Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / The Microbial Connection to Autoimmunity - Episode 349

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The Microbial Connection to Autoimmunity - Episode 349 · Gladden Longevity Podcast

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When your body is stressed, when your cells are stressed,
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when you don't get sleep, when you eat a bad diet,
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when you're exposed to environmental toxins,
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and then mold on top of that, and then all of these things come together
0:11
to stress your cells, impair autophagy,
0:14
which when your cells are stressed,
0:15
they use more energy, they torque those mitochondria harder.
0:20
So one of the signals for these my these these microbes to wake up
0:24
is in paired autophagy and mitophagy.
0:27
It sends signals, they wake up,
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they start breaking down the cell to generate food,
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they reactivate, and then they spread to other other t cells and other tissue.
0:37
And today I'm speaking with a fellow physician,
0:40
a gentleman named Bill Rawls, spelled R-A-W-L-S.
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You're gonna want to keep that in mind.
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R-A-W-L-S. We have a really interesting conversation about chronic disease,
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chronic illness, Lyme, infections in general,
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autoimmunity, the aging process,
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and he's got some really cool insights around autophagy,
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some of the central processes that kind of span across different.
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Chronic disease states. And you'll be able to find him if you want at Vital Plan
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and Restore one eighty and also at Rawls R A W L S D dot com.
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But enjoy this. Enjoy this show.
1:15
It's really it's really quite good.
1:18
He went from saving hearts as a cardiologist to rewriting the entire aging playbook.
1:23
Dr. Jeffrey Gladden believes 100 is the new 30,
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and he's got the science to back it up.
1:29
This is the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
1:32
Welcome
1:33
to the Glad and Longevity Podcast.
1:34
It's good to see you here today.
1:36
~ Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to jump in.
1:36
Pleasure. Thank you.
1:40
Tell us a little bit about ~ quite honestly,
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your journey of how you got to where you started,
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you know, as a medical student at Bowman Gray into leaving medicine,
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so to speak, or at least the practice of medicine,
1:51
the traditional practice of medicine,
1:53
and focusing on what you do today.
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How what was what was that what was that transition like?
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How'd you get from A to Z?
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planned. A lot of it's somewhat haphazard.
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But yeah, so I was conventionally trained,
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went into obstetrics and gynecology because I was more focused at
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the time on seeing the value of interventional medicine as opposed
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to managing chronic illness, which just wasn't very attractive.
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Considered cardiology at one point,
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~ but ended up going to Obicus just because I really enjoyed the surgical aspect
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of it.
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And and did that, went to a small town on the coast of
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of North Carolina to bring everything that I learned to this somewhat rural area.
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And, you know, back then,
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Mm-hmm.
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OBGYN, it was small practices,
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and I was sharing call with two other people,
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which meant I was on call for 10 nights
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out of every month.
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Yeah.
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Which and call was twenty four hours.
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Weekends it was from Friday morning till Sunday.
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Mm-hmm. And I was one of those people,
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unlike my partners who could just go and crash and,
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you know, g drag out of bed to deliver the baby or whatever.
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If I had somebody in labor or in the hospital or whatever,
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I just didn't sleep. And so for all through my thirties and into my forties,
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I was totally sleep deprived because I w I was averaging probably four
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to six hours a night.
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And pushing every stress button imaginable.
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And in your, you know, when you're in your thirties,
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it's like you just push through it,
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you're invincible, you can do it.
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But by the end of my forties, I crashed and nobody could really understand what
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was wrong. And I stopped take I stopped OB,
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gave up hospital practice and just still wasn't getting better
3:53
and couldn't figure it out. Identified later with chronic Lyme disease.
3:57
I now
3:58
interpret that quite differently than most people.
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Mm.
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I by default, just was pushed out of conventional medicine because there
4:08
was just nothing to offer. Became certified in holistic medicine at that time.
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This was pre-functional medicine.
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And started doing things to help my health that were
4:22
intuitive, changed my diet, you know,
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really worked on my sleep habits,
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everything, and was getting better,
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but not all the way better.
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Picked up a book about herbal medicine for chronic Lyme.
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And quite quite frankly, at that point I was desperate.
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I mean, if you can imagine, I was age 50 and having symptoms of a 70-year-old.
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I had severe cardiac manifestations,
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my joints were shot, my brain didn't work anymore.
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I mean, my whole body was falling apart.
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My gut was a mess. And, you know,
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gravitated toward this Lyme disease diagnosis and thought,
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Hey, I can take antibiotics, you know.
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It was the one thing like fibromyalgia,
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chronic fatigue. It's like nobody,
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nothing is going to help me get better.
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But if I can find out that I'm carrying this bacteria,
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I can take an antibiotic and get well.
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And I did find I was carrying that bacteria,
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probably like an awful lot of other people.
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And I took antibiotics and got sicker and it wrecked my gut.
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And I was really desperate, but didn't have the resources to go chase
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all the many Lyme therapies out there.
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And
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by default, put my faith in this herbal pathway really with low expectations.
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Mm-hmm. But within three months,
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started getting better over a five-year period,
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got my health back completely.
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~ I continued practice, but it was more of a wellness-based practice helping people
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overcome chronic illness. And I did that for kind of a part two of my career.
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And then
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built a company with herbal protocols and re restorative protocols after that,
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where that's where I'm spending most of my energy now.
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But spend the past 20 years really f looking for the evidence,
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understanding chronic illness,
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what chronic illness, wellness,
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aging, everything are, and what can we do to prevent chronic illness,
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slow the processes of aging and stay healthy.
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So long story short, I'm one
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You're shy of seventy now and doing things that I didn't think I would
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be doing anymore at age fifty,
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like kitesurfing and a lot of other stuff.
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So it's it has been a pretty interesting journey.
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Yeah, so let's go down the lime rabbit hole for just a little bit.
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So difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat,
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lots of co infections, lots of things going on with Lyme,
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different genetic predispositions for Lyme syndrome,
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if you will. Tell us kind of how you unraveled the knot there and what your what
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your therapies ended up looking like,
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or maybe it was more empiric therapy,
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just on top of the symptoms. I'm not sure.
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You know, the therapy ended up being the right choice over anything that I've
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couldn't could have done by default.
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I mean, it's almost like I was supposed to fall into that to learn certain things.
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And to understand Lyme disease,
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you really have to understand the nature of the bacteria.
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And if you understand chronic Lyme disease,
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you have
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an opening to understand every chronic illness.
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Because I think every chronic illness is fundamentally that the same process.
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So when we look at the blind
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Tell us tell us a little bit about what that fundamental process is.
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What what is the process that you've discovered is kind of connecting everything?
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You know, we don't think of the body,
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we think of the body in terms of parts.
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You know, we divide it up into systems and organs.
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You know, we have a heart, we have a liver and all of our systems.
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And that's our functional pathway of how we understand the human body.
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But it's really more appropriate to think about it as a complex collection of cells.
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So if you want to simplify something,
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take it down to the smallest functional unit,
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which is a living cell.
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So our body is a composite of trillions and trillions of cells working in synergy.
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So when we look at our hormones and our signaling agents,
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it's all about cellular communications and coordinating cellular functions.
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So each one of our cells is you can think of it as a small biological mechanical
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unit that's self-contained and has its own software,
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you know, our genetic.
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program is basically a hard drive that's built into every cell that tells
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it how it should function in relation to all the other cells in the body
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and and it contains a blueprint that the cell can start replacing its parts.
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So when you look at the body as a cellular organism,
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we are a function, our health is a function of this health of our cells.
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Everything that happens in the body is is a f is a function of cellular actions,
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whether that's heartbeating
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thyroid function, anything. It's all cellular functions.
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So when we get sick, it's our cells that are sick.
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And when you look at that,
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it, you know, every aspect of every chronic illness can be defined
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by cellular dysfunction. So carrying that a little bit deeper,
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your audience may be aware of the process called autophagy,
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which many physicians are not.
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But autophagy is the ability of cells to restore and rejuvenate.
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And so autophagy is a really critical factor.
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It's a wonderful marker of cellular health.
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So if autophagy is impaired, then cellular functions are impaired,
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then mitochondrial functions are impaired,
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and that impairment translates into symptoms,
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abnormal labs, every inflammation,
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if every other aspect of chronic illness.
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So when you look at cellular health,
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you really have
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Just to interrupt you for a second.
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So I think the audience is tracking with autophagy,
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but it's a little bit like spring cleaning for the cell is kind of the
10:05
way that I think about it, where it can be triggered by being
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a caloric deficit either from exercise or fasting or things like that.
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It can also be potentiated by things like spermidine,
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which will turn it on. It's turned on by metformin,
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rapamycin also potentiates it.
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So these but these these this process is essentially where you're taking
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old parts of the cell and kind of recycling them.
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Which enables you to to replace those old parts with new parts.
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To your point, there's a full blueprint of what to build in each cell.
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So now you're replacing old parts with new parts,
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and it's kind of like the cell then functions at a much higher level.
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Mitochondria can be regenerated also.
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Mitophagy can occur. And so the old mitochondria are discarded and
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and recycled and new ones are built.
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And and so if you're in this phase of intermittently rejuvenating yourself,
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you can say much younger.
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functionally for much longer. So that's kind of the idea that we're talking about
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here.
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It is the key. Yep, for sure. Yeah,
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without if autophagy stopped right now,
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yours and my body would last a few days and that's it.
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It's that critical. So every chronic illness,
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virtually every chronic illness,
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is associated with impaired autophagy.
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So it's really important. When you look at optimizing autophagy,
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~ you know, diet, exercise, all of those things are very important.
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And we can get down the details of that.
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But
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Well, a lot of people don't realize that one aspect of autophagy is it's also part
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of our defense mechanism. So our immune system is especially important when
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we have foreign invaders that come into our system.
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But if they get past that, they invade cells.
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And when they invade cells, part of the defense is that autophagy.
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That lysosome that digest all the old parts,
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well, you can throw a microbe in there and digest it too.
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So it's it's really important.
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But a lot of microbes have learned ways to get past autophagy,
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which brings it to the Lyme bacteria.
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So when you look at borelia, it has the properties of being what we define
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as a stealth pathogen. So a lot of pathogens,
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when they come in the body, they're
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breaking down the door, they're trying to overcome the immune system
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and break down our tissues as rapidly as possible.
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And they grow very fast. It's like you get a virus and on top of that
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you get a pneumococcal bacteria.
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It's turning over every 20 minutes.
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It's very, very aggressive. And your immune system is recognizing those kind
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of invaders. So every 20 minutes it's turning over,
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doubling itself. Borrelia.
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When it enters the body, it's doing everything it can not to be noticed
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by the immune system. So it grows very slowly.
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The the doubling time of borrelia in the body is twelve to twenty-four hours.
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Really slow. And this is true of all the coinfections too.
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Obesia, Bartonella, mycoplasmas,
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you know, outside of ticks, mycoplasmas,
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chlamydia, many things have this potential of slow growth.
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So that's a defense mechanism.
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It's it helps them survive. Not to say that the bacteria,
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the spirochetes are really fast.
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They you know they squiggle right through,
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but they don't grow fast, which makes them less of a target to the immune system.
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So that's one thing they do. The second thing is as soon as they
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hit the ground running, they blaze through the the bloodstream
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and they invade tissues and they use sophisticated mechanisms of getting into
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the brain, into the heart, throughout tissues.
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And they invade cells. Now, if the if our defenses are down,
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if the immune system is weak, they hang out and start breaking down tissues.
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They use enzymes and other mechanisms of breaking down tissues to generate food
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to grow more microbes. But if they're in a hostile situation that
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the immune system is healthy, they invade cells.
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And once they invade a cell, they subvert or circumvent the autophagy process
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and they basically go dormant inside the cell.
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So intracellular dormancy is a really important mechanism of persistence.
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So borrelia doesn't care about making you sick,
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it cares about having a presence in your body and then later having opportunities
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to spread to other hosts. Well,
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that's actually the way most microbes work.
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So if you have been bitten by a tick in your lifetime,
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there's a good chance that you have some tick-borne microbes buried in your tissues.
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So I picked these things up when I was a kid playing in the woods.
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Sure. So they can be present for a very long time.
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And this is true of of barboria,
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the coinfections, and many, many things beyond that.
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So we pick things up. They end up in our tissues.
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As long as cells are healthy and autophagy is functional,
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then these microbes stay quiet.
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If we were able to dig deeply in the tissues of people in New England
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or other areas where there are a lot of ticks,
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we'd probably find that most of the population are carrying these microbes.
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But when your body is stressed,
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when your cells are stressed.
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When you don't get sleep, when you eat a bad diet,
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when you're exposed to environmental toxins and then mold on top of that,
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and then all of these things come together to stress your cells,
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impair autophagy, which when your cells are stressed,
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they use more energy, they torque those mitochondria harder.
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So one of the signals for these my these these microbes to wake
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up is impaired autophagy and mitophagy.
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It sends signals, they wake up,
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they start breaking down the cell to generate food.
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They reactivate and then they spread to other other cells and other tissues.
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So what I'm hearing you say basically is that one of the keys to combating Lyme
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or any of the tick borne microbes is to augment autophagy and mitophagy.
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That's that's what I'm hearing.
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That's like a central pillar is what what we're saying,
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right?
16:13
or any chronic illness.
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Or or or and then generalizing that to any chronic illness.
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Yeah.
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Yep, yep, it it is true. And you know,
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and and that's where the herbal therapy I've learned is
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so remarkably important because when you look at an antibiotic,
16:29
it depends on fast growth. It's gonna kill that pneumocococcal bacteria
16:33
in your lungs. But it's not going to kill Borelli or Bartonella or Babisi
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or any of these other things. They grow so slowly.
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It's unbelievable. And they're and it's not gonna get inside cells.
16:41
Yeah, and they're hidden.
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So you're not gonna wipe out that reservoir that you may have.
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So the problem with antibiotics and many,
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you know, targeted interventional therapies is that it may kill the active bacteria,
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but it's not going to get the buried reservoir in your tissues.
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And you've got about 10 days before you start disrupting gut flora,
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generating antibiotic resistant pathogens.
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And what's really critical is antibiotics and many drugs actually impair autophagy.
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And you know, so that's critical for getting well.
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So when you look at the herbs,
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the herbs have well-documented antimicrobial properties.
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And when I say herbs, I'm you talking about a class of herbs that
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are defined as adaptogenic. Adaptogens,
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I'm sure you've heard of. An adaptogen is an herb that doesn't have drug-like
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properties and elicits its benefit primarily by protecting cells from
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a wide range of stress factors.
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And that includes a wide range of microbes.
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Interesting. That's really interesting.
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So an adaptogen, just for the audiences to make sure they're clear on this,
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the way that we tend to think about an adaptogen is that it brings something back
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into harmony. So if something is overexpressed,
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it'll bring it back down. If it's under expressed,
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it'll bring it back up. But it's it's trying to bring things back into homeostasis
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or equilibrium, if you will. We tend to think about it that way.
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So
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I always ask, how's it do that?
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You know? What happens is it's affecting cells.
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So when cells are stressed, they die off,
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we have inflammation, hormones become imbalanced,
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everything. So there's good evidence that many of the herbs that we
18:22
use in chronic Lyme disease, like cordyceps and rishi Japanese knotweed and others,
18:27
calm down inflammatory cytokines.
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How do they do that? They protect cells.
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And when cells are able to recover.
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Then things start to normalize and it takes the load off the immune system.
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So the immune system isn't sending out inflammatory cytokines to drive the process.
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And it's calming the microbes that are sometimes driving those cytokines.
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So it's really the effect of that the herbs have on cells that have that normalizing
18:58
properties. Now all herbs have that,
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but some herbs, a lot of herbs that are used in traditional medicine,
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Japanese knot weak.
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Pava, so many others contain phytochemicals that have a drug-like effect.
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And that's why they're predominantly used.
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Now they have all the other adaptogenic properties too,
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but sometimes those drug-like effects get in the way and it makes it harder
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to use that particular entity long term.
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So the value of the adaptogens is they don't have chemicals that have drug-like
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effects that are tweaking our physiology.
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They're primarily affecting stress factors.
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They're affecting free radicals,
19:40
toxic substances, radiation that are adversely affecting our cells
19:45
and especially the microbe factor.
19:47
So that micro factor is really interesting,
19:51
and you can carry it into aging,
19:53
chronic illness of any kind. And the deeper I go,
19:57
the more fascinating it gets.
19:59
Yeah,
19:59
they also these molecules will interact with NF kappa beta and NRF
20:05
and things that basically modulate the drive for inflammation also.
20:09
So it'll tend to downregulate it almost at a genetic expression level.
20:12
So it it works at different levels,
20:15
which is kind of cool. But are you are you suggesting that the combination of these,
20:21
one of their key effects is to increase the autophagy?
20:24
that you're referring to? Or are you talking about using herbs that actually support
20:28
the cell while you're using something else to increase autophagy?
20:32
How r how are you thinking about that?
20:34
pretty careful about how I use the word stimulate or increase autophagy.
20:38
So there are a lot of things that are that increase autophagy that
20:42
are potentially harmful. I mean if you look at most of
20:46
the petrochemical substances that are damaging to our cells,
20:50
they stimulate the heck out of autophagy because they are damaging the cell,
20:56
but it's also breaking the machinery of autophagy so it's destructive
21:01
in the long run.
21:02
So I'm I'm really careful. You know,
21:04
there are definitely you mentioned a few drugs that stimulate autophagy,
21:09
they turn it on. You know, we we know that there are three main switches that turn
21:15
off or turn on autophagy, mTOR being the big one.
21:19
So, you know, when I was first looking at how herbs and how
21:23
th substances are affecting it,
21:24
I was looking at those switch mechanisms and I found that just turning
21:28
it on isn't necessarily the desirable effect.
21:32
Because if you have a cell that is stressed and you are turning autophagy on,
21:38
you're pushing it harder, it can be a self-destructive process.
21:42
So you have to be really careful.
21:44
So here, what I'm talking about,
21:45
and the primary effect that the adaptogenic herbs are doing
21:49
are protecting cells from stress factors.
21:53
And by protecting the cell from stress factors,
21:56
we enable the cell
21:57
to get back to work and do what it's supposed to do and do autophagy normally.
22:03
Now, autophagy, you know, it is that stress recovery,
22:07
stress, recovery. You know, exercise stimulates,
22:10
but then you have to rest to recover.
22:13
Fasting, which is a stress, stimulates,
22:15
but then you have to recover. And that,
22:18
you know, and I was looking at that aspect for what about toxic substances?
22:22
And it turns out that many of the
22:24
things, the chemicals that we process from plants actually do have that effect
22:30
of stimulating autophagy, of promoting autophagy,
22:34
but they don't break autophagy the way a petrochemical that's
22:38
an unnatural chemical that we would define as a poison does.
22:41
So some of these ancestral things that we're exposed to,
22:45
our body is kind of used to it.
22:47
That little bit of stress of having this chemical and having to process
22:51
it is actually
22:53
a favorable effect on autophagy.
22:55
So I like to use the words that it either boosts or enhances autophagy
22:59
or it disrupts autophagy. And interestingly,
23:03
an awful lot of drugs we use for chronic illness are major autophagy disruptors.
23:08
Yeah, that's really interesting.
23:10
So when you're talking about protecting cells,
23:12
a lot of times the way we've thought about that is actually mitigating oxidative
23:16
stress, which is kind of a you know,
23:18
inflammation will be mediated ~ in terms of its effect on the cell with oxidative
23:24
stress, excess oxidative stress.
23:26
So I suspect that the herbs that you're using are also targeting
23:29
~ those processes as well. So are the source of inflammation,
23:33
oxidative stress, et cetera, right?
23:35
Yeah.
23:36
Yeah, you know, the the evidence accumulated suggests that these adaptogenic herbs
23:41
and and I say adaptogenic because t a true adaptogen actually contains chemicals
23:48
that have an effect on the hypothalamus that lower cortisol in our stress hormones.
23:53
So, you know, your classic adaptogens,
23:57
rhodiola, ashwagonda, rishi, cordyceps,
24:00
and there are many really good ones that that I definitely use.
24:04
In my practice. But there's some like turmeric,
24:08
like hawthorn, like Japanese knotweed,
24:11
cat's claw. Some of these and some of those have really nice antimicrobial effects.
24:16
They don't have chemicals that directly affect stress hormones,
24:20
but I call them adaptogenic because you know what we're looking at
24:25
is things that increase our resilience and stamina.
24:29
So by protecting our cells, they do that.
24:31
And
24:32
that's that's where we see the physiologic physiologic benefits.
24:36
So, you know, when when I look at,
24:39
you know, how do we protect our mitochondria,
24:41
besides the fact that we can things that we can do like clean environment
24:45
and eating properly and getting the right amount of exercise,
24:49
sleep, et cetera, the herbs have a higher potential to protect mitophagy
24:54
and autophagy than anything else you could.
24:57
How does this translate into autoimmune conditions?
25:00
Do you take a a sort of a similar approach there?
25:03
Or this translates into autoimmunity.
25:08
Most
25:08
everything that I say I have and spent a lot of time investigating
25:14
and just really sorting out the science to know whether it's true or not.
25:18
Here it's more speculative and when I look at autoimmunity.
25:23
When I look at the mechanisms by which these microbes invade cells,
25:27
go dormant, can stay dormant for indefinite periods of time,
25:31
reactivate under stress and then emerge,
25:34
we know that one effect is the body sees those cells as being abnormal
25:40
and starts attacking those cells.
25:42
We also know that different microbes invade different cells.
25:46
You look at the different Lyme coinfections,
25:48
and then outside of Lyme, all the other stealth microbes,
25:51
they all invade different cells in the body.
25:54
And they and when they emerge,
25:57
it it just makes sense that the body attacking that would
26:02
be the mechanisms behind most autoimmunity.
26:07
Besides the fact that it's well documented that Borrelia and many
26:10
of these microbes cloak themselves by putting you know,
26:14
proteins from from our tissues,
26:16
our cells onto their structure to help cloak them.
26:20
And that can initiate autoimmunity,
26:23
but also just the immune system being in a very stressed
26:29
and dysregulated state is contributing to that whole thing too.
26:33
Interesting. What about what about things like COVID or long haul symptoms related
26:38
to COVID and things like that?
26:39
Is it an also an extension of the therapies?
26:42
Do they extend into ~ those kinds of situations as well?
26:46
Or is that something a little bit outside your purview?
26:49
You know, when you look at these adjagenic herbs and cellular protection
26:53
and you look at all chronic illnesses as being ~ manifestations
26:58
of cellular stress and impaired autophagy,
27:00
you would have to think that they would have some good.
27:03
And there's plenty of evidence.
27:05
~ we have definitely had a number of people on our protocol that
27:09
are struggling with long COVID.
27:11
So I think the end
27:13
the the undefined thing about long COVID is is it just SARS virus?
27:19
And ~ again, speculation here,
27:22
I don't think so. I I think what you've got is reactivation of a lot
27:26
of things that you know, we we all have things buried in our tissues.
27:31
That is a conclusion that I can firm pretty firmly come to.
27:35
you know, everybody knows about Epstein Barr and some of the other herpes viruses,
27:40
but your list is actually much,
27:42
much longer than that. And so you do see reactivation of Epstein Barr,
27:47
which we test for. We know of that one.
27:50
And we find that most people as long COVID have reactivation of Epstein Barr.
27:54
Well, it it doesn't take a whole lot of logic to go,
27:58
yeah, there are probably other things there that are reactivating besides that.
28:02
So long COVID is a state of impact.
28:05
Impaired autophagy and cellular stress that allows reactivation of microbes.
28:10
And I have something I call the boiling point.
28:13
So if you look at this, that if you accept that we all have some kind
28:20
of stealth pathogens in our tissues,
28:22
and when we are stressed, our body is stressed,
28:25
and these things start to reactivate,
28:27
you reach a point, and this is the point that someone is chronically ill.
28:32
Where reactivation of pathogens is driving the cellular stress that's driving more
28:38
reactivation of pathogens so it comes becomes a vicious cycle.
28:42
And that's where I was that just changing my health habits wasn't going
28:47
to get me better. That it took actual suppression of the microbes
28:49
Mm-hmm.
28:54
to get me better. And you know,
28:56
I'm I and
28:57
So the you know, the the the evidence behind this is accumulating pretty fast
29:02
th of just looking at, you know,
29:05
I've hundreds and hundreds of studies of looking at individual microbes
29:09
and tissues and and can conditions of finding that microbe connection
29:15
in so many places.
29:18
So it sounds like you're kind of distilling things down to at least a
29:22
s one common denominator across a lot of chronic illness.
29:26
~ and I'm hypothesizing that with the herbs that you've put together that there
29:31
are variations in the combinations,
29:33
but there has to be sort of a core number of things that probably
29:37
are applicable in most cases, something like that.
29:40
I don't know, do you want to comment on that or how you think about
29:43
You know, I I the value of the adaptogenic herbs is because they don't have
29:49
drug-like properties, you can take them from a long time.
29:52
And we do know that, you know,
29:54
various different herbs may have better properties for one microbe or another,
30:00
or may affect different cells,
30:03
some cells differently than others.
30:05
Like we know that milk thistle is exceptionally good for protecting liver cells.
30:09
We know that all
30:10
Hawthorn is exceptionally good for the vascular system.
30:14
~ so, you know, there are some variations of pulling in different kinds of herbs.
30:20
And the nice thing about using herbs with low potential for toxicity
30:25
is you can combine multiple herbs.
30:27
And that it does go along with herbal traditions of typical of using formulas that
30:33
typically contained anywhere from five to a dozen herbs,
30:37
that you get a synergy.
30:40
Of the different herbs working together.
30:42
Mm-hmm.
30:42
Okay. And with that, you talked a little bit about the ~ nervous system as well,
30:48
nervous system regulation or dysregulation,
30:51
because we know that that's a big driver,
30:53
either being able to heal or not be able to heal.
30:56
It's difficult for the body to heal when it's sympathetically stressed all the time.
31:00
It's easier for it to heal when it's parasympathetic,
31:03
dominant. So the herbs you're using ~ are also it sounds like with
31:08
the ashwagandha rhodola, things like that are
31:11
focused on trying to modulate the nervous system as well.
31:14
Yeah, that was for a long time we had put together just a package
31:20
of ~ high grade, high concentration reserval extracts.
31:24
They focused mostly on suppressing microbes.
31:28
And we found that, you know, using it doing a little bit more logically
31:35
and systematically work. So that led to about a year ago,
31:39
I created a program that's six months.
31:41
And the first thing we do
31:44
right out of the gate is is calming sympathetic overactivity.
31:48
You know, we spend two months on that alone.
31:52
And the herbs help you. ~ I use a combination of ashwagandha,
31:56
L theanine, and a couple of other calming herbs,
31:59
but also helping people learn relaxation techniques and just focusing
32:04
On how do we de stress their lives so that they can function better?
32:08
And I found that that's essential for opening up the door to everything else because
32:13
if somebody's body is in high alert,
32:16
they've shut down their GI tract,
32:18
they've shut down their detoxification pathways,
32:21
and you're not going to make any progress there until you do this.
32:24
At the same time, we start them off on ~ a tincture that's
32:29
a little less concentrated than.
32:31
than some of the other herbs that we use just to get their foot in the door
32:35
on some of that adaptogenic antimicrobial benefit at the same time.
32:40
But
32:41
What does that consist of? What's the tincture?
32:43
What's in the tincture?
32:45
cryp cryptolepis is a really nice herb.
32:47
It's a r it's it comes from Africa.
32:50
And it ~ so we know a lot about these herbs because they have been used
32:56
for over 20 years for looking at this condition that we call chronic Lyme.
33:01
And again, you know, you learn about chronic Lyme and you learn a
33:04
lot of things about other chronic illnesses too.
33:06
~ but cryptolepis was one of seven herbs in a study that we're
33:13
was done in Johns Hopkins University in 2020 that found that that particular herb,
33:19
Japanese knotweed, cat's claw,
33:21
Chinese skull cap, several others were as effective as doxycyclin and
33:26
one of the cell phosporns for killing both the modal and the cisforms of borrelia.
33:32
Interesting. Yep. Yeah.
33:34
So what was now that was an in vitro study,
33:36
and they did it in vitro just because one,
33:38
it's easier, but two, they wanted to exclude the pot the factor or the
33:43
the pot the potential for the herbs to be affecting the immune system.
33:47
They wanted to know will this stuff kill the bacteria?
33:50
So it was valuable, but interestingly,
33:50
Uh-huh.
33:54
some of the same researchers took those same herbs
33:59
and looked at Bartonella, another co infection.
34:03
And they found that Japanese knotwees,
34:05
cryptolepsis, Chinese skull cap killed that as well.
34:09
And then they looked at Bartonella,
34:11
which I mean Babesia, which is a protozoa,
34:14
and it was as effective as the drug for that too,
34:18
just showing the broad spectrum that these herbs have.
34:21
Interesting.
34:22
Interestingly, when 2020,
34:25
about March, when everybody was saying,
34:28
well, we don't have any an any vaccines or any drugs for this
34:34
new virus that's coming down the pike,
34:36
I started looking for herbs. And interestingly,
34:39
they had looked at many herbs from looking at the previous SARS epidemics.
34:44
Not could we eliminate the virus,
34:46
but can we attenuate it? Can we at least
34:49
slow down and calm the death rate.
34:51
There were a lot of herbs that they had looked at.
34:55
And very interestingly, Japanese knotweed and Chinese skull cap,
35:00
along with other herbs that we use like Andographis,
35:03
were on that list. So it just shows that,
35:05
you know, when you talk about an herb,
35:07
you're not talking about one chemical like an antibiotic.
35:10
You're talking about the plant's entire defense system.
35:13
So it's much more broad spectrum than you would see with anything else.
35:17
Yeah, it's it's nice when you over you can use plants,
35:20
you're getting a broad spectrum.
35:21
You're getting you're getting things that are killing the bug,
35:23
but you're also getting things that are modulating oxidative stress.
35:26
You're getting you're getting,
35:27
you know, many, many ~ effects,
35:29
if you will, as opposed to a single effect from a drug with side effects,
35:33
right? So yeah, that's that's really,
35:35
really cool. I like that a lot.
35:37
So when you have put these together,
35:39
do you put them into tinctures,
35:41
which is kind of an alcohol extraction of the key ingredients,
35:44
or do you put them in capsules and
35:46
Or how do how do you get about that?
35:48
You know, they're the when you look at herbs,
35:51
you can get them anything from teas to enjoying the raw plant,
35:55
of course. Yep. But commercially,
35:57
actually using them medicinally,
35:59
there are three main preparations.
36:02
So the first is what most people find in a capsule,
36:05
which is a whole herb powder. And basically they take the active part of the plants,
36:10
be that the leaves and stem, roots or whatever,
36:13
they grind it up, they put
36:14
put it in a powder, a really fine powder,
36:17
and they put it in a capsule. And what you're getting there is mostly fiber.
36:20
So you're getting very, very little of the actual chemistry of the plant.
36:25
So when you see things on the internet,
36:27
that's what you're getting the vast majority of the time.
36:31
And they really don't have much in them.
36:33
So a step up from that is the tincture.
36:35
And the nice thing about tinctures is they tend to be very well tolerated.
36:39
It is the pure chemistry of the herbs.
36:42
So where you typically
36:43
The extractant we're using is water and alcohol to pull both water soluble
36:48
and fat soluble components of the plant.
36:50
And so the concentration depends on how much of the plant they put in the substrate.
36:56
So and then they discard the plant parts,
36:59
which gets rid of the fiber. So a tincture is really nice.
37:03
I use tinctures. They tend to be a little milder than what we
37:07
use for other products, which is a standardized extract.
37:12
So what a standardized extract is,
37:14
is it it it's in a powder. It's a fine powder,
37:18
it's in a capsule. It just it looks just like a whole herb powder.
37:22
But what they've done is they take a tincture,
37:25
spray it on a surface, dry off the water and alcohol,
37:28
and collect that powder and put that into a capsule.
37:32
So it's at least ten times more concentrated than a whole herb powder.
37:38
I see. Interesting.
37:39
And that's
37:40
typically what we're using because a lot of times to really get
37:44
the benefits that you need, you're going to have to use some real potency even
37:49
beyond a tincture. You know, a capsule of that is going to be like
37:52
a couple of teaspoons of a tincture.
37:55
It's going to be really concentrated.
37:56
The downside is what we found is you have to have people have to be ready for that.
38:02
You know, their system, you've got to cut some of the turmoil,
38:05
calm that sympathetic overactivity,
38:07
get their gut working again.
38:09
Or they're just not going to be able to tolerate it.
38:11
So that process of six months leading up to that point of being able
38:15
to tolerate these really stronger extracts is really important.
38:19
Yeah, that's really interesting because when you do that,
38:21
you're creating things that need to be taken out of the body,
38:25
right? So either through detox pathways or through the gut or urine or
38:30
so in some way, shape, or form.
38:32
And it's almost like you're priming the exit strategies before you actually,
38:36
you know, kill stuff off and load it into the system that needs to be exited,
38:39
right? Is kinda that's kinda how I'm thinking about this,
38:42
if that's close. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
38:44
Cool. I love it. Yeah. Really,
38:46
really cool stuff. So
38:48
Where can people find out more about your tinctures and things like that?
38:51
Well,
38:51
they I have a website, Rawlsmd dot com,
38:55
where people can find a lot of information.
38:58
And the company where we have our program,
39:00
Restore One Eighty, is Vitalplan dot com.
39:03
And if they just look up Restore one eighty,
39:06
they'll find a lot of information.
39:08
So restore one eighty is an evolution of where we started a decade
39:13
ago with just this supplement package with these really strong extracts.
39:19
So it ~ it it
39:21
is a progression that includes health coaching,
39:25
a community dedicated to this.
39:28
I've created a whole education program.
39:31
But it's not specific to chronic Lyme.
39:34
It is really any kind of health adversity can benefit from this.
39:41
And you know, when you look at these herbs,
39:43
I I know your area of expertise is longevity.
39:47
just the microbe factor and how it affects aging is really pretty fascinating too.
39:53
Mm-hmm.
39:53
Yeah, absolutely. No, it's ~ yeah.
39:56
Anything that's a chronic stress on the system is tearing us down,
40:00
right? And it's interest there was a paper written recently that showed that
40:01
Absolutely.
40:05
the balance in the sympathetic comparison,
40:07
sympathetic nervous system, you know,
40:08
stress, fight or flight versus repair recovery,
40:11
kind of the Zen mode that has a major impact on all twelve hallmarks of aging.
40:16
So
40:16
It's not a surprise that really it's the nervous system that is one
40:20
of the first targets in longevity for us as well as it sounds like for you.
40:25
So there's some some synergy and overlap there for sure.
40:28
yeah. Yeah. Just digging into the well at this point in life for sure.
40:33
Digging into the aging aspect.
40:33
Mm-hmm.
40:36
Just yeah, the connections are really surprising.
40:40
I had a theory and and I'm finding growing evidence that senescent cells,
40:46
I'm sure you're very familiar with senescent cells,
40:48
they're unwantable, undesirable cells that collect in our system.
40:53
I was researching, well, is there a microbe connection?
40:57
Turns out, yeah, pretty strong.
40:59
Even enough for me to theorize that one of the things that happens with senescent
41:00
Sure.
41:06
cells is these intracellular pathogens are actually overcoming
41:11
the cell because that's our per their protection and their food supply.
41:14
They're basically so there's some evidence that the microbes may
41:18
be actually a factor creating and perpetuating senescent cells.
41:23
Yeah, that's really interesting.
41:25
We know of a lot of different processes that will lead to senescent cell formation.
41:29
You know, everything from short telomeres to damaged DNA to,
41:33
you know, decreased mitochondrial function to now you're bringing in
41:37
the idea of actually chronic infection,
41:39
you know, excess oxidative stress will do it.
41:42
Lots of different things will do it.
41:43
The other interesting thing is we're now able to look at the immune system through
41:47
the senescence, you know, window,
41:49
if you will, and see ~ how senescent the immune system.
41:53
itself has become we have a couple different tests that'll enable us to do that.
41:56
One of them is directly related to shortened telomeres,
41:59
but of course if you have a chronically overactivated immune system
42:03
and it's dividing faster and harder,
42:05
working harder, it becomes senescent that much faster.
42:08
So right, so yeah it's it's the way we've started to think about it,
42:12
you're talking about everything on a cellular level,
42:15
which is I think the right approach.
42:17
And we've kind of moved beyond slicing and dicing the human being into all their
42:21
you know, component parts like a butcher shop,
42:23
right? Into into a systems biology approach that includes,
42:27
you know, all the different levels of of interaction.
42:30
We also know from Michael Levin's work,
42:32
I don't know if you're familiar with him,
42:34
~ out of I think he's out of Tufts,
42:36
~ he's shown that ~ cells communicate not only biochemically,
42:41
but they communicate through electrical fields.
42:44
And you can actually take an organism like a mouse and basically construct their
42:48
genetics so that they are a hundred percent
42:51
Guaranteed to get cancer. And yet if you create an electrical field around them that
42:55
reinforces healthy cell function,
42:57
they never develop cancer. Right.
42:59
So the point is that medicine,
43:01
I think, has been far too Newtonian in the past,
43:04
right? It's receptors and molecules and right.
43:08
When we know there's quantum energy fields inside cells,
43:11
we know biology itself is a quantum process.
43:13
We know that electromagnetic energy plays a big role in what's happening,
43:17
~ which is why PEMF can work and other electricals.
43:20
STEM things can work, as well as laser and light and all these things.
43:23
So as you're listening to this,
43:25
just understand that you're much more complex than you've been led to believe,
43:29
which which actually is a good thing because it gives us more points
43:33
of access to actually balance things out.
43:35
And from our perspective, we have this systems biology approach where we're trying
43:38
to bring the whole thing back into equilibrium through what we call
43:41
the elegant solution, where ~ you know,
43:44
doing key things to actually move things in the right direction.
43:47
So it's kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah.
43:49
it it is fascinating to look at it at at that cellular level and recognize that,
43:55
you know, e every cell in your body is doing everything it can to survive,
43:59
Mm.
44:01
to function properly. So the more that we can do to create that environment,
44:07
that internal environment, then allows the cells to function properly.
44:11
But yeah, cells using electromagnetic energy,
44:14
biophotons
44:16
Just all the different ways of communicating.
44:18
But it's you know, every cell in the body must stay in constant communication with
44:22
all other cells for us to function as a unit.
44:25
But if your cells are healthy,
44:26
all that's gonna happen.
44:28
Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's it's really cool.
44:30
Well, I really I really appreciate the deep dive that you've done on this.
44:34
I think you're bringing some new wisdom into certainly my purview and I think
44:37
to the listeners and the field at large.
44:40
So that's congratulations on that.
44:42
It's really great to see.
44:43
Yeah. It's ~ trying to put it in a form that people can understand so that they
44:49
can start being more proactive.
44:51
I mean, we look at this thing and now the World Health Organization
44:54
has defined that at that seven out of ten people worldwide are struggling with some
45:00
kind of chronic health condition.
45:02
That's just yeah, that's that's kind of ridiculous.
45:05
And
45:06
I
45:06
think it's the environment, quite honestly,
45:08
is a plays a big role. Massive role.
45:10
You know, I was just in Washington,
45:11
DC, actually ~ speaking at a at a event put on by a group that's ~ called
45:17
A4 L I that's looking to improve longevity ~ research funding.
45:21
And we talked Dr. Oz came in and spoke with us and some people from CMS,
45:26
some people from RPH. And what was interesting was that they have this three legged
45:30
stool approach about how they're gonna make America
45:33
Healthy again, right? It's education,
45:35
access, and incentives. So we're going to educate people in a in
45:38
a 10-minute visit once a year on how to live a healthy life.
45:42
Then we're going to incentivize a doctor with $10 or $15 to spend the extra
45:46
10 or 15 minutes talking to this person.
45:48
And we're going to have a improve access by making sure everybody has
45:52
at least one healthy physical a year where they can get this information.
45:56
You know, you are you and I are sitting here like,
45:57
my gosh, this is like
45:59
Doomed to failure. It's it's so little.
46:01
And you know, if you've ever had like you and I have practiced and
46:05
you try talking to people, it was literally two percent of people that would
46:08
actually implement for me anyway,
46:10
you know, what we talked to them about from heart disease standpoint.
46:12
So we know that's destined to fail.
46:15
However, if you put people into a healthy environment,
46:18
right, where they don't have GMO foods and they don't have seed oils
46:21
and they don't have high fructose corn syrup and they don't have,
46:24
you know, all this stuff and pollutants and everything else,
46:27
you know, everything that goes on.
46:29
put them in a healthy environment,
46:30
you'll accomplish a whole lot more,
46:32
right? Just because you can't walk into every seven eleven and buy,
46:36
you know, high fructose corn syrup.
46:38
~ so it's it's it's really interesting.
46:41
I think it's really misguided.
46:43
I I the intention is admirable,
46:45
but the it's it's a really a complete misunderstanding,
46:48
I think, of of what it takes to be healthy.
46:50
Because nobody's got willpower at eight o'clock at night.
46:53
I don't, you don't, right? If there's right,
46:55
if there's ice cream in the fridge,
46:56
I'm gonna so
46:59
If you know, I mean I I I've I've connected with so many people and looking
47:04
at my personal experience too,
47:06
people do want to feel good. And they do if you really help them understand
47:11
how to do that and what they have to do,
47:14
they will move in that direction.
47:17
But you know, I've come around to thinking that we need to gear our health system
47:22
to do what it does best, which is acute intervention.
47:25
Mm-hmm.
47:26
Our mechanisms for managing chronic illness are just highly dysfunctional.
47:31
So we should be helping people,
47:33
you know, we should have a system that is there for people when they need something
47:38
that needs direct intervention.
47:40
But outside of that, the education comes from our society.
47:44
We just need to make better choices.
47:47
We need to be telling people. And if you tell somebody something,
47:51
I mean, I can remember this one patient I had and
47:55
You know, in kind of part two of my practice,
47:57
one of the things I I did all that extra extra counseling,
48:01
I hand people out handouts and information and all this stuff.
48:05
And I had and I remember one guy and he walked in and his wife had drug
48:09
him in there and I just automatically it's like,
48:12
just don't waste your time. But I did.
48:14
I went through all the stuff. I gave him all these handouts.
48:17
I did all this stuff and I said,
48:18
I'll never hear from that guy again.
48:20
And and and he was his health was terrible.
48:22
And
48:24
And I didn't see him again as I thought.
48:26
Until a year later he comes back and he comes in and says,
48:30
You know all that stuff you gave me and all that stuff you said,
48:33
it made sense and I started doing it and I feel so good and I just want
48:38
to come back and thank you.
48:40
That's it. That's awesome. Yeah.
48:42
That's it.
48:42
You
48:43
know, I've learned you don't give up on anybody.
48:45
And the more that we can,
48:45
No, that's right.
48:48
so what you're doing, what I'm doing to get that word out there,
48:53
and and so that you know, we're really one living in a wonderful age of podcast,
48:58
of information, of of of AI, which can be good or bad,
49:03
of course, we'll see. But the more that people are hearing this over
49:07
and over and over again.
49:10
And you know, we did it with smoking.
49:12
I mean, at one point, you know seventy five percent of people smoke,
49:16
now it's well below twenty five percent.
49:19
So if we just keep putting that information out there,
49:24
yeah, I think people are are going to get it.
49:27
So it's
49:28
That's great analogy. I like the smoking analogy because what did they do?
49:30
They changed the environment, right?
49:32
They took they took the advertising off TV.
49:34
They took they took all this stuff.
49:36
They they they started to tax the packs.
49:38
They did they did all these things to change the environment around tobacco use,
49:42
right? And so to my point, that's what has the impact.
49:46
It's it's not telling people, you know,
49:48
and to your point, one guy, you know,
49:50
I've had people like that too,
49:52
come back and say, I implemented what you said,
49:54
I feel so much better. But
49:55
You and I both know that's a small minority,
49:57
quite honestly, of all the people we spoke to.
49:59
It's more about structuring the environment to really support health is kinda
50:02
how I think about it. So people don't have to think about it.
50:05
So
50:05
Yeah, no no doubt. And maybe we are starting to make inroads and making that happen.
50:12
Yeah, I'll we will think so. Well we'll work together on it.
50:14
Bill, it's such a pleasure to chat with you.
50:16
I really appreciate you taking the time.
50:17
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure.
50:19
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50:20
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50:23
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50:35
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