Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] If you woke up this morning, dragged yourself out of bed, looked in the mirror and thought, I am doing everything right. I'm eating clean, I'm taking my supplements, I'm trying to move, I'm trying to sleep. So why do I still feel like I'm running on 20% battery? Then this episode is for you. Because here's the truth. Nobody is telling you clean. Eating by itself is not enough anymore. The world has changed and your body knows it. And the next 45 to 50 minutes, I'm going to tell you exactly why and what to do about it.
[00:00:33] Welcome to Anti Aging Unraveled, the podcast where we redefine aging and empower you to age your way.
[00:00:40] I'm Dr. Laurie, and this show is rooted in the lifeevity philosophy. Living life the way you want to with energy, clarity, purpose, and longevity. Here we break down integrative functional medicine, bioidentical hormones, peptides, metabolic and brain health, gut, immune connection, and cutting edge longevity therapies. So you're not just living longer, you're living better.
[00:01:06] If you believe aging should be intentional, personalized and on your terms, you're in the right place. Welcome to Anti Aging Unraveled. Let's unlock longevity and help you age your way.
[00:01:20] Hi everyone and welcome back to the show. I'm Dr. Laurie Gerber and I'm a board certified physician. And my entire mission and the reason that this podcast exists is to help you age your way. Not the way the calendar says, or your birthday says, or your genetics scares you into believing, but really your way. With energy, with clarity, with a body that actually works for you instead of against you. And that is what we like to call life jevity around here. The art and science of not just living longer, but living better for longer.
[00:01:54] And the way we get you there in my practice is something I built and called the Real3 method. And Real3 stands for real. Because we are done with the fluff, the trends and the band aids. And it's built on what I like to call the six plus one lifelinks, not just the seven life links. Yes, the six plus one. And it's six interconnected systems in your body, plus one critical layer over top that pulls them all together.
[00:02:21] And today we're gonna be working through several of those lifelinks. Those lifelinks we're gonna talk about are your gut, your immune system and your detoxification pathways and your cellular health. And then that plus one, that lifeevity itself, the prevention and prolonging of your actual health span. And I picked this episode for May, very intentionally. May is World Autoimmune Awareness Month. Roughly one in five people, and the vast majority of those women are walking around with autoimmune conditions right now. Hashimoto's rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Sjogren's, Ms. psoriasis, celiac. And countless people in that gray zone, not diagnosed yet. You know, just don't have a name to it. But the antibodies are already cooking. So today I want to really give you an honest and clinical, comfortable conversation about what is actually driving fatigue, what is actually driving the brain fog and this autoimmune fire and what you can do to actually turn down the heat.
[00:03:23] So let's start with where most of you are. You're doing the work. You're reading the labels. You're buying organic when you can, maybe even are gluten free. Maybe you cut dairy, you're sipping the lemon water, you're doing the green smoothie. And the scale just will not budge or the energy won't come back. The joint pains are still there. You're still crashing at three in the afternoon like clockwork.
[00:03:44] The most frustrating part is your standard labs come back normal. And here's what I want you to understand.
[00:03:51] Twenty years ago, clean eating was almost enough. Today, it's the floor, not the ceiling. The reason is something we don't talk about enough, and then really in mainstream medicine at all, is that your toxic burden has gone up while your body's ability to clear that burden has gone down, or if we're lucky, stayed the same.
[00:04:10] So think about your body like a bathtub. The faucet is everything coming in. Food, water, air products on your skin, molds in the walls, plastics in the kitchen, heavy metals from old fillings, pesticides and produce. Glyphosates in the wheat, microplastics in the bottled water, EMF exposure, chronic stress, viral reactivations, mold, and the apartment that you lived in from when you were 15 years ago. It could be forever ago, right? The drain is your detox system. And your liver, your kidneys, your gut, your lymph, and your skin and your lungs are really the detoxification real3lifelink, they're what does the work. So clean eating turns down the faucet, but it doesn't open the drain. And if the drain is partially clogged, for which the vast majority of my patients, it is. The tub just keeps filling slowly, quietly for years. And then one day, your immune system, which has been standing guard at the bathtub the whole time, Trina, trying to clean up this mess gets so overwhelmed and so confused that it starts attacking your own tissue. That is autoimmunity in more than one sentence, but like a couple paragraphs, right? So when someone comes in my office and says, Dr. Lurie, I eat so clean. Why am I still tired? My answer is, because clean food is one input. Your body has many. And we need to look upstream. We look at. Need to look at all the inputs, right? Everything that is junking up the system.
[00:05:37] So before we go deeper, I want to pause for a second if what I said landed and hit something for you. If you're sitting there nodding in your car or your kitchen, do me a favor. If you're on YouTube right now, hit that subscribe button and give this video a thumbs up. That little thumbs up is how the algorithm knows to send you more content like this instead of more nonsense. It's going to leave you more confused. And if you're listening on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, hit that follow button. That way you don't miss our next episodes because every week or two, we're going much deeper into these fields. So, okay, let's keep going.
[00:06:13] What is autoimmunity? What is it really? Let's talk about the immune lifelink. All right? Because for May World Autoimmune Awareness Month. This is the heart of today's show. Your immune system is, without exaggeration, the smartest network in your body. It can remember a chickenpox exposure from when you were six. It can distinguish viruses from a piece of broccoli. It can really operate on a very simple principle. Friend versus foe, self versus not self. And when the noise gets loud enough, the toxins, the infections, the leaky gut, the stress, it all starts to lose the ability to tell the difference. It starts tagging your thyroid as foe, tagging your joints as foe, your myelin as foe. Your skin is foe your gut lining and your pancreas. This is not your immune system being broken. That is your immune system being overwhelmed. Big difference. And that distinction matters because broken things you have to replace. An overwhelmed thing you can support, you can quiet it down. You can help it. So what overwhelms it? In my clinic, you guys know I love to talk about big buckets. We see the same ones over and over. Number one, gut dysfunction and food sensitivities. The gut life.
[00:07:25] Number two, toxic exposures, molds, metals, plastics, pesticides in the air you're breathing right now. Number three, chronic infections that are sitting in your tissues and never are fully cleared. And number four, mitochondrial and cellular exhaustion, the cellular life length. Now, I want to spend some real time on each of these because if you only know the symptom, the fatigue, you're going to keep trying to treat the symptom, we have to treat the cause. So let's go upstream, let's go upstream further. 80%. Some studies say 70, some say closer to 85 of your immune system lives right around the other side of the gut. So the gut is on fire, the immune system is on fire, period. End of discussion. And here's what nobody told you about clean eating. If you're clean eating, you can eat the wrong clean eating for your body, and it can still inflame you. For example, you can be eating organic eggs every morning. Beautiful pasture, raised the best eggs on earth. And if you have a food sensitivity to egg whites, not a true ige allergy, but a delayed ige response, every single morning you are pouring fuel on that immune fire and you have no idea. Same with almonds, same with quinoa, same with kale, avocado. All the foods that we think are bulletproof can also be. You can be sensitive to. This is why food sensitivity is one of the first things that I run on my autoimmune patients. We need to know what your specific body is reacting to. Not what the wellness, our Internet or AI told you to fear, but what your immune system is doing in real time and what antibodies is producing against.
[00:08:57] There are good panels out there. Some test IgG, some test IgA, and some A combination of both. Some are more comprehensive than others. The right one depends on the patient. But the principle is the same. Stop guessing and test. Get the data right. And then we layer in the work on the gut lining itself. Because food sensitivities don't happen out of thin air. They happen because the gut lining is permeable. These little tight junctions actually become open and they actually get gaps in them. They're like chain link fences or concrete that's supposed to be really close together. And those gaps get bigger. Food particles slip through into the bloodstream where they don't belong. And your immune system doing its job says, wait, what is a partially digested piece of chicken protein doing in the blood? And it mounts a response and it remembers. And that is leaky gut driving autoimmunity in literally a couple of paragraphs, right? So we heal the gut, we feed the gut, we diversify that microbiome and all the bugs that are supposed to be living in there, we remove what's irritating it okay. And we rebuild.
[00:10:00] So now let's talk about detoxing, getting the things out of the system. Let's talk about the detoxification lifelink. This is one I could talk about for 10 episodes easy and still not be done. And let me tell you what is on the average American body right now, based on the testing I run every day, is herbicides, pesticides. In nearly every patient I test plastic phthalates from food packaging, water bottles, receipts, cosmetics, heavy metals, Mercury, lead, aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, molds. In roughly half of the chronic fatigue patients or chronic patients I see, they had no idea that they had mold in their system. Pesticide residues, flame retardants, solvents, those forever chemicals, those PFAS's in the drinking water in almost all the municipalities in the country.
[00:10:47] I'm not trying to put fear into you, but I will say this is what the urine, the blood, the hair, they're telling us in the stool. They're giving us these answers and telling us what's present when our body isn't eliminating. And your liver, the poor liver, which is your central detox organ, was never designed for this volume, ever. It was designed for a pre industrial world. It's doing its best. But when you ask it to process the equivalent of a chemistry lab every single day, on top of alcohol, on top of medications, on top of hormones, it has to clear. It just gets backed up. And when the liver gets backed up, the bile gets sluggish. And when the bile gets sluggish, the toxins get reabsorbed back into the gut and they recirculate. The cycle just continues over and over and over again.
[00:11:33] Fatigue, brain fog, hormone imbalance, skin issues, autoimmune flares, and continue brain fog, fatigue, hormone imbalance, and just keeps going. So in my clinic, again, we test, we don't guess. There are specific environmental toxin panels we can check. A mycotoxin mold panel, heavy metals, phthalates, BPAs, a broader environmental chemical test panel. We look at 20 or 30 at once. We map your individual exposures because your toxic fingerprint is not the same as my toxic fingerprint. And the treatment plan has to reflect that. We aren't getting the same things out of everyone. And then once we know what's in there, we open the drain. We support Phase 1 and Phase 2 Liver detox pathways with the right nutrients, your B vitamins, your sulfur amino acids, your antioxidants, and we get that bile moving and circulating. We get the bowels moving daily because you're not pooping every day, you're reabsorbing those toxins. Sorry to be blunt, but it's true. We have to get it moving and we have to get a lymph moving and we have to get you sweating.
[00:12:37] So we're going to talk more about sweating in a minute. But and speaking of opening that drain, that is exactly the kind of work we go really deep into, especially in our VIP community online.
[00:12:47] So if you're interested right now and you're thinking, okay, I need this in my life, I want to actually move on this or at least listen and learn more, here's what you do. Head over to our website mydoctorlori.com and you're going to click on the I want to become a DoctorLorie Real 3 VIP member. It's very easy. Just put your information in and VIP members get exclusive perks, deeper trainings, member and Q and A sessions with me, access to early protocols, special pricing on testing and therapies that we're talking about today as well, and a community of people who are going through the same thing and working alongside of you so that you're not on an island all by yourself. I'll put the link in the show notes. And while you're over there, if you haven't already, follow our podcast. Follow us on YouTube. Thumbs up if this is hitting for you right so that you get more content just like this and it genuinely helps us reach more people who need to hear this. If you did all that. Thank you. So let's talk a little bit more about red light sauna and how we open up that drain.
[00:13:45] So how do we actually get the body to get rid of this stuff? Let's get practical Sauna. This is something I got myself this year. I cannot say enough good things about an infrared sauna for an autoimmune patient. Your skin is one of your largest detox organs. Sweat is one of the few ways your body excretes certain heavy metals, plastic, solvents, and the liver struggles to do that by itself. Infrared sauna gives you a mild heat shock response which upregulates those heat shock proteins as well. They're little like cellular cleanup like avenues in your body and it improves circulation and calms the nervous system. So for many of my patients who are working on I tell them three, four sessions a week if you can get it in 20 to 30, maybe even 40 minutes depending on how hot it is with proper hydration, lots and lots of water and mineral replacement. We don't want to sweat out too much magnesium and we want to Keep your sodium in check.
[00:14:37] So always work with somebody that knows what they're doing here, because it really is important to keep your electrolytes up and to keep that stuff in the right kind of parameters. But adding onto that with red light therapy is one of my favorite tools. And it ties directly into that cellular life length. Specific wavelengths of red or near infrared light, 660 nm, 850 nm, penetrate the skin and act directly on those little powerhouses, those mitochondria of the cells. And they help your powerhouse, your energy factories, helps them to produce ATP more efficiently. It reduces the stress on your cells, it calms inflammation. And for an autoimmune patient whose cells are exhausted and inflamed, red light is like plugging in a phone that has been on 5% for years. We use it in our clinic. Many of our patients have panels at home. And consistency is what matters. 10 to 20 minutes most days on bare skin, eyes protected is more than enough. Okay, fabulous. Even if it's just a face one, it's still beneficial. All right, and then let's talk about binding agents, things that pull out besides just sweating, it's ingredients that actually will pull it out of your system. This is where real detox happens, where I see a lot of mistakes made, especially on Internet protocols. When you mobilize a toxin, pull a mold out of the fat tissue, a heavy metal from where it's been stored, and you leave it in the bloodstream. Big. No, no. If you don't bind it on the way out, it recirculates or it sits there and it makes you feel worse. People call it a Herx reaction or Herxheimer reaction. And often it's just unbound toxins flying around of nowhere, sitting in the bloodstream. We use binders, charcoal, clays, modified citrus, pectin, chlorella, specific prescription binders for specific toxins. The binder choice matters because mold binds differently than mercury.
[00:16:27] Glyphosates bind differently than plastics. This is not a one size fits all situation. That's why testing really matters, to know what's in there and what we're going to do about it. So we use the right tool. For example, glutathione, master antioxidant. We love glutathione. Your body makes it, your liver depends on it. And in chronic illness, autoimmune disease and toxic burden, your glutathione gets depleted. We can support it directly with liposomal glutathione orally.
[00:16:53] We can give it as a capsule or under the tongue, you can do it in IV as well at the office, so. Or we can support the precursors. A lot of people use something called NAC or glycine, sulfur amino acids and B vitamins to try to get your body to make more of its own, especially those methylated Bs for those of you who can't methylate really well. And glutathione is one of those innovations where patients will say, within one to two weeks, my brain is coming back online. It is that powerful when used correctly and in the right patient with the right dose. So we love glutathione. It's almost an adjunct or an add on to almost every patient that we're trying to detoxify. And then there's nad. This is all over the Internet now, right guys? So NAD is the most powerful molecule for cellular and longevity Life links those two combined, it would be at the top of my list. Why? Because NAD naturally declines as we age. It goes down and it declines faster under chronic illness and toxic stress. But it's the currency that your mitochondria use to produce energy and DNA repair. We can support NAD through precursors like nmn, but I personally think oral sublingual NAD and then going to subcute NAD and then even IV NAD is the best way to go. The energy, the mental clarity and the cellular repair are tremendous. It's foundational anti aging, foundational for lifeevity, and it's how you age your way. Like this is one of my kind of baseline structures at this point for aging your way and lifeevity. Life leng. It really is. So let's talk about another protocol that I love, ozone. I want to spend a few minutes on one of the most underutilized, most powerful tools that we offer. And we offer it at refresh, and that's ozone therapy. If you've not heard of it, listen up. If you have heard of it and wrote it off because it sounds weird or scary, I want you to really lean in and listen. Ozone is amazing. It's a molecule of three oxygen atoms. Medical ozone is produced from medical grade oxygen in a controlled medical device. And it's been used in Europe for hundreds of years. Over hundreds of years, honestly. It's not new, it's not fringe, but it's finally getting the attention here in the US that it has long deserved. And for the autoimmune patient, the chronically fatigued patient, the patient with stealth infections and toxic burden, it is one of the most versatile tools in the integrative toolbox.
[00:19:09] So what does it do? Several things all at once, which is why it's so useful. Number one, it's a powerful antioxidant stimulus. So it actually paradoxically upregulates your antioxidant defenses, including glutathione. We just talked about the master antioxidant. Think of it as a controlled little stress that wakes the body up and tells it to get your defense systems online. Number two, it's antimicrobial. It's directly toxic to bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, including biofilms, that little protective coating that these bugs like to make that we struggle to reach with antibiotics. Number three, it's profoundly mitochondrial. It improves oxygen utilization at that cellular level, which means your cells make more energy with less.
[00:19:52] For someone that has a problem with the ability to have that effort, that's huge. That's the cellular lifelink. And last but not least, number four, it modulates the immune system. It can calm an overactive immune response while strengthening an underperforming one, which is exactly what the autoimmune patient needs. So at refresh, we do offer several ozone treatment protocols, depending on what you need. Major autohemotherapy, which is the gold standard for most bug and kind of chronic autoimmune patients, where we draw a small amount of your blood, mix it with medical ozone, and return it to your bloodstream. And it takes about an hour on average. And patients consistently describe a noticeable boost in energy and clarity within hours to days. We offer ozone sub Q as well, which is just under the skin for that chronic allergy or patient that's getting new sensitivities, which works amazing. It's kind of like an ozone allergy shot. So for autoimmune patients, ozone is a cornerstone. My Lyme patients, my chronic infection patients, it's a game changer. So if you're local to someone that's doing ozone therapy or to us, I highly, highly recommend it if this is something that you're suffering through. For patients dealing with mold toxicity, viral reactivation, persistent fatigue, and nothing else has touched it, even the peptides, which we're going to talk about. Ozone is a tool I reach for early, often, and consistent over time. It works on so many of the underlying drivers at once, and it stacks beautifully with everything else. Glutathione, NAD peptides, binders, as a multiplier, really. So, okay, let's talk about one of the most overlooked drivers of autoimmunity. And this one I feel like is being talked about more with parasites right now than chronic infection and maybe post Covid it was more chronic infection, but it's one that I see missed in conventional medicine all the time. And it's chronic underlying infection or what we call like a stealth bug or a bug that's been sitting around for a long time and hiding in your tissues. And your immune system has been quietly chipping away at it for years, unsuccessfully. And you're not always symptomatic of these, at least in a way that you're envisioning symptoms of a bug. Epstein Barr is the one that almost everyone gets in their teens and twenties and it doesn't leave, it gets dormant, right? It just sits, there it goes. If enough stress comes about and you have enough toxic load and a sleep deprivation, it reactivates. It's been linked in the literature to Ms. Hashimoto's lupus, chronic fatigue, so many autoimmune diseases. And then we have Lyme and it's co infections, Babesia, Bartonella, mycoplasma, we have the herpes families of viruses, Epstein Barr, CMV, HHV6 Mycoplasma, which we talked about a minute ago. We have parasites, which I know sounds dramatic because we're all talking about parasites, but it really is more common than people realize post viral syndromes from the past few years that we're still untangling and unraveling. And here's the thing, the autoimmune patient with a reactivated, let's say Epstein Barr is going to keep flaring no matter how clean the diet is, no matter how perfect the supplements are, unless we address the infection, the immune system, the gut, anything that is driving it right to be dysfunctional. But we need to know what's there. We need to run comprehensive virus panels, tick borne panels, parasite panels, and look for what's sitting in the system stoking the fire. And unfortunately regular labs don't do a great job of these testing, right? So there's alternative labs that I swear by. And in all honesty, once we get an idea of what the milieu of bugs in your system are, then we can really go about treating them effectively. So when we treat, this is where I want to be really transparent with you. Because some of the tools we use in functional and integrative medicine are tools that you might have heard about in other contexts. And I want to talk talk about them and honestly and clinically. Ivermectin for example, has a well established anti parasite protocol, right or reputation. And in the right patient with the right indication, supervised by a physician, of course it can be part of a Chronic infection protocol. Methylene blue, very well understood compound, has an antiviral anti parasite and passes to the blood brain barrier. Remarkable mitochondrial supporting properties. If we use it carefully, at low doses and under supervision, it's amazing.
[00:23:54] And then of course there's peptides. One of the most exciting areas in medicine right now, such as Thymus and Alpha 1. It's a peptide that I love.
[00:24:03] Essentially helps to re educate and rebalance the immune system. For an autoimmune patient and a chronic infection patient, where the immune system is overactive and underperforming, thymosin, alpha 1 can be a game changer. It's one of the most well studied peptides in the world for immune modulation and it's a game changer for a chronic infection patient.
[00:24:21] And then there's LL37. I think a little bit of the unsung hero is another peptide that is antimicrobial that your own body makes that we can supplement to help clear stubborn biofilms. Those little bubbles that those bugs create to protect themselves against getting killed. And it's like a slime layer. Think about like the nickelodeon, the slime layer that comes down and the parasites just hide underneath that. And it's one of the reasons that antibiotics fail in chronic infection. It helps to break through that. And there's real research showing that LL37 has anti inflammatory and immune balancing effect in the autoimmune patient, which is why it shows up in many of my BUG protocols, especially if you're resistant to the initial treatment protocols. And then let's take that picture a little bit broader. Let's talk about BPC157 body protection compound, which comes from a peptide in your gastric juices. It's extraordinarily gut healing. So now we're going back to the gut immune connection. For my patients with leaky gut, with ulcers, dysbiosis, inflammatory bowel problems, tendon or joint issues that won't go away. I love BPC157 because it promotes tissue repair, reduces inflammation, supports the gut lining that we talked about earlier. And then you pair that with something called kpv, which is three amino acids. That is anti inflammatory in itself, but it's really, really good for bug. It has some great antibacterial effects. And bonus, great for rosacea, great for eczema, irritable bowel flares. It quietly works underneath BPC157 as a great add on. And then there's copper or ghk. Copper, one of my favorites for tissue repair. And Skin health that I would call like a cellular tune up. It signals over 4,000 genes related to repair and regeneration. 4,000. And it supports collagen. Who doesn't love collagen? Support for the skin, hair, nails and joints. And supports detox and inflammation or anti inflammatory pathways. It literally is a foundational component of the lifeevity, life length.
[00:26:18] So let's talk a little bit about Thymus and Beta 4. It's a little bit different than Thymus and Alpha 1. It specializes in tissue repair, wound healing and reducing inflammation. So for autoimmune patients with muscle and joint damage, maybe neurologic symptoms, cardiovascular stuff, Thymus and Beta 4 helps to rebuild what the immune system is already damaged. So if we're like dealing with somebody that has damage already from autoimmunity, sometimes I'll alternate Thymus and Alpha 1 and Thymus and Beta 4. Or I'll just go to Thymus and Beta 4 right off the bat.
[00:26:47] And then there's some newer immune peptides that are kind of making a little bit of headway that are known for more of their brain involvement with anxiety and the nervous system, cell ANC and CMax and they downregulate inflammation, specifically in the brain. So if you can get the flare down the brain, you can have brain fog getting better, a little bit improved mental clarity. So for someone where you're not sure why they're getting these brain flares or the brain fog or anxiety, Cellink and CMax have really good data on calming that down. The peptide world is expanding so quickly that we try to stay on the leading edge of which ones have clinical evidence, which ones are really hype. And I tried to use the ones that work. So I'm talking about the ones that we have data on. I will put a link to some of the data in the notes for you guys so that you can see some of our articles that we pulled out to use for this presentation. We use the ones that work sourced from compounding pharmacies that we trust. And of course with the right medical oversight, that's always key to this.
[00:27:47] So here's how I think about peptides in autoimmune patient. You have peptides that calm down and rebalance the immune system, like thymus and alpha 1. You have peptides that go after stubborn infection and actually antimicrobial like LL37.
[00:28:01] And you have peptides that repair the damage already done, like BPC157, GHK, copper and thymus and beta 4. And then you have peptides that quiet the Inflammation in real time, like acutely. Right now, with like kpv, we layer them based upon what your body needs and in what order. So what I mean by that, that's really what our precision medicine is. It's not that we all can't look these products up. It's about the nuance of stacking them together in the right order for the right patient. And that's why the real three method, and Dr. Lurie is so important, because we're not just throwing tools at you. We're choosing the right tool for the phase of your healing.
[00:28:38] Now, I want to add one more peptide to this conversation because I love my peptides, and it's for a specific subset of patients. It's absolutely essential. And that's called VIP nasal spray. VIP stands for vasoactive intestinal peptide. It's 28amino acids neuropeptide that your body actually makes. And it's a master of regulatory signaling in your immune system and your nervous system. So here's where it gets really important. Patients with what we have call sirs, Chronic Inflammatory response syndrome, which we finally have a diagnosis for, and it's typically driven by exposure to water, damaged buildings, molds, chronic bugs, biotoxins, Lyme. VIP is found to be profoundly depleted. And research from Dr. Shoemaker, who pioneered the SIRS protocol, honestly, with Dr. Andrew Heyman, showed that actually over 98% of SIRS patients have a deficiency in VIP or its sister peptide, MSH. You can check that in lab work. And 98%, 98%, not a small subgroup, are all deficient. Okay, so that's huge. That's a rule right at that point, not an exception. So here's where the work of Dr. Heyman has really moved this conversation forward and taken Dr. Shoemaker's studies and just kind of taken them to the next level. He has shown that SIRS isn't simply a mitochondrial dysfunction in the way we used to think. It's more accurate to say that the mitochondria can't do their job because the regulatory signaling is broken. The DNA actually gets damaged by the bug. The inflammation is so loud, the metabolic environment is so disrupted, the lipids so transformed into toxic forms, the mitochondria essentially cannot deliver them properly. The mitochondria, literally, their DNA is completely destroyed. When we replace VIP with a compounded nasal spray and we deliver it intranasally, it gets directly to the central nervous system into systemic circulation. We are essentially handing the body back a master regulatory signal that has been missing. What happens is actually Remarkable. The inflammation calms down, the endorphins come back up, which is huge for pain and the depression that many SIRS patients get, calms down. The hormone axes start to rebalance and critically, the mitochondria, which have been struggling in a hostile metabolic environment, begin to reset those DNA, start to repair those DNA damage spots begin to repair. The light switches get turned on and off correctly. So transcription studies on VIP treated patients have actually shown shifts in mitochondrial and immune gene expression that coincide with healing. That is huge.
[00:31:10] Now, VIP is not a good starting point. We've all made this mistake. And what I do, it's not the first thing you reach for because you have to fix everything around it before you actually try to fix the DNA, because you're going to get continual damage if you don't. So VIP is like the terminating capstone. It's the final step in the protocol. And after we've done the upstream work, we remove that mold exposure, support the detox, get rid of chronic infection, lower the inflammatory markers and put all the gut back together. Only when that is done, done, can we start the VIP protocols and pull it all together. If it's used too early, it really just doesn't work. It can drive inflammation up, but when done correctly, it's the missing piece that finally helps that body recover. So again, that's why we always test. We always have to sequence these peptides and protocols carefully and reserve that VIP for patients have completed the upstream work and need that final regulatory reset. It's the termination.
[00:32:05] So if you're listening to this and been told you have mold illness, sirs, you suspect water damage in your home workplace. If you've just struggled for years with the constellation of fatigue and brain fog, sound and light sensitivity, exercise, intolerance, frequent urination, weird neurologic symptoms, please get evaluated by a trained clinician on this. Because vip, when used correctly in the right patient at the end of a protocol, can be the difference between having basically living a small life and not being able to live at all and getting your life back. So I want to be clear, every one of these tools, Ivermectin, methylene blue, the peptides, thymosin, alpha LL37, VPC157KPV, GHK, copper, thymus and beta 4, VIP, nasal spray, ozone binders, glutathione protocols and NAD.
[00:32:52] They require knowledge, a certain order and a physician that knows the order in which to put these and testing first. They are not just a jump on these peptides, on your own kind of thing. Or medications kind of thing. They require the right dose. They require duration and right combination. And again, not Internet medicine or AI medicine. This is precision and that's the whole point of what we do. At Dr. Lurie on the real three method and at refresh with our ozone therapies, we work with all these six lifelinks plus your one Life Jeopardy link and put them in concert in the right order for you.
[00:33:23] So let's do a quick check in. If you're still with me, and I hope you all are, because we're about to bring it all home, I want you to do something.
[00:33:30] Wherever you're listening or watching, send this episode to one person. One person, someone in your life who's exhausted, who has been told their labs are normal and is just wondering if it's them, is it me? Because it's not them and they need to hear this. And if you haven't already followed the show on your podcast app, please do so. It's a free 2 second thing that you can do to help us keep producing the content for you. Show us you care and that you like it. And on YouTube, that subscription button is always important. That thumbs up button on those comments that I answer myself all personally, tell me in the comments, comments, what's hit you hardest? What in your life is hitting you hard? Is the fatigue, is the brain fog. I read them all and I'll reply myself. So all right, on that note, let's land this plane, if you will. Let's get to the last act here. So if you've been listening the whole time and you're thinking, my goodness, where do I even start? I'm going to take a breath and you take a breath.
[00:34:22] Okay? I want to give you the framework because the order matters.
[00:34:26] Step one is always assessment. We can't treat what we haven't measured. So that means in my world, comprehensive labs that go far beyond the standard annual physical labs, full thyroid panel with antibodies, comprehensive metabolic and full inflammatory markers, food sensitivity testing, environmental testing, chronic infection and bug screening. A stool test that actually tells us what your microbiome looks like and your digestive enzymes and your pathogens. Cellular health markers. We build the mat first once we have the roadmap. Step two is the Gut lifelink almost always, because if your gut is broken, nothing else lands properly. We have to remove the triggers and heal the lining and rebuild the microbiome. We get the bowels moving and then three is opening up those detox protocols, the Detox lifelink. We can't just kill things in our Step four, if the drain is clogged, if we get the liver supported, we get the bile flowing, we add the sauna, we get the red light, we get the glutathione, the binders. We want to basically match what we found and pull it out gently, sequentially, in the right order. And step four is the immune and infection workup. Now we go after the chronic bugs, the chronic infections with the peptides thymosin alpha LL37, the targeted agents where indicated. Immune modulating support is necessary because the body is finally ready to handle the work without flaring. Right? Step five is that cellular repair and energy. Now we get the nad, the mitochondrial support, more red light, your methyl to B vitamins, amino acids and stuff so that your cells can rebuild. This is where patients tell me their energy comes back and it's not baseline energy, it's much better than they felt in years.
[00:36:06] And then step six is that lifeevity, that plus one, right? That crowning top, it's where it stops. We want to reverse illness, we want to go back and think about future proofing, right? It's about prolonging health span, about making sure the next 10, 15, 20 years of your life are spent in a body that can do what you want it to do.
[00:36:25] Travel, play with the grandkids, hike, dance. Think clearly. I'll just take thinking clearly, right? Sleeping well, not being exhausted all the time, waking up and wanting to be alive in your skin. This is life, Jevity. That is the whole point. And that is how we help you age your way, the right way.
[00:36:43] So I want to say something specifically for the women listening, because autoimmune disease, let's face it, disproportionately affects you. About 78% of autoimmune patients are women.
[00:36:54] And you have been gaslit by the medical system for too long. You've been told that you're fine, your ANA is positive, but nothing is there. Don't worry about it, right? You've been told it's stress. You've been told it's just being a busy mom or perimenopausal, or that you're in your 40s or 50s and that as long as you feel nothing else bothers you and your ANA is positive or your CRP is high, don't worry about it because there's nothing else going on, you're not crazy, you're not lazy, you're not making it up, and there's a reason that you feel this way and there's a path out there.
[00:37:25] I see it every Single day in my clinic, in my telehealth patients. The fatigue is reversible, the brain fog is reversible. The flares can be quieted. Your body wants to heal. We just have to give it the right inputs in the right order. And that's the key. The right order.
[00:37:42] So let's recap because this is a crazy episode. There's a lot in this episode, and I want it to stick in your brain.
[00:37:48] 1. Clean eating is the floor, not the ceiling. It turns the faucet down, but doesn't open up the drain. You need both.
[00:37:56] Two, total toxic burden. Everything your body is exposed to on a regular basis. Our bodies were never designed to handle that kind of burden. And that burden is one of the biggest drivers of fatigue, brain fog, and autoimmunity. 3. Autoimmunity. Isn't your immune system being broken? Is your immune system being overwhelmed by gut dysfunction, toxic exposures, chronic infection, cellular exhaustion, or mitochondrial dysfunction? Address those and the immune system will calm down. 4. Test, don't guess. We can check food, we can check environmental, we can check chronic infection, cellular markers. The data drives the plan. And then five, we have tools.
[00:38:41] All the tools. Sauna, red light, ozone, binders, glutathione, nad, all the peptides we discussed for SIRS patients. VIP targeted agents like ivermectin and methylene blue. In the right context, they all work together. And when they're sequenced correctly, order is everything.
[00:39:00] And then six. This is the real three method. The six plus one. LifeLink, gut immune, detox, cellular plus our live jevity.
[00:39:08] And we talked about some of the other lifelinks and past episodes and future episodes all working together. That lifeevity layer turns that healing into health span, right? We want you to have a longer health span and lifespan so you don't just survive. You're thriving and you're aging your way.
[00:39:26] So, okay, before I go, May is world autoimmune awareness month, and this episode really matters. And I have one last task.
[00:39:35] Three things.
[00:39:36] All small, all powerful. One, if you got value out of this, and I really hope you did, head over to YouTube and subscribe to this channel. Hit that thumbs up. That single click tells the platform that this is the kind of content people actually need. And it pushes it out to the next exhausted person who might be sitting up at midnight saying, why am I so tired all the time? And they need to find us. You can be the reason they do. Two, wherever you listen to your podcast, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, whichever is your home, hit, follow, hit, subscribe, leave a quick review if you have a second and it's genuinely the single most helpful thing you can do for the show and it keeps me going honestly and it means so much. And three if you are ready to actually do the work to go deeper than a podcast episode, I want you to become A for things, the trainings, Q&As with me, access to new protocols met refresh. You can also work on the ozone and IV protocols and a real community of people walking with you on this road and so you don't feel alone on an island. This link is in the show notes and on the website. So come join us. We would love to have you listen. You deserve to feel like yourself again. You deserve energy. You deserve clarity. You deserve a body that works with you. That is what lifeevity is. That is what age your way means. And whether you do this work with me or another excellent physician, please do not accept exhaustion as your new normal. There is a reason, there is a path, and it starts with the next step you take after you turn this episode off. I am Dr. Lori Gerber and thank you for spending this time with me. I know it was a long one Happy World Autoimmune Awareness Month and may be the month that you start getting your life back. I will see you next week.
[00:41:18] Thanks for joining me on this episode of Anti Aging Unraveled, where longevity is personal and you're empowered to age your way. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe to the podcast or our YouTube channel, Anti Aging Unraveled. And of course, follow us on Social for more tools, insights and conversations rooted in lifeevity philosophy. Living life the way you want to take your next step, visit mydrlori.com, click get started now and fill out your wellness or weight loss intake to begin your personalized longevity journey. Until next time, keep living with intention, vitality and purpose. Here's to longevity, life, jevity and aging your way.
