The Inflamed Brain: Manage Autoimmunity Naturally

Introduction and Speaker Background 0:00

Hi I'm dr Amy and I wanna welcome you to the bio optimized summit where we explore how you can reach your next level of physical and mental health through targeted and intentional optimizing of your biology today, I am very excited to be interviewing Dr Doty's corrosion for me. He's been instrumental in my own journey. In fact his book was what really started me off with helping my brain and figuring out what was wrong with my brain. And so I'm thrilled to bring you his expertise today. Now he has and has done so many things. I I could I mean the whole interview could just be about what he has done and all that he continues to do in the world of functional neurology and now he's expanding that.

So in summary he is a clinical research scientist professor and also then a functional medicine health care provider. I first met him when he came to Loma linda as an associate clinical professor. And he has also served as a research fellow at Harvard and a researcher at the department of neurology at Mass General. He has a PhD in health science with concentrations in immunology and toxicology and then also a doctor of health science degree from Nova Southeastern University. He completed his post doc research training at Harvard and Mass General and then has a masters of Science degree in human nutrition as well as the doctor of chiropractic degree, a master of medical science degree in clinical investigation from Harvard medical School, I think sums up all of his degrees and education but then he has been such a leader in the world of neurology, functional neurology? And not only leads a very active facebook group with thousands of members helping them with their patients, but then has his karate and institute where he has uh module and trains other providers in all these different areas as it relates to auto immunity, neuro inflammation. G I I mean the list goes on.

I think your newest module coming out is on diabetes, which I'm super excited about as well. So thank you and welcome. Thank you so much. Yeah, so when I first started my journey, I hit a wall and here I was a resident in general surgery and I was crashing, I was having such bad fatigue. The brain fog was enormous and I was really struggling just to get through my day. And when I found your book and I've got it right here, you know, why isn't my brain working? And what this taught me so much was the information that was happening in my brain was causing my symptoms.

And it wasn't just what I thought it was at the time, which was, oh, I'm depressed or I'm anxious. It's like, no, like there actually might be biology and physiology behind and I think, you know, you have said before where it's all psychology until you understand the biology behind it, right? And so, understanding that this inflammation in our brain can be playing a huge role in limiting us. And I'd like you to kind of introduce that topic to us. Brain inflammation. What kind of symptoms will this be causing?

Who might this be affecting? And then we'll take we'll kind of dive deeper into the topic. Sure, of course. So I think for most of us we all have some degree of inflammation and some of us have had some degree of information. So more than others in our brain and the brain isn't just working well. Man has disease where brain goes through the general process and part of that degenerate processes information. So, um, past head traumas can have an impact on it. They can catch up with us or diet, lifestyle can catch up with us if you have any other kind of inflammatory conditions, maybe like inflammatory bowel disease or rheumatoid arthritis, those inflammatory responses cause an inflammatory response in the brain to and and those things really impact our brain function. And when you're looking at,

Understanding Brain Inflammation 4:08

when you look at the brain being inflamed, there's a few things that happened that can give you a clue if you're trying to figure out if you have brain inflammation and one of the first things is inflammation will slow down how nerves fire. That's called nerve conduction. And so when people have brain information, they just notice that the brain is that the term they use most commonly as brain fog, they just can't get through the thought. The brain just seems slower. There's just some days they notice their brain is just not there. Um and that just tends to happen more often and it lasts longer for people as they're as they're suffering from the information, if they're going to get worse, the other key issues that information and couples um the energy powerhouse of the cell called the mitochondria.

So it just causes people to get really fatigued really quickly. So what happens under physiological responses of brain inflammation is that nerve speed, nerve conduction goes down and then the brain gets fatigued really quickly and that's not necessarily a neurosurgeon disease. And if you probably go to your health care, professional neurologist and say those things, I mean they're just going to say, you know, you're getting older, you know, not every day is a great brain day, but you know, most people that have information that there's something wrong and this is not how they're used to used to functioning. I just don't know what it is and what it's called. It's not a disease.

It's not a disease, it's just a physiological state that's happening, right? And there's many different types of cells that we have in our brain and inflammation is going to affect each of them differently. Whether it's the astrocytes and microglia, the neurons themselves. Right. Exactly. And I remember when I was learning about the brain, these cells called microglia and you never really heard much about them. You're everyone's so focused on neurons and these pathways and determining them. But you know, there are more micro glial cells than actual neurons and microglia cells of the immune cells of the brain and the mass of the brain is actually more immune than actual neurons and immune cells and neurons. And there they are really reactive to the environment and in our physiology and what we do to it.

So at the end of the day, you know, we're all trying to preserve our brain function so we can have the most efficient life we can and be able to do things we can. And one of the key factors is how inflamed the brain is and how active these glial cells are. And uh that is really important. And a lot of chronic patients I see will come in and they'll have like chronic depression and chronic fatigue and can't think and focus and they think their diagnosis is major depressive disorder, where they think their diagnosis major fatigue syndrome and chronic fatigue, and actually it's just an injured inflamed brain or that really needs help.

And for me, it was key to understand how my prior head injuries had really kind of turned that corner for me and really kind of created a cascade of inflammation that I was having a hard time pulling myself out of. But what I also learned from your book for the first time was this idea of inflammation in the gut is going to cause inflammation in the brain And the key to that is the vagus nerve in that communication pathway. Yeah. And this is a really exciting field of neurology research, this the brain gut access and the gut brain access and and how the environment in the gastrointestinal tract really can change the environment the brain.

And you know, in the brain you have these cells cells called glial cells and these glial cells can create the inflammatory response but messengers in the gut messenger proteins and singles in the gut can actually turn on these glial cells in the brain. So you could have an inflammatory response in your gut and then you can have inflammation change in the brain. And there's been several studies not published where they see patients that suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases have a high degree of white matter lesions in the brain which is which is a violation of the neurons in the brain are getting injured. And now there's also some really phenomenal research coming out in the Parkinson disease world where they're showing that Parkinson's really starts in the gut and the inflammatory response in the gut starts to build up these protein aggregates called. And then this kind of just goes from the gut up to Vegas and into the brain stem and adventures in the brain.

And um we we definitely know that even clinically, you know, patients will come in and say sometimes if I eat like milk, I can't think for a while, It's like you know, get the gluten can be milking really be any food protein. But they'll notice those relationships between how they get bloated and distended and eat something inflammatory and all of a sudden the brain doesn't work. And that's basically this, you know, brain got access experiment in front of them that they can experience anything that some of us have experienced that. Yeah. So at the time I started tracking my food and noticing how closely correlated the brain fog was with what I was eating.

But then the more I looked into your work and then I came to your training on the neuro inflammation and I learned more deep into that topic on how the food sensitivities can even cause this autoimmune reaction where your own cells are now causing more inflammation in your brain because it's attacking your brain cells, your neuron cells or other places in your body, other tissues in your body. But it's not just general inflammation, it can actually be starting to trigger an autoimmune reaction in your brain.

Absolutely. And I think when you look at the food protein, dietary protein impact on brain information, there's a scale of how severe it could be, right for some people they eat it. They get a little brain fog and other people it shuts them down. They can't think and focus for a long time. And then for some people they can actually get neurological auto immunity. And one of one of the mechanisms is a mechanism in immunology that they call molecular mimicry across your activity where someone develops antibodies against food protein because they're sensitive to it. But those antibodies um are so similar to the protein that from the food protein to the neurons in the brain tissues in the brain,

Gut-Brain Axis and Food Triggers 9:58

that those antibodies actually attach the brain. They can cause a neurological autoimmune type of disorder. And I think the most significant protein studied for that reaction has been gluten because something called disease. But other food proteins have been able to do that too. And we published a paper um a few years ago, nutrients where we found the same thing with milk protein and myelin reactions and uh it's it's it's just inflammation. And I think as more research shows that we'll see certain genotype and subgroups will be sensitive to various proteins. And some of those proteins share that sequence and some people will have this chronic exposure to food proteins turn on the brain fog potentially lead to neurological autoimmune it for some of them.

Yeah, it is like you mentioned with the gluten a tax. Yeah, it really depends on where those auto immune cells are targeting which tissues are targeting and that will determine the symptoms. So it won't be the same symptoms for everybody because for some it may be the cerebellum for others it may be the myelin, it may it may be different tissues and their specific symptoms depending on which tissues. Your autoimmune marker or your auto immune cells are attacking these reactions. Again, don't fall into the black and white label criteria for diagnosis disease, especially the early stages. So when people are having these inflammatory brain reactions and their diets causing it in other, other things contributed to lifestyle, you know, environmental triggers, they just kind of feel hopeless.

They don't know what to do and uh and they just don't know it's neuro inflammation and their strategies you can implement for it and to make those links like you made with food and how it impacts your brain function a lot of times people take a step back and just listen and start observing because they now understand it. Um it can be a game changer. So let's talk a little bit then about the primed micro glia because it's on that spectrum of brain inflammation and what has been so significant for me is understanding that these prior insults injuries, whatever was the initial cause of priming those micro glia.

It sets this pattern and now they're much more ready to be activated and have this massive inflammation response. Yeah. Been before. So, can you talk us through like what our prime micro glia that may not be a term that many people are familiar with yet. Walk us through what those are. Sure. So let me just make it very basic for people that are new to all these cells and everything within the brain. You have different types of cells. One group of cells are called neurons. That's those are things that fire that allow you to have different functions like thinking, focus, concentration, movement, smell all those things.

Then there's another group of cells in the brain that are called neuro glia. And these neuro glia have different different different types of cells. But the one we're talking about is the micro glia which is very abundant in the brain. The microbes are really important for us in the brain and what they do is they really clean up our brain, they get rid of debris in our brain. So you know our some of our neurons start to age and get old. They have to basically be cleaned up. So you have healthy synapses between it and these micro glia really serve that function really keep our brain in a sense clean and healthy with nice connections and everything.

Um And they serve other rules too but but that's one of the most important roles. And these micro glial cells um can at certain conditions in most research mechanisms actually traumatic brain injury when they get a bombardment they can they get spirit inflammatory triggers and trauma is one of the major ones when someone has like a brain injury there's a force that hits the brain neurons sheer as neurons can injure this inflammatory response takes place and these micro glial cells get so activated that they become what's called primed. And what prime means is that these cells, these micro glia now um permanently change their structure and these microbes have these long arms and legs when they walk they kind of really travel throughout the brain and scavenge and then when they get prime they just stop and then they lose their arms and they just stay in a state of information in that area um normally to get rid of the debris but pathologically um it can cause ongoing problems because those glial cells just stay there and now they're really really reactive to triggering the inflammatory response and now it's extremely easy to trigger the inflammatory response from food protein or an environmental trigger or if you don't get enough sleep things that really impact the physiology that when they become imbalanced these these these prime glial cells instead of having the inflammatory response trigger way down here then cause response there really close and it takes a little bit of trigger to them cause of response. So typically here's someone who for example had a brain injury and then you know they recovered, they were dizzy for a couple of days, they felt off and then they were fine and they're like okay well I guess that's it, you're okay but that's not really what happened. So what happens is that trauma primes glial cells and these glial cells keep active for a long period of time and and many people may not even experiences as they, as years go by and these prime glial cells start like a forest fire and they start activating and recruiting these other glial cells in that area.

And then all of a sudden you have this basically firing your brain and it's pretty active. And then if you have them lifestyle triggers that activated you can totally fall apart. So one of the big clues that you have prime glial cells is you have let's say for example history of a traumatic brain injury. And then as the years come by you noticed you kind of had a scale slowly sloping downward with your brain function and now like you just don't sleep well and your brain just does not work. You get exposed to food protein, your brain doesn't work. You get exposed to a chemical that you're not sensitive like you're very sensitive to could be let's say gasoline, you pump your gas, you take it with you know the fumes in and now like your brain function shut down for three of those are all the clues of um prime glial cells in a sense, it's an over exaggerated response to a normal daily trigger.

And I would say that most people don't even know what their trigger is if they're not aware that they have this history and what that can cause in their brain. They're not looking for triggers yet. And so they're going about their daily life and all of a sudden they fall apart and they don't associate, oh, I was at this place or I was exposed to this or whatever. It was like. They they're not making those associations yet. They're just in a frustrated cycle of, I'm falling apart again. I can't function. This is gonna usually take me a couple of days to, to bounce back and I don't even know what causes this.

Unfortunately, that's the typical history because it just slowly comes across. It's, it's a, there's an event and then there's a downward scale that gets more and more evident as far as symptoms are concerned as time goes on. And uh, and it is very frustrating for people. I mean as a person who works with patients that are suffering from chronic neurological issues and they come in there, they have no idea what this is. They don't know what's going on. And they, and they really, um, I can't understand why it's something in the past that the brain injury or some type of trigger really causes for some people,

Primed Microglia and Brain Injury 17:20

they may have had some infection, you know, that the impact of the brain or you know, other other factors, but brain trauma is the most common one. And this is actually really being studied now. Um, the chronic traumatic encephalopathy that's happening with football players. That's really led to a lot of research, soldiers can blast injuries, there's been a lot of funding and support to really understand traumatic brain injuries and it is scary, you know, So if you ever had a brain injury and you've lost consciousness, if you ever had a brain then you definitely have some private jail cells. Um and you know if you had multiple bumps over time, some of those can catch up with you especially as time goes on as you get older and other inflammatory mechanisms there.

Yeah, it has been helpful for these more extreme cases, you know, like the football players or the you know, T. B. I. S. It's been helpful to be able to follow those and see what happens for the rest of us who maybe wouldn't associate ourselves as having that severe head injury though, What age are we talking about that? They would be susceptible. I mean are we going back as early as childhood? Like even a childhood, you know, I was out and I had a softball hit my head and I, you know, lost consciousness but it wasn't for very long.

Are we talking about those types of injuries or can you really help us understand what history we're looking for in a normal everyday person. Sure. So there's two factors to lead to micro. One is the insult like let's say a strong trauma to the brain. And the other one is what's the pre existing state of micro glia before the trauma. Okay, so these microbial cells, these these immune inflammatory cells or or reacting with an inflammatory response to some degree before you get trauma. So if you have, for example, someone who is a diabetic who's got severe information and blood sugar issues and all the negative consequences of having, you know, diabetes they have, let's say they're also a smoker and they're hypoxic and they're not getting enough auction to the brain and you know, let's get those two factors alone combined and they get a trauma, let's say the same amount of impact as someone else that doesn't have those things. They're going to have a greater degree of priming in response. So, you know, when we're younger, we don't have as many of these subtle inflammatory triggers that all add up to probably sells for the most part.

Um so you don't, you see more resiliency with Children with images, but as we get older as we become unhealthier in our system and our own physiology starts to compromise. It's not that hard to get these things triggering. Um we also know that there's some conditions when you look at some of the childhood development disorders, like for example autism and these kids have what are called prime glial cells that they actually have neurological auto antibodies um that they can be measured right as soon as they're born. So they're already in this inflammatory heightened state. So for them you have them, they eat gluten and dairy. They pasta, they go crazy.

They run all over the place, can't think the brain is not able to gate they can't behave. That's brain information. Um, so sometimes it doesn't have to be brain injuries. Sometimes there's a subtle auto community. So in the field, for example, autism, many meteorologists have really labeled it as an autoimmune disease because they can fit the criteria that they have these autoantibodies and these these things turn in during fetal development. And so they're already, for example, born with the prime hyperactive inflamed brain and then the other things tend to trigger it.

So, um, so it's a spectrum. Yeah. Are there other factors in utero that can affect priming or even cause priming or is it all after you've been born? What can have One of the main factors is what they found is if the mother gets a significant infection during pregnancy that can have cells of the mother already has autoimmune disease that's not being controlled and flares up their pregnancy, that can lead to this is the, those are the ones who a lot of research coming in. There's also some, some studies where they look at environmental pollution load can be a factor impacting some kids that development issues.

Um one study found high degrees of correlation with kids that develop autism. They live really close to freeways compared to people that don't have, this is the same exposure. So it's probably a multi variant combination of multiple variables with some kind of genetic susceptibility where some people will be totally fine, some people won't, but the ones that are not totally fine to have some believable. Well, initially have these things turned on, we don't know what all those variables are. So it's hard to say how do you how do you deal with the public health issue and what do you do? You just know there's some some data, but how do you change that lifestyle implications for people?

That's not clear yet. Right. But we definitely are clear on the fact of how important lifestyle is. And yes, there are definitely supplements that you can help and we'll get into that as well. But lifestyle is huge for this one because if you're pushing yourself more than what is healthy, if you're putting your stress uh to the point where it's affecting your biology, your micro glia are gonna be on edge and they're going to be right at that threshold all the time. It won't take much to just tip you over the edge if something else happens, right? So, for you, what have you seen as the most important lifestyle factors.

So if I if we if I woke up, I'm working with the patient, we figure out, okay, there's a neuro inflammatory mechanism that's a potential here as a cause. And then we start going down that path and sometimes, you know, it's a working diagnosis until you try interventions and then see like things change and if things start to change, we're going to keep pushing this way until we can see. But with lifestyle um I mean the best place to start with sleep because we know that people don't get enough sleep that these prime glial cells really get active. Sleep is important to dampen these prime glial cells. Um that's a key factor.

Exercise actually helps come down by information, but you over train it makes you much worse. Alcohol is a major sugar for prime glial cells. So you know, some people actually, there's been research that shows that being being, having the sensation, being hungover. It's actually brain information and people that already have pre existing brain information like they just can't handle it right. They just they just say they keep cells is like they used to be able to drink or not to have last and they're gonna pay the price for a long time like never before, that's primed cell too.

So and then obviously diet and diet the key thing is trying to for the most part have an anti inflammatory diet and which is a pro inflammatory, pro inflammatory diet. Being the standard american diet, fast food, partially hydrogenated fats, things that come in boxes and bags like chips and processed foods and microwavable tater tots and whatever, whatever that uh that type of diet is very pro inflammatory, you know, and an anti inflammatory would be lots of vegetables, lots of fruits, lots LTD sugar, lots of essential fatty acids, a lot of fish live avocados. So the standard time climate diet seems to make a difference. And for people that have their information, they'll know it like, they'll know if they have a really inflammatory bowl of greasy french fries and have a pizza and a beer. They're done.

Yeah, healthier. All of a sudden the brain function surprisingly, is much better. So general information is a is a is one of the key factors with it. And then also another major lifestyle trigger that impacts my information is stability of the blood sugar levels. So they overeat and they get, you know, what's called an insulin surge. The insulin turns on these jail cells, significant brain information. So high sugar diets, things that really over eating carbs or starches really make them really fall apart. So most people if they for example, overeat starch and carbs, they're gonna like shut down and get tired and you take a nap.

Like the typical thanksgiving over eating dinner thing, people do right? But people that have great information when they have an insulin surge, they don't just get tired, take a nap. Their brain just shuts down. Like they can't remember, they can think, they can't focus, it's like uh they really don't have their basic essential synapses happening. So that's where the difference is the blood sugar stability is another major one with them. Um and then, and then if they can get the blood sugar levels stable, get enough sleep, get enough rest, get enough exercise their between ng, um and then have this healthy diet that will start to really impact them from a lifestyle perspective, right? Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up the point

Lifestyle Triggers and Daily Management 26:10

about the sugar because that was a big game changer for me when I read your book and I started going to your trainings and I realized that what I had thought was a healthy diet ended up not being healthy at all for my prime micro glia and was actually contributing to me constantly feeling like I was on the edge of falling into that brain fog and fatigue. And I remember there being a long stretch where I was doing so many other things right, but I didn't have that diet piece and specifically like the amount of carbohydrates and so my blood sugar levels were always up and down up and down in between when I was eating and I would, I would have to go out in between patients and take a nap in my car just to be able to come back and feel like I had enough brain power to get through my next patient.

And what I found was really helpful for me was switching over to what would be considered like a paleo type of diet, much more focused on healthy fats, healthy proteins, not very many carbohydrates, if any at all in the morning, because that would cause my blood sugar levels to just be up and down all day long and that was exhausting for my brain to try to work through that. Yeah, I mean the blood sugar roller coaster ride is going to devastate inflammation and yeah, I mean sometimes doing a paleo approach where you really cut, you know, you get rid of grains and gluten and starch is is a really good place to start.

So with my, with my patients um and I'm working with them and kind of the spectrum of like how deep do we need to go with their diet and I mean a paleo getting rid of inflammatory, the most inflammatory proteins in the brain which are gluten dairy is like easy place to start. I mean not easy for some people because they have to make a lifestyle change as far as the concept of dairy free, but then going into a paleo would be like the next step getting rid of the other grains and grain scientists cause insulin surges and if you're already, if you already sensitive gluten other grains tend to be an issue so they can go and go across there and then the next stage where you can have a significant impact on your health if you have brain information is to actually, you know, going to accuse genic diet and more popular today because of like weight loss because people noticed that for brain inflammation despite all the hype, it is a major, major way to calm down So when your body um, you know, cuts down its carbohydrate intake to two very small amount and you're getting most of your calories from healthy fats and and some protein.

Not really sure that all the body shifts into using fat for energy and ketones and ketones actually dampen brain inflammation and they also provide a good source for the brain as fuel that's more efficient than glucose. So people have information really have issues and endurance of the brain. So this really changes it for them. So for some people, when they, when they get into a ketogenic diet, um, they'll just notice like, hey, there's just a level of blocking is lifted, they feel a lot better. And then the most exciting research about, about prime glial cells is really a tautology which is the process of these cells die off and you can't get rid of these cells. But the really only way to get rid of these cells is if you activated Takaji and this is where fasting fasting comes in and if people do engage in one of those called intermittent fasting and you cannot do this if you have a blood sugar problem to start with, you have to, you know, I don't like eating donuts and cookies and sugars all day, if that's your diet and then try to fast, if you will crash, great information will get much, much worse. You'll fall apart get people if if you're new to this field and this concept, you're listening and you're worried about my information, just know that fasting is something you kind of work into.

The best way to work into fasting without totally falling apart and feeling awful, especially for information is to first, you know, cut your sugar and take down and get rid of that addictive sugar surge symptoms, progress into learning how to do a ketogenic diet so you can take this for a while and once someone gets in ketosis for a while, their body gets used to using fat for energy and that can take six weeks. That can take two months for some people. And then they just notice that they wake up and they're just not hungry and then they'll they'll just feel like they don't need to eat because the body is using fat for energy and they can go longer and longer without eating.

And eventually they can go into like a 14 hour fasting window and a 16 hour fasting window without really ever noticing any significant crashes. And that that period of going from keto to a 16 16 hour fasting window or not eating anything for 16 hours and they feel fine. Can can take 3 to 4 months. It's not like it's gonna happen when I, but it's a very easy way to not stress. You can't stress out an inflamed brain with trying to Push fastening them to crash, do that and then once they get into a fast, if they do this 16 hour fast, then occasionally, if they can try to do one day fast and then research shows a three day fast as this most impact of getting rid of these cells, these prime cells through Takaji. So, so I'm working with lots of patients with brain inflammation, have traumatic brain injuries, and some of us, like, we're still working with them their year into it and they still haven't gotten to the point where they can do a three day fast, we're working towards it.

But we know once they get the physiology set where they can handle that, they start playing in that debris and they can start doing a three day fast recorder. Um we're going to see lots of things change. Exactly. And that brings me to my next question because it's been my personal experience as well. And then I've seen this in lots of patients of mine. So I'd like you to weigh in on this and bring your expertise to this and that is how do you know how much stress you can put on your brain, even if it's good stress, Right? How do you know how much stress you can put on that? What pace you can go at when you have these prime microglia because I have made the mistake many times of going too far too fast. Even if it's a good thing trying to get to the intermittent fasting and trying to do ketosis and going too fast and and suffering the consequences and being uh you know, challenge for a few days as my brain is in this massive inflammation state. So how how does a person pace themselves?

How do they know? Can they tell before they actually cross that line of activating their micro glia again? Right, So that's the bad news is there's no consistent method for everyone. The good news is your body will tell you. It's like all the theories are out of the window because your body will say no, no, no, this is not working. Um so as far as like an everyday thing, I mean your your if you do have an injury and you do have private little cells for example, and you're very susceptible to inflammation reactions in the brain then, you know your level for example, exposure to food protein that can typically costing information can be totally different. You also have not had sleep, right? So it's a combination of different factors that kind of combine and and at some point as you kind of become aware and conscious of like how sleep and diet and exercise really impact your brain function.

You kind of find your like where you function best at, right? So you find your threshold, how much exercise you can really do with that crashing and what makes you really feel well and then what kind of diet you need to do to feel well, how much sleep you need to get every time you deviate from that, then you're vulnerable to other things and then the goal is to kind of find out your baseline where that is and then as far as like transitioning to diet where you go into the fascinating, like that's the common thing where most people go too fast and then they crash because you know why wouldn't you want to be better sooner?

This is the way to do it. Well you gotta listen to your brain and your brain and so um the easiest thing is just to just know it's a process that takes a little time and your healing all the way through. So if you cut down sugars and starches, you comment down brain inflammation and you're on your way to helping your self function and get to the next stage. So it's it's very positive, it's not like you have to jump into it right? Um and then if you started to get into ketosis and you start to make ketones that's very protective to the brain, it's very healing itself and you're gonna get some some major benefits from that. And then when you get to come in fasting now you're really promoting the ontology where you're getting rid of this debris of these neurons and then if you go longer even get greater response so that you know it could take a year for some, for most people to get to that to that stage for some people it could be six months. Um but it's not gonna happen like two weeks.

I mean you can really crash if you try to do it too fast. Yeah. And and that's the thing is that there's without question, there has to be trial and error. You have to listen, you have to find your threshold. You got to forget what you can you can respond to. Um so your brain will be your partner and letting you know what those levels are. You know, don't listen to it. It will let you know by crashing on you exactly one way or the other. It will let you know, right? And like this concept of since there's many

Diet, Ketosis, and Fasting for Brain Health 35:40

factors understanding like what to do when you didn't have great sleep and knowing that you've got to be more dialed in on these other factors for that day because you are more susceptible. And so when we optimize our sleep, yeah, we've got more, you know, wiggle room and these other factors. But knowing that it's all these factors combined and so being able to look at that big picture and know how vulnerable you are on a given day and how careful you need to be with your diet based on your sleep or vice versa.

Yeah, I mean that's when you have to like really go, I got to take this stuff seriously. People that sleep, like you can't be on social media, midnight trying to respond and you can't watch tv. Like there's a point, you got to have a ritual of going to bed and getting used to actually normal circadian rhythm of just going to bed and sleep. And really taking that is a very serious part of your day. As you would think anything else that's very important for you becomes a key factor. And I mean it's for everybody, right? But for those people, for those of us who have prime Michael glia, it's a matter of being able to function or not.

So it really has become essential for us. Exactly. And and the issue is also like, once you if you if you don't listen to your brain and you keep crashing and keep them in bad days and you're actually in a situation where you're promoting Euro degeneration, like you can't win. It's like this can become a really big deal really quickly. So you need to like jump on board and listen to your brain and and just follow the guidelines and then, you know, you can dramatically improve your health and function as you take these steps in.

But uh you can take it seriously. Yeah, well let's talk a little bit about emotional stress and primed micro glia because that's also a big factor in terms of activating them, but can emotional stress be the initial insult for priming micro glia. Yeah, so there is research that shows the psycho neuro immune response itself can be significant trauma glial cells and and part of you know post traumatic stress disorder uh from your immunologist is primed and glial cells that um when you actually engage in significant trauma emotional trauma, you're actually acquiring up your limbic system and your limbic system will fire up your autonomic centers which create the sympathetic fighter flight response.

But that mechanism in a prolonged state turns on glial cells and creates this inflammatory response. And if it's significant enough in the PTSD world there there's finding that primes jail cells and now you have these prime glial cells from let's say severe, you know emotional trauma and now your brain is inflamed and now a dietary thing can trigger, you know, it wasn't the head injury was the trauma that was very significant emotionally that that did it. Um So that's a that's a factor that's very interesting in the field of psychology, immunology. Um But once it turns out however it turns on it's on. And then also people that let's say they did have a traumatic brain injury, they could have a significant emotional olympic response turn on the brain inflammation and they didn't have that as the trigger.

But brain trauma, but now they're most responses. So you can go, you know, different ways. But yeah, there is absolutely an autonomic response that can turn on significant information, the brain and then when a person is experiencing stress, maybe higher stress at their work and then their uh their leaky gut permeability starts setting and then that's going to increase the inflammation in the brain. It's like how many of these things start to add up and then boom person goes down for the count and the goal is to to know what those things are billed as much resilience as you can and then, you know, we all are going to have things that trigger it.

Like you could, you could have some prime glial cells in you walk past the building and they're doing construction, all these chemical views hit you for some people, they would have noticed, most people noticed that for some people have probably sells, it would be a significant trigger for them and they were already sleeping well and eating well and doing these things and boom. Um, sometimes just get a common goal and that treat that activates the primordial schism, you really down for the count more than most people would be just from that.

So, um, these are all triggers that. So basically when you're, you're vulnerable for all these different mechanism and that's the key difference between having primary cells or not, most people have a lot of emotional stress or get exposed to toxic gasses or humans in a separate area or inflammatory food, they don't totally shut down. The brain function doesn't just stop and go down. They just, you know, have some information in there. Well, that's felt bad. They walk away. But people are primed cells have a completely different experience and that's the key factor.

Well let's talk about, how would a person go about testing for this? Are their lab tests? Should they get tested? Can they go based off of history and symptoms? If testing is not an option for them? What what are your thoughts around actually doing some lab testing? Okay, well I suppose like laboratory tests to go blood tests go, there is no direct marker for brain inflammation. There's markers for things like blood brain barrier permeability, once called. The most common ones published S 100 B protein elevations. Um that show up but there's no like really good blood test. And then when you look at imaging studies there are imaging studies that you can actually see active cells but they're not commercially available. They're used in research hospitals.

They inject a dye that glucose source that traces to the glia and they can see how much activity is taking place and be able to have prime glial cells and see these cells lit up all over the place with with special techniques. Um So that hasn't become commercially appropriate for the most part. Um You're the clinical diagnosis based on symptoms and then improvements as you follow guidelines to reduce brain inflammation. Now you can look for triggers for mechanisms for brain inflammation through blood work.

Like for example, if your blood sugar a little bit high if your blood brain barrier's preferable if your leaky gut permeable inflammatory markers in your gut, those are all potential triggers for your information. But there's no like blood tests that goes, yeah, your blood test came back positive, you have great information which is also why the diagnosis is hard to make. So that's kind of unfortunately the setting, so it really is enough for a person to say I've got a history, I've got the symptoms, everything seems to be aligned with this.

It's safe for me to start working towards just making my whole life lifestyle uh anti inflammatory and seeing what makes that if it makes a difference, seeing if that improves their symptoms, improves their quality of life and then that should be enough for them to confirm that yes, these are important changes that I need to make in my life for the health of my brain. Absolutely. And even if you didn't have prime glial cells as a need to survive throughout the day, the strategy used to impact brain inflammation, preserve your brain function. So I have a very diligent protocol to support my own brain, you know, And uh unfortunately I don't have a significant enough prime glial cells where I totally crashed and I'm sure I've got some but uh but I still have a lot of these strategies because I know it's going to protect my brain and be neuro protective.

So the strategy is protected whether you have or not, you know. Um But if you do have it's the difference between functioning, not functioning so that it's all that more important. Yeah. Good. Well I've pulled out some of my supplements from my brain here that that I've got. Can you walk us through what would be some of the more important ones for the prime micro glia if a person has a clear history of concussion and has these types of symptoms of just shutting down. Sure. There's actually been quite a quite a significant amount of publications on various nutraceuticals on brain inflammation to um the polyphenols antioxidant compounds have been shown to really block these inflammatory responses. Doesn't cure it.

Just you know, it's adding adding some water to the inflammation, bringing to town you know uh The only way to get rid of the prime glial cells to go through a Takaji where you do long term fasting and you can get rid of them that way. But the most published ones are rich, virtual curcumin green tea. Those are the flat noise from those compounds that shouldn't be very effective in tamping down brain information. Essential fatty acids like fish oils have been shown to very protective for damping down the information and then um short chain fatty acids.

Um Beauty rate for example has been shown very important. Very important. Then really good antioxidants, especially with ion and things that we used to find like a nice little Sistine they're all the those are the ones that we see. Um at least some research published on it. So for for my patients that have no information again, Well here's the list. I don't know what your budget is. I don't know, you know, how much do I take? I don't know because like how much fire do you have in your brain? And you know, it's like you can't say we take 500 mg of this once a day. And then, and then to be quite honest,

Supplements, Testing, and Clinical Resources 45:20

patients experiment and for some patients they'll take a handful of let's say 10 capital officials and you know take 10,000 mg of fishing in the morning and they're good for many hours. Someone else will take two and they'll feel fine. Someone else will take 10 and not feel anything and doesn't even touch it. There's gonna be lots of variations in between. Yeah. So I use a lot of the products from apex energetic, the spiritual, the nitric balance. All of those like myself every morning. Good, good. That means I'm doing something right here.

No. And they made a big difference for me. I can really tell the difference on the days that I take them in the days that I forget and I have a 14 year old daughter and she's been taking those same liquids, because she you know as a kid, she's always had a hard time taking capsules. But she's taking like liquid tumeric liquid was virtual liquid glue on and metric balance, which is a team which helps um ever since kindergarten, you know kindergarten the strategy of this dampening inflammation in your body, especially green information is so critical also for kids for helping your development and grain function.

So you know that it's gonna be a cost benefit and you know, how much, how much is it worth it for them to take some of these articles as far as the cost of taking them versus benefit. And they have to decide themselves. Some of the other supplements that for me have been very helpful that I know that you talked about as well are the magnesium. So I've got like multiple forms of magnesium and the triple calm. And then I have the one that's specific for the brain, right? The magnesium three innate.

And then vitamin D. Has been really helpful for me as well. And I'm not sure if that's more because it's bringing down the inflammation in my gut. And so that's helping my brain. But for me, like I mean relatively high dose like 10,000 of vitamin D. Every day has been helpful for me. Has that been your experience at all? Well I think is so crucial and you know, it's so important for so many pathways that also inflammatory, they have impacts on T. Rex and and and general information. Um But I think I think that the point you're making is you've noticed the tremendous benefits. So it's like to you, someone else may not doesn't mean they don't need it too. But I think for some people, some things will have a different impact on them for other ones.

So there is a little bit of experimenting. And then if you just don't know that you should take kind of like a broad spectrum of some of the list them in my brain book and chapter under information to. But you covered all the major ones and those are the most important ones. Yeah. May I may I point out all the sticky notes that I have in your book. Like, you know what, it literally a savior for me. The first copy of that book when we wrote it was actually twice as thick because the second half of it was all references and when I was I cited everything from the period of literature.

And when I got the first book back, I was like, oh my God, like you couldn't even open the pages. So we had so we left it, we got off at 1000 period references for the book. But still still thinking since you've written this book, like you have learned so much more and there's been more research done. So it's such an exciting field. And yeah, I've really appreciated your leadership in the field greatly. Thank you and I think a lot of the fundamental concepts we first wrote about in that book. Still apply today. They're just more supporters coming to show.

It's it's beneficial. The one major game changer that we didn't know about when he wrote that book was. How important fasting can be to a top Pg. And we didn't have that in the book. But that is, that is really new research that's come out past few years, you know? Yeah. And as you talk about, you can't start with fasting, right? You have to build up to that. But that's that's the point like wherever you are in discovering and working with the inflammation in your brain, there's the next level and go to that next level and work up until eventually you are able to do the ketogenic diet and the fasting because that's really where you're gonna get so much more benefit if you have this type of inflammation in your brain. Good.

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciated your during your information and your experience. And if you're a practitioner, a provider, please look up his corrosion Institute where he has all the training that he has. I highly recommend those. Those have been game changers, not only for me personally, but then for my practice as well and read his books pore over them because like I said, they've made a big difference and they are so comprehensive. There's so much benefit there. So, and for, and if we have a web, my website called dr K news, D R K N E W S dot com.

We have lots of articles on Dr K dues and uh information about the books. And I have an online program called Save Your Brain. We watch walk people through some of these steps and strategies. So if you need any information, we have some for you. Yes. Yes, please. Like DR Crossan has saved my life, saved my health. So please thank you so much. Yes. And thank you for joining us today together. Let's take our health to the next level and a Liveness. All right.