Your Health and Gluten Insensitivity

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM​

Oh, okay. Well, what’s important, I guess, is that I’m on the teaching faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and I have been for about 11 or 12 years. And I’m adjunct faculty at the National University of Health Sciences, and go back to my alma mater and teach whenever I can. And you know, I’m gonna date myself, but it was January, 1978, and I’m just starting my professional education at National, just starting and the first week there was a sign in the hallway that Dr. Sheldon Deal, Mr. Arizona, was coming to teach on campus. And I thought, I don’t know who this guy, oh, well, he’s a body builder. All right, he’s a healthy guy, I wanna learn more about. So I went and sat and listened, and he had a color television brought into the room and put on a stand, and color televisions were still not the norm, so it was kinda cool to see all the colors on the screen. And he turned it on, but turned the volume off. And then he went over to his briefcase and he took out a bar magnet about the size of an iPhone. And he held it up and he walked up to the color television, the picture turned upside down. And when he walked away, the picture went right side up and he walked towards it, the picture went upside down and he walked away and it went right side up. And he said, that’s what electromagnetic pollution does to your brain and your nervous system. And it’s called neurological switching. And these are people that say, right, when they mean left. They write the number three backwards. They forget and put the E before the I, you know, I before E except after C, and they write it back and they know, but, oh, I wasn’t thinking, but they’re switched. And you see this, children that write letters backwards, they’re switched. And at that time, he wasn’t talking about, there was no such thing as cell phones, that he was talking about the battery in a watch on your wrist, and having a battery next to your body, in sensitive people will trigger this neurological confusion that goes on. That was my first week in my education.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Three weeks later, this is still January, 1978, three weeks later, a medical doctor comes from California, Dr. Kirpal Singh. And he was teaching about Electro Acupuncture by Voll. Voll was a German guy in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s that came up with some concepts that were right on the money, and this doctor told us a case study, 44 year old woman comes in, she’s just been diagnosed with adult onset diabetes. You know, back then we used to call it, adult onset type two diabetes. We don’t do that anymore, ’cause kids get it almost as frequently as adults. But back then it was mostly just adults. And she came in and she said, “You know, doctor, I’ve just been diagnosed with adult onset type two diabetes and I’ve had blood sugar problems forever, can you help me?” And he scanned her with his Voll instrument, he said, “Well, yes, you have type two diabetes and you have a long history of a volatile blood sugar, which will go up and then crash into hypoglycemia, yes, all that’s true, but it all comes because you were very sick as a child and you almost died, and the virus set up shop in your pancreas”. And she said, “Well, doctor you’re right, I did have very volatile blood sugar, but I was never sick as a child”. “Yes, you were.” “No, doctor, I wasn’t”. “I’m sorry, you were.” “No, no, no”. He said, “Is your mother alive?” “Yes”. “Call her”, handed over the phone. “Hi mom, I’m at the doctor’s office, I’m fine, everything’s okay, but he says I was really sick when I was a baby, was I ever?” “Oh honey, you almost died. Your fever was at 105 and a half and the doctor was outta town”, they lived in a small town. “We put you in ice baths and we put vinegar socks on, yeah”. This instrument picked it up 40 years later.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

40 years later. So this is my first month in my education, just starting with anatomy and, you know, cadavers, and biochemistry and genetics. And then the third thing that happened was about a month later, so we’re in February now. And there’s a sign that Dr. Raymond Nimmo was coming to campus, founder of the Nimmo Technique, trigger point therapy. Now this is the guy that taught Janet Travell, who is considered the godmother of trigger point therapy, well, she learned from Nimmo, from the chiropractor, Ray Nimmo, in the panhandle of Texas. So I go to listen to this guy, and he’s tall and lanky, he’s got skintight blue jeans on with cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, you know, and he looks like the panhandle of Texas, right? And he’s 84 years old, and talking about trigger points and a doctor raises his hand and he says, “Well, doctor, sometimes it’s painful for the patient”, because Nimmo said, “You find the trigger point and you”, and then he’d take a breath, “Hit it”. And that’s just how he would say it, “You find that trigger point and you, hit it”. And the doctor raised his hand, he said, “Well, doctor it sometimes is painful”. “Hit it anyway”. And he said, “Well, they fall on the floor”. “Get down on the floor”. This is an 84 year old guy with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, “Get down on the floor”. And this is my introduction to soft tissue work.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

I didn’t know anything about soft tissue work, and he did case after case after case of these critical patients that got so much better with trigger point therapy. So at the time I was a marathon runner, I ran a bunch of marathons. And so I had met some of the guys at school, we’d been in school now for about two months now, you know, you see guys out there running and we’d run together sometimes. And there were tables in every room, so after the Nimmo weekend, I carried oil in my back pocket, and yeah, you got 10 minutes between classes and there’s tables and there was, “Come here, lay down, man. Let me check your gastrocs”, and I’d get some oil on my hand and then, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, that hurts”. I said, “Yeah, it’s good for you”. “Oh, it hurts, stop”. “No, man, this is really good for you”. I gotta, “Hit it”, right? So I’m just, and these guys are screaming on the table, literally screaming on the table, but they got better. Their stride improved because when you break up the trigger points, you’ve gotta break up the membrane on the outside of a trigger point, so your body can reabsorb all of that congested debris that makes up the trigger point, you gotta break up the membrane. But when you do, you now get more elasticity back to the muscle, again. And the muscle tendon connections, ’cause tendons aren’t very elastic, but muscles don’t hook to your bones, muscles hook to the tendon, tendon hooks to the bones. And you get lots of trigger points, both at the musculotendinous junction and at the osteotendinous junction. Well, what do you think shin splints are? Shin splints are when the muscles are so tight all the time it’s pulling the tendon off the bone at a minor degree, so the body puts more calcium on that osteotendinous connection, the result is you get like tougher tissue right on the bone, those are trigger points. And so this is my first two months, in chiropractic school. Now here we are, 40 years later, and in my career, well, in my second book called, “You Can Fix Your Brain”, that is in nine languages, I’m really proud of that, it’s a fabulous book, it’s number one on Amazon for weeks and weeks and weeks, it was number one in seven different categories for brain and nervous system function, I talk about the pyramid of health, and my entire career has been based on the pyramid of health. Now, one of my mentors was Dr. George Goodheart, the founder of applied kinesiology, which is the muscle testing.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And in applied kinesiology, we talk about the triangle of health. Triangle of health is structure, emotional or spiritual, and biochemical. That’s the triangle that you have to look at for any complaint and every AK practitioner has been taught to think that way. Well, I was privileged to have dinner with Dr. Goodheart a year before he died, before he passed, and I said to him, “Dr. Goodheart, I don’t think it’s a triangle of health”. And he had a glass of wine, “Well, what do you think, Tom?” And I said, “I think it’s a pyramid”. And he got this little smirk on his face, he said, “Tell me more”. I said, “Well, of course we’ve got the structure”, you always have to check out structure, ’cause structural imbalances will cause anything, literally anything can be caused by a structural imbalance. And we’ve all seen so many miracles in our practices, when you correct the fixations and get more mobility back to the spine, all of a sudden the thyroid’s functioning better or acne goes away, or of course pain, it doesn’t matter the condition, you always have to consider structure as a component contributing to the dis-ease that’s causing whatever symptoms they have, always consider structure, but it’s only one part, you know. But of course we have the structure, then we have the biochemistry, what you eat, drink, breathe. And then we have the emotional or spiritual, and we all have heard about stinking thinking. And we know the results of that over time can cause any dis-ease, any disease. But there’s a fourth one, that’s just come on the scene in the last, almost two decades now. And that’s electromagnetic. And any condition can be caused by an electromagnetic imbalance, any condition. 

So I say this to Dr. Goodheart, and you know, in applied kinesiology, when you get board certified and you’re a diplomate, you get the pin, and the pin is a diamond triangle that you wear on the lapel of your sport jacket or your suit. And so I explain all that Dr. Goodheart and George says, “Well, Tom, you’re absolutely right, absolutely right, but I’m not giving up my pin”. I laughed and I said, “That’s great, doctor, that’s just fine, thanks so much for the validation”. So in my book, “You Can Fix Your Brain”, I talk about the pyramid of health and every health practitioner needs to understand that any health condition may be contributed to or fueled by, or even be primarily caused by, any side of the pyramid. Well, people say, well, there’s three sides to a pyramid, no, there’s not, there’s four. Well no, there’s only three sides to a pyramid, yeah, but there’s a base, and that’s your structure. And then the three sides, emotional spiritual, biochemical, electromagnetic. And so this concept of electromagnetic energy from my first introduction, my first week, in my education, all the way through to today has always included electromagnetic health, that you must investigate on any patient when you’re not getting the results that your therapy should be producing. Whenever you don’t get the results you think your therapy should be producing, there is an emergency break. 

You know, it’s like you’re backing out of the driveway and you say, “What’s wrong with this car? It’s the, emergency break”. And you let go of the emergency break and then you back out just fine. So whenever you’re sure that this is a really good therapy but it’s not getting the results, well, it’s a resistant patient. No, it’s not, you’re not comprehensive enough in your protocol. You know, so we have to get out of the ego that we know best and become a partner with our patients to investigate, where is all this coming from? I’ll give you an example, of 38 year old bank president, really young, smart, smart guy, heavy hitter in the world of financing. He had been to Mayo Clinic twice. He’d been to some clinic in France. He’d been to Columbia and someplace else, no one could help him and his wife demanded he come talk to me. And so he made an appointment. I see patients about once a week and it’s by Zoom. I’ll see one patient a week, that’s it. ‘Cause I’m a Sherlock Holmes, you know, but my time is best spent teaching others, but I just love the interaction with patients, so I just announced two weeks ago, you know, I’ll do one patient a week. And so he fills out my questionnaire. Every practitioner should consider this questionnaire, it’s called, “The Living Matrix”. Just go to livingmatrix.com and check it out. And it’s a, I don’t know, 30, 40 page questionnaire, the patient fills out and it’ll take them a few hours. I wanna know what was the birth like for you? I don’t know, my mom passed. Okay, well ask your aunts. 

Do a little investigative work. And if you don’t fill it out, I’m not gonna see you. And so he filled, you know, ’cause I wanna know what was mom’s health during the pregnancy? How many antibiotic prescriptions have you had in your life? What kind of problems did you have as a kid? ‘Cause all of that relates and The Living Matrix is a very organized way of you accumulating a first class history. So the guy fills out The Living Matrix and I’m gonna see him in an hour, so I take a look at it. Oh, there it is. And so he gets on and he tells me all these places he’s been to and his problem is he can’t think anymore. He had to take a leave of absence from work because his brain’s not working very well anymore. And he had sent me all the tests they had done and the MRIs and the CT and the spec scan, the spec scan shows there’s not enough blood perfusion going into the brain, meaning the brain’s not being soaked in blood the way it’s supposed to be. So he’s got low perfusion, called hypoperfusion, a lack of blood flow into the brain, but nobody can figure out why. And so he gets on and I can’t tell him the answer in the first two minutes ’cause you know, he’s paid for an hour of my time already. 

And so we get on and we’re talking, so, tell me about your childhood. And he’s a little frustrated, you know, he doesn’t wanna talk, “Well”, I said, “No, it’s important, tell me about your childhood”. He was raised on a cotton plantation in Alabama. And I said, “So did you used to play outside in the fields when the planes would fly by and spray the fields?” “Oh yeah, we used to go out there and get the mist, and we’d play in the ponds of water and, yeah”. The guy was loaded with organophosphates that had been in his body now for 30 years. So I said, “Just Google, organophosphates and brain function”. And he said, “Oh yeah, hold on”. And he said, “Holy shit”. You know, he’s just, oh my god, how come no one’s ever told me this? Your body’s probably loaded with organophosphates and we ran a test on him and his antibodies, so organophosphates were through the roof. So he needed a detox program. And I said, “And this is very dangerous, if you detox too quickly, you could get very sick. So I recommend you go to Swiss Mountain Clinic in Switzerland, they’re my friends and they’re just the best, and they hold your hand and take care of you, all the food’s organic. They have a Michelin Star rated chef and you’re just so well taken care of, you go there for two or three weeks, and you’ll be fine”. And he did, and he was fine. But it was the history, that gave me the evidence of where to look.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

So, this one page history that doctors are doing, is ridiculous. Even if your specialty is the base of the pyramid, even if you are a musculoskeletal practitioner, exclusively, which is great, we need the best musculoskeletal practitioners we can get, right? But they’re coming to you for help with their problem, they’re not coming to you for musculoskeletal care. Usually, you know, they’ve got a problem and they’ve heard that maybe you can help them. So when you see the whole picture here and you think, oh, this person, might have some emotional stuff going on, so I’m gonna fix their structure. But Mrs. Patient, this is a doctor I’ve worked with before, who’s really good with dealing with emotional trauma. You had mentioned in your history that there had been some sexual abuse somewhere in your past, and that’s not my area of expertise, but I know that that can be an emergency break that holds back your health, that at the stress hormones that we produce affect your entire body. So, I’ll work on your structure and we’ll get that all working great, but I’d suggest you consider having a session or two with Dr. so and so, that if you’re on this summit, watching this summit, you’re a big thinker already. You may be a musculoskeletal specialist, which I think is great, but don’t ever represent yourself as a comprehensive functional medicine practitioner. You don’t have to be a functional medicine practitioner, but they’re coming to you because they think you are the doctor that’s gonna fix their problem, right? So recognize where your strengths are and recognize where it’s good to punt and get some help. And if you do that, you’re gonna have a thriving career. ‘Cause people are gonna say, oh, I went to Dr. so and so, boy, he fixed me right up and he sent me over to this person and she really did a great job for me too. Right? And they’ll appreciate you. So anyway, you asked me about my history and that started with Dr. Sheldon Deal, Mr. Arizona and Ray Nimmo, “Hit it”, and then went on from there.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

I love it, I love it. What a great introduction. I can’t tell you that I have any nice stories like that from chiropractic school, but except that hold hands around the weeping willow down at Sherman,

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

There you go, there you go.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

It was great. So while I was perusing your books and your website, it seems that gluten and gut health, is kind of one of your big thing. And gluten, it seems that in the last 20 years or so, it’s all about gluten, gluten grain free. The vet few years ago said don’t feed your dogs and cats any grain stuff, grain free. And then all of a sudden, you know, you have people, I hear gluten this and gluten that. What exactly is gluten and what is the big deal?

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Really good question, okay. Gluten is the category of a family of proteins. Now gluten proteins are in wheat, rye, barley, rice, corn, quinoa, there are many different grains that contain gluten proteins. Gluten is not bad for you. Bad gluten is bad for you. And that’s a really important differentiation.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Okay.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And the bad glutens, and I’ll show you why, are in wheat, rye and barley.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Okay.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

The gluten in rice is okay, unless you have a sensitivity to rice.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Okay.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And then you got a problem with rice, if your immune system’s fighting rice, you got a problem with rice, and it may be the gluten proteins or other proteins in rice. Or if you have a sensitivity to corn or something that’s possible, but everyone has a problem with the wheat proteins and I’m just talking science, I’m gonna show you the science on this. Everyone has a problem with wheat proteins, whether they know it or not. So I’m going to share my screen if I may.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Sure.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And show you some slides. Now I just did a presentation in Brazil, a week ago yesterday. And so I’m gonna show you some of the slides from that presentation. And we’re gonna start here. The first thing to recognize, is that all chronic diseases, let me stop sharing while I talk about this, all disease is inflammatory. It’s very difficult to consider any disease that is not inflammatory. I know of one, central pontine myelinolysis, big geek thing, which is a salt deficiency in children that creates atrophy in a part of their brain, and it’s not inflammatory. Everything else, as far as I know, is inflammatory at the cellular level, the cell’s on fire.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

It just depends, is it a kidney cell or a thyroid cell, or a brain cell or a heart cell? But it’s always inflammation. Always. The National Institute of Health tells us, eight outta the top 10 causes of death in the modern world, are chronic inflammatory diseases. The only ones that are not, are unintentional injuries, accidents, and suicide, but suicide is a depressive state and depression is inflammatory, so arguably it’s nine out of the top 10 causes of death are chronic inflammatory conditions. So that’s a 30,000 foot view, that everything that comes, everything and anything that’s gonna take you down, eventually, is a chronic inflammatory disease. And these diseases develop over years, sometimes decades, when you don’t have any symptoms. You know, when a patient gets diagnosed with rheumatoid, they just got diagnosed. They didn’t just get the disease. They’ve had the disease at least 14 years, killing off collagen, killing off collagen, killing off collagen, before they ever had a symptom. And it’s when you kill off enough tissue, now the tissue can’t function correctly, now you start getting some symptoms, eventually they get bad enough you go to the doctor and they can’t figure it out, and the average is two and a half years for an autoimmune disease before you get the right diagnosis, because the symptoms are kinda subtle in the beginning, and you know, and doctors don’t look for autoimmune diseases very often, but they develop over years and years and years. Then one day it’s so bad, you know, I gotta go to the doctor again, that other doctor didn’t help me, so. Oh, Mrs. Patient, you’ve got autoimmune thyroid disease. Well, how did I get that? Well, it just happens. No, it doesn’t just happen. My first book is called, “The Autoimmune Fix”, and we talk all about the mechanisms that set the stage for all these diseases. The point for today, is that it’s inflammation in your thyroid, killing off thyroid cells, killing off thyroid cells, killing off thyroid cells and eventually you kill off enough cells, your thyroid isn’t functioning very well and you eventually get the right diagnosis of thyroid disease, but the point is, all chronic diseases are inflammation diseases. And for almost everyone, what’s gonna take them down at the end of their life, what they’re gonna suffer with at the end of their life, is a chronic inflammatory disease. So if you understand that as the baseline, then always the first question is, where is the inflammation coming from?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Because if you can identify where the inflammation’s coming from, and you can eliminate that gasoline on the fire, you reduce the chronic inflammation.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And we’ve got hundreds or thousands of cases of this all over the world. So many functional medicine doctors have large numbers of examples of this and we did an entire docu-series called, “Betrayal, The Autoimmune Disease Solution They’re Not Telling You”. My wife and I traveled seven different countries, and I interviewed the world leaders, the big kahunas in science, and we interviewed them and I knew what to, you know, I didn’t say, “So tell me, how did you get into systemic sclerosis, doctor? What was your interest in that?” You know, I didn’t do any of that. I said, “Doctor, in your paper where you wrote about collagen diseases”, and I asked specific, I just went right to the jugular, you know, asking the questions and they really appreciate it, and so I interviewed, it was 85 interviews. Then I interviewed doctors all over the world who were using the principles of these scientists, and then I asked them to bring in some patients who had followed the recommendations and reversed their MS, reversed their rheumatoid, reversed their chronic fatigue, reversed their multiple chemical sensitivity, reversed their severe sciatica that nothing could help, again and again and again, and you know, I’ll never forget the 44 year old woman in London who said, “You know, I took the Tube to come here today”, and that’s the underground train. “And it’s a seven block walk from the Tube station here to the hotel for the interview, and I walked”. Oh, she said, “And it’s not a big deal”. But it is. And then she teared up, and then we show you pictures of her two years ago, she was in a wheelchair, she can’t walk at all and she had eight lesions on her brain.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Oh wow.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Today, she has no symptoms and she has two lesions left on her brain and we show you the MRIs, reversing lesions in the brain, on a comprehensive holistic health diet and lifestyle, getting rid of the inflammation. And there’s case after case after case like that. And it’s at the dr.com, the doctor.com, just don’t spell the word doctor out, forward slash betrayal, and it’s free. You can watch it, it’s a nine part series, it’s all free. We’ve had about 700,000 people that have watched it. And we get emails of gratitude, almost every day, still, that it changed their lives and things. It’s really great, it’s really great. But so there’s a paradigm shift that when you understand that all diseases are chronic inflammatory diseases and you include in your protocol, a little investigation, where’s the inflammation coming from?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

You increase the likelihood of getting dramatic results. And so with this concept of gluten, now I’m going to share my screen and talk about sources of inflammation. So here we have, from my presentation last week, what are the mechanisms that set the stage for the production of excessive inflammation in the gut? And I’m gonna talk about Professor Alessio Fasano. Now he’s a Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Professor of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Chief Pediatric Gastroenterology, Mass General Hospital, Harvard, Director of Mucosal Immunology, that’s the lining of the lungs, the lining of the gut, the lining of the brain, the lining of your reproductive system, he’s the Director, Harvard, he’s the Director of the Celiac Research Center, Harvard, I mean five titles, that any one of these titles is a lifelong goal for people at the top of their field. He has five. We think he’s gonna win the Nobel Prize, we truly do. We hope so, because he and his team are the ones that identified the protein that causes, what we now refer to as leaky gut. In 1997, they identified the protein zonulin and how this whole leaky gut thing, the technical term is pathogenic intestinal permeability, but how all of this works, and he’s been writing hundreds of papers now, he and his team, since then. Now look at the title of this paper. This guy, five titles of chief or director at Harvard, does not exaggerate. All disease begins in the leaky gut. The role of the protein zonulin in creating chronic inflammatory diseases. 

All disease begins in the gut. Well, what about thyroid? All disease begins in the gut. What about spondylosis? All disease begins in the gut. What about psoriatic arthritis? All disease begins in the gut. Do you get the message? Now, and this is what they’re teaching at Harvard Medical School, right now, this is what they’re being taught, much more detail and much more sophisticated into the minutia of understanding the physiology, all this, but this is the big picture. Professor Fasano identifies the five factors that create the perfect storm for chronic inflammatory diseases. And if you understand this, this goes so far in getting a big picture on how to help your patients. So the five factors and, you know, I love this picture because here you got a guy, whose hands are in his pocket, his left knee is bent, foot’s on the wall behind him, just standing there, whistling away, probably, you know, just as comfortable as possible, with all the chaos around him. I mean, look at the chaos and look at how comfortable his body language is. ‘Cause he’s protected. When you understand the five features of the perfect storm, you understand how to get started with people, doesn’t matter how sick they are. This is how you start with them. So first of the five factors, is genetics. You can’t do anything about genetics. That’s the deck of cards you were dealt. And doctors often say, well, we’re gonna turn off those gene, you cannot turn off genes, genes don’t turn on and off. Genes operate on a dimmer switch, and you can dim the genes down, so they don’t express themselves very much. Or you can turn the genes up, so they’re fully expressive. And the goal is to dim down the genes of inflammation and turn up the genes of anti-inflammation, that’s the goal. But that’s your genes. Now your genes also determine the weak link in your chain. What does that mean? If you pull at a chain, it always breaks at the weakest link.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

It’s at one end, the middle, the other end, your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidney, wherever your genetic weak link is, there actually two things that determine which link breaks, one is your genes and the other is the antecedents, how you lived your life.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

If you eat tuna fish sandwiches, three days a week, you got mercury poisoning, and that sets you up, right? So, you just have to look at the antecedents, that’s why The Living Matrix, as a questionnaire, becomes so helpful. That’s number one. Number two, the environmental triggers. It’s the environmental triggers that have their fingers on the knob of the dimmer switches, of how much your genes express themselves. Turn them up, turn them down. That’s the environmental triggers. Now that means everything you eat, drink, breathe, and what’s already inside your body, stress hormones, toxic chemicals, there are three that need to be addressed internal, they’re called endotoxins, but it’s environmental triggers that turn your genes up, turn your genes down. You have complete control, over time, as you learn to change your lifestyle, on the environmental triggers. Number three, oh, by the way, the most common environmental triggers, what’s on the end of your fork? What you put in your mouth is the most common source of inflammation in your body. And that’s why number three, of the five pillars in the development of chronic inflammatory diseases is when you alter the microbiome by what you eat and drink. So, you develop too many bad guys, not enough good guys, and that’s called dysbiosis. That creates an inflammatory environment inside your gut, whether you have gut symptoms or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s an inflammatory condition inside your gut. And that leads to number four. Mrs. Patient, your digestive system in is a tube, it starts at the mouth, it goes to the other end, about 20, 25 feet long, winds around in the center there. 

And if you think of a donut, if you could stretch a donut out, one big long donut and look down the hole, the center of the donut, that’s your digestive tract. So when you swallow food, it’s not in the body yet, it’s in the tube, and it’s gotta be digested, broken down really small to get into the bloodstream. Well, the inside the tube is lined with cheesecloth. So only really small molecules can get out of the gut into the bloodstream. So these bigger molecules of prime rib, for example, takes a long time to break down prime rib, compared to a banana, right? So, these larger molecules, until they’ve been digested smaller and smaller, by your pancreatic enzymes, your gallbladder enzymes, the digestive enzymes of your bacteria in your gut, until they’ve been digested down small enough, they can’t get through the cheesecloth, and they have to go further and further down the tract being digested, digested, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, until they’re small enough to go through the cheesecloth. That’s normal physiology. But when you’ve got number three, an altered microbiome, meaning you have an inflammatory microbiome, you tear the cheesecloth. Now, larger molecules called macromolecules, get through the tears in the cheesecloth into the bloodstream, before they’re supposed to. Now you’ve got a macromolecule of raspberry, that got into the bloodstream, or of chicken, that got into the bloodstream, or of spinach that got into the bloodstream and your immune system says, trying to protect you, “What’s that, in the bloodstream? That’s not something I could use to make new bone solves or brain cells, that big molecule, I better fight that”. Now you make antibodies to spinach. 

And now you’ve got antibodies in your bloodstream looking for spinach. That’s number four, the leaky gut tears in the cheesecloth allows the molecules to get through it, the macromolecules into the bloodstream, activating your immune system to protect you, that’s number five, systemic immune response. Now these antibodies are going through the bloodstream, looking for spinach, and the way they identify spinach, because your bloodstream is just a highway of traffic, everything’s going the same direction, but there’s no lanes of traffic, everything’s bumping around like bumper cars at the circus, bumping into each other, you know? So how do the antibodies know what to attack? The antibodies know what to attack because they’ve been trained to look for a protein signature, on that molecule, that macro molecule, I call it an orange vest. So the antibodies are looking for orange vests and it’s a protein signature, I’ll say ABCD, for the amino acid protein signature. Well, the antibodies are looking for ABCD, everywhere in the bloodstream, and as the blood’s going past the brain and the central nervous system, it sees, look over there, A A B C D, hiding out, and they fire their chemical bullets at that orange vest, that amino acid signature, which happens to be a part of the protein of myelin. 

So the antibodies for spinach, looking for orange vests, see the orange vest over there, so they fire their chemical bullets, but that’s myelin basic protein. The Saran wrap around your nerves. But now you’ve attacked myelin. This is called molecular mimicry, that the antibodies to the food, or the antibodies to bacteria will attack the human tissue because the protein signatures look very similar. Now you’re attacking myelin every time you eat spinach and you feel good when you eat spinach, it’s good for you, you know, supposed to be like Popeye, it’s good for you. And you don’t feel sick when you eat it, but you’re making antibodies to it and the antibodies to the spinach are attacking myelin, if that’s your genetic vulnerability. And that’s the mechanism that causes MS. So that is a very common mechanism, I’m gonna stop sharing screen for a minute so that you all understand the environmental triggers that we put in our mouth, or that we create inside our body, they are the triggers that ramp up the genes of inflammation that will pull on the chain, where’s the pull on the chain? Well, it’s inflammation that’s pulling on your chain. 

Where’s the chain gonna break? Wherever your genetic weak link is. That’s where the chain’s gonna break. It doesn’t matter if it’s rheumatoid or multiple sclerosis or spondyloarthropathies, it’s the same mechanism. It’s always the same mechanism. So that is the five pillars in the development of chronic inflammatory diseases. Big picture concept, please read my books or watch this again, go back and watch this again and again, and it’ll just make sense to you. I’m gonna go back and share screen right now, ’cause we’re still trying to get to gluten, on this one. So let’s go back and share screen, and see where it takes us now. So those are the three you’ve got complete control over, environmental triggers, too many bad guys in your gut, not enough good guys, and the leaky gut. Those you can make a change in. Number one and number five, you don’t wanna suppress your immune system. We need your immune system. It’s not an immune system gone crazy. It’s not like girls gone wild in Florida, you know, those videos that I grew up with and that were out there for a long time. No, it’s your immune system is trying to protect you.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Right? So although there are dozens of environmental triggers that have contributed to the specific inflammatory state, what’s the big kahuna? Let’s ask Professor Fasano, what they’re teaching at Harvard. Among the several, inside the gut stimuli, that make more zonulin, thus increase intestinal permeability, a little exposure to too much of the bad bacteria in your gut and its exhaust, which is called LPS, lipopolysaccharides, and gluten, are the two most powerful triggers. This is what they’re teaching at Harvard. Well, I feel fine when I eat gluten. It doesn’t matter how you feel. It’s got nothing to do with how you feel. Gluten is misinterpreted by the zonulin pathway as a potential harmful component of a bug, because the protein structure of the gluten proteins in wheat, rye and barley, look like the outer surface protein structure of dangerous bugs. So your immune system trying to protect you, fights gluten. The activation of the zonulin pathway represents a defensive mechanism to flush out the bug, because when you have leaky gut and the cells open a little bit more, water comes into the lumen of the gut to wash out whatever the threat is with the poop. You get loose bowels. And that is a protective mechanism that our ancestors had. And we have the same body as our ancestors, thousands of years ago. 

Now here’s the paper, in the Journal of the American Medical Association from professor Maureen Leonard, very famous gastroenterologist at Harvard, and she looked at over 60 studies on this topic of gluten and activation of inflammation in the gut. And she said, “Previous studies have shown that gliadin”, that’s one of the gluten proteins in wheat, “Cause immediate”, it’s within five minutes of wheat coming out of this stomach, going into the small intestine, “Immediate and transient increase in gut permeability. This process takes place in all individuals who ingest gluten”, that’s you. Every piece of toast, every bagel, every crouton on a salad, that’s you. And this occurs in every human, without exception. It’s a life saving mechanism of our immune system. Why does that happen? How does this occur? Because gluten activates Toll-like receptor four in the proximal part of the small intestine. What’s that? Toll-like receptor four is the century, standing guard inside the first part of the small intestine. 

So anything that comes out of the stomach that looks like a bad bacteria, Toll-like receptor four gets activated within five minutes of it coming outta the stomach into the small intestine, gets activated immediately and Toll-like receptor four does two things, it turns on more zonulin production, increased leaky gut, to wash out whatever the threat is. And it turns on NF Kappa B, the major amplifier of inflammation. Now here come all the inflammatory cytokines, IL 1 beta, IL 6, tumor necrosis factor, they all come because they’re activated by NF Kappa B, which gets turned on by Toll-like receptor four, which gets activated by gluten. And this occurs in all humans. There’s the NF Kappa B component of that. And also Toll-like receptor four, when it gets activated, the microbiota changes, the good guys in your gut get reduced, the diversity of your gut gets reduced because you have more inflammation killing off the good guys, which allows more of the bad guys to develop, ’cause the good guys aren’t there to police the area anymore. “Toll-like receptor four plays an important role in maintaining the fine balance between tolerance and inflammatory properties of the gut microbiota, by regulating innate immunity”. That’s really important to understand, that the centuries that are standing guard inside your gut, they’re there to protect you. And they recognize gluten as the protein structure of a bug. That’s a threat, a pathogenic bug. I’m gonna stop sharing my screen now, because that is why wheat is a problem for every human.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Now, I never say, every human should avoid wheat, I never say that because I sound like a nutcase if I do. But what I always say is that if you have a health condition that you can’t get a handle on, just test accurately to see, is wheat a problem? Is my immune system fighting wheat? ‘Cause you’ve crossed the line of tolerance if that’s the case, and just to, there’s only one test that’s extremely thorough and that’s called, the “Wheat Zoomer”, ’cause you zoom in on the problem. The lab is Vibrant Wellness, it’s called Wheat Zoomer. It’s head and shoulders above any other, and I travel all over the world teaching and I look at the labs, the vendors down in the vending area, you know, at breaks at symposiums, I always look at their catalogs and there’s no test in the world like the Wheat Zoomer.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wheat Zoomer. Wow, that was so much information and such amazing information. And apparently it works for our pets as well, because that would make sense why the vets are saying don’t feed them all these grains. And because one of the first ingredients when you look at some of the pet food, wheat.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Oh yeah, you’ll see a change in your animal usually long before you see a change in humans and that’s not true, if you go gluten free, so many people notice within a week to two weeks, their bowel movements are better, their energy’s up, they’re sleeping a little better, their belts going a notch tighter within two weeks, you know, all these little things and they just feel better. So it’s very common to see that, very common.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

So wheat, barley and rye.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Yes.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Those are the bad fellas.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Right.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

So, the sense of what I got is, my parents used to say, you’re as healthy as your colon, is kinda true.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Well, you know what Professor Fasano said in that paper, all disease begins in the gut.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

If we, get that paper, I mean it’s free. Just Google, “All disease begins in the gut” and you can download the paper, and as you read it, this guy, he doesn’t exaggerate. He can’t afford to exaggerate, he’s the Director of Mucosal Immunology at Harvard.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right, right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Right? And if you understand all disease begins in the gut, then if there’s only one thing you’re gonna do to be healthier, Mrs. Patient, if there’s only one thing where you’re gonna spend your time and money, build a healthy microbiome, that has more bang for your buck than anything else you can do.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

So really, just about anything, any disease process, any inflammatory process, which a lot of disease process is inflammation, starts with

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Yes.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

The gut and,

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

That’s correct, that’s correct.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

And getting rid of the wheat and adding PEMF is great to eliminate some of that inflammation, so those are two things marry, hand in hand. So, some people just can’t get rid of wheat completely. I have patients in my office and my husband, he’s got, irritable bowel syndrome. I’m vegan, he is not. He is the prime rib kinda guy. And he eats a lot of bread. I am the rice girl, he is the bread guy. And with already having two preparation, every meal, it’s two different complete sets of meal. For people like that, could they just limit or do they cut it out completely?

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

You can’t be a little pregnant. You can’t have a little gluten, after you’ve crossed the line of tolerance.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah, I’m gonna tell him that, he cannot be a little pregnant.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Yeah.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

He’s gonna, he’s-

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Now, the point is, if the Wheat Zoomer comes back normal, it’s okay for you to eat wheat. You’ve not crossed the line of tolerance.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Okay.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

But check it every year, check every year, because at some point you will, you will cross the line of tolerance. But if you’ve crossed the line of tolerance, then Fasano said the two most powerful triggers causing leaky gut, which is the gateway in the development of every chronic inflammatory disease, it doesn’t matter if it’s cancer, heart disease, diabetes, this is the gateway, is leaky gut,

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And the two most powerful triggers are LPS and gluten. They’re the two most powerful, this is what Harvard Medical School’s teaching. Who’s gonna argue with this?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

True. True. I totally agree. This has just been such an eye opener. Something as simple as the word gluten, who would’ve thought that, we’ve been talking for over a half an hour, and I would have to tell you that I feel that this conversation could really go on for days. You know, the Hindus have these religious celebration, Satsang, and where they talk about the Bhagavad Gita, but it goes on for nine nights. And this gut health thing, can go on for nine nights. And I think this, I still wouldn’t know, every single thing that there is to know.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Oh my goodness, no, that’s why I have, if I may share my screen one more time,

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And show you guys this. That’s why I have a course that I put together called the “Certified Gluten Practitioner” course. And we’ve had over a thousand doctors that have done this, and it’s online, you do it at your own pace, but no one can ever argue with you, when I give you all the science. And it’s study after study, after study, after study. And our goal here is to get people thinking the big picture and not be caught by the joint pain. Oh, it’s my knee, Doc, it’s my knee. You know, it’s hurting me so much. Well, you always wanna treat the local area of complaint so they feel better, but where is it coming from?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And you may be identifying the early stage of a rheumatoid arthritic patient. So it’s CertifiedGlutenPractitioner.com. And you can go there, you can get all the information about it, but I think every practitioner needs to do this course, and if you don’t like it, we’ll give you your money back, I don’t care. You know, because this is paradigm shifting.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

You change how you think, when you do this and we’ve got a money back guarantee, you know, fine, fine. You know, and no one’s ever asked for that back. Everyone says, oh my god, I had no idea.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And you’ve got three months to complete it, so take your time with it and there’s quizzes after every section. And so you take the quiz and if you miss a question, it says, now go back to slide 242 and look at that and then answer it again. And you say, oh, that’s right, that’s right. And then you go back and you, you don’t need to memorize this stuff. I just want you to be familiar with it and have the resource so you can study it.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

So please, please, please, all of our practitioners out there, please consider the CGP course, because it changes the way you think and if it doesn’t, ask for a refund, fine.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

I think I’ll be signing up. I’ll be signing up because this is amazing. I’ve been a vegan for almost 40 years and I have the bad genetic pool, but at the same time, I eat a healthy meal and I do the intermittent fasting, but yet when this premenopausal thing started happening, and there’s the belly fat, that you can’t get rid of the belly fat, and it may just be that little trigger, that gluten.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Well, clearly, what you can say is that something has triggered an inflammatory state in my body.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Something has accelerated the inflammatory state, and we’ve known forever that when a woman goes through a change of life and the ovaries start shutting down, it’s the job of the adrenals to get kicked in, to produce one 10th the estrogen that the ovaries used to produce. But if you’ve lived a stressful life and you’re in a state of hypoadrenia and your adrenals can’t do that, then your body just starts compensating, and here comes thyroid dysfunction and adrenal dysfunction and blood sugar, and I mean, the whole gamut starts. So it just depends on where the trigger is for this

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

For you.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

You know, we don’t get more fat cells after the age of two or three, they just get bigger or smaller. What are they getting bigger with? Toxins.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

So, we have to identify where is the toxic overload, for a patient with symptom patterns like you’re describing, where is it coming from?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And wheat is always at the top of the list. Now this is a little pearl perhaps, you said you’ve been in vegetarian for over 40 years, so for me, it’s really a no brainer, is vegetarian good for you or not? All right, well, the primary concern with vegetarianism is not enough protein. So let’s do a urine amino acid test and see, do you have adequate protein?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

And if you don’t, I don’t care how much you believe in a vegetarian diet, what you’re doing, isn’t working.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Here’s the test results, Mrs. Patient.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

You don’t have enough protein.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Right?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

It makes complete sense, the whole eye opener. This has been, I think I’m gonna label this as the biggest eye opener.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Oh great.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

And this was amazing. Thank you so much, so much. I can’t even begin to say how privileged I feel that I was able to do this interview and talk to you.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Oh, thank you, Dr. Marlene. Thank you so much, and it’s, I’m really grateful for what you’re doing out in the world, putting together summits like this. Because it’s only by carrying this information out in every venue that we can, that we can make the difference that the world needs right now.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Tom. It was a privilege, like I said, and I’m gonna be doing the course, so you are gonna be hearing from me again soon.

Tom O’Bryan DC, CCN, DACBN, CIFM

Marvelous, look forward to that. Thank you so much.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Thank you.