut Axis For Gut Health

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

I am excited and so thankful that you are asking me to speak on this topic.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Let us dive right in. I actually do not think that I have heard you talk in depth before. What got you so excited about and passionate about the brain-immune gut axis? What was your journey to become an expert on this?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah. And I started in a chiropractic school, been exposed to chiropractic neurology, and one of the lectures, it was actually notes somebody took, a lecture that they typed out and I read it and it just got me so interested in the brain. Basically what I was saying is that we have mast cell spindles in our mast cell and these are our sensory organs. And our mast cell hat detect changes in length and basically proprioception. And these mast cell spindles are under the influence of gravity, are constantly being activated. Just by being sudden there even when you are sleeping gravity is constantly pulling on our sensory receptors within our organs and it is a constant barrage of signals to our brain that drives our brain function to keep our brain essentially alive. And to me that was just like, whoa, mind blown that we have this world that is created where gravity is even sustaining our life. This is why astronauts in space do not do so well because under zero gravity they do not have that constant pull. And in fact, astronauts they have to constantly exercise to create that artificial pull like gravity for them to not degenerate. And it is just kind of helps me to understand how wonderful our body is made and how important our brain function is. And then later on in my career, when I started learning about functional medicine that is when I really started to connect the dots between neurologic function, and metabolic function, and immune system function. 

And when I started seeing people with chronic conditions they often showed up in my office with a set of brain symptoms like brain fog,  short-term memory issue, depression, can not concentrate, and then they also have immune system problems like they have chronic inflammation, they have chronic infections they can not clear and then also show up with a lot of gut issues like leaky gut, gas, bloating, reflux, IBS, SIBO. And it did not matter what kind of chronic condition they had whether it was Lyme disease, or mold issues, or Hashimoto’s, they all showed up with, I have brain fog, I have inflammation, I have GI problems. That led me to kind of make the connection that, okay, the brain immune gut kind of work in tandem together as an axis, and when one area this domino falls the other pieces fall with it as well. That helps because it simplify things. One of the things with a chronic condition is that people can show up with like 50 symptoms and they think they have 50 problems going on with them and they may be seeking 50 different solutions for 50 problems when in fact they just have one big problem, as I call it and this helps us to simplify and be able to target the most important things first and that really helped to get us better results and help simplify the protocols for clients.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is such a great point. Okay. I really want to unpack it in-depth today. What is the brain-immune gut axis, why is it so important to people who are working on their health right now?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah. The brain-immune gut axis is basically these interconnecting, physiological, and immunological pathways between the brain-immune in gut. Now, we have heard a lot about the brain-gut axis or the gut-brain axis depends on who you read, the people who are more, the gut people, they are going to say the brain-gut axis, people who are the brain people they are going to say more brain-gut axis. But really, it is a bi-directional highway, it is not one is more important the other they are all important and they drive each other’s function. And we heard so much about the brain-gut axis or the gut-brain axis, but I feel that the immune system is kind of left out and is not getting as much attention. Because really the interface between the brain and the gut is the immune system. The immune system is the go-between and the messenger through cytokines and through these inflammatory pathways that really communicate what is going on between the brain and the gut. If we are going to address the brain-gut connection or the gut-brain connection we have to understand the immune system and how that play a role in how all of these things does function. And when we do that we are able to become more customized and targeted and at the very least understand why we are doing something like if we are doing a parasite cleanse, how is that going to help us to balance not just our gut but our immune system? And when we address mold issues, how does that help with our immune system to balance itself so that it is not creating havoc? This is what I aim to relate to people.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is really important. When we think about this and placing this axis against the backdrop of modern-day stressors, how have you seen that shift for people in your time in practice? What have you seen start to change for people when it comes to brain immune gut axis issues?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah. With modern-day stressors. And we are talking about environmental toxin exposure which is ubiquitous and it is not a question of whether you are exposed it is a question of how much and how long. And I would even add to that equation, not just how much and how low but how is your body dealing with it, how resilient are you to it, and how well are you able to handle the toxic burden that you have. Some people can handle it quite well, the genetics and just different microbiome makeup, they just can handle things better and other people, they get a whiff of something and they just fall apart. Everybody is different, we have to kind of just understand where they are. But definitely the rise of the environmental toxin, I believe, is creating a chronic inflammatory effect. Now, let us talk about inflammation for a little bit because we are talking about the brain immune gut access. And really, inflammation is an immune system mediator response. We can talk about inflammation without saying that it is the immune system that is doing that. When you bang into a wall and your elbow swells up, it is not like your elbow swells up, no, it is your immune system that is doing that, that is causing the elbow to swell, bringing white blood cells to the area to clear cellular debris, this is all immune system. When we have inflammation, inflammation is not good or bad, inflammation is a natural process within the body that is vital to us staying alive. In fact, the weapon of destruction of the immune system, how your immune system get rid of pathogen, that is inflammation. When you think about immune system it is killing off pathogens. Inflammation is the tool and the weapon that uses to kill things off. We want inflammation which is do not want it to be there when we do not need it anymore. As a lot of people, they have so many stressors and triggers in the body and then your body also have this pathway that can drive this imbalance that cause this inflammation to stay and you do not swing the pendulum back to homeostasis so you stay chronically inflamed. 

Now, the problem with chronic inflammation is that it causes tissue destruction. Because when you have inflammation, remember, that is the weapon of destruction of your immune system trying to kill pathogens. But as a byproduct of killing pathogens, your tissue is going to get damaged as well. For example, if you have a cell that is infected by a virus or the way your body gets rid of that virus oftentimes by killing the cell that is infected with the virus, this is what natural killer cells do. Natural killer cells were identifying markers on the cell that will tell whether their cell is infected with the virus or not, these are major histocompatibility compatibility complexes. And the presence or the absence of these MHC complexes inform the immune system whether a cell is being affected. And then that all costs these natural fuel us to go hunt down these cells that look like nothing cells anymore. And by killing off your own cell that has a viral infection it gets rid of the virus or it gets rid of the possibility the virus can reproduce themselves inside the virus and spread to other cells but at the same time, you are killing your own cell, you are losing tissue, you are losing your cells. And that also creates cellular debris because that dead cell that is bursting and being killed off is going to just spill out the body parts. And when your immune system see body parts it is like a signal that we are under attack. Now, imagine you take a nice stroll through the forest, the birds are chirping and then you see an arm of a human laying on the ground, I mean, you will be kind of freaked out, you will be like, there is an axe murderer in the forest, you are run and you tell the cops, you are telling people about this, you can look out for the killer, that is what happens when you have cellular debris. By having infections and inflammation you are creating cellular debris fields that is going to alert the immune system to come and try to clean up the cellular debris. But the way your immune system play up the cellular debris is using the same weapon of mass destruction that it used to kill infection to clear the cellular debris, you are basically creating this chronic inflammatory cascade that leads into more tissue destruction. And this is why people get heart disease, they get arthritis, they get autoimmune disease, they get tissue destruction associated with the inflammation. This is really important to address by understanding that inflammation is not good or bad, it just is but if it does not swing that can cause a problem. And chronic toxicity and these chronic modern-day triggers is the main driver of this chronic inflammatory response at least to chronic disease.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is such a great explanation. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. And it is definitely some very memorable roles.. I will never unsee the arm in the forest. That is a really good description of what the chronic inflammatory response is like when you are dealing with infections, when you are dealing with toxins driven, and inflammation. And also, I am really wondering how in your mind does this with brain dysfunction. And how does that lead to chronic issues, what is the relationship there? Can you unpack that?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Inflammation, of course, inflammation is kind of a catchword, this is a process where the immune system is trying to get rid of something. Now, there is many different pathways and many different parts of the immune system with many different types of immune cells that are responsible for different types of inflammation. That is kind of a talk in itself just to go over that. But inflammation can come from different sources. When we just say inflammation a lot of times people will say, well, I have inflammation, what pill do I take for inflammation? Well, taking some anti-inflammatories can help, dampening inflammation so you kind of reduce the damage there. But if you do not identify the underlying trigger for that inflammation then you put out a fire here but the fire starts in another place, you are just constantly chasing your tail. 

There is different types of inflammation that can infect the brain and a different type of inflammation that can infect the gut. And so, for example, in the gut, mostly, we are going to encounter things like pathogens or dysbiosis which is a situation where you may have a situation where you do not have a lot of bad bacteria but you do not have enough good bacteria, then the ratio between the bad and good is off balance. Or you can have a situation where your good bacteria are just fine but you have too much bad bacteria, that could be a problem. Or you can even have a situation where you have way too much good bacteria, that is bad too. Because bacteria to the body is bacteria even if it is commensal. A lot of times we say, their beneficial bacteria more the better, no, if you have way too much beneficial bacteria, guess what your body will use, weapons of mass destruction, inflammation, and white blood cells comes to the scene. It will try to kill these bacteria that is way too much. This is the sense of this neutrophil bacterial by stable balance which is a fancy way of saying your immune system and all our microbiome, all of your organisms that live in your body have to maintain this balance where your immune system kind of has an edge. You are not never, never sterile, there is no sterile human being. We all have like trillions of germs on us at all times, some are pathogenic, some opportunistic, and some are commensal that lives with us. But any of those germs if it grows way too much is going to present a problem and your immune system is going to start to increase the inflammatory response. 

In the gut then we are dealing a lot with these pathogens. However, environmental toxins can definitely impact the gut as well. Glyphosate can damage the gut microbiome by inhibiting Shikimate pathway. That is one good example. But in my practice I see many other things causing problems with the gut microbiome, fire retardant material, EPA, you name it, these chemicals can all be a stressor to the gut microbiome or to the gut lining itself and cause leaky got in other issues. Now in the brain, we do not have the same set of pathogens that can affect the brain, although some can still get in the brain by a certain parasite can be in the gut, can be in the brain, they can travel into the brain, but the most part your brain is going to be has a blood-brain barrier which is the blood vessel that supply blood to the brain and that serves as the barrier so that not just anything can get through. Although viruses like Herpes Simplex Virus and Herpes Family Viruses can get through the blood-brain barrier they have a propensity for it. And then in the brain, we are dealing a lot with these environmental toxins like heavy metals and environmental toxins that can either be stored in the brain or they can cause a lot of oxidative stress which causes tissue destruction in the brain. And again, once you have tissue destruction your body will use in the immune cells to go clean out the cellular debris which can again meet the inflammation. I see these triggers, we have to hunt for them, we have to understand the landscape of what we are dealing with modern-day environment. And that is what makes detox which is a topic that you talk a lot about, Sinclair, so important that we really need to do regular maintenance. I come from a time where, I am an autocrat, it was internal combustion engines, okay? I did not grow up with EVs, we were told to change the oil every 3000 miles, that is a good thing for us to do for our body as well.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. It is a great way to say it. Let us talk about where to go from here. Because so many people listening in are just taking control of their health and they have a new diagnosis and it is frustrating and scary and they have been maybe waiting for a label for a long time and they thought, I just got the short end of the stick, this runs in my family, and now it is finally bad enough that I actually have an autoimmune disease label, or we are calling it Crohn’s or colitis now or calling it SIBO, there is finally a label to apply to this. And I think this is where Western medicine has really left us to perpetuating a cycle of suffering until it is finally bad enough that there is a word to apply to it. For those people who are listening,  how should they be thinking about the gut-brain immune axis and how can they take control of this?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah. That is a great point I usually made. I think the first thing I would tell people is to, there is a time and place to get a diagnosis, you want to know what you have, but there is a time and place to get a diagnosis. But more important than the diagnosis is more important that we understand the mechanism and the root cause of that diagnosis. Because if you are just get a diagnosis is nothing more than, as you say, a label. And the label itself tells you nothing about the root cause of it necessarily it just tells you the symptoms that you have associated with that. I would encourage people to deemphasize the diagnosis and emphasize more of the understanding, the mechanism, and how did that tissue or organ became dysfunctional in the first place. What is the cellular process that lead that to become that way, and what are the causes that caused that to happen? And that will help people to really start to seek solutions in a different way. 

Now, when it comes to brain immune gut axis, again, when I say the brain immune gut axis and then how we go about addressing it, this is all just kind of using that as a conceptual way to understand how your body works and there is a way to understand the mechanism. When it comes to brain immune gut is understanding that, okay, there is a brain immune gut connection that if you have gut dysfunction that can drive neurological dysfunction. Your depression, and your brain fog, and your memory loss may be caused by gut issues, you do not want to just, I have a memory issue, what memory supplement do I take? But rather maybe you need to look at the gut or I have gut issues, okay, you may need to address the gut but do you also have a concurrent vagus nerve problem or some kind of brain issue that is driving the gut problem that you need to look at as well? This is causing people to look at the mechanism in understanding why things are happening so they can empower themselves rather than looking at a label or a diagnosis. That is how I think this brain-immune gut concept can help people to get to the root cause better.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. I think that is really well said from a bio-regulatory medicine perspective. All of my great teachers used to say, we are always looking for regulation and being providing the body with the opportunities to restore regulation to itself. And in a very real way you could look at a chronic condition, yes, there is a toxin driver, and yes, there is there is other root causes and the mechanism of chronic illness that can be considered a bad habit of the brain.

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Wow. I like that.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

It is cool. It is a really interesting way to think about it. I mean, that is why I love the way you talk about the brain-gut immune axis because when think about nervous systems regulating every aspect of digestion and every aspect of the immune system, of course, we have to talk about these things together. Let us. go ahead, what do you think about that? And then I have another question for you.

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

I absolutely agree. We need to take it as a holistic approach. And I think often time in natural health care, I think in the past or even currently there may be some practitioners that have a tendency to still treat symptoms with a supplement instead of looking at it from a holistic model. And sometimes people think just because they are taking a natural supplement that automatically makes it holistic, now, that does not make it holistic at all, I just means you are taking a natural supplement instead of a drug. But what is your underlying approach and your philosophy in dealing with this? This is more of a philosophical approach. But philosophy is important because philosophy is what drives your behavior, you believe based on science. Philosophy is not just talk it is also based on science. And philosophy and science are intimately linked together. You have to have a way of thinking about things as useful. And if the way that you think about things is like, if I take a natural supplement then I am doing something natural, then that is not useful because you are not necessarily getting at the mechanism in the root cause. And this is a reason why I talk about these things probably in a more detailed way, and then some people do because I think it is necessary and I think people can get it. I think if I just speak English people can understand these deep concepts and be able to understand the nuances because the nuances is really where it is at.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, that is the perfect to get to the next question I was going to ask you. Because we are getting more and more advanced students and our audience, thanks to events like the ones that you and I do, are really helping to educate people on that base layer, how to take control back over their own health and at the same time people are getting sicker. Pretty complex right now. We get students in all the time. And I know there are many people in the audience today that would describe themselves as advanced student and they are doing vagus nerve work, and they have been working on their leaky gut, and they are very intentional about their food, obsessive even to the point of stress, and they think that they understand their immune system and yet they are still not making the kind of progress that they would hope to have. What would you say to the advanced students in the audience today about their brain-immune gut axis? And how to be thinking about. What have they overlooked or where should they go next?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah, that is a great point. And I do see that myself as well in people out there. A lot of patients come to me and already have done everything, they are almost like semi-professionals when it comes to the amount of knowledge they have gathered throughout the years and they have a whole arsenal of supplements in the cupboard that they take for different situations and very specific, how they do those things but yet they still have certain issues that is not resolving. I think it is not a lack of knowledge or definitely not a lack of trying, I think that the reason for that is because I think sometimes the body is so complex that, and even for myself, I am always learning and just when I think I know something is like, I do not know it that well. I think the main thing is we have to stay humble. And just because we hear it out there in the summit land or on Google does not mean that they are all there to know. You have to know that we have limitations. Even the top scientists know that there is things that they do not know. We have to be humble, we have to be good observers, good scientists. Science is innately an empirical type of field of study. That means empirical, meaning your observing your response. Kind of like mast cell testing as a way of empirical observation, you do something and you mast cell test, and you see is that strong or weak and this is give you an idea into the body. 

I think for advanced students, I think they need to continue to learn. And really actually for me, the big turnaround for me that really helped me to up my game is get back into the basic sciences. I just, these books, they are not virtual backgrounds they are they are real. I would not say that I read every single one of them. But some of these books, textbooks, I just dive into basic sciences, really understand, okay, immune system, what is adaptive immunity, what is an immunity, how does body produce antibodies, what are all the different branches, I just dive into it. And then I have basic sciences understanding so I can actually converse and when I read the literature I can understand it. And that is really what took my game really to another level because now I can actually understand how these things work, when I read literatures I can understand that versus a lot of people, they just kind of say, I am inflamed, okay, turmeric, yeah, they work, but how do they work? And it is almost too simplistic, there is other pieces to the puzzle. And the more knowledge you have the better you will do. One perfect example is this. When I talk about, I think a lot of people who want to send TH1 and TH2, they have heard about it. But a T-helper 1 is your innate immunity and TH2 is your adaptive immunity. And I think people need to just have a basic understanding what that is. Innate immunity is a part of the immune system that gets pissed off and go kill things, that is the weapon of mass destruction that is your innate immunity, they are the ones that go out and kill pathogens. And then your adaptive immunity are the smarter ones, they make antibodies so that you have long-term immunity, those are the snipers, they do not just go spray machine gunfire on the bad guy, they are the snipers that they are very specific, one antibody for one specific pathogen. And our body works in that way. 

And there is situations where TH1 and TH2 activity can become imbalanced and that can be a driver for a lot of people symptoms. And some people can have TH1 dominant issue, some people can have TH2 dominant issues. And when you are TH1 dominant you tend to be very inflamed, active tissue destruction. When TH2 dominant you tend to have a lot more allergies and environmental sensitivity because you are making way too much antibodies. And antibody, when you do food sensitivity tests, what are you measuring? You are measuring antibody IGG to food proteins. When you are measuring Hashimoto’s, what are you measuring? Antibody to TPO enzyme, thyroid tissue. You can even measure antibody to metals to see if we toxin. re immune reactivity. The point is that when you are TH2 dominant you are going to have a lot more sensitivity, when you are TH1 dominant you are going to get a lot more inflammatory response. And just by understanding that it will help you to see patterns in yourself or client populations, they will be able to drive your decision-making that, okay, maybe there is a tissue dominance situation there, I need to dampen that with certain nutrients or find drivers of TH2 dominance. For example, parasites are TH2 dominant drivers, because parasites are too big for the immune cells to eat. The innate immune cell TH1, they are primarily macrophages and neutrophils and the way they kill things is by phagocytosis, they engulf a pathogen and they spill enzymes on them, digest, and degrade them. Well, parasites are too big for these little white blood cells to involve, the way your immune system kill them is by using eosinophils which is the specific white blood cell, they have enzymes in them and what they do with the eosinophil will spill enzyme on the parasite to digest them and degrade them basically bleach them to death. And that is how eosinophils work. And eosinophils is a TH2 immune cell. And then by the way, mold is a potent TH2 immune cell stimulator. 

If you have somebody with a parasite and they have mold they are going to be probably very TH2 dominant because that part of immune system trying to actively get rid of those things so they are going to probably present with a lot of allergy symptoms, they are going to present a lot of drainage, a lot of mucus. Because that is what tissue dominance does, it creates drainage so you can wash that stuff away so then we can identify that and be able to say, okay, that is probably what is going on. Or someone with TH2 dominant will be suspicious of TH2 drivers like parasites and mold and other things. Knowing these things just helps you to be able to zero in better to help you to get near the ballpark where the problem is instead of completely on the left field where you are not even close to it. That is what I mean by just learning, just get better equipped with knowledge.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That is such a great way to lay that out for everybody. Because what we see happening when we come as students or clients come into our practice or our groups, is that they are on 37 things and their naturopath put them on 27 of them because they were low-end 27 markers and then they watched some ads or listen to podcasts and they are like, “I’ll add tumeric, and omegas, and this, and when you look at the full shopping bag of supplements it makes no sense together like whatsoever. And you could actually be aggravating the body’s inflammatory responses and being while you are doing it, what you think is like the best thing to to heal. And it is actually prolonging the issue because you are asking the body to process these things that are too much work and are actually aggravating the issue without getting to the root cause. I really appreciate you taking the time to break that down for people. I am really curious what immune support you prefer in the context of this access amidst all of these stressors today. Are there any tools that you really rely on that you think have broad applications for folks?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah. And the macro is the brain immune gut axis. The reasons they are axis is because they all impact the immune system. And the immune system impacts the gut and brain. And brain impacts the immune system in the gut. From my perspective, there is several different ways to impact the immune system, of course, a lot of this is context-dependent, depending on what is right. But if they have gut dysbiosis, okay, then the obvious thing to do would be to decrease the pathogenic load if they have too much bad bacteria, let us say, if that is the problem. Because if they have too much bad bacteria. By the way, having gut dysbiosis is very inflammatory and is also very TH2-promoting at the same time. Your gut lining is a factory for inflammatory cytokines, it just it is just really good at making cytokines and inflammation. The reason because if you think about it, your gut is the portal or entry for things that you put into your mouth, it is constantly gut pathogens going and germs going through. Your gut lining is lined with immune cells that are there to just kill things, there is really a factory, an inflammation. But if you have way too much stuff going on like toxins, and infection, and stress, and blood sugar issues, then you are going to just make way too much cytokines, now you are going to damage the gut lining, you are going to get leaky gut, you can get results and more inflammation. Decreasing pathogenic bloat, if you have one, it is always a good thing to do because you are taking the stress of the immune system to have to do that fight alone. 

Antimicrobials, berberine and caprylic acid for fungus, artemisinin, sweet wormwood, and things like oregano oil, these antimicrobial herbs can help just lower pathogenic load and take the load off in the system, that is the gut. On the brain’s perspective, how can we use the brain to improve immune function? Well, we know that there is a brain-gut connection that if your brain’s inflamed your guts inflames, your guts inflames, your brain’s inflamed. A lot of times leaky gut leads to blood blood-brain barrier and leads to brain inflammation and brain inflammation leads to a leaky blood-brain barrier and increases the gut inflammation. We may need to dampen brain inflammation at the same time. There are certain anti-inflammatories that can cross the blood-brain barrier. For example, if you take your classic Wobenzyme type of enzyme, proteolytic enzymes, like your.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Love my Wobenzyme. I had a whole chapter of health with lots of Wobenz.

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

These proteolytic enzymes they do not cross the blood-brain barrier, they do not dampen inflammation in the brain, and they can work well. If you have arthritis or something.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

In the body, that is fine, yeah.

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Then you use a specific anti-inflammatory that can cross the blood-brain barrier, that would be like things like turmeric, that would be things like epigenome,  luteal, and these flavonoid compounds so then you can get selective with that. Now I would say also stimulating the vagus nerve can also dampen inflammation. I think a lot of people are not aware how important the vagus nerve is in its role in inhibiting macrophage activation within the liver, spleen, and intestinal lining. What that means is that there is a cholinergic pathway in which the vagus nerve, when is firing, has a dampening effect on your body’s cytokine production, specifically in the liver, spleen, and the intestine, now I said, okay, what if I do not have any problem with my spleen, liver, and intestine? Well, that is not the point, because your liver, and your spleen, and your intestine produce the vast majority of the cytokines, inflammatory cytokines that circulate in your entire body. 

So your ankle, your liver, and spleen is going to make some cytokines that is going to go to your ankle to help with that. If you have systemic inflammation that is chronic, that is excessive, that needs to be dampened, stimulating vagus nerve can have an impact on that, that is brain, we talk about gut. And specifically within the immune system, how can we support the immune response? Well, depends on what we are trying to do, if you are trying to kill an infection then you want to just full bore kill the infection. Sometimes if you have an acute case and you have an infection you are trying to kill you may not want to pour on so much anti-inflammatory because you are kind of dampening the process of trying to kill it. 

Because inflammation is the way your body kill infection. If you get inflammation too much excessively then you kind of hamper that process. If we are trying to kill infection then we want to focus on that and maybe after a few weeks, then maybe if the infection is under control we can start lay in the anti-inflammatories. If someone is really inflamed then obviously we can lay on anti-inflammatory and while watching if they have chronic infection. It is kind of a assessing the situation with the person, clinically speaking. Again, the more things that we can look out for as markers for whether someone has inflammation or infections and what are the underlying drivers. And I say underlying driver, we say toxins, infection a lot, of course, those are the main things, but I want to remind people that blood sugar problem, insulin resistance is one of the biggest drivers of inflammation and is also the most common. 

And you know that by just looking at how many people in the US have diabetes or pre-diabetes. I mean, that alone is a huge driver. Now, sure, there is probably a certain percentage of those people with diabetes or pre-diabetes that have environmental toxin exposure causing insulin resistance, that could be a thing. That is a thing that a lot of these toxins can literally cause insulin resistant and block insulin receptor. But a lot of these people with diabetes or pre-diabetes simply is just eating way too much sugar and carbs or processed food and not getting enough exercise, they are getting pre-diabetes and diabetes and that is a huge driver for inflammation as well. We want to mind that as well.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. We have been sold a food pyramid that makes great customers long-term for big pharma. It is working out awesome as a business model. Hey, you have covered so many great gems for people today both the beginners and the advanced students in the audience. I really want to give you a chance to speak to the practitioners listening right now. And I love what you said about staying humble and continuing to learn. And I totally agree in our mentorship that we do for practitioners. Our first six weeks are about unlearning, what you have been taught that does not work or is misleading in this day and age. And I really want to give you a chance to share your thoughts on like myth-busting right now. Any myths that persist for practitioners that you really want to unpack for people and advice for practitioners looking to get better at dealing with this complex time.

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Yeah. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to share that. I have a few thoughts on it. But really the most important thing I think for practitioner is be able to ask really good questions. The quality of the questions that you ask is going to determine the quality of the outcome for your patients and what result that you get. Because if the question is, this person has a leaky gut, what supplement do I give them for that? Then it becomes very prescriptive. We do not want to be prescriptive we want to be thinking about the mechanism as I said earlier, I think about what got them there and what is the physiological process and the biological process that is driving this and then finally, what is the trigger for it? The reason is because you can just get rid of a trigger, but sometimes people just need some help, they just need some rescuing, they just need to have the fire put out, at least temporarily, while we are looking for the root cause. There is some hope so they can have some relief because ultimately they are looking for relief. When people get them the relief and we just bring them along for a long period of time without them feeling better and say, we are still chasing the root cause, then they can lose faith and they may not stay in a fight long enough to get to the resolve. 

We all understand root cause, it may take some time. But in my opinion, if we can do the right thing, usually we can get them some type of improvement symptomatically within a month or two, I think that is reasonable to expect that and then as we continue to work on the root cause. That does not mean within a month or two they are going to feel completely better but it should be something, give them a carrot, keep them in the fight so they can continue.. That comes down to really good questions about their history and understanding what that history means as far as the mechanism that is driving that particular symptom. I think just being very thoughtful and intelligent instead of being too quick to recommend a supplement, think about the supplement in context of the overall condition. I think that is probably good advice for all of us.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. I got full-body chills when you said that. The quality of the questions that the questions you ask your patients and clients determine the quality of their results. Yeah, that is definitely, I hope everybody puts that up in their office. And it is so true. I just love you, man. Thanks for being such a bright light in this landscape and for giving ready hope. And I love the nuance with which you approach these topics and also how you make it really accessible to take the next steps.

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Thank you so much for having me, Sinclair.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. You are so welcome. Where can people find you and your work right now?

Peter Kan, DC, DACNB, FAAIM, CFMP, CGP

Absolutely. Thank you for letting me share. I am on YouTube. I have a lot of free videos out there just speaking a lot about my thoughts and these concepts. They can just go to YouTube and search, Dr. Peter Kan, and they will find me. I am on social media TikTok and Instagram, but also my website askdrkan.com. There is just information about the practice as well.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Awesome. Thanks so much.