The Cell Danger Response: MCAS As A Healing Response

Beth O’Hara, FN

Hi and welcome back to the Reversing Mast Cell Activation and Histamine Intolerance summit. I am your host, Beth O’Hara of Mast Cell 360 and I’m so excited today to have with us Dr. Eric Gordon of Gordon Medical. We’re gonna be talking about cell danger response which has been a groundbreaking and revolutionary model in terms of how we look at things like mast cell activation syndrome. So whether this is the first time you’re hearing about this or you know something about it and you want to learn more, this is an interview you really are going to want to watch and listen to the whole thing and you may want to listen to a few times here. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Gordon and we’ll get going with our background in cell danger response. So Eric Gordon, MD, is the clinical director of the Gordon Medical Associates, specializing in complex chronic illness. In addition to 40 years of clinical practice he’s also been engaged in clinical research and he’s focused on bringing together leading international medical researchers and cutting edge clinicians focusing on chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, autoimmune diseases and autism. Really want to welcome you and thank you so much for joining us.

Eric Gordon, MD

Well thank you, thank you Beth. It’s a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing on just educating people and helping them in such difficult, difficult illness. Mold and mast cell really can make a mess out of life and having, and doctors aren’t that helpful. So thank you.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Well thank you for everything you do as well and I’m super excited to jump into cell danger response but first, you’ve made a big transition from starting in traditional medicine and then moving into this more functional model and I would say we’re really beyond that with the cell danger response and looking at that as a model for chronic illness and what’s happening with chronic illness. Can you just share, it’s kind of a fun story. Share with us a little bit about that transition for you because I think it really defines who you are as a practitioner.

Eric Gordon, MD

Well I said, you know I went to medical school hoping to learn nutrition and it wasn’t more than a few months in when I realized that wasn’t what they were going to teach me. But I got seduced to the dark side because the miracles of modern medicine are pretty amazing. What we can do for trauma and people with acute illnesses. You know saving people’s lives in the moment, very impressive. And it made me doubt that what I had been reading about, as far as nutritional medicine could possibly be that effective and you know, so I kept reading about nutritional stuff but I really wound up doing what I call regular medicine. You know, working with an internal medicine group but as I was seeing patients, I started to see more and more people, that though we did lifesaving things, after the lifesaving intervention, they didn’t go back to health. 

They often stayed not well and even people who weren’t that sick would come in with complaints and I couldn’t do anything for them. You know I could give them what I call BAND-AID medicine which is not bad. You know it’s good to help people’s pain but I didn’t really help them be well. And the most frustrating patients were of course the ones that we still see today who were really debilitated. You know, in life, they couldn’t function but their blood counts and their chemistries were normal and those people who are out there know that the average doctor’s response to that is you know, you probably are depressed. You know, you should see the psychiatrist. You should see, now it’s cognitive behavioral therapy or whatever. And all these things can be helpful but you know, when you’re sick, you’re sick and that’s not gonna get you better. So I tried to do a little on the side and then in 92 I just realized that I couldn’t, there was too much to learn and I couldn’t keep doing regular medicine and fooling around with this stuff. 

So I just went off and I did a year of osteopathic training ’cause I really got, I really realized structure was so important and that’s not part of today’s discussion but something I always like to remind people is don’t forget you’ve got a body and a nervous system and that nervous system doesn’t work well if the structure is a mess. So, but, anyway. Anyway, so I just went off and started and in the beginning it was, you know it was kind of exciting. You treated people with thyroid and other hormones and fixed their guts and people got better. But the longer I did it, the sicker the people I saw and I wasn’t that successful. 

So you have to learn more and learn more and learn more and then I moved to California in 98 and in 2001, Dr. Wayne Anderson joined me and he was, he had been treating Lyme for about 10 years at that point and I started to realize that my sickest patients, the ones who really didn’t make sense, they looked like his patients because I had been hesitant to do Lyme disease because Lyme meant that, especially in those days, we didn’t have, the tests were really poor and you know, I really was hesitant to be treating people with longterm, in those days we just used longterm antibiotics right at the beginning. For clinical, on a clinical diagnosis. Meaning like based on their symptoms. I wasn’t comfortable but when I started to see the results that Wayne was getting, I joined the bandwagon but again, we got sicker and sicker people and that didn’t work and then everybody learned of course it was co-infections and coagulation disorders and methylation disorders and we were treating mold back then. Interestingly, we worked with, there was a Dr. Marinkovich in San Francisco who really understood that carriage in the nose of mold would trigger the immune system. This is again, not accepted by allergists because in allergy terms, you have to have IgE allergies. Because that’s the definition of allergies. But mold often triggers the immune system by different methods. Anyway, so that’s how I got here. Just listening, the bottom line is, is like most doctors who fall into treating chronic complex illness is they believe their patients. And you just gotta keep looking and that’s.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And that’s so huge. I mean that’s huge for people. I know even myself, having seen over 75 practitioners before we figured out I had mold toxicity.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Was that I, the best ones said you are the most complex, sensitive person I’ve ever met. But the ones that were just stuck into this box of looking at it right through the same lens would tell me I was crazy. And because my CVCs looked normal. And so, or they told me I wanted to be sick and so it’s just. I think that what you’re sharing brings people hope because so many people then, my story’s not unique and I hear it all the time. Ik you hear it all the time. So to hear that there are physicians who are looking from that lens, one is just huge. And I want to highlight that for people, that there are physicians out there that have that noise.

Eric Gordon, MD

And the good news is that in this day and age, so many of the naturopaths start off that way you know and so that’s been the great blessing is because doctors, ah God. It’s just, the education of doctors has, they learn a lot. It’s not that the education has gotten worse, I mean the teaching is excellent. But the way they’re trained to think about treatment is so poor today okay? Like I say, I used to send people to you know, to Stanford, to Mayo back in the day and I mean, and we still do. But with less and less results. Okay? Because 20 years ago, those guys would actually come up with ideas and with treatments but now even though they come up with ideas, they can’t do anything.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Well you’ve been doing this for 40 years and I really, I love asking people who’ve been in the medical field for a number of decades. Are you seeing cases become more complex? Are you seeing people get sicker as the decades go on?

Eric Gordon, MD

I think so. At first I thought it was that just because, at this point, my world consists. Nobody comes to see me unless they’ve been, usually failed a bunch of times. Because unfortunately, the finances of medicine is terrible. So you’re not gonna come to me just because you think you’re sick. You know, you really gotta be kind of desperate at this point. So I thought that’s what it was. But the more I talk to people and the more I just read, yes, people have become much sicker. When I started medicine okay, autoimmune diseases were fairly uncommon. You know, I mean they weren’t, we saw them. But Hashimoto’s was like you know, you noticed a Hashimoto’s case, we talked about it. Now, I don’t know. I don’t have to look, but at least 20 to 40% of my population has Hashimoto’s at least. We don’t even, I don’t, it’s sort of expected you know and that’s not normal and just to bring in the, I mean I don’t really treat autism anymore but the thing is is that Dr. Sid Baker, he’s one of the giants in the field of autism and just on thoughtful medicine okay? And he, he was trained in the 60s and he tells me that in those days, he was at Yale and if there was an autism case, all the pediatric residents would get called in to see it. It was that unusual.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It’s not now.

Eric Gordon, MD

Not now. You know, and it’s true. We have the autism spectrum which we allow many more things and so it has gotten wider. But the significant autism cases of people who, young people who really cannot function is still just growing exponentially. So things are changing and you know, who knows? Is it the number? Is it the EMFs? I mean I really truly believe that toxicity. The number of the chemicals in the environment. I mean it just skyrocketed. I mean again, since 1980, we can use that as a year. You know, everything has changed. I mean you know, we had high sugar consumption started going way up in the 1900s. But again, but obesity in America is now beyond belief and in Mexico. I mean any place where we’ve had this corn syrup diet. And liver disease, the non-alcoholic liver, the fatty liver disease, the NASH. It’s all epidemic. So you know, and you know, and again, we can, the number of vaccines. Who knows what triggers the immune system to be so dysfunctional. But I do believe it’s the toxins. 

The issue of molds. I mean again, the housing changed. When we grew up, single pane windows. There was a lot of air exchange. Maybe things leaked but there was a lot of air exchange. Now you make tight houses, so once you get moistures trapped in there, it’s trapped in there. So, and the mold doesn’t have any place to go. The microtoxins except you know, a nice, tight house. So we have so many factors that have all added up, to I think a skyrocketing level of chronic, of chronic illness. And it’s frightening, it is. ‘Cause it’s happening to young people. We used to have, our patients used to be 40s, 50s, 60s and now they’re teenaged, 20s and 30s. It really has shifted. We see so many more young people who are really immobilized. I mean bedbound and stuff. We just didn’t see this. So I’m sorry, I go on and on but I’m telling you. It has changed and it’s disturbing and I don’t think there’s any one answer. I think that’s the other hard part. The cry that I give to everybody is just like for your illness, there rarely is one cause. I mean occasionally there is. I mean I’ll always remember the, I had a patient I couldn’t help, I couldn’t help, I couldn’t help and somebody put them on, this is like 20 years ago. Somebody put them on folinic acid and that was all they needed and poof, they got better. Those things happen but they are rare, you know? Most of the time, by the time you’ve been chronically ill, you, multiple systems have, failed isn’t the right word. Are just not talking to each other appropriately anymore.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah.

Eric Gordon, MD

And so it’s not, it’s not gonna be easy. And I think that’s why, the same thing with the environment. Is as above, so below. It’s a mess.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It’s a mess and it sets the stage beautifully for this model we desperately need at this time which is the cell danger response which really looks at what’s happening in chronic illness, what’s triggering it and when I first, I know I shared this with you before. When I first heard about this and I heard you know, Nathan lecturing about it at a conference. I felt like I had these hundreds of lightbulbs go off in my head. Oh my gosh, everything makes sense now. Everything in terms of how my illness just unraveled. Everything in terms, or my health unraveled. In terms of, once I finally was able to onboard supplements. Once I got past trying little sprinkles and having these huge flares because my nervous system was a mess. Then when I could take things, I was up to 150, 200 supplements and we talked about you know, the shopping bags you carry into the doctor’s office with all your supplements and then nobody looks at them all. And I got some of my life back but we weren’t addressing the big issues and so I had seen over 75 people before I figured out.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Oh my gosh, this is mold toxicity. It’s been mold toxicity since I was seven years old.

Eric Gordon, MD

Wow.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I had been sick for about almost 30 years at that point. So then we talk about first, one, how did you first learn about this and get into it? Because I know you did some early research in this area and then let’s talk about what it is and really, for people who’ve not heard it before because.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah the cell danger response is one of those things that is, is beautiful in its overall simplicity and mind, well not mind-numbing but mind overwhelming in its complexity when you try to get into the details. So we’ll try to keep to the overview part because it’s easy to go down rabbit holes with it but you know, we learnt about it. I said, doctor, a friend of mind, Dr. Chandra sent me an article written by Dr. Navio and I think it was probably oxidated shielding or something and it just was, it just, as soon as I read that, it opened my eyes because I had been, I grew up in the early days of orthomolecular medicine and it was all about antioxidants and yet we, in the late 90s we started, in the early 2000s, we started to see that the data wasn’t working. Giving more and more antioxidants wasn’t getting people better. You know, who knew that high dose Vitamin C, at least the intravenous kind is actually a pro-oxidant? 

We didn’t realize that then. So anyway, so this article and I shared it with again, Dr. Nathan and Dr. Anderson worked with me at the time and so we read it and Neil said, “We have to meet this guy.” And I wrote to Dr. Navio and it turned out that he was in San Diego and there was an ILATS meeting that year was in San Diego and we had lunch and it was two hours of just talking to somebody who just was like, we just fell in love. It was one of those conversations that was like, “Oh my God, this is amazing.” And someone had given me some money for a research assistant and I just said, “Can we do a study on you know?” Because he was doing metabolomics at that time. I mean that’s still one of his big interests which is looking at hundreds of molecules and we always, the thing about doctors is that we’re still looking for the test that’s gonna give us the answer. Okay, I confess. I mean even though I’ve been doing, I am a sucker for the new test. I have to admit, they usually don’t give us the answers as clearly as we hope. But you know.

Beth O’Hara, FN

But it’s something. It’s something.

Eric Gordon, MD

But we’re still looking for something because we probably mentioned is that again, is that most doctors, if the CBC and the metabolic panel is normal, you’re normal, stop bothering me. But you know, but we know there are lots of other tests and we learnt that from Dr. Schumacher’s work in the early, that’s where, just a shoutout to a man who can be sometimes difficult. But his work has really helped us in the beginning by showing us how important the innate immune system was. And give us lots of tests. Unfortunately, they were non-specific.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah.

Eric Gordon, MD

They were great tests, they just told us you had chronic inflammation. Not that you had chronic inflammation, necessarily from mold or anything in particular. But again, I was looking metabolomics, I thought ah and I was also hoping that we could at least tell people what they had because one of the hardest things for people is that they lose their families and their friends. The thing about, my story about chronic illness is that I always warn people. I go, your friends are gonna disappear because you can’t, you can’t make plans you know? You drop out all the time. Your siblings will often go even before your friends because they always knew that you were malingering or trying to get away with stuff you know?

Beth O’Hara, FN

They make, you mean they’re kind of pinning that on.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah, yeah you know? They go on, you’re just, you’re faking. Because you don’t look that bad and you test normal. The doctor said you were okay.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah. And that, I love how you bring that to the social context because when the doctor says oh you’re fine. Then the family believes that.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And then they don’t believe the patient anymore.

Eric Gordon, MD

And that is often the most difficult part for many people is to just deal with that and you know, and then you have husbands who sometimes are great but often are shaky when the doctor says there’s nothing wrong and you just look, you don’t look too bad you know? So that, and I always tell people. Mothers and wives, they tend to hang around. You know, we have the special husbands. I mean these days I have to say, we see a lot more of them who really hang in there. But it’s a difficult thing. So that’s what’s so important is that if you get validated by a physician, you have a chance. Unfortunately, if I’m the only physician who validates you and the specialty infectious disease and the rheumatologist and the immunologist have all said that you’re crazy, you’re still not gonna do so well.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Well maybe though. Because I find.

Eric Gordon, MD

No maybe.

Beth O’Hara, FN

When there’s somebody who really gets it.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah, right.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I think that this framework brings that model. This framework of the cell danger response and go back to the oxidated shielding.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

When I started studying all of this which was a few years before that paper came out. It was everything in the functional approach was about oxidative stress, you’ve gotta shut down the oxidative stress and then this paper on oxidative shielding said, “No, oxidative stress is protective. “It’s protecting you. “Just like the massels are protecting you. “These are like your guards of the castle gate.” So don’t shoot the guards of the castle gate, you don’t have any protection left. And then the cell danger response took us to this next, I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s not a next stage. It’s like another world of looking at all of this. So what is, in a nutshell, the cell danger response? Let’s talk about that.

Eric Gordon, MD

Okay, I think it’s just understanding that inflammation is how your body as you said, protects yourself and sets the stage for healing okay? And that you know, that at the basic level okay? The body has to, is all about self defense okay? Because the, I mean even if you take a single celled organism okay? They get infected by viruses. They have to deal with toxins okay? And they have to defend themselves and in order to do that, the first step is often to deprive the virus of raw materials okay? And also to change the milieu to make it less, the intracellular neighborhood if you will, to make it less friendly to that virus for it to replicate. So basically, the cell danger response just gives us a story of how the body protects itself okay? And I’ve seen it as a live, an alive thing. Before that, we thought of you know, we didn’t think of the body as a, as alive. 

I mean again, philosophers did, theoreticians did, but doctors thought of it in a very mechanical way. You had something wrong with you, we go in, we remove the thing wrong, and then the body heals. The healing process is what the cell danger response is okay? And the healing process was never really thought about because we didn’t understand it and we were too amazed by our abilities to remove the injury, the triggering event and then expect the body to heal. And that really worked well when you had a bullet wound, a broken leg. It’s a great model and the person was really healthy. ‘Cause the thing that we have to remember, just what we talked about before. How people aren’t as healthy, because, I mean just a quick aside. In 1900, in the 1800s, cancer was not a common disease. Heart disease was not a common disease. Doctors were really good at describing these things. It’s not like they didn’t know they existed okay? They were not common okay. Doctor Warburg, the fellow, I mean who was the fellow who actually, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about the cell danger response. In the second stage of the cell danger response, the cell uses what we call the Warburg effect which is where it’s burning glucose for energy instead of burning glucose to make ATP okay? And.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Which fuels the, it comes from the mitochondria and helps fuel the.

Eric Gordon, MD

Right, it’s all about how the mitochondria work and Dr. Warburg was a Jewish, gay physician. Difficult thing in the 1920s. Actually, in the 20s to the 40. I mean, actually till the 60s. And he actually survived living in Germany. Hitler, he was one of the few. He was not sent to a concentration camp. He actually kept his lab because he was working on cancer and Hitler’s mother died of cancer and anyway. But the point of the story is, is Dr. Warburg, you know, his work in the early. They did a tremendous amount of work in the early 1900s and because this was a new disease. This was a scourge, this was happening. And he really felt it was environmental. In fact, Rachel Carson refers to him as one of the early fathers of you know, environmental medicine. Of realizing how damaging the environment is. So somehow we got all the way over to this. Sorry about that little rabbit hole.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It’s okay. We come back, and it was an interesting rabbit hole. If we come back though. So we, some of the injury response. We start to enter this as this healing mechanism and I think of it as when we get, the body has had an overwhelming amount of hits. From toxins, pathogens or stressors. It could be traumas, it could be injuries, it could be surgeries or whatever. Any combo of those. Did I have that part right?

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah, well basically you get stuck okay? The cell danger response is a cycle okay? It’s part of the healing cycle okay? And I mean, this is what should happen is you have an injury and then you get the CDR1 where your body is killing off, you know you got a lot of inflammatory cells to kill off any bacteria that are there. Knock off any viruses. And to clean up any of the half dead cells that need to die. You know you want to clean up the area okay? So the, the cell did this first response is lots of inflammation okay? That’s the thing we see when you get a cut that begins to have a little infection and it gets red and hot. That’s the first stage of the cell danger response.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Or we get a cold. So we’re gonna go into this, kill off the virus. Clean things that.

Eric Gordon, MD

Right, whatever. Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Then we should go all the way though.

Eric Gordon, MD

That’s the problem, we get stuck.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Phase two, and three and come out.

Eric Gordon, MD

COV!D is a great example okay? Because when the cell danger response is working well, you don’t even know you had COV!D. Because in that first stage, you make enough interferon gamma inside your cell that you’re gonna not let that virus replicate very much okay? You get enough, as soon as that virus particle gets in your cell, your mitochondria sense that somebody is stealing some of the nutrients and then it turns down. It makes less ATP. That raises the oxygen concentration inside the cell because normally your mitochondria use up oxygen. That’s why it’s so important to get oxygen to our cells because we’re feeding the mitochondria. The other parts of your cell don’t use much oxygen. The mitochondria is what use oxygen up because when you make ATP, you actually make water, H2O. You take oxygen and the hydrogen and you make a water, at the same time, you create your ATP molecule and I think that’s the other reason that sick people are always dehydrated. I’m not sure of that but I really think so because you really actually, you don’t make enough water if you turn off that process. 

So, but the first time that cell gets infected with something, it’s protect itself, it starts making less ATP. It starts shuttling some of that ATP to the cell surface where it acts as a signal to tell other cells that it’s not well, that there’s danger here okay? And the oxygen in the cell creates an oxidative stress to whatever is in there okay? Whether it’s a bacteria or a virus or whatever your body’s trying to fix. You have higher oxygen concentrations in the cell which makes it a toxic environment. So it is oxidative stuff is bad but it’s just transient. Now in the next step, you know you’ve killed off the bug. Okay, if you’ve killed off a cell or two so now you have to replace the cells that have died because some of those cells aren’t gonna be that lucky to have killed the virus before it can replicate. Some of them are gonna be damaged and you have, your body is very, very good at housecleaning. At getting rid of dead cells, very important. 

So the second stage of the CDR is to rebuild those dead cells. Wherever they may be. In your nose, in your liver, any, in your heart even. You don’t, rebuild as many cells but you can. And that’s the CDR2 and during the cell danger response two, that’s when we’re having this Warburg effect which has always confused people ’cause it’s what we see in cancer cells. Okay, cancer cells don’t use a lot of oxygen okay? They burn sugar. And that’s the reason many people with chronic fatigue are stuck or have some cells. I mean this is the important thing, that actually confused me in the first years is that this can be a local phenomena. Your whole body is not necessarily stuck in any one of these places. It can just be groups of cells. Maybe you had an infection that got into your liver but only affected part of your liver. The rest of your liver is still functioning. Well, it’s just that that part can give off messages that still can affect your whole body.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And the kidneys may not be, in cell danger response one. The heart may not be, the lungs may not be.

Eric Gordon, MD

Exactly, exactly, that’s the thing. This can happen anywhere that there has been an infection or a toxin that has caused damage. It can be any cell. This is what happens in the process. So sometimes in the beginning there is this first really inflammatory thing, inflammatory stage which can create a lot of pain and actually, Dr. Navio has listed diseases and to be honest, I can never remember them because they just don’t fit in my brain very well. I think about them a little differently. I mean the cell danger response to stuck is easy because that’s things that cause scarring and cancers, or especially scarring you know? And mast cell activation can often be a little combination of CDR2, CDR1. But the CDR2 is where I think a lot of people who have fatigue and who notice that when they eat sugar they, even though the sugar might do other things, they might think. The sugar gives them energy but then gives them brain fog. You know? It’s a very common thing, because well, the sugar is probably feeding yeast or bad things in their guts but initially it gives them energy because their mitochondria are shut down. That’s what people have to understand and that’s why taking CoQ10 and PQQ and all these good mitochondrial supplements often aren’t helpful and are very frustrating ’cause they’re spending a fortune on these very expensive supplements and they’re not getting much benefit.

Beth O’Hara, FN

They’re bringing them in at the wrong time.

Eric Gordon, MD

Exactly.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It’s not that they’re not useful. It’s just there’s a timing goes. And that’s what I love about this model is it gives us the timing for these things.

Eric Gordon, MD

And you said that’s something that’s so important is to not throw away a therapy because it didn’t work. It didn’t work because you tried it at the wrong time. I mean it’s the same thing when people try to, if they have a, if you have Lyme disease or some other infection but you also have mast cell issues. If you haven’t controlled your mast cell issues at all and you try to kill the bug, you flare badly because once you start releasing inflammatory chemicals, your body just goes kind of nuts until you get that system to communicate and that’s communication is really what the cell danger three response is about a lot okay? Because in CDR3, the cells are, that have been rebuilding. CDR2 is rebuilding okay? 

So cells are growing back. If the cell has been damaged or if a new cell, if the stem cell has to come into the area to grow a new cell, that’s the CDR2 form. But during that time, they’re immature and they’re not communicating well okay? Because the cell membranes are kind of stiff at that point. They’re protecting themselves okay? In CDR3, the cell membrane is maturing and the receptors are more responsive okay? And the hormonal receptors are now working okay. So they’re back as part of a whole, they’re back in the communication business. But if your cells aren’t communicating well with each other, then you have a bit of chaos which is what a lot of our patients wind up living in is this chaotic place where you know, information that should be relaxing is stimulating you know?

Beth O’Hara, FN

Can you give us an example of that?

Eric Gordon, MD

Well, I. I’m trying to think of a good biochemical example. It’s just something I see all the time. You know, is that when, and again it’s usually because the nervous system is too upregulated you know? And it’s like the, the cells that should tell us to relax okay? Are not able to, yeah, like in traumatic brain injury okay? Where the Purkinje cells, you have a whole lot of cells in the brain that are designed to produce, they’re GABAergic. They’re designed to produce GABA, to relax the system. But they’re a very high energy cell okay? And if they’re not functioning well, if they’ve been damaged and they’re kind of not really in that, their cell membrane is not normal. Is not working normal. They’re not, they’re not able to fire off like they should. They wind up to be kind of overly stimulated but not able to release GABA like they should.

Beth O’Hara, FN

That makes so much sense because when, so I also had some brain injuries and early in, as I was trying supplements, when I would try things like l’theanine, I would get anxiety.

Eric Gordon, MD

Right.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And that seemed paradoxical but as I went further in my healing process, now things like GABA, l’theanine, all of that is very helpful. CBD, very helpful for me. But there was a period of time where they all backfired. So is that what you’re talking about?

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah you know, I mean and this happens on so many levels. Okay? Is the you know, in that when the, for instance, someone like any time you’re having. You’ve got your glutamine and your glutamate pathway which is you know, constant, constant balance okay? And glutamate is excitatory but you need it to learn okay? So a little bit is really good. But if you can’t balance it because that cell, because that cell isn’t mature, you wind up with anxiety and headaches and just feeling terrible you know? The tiniest amount of glutamate but without glutamate, you can’t think, you can’t remember.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah. So it’s like having.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It’s ADD and brain fog all at the same time.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

It’s terrible.

Eric Gordon, MD

It’s about balance. You know, and the thing that I find difficult. Okay, just to put it in perspective is the, you know, I use the cell danger response to understand chronic illness okay? Because again, it helps understand why people who, you know, your body is in a habit loop okay? Because that’s really what the problem is. Is that the cell danger response, when it’s working well is not a problem okay? You go through the healing stages and none of this really matters okay? You only have an issue when the cells are stuck in one of those paths. You know? And that’s usually because in my worldview, because there’s been some chronic irritant okay? That is not letting the system go back to balance. You know and the issue can be, it can be biochemical. But it can often be structural or neurologic or environmental. I mean the mold is the great example of the environmental you know? That is constantly irritating the system, causing inflammation and then depending on where your body’s pathways don’t balance well, okay? 

That’s what makes it so individual because when we, you know, like there are people, when they get ill, they tend to get headaches. Other people tend to get, you know, gut issues. Other people tend to get joint pains. Other people tend to get you know, again, some people just get you know, get scars or just get hypertrophy. Like things just grow in their bodies, they get cysts all over the place you know? So where our system has trouble modulating itself is the issue and what the CDR, what the cell danger response teach, it just gives us the model for understanding that this is about balance okay? And it’s about finding, in the individual, what areas are over or under regulated you know? I, to be honest, I had been unable to use the cell danger response for you know, pinpointing which, what supplement to use when. As more as just understanding that the system is at a balance and looking how to balance it. You know, more on the global level of, that there’s too much. There’s too much information going towards fear.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah because this is the model of safety, even on the cellular level.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah, yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

We think about safety as a psychological concept but there’s a cellular safety.

Eric Gordon, MD

No. Safety is a cellular, is cellular. That’s the thing. Is that when that cell ’cause that’s what, so going back to the basics of, to me, the heart of the cell danger response is what the mitochondria does okay? And I think that’s where I use it. Okay because to be honest I say you know, Dr. Navio has his lists of diseases that he considers CDR1, CDR2, CDR3 and I understand them when I look at them but they don’t give me that much clinical help. What gives me clinical, what I use clinically every day with every patient is understanding how the cell is responding to the environment okay? And when I think of the cell, it’s the mitochondria okay? And in the cell danger response, the idea, the mitochondria is sensing nutrient sufficiency and what’s being used up and if it, if it senses danger and it doesn’t have to be danger with a capital D okay? It’s just when it senses something different okay? The reason we remember things is because the mitochondria release ATP okay? And that ATP plus dopamine gives us a signal to remember that okay? 

So it’s not necessarily, so danger almost is too strong of a word. It’s just different you know? That’s what your body is designed to do. Consciousness loves, you need difference. If everything is the same, you don’t learn okay? And your cell defends itself against something that’s different. Not always harshly but it notices it okay? And when it notices something, it puts more ATP on the cell surface as a signal to the other cells. Now when you’ve been ill for awhile, and you have a handful of cells that are stuck in this hypervigilant state okay? And that happens when they don’t have enough energy. They get stuck and this is the interesting, how I think about this. This is, you’re very interesting. I think it’s a little bit different than how Dr. Nathan thinks about it. But for me, it’s all about energy and danger okay? When there’s enough energy, the system relaxes okay? Anxiety is a low energy state. Relaxation is a high energy state you know? Muscle contraction okay, that’s low energy. It doesn’t take anything to contract your muscles. It takes energy to relax them. And that’s what, so understanding flow is what I think is so important. And what the cell danger response tells me is that when the mitochondria sense that things are safe, the body can heal okay? But when the psyche sense that things are safe, the body can heal.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And that’s how, if you look at all of the various triggers to this. The environmental, whether it’s your local toxins, mold toxins, EMFs. We have to look at what’s happening in terms of pathogens, the bacteria, viruses, molds, colonizing the body.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yep.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Kidney data, parasites. And then we’ve gotta look at the emotional side as well.

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh right.

Beth O’Hara, FN

I’m yet to have anybody come into my practice who had a deep sense of safety in their body. That just felt relaxed, they felt at home and what you’re saying about the relaxation being a high energy state makes so much sense because people are chronically ill, when I was chronically ill. They have all this muscle tension, they have this guarding and everything trickles up and then down to the cellular level, back up. So membranes just putting some dots together here.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And I’ve had some cases even where we have done everything we could on the environmental side. Done everything we could in terms of mold. They had worked on lime and they had worked on nervous system healing, all this stuff. But there was a toxic relationship and they hadn’t gotten out of the toxic relationship so there was still a sense of danger coming from that and that’s where we have to look comprehensively at what is keeping the cells in this state of.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Of danger, or.

Eric Gordon, MD

The brain controls everything. You know, I mean the nervous system. When you’re stuck in CDR, I mean this is the point. Is that when you have cells that are stuck in CDR3, they’re not responding to nervous signals well okay? So that’s where you gotta get. And you know, it’s any time there’s been trauma in the body okay? You know and that’s why as we get older, we have more and more collection of areas that ache okay? And, but often we don’t even notice they ache until we use them in new ways okay? Or use them in the ways they were meant to use because we restrict our motion okay? We go to places where the brain has actually cut off information to the area you know? And I know I’m digressing. This might seem confusing but I just want to get across the idea that it’s all about communication okay? And your body stops communicating with parts that haven’t healed okay? It just does. It’s more, you know, you try to heal an old injury and you go so far and then it just says, “Okay, I’m going to accept that this is where it is.”

And you know, the problem of Western medicine is we don’t have any story that’s alive okay? That’s where the Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine and all kinds of traditional medicines are much more powerful because they understand relationship and in Western medicine we have you know, the heart and the kidney and the brain. We have stories about how they work but not how the system communicates okay? And health is only when the whole thing is talking and chronic illness is because parts of your body have just stopped communicating and this is where the CDR comes in. Because that’s where most of us have pieces that have been injured and are stuck, have too much of their tissue that’s stuck in a little bit of CDR3 where that cell membrane is normal but hasn’t gone back completely and when that happens, the lymph flow isn’t as good. The muscle flow, the nerve communication isn’t as good and that’s where body work is helpful. Where again, your flavor, whatever sings to your body. Some people it’s acupuncture, some people it’s different, I mean body work. It totally depends on the practitioner. I mean I tell people never give up, keep hunting. You’ll find someone whose hands talk to you because you gotta open this stuff up so there’s communication again but the body doesn’t really want to do it. 

Because you’ve been stuck for so long and it’s safer. And I think, just go back to relationships. This is what I was getting to is psychology is the best analogy we have to how the body works really. ‘Cause it really is. That is above, so below. If you are, what we learnt is that if you have a family member or a good friend, maybe you shouldn’t be a good friend but a good friend who there are just subjects you don’t talk about ’cause if you talk about it, you’re gonna fight and you don’t want to fight so you don’t talk about it. Well that’s what happens when you try to heal because it’s the same thing. Is that if you’re gonna go back there and try to heal, you’re gonna have some pain and inflammation. 

You’re gonna have to go through this healing cycle and it’s gonna take work and energy. And sometimes, the system has just decided. We don’t have that much energy, we’re not gonna do that. And so that’s where it’s sometimes helpful to understand when you’ve been ill for awhile and you feel overwhelmed. You know you’re not, and you are. So give yourself the space to know that you’re not gonna heal everything at once. You know, you’re gonna go through a process and you’re gonna let your body have time to talk to the places that don’t work and you don’t, and be respectful. If you get body work or psychological work or take a medicine or a supplement that flares your symptoms, oh okay. Maybe it’s not the right time for them. They’re not bad, it’s just not the right time. And I just, I’m feeling bad right now because I realized I’m not really talking about. Well I’m talking about what I’ve done with the cell danger response and not the way. I think, well I know Dr. Navio thinks this way when we talk but he would put it in much more biochemical terms.

Beth O’Hara, FN

That’s okay, I think you’re making it make sense for people and that’s what matters. Is that we’re making it make sense for people in terms of why they may not have done well with the vitamin D early and why they might be reacting to vitamin D, why they might be having trouble with the methyl B12 and methylfolate. Why they might have trouble with B6, because we know that the HTC enzyme that converts histadine to histamine and so depending on B6 and that can get outregulated early in. So it’s just bringing the context to what we’re dealing with.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah you have to, right just be respectful that everything that increases energy okay? Has a chance of making you feel worse. Until your body can let the energy flow through it okay. So don’t give up because that is the way to health. But you just have to go slowly and in the right steps. When you take something that makes you feel bad, now there are things that are just toxic for you okay? So no question about that. But the toxicity is almost always in the dose. There are very few things that we have on this planet that we give to each other that are inherently, at least in the supplement world, that are inherently toxic. But it’s the dose, it’s how fast you’re pushing the body and so, and so I’m trying to get back to that. The cell danger model in, so when you have excess inflammation okay? Using BAND-AIDs can turn that down can sometimes help the system feel safe and calm so then you can get to the next stage of healing. You know? In individual areas. If you’re just suppressing the system, it doesn’t work. 

You know, one of the things that’s very interesting is that you know, Dr. Navio has this CDR1, CDR2, CDR3. Like the CDR1 as I said is like the killing the bad things and getting rid of dead cells and kind of a destructive, high energy kind of process okay? But what we don’t know is what are the necessary substances or things to get it to go to the next step okay? And it’s a lot of little things together. That, the best we can come to is something we call quorum sensing. We know that bacteria do quorum sensing. Bacteria change forms and sometimes they do that and we don’t know what this exact signal is but when a certain amount of chemicals happen in the soup that they’re living in, they suddenly will change form, kind of all together. And it’s the same thing in healing. There’s this quantum change when you know, you get a group of chemicals together, the whole thing changes. And it’s hard for us because we think like engineers. We’re looking for the one thing that’s gonna make the effect and we do see that, obviously with lots of supplements and lots of drugs. You take X and you feel better. But often, it’s the 20 or 30 things that you’ve been doing and suddenly it’s different.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah.

Eric Gordon, MD

And that bothers us because I said, we’re engineers. All of us are engineers. I mean monkeys, we all want, we all have that A causes B ’cause that makes sense. You know? But that’s not how the system, the system works.

Beth O’Hara, FN

No, I love that.

Eric Gordon, MD

A little more complicated than that. And you know, and as we go through each step of the healing cycle, we have to remember that it is kind of mystery. But Dr. Navio, one of his things that he’s emphasizing these days is what he calls the healing. The health cycle you know? And he calls it salugenesis versus pathogenesis. You know, in medicine we always study how you get sick. And I, and we all do. We do lots of tests looking for the pathogen, the bug or the toxin. The mold, find it somewhere, the microtoxin. We’re gonna, always looking. We spend a huge amount of time doing that and that’s good. Because when we remove those things, we allow healing but we don’t necessarily, healing doesn’t necessarily happen. You know, you know lots of people who were in the cleanest environment and they’re still not well and that’s when the simple things like being in the earth, being in the sun and being in relationship that isn’t making you sick. And we’ve gotta be careful there because you know, when you’re ill, it’s hard to be with you. See this is the Catch 22 is people have to understand is that when you’re sick, you’re usually not as nice as you could be. You know? I mean the system’s irritable, your cells are irritable and you’re irritable and so you, I want to be careful. I hate to give people the idea that they should just live in this like, ’cause it’s not about a perfect world. I mean you’re supposed to have stresses. Life without stresses is death but you have to be aware that if you’re in a system where there is no room for you to move without being assaulted, emotionally or physically, it’s gonna be, you’re rarely gonna heal with chronic illness. It’s, chronic illness is about your body. It’s very individual, it’s not about the other. You can’t go, what worked for your uncle may work for you but maybe not.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Not as likely to.

Eric Gordon, MD

You have to find.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah, everyone has to find their own synergy and that’s what you’re really talking about is the synergy of the right supplements at the right time for this person which is gonna be different than that person. That’s why I don’t have any blanket protocols and it’s the synergy of the nervous system supports that are gonna work for this person, the body work and I can’t do massage but I love cranial work and my body really responds to cranial work. There was a period of time I couldn’t do acupuncture because I’d have huge amounts of activation and redness and itching. Now I can do acupuncture and then for me, getting my feet on the ground and being outside in nature for an hour a day. Rain or shine, has been hugely healing for me. It’s essential for the process I’m in now. But I couldn’t do it 10 years ago. It was, I was in a different state. It was too much. I couldn’t handle the temperature changes, too hot, too cold. So our healing, what works for us shifts as well as we’re moving through these stages. So that’s what I’m hearing.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yes, yes yes, yes and just always be gentle to yourself because it is safety that will allow you to heal. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I’m just, like I said, I always hesitate to use those words of safety because you know, then people, it’s not, you need also struggle. I mean it’s not, but it has to have some, your body has to know that it can relax but you’re not expecting perfection. But the healing, but just getting to that state where you’re giving it the nutrients that it needs to allow healing. It’s funny talking to you, I’m just realizing how, like I still have not been able to really put together you know, when I sit with the biochemical which would, the details which I love of how the cell danger response works and what the mitochondria do and what the endoplasmic reticulum and blah blah, how they all. And that’s fascinating and it gives me ideas about different supplements and different drugs to use but I realize there’s still a disconnect.

Okay, when I’m working with that person, what’s gonna work for them is more in this bigger zone of like, how do we get the nervous system in a place where it can listen? How do we get the, because I mean structure, one of the things I know, I just always want to put a plug in for is how important the cranial cervical junction is because people, especially people with severe mast cell issues and a lot of mold inflammation, you don’t have to have CCI with the cranial cervical instability to the point that you need surgery but just inflammation makes ligaments lax. That simple, I mean any chiropractor will tell you, in allergy season, it’s harder for people to hold adjustments because you got a lot of local inflammation. The ligaments get a little more lax and when you have a lot of local, a lot of inflammation in your body and if that ligament happens to be one that’s holding your upper cervicals in the right spot, a little bit of more movement irritates the nerves. Especially if it affects, if it affects the, where your head sits on your neck and that can irritate where the vagus nerve, where the ventral vagus nerve is you know? And that can really play havoc with your autonomic nervous system and so danger is with you all the time. Has nothing to do with your environment okay? 

You know, if your nervous system makes your heart beat fast you’re gonna be frightened and you’re gonna be anxious. It doesn’t matter how calm a person you are, when your heart’s going 120 beats a minute because you walked up the stairs, your body’s gonna feel like it’s in danger okay? And that has nothing to do with your psychology. Okay, that is hardwired into how the body works and I just want to emphasize that. More importantly than anything is while we’re talking about psychology, I’m not talking predominately about. We want to give equal weight to yes, how you interact you know, emotionally. But there is so much that’s hardwired into what it means to be an organism that sends danger signals because it’s about survival and if your heart is beating fast, if your lungs feel tight. If you don’t feel like you can get enough air, you’re gonna be frightened. I don’t care who you are you know? If when you swallow, it feels like it’s not working, it’s gonna make, it’s gonna be frightening and that’s gonna send a signal to your body to be more hyperalert and that’s gonna get your mast cells and all the other T cells and B cells to be more agitated, to be more easily agitated. So understand, when you’re relaxed, you can be exposed to what you’re allergic to and you might not react.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Yeah this is so critical because the vagal nerve controls that heartbeat, controls the lung function, controls the GI motility. So we see a lot of that with chronic constipation, that’s stubborn. Involved in sleep, communicates to the mast cells. The mast cells of the nerve endings and all along those nerve sheaths.

Eric Gordon, MD

Right.

Beth O’Hara, FN

We have to wrap up here because.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah yeah and I just want to say. And that is the thing, is that this is your whole system. You know the mast cells are interesting because they can make noise and they interact with you know, with the whole system. They were probably the original immune cell and so they communicate with every T cell and B cell and neutrophil and dendritic cell. They’re all part of the communication and they don’t have to release histamine. I mean that’s what people don’t get, is they go, “My histamine levels aren’t high.” Mast cells have lots of other chemicals to release and more importantly, they can stimulate other cells to do inflammatory things and we just, when they are upregulated. So it’s, the body is just an amazing, amazing thing and when it’s causing you to feel bad, it’s really hard and my advice is just to be patient and keep looking and you know, listen. Because I say it, when I started doing these summits, I was amazed by how many different opinions and information that’s out there. And there’s almost always a different one. Something you haven’t heard before and something that might trigger what you need. You know? I just emphasize that. Don’t give up. So many people, because they’ve spent a fortune going to a bunch of doctors and they just want to give up and I totally respect that. But I can tell you is that it just, you just haven’t found the person who knows enough about what you need to fix. And I wish I could tell you that you can find that all the time, easily. Because you know, there are so many different ways to heal the body. You know?

Beth O’Hara, FN

That’s a wonderful way to just frame all of this and to frame healing and I want to really thank you.

Eric Gordon, MD

Okay.

Beth O’Hara, FN

For putting this together for us, putting this context together. And for really sharing this, your passion. I can see how passionate this is and we’re really blessed and privileged to have you on with us. Thank you so much.

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh well thank you Beth, thank you for having mme. And thank you for educating the world because your work is so, so important. People have to learn about this, so thank you.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Oh I appreciate it and again, please let people know. How can they find you?

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh.

Beth O’Hara, FN

I know people are really interested in finding you.

Eric Gordon, MD

We’re kind of, we’re just Gordon Medical Associates. We had another name years ago but somebody else took it and then we just went with this one. So it’s Gordon Medical Associates and I think it’s gordonmedical.com and we can be found. We’re out there and always happy.

Beth O’Hara, FN

You have an in-person clinic?

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah we have, we have a, that’s what we do. We’re kind of old fashioned. Well not so old fashioned these days. It’s a lot of Zoom. But yes, we see patients. That’s what we do. We listen and we try to find the people. You know if I can’t help, you know if I can’t figure out, or if I don’t think I’m the right one, I’m pretty good at helping people find what I think is the right people. Because that’s the trick. I don’t have answers for everyone. It’s just that, but I know enough of the questions that I can usually figure out what direction people need to go. Because this is, this is not. And you can’t know it all. You know, when I started I thought I was gonna be an expert in everything. I was gonna be a homeopath and an acupuncturist and a this and a, and you know, you learn. But you can’t. You gotta know what you know and then I send people for the work that they need because I think that’s.

Beth O’Hara, FN

And you have a whole network of people in your clinic, so you have.

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh yeah and in the clinic.

Beth O’Hara, FN

A lot of modalities.

Eric Gordon, MD

Yeah we have lots of modalities and outside the clinic. It just depends what the patient needs because you know, that’s what it’s about. People, people who are willing to work hard to keep getting better. I’m just impressed with them, that’s all. It’s, you have to say is that so many people aren’t willing to put the work in and those who are, I just want to, you know, we want to support them as best we can.

Beth O’Hara, FN

Well thank you so much for what you do as well. The research that you’ve done has really changed lives and I think that this framework is going to change lives. Both practitioners and their practices, for people who are listening for themselves and looking at this from a whole new lens in terms of how they can heal. So I just, lots of gratitude for you. Thank you so much.

Eric Gordon, MD

Oh thank you. Thank you, thank you for having me.