Healthy Detox for Peak Mitochondrial Function

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Welcome to the Restore Your Mitochondrial Matrix summit. I'm your host, Laura, for Ontario. I'm bringing you experts to help you boost your energy and fix your health so you can build the life you love. And today, I'm bringing back my very special guest, Doctor Isaac Elias. It's wonderful to have you back on the summit. Thank you for being here. So good to see you. Thank you for having me back. Yeah. So last time we talked, we had this incredible discussion about the survival paradox. And today we're going to get deep into toxins and the problem there.

So I'm going to have you recap what the survival paradox is. But real quick just in case our listeners missed our first interview with you. You're an expert in the field of integrative medicine. You focus on cancer detoxification and really complex conditions. You're a physician, you're a researcher, you're a bestselling author, you're an educator, and you're a mind body practitioner. You really cover it all. And, so excited to have you back. Yeah, I think, well, I'm old. I'm old enough. Yeah. And yeah, but I do in my career is in integration.

I'm a licensed acupuncturist, so. So I do. Yeah, I kind of study vertically. So I'm very happy to be here and talk about the, about all of this in the context of mitochondrial function and mitochondrial health. As we discussed before the interview, if the mitochondria is functioning well, we cannot get sick. It's pretty much because anything that disrupts us is going to disrupt the mitochondrial function. So in this sense, the survival paradox is, is a little bit of a name that it's hard to always grasp.

What it means is it's the same thing that keeps us alive, our survival drive, which is innate in every cell, in our body, in every organ and tissue in us and the person in the community, and is innate in the cellular function. Very important is actually the survival drive is what gets us sick, because it's part of the survival drive. We either fight. This is a sympathetic response. It's innate. We fight creating inflammation or we run away flight by hiding, creating fibrosis, biofilm, micro environments where we don't get oxygen when mitochondrial function is off.

So this is a sympathetic level. But within minutes, our biochemical system starts reacting through our icon. I coined the the survival protein or this or the paradoxical protein or the inflammation protein galectin three, which is the bus that drives inflammatory compounds to the tissue, starts inflammation. It doesn't stop. And then that's why it will affect adversely cancer every chronic disease and mitochondrial function. So today we're going as you mentioned we're going to see what disrupts what turns on the survival.

That is the abnormal survival response. So last time we talked about emotion and psychology I'm not going to go into this. It is a toxin. It is a mental toxin. It's an emotional toxin. It's a psychological toxin. And so we do want to look at it. And that's why meditation is so powerful with the mind practically, not only theoretically, you can heal anything, it just takes a lot of doing. Yeah, yeah. And there are certain shortcuts. That's what I teach open heart medicine. But today we're going to look at the biochemistry and chemicals, because these are things that are not our always under our control.

No, we are exposed to all of them. So is the bottom line. They will end up affecting our mitochondrial health, our energy production, like you said, and our quality of life and quantity of yeah. So what I'm hearing from you, just to break it down really simply is this process of fighting infection and toxins in our body actually can be harmful to us. The survival paradox we have to our body is trying to protect itself, and at the same time, it's causing harm. So this is fascinating how the human body works.

The Survival Paradox Explained 4:12

And I know you have a lot of solutions for this, but can you start by talking about the relationship between toxins and the damaging effects of the survival paradox? Yes. So what you said is so true and all of us know it. It's called the cytokine storm. This is why people are dying from Covid. This is why people live long, whole Covid. The Covid is gone and so many people have chronic symptoms. Or some people, after I've after vaccines, it doesn't matter what the picture is the same. It's chronic symptom.

You tweeted somebody and then the the response becomes the problem. So in this sense, in this sense, anything that turns on our survival drive is damaging unless we can let go of it very quickly. So stress is a is a toxin. We all have. We all the time. We don't have time to know. People don't sleep enough, they don't rest enough. They don't hydrate enough. The eat food is inflammatory. All of this is a given. But we are also bombarded with toxins that were not so prevalent decades or centuries ago.

So there are a few categories. The categories of heavy metals where we made some progress, but not enough, with the key ones being lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, and also cesium and uranium. These are positively charged heavy metals. Often they are occurring in the body. So in oxidized lipids they hide in biofilm and they use galectin three very well. And so for example, pick picked a song. What if I say prospecting is a well published key later of heavy metals. You know, we published a number of papers about its ability to remove mercury, lead all the positively charged heavy metals and recently uranium.

So it even it will even remove radioactive compounds as long as they are positively charged. So that's one category. The other categories industrial and environmental toxins. And that's something that we may not be as aware about. For example, people can live in a beautiful neighborhood like in the South Bay in the Silicon Valley doesn't get much more expensive than that. But the planes are flying over and they land use in in San Francisco International Airport. And as a result, you get MTBE byproducts spraying into you all the time.

So you look at the it's a urine test and, and you can see that the levels, are very high, you know, so that's an example. And there are toxins that are produced by imbalances, you know, and gut mycotoxins being the classical toxin that the different fungi make as a response for their own survival, for their own survival. And they can affect our brain system, like untangling and. Antibodies, mycotoxins they can affect the other way. Maybe the most important one, which I overlooked 23 years ago, is pesticides.

We are bombarded with pesticides regardless, even if we do organic, because if you live in a flat area and somebody spraying glyphosate, roundup, it will travel miles and miles and miles horizontally ten, 12, 15, 20 miles. So anybody who is spraying their lawns, any farmers spraying, it doesn't matter if there's an organic field, it's going to get them. And glyphosate is nasty. It's nasty not by itself only, but it's also an issue because of its formulations. The formulation itself, which are not regulated, have extreme toxic materials.

So all of this to to so just to give you a sense, Laura, in the United States, they are spraying 300 million pounds of glyphosate a year, which is water soluble. It stays in the ground every year, every every every year. And what it does, it disrupt our microbiome. It prevents us from absorbing nutrients because it gets activated by by the microbiome. It. And suddenly we can't absorb the nutrients. It creates leaky gut, which means now inflammatory compounds are coming into the system. So fix autoimmunity.

It clearly causes damage to the kidney. Chronic kidney disease is an epidemic. 17 one 7% of the population people. It is not the wealthy and it disrupts the blood brain barrier. It goes into the brain. It's very similar to glycine. So it can exchange with it. So it weakens connective tissues and it affects the brain. Instead of glycine being protective, the smallest amino acid and relaxing, you get the life of the excitatory. Then you get more and more people on the spectrum, more autism and certain cancer that it's directly related to the once mostly recognized thyroid cancer, lymphomas and leukemias, but also prostate cancer is affected, mate.

So we are bombarded, mate. But the reason we are talking about it is because there are solutions. And that's why we have this talk to me. So I'm just you know, I'm I'm so glad that you're talking about this. So just to recap, what you've said so far is if your mitochondria are functioning well, we can't get sick. And you just covered five big sources of toxins. So heavy metals and then environmental toxins, including the MTBE that's coming out of the car.

Major Toxin Categories and Their Effects 10:12

And then just industrial, environmental, mycotoxins and pesticides and glyphosate specifically, which is herbicide. Right. So, so, so when you're exposed to these and the mitochondria get sick, it's disrupting the microbiome. You can't absorb your nutrients, you get leaky gut, you hurt your kidneys. The blood brain barrier, gets crossed with these toxins and then sets you up for chronic disease, cancer, all these problems. So I always say in my clinic that toxins create deficiency and toxins create illness.

So when we're doing, when we're healing people, we must address toxins. It is critical. And I think that many functional medicine programs just kind of focus on let's restore your gut or let's. But leaving out the detox part, the toxin part. So let's get deeper into that. How I, you know, I've heard about I've heard you talk about the pitfalls of detoxification and the healing crisis. And people get Horkheimer reactions when they try to detoxify. And this can be unhealthy. So how do you safely detoxify the body while avoiding the detox side effects?

Because clearly we have to get this stuff out of the body. I'm be delighted to talk about it in my book, my book, The Survival Paradox, I introduce the concept of survival paradox. What he does biochemically, metabolically, and then we talk about the fact that galectin three can be blocked by, by by pictures of the Modifieds. It was picked. And this is why it's the most important supplement one can take, because anything else you take is going to work better. And then I talk about every, every illness in the body, every main category, consume all the main organs.

The mental metabolic diseases, their inflammation, immunity, microbiome. Then I go over the solution and the first part is detoxification. Then it's healing our scars of survival multi-generational. And then how we really transform the survival paradox. So you mentioned something really important within this context. You mentioned the toxins cause deficiency. This is why if for example, if you look at my detox complete formula, you will see adaptogenic herbs. You will see circulation support ers.

You will see nutrients. Because to detoxify we need energy. That's kitchen 32 of the whole process. So the first step in detoxification we got to regulate the survival response. Because when we detoxify we are opening all the car all the closet in the kitchen and throwing everything out. It's going to be a mess right. We already, you know, to be ready to cook. But I do dishes. It's my job in the house. My wife is an amazing chili gourmet cook. I'm not allowed to say you. I'm saying eating publicly.

But I do the dishes if they know how to do em. So I know what happen when? When? When there's a lot of stuff. So if we do this. And that's why I bind those people to get side effect when it's done binding things and pick. This is an amazing binder, well published, but if you reduce the effects of galectin three, if you melt the biofilm which is built by collecting three, I know we are jumping about a lot of concepts and and then you are reducing blocking the inflammatory cytokines response which MCP does its way to published dozens of papers.

There are 80 papers published on this. So once, once, once we established this, we don't get the inflammatory response. And that's why is that some of the largest land clinics give pictures to all the patients. They don't have similar response. So this in general is the first step. Now that we got this foundation, we can dive into the what is detoxification. Because everybody has so many books. We detoxify with this, we detoxify it. But seldom people take the time to think what is detoxification.

So our body is an ongoing interaction between detoxification, letting go, nourishment like you said, nutrient. You said it right now and the transformation between them. Every time we exhale, we let go. We detoxify carbon dioxide. Every time we inhale, we take nourishment in in the alveoli, in the membrane of the cells, we have an exchange in the mitochondria you take certain compounds. Right. So so you take pyruvate and oxalate acetate. And then it goes together to alpha keto glutamate. And then you've got your minerals coming in and you'll be 12 and you'll be six.

And alpha lipoic acid that opens it in. And it goes through a process and Co Q10 and what do you get ATP you get energy. It's a transformative process. It's transformative energetically because you end up getting energy. It's amazing right. And if you do it well you have no byproducts. Why? Because there's no holding. There is you just flow with the process. I'm giving a little bit of a deeper understanding why you and I said mitochondrial health, a good mitochondrial health, meaning we are health.

So when we look at this we want to see what can disrupt it, what can disrupt it. So now we understand it. We detoxify all the time and we nourish all the time. We have to understand how do we support the body on an ongoing basis. And then there is more of a focused detox effort that is done, you know, once a year, twice a year after a big illness, after surgery, after chemotherapy, after radiation, in preparation. And it's done seasonally in the spring and in the fall. Why? These are the changing seasons.

In the spring, we are preparing for growth, for activity. In the fall we are preparing for the letting go. The end. Very different detox, not the topic of the summit, but you can see I want to give people a sense it's big. So the first step in detox is preparation. So we prepare first of all by trying to regulate the survival response. Make is known as the chemical. The biochemical. We also create time for the detoxification. We need space because when we we need when we have space in our life, in our breath, if we can breathe a little bit slower in our mind when one thought doesn't stick into another.

There is an opening in my book. In the last chapter, I have this diagram. When you open between, the thought stuff comes out, toxins come out, memories and traumas come out, insights come out. Right. You know it, I know it. When we do detox, we get insightful. Where were these insights? We didn't invented? They're within us. We just gave them this. The space to come. So when you prepare for detoxification, you would people who are listening make a list warning what you want to get rid of. And honestly, sky's the limit.

And why sky's the limit because everything per definition in this universe, in our mind, in our body is nothing to do with belief system. Nothing stays the same. That's a basic a quantum physics. That's the basic reality we live in. We are different now compared to half an hour ago because I learned some stuff. You learned some stuff. The body responded differently, right? That's the biggest flaw of Western medicine. It looks at a pathological tissue, which is no longer what the person is at the time.

That the pathologist is looking at the tissue. So because we are changeable, if we can connect into this changeability, everything is is possible and detox is the process of letting go. That's what it is. So what I'm what I'm hearing you say is there's some preparation for detox. So you're prepping the body, you're getting ready for it.

Safe Detox Preparation and Biofilm Exposure 18:36

And this is I think the piece that a lot of people skip is the prepping. They just want to go straight for the give me the binders, give me the supplements, tell me what to eat. So in your book, The Survival Paradox, you're talking about how to prep the body. So I'm going to invite everyone on this summit to dig deeper and explore this preparation process. But once you've prepared, what's the next step in detoxifying? So it's very important just in the book, just like the way I teach, there is this philosophical understanding.

And then there is 80 pages of protocol in the end. So the protocols are there. But just like you said, I'm not going to give you the protocol. I want you to first, I'm going to give you I want the people to understand the process. So once we prepare on all level emotionally, it's psychologically, physically then we need to expose. We need to expose the areas of detox. So we need to expose it physically, like dissolve the biofilm. Again galectin three holds the biofilm. Why Glacier is the molecule that looks in this way.

It's like it has this circular way. It binds to a carbohydrate ligands all of the inflammatory ligands, a glycoprotein like a lipid. And then it attaches to each other. And it also attaches like this creates a pentameter of five and then five attach to five. And what do you get. You get you get a biofilm. You get a lattice formation. You retain that. You get an actual sclerotic plaque. You get a micro environment where cancer grows, okay, no longer the membrane of the cell, the areas of the bacteria, the areas of the toxin is not accessible to the body any longer.

So when you give it picked up zone and you can combine with proteolytic enzymes and with lighter diet, you know, that is a little bit more catabolic. There we have breaks but you are absorbing. You are you are preventing the normal inflammatory response. That's why I'm emphasizing the importance of blocking galectin three. And it's really it's and I'm saying it with passion because I'm now a little bit getting involved with mast cell activation patients. And the key issue this is like we just talked about before we started this interview, is that the muscle activation starts mentally.

I'll talk it I'll talk about more in the muscle Activation Summit. So people are already activated in advance. So you want to do detox and you are totally stressed about the side effects of the detox you are holding while you wanting to let go. It ain't going to work no way. And the side effects? No, not a good idea. So you prepare you and you expose. And when you expose, you bind. Okay. The binding is that bind again pick this one. What this is respecting is unique. It's an amazing well published binders poly a.

But you can also use alginate. And for specific binding in the gut especially for mycotoxins and pesticides I use a little bit of different ingredients. So we have the we have the preparation. We have the exposure. And now we bind. Once we bind, when you're ready I'll go to the next. So I just want to cover exposure real quick just to break it down. Simple exposure means breaking down the biofilms. So now you can get to the toxins which are hidden and safely hidden inside of biofilms. So so now we're exposing.

Now you're binding. So go from there. So the exposure doesn't mean only breaking the biofilm. It also means supporting the circulation. So the oxygen can make it to the tissue. So circulating herbs for example. Yeah it's so that and being well well oxygenated you know if you can use oxygen in the process it's great. But just taking the time and allowing yourself and then exposing the areas of vulnerability in your body, you know, you have an area of pain. Open it. Here it is. You got time. You're in the right environment.

You're going to do it now. Once we bind, we have to get rid of and the process of discharge and elimination discharges. When the cells let go into the system, that's phase one. And deliver pretty toxic intermediate materials. And and in the book I have very detailed diagrams and what nutrients are needed. And then afterwards we got to eliminate. So the gut is to work. Urination is to work. Skin is to work like this. To work mind has to work. The hardest one, the letting go of the mind. If things come up for you and you keep on hashing them, you're going to bury them in another place.

If you just let them in. So toxins get buried in other places. So Chinese medicine is a beautiful discussion of the flow between the liver and the lungs and the heart and the digestion and the kidneys. So, for example, it went from what I usually don't talk about so much and I should detox complete. There are herbs in the formula. It supports all the different organs which are going to be in the flow. But there are many different formulas. But the idea is we support phase one and phase two of the of the of the liver detox.

And that's what you mentioned about nutrients. And as you know so well, these nutrients are the same nutrients that their mitochondria needs to function. Right. What is it B vitamins and minerals, or the methylation agent and use botanicals. Botanicals have a life. You can see the way work. I mean, the most venerable is dimension is doctor. Herbs have life. They have power. They are. They are not just a and no synthetic ingredients. So it's always good to use a life preparation. No modifying. It was pectin is made from the peel of the citrus fruit.

You know, it's part it's come straight from, from a fruit. So it's extracted from there and modified. So that's that's a process of destruction. Elimination has to be balanced. If we discharged too much and we can't eliminate, we're going to get back up and side effects. And in this sense, we have to be grateful and respectful of our microbiome. And we and I talked about it last time. I think we are a miracle. You I everybody listening. Everybody leaving because we are 52 trillion cells with close to 1 million creation.

The second working together. And if that's not a miracle, don't ask me what is a miracle. We just never take the time to think about it. It's an endless number where we can 100 trillion organism in our gut while supporting our health, while supporting our detox, while supporting our nourishment. We can activate chemotherapy, immunotherapy and cancer. So we got to be respectful of it. So when you do a cleanse, a detox from a dietary point of view, you can support with some digestive enzymes but don't over support.

Let your digestion do some work. Don't do it. Don't do a replacement therapy. That's the easiest.

Binding, Elimination, and Nutrient Support 26:00

Do a supporting enhancing therapy. Let the body come into the process. Make its own contribution and pre and probiotic. I like to use it in a liquid preparation because it's based on herbs and utilize. It can feel how your digestion like when you take I mean when you take eco probiotics, you can feel digestion wakes up, the whole system wakes up. We got to respect our gut. It's part of who we are. And the way to respect our gut is to respect our community around us. And this is not this is not a good time for the gut.

There's a reason why you get so much. See. But what is Sibo to certain bacteria becoming aggressive in the count of others, right. It's lower the diversity our mind, our acceptance of other people's opinions has been really narrowed lately. So simple is just in that respect. And whenever we are tied lower back to the topic of the summit, they mitochondria will not function well because the moment the mitochondria are filled under stress, it will go into survival mode. Ampk normal production of of adenosine monophosphate that is needed for ATP shut down into one.

It turns out we get to a sense of we don't have oxygen. Hypoxia inducing factor goes up PDK, which is the enzyme that blocks from here the movement into the mitochondria gets activated. Pyruvate doesn't make it into the mitochondria. We go into lactic acid production to glycolysis survival 100 times first of energy only two ATP tour glucose, lots of toxic byproducts. We get sick. We call it mitochondrial dysfunction. Everything I described today is effective. Today we talked about toxins. So when we detoxify and we create space.

And I want to go back to your comment, which was a side comment. You got to give nourishment and nutrients to build up because now the mitochondria is open. But it needs these nutrients. You can get depleted when you do detox without nourishment, and the microbiome will help you navigate yourself. So when you do this, then you get a successful detox. So the last step is restore the balance, supporting the gut in providing adaptogenic and circulating herbs to the body. So the body has the energy to do the detoxification.

So for example, if you look, if you look at some of the detox formula that I work with for the brain, they have a lot of adaptogenic herbs that I learned when I was treating people in the Himalayas. It's very high altitude, right? But there's no oxygen in the brain still needs to function. So these botanicals will allow the tissue to function under time of detoxification. So right now we just covered or you just explained a five step process. So first you prepare the body for detoxification which is often skipped and and essential for success.

Then you expose the toxins. So you break the biofilms and you oxygenate the tissues. And then you bind the toxins once you've exposed them. So you safely bind them so you can pull them out of the body. And then you discharge and eliminate that space for and this is supporting, phase one and two liver detoxification and all of the, all of the detox pathways in the body through the urination, the skin, the lymph, the mind, you said even which is often, overlooked. And at this step, you're also nourishing with cofactors like B vitamins, lipoic acid and such and botanicals.

And then the final fifth step is restore balance. So that's when you really start supporting. I almost like to think of it like there's been a war zone in your body, and now you got to put it all back together. Or another analogy I like to use is a bunch of rowdy teenagers had a party in your house and they broke a bunch of stuff, and now you've got to put it all back together. So that's the Restore Balance piece, right? It's true, it's true. And, you know, so is the balance in restoring happiness throughout the whole process all the time.

You don't you don't just do it in the end, but you change. You change the dynamic. Again, we are talking here for the general public. If, for example, when they you've programs to to cancer patients undergoing treatment, the supplement changes based on the days away from the treatment because it's it's a dynamic process, but it's the detox. And there has to be greater emphasis on nourishment. And one of the big tricks for detoxification for people going on retreats because it changes your, your, your, your autonomic nervous system receptors on your skin.

And how you react is when you are done with the process and you ready to go back to life, give yourself another day, give yourself another few hours. It's the transition from an intense detoxification back to life that will determine, are you going to integrate it? Are you going to go into a crisis like people coming back from vacation and they're wiped out? Yep. So we just peeled off. We need time to go back into balance. This is so simple. I have a good example of this. You know, when we were when I when my daughter was very young, we had season passes to Disneyland and it was a joke in my friend group and family that whenever we went to Disneyland, I needed an entire day to recover.

So there would be the day we go there. And then I take the next day off just to recover from the stimulation from that, from the go, go, go. It's the same kind of concept. Give yourself a recovery time. So this recovery time is is also a detox because we let go. So the recovery time we need somebody to take a few days. But if we are well trained for them. But as I talk to you, as my thoughts come, I let go of them. I don't hold them as they come. So I'm recovering as I do my stuff. Now that's more advanced training.

Yeah, most people, they can recover between this and it's good enough so. But we don't remember to recover between the salts because we ran one, one, one. But we can remember to recover between the exhalation and the inhalation, the nourishment between. That's exactly what you said. So these types of recovery, this is what happened to a muscle and muscle has, you know, calcium pumps and is magnesium pumps.

Restoring Balance and Closing Reflections 32:48

Right. In order to contract well, we have to relax. In order to inhale, we have to exhale first the next principle of life. And that's why detox is profound. And unfortunately there's so many expert in detox with amazing protocols. But when I talk to them, this is why I never thought about it. Well, detox is fundamental to our life. It's a letting go process because the moment we don't let go, things get sticky. Mycotoxins are sticky. If you ever touch your mycotoxins it's wet. Where do mycotoxins grow?

They don't grow in the sun when there's a lot of ventilation they're going dark damp oxygen less environment. Right. If we create this environment in our body by shielding survival response. Galectin three okay. Or we create them emotionally by creating boxes of traumas we've done deal with, or we have a physical scar after surgery. We have a multigenerational scar. In the book, as I describe my grandparents, my mother in me as being a Holocaust survivors and how when I healed my own pain that was related to my grandfather, how it changed the dynamic for my mother without telling her, that's multi-generational healing.

So there are so many levels, but the journey of light, of life is letting go. And the deep purpose of life is to connect with our heart, because love melts everything. Oh my gosh, that is a perfect place to finish this interview, that it was beautiful and I love the way that you have connected, detoxifying the body to this higher level way of being, this higher level emotions, higher resonance. And I think all of us want to achieve that as we're letting go and detoxing. At the end of the day, we want joy, we want love, we want happiness.

And you've laid it out perfectly how to do it. So thank you. Thank you so much. Tell us tell everyone where they can get the survival paradox book, where they can get picked us all to support their detoxification process. Where can we find you? So the survival paradox is available on Amazon or on the Survival paradox.com and picked us so you can just look picked us all.com a doctor realized that or that org even the summit is part of our gift. We will provide a few chapters from the survival paradox and protocol is how to use modifiers.

It was 15 based on the condition and and day and dosing. And this is my first book after being after started training and healing our kids age 15. I mean my 60s. So it's almost 50 years and I got scary. And so everything is in this book, and I didn't took my time before I put it in writing. So I'm really glad for the opportunity because now my my mission is to share my heart and in my knowledge, you know, I traveled all over the world to the most remote places known for different systems. And it's all about connecting from our heart.

It's really it's a it's really the only hope we have. Thank you so much, Doctor Elias. I'm so honored to have you as a featured speaker on this summit. We'll have lots of clickable links all over the place where our viewers can get access to your products and your support. And just. Thank you. Thank you for what you're doing in the world. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. You take good care, Doctor Elias. Bye now. Bye.