Survival Paradox And Galectin-3 In Mast-Cell Activation Syndrome

Beth O’Hara, FN

Welcome back to the Reversing Mast Cell Activation and Histamine Intolerance Summit. I’m your host, Beth O’Hara, of Mast Cell 360, and I’m really delighted to have with us today Dr. Isaac Eliaz who’s an expert in the field of integrative medicine and he focuses on cancer, detoxification and complex conditions. He’s a respected physician and researcher, a bestselling author and educator, and a mind-body practitioner, and he partners with leading research institutes, including Harvard National Institute of Health, Columbia and others, to co-author studies on integrative therapies for cancer, heavy metal toxicity and other areas. He’s also a founder medical director of Amitabha Medical Clinic in Santa Rosa, California, and he’s one of our biggest supporters for this summit, making it possible to get this information out to you. So just wanna send you, Dr. Eliaz, a huge amount of gratitude for your support in helping us get this summit out to people.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Thank you. Thank you. I’m so happy to be part of this summit. It is such a, not only an important topic, but a topic which is growing in its importance and its impact on the health of so many people.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It definitely is, and I wanted to just ask, how did you get into the fields that you specialize in? Because it seems like for all the practitioners that we’re talking with, there’s something that drove us into these areas that aren’t as common and particularly in the kind of discoveries that you’ve made we’re gonna talk about.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So I’m a little bit of a different story. I started my journey in the healing art at age 15. So I was always drawn to multidimensional thinking and my father was an engineer. I was in Korea, the family from native of Israel. So I learned, I practiced TaeKwonDo and yoga in Korea when I was there for about a year and a half, and I continued with it. So when I went to medical school for a six-year program in Tel Aviv University, I already knew that I’m gonna be a holistic doctor. I was already a yoga teacher. So as I went to medical school, I trained in yoga. I trained yoga teachers. I learned shiatsu. I learned Chinese medicines for three years, and when I did my internship and got my license, I came and did my master of science in Chinese medicine and really focused very deeply on Chinese medicine, on acupuncture on herbs. Then I studied classical homeopathy for many years. So I really studied integrative medicine in vertically, taking every field for a few years, then by the age of 40, I realized, wow, I really did a big journey. I went and did a residency and got my medical license in the United States, and through all these years I’ve specialized in cancer, but I also was very deeply involved in meditation and healing, especially through Buddhist practice. I spent 20 years, two months a year, in the mountains meditating and for 10 years, half a day. 

So all of this comes together now that one of my missions in my early 60s, my third act is to share my knowledge, share my heart and my decades of observations, some of it through my books, “The Survival Paradox” and through teaching. And then as an entrepreneur, inquisitive researcher, I developed some important preparations, PectoSol, modified citrus pectin, is the key nutraceutical. It is 80 published papers, multiple studies, and I’m a researcher also in Galectin-3. I’ve just got my second, very large NEH grant for almost $2 million to research the effect of removal of Galectin-3 in sepsis, which is so relevant to our topic today. So that’s a little bit about who I am and my background and my journey.

Beth O’Hara, FN

That’s one of the things that I love about your work is we have similar, what seem like diverse interests, but they really all dovetail together around looking at both our perspectives, our mindset, how our nervous system’s functioning, what’s happening socially and culturally in terms of how this trickles down, to what’s going on biochemistry. And then I love that you’re also very rooted in the science and the research of it, in addition. And one of the things that really made me excited about talking today was reading your book, “The Survival Paradox,” and it touched on this bigger picture, this bigger perspective, of how all of these come together in terms of what’s happening in chronic health, what’s happening in cancer, what’s happening in mast cell activation. So why don’t we jump in there? ‘Cause I know this has been a really foundational book and one that if people haven’t read, they should pick up because it’s a paradigm shift. Can you describe for people what the survival paradox is?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Of course. So the survival paradox is a paradigm shift from the point of view that in integrative medicine, we recognize for some time that inflammation drives every chronic disease, and in acute diseases in medicine with COV!D and the cytokine storm have recognized it. But inflammation is really not the cause, it’s the expression. What causes inflammation and then irregularities in inflammation and immune response is our survival drive. So the same thing that makes us stay here and stay alive and survive through multiple generation, the same drive is the drive that causes us to age quicker, to be sick, to be unhappy, to suffer. So when we look at this a little bit deeper and we say, “What do we mean?” Our survival response is so innate in us, in every cell in our body for endless times. So, if this is true, it has to be automated. And the first automatic response that we can’t control is our autonomic nervous system response, our sympathetic response. What do we do? We either fight, which creates inflammation, or we flight, we run away by hiding and escaping. We create fibrosis. 

Both of them will lead eventually to dysfunction of the tissue, to organ failure, and to early death. And every disease will see this mechanism. So when we recognize it, we recognize, wow. If we can tune in to our survival response and transform it, anything and everything is possible. And the reason is because everything is changeable. So we have the sympathetic automatic response, which we know we all can get stressed and our heart rate goes up, and then we take a deep breath, we go out to nature, we meditate, we dance, we do whatever we wanna do. We take a few deep breath. We bring oxygen to the tissue, the survival response, the survival crisis goes down and we can balance it, although the more we’re in a sympathetic mode, the more we’re unable to do it and the effect goes up. But we also have a biochemical response and the biochemical response starts in minutes. And this biochemical response is driven by a protein that is called called Galectin-3, which I have been researching and made some of the most important discoveries that when we block it, we can prevent and attenuate inflammation and fibrosis, the basic drivers of every disease. So I’ve done it by developing PectoSol, modified citrus pectin, and now I’m trying to do it by removing Galectin-3 through therapeutic apheresis, filtration of the plasma. So this is the big picture and I’ll dive into Galectin-3 soon, but this is extremely relevant for MCA because MCA is an inappropriate survival risk.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It definitely is. We know that mast cells, their normal behavior should be to create inflammation appropriately and then reregulate and calm it back down. And this role of the nervous system in mast cell activation is something we’re talking about again and again on the summit, because it’s been underappreciated and underrecognized, but mast cells line every nerve ending, they line all the nerve sheaths, there’s receptors for neurotransmitters and neuro hormones. Mast cells are releasing neurotransmitters, neuro peptides. There’s that constant crosstalk with the nervous system. So whatever is happening with the nervous system is simultaneously happening with the mast cells and that interface, and that’s what I did my master’s research on was that interface and that role and what was happening there. One of the stories I share with people that illustrates how powerful this is, is that one of my first mast cell symptoms I get when I’m triggered is I get hand swelling. And it’ll happen in seconds, and I can trigger it by spiraling on stressful thoughts, and then I can shift my nervous system into a parasympathetic state through the training I’ve done and watch the inflammation drain out of my fingers.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Exactly.

Beth O’Hara, FN

I mean, within two minutes that happens.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Wow, exactly. Exactly, so this is the sympathetic level because we know blood vessels contract and expand. Yeah, thank you for sharing. I assume you already shared it, but that’s the story. So when we look at the survival response and we mention Galectin-3, which again, I’ll get to a little bit later. Galectin-3 is in the upstream survival paradox protein. So a small change in Galectin-3 will create a fountain of change in interleukin 6. So for example, in our research in sepsis, when animal get infected with sepsis, then we see Galectin-3 rising before interleukin 6, the main cytokine that start the chain. Then Galectin-3 will go up a little bit, interleukin 6 will go up a thousand fold compared to once or twice only doubling of Galectin-3, and then you will have systemic damage. When we block Galectin-3, we attenuate dramatically the IL-6 rise and there is no damage to the kidneys. There is a decrease of death from 60% to 20%. But even in ICU, when patient who were under systemic stress because of sepsis or because after cardiovascular surgery, no preexisting condition, they just come to the ICU for sepsis because they’re hospitalized after a bypass because they have to go, the level of Galectin-3 at admission will determine who will die from sepsis and who is going to actually get acute kidney injury. When a COV!D patient comes to the ER, regardless of their symptoms, their level of Galectin-3 in the ER will determine later who is gonna get into the ICU and who’s gonna die. So when we understand this, we understand, wow, there is a sympathetic system that you are connected enough to reverse. 

And I’m so glad you started with this because that’s really one of my missions with this interview and in my next interview is to really bring this home. And then, there is a biochemical. So if we look deeper at the survival paradox from the point of view of the mast cell activation, we have mast cell activation on a physical level, on an emotional level, on a psychological level, on a mental level. For example, in the Buddhist tradition, they often talk about the body, the physical body, speech, the expressions, the breath, like you said, when you can work with the breathing, the breath, the sound, and the mind, the thought pattern. Now the central nervous system changes with the mast cell are occurring in the place that affects our mental function, but they’re occurring on the biochemical level already. So when we want to address, we want to really address a MCA on the level of the physical, on the level of our expression. How do we talk? Like a patient will say, “Oh, I can’t take a supplement. I always react.” The moment you say, “I always react,” and you are into this mode, you’re going to react. That’s the speech. And the third thing that somebody can say, “Oh, I’m gonna do fine,” but inside they’re saying, “No way, I’m gonna get sick.” So this is the work, and I remember I one extreme case of a patient that is almost 20 years ago. They had such severe MCA. They had to go with the respirator everywhere. And they got to a place where, instead of expecting to get triggered, they got to a place where they became opened and nonjudgmental, accepting everything, and this allows them to go into like CVS Pharmacy and walk in the perfume aisle and breathe the smell and nothing would happen. Now, this is an extreme example of this transformation that you are describing. 

So the idea is that this comes and you change it. But the idea is that, can we change ourselves so it doesn’t come? So, that’s a meditative process. That’s what I teach when I teach what I call open heart medicine, how we connect with our heart and not with our head, and then we can avoid it. And again, we are jumping to deep ground, but I just wanna give you a taste because in the head we always judge. We like it. We don’t like it. Oh, it’s gonna be terrible. It’s going to be okay. In the heart, we never judge. The heart takes any blood that comes in, connects with the universe and gives out blood without judgment. So the moment we function from our heart, and we all are capable of functioning from our heart, and we all are capable of getting lost in our head, right? I do it, you do it, everybody does it. So really what MCA patients have to know, you have a choice. You really have a choice. I just was treating somebody with severe MCA, well educated, and they came with a certain symptom out of many symptoms, but really life is nonfunctional. And they came for therapeutic apheresis and I knew that they have an issue in their sinus that’s a reservoir of trigger. I have to treat, but they were so anxious about it. They said they couldn’t handle it. 

So, they came to the clinic, they flew in and I told this person, “I heard you don’t wanna wanna do this.” They said, “No.” Anyway, they suddenly decided to really do it. And while I was doing, these certain symptoms they had for eight years disappeared, but then a certain small pain from the injection that I told them in advance, 100% of the people are gonna get this. It was amazing to see how they were catching this pain and starting the spiral down of the symptom instead of saying, “Oh my God, my symptoms of eight years is gone!” But I caught them with again with creating enough space and just letting them relax. And then the first apheresis treatment, they were so stressed, it was a little bit hard for them. They left two days later, they were just, they were surrounded by light. You could see the happiness, the cellular happiness. Now I had only less than 48 hours. It’s something we need a little bit more, but this is the ability of the patient to recuperate and it requires, it takes two to tango. It takes the patient and for the health provider, it takes the health provider. We buy into the diagnosis. We buy into an expectation. We even buy into what we’re gonna do. And by doing this, we limit the possibility. So when I see a patient for the first time, I have no preconceived ideas. I ask them to write freestyle what’s important for them. Not, yeah, they fill the questionnaires, but it’s really what’s important for them. And then if I take their pulses, when I’m with them, now with Zoom, we know we develop the skill, but in person it’s a little bit better. 

There is no preconceived idea. So you let the story come. You let the space for things to change. So really the more we have space, the less we have congestion, the less we have biofilm, the less we have areas which are, which have no oxygen, the less we have a stress response in the body. So that’s an example, a little bit more of the survival paradox specifically for MCA and the beauty of this, I’m describing this because there are solutions. There are really solutions and I think in this sense, what you’re doing with this summit and the fact that you are bringing the nervous system and our thinking process with respect that certain people are very allergic and they are biochemically triggered hundred times faster than other people. And we have to accept their difficulty. We don’t have to doubt it. It’s very important. It’s part of acceptance, but we have to see where is the possibility, and we have to recognize, again in this summit, I don’t have time to talk about it, but for decades I’ve been drawing these diagrams about multi-generational healing. And then epigenetics came said, “Oh my God, I’m not crazy anymore.” There is science behind what I’m saying, and behind what Chinese medicine said millennials ago. It got lost. So the experience we have now is a result of multiple experiences from our past during this life. That’s the MCA. 

From our ancestors on a genetic level and on an epigenetic level. In my book, I describe my severe intense chest pain since I was a child. I’m named after my grandfather, Isaac, and so I describe in the chapter about healing the scars of survival, which is really very similar to the topic. How I’m named after my grandfather, who died at the age 50 in Israel. He was a Holocaust survivor, and when my grandmother died almost 50 years later on the graveside, my mother finally said, “10 out of his 12 siblings were killed by Hitler.” Nobody talked about it. So he stomached it in his stomach and got stomach cancer at age 50. And I knew this pain is not mine. And when I healed my pain through meditation and through letting go a few years ago, I have no more pain. I can pressure. I mean, almost 60 years later, it’s insane. But my mother was able to suddenly watch movies about the Holocaust she couldn’t watch before because the healing went back to him because his energy is affecting me. His epigenetics affecting me, and this effect affected her. So this is multi-generational healing. That’s the ultimate capacity. The reason why I’m telling this story, and the reason why this book is a paradigm shift is, not everybody is going to be a miracle, but anyone can be a miracle because we always have the ability to change and your story that you told is a great example of this. So you really opened with the ultimate solution, but the roads to get there are many, as you and I know very well.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And the key is to find what works. I find the exact same nervous system programs, the exact same spiritual practices don’t work for everybody, but to find what does, and it’s really about feeling deeply safe. And a big part of my healing has been to stay off the news, because I get stressed by it and I’m an extreme empath and I find that many people dealing with mast cell activation are empaths, and we feel everything. And we have to really have discernment about what we’re going to allow in, what we’re gonna allow affect us, and even those beliefs. So when I was early in figuring out what was going on with my chronic illness, I would be in these patient groups where everybody was spiraling downward mentally. So, I had to pull myself out of that and I always held onto that I could heal, that I knew I could completely heal. I didn’t know how, but I knew it could happen. And every time I hit a roadblock, and I’d have meltdowns and I’d give up and then I’d get up again the next morning, I’d go, “I know this is possible.” And to keep going, and for people who don’t know my story, I just wanna share that I was in horrific, chronic pain. I mean, level 10 pain. I was bedridden for periods of time. I could barely walk. It’s not like I had a mild case of mast cell activation. And it took me time to hone these things that you’re talking about, but they do work and now they’re part of my daily practice. I sit in nature every day and connect with what’s bigger than me, connect with the energy. And there’s a huge healing that happens just in that.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Totally, nature healing anything.

Beth O’Hara, FN

I love what you’re talking about with the generational pieces as well, and research is validating what you’re saying, that with these generational traumas, we have these epigenetic genetic expression changes. We have these mitochondrial changes, but we can shift that. And there’s a saying also that we can heal seven generations back and seven generations forward.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Right, so it’s very important to realize. Yeah, so definitely. Actually we’re not affected only by the past, we’re also affected by the future, believe it or not, because time goes back and forth and that’s a value. So as long as we are self-focused on ourselves, now we are still staying in the higher realms, then I want to go into practicality. As long as we are self-focused on our own drama, on our own symptoms, then we are not open to this multi-generational effects and also they are not, they don’t become resource for us. And as long we realize everybody has their own story, we’re all in the same boat. We all wanna be happy. We all wanna feel well. So, that’s important. So the meditative process, and again, I didn’t plan on jumping so quickly into, so the meditative process is first not to hold to things that are not good for us. So if news is not good for you, you go to a place which is spacious, or when you have your thinking process, you slow it down enough so you can recognize the gap between the thoughts, the place when there is no activity. Just like the gap between our breath, which is easier to recognize, just to gap between a cell contracting and releasing. 

Each cell has close to a million reaction a second, but the ultimate healing comes where we realize that in the activity, in listening to the news, you can still stay in the same place, but it takes a lot of training and it’s not something that is easy to come by. But what you are doing, you are avoiding the stressors and you know, I know, everyone listening knows, COV!D hasn’t helped it. The political environment haven’t helped it. The lack of trust with the fake news, the split in the COV!D between yes vaccine and no vaccine. And you know, and so what happened, all this divisiveness is creating lack of trust. And when there is no trust, there is no safety. Often you have a trauma in life, let’s say something happened to you in your career, or somebody betrayed you. And the tendency is not to trust, and it’s very, very, very limiting. It’s constricting. So the first step is you have to cut down the stimulus, just like you said, “I don’t listen to the news.” And then the system starts detoxifying the backlog. That’s for example, what we’re doing apheresis. People ask, “If my liver system is not working well, how therapeutic apheresis can help?” Well, this with the right supplement, with the right healing, I am creating space. We are clearing the backlog, and now you have a chance because your body can handle ongoing toxicity if you are improving efficiency. But if we have so much backlog, sometime multi-generational, sometime toxicity, it’s an issue. So COV!D is adding to it. The COV!D cytokine storm, the ongoing inflammation, this is an unregulated survival response, and interesting, Galectin-3, which by the way I haven’t defined it, but I will in a moment. This survivor protein, well, the spike protein of the COV!D is practically identical to Galectin-3 because the coronavirus also wants to survive, just like we want to survive. So if we create inflammation around the struggle with it, it’s inflammation that’s going to really kill us. So for me, cytokines storm and this approach in Galectin-3, it’s almost 30 years. 

So in one level, what my work and my approach is coming to the frontline because it’s so recognized to a point where I get grants from the NIH, whereas the focus is the relationship between Galectin-3, cytokines and kidney failure in sepsis because it’s a thing that kills more people than anyone. So, in this sense, I think the MCA is a reflection. So there is MCA on one end, and then we see so much SIBO, so much abnormality in the gut. Why? Because we don’t respect the microbiome, which is another community that we have to feel safe and has to be mutual nourishment. And then we got all the pesticides, and heavy metals, and microtoxins that… Microtoxins are produced as part of the survival of yeast, fungus, and pesticides are produced to kill something. And when they come in, they change the membrane environment. A lot of my work is about extracellular intracellular receptors. I kind of like see them in my head, feel them, and how do we shift? So yeah, we got to address one thing that I overlooked, and also we all know it, I overlooked pesticides. I mean, I’m saying it as, not I wasn’t aware, but we’re all brainwashed to accept it. A little bit of pesticide, it’s okay. If you eat a little bit of poison, it’s acceptable. 

Well, I don’t think so. And so we have this enormous amount of pesticides being put into the ground, one pound a year of glyphosate per person in United States. And it bioaccumulates, and it affects our gut lining and our microbiome, and it changes the permeability of the gut and systemic. So mast cell is activated by Galectin-3. So when it changes the gut and it creates systemic inflammation and inappropriate microphage response, the equivalent in the brain is activation of microglia and fibrosis. So if we look at Alzheimer, there is 10 to 20 times concentration of Galectin-3 in the Alzheimer plaque, the amyloid plaque, and the amyloid plaque gets worse, more Galectin-3 comes in. So that’s part that we started today the talk with the fibrotic part. So in this sense, it’s a really important topic and there’s a chance I want to little bit explain what is Galectin-3 so people know.

Beth O’Hara, FN

I definitely, let’s go there next, because we’re talking about how these different expressions, we’re talking about COV!D complications, long COV!D. We’re talking about sepsis. We’re talking about the plaques in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegeneration. We’re talking about mast cell activation. These are just different expressions of the same underlying problems.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Completely.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And it’s how it’s showing up for people differently. So let’s talk about what is the Galectin-3 and what is its role in mast cell activation?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So Galectin-3 is the carbohydrate binding protein. It’s a protein that has a structure like they draw it like this, where carbohydrate attach. So it attaches to different ligands to inflammatory ligands, to hyper viscosity ligand, to sticky ligands, that sticks cells together to ligands that affect the immune system, to growth factors, to repair molecules, and it’s expressed within minutes when we have an injury in the body, when we have stress in the body, physical, emotional, mental, and it goes to the area of trouble and it delivers this compound that produce an inflammatory response because that’s how the body repairs. I mean, a mast cell response is a danger response. We gotta react, and a little bit of Galectin-3 creates an ongoing response. Like we turn on the alarm and we never turn it off. So when it attach to a ligands, one ligand attaches to the other, so first when a Galectin-3 gets activated, it produce a pentanol of five Galectin-3 that then attach to each other and create biochemically, structurally, a lattice formation, a coating. So Galectin-3 is the skeleton of the biofilm. It in the skeleton of the arteriosclerotic plaque. It builds a micro environment where cancer can grow, where there is not enough oxygen. It also builds the area where chemicals can hide because the heavy metals bind to oxidize lipids. Microtoxins are very greasy. 

Where do we get microtoxins? Then don’t happen in the air, in the beautiful sun. They happen in dry, damp, unventilated areas, which this lattice formation creates. These areas of hiding is when things cook up, it can be cancer. It can be autoimmunity. It can be infections that whenever there is stress, they wake up from the reservoir and it can be an inappropriate, a mast cell response because this area is always under survival stress. So when you have Galectin-3 in the extracellular space, it activates microphage. It also blocks insulin receptors. The cell goes into a survival mode. AMPK doesn’t work anymore, mTORC1 gets activated, and the cell has a sense of no oxygen. Hypoxia inducing factor goes up and it activates PDK, pyruvate kinase, which blocks the entrance of pyruvate into the mitochondria. You get mitochondrial dysfunction, the basis of every disease. So this is an extracellular effect, and this happens on a cellular level. This happens on a tissue level and this happen on an organ level and systemic level. 

That’s why with all the different understandings, the first step of blocking Galectin-3 with modified citrus pectin, with PectoSol, is a foundational step for MCA at whatever dose you can tolerate. Ideally you go up to 15 grams a day, but this is what allows every treatment to work better. Why? Because we are exposing the tissue. We’re allowing oxygen to come. We are changing the metabolism. So for example, this work started with cancer because they saw when we block… In animal models, when there is prostate cancer and we give modified citrus pectin, it prevent metastasis. We finally published a multi-center trial on biochemical relapse of prostate cancer with 80% response. It slowed or stopped the cancer growth after the prostate was removed. But interesting, the people who responded were studied for another year and close to a hundred percent of them had as a response stay for whole year. So it’s not that modified citrus pectin killed the cancer. It allows the body to take care of it. So for example, now we have doctors who are giving PectoSol to every lyme patient to prevent the Herxheimer response. Why? Because it can bind to heavy metals. It can bind into different toxins, but it regulates the abnormal inflammatory response. With the MCA, it’s like siblings, the inflammatory mast cell activation that go side by side. And it is in this sense, that’s why it’s a foundational product. So we got to address Galectin-3. That’s why we seen studies, blocking Galectin-3 helped with kidney disease, with liver disease, with heart disease, with Alzheimer, with neuro inflammation, with cancers, with immunity, with autoimmunity. Why? Because like you said, it’s a foundational process that affects everything, and that’s why the survival paradox is a paradigm shift.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I wanna share with people who followed me for a while, and I know I told you this already, that initially I was worried that the modified citrus pectin was going to be too high histamine because of it coming from citrus, so I had shied away from it for quite some time. And then I got to talk with you and we went through information and I said, “Okay, I’m gonna try it.” And so I try everything on myself and I noticed inflammation coming down with it, even with some small doses. So I thought that was exciting. And then I started bringing in my protocols when we were ready for the biofilm stage, and we’d gotten some stability where I felt like they could handle the exposure of the immune system to the toxins, or the metals, or infection load that was hiding behind these lattices and we’re actually seeing really good results with it. 

So I have to walk back my early concerns ’cause I’m always conservative and I’m always skeptical. It’s just me. But I just wanted to share that and share what we’re seeing, and we’ve seen some good results with it in inflammatory levels. We’ve seen a number of people who, there’s a lot of overlap in mold toxicity and cancer, and we’ve seen some really good results with it in cancer, and I know a lot of your studies are on that. And for the super-sensitive people, we’ve found just bringing it in at the right timing, where we bring it in and we start just very small. So one mistake people make who are very sensitive is, they start with a whole scoop, and it’s too much. And then they say, “Oh, I can’t do that.” But if we start with sprinkles, we can build it up and let the body clear some of these things slowly, instead of it just being this rush hitting their system.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Yeah, definitely. It’s the right approach. When you take modified citrus pectin, so it’s not really, it’s made from the albedo, from the white part inside the citrus. And it’s really, it’s a carbohydrate. It doesn’t have the different… It doesn’t affect cytochrome P450. It doesn’t have the thing that people are worried with citrus. It doesn’t have the thing, but we didn’t do enough of an education. The focus was on research. But because of the pH, it’s buffered with sodium and potassium, more potassium than sodium. So often the digestive, not often, usually, the digestive discomfort is not because of the pectin. And again, it’s a specialized pectin. Regular pectin won’t do it, of course. It’s modified to a very low molecular weight, specific structure. We showed it gets absorbed into the bloodstream, but it’s really the electrolyte that causes the digestion to kind of get used to it. Just like if we drink salty water, we know we’ll have it change in our stools. So as we get used to the electrolyte part, within a few days, it will go away. And that’s a great example for someone with MCA, not to expect that because they have one symptom that all the other symptoms are going to come. That’s another example. But yeah, each one with their own doses, some people have to start slow. It’s always good to start slow with like one fourth of a scoop if you’re sensitive, one half of a scoop, but usually within a week or two, you can build up to the full dose. But some people will find out five grams a day only, because they’re sensitive, does what they need and they really don’t need more. 

The usual dose, you see an effect, clinical effect when you take the full dose. And of course, as you know and with your protocols, we have to support the other systems in the body. We have to do other things. But I think the idea is of the beauty of this, the wisdom of addressing Galectin-3 is that we are doing it, we are exposing, we are binding and cleaning, and at the same time we are regulating and attenuating, taking down the fire of the inappropriate inflammatory response. And yeah, it’s usually surprising. I mean, some people, it’s amazing. They take the first dose and say, “Wow.” They will describe it’s life changing because the first time they can bind and they can take care of the inflammation in the same time. ‘Cause what is the image? When you start opening the drawers, it’s like opening all the drawers in the kitchen, putting everything on the ground, or on the sink countertop. It’s a mess. But here as we are opening, it’s being cleaned in the same time, and that’s really the beauty.

Beth O’Hara, FN

You touched on something that’s really important and I just want to make sure that we dive into it a little bit more so people understand that this doesn’t happen with just any citrus pectin, and it’s really about the molecular size. So this is where we’re talking about modified citrus pectin. Can you just explain a little bit more of that and why people don’t wanna grab just any citrus pectin?

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Of course. So citrus pectin is a very low, a very large chain of a certain sugar called galacturonic acid, and it is esterified, which means it’s not charged, and it’s a good binder of cholesterol in the digestive system. It can bind some lipid soluble toxins. For example, in my product GlyphoDetox, you will see citrus pectin. It’s not modified. It’s high molecular, high esterified for fat soluble toxins, different purpose. We modify the pectin specifically to a very long molecular weight. Like 1/20 of the size, very specific size. If pectin can be 2-300 kiloDaltons, then that’s between five and 12 kiloDaltons. Any specific structure that allows it to bind to heavy metals creates charge. It also has a high component of rhamnogalacturonan-2 which is the immune component in mistletoe. So it also regulates and helps the immune system. 

So for example, patients who go on immunotherapy with sPL1 inhibitors, if their Galectin-3 levels are high, they will not respond to immunotherapy. So it has this regulatory effect, this chelating effect, and mainly it breaks down the Galectin-3 lattices. So regular pectin doesn’t do it. The one issue is that modified citrus pectin is a generic name. So I have had a lot of borrowed signs over the decades of my work. So all the published papers, these 80 papers, the only MCP commercially available is PectaSol. It’s a specific, it’s different because anybody can take a regular pectin and say it’s modified because if you extract something from the peel, you have to modify the peel. So it’s really the specific one. So thank you for, I cannot forget to explain this, but it’s a very specific preparation that does the treatment.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And we’ll have a link to the specific type that you’re talking about on our Summit Resources page so people can find it. They can go right there. They don’t have to try to sort through all the options on the market. So they can find that at MastCell360.com/summit and you’ll get all your resources and we’ll link to what you’re talking about, and we’ll have your book link there too.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Right, I will also, all the participants, all the registered will get select chapters of the book and the chapter on modified citrus pectin, and the table, how to use it. So, yeah, ’cause in my book, I don’t give recipes in the book. I change the way of thinking and then go through every disease and then say how you change it. But then I got 80 pages of protocols. Once you go through the process and the different understanding, then there’s a lot of information. So of course, yeah, it will be shared in the summit and I will share it because then I think is there are practical solution.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah, there are definitely, and I know you have some other things you’re noticing that are effective in mast cell activation and I’d love to hear what people are seeing day in and day out in a clinic that’s working, ’cause we’re all coming from these different angles and we have to keep expanding what we’re doing and learning from each other. So I’d love to hear from you and learn from you what else you’re seeing working for people.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

So I think there’s a multifaceted approach, but I think we got to, and you mentioned it, Beth, a moment ago, we got to address the microtoxin pesticides, heavy metals and how they affect. So, I was very keen on it. It became my project about two years ago, among other project, as you can see. So I developed a product called GlyphoDetox. And the idea is glypho detox, is that we are just bombarded with glyphosate. And glyphosate, it’s not only the direct toxicity, but glyphosate formulation includes a lot of toxic stuff in the formulation, which is not regulated. And most of the glyphosate spraying is in commercial agriculture. But in flat areas, glyphosate can travel 10, 15, 20 miles, so it doesn’t matter if you’re in an organic field. Glyphosate will destabilize your gut lining, so it will create leaky gut and autoimmunity. It has a direct relationship with chronic kidney disease, the most common disease in elderly age, 17%. And it produces neuro inflammation. Glyphosate is very similar to glycine, which is a neuro protectant amino acid, the smallest amino acid. And it’s an inhibitory relaxing amino acid. You get glyphosate, you get an excitatory nerve damaging. And when something is excitatory, you can imagine what it does for MCA. 

It helps you to worry, and then it delivers certain heavy metals, like aluminum, into the brain. And according to some researcher, like Stephanie Seneff, she says that it’s actually exchanges with glycine in the connective tissue, which makes sense. Certain antibiotic that effects the gut will create weakness of connective tissue. So the idea, so I created this product, which I will talk maybe in the second interview, the idea is that, how do you address a pesticide glyphosate microtoxin together with the unique ability of PectoSol to remove heavy metals, which we have published extensively, on lead, on mercury, on arsenic. And what we are seeing that it’s really making a difference, like even this week I saw a few patients that just came for the first visit after basic consultation and using the PectoSol with the GlyphoDetox and wow. People are getting their life back because if we can regulate the inflammation on the gut level and start decreasing the load of pesticides, we are pulling people away from the survival response, and because of the neuro inflammation that is driven by Galectin-3, what Galectin-3 does, it disrupts the blood-brain barrier. It creates a blood-brain barrier permeability, so more inflammatory compounds going to the brain.

It activates specifically the microglia. So we go into this inflammation mode, which drives Alzheimer and Parkinson and every disease, but because of this and because of not getting enough oxygen often, because the metabolism is different, we get micro events of lack of oxygen coming to the brain. And when you have a perfusion injury, re-perfusion, which happen with stroke, of course, with TIA, but we have mini events all the time. What happened, Galectin-3 will trigger the post perfusion injury, inflammation, and fibrosis, meaning that the brain damage caused after lack of oxygen is driven by Galectin-3 as a repair mechanism. And study just published a month ago, or two months, when you give modified citrus pectin in studies, in tissue studies, our modified citrus pectin, it will reverse and prevent the damage. So we got to, and of course gut brain connection. It’s like the big thing, but it’s the basis of the stomach, spleen, digestive school of thought of Chinese medicine for millennia, where when we had a study group for Chinese medicines in the ’90s, we determined Alzheimer and dementia to be the next epidemic of the 21st century, based on the weakness of our community, of our safety, just like we discussed about it. So we got to address the pesticides’ power and we got to move from a survival mode with some like lifestyle, sleep, staying away from electronics, and also we have to support circulation. We got to have normal circulation. So exercise is big, but also herbs or different compounds that helps circulation, and we can talk next time a little bit more about the details.

Beth O’Hara, FN

So to recap, we’ve covered so much. To recap, so people have some concrete action steps. We have to start shifting the paradigm of how we’re viewing our chronic illness, whatever it is, to this healing mode, this healing paradigm, and out of this survival paradox. And we do that with our mindset. We do that with the ways that we’re thinking, with our feelings. We can do that with energy work, with meditation, with spiritual practices. And we have to create this space between our thoughts. We need to detox the metals, the micro toxins. We need to work on the pathogens and we have to address this Galectin-3 layer that’s going on, and we have to really be mindful of the glyphosate and protect our guts because we’re living in this world where we’re probably not gonna be entirely glyphosate free, even though we’re eating all organic, and being careful, that we live in this world where we’re going to have to take care of ourselves in these particular ways longer term. But what I also hear is a lot of hope that people can turn these things around.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Absolutely.

Beth O’Hara, FN

They can recover.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Absolutely, I mean, absolutely. I mean, a MCA patient can be turned around. So there’s a difference between trying to suppress the reaction by taking antihistamine and transforming the reaction, moving from reactivity, which is a survival response, to a responsiveness. How do we do it? Why can we do it? Because we are built to do it. What do I mean? Every cell in our body, that’s a good place to kind of give a bigger picture. Every cell in our body wants to survive, so it takes nourishment and it lets go of toxins, but it also recognizes that it’s part of a bigger community. So if we have 50 trillion cells in our body, rounding it, each cell has one up to one million reactions a second. The fact that we are alive is a miracle. 50 trillion cells with all of these reactions, putting out what they don’t want and taking what they want. The only organ in the body that takes what everybody doesn’t want, connect with the universe, and then nourishes the whole body with no discrimination, the aorta is a rigid artery, is the heart. 

So when we move and connect with our heart, everything is possible. Now we are built physiologically to do this, otherwise we won’t be alive. And who does the heart nourish first as part of nourishing others and in order to nourish others? It nourishes itself through the coronary arteries. So self-love, being easy with ourselves, loving ourselves is part of loving others. The heart doesn’t nourish itself until it finishes its work. The only organ in the body who does, and that’s why the medicine is in the heart. And we look at heart failure, the worst heart failure is fibrotic heart failure and who drives this heart failure? Galectin-3. So we have the physical solution of dissolving this separation and we have the bigger picture that you described, and all this together, if we change it, MCA has no place to exist. There’s no right to exist. Shouldn’t have been there to begin with. It’s just our life consequences, our toxins of all levels, our multi-generational effect created this response. So we address it biochemically, sometimes we have to suppress it in the beginning, we start changing it with breaking this lattice formation, and we connect. And when we connect and we feel safe, there’s no MCA. It’s impossible to have MCA.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Thank you so much for all of your generous sharing. And we will have the products linked on the Summit Resources page. And if people want to continue to work on this, what we’ve been talking about in terms of the paradigm shift, the nervous system, I know you have some programs. We have one, a nervous system program for people. There’s lots of resources, just to find something and to get going with it. So thank you again. I can’t wait for our next interview.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Thank you so much for having me.