Toxicants and Neurodegenerative Diseases

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

I have many patients that have no evidence of Alzheimer's. Stage 2 Alzheimer is reversed. Parkinson's disease, full debilitation after 10 to 12 years. No evidence that disease. We even have stage 4 cancers and other components from just the two decades of practice that I had. But I'm not saying I am curing anybody. It's the body giving the right information. I like to say I do a lot of nothing all day. The body, the inherent wisdom and the information that we bring in. to the individual. This is doctor talks.

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Environmental Toxicants, Autoimmunity, & Chronic Diseases Summit. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo, your host of today's episode. And I am super psyched to be talking to Dr Greg Eckle. He is a naturopath doctor and an expert in treating neurological conditions. His goal is to help over a billion people achieve optimal wellness through natural health care to become as creative, energetic, loving as they can. He uses a combination of his Nature Cures Clinic, his Be Vital Clinic his podcast, What the Health, and lecturing to make the broadest impact he can.

So super excited to talk today about why brain disorders are on the rise. And Greg, welcome. Welcome. What did I miss? Anything you want to jump in and out? No, that's phenomenal. Thank you. You get no charge for the brief bio, the marketing. I love that. So, how did you get interested in brain health? I think this is personal for you, right? This is very, very personal. I've been in medicine 22 years, started medical school in 1996, went through five years of really rigorous training in naturopathic and Chinese medicine.

had a really thriving clinic here in Portland, Oregon, and I still do, Nature Cures Clinic. And at the time, I had my wife, Saraya, she was a certified nurse midwife, nurse practitioner, six foot one, amazing being. Women would come out of the exam room singing a song, doing a jig. It's like, what the heck are you guys doing in there? An amazing women's health provider. strong voice for for women and health and You know, really the she was the love of my life at that point I didn't know I thought you know the aliens had put her on the planet like Her's a perfect ideal woman.

Like, wow, somebody's messing around with me from above. You know, we blended our families. We blended, our practices, her three kids, my two. we even had a maid named Alice, just like the Brady Bunch. And we moved, We bought a house. and you know when you move, you tend to lose things in the shuffle. But there was one orange fiesta ware plate that became Basically, the talk of the children and I around the dinner table, Soraya just couldn't let it go. It was like this one orange. I was, like, hey, we'll get a new plate.

Like, it's fiesta ware, I love all the colors, but the orange plate, she, couldn' t let go, to the point of it became like Groundhog Day. She'd go into the kitchen looking for it, into cupboard, down the hallway.

Personal Story of Brain Degeneration 3:08

Finally, she'd wind up in the attic in our garage, still rummaging through the boxes like, where the heck is it? But it was redundant and it accelerated and we started to notice other issues with her memory. And it was really rapidly progressing dementia. I always knew Saraya was one in a million. And unfortunately, the medical community also agreed with me because the differential started to become very, very dark in that it C.J.D., Crisfeld-Jacob disease or autoimmune encephalitis, like basically a bunch of as of yet uncurable neurologic neurodegenerative conditions.

The process was fricking brutal from her first symptoms of memory loss to her, she lost the ability to speak within two months. We needed 24-7 care. it became evident to me, I need to change my game plan here. And I grew up in a really hard way of, you know, had my family, my medical practice, then my wife was just totally debilitated. So on that, through that process, she left her body 18 months later, navigated grief and the sadness and loss and devastation really over those 18 month. for years to follow, but came through really in an odd, odd way.

It reinstated my faith in the unity of and kind of unity consciousness and in oneness of all. And there's this thought process that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it just changes forms. Going through that at a younger age, and she was 43 at the time, It really opened me up into that thought process. You know, I've always had a faith and an understanding of God and whatnot, but to know it intimately and come through whole and open-hearted, being actually able to experience and express grief, you know I became a grief beacon for a while of just in my openness, people felt very safe and comfortable sharing with me because they knew of my loss.

And it still happens to this day and I'm grateful to be able to facilitate that for folks. But that process really set me up. I took a deep dive, Wendy, into swinging for the fence of like, how do we regenerate a brain? How do do that? And so the other component of it is, I just want people to hear is you don't have to go it alone. You can have a trusted source on that path. And I know it all too well. We all know the medical system is fractured and broken and is really hard when your loved one's life is on the line.

I'd been in medicine at that point 17 years and navigating that was really difficult, even as a provider, knowing the doctors speak and knowing what we were getting into. The beauty of it is I don't want my suffering to be for naught. And so I also want people to know life goes on and share. I know the last time we spoke, I left out a crucial part of my story is that I'm now happily remarried. loved man, almost as if Saraya had sent my wife Kitty to me. And so I just want people to hear that there are possibilities, there's always hope.

I get more and more comfortable and confident speaking into with 22 years of practice is that miracles happen and we should really expect more of them. What I researched and studied did not help Sarayya as far as not having her die, it is helping thousands of patients around the globe with the thoughts of neurodegeneration, brain regeneration, and even longevity and bioenergetics. So all of that is basically the gift that came out of it. I mean, I don't wish it on anybody. It's my story, was my path, is my learning.

That's kind of what I came for. And so that, my intimate awareness of brain degeneration You know, Christopher Jacob is a one in a million, one-in-a-million condition, about 300 cases plus a year in North America. It's misfolded proteins. And so we're going to talk about that today as why I think neurodegeneration is on the rise. Its multifaceted, as you know. You've got a whole summit on it, but I'll add my piece of the puzzle here today. Yeah. I mean, first off, thank you for sharing that. And I am so sorry that you went through that, I'm glad you came out the other side.I met your wife and she's lovely.And I think what's important is to remember that what you want through so personally altered your course and actually makes you a better doctor.

You're in this because it's personal. Like you researched it, you got into it. So talk to me about, do you feel like, and by the way, as you said, one in a million? I think it's one in a hundred million. If you think about there's three cases and there are like 350, 450 million people in the U.S., that's not even all of North America. It's probably like one and 200 million if you execute it. All right. So even more unique being for sure. Yeah, she's really special. Do you feel like neurodegenerative diseases are on the rise?

And if so, why? Well, they definitely are. So on a lot of different fronts. I'll give you, for instance, so for dementia Alzheimer's in the Blue Cross, Blue Shield actuarial data in 2017, this is even many years ago, the average age of onset of mild cognitive impairment, which is the first step into dementia, Alzheimer. The average was not 65, it wasn't 50, It was 47 years old. The average age. This is only five years ago, Greg. And so, you know, the predictions or projections for Alzheimer's by 2030 They're basically saying 50 of adults over the age of 65 will have some form of

Why Neurodegenerative Disease Is Rising 9:13

dementia slash Alzheimer's. I mean, there's some differentiation in there, but I will tell you as I have really specialized in brain regeneration over, the last four, four and a half years. I am seeing patients that basically collect a bunch of diagnoses. It's almost as if neurologists, they can diagnose like anybody's business, but they have no solutions. And I feel bad for them because it's heartbreaking when you see this and they're writing patients off like, oh, you have dementia, Alzheimer's.

Well- Good knowing, yeah. See you later. You know, here's a medication that may extend your memory for three to four months, but, you know basically, get your affairs in order. We know that not to be the truth, But that's the system that we're dealing with because it's hard to get the information out there as far as there is a lot of things that can be doing for folks. But why? So that Alzheimer's dementia. Parkinson's rates are also on the rise. Multiple sclerosis is on the rise, all of the neurodegenerative states.

So there are magnets in that multiple fronts. One is the topic of this summit, which is around toxicants and the amount of toxins we are exposed to on a day to day, week to week, month to month, annual basis. is really unheard of and it's a great experiment. And, you know, one of the basic tenets of naturopathic medicine is treat the cause. Well, when it your environment, that's an issue. So, we're all basically loving Mother Earth and seeing the connection between clean air, clean water, and clean food.

Right. I mean, these are should be basic rights and tenants for inhabitants of planet Earth. And we don't treat it that way. Like our biosphere is our home and it affects us. You know, what happens in the macrocosm, the environment happens and the microcosms in our bodies. That's an ancient Chinese saying of wisdom and to really experience that microcozum, macrocozzum is the truth. So looking at that, that's one level. So levels of toxicants are on the rise and our exposures, you know, levels, of nutrients in our soil to feed our bodies nutritionally is also playing a role there.

It's actually not on the rise, it's on decline. The mineral content is going down, which is expediting all of these other issues. Thank you for that clarification. On the hidden component here, though, that I think a lot of folks aren't addressing, we're hearing more and more about trauma, general trauma. adverse childhood experiences, the ACE scores. I have a quaint saying is nobody gets out of here alive. We're born, we live and we die, but it's that component of the living component. When you look at levels of trauma, I've a working hypothesis clinically where I'm seeing as our species has been on the planet longer, We have more of an ancestral lineage.

So there are epigenetic changes that maybe our great, great great grandmother had some stressors in her life that threw epi-genetic switches and now the illness is expressing today. Greg, I want to pause you right there. Talk to the audience about epigeneetics because some of them listening might not know what you're talking about. So they're like, wait, what? Yeah, so there's our genes, right? And our jeans. And when we get into this discussion, I'm going to put a huge asterisk here because it's kind of cutting edge therapeutics and understanding, and it is very complex.

So I am going with kind the day-to-day, this is the best knowledge today. We have our Jeans and our Genes are not our destiny. Just because you have a gene doesn't mean you're going express it. And so we know the epigenetics is what overlays our genes. So that's the soup that we swim in. And we have Bruce Lipton to thank for a whole really breakthrough of this understanding. He was growing stem cells in a Petri dish. And he saw and actually visualized the medium that the cells were growing in mattered.

So that is the epigenetic. The medium your body is functioning in matters. Are you running around in chronic stress, which throws inflammation off? Are eating Twinkies and donuts? hot dogs, you know, that's the fuel for what your body uses to create itself anew in the future. Every seven years, all of your cells of body are new. So you have an opportunity all the time for renewal. So that's what I'm talking about, the epigenetics. It's, what surrounds the gene, which then allows expression of the genes.

Have you heard the study about in Sweden, some epidemiologists went to Sweden to the small little town that had meticulous records on their inhabitants, and they looked back a couple hundred years and found that if your grandfather went through a famine or a feast during puberty, it altered your lifespan and your health span, actually. So if the if their grandparent went to a feasts during two generations down was significantly more likely to have diabetes, heart disease, and die on average six years earlier than the general population.

But the reverse, if your grandparent went through a famine during the puberty time, their offspring two generation down were significantly likely, to the tune of 25 years, less likely get chronic disease and live on an average 25-years longer. Like, that's a huge spread. Yeah, and those that also happened in Quebec, there was a great freeze. And they followed that for two to three generations now and same findings. So that's the component. It's made our jobs a lot more because a lot of us don't know our family lineage or the tree.

And in reality, it matters to a point because you can't go back. There's nothing you could do about it. But you make different choices and decisions today knowing maybe you have the deck stacked against you. Right. I mean, as Joe Pizzuono talks about, your genes account for 15% of what's happening, whereas the other 85% is in your control, right? What's in the environment, you're eating, sleeping, pooping, thoughts, intimacy with others, movement, stress reduction, all of that is your in control.

So what do you focus on with people then? Because when someone shows up in practice and they have what you consider to be neurodegeneration, What are you focusing on with them? Yeah, so we're focusing actually on all of the levels. So what I like to say is I don't treat conditions and I do not treat symptoms. I treat heart centered dynamic human beings moving through time and space. Well, how do you do that? One, you really cut to the matter at hand as far as, Why did they incarnate?

Epigenetics, Trauma, and Brain Health 16:48

I mean, we go deep quickly with our patient base in that we're addressing the biochemistry, the physiology, and the structure of the body, so more of a matter body. We address the Bioenergetics, biofields of our body and we use a voice scan for that. So we are utilizing blood chemistries were utilizing functional medicine tests with urine and stool analysis. We're utilizing mindset and matter. I mean, we know in a longevity play, purpose matters, like the universe will recall the pieces and parts when there is no purpose or passion.

And so getting people to understand Like you won the lottery by being here. It's about a one in 500 million chance of being born. And that's a gift. That's precious. Like it is amazing, these vessels we walk around in. Now when they go wrong, they can go really wrong. I'm not minimizing people's suffering, but I also want to couch our discussion around Okay, well, what is the symptom picture and the pathology? What can we learn from it? Because it's happening. Like we can push against it. We can fight against.

I really want to do away with war analogies in our health because ultimately in a oneness understanding, it is all us anyways. And so looking at the inherent intelligence of our bodies, and it's always striving for correction. And basically our true nature is health, but we have a lot of obstacles to take us out of health. Whether that be through mindset, maybe through traumas, Maybe through the epigenetics, may be it our lifestyle stuff of what we're doing day to day. But all of those things are correctable.

Now, while we may not have complete 100% resolution, I have many patients that have no evidence of Alzheimer's, stage two Alzheimer is reversed. Parkinson's disease, full debilitation after 10 to 12 years, no Evidence of that disease. We even have stage four cancers and other components from just the two decades of practice that I Have. So I'm, but I am not saying I' m curing anybody. It's the body given the right information. I like to say I do a lot of nothing all day. The body, the inherent wisdom.

and the information that we bring in to the individual. So it's really amazing when it works. We do improve a lot of people's quality of life by practicing that way as well. Talk to me about what are the most impactful for people who are listening? What are the most impactful things that someone can do to either prevent or slow down the process of neurodegeneration? What would be the more impactful thing that you would recommend people focus on? Yeah, so there's a couple levels there, right? So it depends on is it a loved one that you see going through this.

So my Nana, Ethel Bloom, had dementia. And it actually just dawned on me just in the last year, like, oh yeah, Saraya wasn't really the first one with brain degeneration that I witnessed. My Nana had Dementia for 10 years. Ethil Bloom. Bless her heart. She would come put her teeth on the table and drink her Budweiser, smoke her cigarettes. You know, I'm from farm country in Western Pennsylvania. And so that component is lifestyle. Like you cannot be putting like smoking. Obviously, if you're smoking, get support.

There's plenty of ways to stop. But we know that is a massive toxicant of you imbibing there. Getting your sugars in balance and looking at your diet food is your best medicine So not spiking insulin as a result of massive glucose going up So that would be breads and pastas and potatoes and sweets and alcohol all the standard food, right? Like the Standard American diet the sad diet like that component is really getting plugged in with support Maybe you're a do-it-yourselfer You know, there's a great book by Dale Bredesen, The End of Alzheimer's, and he goes through a lot of that.

I call that naturopathic medicine 101, which is addressing lifestyle and diet. And those are big players. Moving your body. These are not sexy concepts, but they are so essential for our health and for the embodiment of not forgetting about this vessel. Really, I'm out now. training and teaching people on, we haven't been taught how powerful we truly are. When we fully access, get the embodiment, Get these things pain free, freely mobile, fully functioning, battery charged, and the ability to then create from a heart and brain coherent space is phenomenal.

But depending on where you are on that, I know it's a long winded answer, but I'm going to go. I am coming back. There's different levels of what can you do? So there's not just one thing, But looking at the different facets or pillars to health, you could call them. looking at your diet, looking At your mindset is a massive one, you know, a dangerous neighborhood to go into by yourself. I've had 70 year old patients on my procedure table where we're doing very small embryonic like stem cell procedures laser guided and activated on brain regeneration.

telling me they're not worthy of healing at 70 years old. And, you know, that's a profound breakthrough for that being on the planet. I don't want people to get to 70-years-old or older and having a belief in them that they are not worth enough for healing. You know, that is tragic in my mind. And so if we're able to educate people earlier, like there is a lot of support. You don't have to go it alone. Plug into Dr. Wendy's programs, plug into ours. Like there's more than enough suffering out there that we all are getting on these summits to try to education and bring this information to you so that you know that, you have possibilities, You have hope and you support and so diet, lifestyle movement, sleep hygiene, you know, what gets tracked gets, What gets measured gets can get changed.

Treating the Whole Person in Practice 23:08

And so really plugging in with some support, if you're do it yourself for sure, do your homework, there is information, but get a trusted source, don't go out there on a limb with somebody with unfounded hypothesis, you know, get somebody that you can trust as a trusted guide to go the path with you. Because there's multiple roads in and it's not always that I call it fractal medicine really is there isn't just one thing. And there is not even one system. It's like, where does the individual come in?

What resonates most with them? Can you meet them where they're at and then really go from there? And I'll give you an instance, for instance on in case you don't know what a fractals is, is You can go forever in and forever out. The pattern is the same. So I can treat your whole body on your ear with auriculotherapy and Chinese medicine. There's a point on there. Maybe in the West, we understand reflexology. there's A point On your foot for everything in your body. Well, that's the microcosm and the macrocosms.

You know, I happen to use a voice scan for people that is a hologram of the biofield of whole body. I find it very valuable to help people because we're helping people around the globe now out of our centers in Utah and Oregon. And so, you know my long winded wind up is, is there one thing or I gave a couple concrete things in there. All finish with just this one is movement and I don't call it exercise because that's a loaded four letter word. So movement of just moving your body 10 minutes a day, start with that of maybe it's putting on your best tunes and dancing around the house.

I oftentimes recommend just go get outside, you know, not like my mom said, like go play in the street kids, but go take a 10 minute walk from your house and then come back. And even that circulation in Chinese medicine, we say the blood is the healing ability of the body. So we get the circulation going. If you get one next step is going into a high intensity workout, which is increasing your blood pressure to a point where you can't hold on a conversation, that will increase BDNF,which is brain derived neurotropic factor.

That's how you create new neurons in your brain. So like a very powerful intervention. People say, oh, I know about that. They want to know like, what kind of mushroom complex can I take? But it is these simple things that we can put in. The one you'd get from the forest that you forest. So Greg, there's so much that you've said that really I want to highlight. So the first thing that I wanna talk about is that it's like a team effort, right? It's not just to eat your veggies. It to, eat you veggies, don't load the system with toxins.

Do make sure you allow your body to rest. do stress reduce? And you mentioned something about heart-brain coherence, which I'm a huge fan of heart math. And it's funny, I stink at meditating. I stink at it. You can't do it wrong, Linda. No, and I recommend it, but I think at so I have found that heartmath is the thing because I am very competitive. So I can watch my breath in and watch the coherents go up. And for me, that's the way I can work on that. So I'm a huge proponent of meditation. I just haven't yet mastered it.

But heart math, I like, okay, i got this. And so when you mentioned coherence, they thought heart is such a practical tool for people to manage stress, increase the coherency. the gelling between your head and your heart so that your body's in balance, and then don't drink alcohol, don' smoke, you don''t inhale heavy drugs. I mean, there's so many things that you could do and move your bodies, right? There's just all these platform behaviors. So if you get nothing else out of the summit, You'll get what not to do, And what to from this conversation.

Perfect. So what are some of the toxins, because we're all about environmental toxicants, of course. Yes. Are there toxins that you feel are particularly nasty for neurodegenerative disease? Yes, so heavy metals in particular are a big showstopper and are very ubiquitous in our human bodies. When you look at the NHANES data, which are the databases they do, basically every 10 years they massive study on the populations to see how many metals are in our system. I find the top four for neurodegeneration.

So I do, we do urine challenge tests for heavy metals and I'll explain why I got to that. But cadmium, mercury, arsenic and lead are the Top Four that I'm finding in people. Now, not everyone with neuro degeneration have the metals. But those that do that needs to get addressed first off because any of the natural therapeutics, even the brain regenerative camp that I run in my centers, we don't, that's a showstopper. We don' do it because it's just too much of a drag. It's like you have a huge hole in the bottom of your bucket.

So it doesn't matter what we put in on the top side. And then solvents, pesticides, I mean, glyphosate, That is a crime against humanity. Don't get me started. we have an episode on glyphasate on this summit. Do not get started, it is one of my biggest pet peeves. Well, it's a crime against humanity in my book, and it is responsible for undue cancers and neurodegeneration. It's found in all of our food. And so that means detoxification has to happen for everybody. Saunas are amazing if you can afford one.

We run a liver and brain detox.

Lifestyle Changes for Prevention and Recovery 28:38

three times a year for communities to do that. I'm a firm believer is you've got to change your filter like any other filter in your life. If you're not changing it, get what happens to it. It gets congested and clogged. And then the machine doesn't work well, the same thing for our bodies. So, you know, glyphosate, pesticides, plastics. Don't use a microwave, number one, but do not microwave in plastic either because you're just leaching those chemicals into the food then you are ingesting them.

Looking at those dang air fresheners in cars, no one should be using air fresheners. They are full of toxicants and then your inhaling them like we're bringing them into our homes. I also like air filters for our homes. Our homes are some of the most toxic places because things get trapped in our furniture and in the rugs. Even our cars. I just made my son, not my, son. My oldest daughter who has a new car and my husband who got a car a year later, I made them both get air-filters because I said, you can't breathe that.

It's so much toxins. Yeah, just coming off of the vinyl and the plastics. You know, I guess the good news here, you know I learned about environmental, studied environmental studies as an undergrad. I was out in, rivers in the Chesapeake Bay doing snail inventories in rivers. I loved it because it got me outside, but also to see what pesticides are doing to our natural environment. It's like, wow, it is devastating. But the good news is Chesapeake Bay is coming back to life so things can regenerate.

So really practicing regenerative medicine and our bodies are really resilient to a point. And I mean, we've seen some really tough cases, very progressed, debilitated folks really get their lives back. A patient, Rick, Retired forester. He had Parkinson's for a decade. Medications weren't working anymore. Uh, he was debilitated on the bed, couldn't go from the bedroom to the bathroom anymore and we get word from he's up in Alaska in the wilds doing white water rafting. So he got his life back. You know, and no, really very little evidence of the condition.

That's unheard of in Western medicine. Again, I'm not claiming cure. Maybe a spontaneous remission in the Western world. But we did actually push on some rather large levers for his innate intelligence to come back online. I think the listeners will also know Terry Walls is on this summit and we talk who has multiple sclerosis and trigeminal neuralgia. And we talked a lot about the reversal of her illness, which is just profound. Phenomenal. Yeah. So I really think you really highlighted two things.

One is hope. There is always hope and then the other is work with a good team. Yeah, really. And the thing that's so interesting is people don't think about the metals that they have, but if you're born before 1978 or if were nursed by someone who was born in 1978, you got exposed to metals because they cross the placenta, they crossed the breast milk. I think you and I are the same age. But I grew up in a house that had lead paint and then I got mercury fillings, just like that. Super easy. Yeah.

I mean, leaded paint gasoline was outlawed in 1975 in North America in the United States, but that's in our soil. We get the mercury from coal-fired plants in Midwest that rains, the acid rained in Northeast. Uh, we get a plume on the West coast from China and they're coal fired plants. So, you know, mercury bioaccumulates in fish as well. Do not eat swordfish ever. No heavy metal fish. None of them. Yeah, so. You know, you ask like, well, okay, where do they come from? You they're just ubiquitous now in our environment.

So we need to know that. And I guess the reason why I started with the metals when you asked me, Okay, what are the toxicants? David Perlmutter about 18 years ago, put a picture of a gentleman with Parkinson's on YouTube. He pushed two grams of glutathione in an IV. It was like a miracle cure. And the guy went, his face brightened up, arms were swinging, he got a strong and striding gait, not the stutter step or the pill rolling hunched over frail looking fellow. He did kind of navigate the turn a little stuttering steppy.

So I put that in on the first five patients 18 years ago and nothing happened. And I thought, gosh, I know he did not hire an actor to do that. I actually got to tell him this a couple of years ago when I interviewed him for a different summit. So with that, I knew I did study environmental science. Walter Crinion was my main mentor in that. And we looked at that all five of them had heavy metal burden. We got rid of their metals, one patient, Dennis in particular, had high lead burden. We did chelation therapy with him, hyperbarics and acupuncture.

He no longer comes in. You can't really tell that he has Parkinson's either. Some church members, how do I know? I treat some of his church member and say, yeah, you'd never tell he'd have Parkinson unless he gets really upset. Then the tremor comes a little bit. So, you know, it is, these are not getting looked at in conventional neurology. They're looking at the substantia nigra, they're look at DAL proteins, They are looking different end stage of disease and looking for medical or pharmaceutical

Environmental Toxins and Heavy Metals 34:18

interventions there. And I just don't think we're going to move the needle there because we got to go upstream. So we look the gut, we looked the hormones, You know we do the functional medicine analysis there Yeah, I think you're really a highlight. I mean, you've talked about this repeatedly, don't go it alone. But also you do work with a... So I always say to my patients, look, if I was an OB-GYN, and I'm still an ob-gyn, so if you need to deliver a baby or if your surgical emergency or another type of emergency that's medical, You really do belong in the traditional system.

You know, do you have a mechanical issue? You do not belong to in my office. If you a huge growth in your uterus,I can't do anything about that. So there are certain places that traditional medicine are excellent. Excellent. And if you have something where you're rejecting the common wisdom and you are flying against the grain and just want a different future than what traditional medicine sees for you, which is essentially a process of degeneration and failure and dying in your bed decrepit at 68 without your brain or your body, I reject that fully.

So, and I think you do too. That is not the future I see for me. No, not at all. vital, vibrant, healthy, able to be an interested in intimacy until you're at least 100 that every decade gets better than the next, right? Oh, yeah, that's what we're doing. Yeah, so don't go alone, but it does sound like you really, anyone who's experiencing degenerative disease needs a functional, a senior functional medicine workup. Probably not the person who just hung out their shingle because that you'd really need to deep in the weeds.

Yeah, because one of the components, even in functional medicine land, a lot of people will not take on neurodegeneration. there haven't been many people out on that forefront. And so that's where I find myself is because I went through it and I needed to do it. So looking at, it's just necessary. I'm educating other providers as well, that there is a lot of things that we can do for folks and we're seeing benefits. We have 95% of people that engage in our programs are saying their quality of life has improved with since seeing us.

So, you know, I'm training, and I've got two physicians in Portland, Oregon. I have some more providers down in Park City, Utah. We do a lot of online programming as well with coaches and providers. We're working on all of the levels so that why the billion just seems like I can't even wrap my head around that. I wanted to have, with knowing our time on the planet, we don't know when we check off or out of here, I might as well go big. because I was done playing it small. I wasn't playing at small before, but just with that loss profoundly, it's like, you know, lit a fire under me, put the flag in the earth of like we're taking a stand for people's health and we are going to do it with a lot of joy and a lots of fun and lots a love.

think this is great. I think we're always informed by what we absolutely don't want. And playing a big game, like, you know, might not win, but you have a future that every day gets you out of bed and inspires you to pull you forward, which I also think is really important for people to have for themselves. Like, why are you here? What's your legacy? So, I know that people who are listening are thinking, how do I reach this guy? He's great. So how did they reach you? How do they get in touch with you, what do you want to share with them?

Yeah. Really, we're rebranding, but I've got naturecuresclinic.com. That's nature singular cures with an S clinic. And bevitalpc. Those will get you to where I am. I also have a podcast called What the Health? The doctors chat. So if you can do Dr. Greg Echol, what the health. It's a great way we do a weekly podcast educating people about different facets of their health and what they can day to day.

Hope, Resources, and Closing Remarks 38:08

This is great, Greg. Thank you. Really. For all of the people listening, thank you for listening to this episode of The Environmental Toxicants, Autoimmunity, and Chronic Diseases Summit. Today we had Dr Greg echol on and really thank so much for being here. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks dot com.

Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on DoctorTalks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.