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Dr. Joel Rosen: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another edition of the less stress life where we teach exhausted and burnt-out adults the truth about adrenal fatigue so that they can get their health back quickly. And I’m really excited to do Part Two with Beth O’Hara. She has a Doctorate of the natural path. And she specializes in functional natural Pathak approaches, for helping people with mast cell activation, and helping them heal, and helping them get to the root cause of the problem. And ultimately, let’s just get in talking to Beth and get some new clinical pearls. Pat, thank you so much for being here today.
Beth O’Hara: Thank you, Joel, I’m just really delighted that we’ve been coming together for this because I know you and I both had these massive health challenges. And we crawled out of them put it together. There are so many people out there still struggling and they don’t have the healthcare background we knew to figure this out. And so that’s I know, your mission. And my mission is to help other people get their lives back here.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, it’s aligned in that way. And like I told you earlier, I was listening to our recording a little bit earlier. And so many bubbles go off in my head of Oh, I should have asked her this, I should have asked her that. So we got you back here today. And we can kind of build on part one, I’ll make sure that we give the link to the listeners for part one so that they can listen to that. But ultimately, I want to share what’s new with you and hear what new clinical pearls you have.
And one of the things that we talked about that just scratched the surface in our last talk was how impactful the epigenetic or the environmental trigger of mold is. So maybe we can start going down that rabbit hole, Beth of why it’s such a big, I guess, a tidal wave of mast cell activation. And all of the strategies that you do downstream from that is really like playing whack a mole, if a person is dealing with mold, and stimulating the muscle. So let’s kind of start with, okay, this is why mold is important. And this is what we’ve been learning about it and most importantly, what can be done about it.
Beth O’Hara: And you’ve hit on some things, right, you know, the nail right on the head, which is that mold has become an epidemic issue. And people aren’t recognizing this, right? Because you mostly don’t see it, it’s really rare for somebody to actually see visible mold, or they might see a little in the shower. But they’re thinking, Oh, I’ll just clean that off with some bleach or, you know, if you’re in natural cleaning products, use some hydrogen peroxide or something. But if that molds growing in there, that’s a sign of a bigger problem. And most of the time people aren’t seeing it. But here’s the thing is that 50 years ago, we didn’t have the mold issues and buildings that we have today.
And that is what we need to be understanding is this is truly a new level of what is an old problem. And so if you just go back, I like to look historically, you know how things have unfolded? And if you go back to just the Bible there, there are passages in the Bible about what do you do if you have mold growing in your home? And what does it say? It says you have to burn the house down. Now, most people have to burn their houses down. Now we have all kinds of ways to remediate things, but I’m just saying that even then it was known to be a big problem. And then looking historically to all the witch trials that were going on in the 1700s where people were hallucinating, they were having seizures, they were convulsing, they were psychotic.
Well, what was found was it was a mold growing on the Rhine rain called Virgo. These days or air got in these days, we test our food for mold. But three major things have happened in the past 40 or so years, that has really changed how mold is becoming so problematic. So number one, we have more chemical exposure than we’ve ever had in human history. And we’re talking most people are going to be exposed to at least 20,000 different chemicals in their lifetime. And when chemicals have released the environment then they combine and form new molecules.
So it’s not like they just stay in these isolated forms. And just to really illustrate this, I was reading this article on National Geographic and about an indigenous hunter in the Great Lakes area. And then the whole article was an expose on the number of toxins that are dumped into those Great Lakes. And this Hunter as he hunts for his family and his community. So as part of their survival, and he’s been hunting for decades, so he brought a moose down.
And the reporters were there with him, you know, going through his life with him. And the first thing that they eat is liver, because it’s a superfood, right, that’s one of the most nutritious parts of the animal, so it cuts the most open, he pulls the liver out. And liver food, if people you know, have ever cooked liver, it should be really firm. You know, it’s kind of like a muscle in texture. But when he pulled this moose liver out, it was like sludge, I mean, it just was like goo through his fingers, which means that animals decaying, it’s, it’s breaking down from the inside.
And he said He’s seeing that rabbits, he’s seeing that and beavers that’s happening to us too. And that really affects our ability to handle any other kind of toxic load. So we think about all these chemical sensitivities developing and liver issues, and kidney issues, and these different types of things, it’s going to affect the adrenals gonna affect all these systems. So that was factor one. factor two, was that in the 1970s, we had a big change in building codes because of the energy crisis. So start building buildings more tightly, which is important, right, because we were just losing all this energy out through the walls out through the roofs, and energy was getting really expensive.
And it’s not a renewable resource that petroleum and all this. And so that solves one problem. But it created a new problem, and that now we’re trapping humidity and moisture inside our walls. And houses are more human, they don’t have as much air exchange as they used to. And I just ran into this because I bought a house that was built in 2000. And when I tested the house for mold before I moved in, it was January here in Cincinnati was dry as a bone. And then come March and April, we had intense rains as a factor of this right in certain places. We’re getting more rainfall, more humidity, more flooding, more hurricanes, more moisture, and humidity. I couldn’t keep it below 50%. Well, if you have 50% humidity for more than 2448 hours, you get mold growth. That’s just what happens.
And so we ended up with a big mold problem in the house from the humidity garage going up. And this is happening in churches and schools places where they close up for the summer, and humidity goes up dorms are notorious. Even work buildings, retail stores, all these places. There was a study job by the is one of the governmental environmental organizations that showed that over 50% of buildings in the United States are water damaged, which means they’re going to have toxic mold, toxic bacteria, so it’s a big deal. Number three is the Wi-Fi that we started bringing to our homes around 2004 to 2009 is when that really exploded. Now, almost all homes have Wi-Fi routers, we have Wi-Fi doorbells, we have Wi-Fi security cameras, we have Wi-Fi thermostats and refrigerators and speakers, and all these different things.
You know, we have Alexa or echo and we have Wi-Fi everywhere Wi-Fi baby monitors. And Dr. Klinghardt talked about one of his Swiss colleagues running an experiment where an AMOLED plate and I really want people to get the impact of this animal plate in a Faraday cage, meaning it was shielded from all the ambient EMF from the laptops and the computer speakers and the routers in there in the lab. And he just measured how much mycotoxins the toxins from molds were produced to get a reading of the normal amounts outside of that. Then he took it out of the Faraday cage and expose it to just the normal amounts we have in and then you know, a workplace a home, or whatever, and measured and it produced over 600 times more toxins in the being exposed to EMI offs.
So if we think about how this has come about, we have less ability to detox. We have more mold growing in our home since the 70s. But we were still kind of okay. And it’s really been these past 20 years that these health issues have kicked up dramatically. And this is one of the big, big reasons it’s a hidden issue. It’s really truly at an epidemic level. So this is what’s going on and mold toxins are. They’re toxic to every system in the body, to the liver, to the kidneys, to the eyes, the immune system, the rentals are a whole hormone system. They’re carcinogenic, and they’re toxic to babies.
They’re toxic to pets, children, pets get hit hardest. They pass through the placenta in the breast milk, and they pass to the fetus. And these toxins, mold is producing more toxins and more toxic toxins than ever before. And we’re not looking for it. So it’s that whack a mole situation if it’s at the bottom of this tower of issues. You can do CBOE protocols or adrenal protocols or line protocols for years. You’re not going to get rid of it, because you just have this wrecking ball that just keeps coming through and knocking everything back down again.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I mean, scary stuff. I remember when I interviewed Bob and Bob Miller was going through all of the other environmental perfect storms that we have exposed to our populations. And at some point, we’re going to look back and say, whoops, you know, in terms of like, aluminum and deodorant and smearing that on our bodies plastics, in bottles and hormone disruptors and polyesters. And the list goes on and on.
And I remember thinking this is daunting, and we talked in our last interview about a lot of histamine or mast cell activated, people being type A. And when we hear this, when I hear this, I get anxious and overwhelmed. So let’s talk about solutions. Because it sounds like it’s past the point of no return. And there’s no getting better from this at all because we’re doomed. And it’s what’s already been set in motion. So as far as First and foremost, is, how does all of this have to do with mast cells? I mean, what you were talking about, yeah, what is mold have to do with mast cells in the first place?
Beth O’Hara: Yeah, that’s a great problem. And I and I, and I do want because I think it is daunting, right? It’s, it’s a lot to think about. But for those of us who’ve been so sick, and you know, I know I shared last time I’ve been bedridden, I was fumbling with a cane, by the time I was 28, I was just so horribly ill. But all my lab markers still look normal. So it hadn’t hit that organ level yet. But you know, we don’t want it to hit that organ level, we want to get it cleaned up, and we can get it cleaned up. And that’s the thing is that we’ve got to figure out what is underlying all of these different issues in these different systems, and fix that and address it.
So what happens with mold is one thing that that’s helpful to think about to really grasp why this is such a big issue. And why and people may find this really controversial, but mold is a bigger issue than Cebo. It’s a bigger issue than mine. It’s a bigger issue than a lot of really popular stuff people are chasing because again underlies it. And if Epstein Barr right, that’s really popular right now a lot of people have activated it Epstein Barr why shingles? All these different things are, you know, the viruses that we’re dealing with? Now?
Why are we struggling from these? Well, they think about bacteria and viruses, with their, their way of operating is to come into a host. So we’re going to talk about us, you know, humans are common to humans, and to replicate. So they want to keep the host alive. So it’s going to weaken you, the bacteria and viruses don’t want to kill you off. bowls are in the world to decompose. So, if you know Moltar in the fungi kingdom when you go walk in the woods and you see a tree that fell and you see mushrooms growing on the Dominos mushrooms is a decompose that tree, and that’s critical. If we didn’t have molds, we would have dead stuff piled up everywhere.
That wouldn’t work. So we need that and they have a very important role. The problem is that all the chemicals, the Wi-Fi, all that mold recognizes as a threat and it’s defending itself and it’s fighting back. And when it starts doing that, it puts out what are called spores, which are how it replicates and it puts out these toxins called mycotoxins so that now these two components here, so the toxins we can absorb their nose or mouth, we can swallow them. You know if we could leave a glass of water sitting out in a moldy environment even to get spores and toxins in that water and then you drink it or food or whatever, you know if it’s out for a while things are going to land on it.
So, we can absorb mycotoxins into your skin as well. So then we get these toxins in our bodies. And for a lot of people, not all but a lot, we get the spores in the body too. So we become colonized. So kind of like having a bacterial or viral infection, we can have a fungal infection. And these mold toxins are very disruptive to the immune system. mast cells being when those frontline defending cells are so critical, they’re sensing the defending they’re protecting us. They have sensors on them called the toll-like receptor. And they’re always looking for fungal species, whether it’s Candida, different kinds of molds, whatever, they’re looking for those and they’re going to launch an attack against it to try to keep it out.
And because we don’t want that growing in our body, no candy to a certain level is normal in our bodies, but candy is way out of control as well, and a lot of people these days, so the mouse will start responding. Plus we’ve got this other stuff, right mast cells respond to EMF. So that clear, clear data, lots of data on that now, mast cells respond to chemicals in the environment. So it’s like they’re getting this constant onslaught. And then another important thing that mast cells know sorry, mold does to our immune system, is it takes this what’s called the one branch. So t helper cell, that’s our killing of viruses and pathogens, we want that to be a little more dominant in our bodies.
Well, it drops that down. And the mast cell side is the two sides and they work like a seesaw. So if that the one pathogen killing virus, bacteria-killing cyclins, down, mast cell site comes up. And then we get lots of these symptoms wherever people are susceptible. So it might be the skin symptoms, itching, rashes, psoriasis, eczema, some people flashing, some people, it’s gonna be respiratory breathing issues, it might be in the gut mold, toxins just wreck the gut.
And so this is where we get these chronic cases of Cebo, we can get a lot of IBS, these kinds of issues constipation or diarrhea affects the nervous system, and disrupt. So we get anxiety, we get light sound sensitivities, we people can have depression, you can have tons of different types of symptoms, heart palpitations, you can get the heart involved here. Lots of things can go on when you get elevated liver enzymes.
But if we let this go on for decades and decades, mobile will gradually decompose us and there’s plenty of research linking mold to things like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, different forms of autoimmunity, all kinds of severe disorders.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, okay. So as far as what do we do about it? So one of the things that you talked about last time were testing first and being able to identify that it’s there and you talked about the Great Plains mycotoxin test may be better for identifying certain mycotoxins or species, you talked about doing a provoked test for that, with sweating, and then we talked about potentially doing real-time labs, which was better for other mycotoxins and maybe a different kind of provocation. So maybe just a quick little recap on that both so people can understand why we need to do those things.
Beth O’Hara: Yeah, that’s a great question, Joel. So we want to know which mycotoxins we’re dealing with. And if people have any kind of chronic health mystery, I really encourage them to check for this. If there’s a typical anything like I’ve had people who came in with atypical Ms. And I’ve seen people with atypical Parkinson’s, I’ve seen people with typical epilepsy, all these kinds of things are just not matching early cancers or cancers, that just seemed strange, you know, this shouldn’t be happening. It’s really important to roll this out or to reel it in. And we want to test through the urine. And so that’s what I found the most helpful there, you can do some blood antibody testing.
I really like urine testing because we can get a sense of what we’re trying to get out of our bodies. And to best labs right now, our real-time and Great Plains. So real-time has a mycotoxin panel. And it’s really good for Xrl unknown gliotoxin, aflatoxin, and trachoma scenes, their methods not quite as sensitive for the ochratoxin but those are the five they check for. And these mold toxins get trapped in our tissues because they’re fat-soluble. So they Shouldn’t be a ton of them in the bloodstream.
And so and then from the blood, we go to the urine, right. So if we want to capture something, it helps to do a little gentle drawing that out of the tissue. So we can do just a little Bluetooth ion. And just, you know, some sweating and people tolerate it sauna, not a lot of my clients tolerate sauna. The key is to do it in a way that is comfortable and doesn’t provoke a flare because it’s not worth getting worse over. And to be real careful with that Bluetooth ion because I’ve seen people put themselves on high amounts, and get really, really sick. So just to go slow and gentle there.
And then Great Plains, their test is going to be more sensitive for okra toxin. And they check for some other things like chatter, global sense a trend and micro phenolic acid and gloat fluidify on can actually inhibit or interfere with their testing methods. So you don’t want to do glue the file for that you just do some sweating if possible, or people can do lymphatic drainage massage. I know a lot of my clients have trouble even getting hot because that can trigger mass activation and sweat. So then they can do some gentle lymphatic drainage. So we want to the reason we want to know what we have is that I was on a research team.
It was so exciting to do this with Dr. Neil Nathan and Dr. Joe Mathur and Emily gobbler over a tree of life with Bob Miller and, and myself and we went through every study we could get our hands on in the research literature, this was such an undertaking Gelatt took over six months. I mean, it was just like each of us working on different sections, and pulling this together. But we were able to identify what the research literature shows us the most effective binders for the specific mycotoxin. So we can really customize this. And the phase two detox pathway. So this is game-changing.
In terms of how we handle mold detox has a lot of people were just using charcoal and cola styrene and glorify them. But charcoal and cluster mean won’t bind all the different mold toxins. They’re not they don’t have the affinity for all of it. So this is where we want to really match what we’re dealing with. And then the glutathione is only effective for aflatoxin b1 and okra toxin. Most mold toxins and use glucuronidation. And okra toxin does as well. So that’s why it’s so critical to make sure we get these all out. And we want to keep going until the mold toxins are 100% gone off the testing and then about three months more and that comes from Dr. Neil Nathan who’s my mentor in this area.
And I just have to give him a lot of credit for this approach because he really developed it and then I’ve been honing it for really super sensitive in the mass all kinds of people that I see here. But just to give one case, Joe, because I know this is a heavy subject. I had a young woman who came in and she was having 20 seizures a day. And she was in a wheelchair, she couldn’t walk. She wanted to go to college. And she couldn’t even there was no way she couldn’t send a text to Joan like she couldn’t put sentences together. And she had Bartonella she had Lyme, and she has mold toxicity. And so people had been trying to treat the Bartonella and the Lyme. And she was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And so what we did was we went in, we backed way off we went very gently. And then we had looked at the mold toxins. So we found out which one she had. We worked with her nervous system, we call them the mast cells.
We started then addressing the mold toxins, that order is really important when people are sensitive and really sick. And then within about six months, she was out of the wheelchair, with no seizures. She was writing complete sentences. And she was applying to college. And she was a little early to get started. But she was applying to college. So if you think of somebody who’s that sick, then you’ve got you know, I see a lot of people who you know, their moms or dads. They’re working jobs, but they’re just dragging are so tired.
And it sometimes can take a year to three years. But we get these dramatic turnarounds. It’s so exciting to see people get their lives back. And that’s what happened to me. When I couldn’t I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t function. I couldn’t I couldn’t read a book. And now I run this busy practice called masl 360. I just went hiking for an hour a couple of days ago and I’ve really got my life back.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I mean, listen, the proof is in the pudding ultimately, right and I always tell That, like you can micromanage values in labs. But the big goal is improved function, obviously. And being able to do that I think it’s always possible no matter how daunting the environment and getting past the point of no return may seem, there’s knowledge is power and understanding, not, you know, specifically, what mycotoxin, you have I assuming guilty until proven otherwise, not just with typical things with anything that is a chronic multi-system, body impact.
And so with people that listen to this podcast or people that I help are identifying themselves as burnt out and exhausted adrenal Lee based, and this is such an important topic for them to hear because it’s not a reductionistic approach of just taking some fossil title searing. After all, your cortisol is high or taking some licorice root or some additional cortisol support when your cortisol is low. That is the whack-a-mole approach. And you’re never going to impact it if you have major mole challenges.
So great, great share. And just to get you on with the real-time labs that do have the approach where if you took small amounts of gluten phi on with some sweating, what are we talking about Beth, in terms of the small amounts dosing wise?
Beth O’Hara: So great question I know I work with I specialize in very sensitive people. And that’s where I’m going to come from if somebody is, you know, they can pop back three capsules of anything on the first go, this may not apply to them. But for my sensitive people, what really works well is I have them open the capsule, and start with sprinkles. And we’re talking about using a format that can be well absorbed. So we’re really talking about s acetal glutathione. Or lipids, some people tolerate it, I find a life of syllables usually a lot stronger because it’s in that base that will make it cross the blood-brain barrier.
So I usually people start with a capsule form of vas acetal Gluta file, then we do some sprinkles and those capsules, usually 100 125 milligrams. And then they go up to maybe a 16th of a capsule and eighth, a fourth a half, and so on. That’s how slowly people go, some people go even slower. That may sound like a snail’s pace. But if you’re a sensitive person that says more successful method, but then building up and it’s really cased by case, I’ve had people who couldn’t do even 25 milligrams of glue with ion.
Other people can do 100 200 milligrams twice a day, people who are really much, much less sensitive, those people that can just pop back anything and it’s not throwing them for a loop, they might be able to get up to 500 milligrams twice a day, rarely have somebody in my practice that can do that. But that would be the upper limit for people who have a stronger system.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Right. And this is provoked. So is this a couple of days before the actual samples being taken? Is this the day of a couple? Like what’s the what’s your suggestion on that?
Beth O’Hara: Usually we do about five or six days before, do glute fi on, and then two or three times sweating if possible, or lymphatic drainage massage the day before you can do all three if you like. And then I like to have people collect first-morning urine, say just have the most apples to apples and have the most concentrated urine there. And but here’s the thing is that overdoing it doing more than your body can handle or doing what is flaring you up, and then pushing through that and flaring more is not going to get you better results is going to get you sick.
And so because what that’s telling your body is that you’ve got way too many toxins flooding your system, you can’t keep up with them. So that’s one thing I want to really hammer home is this whole kind of this culture now of pushing through these hooks reactions. And if you’re a sensitive person or you have mass activation issues, I’ve seen people do that and then be in bed for three months. So that’s not a good strategy for our sensitive population. Again, if you’re a college athlete, you can throw back 500 milligrams of glue found twice a day pushing through an adverse reaction may be okay, but if you’re sensitive, we have to take a different angle here than what some of our standard just standard philosophies out there on the internet are.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, and it points to the concept of the Goldilocks zone for everything, but it also keeps it in context. But the reason why We’re having you do a gentle provocation is that we want to validate, and actually, see and objectify the mycotoxins that you have in your body. And it’s not worth getting sick for, to be able to do that. So I think that’s really what we’re talking about.
So, okay, let’s say and then just to reiterate what you talked about before, it’s so important to know why or which particular mycotoxins you have, because it’s going to change around the approach so that it’s more customized, not only in terms of what’s the best at what in the marketing message to market match, what’s the best binder that is known in the research to help get whatever the mycotoxin you have out, but the other part of it is the phase two processes like glucuronidation, or what specific phase two pathway is, is the mycotoxin being used to get out and then that’s where the genetic susceptibility comes into play as well, because some people may have some demands to help not just get that mycotoxin out but support that phase two pathway consistently over time.
After all, you’ve mentioned all the chemicals and toxins and molds in the environment in the first place. But before we get into that, what I want to talk to you about is a lot of the clients that I work with and you work with to at the same time are like okay, well, what do I eat, because I have no idea I have Mast Cell activation, which means I have extra histamine in the GI tract. I can’t eat histamine-based foods, I have a leaky gut, it also has fermentation. So I got to be aware of fermentable foods and Cebo.
But then again, I think I may have oxalates. And I don’t know what to eat with oxalates. And I know I don’t have anything I have auto immunities. So can you take us through that? That is like, Okay, how do we get them eating food that’s nutritious and substantial, and it’s going to give them energy so that that’s not another, you know, anchor to have to, to cut away and deal with as well.
Beth O’Hara: Yeah, that’s so so important. Joel and I, I had a quick thought I can’t leave alone before I go to this, which is that of just on the tests, a lot of very sensitive, very sick people will not have really high levels of mycotoxins on those first tests, frequently, it’s going to come back with very small amounts. But if anything is showing up, because there was a study, Great Plains dead that showed that not all people have mycotoxins in their urine. So if anything showing up that’s serious, even if it’s tiny amounts because it’s not showing the whole body burden, it’s just showing what’s in the bloodstream. And most sensitive, people can’t dump those into the bloodstream early on. So always take it seriously. If anything shows up. Then Then, transitioning here into the foods, this is so important.
And I see a lot of people who are down to, you know, down to 15 foods or 10 foods or six foods. And there are a few elements here. One is that if we get that low in foods, and I did myself, I made this mistake of every time I had reactions after eating, I decided it was that food. And I took it out because that’s how I used to do food allergy assessment, right, you would kind of go down to this hypoallergenic diet. And then he put one thing in if he reacted, then you determine that was a problem. So that was the method I use. Well, that used to work before we had the complexities that we have now with people’s health and mold issues and chemical toxins in the mast cell activation, it doesn’t really work anymore.
And this is where we’re getting in trouble. And when we get down to that like 10 foods, five foods, we don’t have enough nutrients to make the bodywork correctly. And the mast cells have nutrient needs to stabilize themselves, particularly sulfur is really critical. And so a restaurant and really current courage people to look at replacing foods, not removing foods. Those are the people that get in trouble and if you’re down to that few foods, gotta be working with somebody to get that expanded. And one of the things that are going on with these reactions, so we can have specific biochemical pathway issues right we can have oxalate issues, we can have histamine issues, we can have fodmap that’s not biochemical but vibe issues where they’re causing gas and bloating. We can have lectin intolerance, which can tip off autoimmunity, all of that for sure.
Another element is if we’ve got a lot of mold toxicity dumping into the gut mass Cells fully line, the GI tract from the mouth all the way to the end. And so sometimes it depends, it’s not the food somebody is eating. It is the levels of mold, toxins dumping and the stress that they had, and the pollution outside and all that coming together causing Mast Cell activation. And I had this with a young girl who was down to about 10 foods, she was having anaphylaxis every time she ate and throat closing, even like eating something like fresh carrots was causing that this should be you know, the ones with the top should be lower histamine. So that was really mast cell.
So you’ve got to calm the nervous system, because that we have this whole what’s called the enteric nervous system, a huge amount of nerves in the nerve, and it’s all connected by the vagal nerve. And so we got to calm the nervous system calm the mast cells, and a lot of food sensitivities will come down. Now that said, we issue corn issues, dairy issues may not calm down, I’m talking about just being able to eat, you know, dinosaur kale, these kinds of things.
Then, I do have people I do ask people when they come in unless if they’re on super low foods I don’t, we’re just immediately looking at expanding. But if people are eating a lot of stuff, they don’t know what’s bothering them, then I’ll ask somebody lower histamine, lower lectin for about six to eight weeks, see if we get any improvement. Not everybody’s histamine intolerant. So not everybody has to do what we want to see. And same with fodmap. Right? If we are going to try a low fodmap diet for Cebo we want to reduce those fermentable foods, see if it makes a difference but doesn’t make a difference.
We don’t want to leave them out. Because we need that nutrition. But I have had to eat low histamine, low oxalate, low glutamate, low lectin, and low fodmap for a long time because I had severe mold toxicity and had the third-highest levels of mold toxins I’ve ever seen. And so I have a lot of exposure. And I found plenty to eat, but you have to get creative, right so I do things like here. Here’s one of my favorite foods right now. My favorite meal is a chicken sesame meatball. And so taking fresh, well it’s chicken those frozen after slaughter. So as low histamine gets flashed on, it gets the ground. It gets mixed with some toasted sesame oil, some ginger, some green onion tops, some garlic-infused olive oil.
So that’s all low fodmap and a little bit of cooked sorghum and it gets rolled to meatball and then I have it on rutabaga noodles. And then we can put some cilantro on there. So and then chives things that are really nutrient-dense. And that’s a lovely meal. But that’s not a meal most people would, you know go order at a restaurant. So that’s where we can get creative or another one I do is make low histamine, low oxalate pesto, like a chicken pesto. And then I’ll have it on steamed carrots and, and I can’t do a lot of pomegranates because they’re high oxalate, but I’ll do like a little sprinkle of pomegranate on there. And that feels really gourmet. And there are lots and lots of options.
This is why we have a website with tons of recipes for people that are in these different categories that love solicit recipes because we’ve got to eat and eating is such a psychological process as well for just satisfaction and happiness. And if we feel like we don’t have anything to eat, and I’ve been there where I was just eating steamed chicken, steamed zucchini, standard squash, and steamed carrots every day, and then maybe a little basil on there, and olive oil and that’s about all I had. And if I looked at another zucchini, I still can’t eat zucchini. Look at another zucchini Noah’s gonna throw it across the room. And, and I’m a foodie like I love gourmet food. So we have to get creative, but there’s a lot to eat. And I can tell you, Joel, I’m not underweight, I’m actually having to watch not to gain too much weight here.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, I think the great news is that as daunting as we painted the picture of the environment, really creating perfect storms in our, in our body. I do feel like we’re in a paradox of the best of the best and the worst of the worst. And I think there’s always there’s, it’s a lot easier in 2021. Then it was even in 2015 to have gluten-free options to have low oxalate auction options, all of the above. But one of the very first things that I think Really important that may have gone past the listener is when you are talking about slowing down the sympathetic or at least ramping up the parasympathetic, and the limbic center, and the prefrontal cortex and the Vegas nerve.
And I’ll make sure I put the link for your quiz, or at least the link for determining how haywire your mast cells are going because I love your course, Beth. And I will say out loud, that part of the courses that I do as well as a Vegas component and stimulating of that parasympathetic nervous system. So really, what you’re saying is, if you took a quiz, and we find out that you have moderate, severe, or even mild, and I don’t even know if your minimum one is mild, I mean, it’s, you know, up-regulated haywire. mast cells, that means at some level, your sympathetic machinery is upregulated. and your parasympathetic digestive machinery is downregulated. And no matter what diet you do, if you’re not getting that in balance, you’re going to have major challenges.
So I love that idea. And there are certain exercises you can do. bagel, bagel tone exercises, coffee enemas, gargling, swallowing, there’s a lot of other, you know, autonomic nervous system, things that people can learn about. But certainly, we’ll put the link in there. I think that’s a really key point that you put there. So thank you for sharing that. That’s, that’s awesome information. So there is so much more information, I’d love to ask you. I know, we’re just we’re, we’re getting close to the end of the time here. So anything specific that you haven’t talked about, or you think is maybe a cleat key clinical pearl? That, along with everything else that we’ve talked about? Do listeners need to know?
Beth O’Hara: Yes, well, I want to expand on I’m so glad that you brought the nervous system up to more. And that’s where I love always talking to you because we’re on the same page with this stuff. And this is a big missing piece of a lot of functional practices are going well, let’s look at the detox pathways, let’s work on the gut, let’s work on the hormones. And then there may be a little nod to doing some breathing or some meditation. And when people are really chronically ill working on the nervous system is at least 50% of the healing process.
So I just want to say, again, that if we want to heal from a lot of chronic illness, this nervous system piece is just as important as cleaning up the environment, getting clean water, taking the right supplements, doing exercise, all this stuff. So I have a graphic where put all that on one half and the nervous system on the other. So here’s why. Because we don’t live in a culture that this makes sense, because of how busy we are all the time and how much demand we put on our lives.
But the nervous system is what connects everything in the body and connects every organ, every muscle, every bone, everything is connected by the nervous system, and their mast cells at every nerve ending and their muscles in the limbic system, their muscles all along the vagal nerve branches. And they’ve hot talkback and forth constantly. So the nerves are releasing these neurotransmitters, and the mast cells are receiving those and responding. So any stress is a direct effect on those mast cells, which is then going to affect every tissue in every system.
And then the mast cells have chemicals, they release mediators that respond to the nervous system. So you get this constant feedback happening. If we want to enter in with people with chronic health issues, and particularly sensitivities, we’ve got to calm that down and work on that. And its very specific modalities. It’s the vagal nerve. It’s the limbic system. There are hundreds of options out there, but very few are actually really dialed in. And that’s what I know you teach in your courses and that’s what I teach in that mast cell Nervous System reboot is, how do you take the plethora of options and build a roadmap that matches how haywire you are. So how out of balance your dysregulated nervous system is.
So this is really key and it’s really key in healing from mold toxicity because mold toxins disrupt the nervous system, Bartonella Lyme, all these things food poisoning paralyzes the vagal nerve. So lots of things will affect the nervous system. Then we have to like Kyle Nathan calls it rebooting without a reboot, we got to turn it back on the way it should be working. So that is so critical and not to be overlooked. And that’s one place where I didn’t give it I I was doing yoga and so much meditation, but I didn’t give it, the tenant dialed in attention that it needs. And then the other piece is that we wanted to touch on this more, maybe we can do it another time, but that
a lot of these issues are all tied into what’s called cell danger response. And so we have underlying chronic toxins underlying chronic pathogens, like Lyme, Bartonella, Epstein, Barr, all this stuff. And we just it overwhelms the system, and your body goes into this defensive lockdown mode, it’s going to pull resources away from certain pathways, just to keep us alive. And some of those are going to be reducing the vitamin D production, changes, and methylation, we’re going to get changes in being able to make melatonin and sleep. But a lot of approaches are just throwing methylation pieces at people training them to take these high doses, methyl Foley, and that’s working against this natural process.
So we want to be doing things in that order. There’s an order of operations that will allow our bodies to heal successfully. And that all to tie in and say, if you’ve been struggling with this for years, and you’re stuck, and you’re feeling like nobody’s going to figure it out, or you’re not going to get there. The reason is, there’s a missing piece, or they’re missing pieces. And I believe that for anybody who truly wants to get well, that is dealing with this kind of issues we’re talking about, we have ways of getting our health back. And we have ways of recovering and I see it day in and day out.
And I gave some of the worst cases, we get a lot of people just moderate health issues that come in, and they get really well. It’s about making sure we’re attending to the big picture, attending to what is the root most pieces? What are the linchpins and we’re doing it in the correct order that unlocks the body’s own healing capacities?
Dr. Joel Rosen: Yeah, it’s a great answer. And the only thing I would add to that is obviously the balance, the customization, the prioritization, doing everything, but also appreciating the power of the body. And that’s one thing that I’m beside myself on with the public health mandates in today’s world, and today’s epidemics, and the way that governs not to get down a slippery slope, but we’re forgetting about the natural ability for the body to heal. And sometimes it’s a matter of getting out of the way. It’s the analogy is like, if we have a fever, there’s a reason why your body’s going through a fever, it’s physiologically necessary.
Now, if it goes too high as a fine balance, you may want to augment it. But you know what the body’s born with the natural ability to heal if you kind of just perturb it in the right direction, and not necessarily say, Okay, I’m the master of the body, I know more than the body knows about the body, and get out of the way. So I’m going to take over and just, you know, make up for the inability of the body to do this. And some that and you’ll agree with this to the bath is sometimes our most difficult clients are not only the ones that have the perfect storm of genetics and environment going on.
But they also have what I say the analogies are not only a broken golf swing, but they also have a lesson a golf coach taught them the wrong way. So now we have to unlearn the bad swing and also teach them the good swing. So anyway, listen, I appreciate your time, we definitely need to do part three. But you have a couple of new programs coming out, which I’m really excited to hear about maybe just kind of give us a quick little plug for that. And then I can post the links into the show notes and on my website as well.
Beth O’Hara: Oh, thank you so much, Joel, what I’m doing is I’m taking so long detoxification is complex. And here’s the thing is, if you’re reading blog posts and trying to piece it together, you’re not going to get it. It’s too complex is too much. So what I’m doing is distilling down, what we’re using at masl, 360, and hundreds of people that’s working so well.
And what I’ve pulled from my mentors who I’m so grateful for, and then I’ve expanded into our masl 360 processes is how do you step through if you’re a sensitive person, if you’ve got muscle issues, how do you step through a mold detox program, and I’m putting it in the right order. So I’ve got a basic level for people who are just getting started figuring out what all this is, and they’re brain fog. They’re tired, they can’t take a million details.
And then we’re going to have at the advanced level that’ll be for people who’ve been Looking at this for a while, they want the studies, they want all the background. So lay people who are a little more at that intermediate-advanced level, and practitioner. So we’ve got both those options. I’m so excited, I’m pouring my heart and soul into this. And really, it’s about this mission of recovering my health, Joe. And I know you understand this was such a nightmare.
And I had to do it on my own because 20 years ago, nobody knew about any of this stuff. And it took years to uncover that the mold was at the root of even my Lyme-like Cebo, all this stuff that gave me so sick. And so that was such a nightmare. If I can take what I learned from that, and I can help just one more person, get their health like back, get their lives back and not have to do this alone, then it makes that nightmare worth it. And then it can be in service. And so that’s what these courses are for is to help people to get their health back their lives back.
Dr. Joel Rosen: That’s awesome. And that’s what the paradigm shift again of the best of the best is now we’re able to give more and allow people to get their own healing done with quicker outcomes and not as many costs and financially or things that you can’t put a financial price tag on. So thank you so much for your time, Beth. I appreciate everything that you’re doing. And I will make sure that I give the links to be able to see those different programs for people that are listening, to take that next step.
Beth O’Hara:
Thank you, Joan. I’m really grateful that you’re helping me get this information out there and for everything that you do too. I love your work.
Dr. Joel Rosen: Thanks, Beth. Have an awesome rest of your day.