The Survival Paradox: Fibromyalgia

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hi. Welcome. I'm doctor Roger Murphree, and I'm the host of freedom from Fibromyalgia summit. I'd like to welcome doctor, Isaac Elias. So, Doctor Elias is, getting to be a, not only a colleague, but a friend. We've we've appeared on some, podcasts and some summits in the past year, recently, in the past few months. And I really love his work on to read you a little bit about his bio, so don't miss anything, but, doctor Elias is a leading expert in the field of integrative medicine, specializing in cancer detoxification, immunity, and complex medical conditions.

He's a respected, researcher, physician, researcher. He's a bestselling author and educator and mind body practitioner. And a little bit about, we're going to talk a bit about his book. I want to make sure I mentioned that we get at the The Survival Paradox. So I want to make sure we mentioned that. And he's the coauthor of Studies of Integrative Therapies for Cancer, Heavy Metal Toxicity and others. And, worked with the NIH, with partners at the National Institute of Health and Columbia and others.

So there's your bio goes on and on, but that's good enough. Welcome to the summit. I've always wanted to get a chance to to pick your brain about, you know, what's going on in the research world and, and particularly what's going on, what you're seeing with fibromyalgia, some of these underlying triggers that are creating these symptoms that we see with fibromyalgia. So welcome to the summit. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's it's such an important topic and something I was interested in actually very early in my career, in my late 20s, you know, when this was starting to, to appear, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue.

And it was really not not appreciated, recognized and doubted, you know, by the doubters. So. And now, of course, everybody understands the importance of this condition, how many people it affects. And so I'm delighted to to actually speak in this summit. Yeah. I've got a list of questions here that, that I have, you know, that I wrote down. Make sure that we cover. But I'm gonna throw you a little bit of a curve and ask you this. Why do you think we still have so many physicians that doubt the existence of fibromyalgia?

It's a good question. I think there are less. It's, you know, medicine is driven by putting people in boxes, and the fibromyalgia is not such an easy box to put in because some people it's a virus, but it's toxin. Some people it's trauma, some people is inefficient energy pathways. And so whenever we have a condition that doesn't is not easy to put in a box. And actually that's what life is about is who you are. And I know the answer is I wait either resistance or skepticism or fear of what we don't know.

And definitely the fibromyalgia community is one community that really paid the price is, you know, so well, you do so much work and it really being under-recognized and not valued and labeled like, oh, you have a psychological problem. It's insane. It's like it's, and really wonderful people often very sensitive, you know, very sweet, very sensitive, so, so sensitive to energy changes. And so it's quite a journey. I think we it's a much better place where, you know. Yeah, I can tell if talking and looking 40 years back,

Why Fibromyalgia Is Often Doubted 3:34

you would, you would think twice even about mentioning the name or doing a segment about it, you know. So definitely we're in a different place. But and there are, there are good solutions. So yeah. So you mentioned that fibromyalgia is an illness with different triggers. This. So when one person's fibromyalgia is different than the next person, I mean there's some common commonalities for sure, right. But unlike, a lot of diseases, we have to realize that fibromyalgia, since it's a syndrome, it's really just a name given to to describe these different symptoms that people have in common.

But there there are there's no one smoking gun. I mean, it can be different things that bring this condition known, right? Of course, of course. And that's why. And it's part of really understanding and treating fibromyalgia. Yeah. Is understanding the person who has fibromyalgia. Yeah. And in principle, for me I always treat the person with the disease. You know, once I was working with one of my doctors and somebody called, they had a lung transplant, and I think another transplant and some other disease and, and in some and they asked me, can you, can you see them?

I said them, yes. The other doctor asked me, how can you see them? It's so complex. Tell them I'm not treating the disease. I'm treating the person one to understand the person I know how to treat them. And so with so fibromyalgia falls into into this, into this category. And within it. Yeah it's fascinating. I don't I don't want to go like on tangent, but there are certain points that are less discussed about fibromyalgia. You know, the ability of keeping sustainable energy on a long term, on a short term and the cost on the long term, you know, so we know it energetically in Chinese medicine, but now we know it much more in Western medicine, with the whole issue of mitochondrial function and normal energy production and efficient energy production.

Yeah. So yeah, it's definitely a disease. It causes pain that causes limitation. And one condition that really can transform remarkably. It's really it's one of these one of these symptoms condition whatever you want to call it that can really like can really change dramatically sometime very quickly. So I want to ask you here in just a moment, but I got to set this up. I want to ask you about your book and the whole survival paradox, because to me, it and I've said this on a summit here recently in a podcast we did together.

It was and I've been training fibromyalgia 22 years. It was a game changer for me with this new paradigm. And part of it comes down to, you know, the fibromyalgia patient oftentimes they go from doctor to doctor. They kind of get on the medical merry go round and it can take, you know, it can take seven, eight years before they finally get the diagnosis. Now that's changed. You know, thankfully it's changed. But oftentimes they see, you know, one doctor after the next. And sometimes we're kind of made to feel like they're either lazy, crazy or just hypochondriac.

But eventually they get the diagnosis. So they get this rubber stamp on their forehead that says fibromyalgia. Now we've got a label so we can put an ICD code on there and deal insurance. But, you know, a lot of times patients will finally get this diagnosis. And it's a it's a sigh of relief. Finally somebody telling me what I've got now, what do you do for it? And then they get, well, you're just going to have to learn to live with the,

Fibromyalgia as a Syndrome With Multiple Triggers 7:01

you know, that's where we're at in traditional medicine anyway, you know, and, and even in some cases, functional medicine practitioners are telling me that it's a great point because first, by being labeled in a recognized, it's like, okay, people are taking me seriously, but they being labeled you also being, fixated on a, on a, on a condition instead of just looking at things as you've got certain symptoms today they are here, tomorrow they can go away. Yeah. And it's very important because fibromyalgia is a very big connection to flow.

And I'll talk about it a bit later. But looking at the survival paradox, which is a new paradigm that I introduce, that really recog just innately built to survive every cell in our body. And as such, we want to develop in a healthy way, and then we want to repair any danger to our life. And because it's innate in us, it's automated. So the nervous system, through the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic system driving fighting, which equates to inflammation, cytokine storm that affects fibromyalgia, very deeply inappropriate sometime and all we hide we run away.

We create a micro environment, a shield that leads to fibrosis, to organ dysfunction and leads to rigidity. You know, fibrous tissue are very rigid. They're not alive anymore. You know, and trigger point in many levels, you know, resembles some of these and, so we have this automated response and we can try to balance it with the parasympathetic response, with taking a deep breath, with relaxing, with movement and with expansion. And then there's a biochemical response. The body goes into survival mode.

Alarm protein go up within seconds. The autonomic nervous system starts within a fraction of a second. With the second minutes, alarm proteins go up. And one of the key ones that I've researched for almost 30 years, it's called galectin three. I made some of the important discovery that blocking it can attenuate and help inflammation in fibrosis. So this protein is called the help. It moves to tissues where the body is saying that is a problem. It brings with it inflammatory compound, sticky molecules immune.

This regulating molecule is part of trying to create a big response, a big fight. And then the problem, it doesn't turn off. So when we understand it, we say, wow, what helps us survive literally does actually makes us sick. Good affects every disease and fibromyalgia is no different. You know, like the, well, I, I should use, like, I find it enlightening that now that we have Covid and people are getting used to this whole cytokine storm that's, you know, that's become, you know, that's a conversation that people are having.

So we have a little bit of understanding about how the body can release these proteins that are really can save our lives. But at the same time, if they if they continue to to be released and never get turned off, they can create some problems. And this is what we see with Covid. And this is similar. This is a kind of a seminal insight with the survival paradox that the body is feels threatened, and that can be from different triggers. And because it feels threatened, it's turning on this reaction.

But for whatever reason, it never turns off. And they get they get stuck. Yeah. And so I think that your paradigm really it really is a perfect fit because of fibromyalgia. I remember years ago, looking at surveys and they would say, you know, what are the triggers for fibromyalgia? And 70% of the time that people would come back and say, stress and people hear that now, and I have to I have to assure them that they're not a wimp or or, you know, milquetoast or whatever that it when we say stress, we're talking about a deep level of stress underneath this, creating these biochemical, dysfunctional, dysfunction of the different systems and creating the symptoms themselves completely.

And it's, it's so accurate and important to really understand,

The Survival Paradox and Chronic Stress Response 11:24

because when we go into survival mode, we are changing our metabolism into a survival mode. From the point of view of energy production, from the point of view of staying alive. And in this sense, Covid made a great contribution for me. It was, oh my God, finally. You know, I've been dealing with this for like 20 years before the Covid and talking about a dysregulated immune system showing that the main protein called galectin three is the one that research drives all this cytokine storm. So the concept of survival is big.

We are not the only ones who want to survive the coronavirus wants to survive. So the spike protein of the coronavirus is almost identical to galectin three. It's the survival response of the virus. So we, when we have stress, we feel the stress in the body. So, for example, in our gut, our microbiome feels the stress. And for example, spiral. Kids from Lyme, which are dormant, will wake up and infections will show up because everybody is feeling it. Stress. Everybody needs to survive. Compare to come into an harmonious, dialog.

And this harmonious dialog is key for fibromyalgia. This is why, for example, in my meditation in healing retreats, which I teach in the last 11 years, mainly in Israel, but I will start teaching more here. I used to teach you before, but from time. But I'm going to really to be doing fibromyalgia is this condition where people can transform 20 years of symptoms in 3 or 4 days? And one of the reasons they let go of the stress, they let go of the underlying drivers for the stress because stress is two components, is one.

What's coming our way, either externally or internally, rises out of our being into how we respond to the stress. Yeah, okay. And and that's, that's where we have a choice. And it's just remarkable to see how people suddenly shift and suddenly have energy because, one of the issues with fibromyalgia, one is the is inappropriate energy production, but two, we are using the energy as a protective mechanism. So if we have traumas, we have pockets of toxins that we don't want them to explode into the body we can handle.

We will keep them boxed, will give, will keep them contained as part of our survival mechanism, and will take a lot of energy doing it. And some of it is physiological, biochemical, and some of it is associated where we are functioning based on lifelong pattern or genetic and epigenetic behavioral pattern, and actually actual DNA effects pattern, which drives our, our, our, our response at the moment. And once we become fresher, once we are more in the moment, suddenly we have so much energy because we are not burning 90% of it, trying to digest past events.

And that's very, very big for fibromyalgia. This specific pattern, not all of them. And in this patient, it's amazing. Sometimes one acupuncture treatment done, sophisticated and two, because the person can come to the moment and actually they are spending 90% of their energy trying to body trying to deal with trauma. They've 10% for the day to day energy. Of course they have fibromyalgia because when you don't have enough energy, you have to go to glycolysis. You change your metabolism, you get lactic acid, you get lactic acid, you get acidosis, you get pain, you get trigger points.

And then it becomes a vicious cycle, you know? So once suddenly the body gets more energy. Oh my gosh, it's a celebration going to a place of safety, of normal metabolism. And in this, this sense, it's really important the message which people have with fibromyalgia, it's really a treatable condition. It can be healed. I mean, I have it in my career, some severe or severe maybe cases where people couldn't get out of bed, like for months, you know, for years. And these are harder to treat. But even these people can get better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm so glad to hear you say that because, doctor, Jacob Teitelbaum and Neil Nathan and several other well known physicians that are on here, including myself, firmly believe that this is a condition that you can overcome. I mean, it's a but big part of that is finding and fixing the underlying causes that are creating these symptoms. But you can I mean, it's doable. It's doable. And certainly with the kind of medicine that you practice, the, you know, functional medicine that we do, do you that you mentioned genetics, do you think that fibromyalgia runs in families and, and do you think that this is a condition that starts early on.

So there is a familial tendency? Definitely. And part of it relates to inefficient energy production. You know, it's very big and it's one. But the other thing is that it's can be behaviorally genetic and epigenetic, and so it persists on. But yes, you can see people, you know, who who have fibromyalgia in the children in fibromyalgia and the grandchildren. So we want to see what disrupts normal energy production, because if everything flows normally there's no fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is really a stuckness of energy in pain.

Well, it's not supposed to be. So there's an issue of flow. And that's where the survival paradox becomes so important in addressing collecting theory and using modify to introspecting pick the soul as a way to regulate this protein. But then we want to look deeper and want to see what disrupt my energy production so it can be lack of nutrients, vitamins, minerals, you know, the different BS zinc. Anyway, that's one category. It can be things that put us in a survival mode so it can be different toxins, more toxins.

You know, it's meaningless and probably talked about heavy metals. Environmental toxins and pesticides, pesticides, huge. So these all of this will disrupt normal metabolism. The moment we disrupt normal metabolism we are opening ourselves to being sick. And which I, we take is based on our predisposition. Then we have the systemic effect. So if our gut is imbalanced, if our energy production is not good and we disrupt the blood brain barrier and the brain becomes inflamed, then immediately when the brain becomes inflamed, inflamed, when the brain is on fire, we become more sensitive to any stimulus and we get more pain.

Yeah, right. Often we do. We have pain and we meditate and relax and the pain goes away. Not real. Right? How is it possible? Well, we go to a sense of parasympathetic, to safety, to spaciousness.

Energy Production, Trauma, and Healing Potential 18:38

More oxygen comes to the tissue. We have little less lactic acid doses, less of factors like hypoxia inducing factors in the cell or screaming the cell goes into a sense of safety, but also the gut relaxes. The microbiome feels safer. Our blood brain barrier improves over time. We have less neuroinflammation. Then we have less signaling that something is wrong. And it's amazing. How is the brain is so sensitive? You know, small difference in insulin levels in the brain will change glucose metabolism so quickly.

Systemically. So, you know, we're at a place where metabolic disease is really, running us. You know, we have close to 100 million people with and with NAFLD is now nonalcoholic fatty fatty liver disease. We got 17% of the population with chronic kidney disease from circulatory issues. So all of this triggers certain population will drive fibromyalgia. The beauty is that when you remove this trigger, the disease will go away. Now because it's a functional disease, right? One moment it's more painful.

One moment it's less painful. It's very different then let's say you have which is also reversible coronary artery disease. When the other way is blocked, you got to find a way to scrape the arteries. Clear was totally possible. Totally possible, of course, and definitely reversible. But here, the moment the function gets better, the person feels better, and the more they feel better, a cycle of improvement starts. Yeah, and over time, if if patients if people take a truly more balanced, holistic approach, then stress become less of a trigger.

Yeah. Less. And then that's really the path. It's not it's somebody with fibromyalgia. And really now feels so much better. We never have a symptom, but the moment that we have the symptom, our mind goes, it's coming back, I know this now. The next symptom will be this. And then the biochemistry start changing. The cell goes into protection and survival. Metabolism goes down. What do we say that metabolism shifts when we move into a survival, space. And the survival response is, you know, well, we we can produce energy 100 times faster.

That's what we need to survive for short term survival. Okay? You can sprint for more than a minute or two. The cost is only 5 to 6% efficiency. Two molecules of ATP to one glucose, compared with 33 six. So 1/18. And the amount of substrate we need to use because we are producing hundred times faster at 1/20 of the efficiency is 20 times more glucose. And whatever we're using and breaking protein, well, we're gonna have a lot of byproducts. You know, when you cook in the kitchen, such a big pot, you get a lot of stuff to throw away and wash.

The body can detoxify, the body gets stuck, it gets stuck, it goes into a crisis mode. So all this description that may sound psychological is, you know, from the how I work, they translate into specific pathways in the cell. So we address fibromyalgia from the cell, from the cell outward to the extracellular out to the organ to the tissue, to the person. And we address fibromyalgia by changing our whole view, by changing our reactivity to a symptom. If we can change the reactivity to a symptom, we immediately create a biochemical response that is more helpful.

So early on for well, actually, I guess for a number of years is actually quite, quite some time I've explained fibromyalgia where and we know this unfortunately be true that a lot of these individuals have had a very stressful household. It was. I grew up so they could have had a, you know, could've had an illness as an adolescent. They could have had a dysfunctional house. It could have been, you know, some kind of verbal abuse or physical abuse or they moved a lot, but they they came from a a fairly stressful situation.

And as I got older, they, they lose their plasticity, distressed. Something comes along that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. And then they can't really handle stress or stress becomes magnified. And then it's this vicious cycle. The more stress they get under, the less they can tolerate it, the more stressed out they are. And I've always explained it is what we've got to do is lighten the load. We got to take away the different toxins or triggers. So we take that stress off the body. But now from what you've, you know, from what you've shared in your research, now what I'm seeing is yeah, that's true.

But what they're facing now, I think now is the same danger that they can't turn off. Maybe in the past they could turn that off. But now is a something's come along and they just can't turn it off. So next thing you know, as you mentioned, things that weren't bothering to start to get activated and that could be food allergies or that could be, as you mentioned, toxicity to to mold that never gave them any kind of problem. Or I've got a patient with arsenic in the water. She's been drinking it for a decade and not had any trouble.

But all of a sudden, you know, that's what we kind of figured out what it is. So it's it's it's the body can't when the body doesn't feel safe, and it goes into survival paradox. Not only does it drive inflammation, but as you've so, eloquently outlined, it sabotages your energy so it doesn't have the production to run the different systems in the body because the mitochondria are affected. It's so it's really important for the listener to remember what you said. It's important to remove the toxin, but we really have to understand the underlying mechanism in toxins, again, can be physical and can be toxic environment.

Yeah. For example, when somebody moves from two different places, if you move from one place, which is your home and you come back, you have a center. But when you move from different places, you lose your grounding. You lose your roots, you lose your safety. It's like, you know, it's like a tree bouncing. Everything changes you because you don't have the place where you get nourished, where you can let go. And so this is very important in Chinese medicine. They will say it's a weakness of the earth element of the nourishment.

We don't get nourishment. We don't have good production of energy. So definitely so in this sense, fibromyalgia doesn't come out of the blue and is in the process of getting over. Fibromyalgia offers an amazing healing opportunity to really, as we shed the symptoms, can we shed the underlying stuckness, the underlying trauma, the underlying holding and create creative flow?

Genetics, Toxins, and Metabolic Disruption 25:48

And we can we can definitely I know, I know from my own my own personal experience. You know, I don't I don't diagnose myself. But I had no I really don't have pain in my body now. And now I have very little. But I used to all my life, so it didn't affect my life. I still do things, they flow so I don't have fibromyalgia. I know it's not affecting. It's, and you know, I had a severe Lyme in my late 20s from a really taken tick infection. It took years until it went away, but I never even I had a tick bite.

I never checked, even after the initial one. White check. You move on. You okay? You're healthy. So part of it is really recognizing that you actually have an issue that is legitimate, that is not in your head, right. That should be acknowledged with an open heart, because it's people with some idea of suffering, of pain, and then recognizing that you've got to let go of that identification with fibromyalgia so you can move on. And the survivor paradox contributes to all of it, because when we are in a survival mode, we become alarmist, you know, so we over, we over respond.

We are reactive, so we respond outwardly. We get allergies. What is an allergy is an inappropriate response to something from the outside food smells, etc., or it responds inwardly, develops autoimmunity. Yeah. And the fibromyalgia sits in a relationship with these both of these. Right. Not in a direct way but it touches all of these aspects. Yeah. So and each person needs to find their own door to the journey to, to healing. But letting go is always a part of letting go of the toxin, letting go of heavy metal, letting go of micro toxin, letting go of pre consume preconceived ideas, letting go of traumas.

And as we truly let go, it usually also will affect the people around us. I mean to create a whole environment of healing. And I think maybe that's why in in meditation retreat you get such a profound healing because there's a whole group holding each other and we have to recognize it in our body. We have 50. I'm rounding up a little bit, not a lot, but 50 trillion cells that hold each other. Each of them is about 1 million reactions, 1 million a second. It's like insane. And we hold each other the harmony.

When we lose harmony, we get in trouble. And I'm sure the audience is listening to this and some of this is going over their head. It's it's okay, you know, get the big picture and the big picture. I think, is being painted pretty, pretty clearly in that, this whole survival paradox, this whole thing where the body feels threatened and, and for years I've explain, well, it makes sense to I mean, for, for most of you watching this because, you know, when you get under stress, you're likely have a fibro flare.

I see this with my patients all the time. I get them sleeping. They have less pain. They're doing great. And then they try to go do something they hadn't done maybe in a couple of years. And, you know, maybe they go out with friends and, you know, spend all day out shopping and then they're in bed for 2 or 3 days because there's not they still haven't turned off enough of that reaction that night. And three, they hadn't turned it off enough. They just don't have enough. They don't have enough, space enough.

And, you know, to be able to handle this and I and I, I've said in the past that using this analogy that we're all born with a stress coping savings account, and in that stress coping savings account, we have certain chemicals that allow us to deal with stress. So all day long we're releasing these chemicals, whether that's pantothenic acid or magnesium or cortisol or DHEA or serotonin, whatever it is to help us deal in that moment with the stress these chemicals are being released and at some point you you can bankrupt those chemicals.

Then you become more vulnerable to stress. Now I'm having to change how I explain that in that. Yeah, I think you do develop these biochemical deficiencies, but you also have turned on this this survival paradox. Right. And it's going to take some some work to really get your body and in your mind, you know, everything to be able to feel safe again. And that can be moving toxins. But you've already mentioned, meditation. So there's other things you can do to help to really tone down that overreact to sympathetic nervous system and help the person make the nervous system come up so we can relax some of these reactions, like, I really I want if we visit because this is so important so often, you know, we feel somebody has lack of certain B vitamins and minerals, but the lack is because they are overburdening them and they're overburdening them because the metabolism is not efficient.

It's not efficient because of abnormal pathways, because of the reasons you and I have been discussing this, why what you are discussing here? What we are talking is a deeper level of healing to deeper level. Because once we change the habit of how we produce energy, we can suddenly handle stress. And it's very doubtful to know how much to add. One of the issue with people with fibromyalgia is that they will overextend their energy, and then they are in bed for like a week. Okay, so what happened?

They went into into a glycolysis energy process to be able to meet the demand. From your biochemical point of view, they created lactic acid. They created byproducts. They don't have a proper antioxidant system to clean up the mess. And they don't clear up the detox systems are not good just because innately you follow different things. There are many of them, or they have toxins which are blocking the pathways, and then they get stuck in this place. So you have to slowly increase the capacity of the patient.

And when you treat people, you know, just like when you exercise, you build up slowly. And but also we have to try to work on it,

Modified Citrus Pectin and Galectin-3 Research 31:58

mentally, emotionally, psychologically, while we clear the different toxins. But when you clear toxin, for example, when you remove pesticide and, you know, I do a lot of work when removal of pesticides I've developed, you know, just so people can know they developed the first day knowing the only research based blocking of collections to be modified said respect. In my opinion, the most important supplements someone could take for good reason. But then I've been doing a lot of work on the removal of pesticides and toxins with the formula.

Like for detox, because when all of us are bombarded with glyphosate and from the point of view of fibromyalgia, when glyphosate disrupt nutrient absorption, when it disrupts the gut lining and creates leaky gut in macromolecules, creating an immune response. When you disrupt the blood brain barrier and allows molecules that are not supposed to get in to get into the brain. And when it activates glial cells, the macrophage of the brain's the immune cells, it starts to clean up through inflammation.

You get a vicious cycle in the brain, and the vicious cycle of the brain affects the body. And the systemic system in this systemic condition affects the brain. So that's why it's a package deal that we really have to address. Yeah. You mentioned modified citrus pectin. So your product is packed us all. Happy to mention that I'm a big fan of a big supporter of it. And this is research that really was kind of almost given to you. By the universe, I mean, you you had a next door neighbor, if I remember right in the book that was a scientist that was doing research on, on citrus and, and, you know, at one point you said, you know, this is going to be something that's that's going to change medicine.

And yeah, I think you've kind of forgot about it. And the next thing you know, you're researching modified citrus pest, pectin as a way to turn off this galectin three. And, they help to break up some of these, pincers. Pincers. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so this research now came from, from, you know, from Israel and now, you know, into your medical practice. And now it's a big part of your, you know, your bestselling book. Certainly. And your ongoing research and then your clinical practice using this modified citrus packaging.

Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yes, of course. So I am I'm a native of Israel, and my neighbors were were the key scientists in the citrus industry. So in the first and the Ruth Ruth coin, she's not alive anymore. In 1971, I was 12 years old. Calculator all them. We were walking to the house in up in the evening with my with my parents. And out of the blue she turns to me. She says, Isaac, one day they will find a treatment for cancer in the pill of the citrus fruit. So when the first research by Doctor Avram Rice came in, change my very respected journal that, from the National Institute that you can prevent and slow down metastasis.

I called you up from San Francisco. I told Ruth, I don't expect you to remember, but I remember what you told me 24 years ago. So she put me together with the main, the pectin developer, and then started an amazing journey nobody expected. Well, we found out they need to fix the inflammation and fibrosis and helps to kill it. Heavy metals and regulates immune response. Really remarkable. How is it? Over 80 published papers and about 10,000 papers and 83. How is it possible because it addresses such an upstream early fact or that effect so many other factors.

And that's why while maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it wasn't something I recommended to everybody, now it's the most important supplement. And if somebody has health issues, they need to take 15g a day. Somebody is in great health. Five grams is enough. It can be combined with different treatment in different arenas. It's a great oncological nutritional support. I'm presenting, we're interviewing. We're doing this interview in early February, and in two weeks I'm presenting a multi-center trial on modified introspecting on recurrent prostate cancer with remarkable results.

So but it's much bigger than cancer. No. And so this is one area that it works the other way I which I work is I am one of the disruptors. As you label them of using therapeutic a filtrate of the plasma for, for inflammatory conditions. And that's relevant in age group and active in age group and large. Grant to study the effects of removal of galectin three on sepsis and acute kidney injury. So that's my scientific and and formulation part. But the other part is that when we connect with this place that causes us reactivity and we can transform it into responsiveness, connect with our heart because our heart doesn't react our every cell in the body decides what to take, what not to take.

Every organ wants to be nourished. The heart accepts any dirty blood that comes from every organ. The heart accepts it. Connect with the universe, right? Exchanges air and from a fibromyalgia point of view, what is a drama? For us, it's not a big deal for the universe. So it accepts our carbon dioxide. It accepts our difficulties with an open heart. As long as we take care of the environment. Because global warming is inflammation on a global scale. So and then it gives us clean, clean air. We oxygenate, we improve the blood and then the heart just gives without discrimination.

So when we move so because we do it physiologically Roger. It's easier to do it mentally and emotionally and spiritually compared to trying to change our habit of thinking all the time and being crowded in our head. So this effect when the heart energy changes, when the electromagnetic field of the heart becomes more modest and it gets to every cell in our body, it affects every cell in our body, it's critical for fibromyalgia. So the heart can send nourishment to every cell. But the cell in the tissue has to be willing to accept.

And if they are contracted, if there are any feel based, if they are in a survival mode, they will not accept. They will shut down the circulation. They will create like a biofilm in a microenvironment. Galectin three will create to spend time at its greatest seal, the. And then suddenly, yeah, the heart is nourishing but the cell is not accepting. Not accepting grows into acidosis. You get pain. And so it's this beautiful dialog in the dialog between the heart and our cells is an inner reflection of our dialog with the outer world.

It's exactly the same in just in different scale. So part of being more tolerant and more understanding outwardly, also coming into our own body. And if we become more tolerant outwardly to something we were not intolerant of, allergies go away. That's the definition of an allergy. If we become more tolerant to what's going on inside our body, autoimmunity goes away. So that's the importance of these things. And today I am I, I touched a little bit on the biochemistry and but the really way people want to understand the power of healing and how it's so relevant for fibromyalgia, because people know they have a bad day and they have a good day.

They just want to have more good days and bad days. So it's a dynamic condition, and that's why it's, it's completely can be transformed and you can heal from it. So in, Phillip Stutz, his book, the Tools, I don't know if you ever heard of that book that he's a psychiatrist, well known in the celebrity world, but his best book is bestselling book. It's been out for a number of years, but he talks about the heart is how you connect to higher power. Whatever you call that, the universe, God, however you want to call that.

Right. So what you're sharing with us about the heart, how can we tap into that, that love, you know, that really can transform us from being a person that's living on the edge of fear and in survival mode? Is that meditation? I mean, I know, I know your answer. We yeah, it's we both meditate so very. No, no, but it's not general. It's very specific. My, my first book was going to be I wrote it in Hebrew and then at the Covid came say and holding I wrote my second book is Survival Paradox, which has some of the elements, but my first book was and it will come out.

It's called Open Heart Medicine The Infinite Healing Power of Love and Compassion. So there is very specific techniques to connect with the heart energy. And once you learn exactly very quick to learn because it's much harder, the mind always stops and thinks and analyze. The Quran is skeptical, so it's very hard to create the mind to be spacious. The heart, it always flows the moment it stops flowing. Roger, we are dead in one minute, you know? Yeah, yeah. So when we connect with this flow and we realize, well, if the heart is taking all this stuff that the self doesn't want, the heart is also getting all the negative energy from everybody.

It's affecting us anyway. So instead of fighting it, we connect with the purification of it through the breath, and we transform it into nourishment, into love and compassion. So and is there is a process of forgiveness, of acceptance, of understanding, you know, so for example, in, in certain meditation school of thought, let's say

Heart, Compassion, and Meditation for Healing 41:48

in Buddhist thought, they say that, you know, suffering is so inherent in us. So suffering causes us to behave in ways that hurt us and hurt. Otherwise we get upset and we do something. But suffering can also open our heart to ourselves when we are suffering and to other than if you look at the heart, the heart gives blood without discrimination. Meaning the altar is a stiff artery, blood goes everywhere and then the heart relaxes. The coronary arteries which are outside the heart, open up and the heart nourishes itself.

That self-love is part of loving others. We are built to do this, which means that in every breath, in every contraction of the heart, there is power of healing. Now, why does it happen right away? Because the body is habits, right? The habits translate into pathways, into circulation, into immune responses. It's multi-generational and I write about it in, in my in my book, you know, the survivor paradox. I really I really think it's a book worthwhile reading, you know, because it really offers a different way of thinking and decades of my studies and experience.

So when we can change this habit and the body keeps getting it again and again, slowly, slowly, things change. Because if we can let go and clear our justified tendency to function based on past experience, because the body, the body always does the best it wants, it can always. So we, if we were in a real survival danger when we were five years old, or our grandparents in the Holocaust, they reacted in a certain way. You know, my my grandfather couldn't handle the fact that ten out of his ten siblings were killed by Hitler.

He couldn't stomach it. So he got stomach cancer when he was 50 and he couldn't talk about it, you know, because we were told about it only 50 years after he died, when my grandmother died. So he held it in his chest. So I was named after him. I have this bizarre chest pain. No matter how much yoga I did, it was bizarre. It would touch you. It would be so painful. Now I feel nothing. No pain. It happened only a few years ago. Took me 50 years to get rid of it. You know. But when I healed, my mother was suddenly able to watch programs about the Holocaust without me telling her.

This is a multi-generational healing. You know, I let go. That was the process of acceptance, forgiveness, and boom seem to went away. Now I'm a little bit more trained meditation. So, you know, a little bit of a smoother approach took only 50 years. But instead of 70 maybe. But in any case, that joking. In any case, that's the power of healing. So when we do medicine, when we take supplements and we change our diet and we bring this kind of understanding, the cell, you know, the cell takes a sigh of relief because we have to remember in the book and people will read.

They will see. I look at the cells as living beings because they have a boundary, the membrane. They have a production energy, the mitochondria, and they have a personality. They decide what comes in, what doesn't come in. So when the cells feel the sense of warmth, of being held, it can relax. Insulin receptors work better, energy production works better, macrophage can relax. There's no more inflammation in the extracellular space. The trigger point pain, the fibromyalgia pain is dissolving because the lymph system is draining it better.

The pH is better. Oxygen is getting into the tissue. It's a true celebration, you know, of harmony and support when the cell tries to rebel, when the central threatened, it can create a micro environment, it can cause pain, or it can decide it has to survive on its own, and it's at any cost. And that's how cancer cell develops, you know. So this the survival paradox is really an understanding of how we live our life. And the cell danger response is part of it, very important. And it's only a part of it.

So this is a lot of profound material and I love it. I think it's great. You know, I have patients that, that I will take care of and they'll tell me in the beginning that, oh, I've, you know, I've been gluten free, I've been vegan, I've been I've been, you know, I work at a record. Not many of them say they work out every day, but they're they consider themselves healthy other than they have fibromyalgia. They don't know why they can't get to the next level. And and I think what you share with the survival paradox is the reason why, for many of them, they just can't get to the next level.

They're eating healthier, they're taking supplements that they, you know, they have deficiencies in, but they've not gotten that other piece of the puzzle, which is just to give them to give their bodies the permission to not be under fear and and feel threatened all the time. And that, you know, that that takes that takes some work to do that. But, I want people to get your book, that's for sure. I love the book. Obviously, you can tell that. I recommend it to all my patients. I have all my patients, reading the book.

That's when when you become a patient of mine, that's one of the one of the few books I just send to you right away. Isaac, what's the best website for them to go to to learn more about you and your work? Best one is go to Doctor elias.org Dr. Elias. That all gave a high quality newsletter that comes out every week with the whole research team. And so then they can also find about from there they can get to my clinic in to the different supplements and to my research and my goal and hope is in the second part of 2023 to start offering, some meditation and healing in, in the United States.

I'm going to start with doing something for free on zoom. Just just so people can experience what can happen in like 3 or 4 days, even on zoom, as long as somebody takes the time and stays with the process and, yeah. And I think of just people have to remember, fibromyalgia is a treatable condition and within the is within improving fibromyalgia, there's a real opportunity to go through a profound healing. Yeah. And this has been a real delight. Thank you. I've enjoyed this conversation. I hope that I'm sure the audience did.

And I want to encourage you to check out Doctor Elias's website and certainly check out his book. Isaac, thank you so much. It's very cool. Thank you for having me.