New Year, New You. Ask Me Anything!
Are you ready to take charge of your health and potentially improve your memory? Schedule your free 20-minute discovery call with our New Patient Coordinator to see how you can become a patient at MaxWell Clinic and start your healing journey today.
Are you ready to take charge of your well-being and chart a course to a healthier, more vibrant you in 2024?
In a world inundated with health trends and contradictory information, navigating the path to true well-being can be a daunting task.
At MaxWell Clinic, we’ve been guiding patients through this intricate landscape for 20 years. In fact, we were recently awarded Best Holistic Clinic in Nashville, and we’re here to help you find a better path to health in the new year!
Dr. Haase, a Vanderbilt University School of Medicine graduate with a residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is double board-certified in Family Medicine and Integrative Holistic Medicine. He also serves as Lead Faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine and has imparted his wisdom to over 10,000 physicians worldwide in his groundbreaking approach to Alzheimer’s, dementia, and complex chronic illnesses.
Back in 2003, Dr. Haase founded the MaxWell Clinic as a living laboratory to explore the fundamental question, “What Creates Health?” It has since blossomed into a sprawling 12,000 sq ft facility in Brentwood, TN, housing a team of dedicated clinicians. Together, they employ an array of cutting-edge investigations and interventions, drawing from the fields of nutrition, genomics, mitochondrial function, systems biology, apheresis, and brain optimization. Their mission? To empower each patient to lead their happiest and healthiest life.
Start your new year on the right foot listening to Dr. Haase as he delves into YOUR questions.
Watch the video and learn:
Expert Insights: Dr. David Haase is on a relentless mission to advance the frontiers of medicine and enhance patient care, solidifying his status as a true luminary in the field. And guess what? You’ve got a golden opportunity to tap into that wealth of knowledge!
New Year’s Resolutions: And speaking of the New Year, this webinar is just the ticket for folks who are eager to kickstart their health and wellness goals in the upcoming year. Dr. Haase can dish out some fantastic insights on how to set and actually achieve these goals, all while making the journey towards better health a whole lot more enjoyable!
In this blog post, we delve into the dynamic Q&A session we had the pleasure of hosting with Dr. Haase. Step into the realm of an exhilarating and friendly interactive experience as we explore the insightful discussions that unfolded during the webinar.
Understanding Fatigue
Fatigue is a common complaint that can affect individuals in various ways, and addressing its root causes requires a comprehensive understanding. In the recent Q&A session with Dr. David Haase of Maxwell Clinic, a range of health-related topics were covered, with a significant emphasis on fatigue. This blog post delves into the insights shared by Dr. Haase during the session, shedding light on the different aspects of fatigue and how individuals can approach its management.
Peripheral and Central Fatigue: Unraveling the Layers
Dr. Haase highlighted the distinction between peripheral fatigue and central fatigue, offering a unique perspective on the various ways fatigue can manifest. Peripheral fatigue, often linked to mitochondrial dysfunction, points to a lack of cellular energy. This type of fatigue can be likened to the feeling of muscles giving out during physical exertion, signifying an insufficient energy supply to support the task at hand.
On the other hand, central fatigue is described as a complex emotion, a brain-based perception of a lack of energy or an inability to perform tasks effectively. This form of fatigue is influenced by factors such as emotional trauma, chronic inflammation, or even a history of head injuries. Dr. Haase explained that recognizing fatigue as a brain-based response is crucial, as it provides valuable insights into an individual’s overall well-being.
Estrogen Replacement and Thyroid Health
The conversation also touched upon the relationship between estrogen replacement therapy and thyroid health, particularly in postmenopausal women. Dr. Haase emphasized the importance of estrogen in various aspects of health, including bone, vascular, and brain health. Contrary to misconceptions stemming from certain studies, he stressed that estrogen replacement, when done correctly, can be beneficial.
Moreover, the discussion explored scenarios where individuals, especially postmenopausal women, might experience changes in thyroid function. Dr. Haase provided insights into how immune challenges, such as infections or inflammatory conditions, could impact thyroid hormone production, necessitating careful monitoring and adjustments.
Methylation Testing: Navigating the Controversy
Another topic that emerged was methylation testing and its role in guiding supplement usage. Dr. Haase shared his extensive experience with methylation testing since 2003, cautioning against overreliance on such tests without considering the broader context of an individual’s health. While methylation is often associated with folates, B12, and amino acids, Dr. Haase stressed the significance of focusing on S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) and ATP in the context of mitochondrial function.
He warned against falling into the trap of marketing-driven trends, advocating for a holistic approach to healthcare. Dr. Haase underscored the limitations of laboratory testing, emphasizing the importance of understanding a patient’s entire life experience, including diet, lifestyle, gut health, hormones, toxins, and more.
Life Experience, Emotions, and Health
In a poignant moment, Dr. Haase urged individuals to honor their life experiences and emotions. He explained how emotions, including fatigue, serve as signals from the body, guiding individuals to seek help or make necessary changes. Drawing attention to the individuality of every person’s life experience, Dr. Haase emphasized the sacred nature of one’s being and the importance of recognizing and addressing the signals the body sends.
Conclusion: Navigating Health with Dr. David Haase’s Wisdom
Dr. Haase’s Q&A session offered a wealth of insights into fatigue, estrogen replacement therapy, thyroid health, and methylation testing. His holistic approach to healthcare, rooted in understanding the intricacies of an individual’s life experience, sets the stage for more personalized and effective interventions.
As we embark on a new year, it’s essential to heed Dr. Haase’s advice on embracing the uniqueness of each person’s journey and approaching health with a comprehensive view. For those grappling with fatigue or seeking guidance on hormone replacement therapy, thyroid health, or methylation testing, the wisdom shared by Dr. Haase provides valuable considerations for informed decision-making.
Are you ready to take charge of your health? Schedule your free 20-minute discovery call with our New Patient Coordinator to see how you can become a patient at MaxWell Clinic and start your healing journey today.
well hello everybody hello um super excited to get to start 2024
with you all um this is a a fun time um you know I I always love the
new year uh I take New Year really seriously I know it’s just kind of some day that we
assigned on our Gregorian calendar to say oh this is the be end of something and the beginning of something but I hope all of you have taken a little
moment to step back and think about the last year and the fact that you made
it you made it no matter how difficult your year was you made it and you
learned something and uh you grew in some ways certainly have probably
struggled and suffered and others um but this is that moment in time where we can St back and say huh uh this is what happened and this is what I hope for the
future and so when um uh it was came time to decide you know what type of
webinar was I going to do this month and I really thought it would be great to do and ask me anything you know and just throw it out there and say Hey you know
I I love having conversation around health and disease and and all things
Maxwell um and uh you know and I want to see 2024 be our share thir year of
Optimal Health you know um you know many people really hit this time and you look
back in the last year and you go like oh man I struggled so much and um and you
you’re thinking about what’s happening in the future maybe you don’t have as clear of goal or direction as you’d like to or uh maybe you’re dealing with a lot
of conflicting health information um you find sustainability
of Lifestyle Changes difficult you don’t know what which direction to go or how to look at an issue um you know would love to dive into those questions today
so uh we’ve got our our chat bar here our question and answer so uh please
um please dig in toss me anything uh I’ve got uh some several questions have popped
in already and uh and we’ll have a great time to uh dig into those
and um I just want to let you know that uh if you have any questions about Maxwell clinic or
what we’re doing uh you can text 2024 uh to our Clinic phone
number which is 615 um uh 270 0091 um 370 sorry I’ll do that over again
obviously they wouldn’t hire me for that job 615 uh 37
0091 text 2024 uh for any any questions about Maxell clinic so all right let’s dig in we
got a first question really specific question if a patient comes in with an igenics report that shows exposure to Lime with signs and symptoms but
thinking it was a chronic exposure how would you treat this patient wow okay great specific question so igenics is a lab that has really led the charge in um
doing wholesome yet complete uh Lyme disease testing and what’s interesting
is that a lime test that is positive on an igenics says that the immune system
is mounting a response to a molecule um that would be represented on um the
borella um organism or what we think causes limes disease and so the good news is the body
is making an immune response sometimes with lime the body it doesn’t make an immune response and lab test can be negative and the individual can still
will be suffering with almes uh as a condition and how would treatment
proceed with that well that’s individualized it it can entail um
multiple antibiotics for a period of for a long period of time um but it can also
involve IV ozone uh which is a great supportive therapy um we have herbal
supportive tools uh for individuals that are um are appropriate for that
indication and you hear me kind of going back and forth because the person that
has a disease is so much more important than the disease itself because when we
think of lme disease it actually kind of falls into a category in some ways like
long covid um or chronic fatigue syndrome that you know some chronic
fatigue syndrome is stimulated by human herpes virus 6 and or htlv
virus um because it’s not just the the organism that’s the problem it is the
individual’s response to that organism um sometimes because it’s really
debatable if you have a lme infection there are some people who think oh you
a lime infection the body clears it out and it’s gone forever and then you have another group of people uh clinicians who say no we can find the spir in the
body long term and it’s there long term until you go after it very aggressively
there’s another set of people experts who would say that we never truly get rid of these organisms completely and what we’re trying to do is to help our
body’s immune system uh effectively suppress that organism shut it down make sure it can’t spread
can’t do its job long term so whenever we’re thinking about a infectious disease we’re always going to be looking at both the in the
organism uh the the the bug but we’re g to pay a lot of attention to the person
because it’s your immune Health that really matters long term uh in the
successful regaining of Health okay hope that’s helpful all right um the uh hey
Dr hzy I see clinical trials showing TMS or transcranial magnetic stimulation benefits for early dementia or Alzheimer’s what are your thoughts
do you use this for your patients um we don’t use TMs in our clinic right now trans cranial magnetic stimulation um TMS is a really cool tool um in that
you’re using a magnetic field and and putting a magnetic field that pulses at
a particular frequency on a particular part of the brain I think there’s some
really great advances coming in this I’m I’m very excited about some of the advanced protocols for TMS uh for treating depression um but but
those are still in the uh still in the early stages with regard to being sorted out um TMS has
um I look at I always think about a therapy in this way the best therapies are the ones that
the longer you use them the less you need them right you think about that you know that means you’re addressing a cause and the cause has gone away and
now you can go on with health and um TMS uh you can think about using like
magnetism kind of like a drug it’s going to make the brain do something we have
transcranial direct current stimulation in the office um and we utilize that in
much the same way and that has some benefits with memory um but that’s putting electricity into the brain and you get a an effect but it tends to be
more of a short-term effect I um with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia we’re
actually running a trial right now so we’re still enrolling individuals in our uh evantha trial which is a study to look at our Precision medicine approach
to reversing cognitive decline and it is a randomized controlled trial um and uh
where all of our evaluation and treatment is covered and we can really go after this and being part of that trial if you or someone you know is
interested please uh look on our website at our clinical trials um apply and know
that it’s a trial so there’s a group of individuals that will get the same same
treatment and everything but delayed for a period of time um because we really want to sort out and we want to show the world the results that we’re able to
achieve and and by doing a you know essentially a controlled trial we
can say that hey this is not Placebo you know this is not just in somebody’s head this is that our our treatments really do make the difference um and we’re very
excited to get to do that trial um but and that looks at a
multitude of complex interrelated causes that cause dementia to proceed forward
so when whenever you’re think about memory loss and dementia it’s very important to find and address the multiple underlying causes of those a
really good first step is we’ve actually just started up our new um brain health
evaluation here at Maxwell clinic and this is a kind of a single you know you
get a whole bunch of evaluation done um a visit that incorporates an
understanding of what those in those findings are and gives Direction upon
well where would we need to go next with regard to what kind of brain cognitive
problem do I have um and and what are my options moving forward there but again
if you have any questions about that you can text 2024 to 615 370
0091 um I’m getting better at that all right hey um there’s another uh question
here is are there benefits of therapeutic plasma exchange for people who do not have have brain body
degeneration if so what are they um so I actually got into plasma exchange
because of one of my um deep di patients was a sea level uh employee at a big
Silicon Valley firm and I was doing an intake on him and he said um I asked him
well what do you want to achieve by working together and he said I want to live forever
I went and I you know I’m always going to hold space for my patients right um you know my job is not to laugh at them but that was tough and but then
I thought wait a second what might I be missing if I just kind of dismiss that
idea so in working with him I took a couple months and really dug into everything that actually has has real potential for longevity for increasing
the number of good years that we have and therapeutic plasma exchange really
hits the top of that list right now because uh what we now what we we
have some uh one of the trials that we’ve just completed at the clinic and I can’t share all those results publicly yet because the uh we haven’t gotten to
publication yet but um I can say we have some great confirmatory evidence that we
can change genetic expression in the body so that the cells are behaving
younger again as opposed to behaving older and and that’s a very exciting uh
idea so we do testing um of the immune system of cellular behavior of the types
of cells that are expressing in the immune system of different proteins that
are made in neurod degeneration or in aging and we actually even have age
clocks uh there’s a great company called true Diagnostics that does a methylation
age clock where this test actually will measure how biologically old you are and
um and we’ve been able to show that um our way of doing plasma exchange which
includes a lot more than just a plasma exchange um we’ve been able to really turn down people’s biologic aging now that’s really exciting stuff but plasma
exchange is standard of care for the treatment of severe autoimmune disease
and um we have wonderful orthopedic surgeon uh uh that visited our practice
and he had to leave practice because he developed a condition called Scleroderma Scleroderma is where your skin just starts to get tight it got so tight
around his fingers that he developed ulcers at the tip of his fingers um his
his pulmonary function started to get worse because his his lungs started to get tight um you know he was very cold a lot of fatigue brain fog and we did a
comprehensive evaluation we addressed some chronic infections with him we dealt with toxins uh some and uh but we also did plasma exchange and he was able
to uh all the different ulcers on the tips of his fingers uh went away um his
pulmonary function came back to normal um he truly got full remission from his
claraderma which is really remarkable because claraderma typically on average
has a seven-year lifespan from the time of diagnosis so plasmic exchange can be
very useful in the treatment of severe autoimmune disease and um where’s more
data all the time and we’ve seen some good results from severe long covid as well because plasmic exchange doesn’t just take out the nasty plasma uh and
clean the blood but what it also does is it removes all these little signaling molecules in the body and it hits a reset button for how the immune system
is behaving so the immune system starts to behave differently we have so much
more to learn about this but we we are setting up research protocols uh so that
we can gather more data to make better decisions and give better guidance for
people uh but the great question um the uh so uh my mother has
Parkinson’s um diagnosed in early 2023 my brother believes the only thing to do
is the levadopa or Carbidopa I’m pushing for some supplements any particular supplements that anyone Parkinson Parkinson’s needs so Parkinson’s is
a a condition that we in functional medicine have talked about I mean I’ve
talked about for 15 years that it starts in the gut and and current science now
just continues to come forth and prove that fact out um the most important
thing that you can do to decrease the progression of Parkinson’s from a
biological standpoint I believe is to optimize gut health
now let’s be really clear when when you start having your first symptoms of
Parkinson the slight Tremor going on or maybe the face loses some expression
maybe some depression um that is a late finding I consider those late findings because
your body has so much res neurological Reserve that by the time you start
having symptoms you have already lost anywhere from 75 to 90% of the neurons
that do that work so Parkinson’s has already progressed a long way when we
see some of our first symptoms so bar is really hard to you know reverse because
so much neuron neuron death has occurred at the time we’ first start seeing it’s
one of the reasons that I’m a big fan of doing um Advanced testing to measure
molecules uh that are associated with Parkinson so like Alpha sin nucleon in
the blood is something that can be measured and that is a that Aggregates
it’s not a test that say do you have Parkinson’s or do you not it’s not that good yet um in looking at autoimmune status of the gut would be important as
well autoimmune autoimmune status of the neurologic system would be important as a whole um but you the then the most
important supplements I think would be helpful here is things that can decrease
oxidative stress um oxidative stress is you can think of it as the rusting of
your cell it’s where a molecule has an uh well it rusts you know it oxidizes and um it turns out
that dopamine which is the major neurotransmitter in Parkinson’s has a lot of oxidative potential so it actually is
a stressor unto itself this is one of the problems with uh getting levodopa
Carbidopa um as a treatment because you’re giving the person this levodopa
which will turn into dopamine and decrease their symptoms but it’s also
going to be a molecule that’s very reactive and oxidizes so it increases
your oxidative stress so two things that uh come to mind um one of my favorite
supplements is netal cysteine or NAC NAC is the raw material for making
glutathione glutathione is your master antioxidant you make it in all of your
cells in huge amounts and it’s helpful as a kind of a rust preventive now you have to have enzymes that make this glutathione and there’s a gene cassette
called Nrf2 that when it gets turned on it makes all of these enzymes that help
decrease oxidative stress so you make the enzymes that make glutathione and
recharge glutathione and recycle glutathione and the most potent um
molecule for that is sulforaphane sulforaphane um is it comes from
broccoli uh broccoli sprout extract actually uh we have one called enco
detox plus that is actually a combination of sulphoraphane and morinas
so morinas is a compound that would be found in radishes and it activates this
um sulphoraphane glucosinolate to become its active component in the gut and um
and and then in the gut that sulphoraphane turns on the genetics of Nrf2 Nrf2 turns on glutathione synthase glutathione peroxidase um it turns on superoxide
dismutase so all these are antioxidant enzymes and the great thing about
turning on your body’s production of an enzyme in your own body is that enzyme
can do a can just uh do the work of antioxidation again and again and again
and again and again it’s very um efficient in doing that so it’s one of the reasons that um uh cruciferous vegetables are really good for you um broccoli
Sprouts broccoli uh cabbage and kimchi kimchi is one of the best foods that you can have in your
life um kimchi has amazing Health properties uh because
interestingly enough there are radishes often in kimchi and there’s cabbage in kimchi and it’s a fermented source of food when you start eating kimchi just
start eating a little bit because um it will start changing the types of
bacteria that live in your gut and you could have some bloating or gas uh it
can be kind of dramatic but what you do is you hit a little bit more every day and your gut kind of gets used to it and you change the microbiome in the gut and
all of that that can be really helpful so I hope hope that’s helpful focus on the gut kimchi probiotics uh I really like the probiotic
um uh Flora Foundation SB as a very good uh foundational probiotic to take daily
uh and and then thinking about anything that’s going to decrease oxidative stress um those are Upstream very important uh things when you’re
thinking about neurodegenerative disease okay um the uh uh okay all right so question here is in if
a neurod degenerative patient does not want to go full keto is it better to just make healthier
choices as opposed to adding healthy fat if they’re still eating carbs and sugar
um or should they try to increase healthy fat boy this is a really good question so let’s take it back for for
those of you who aren’t familiar with this in neurodegenerative disease and and even in our trial when people have clear um cognitive decline one of the
things that’s been shown to be very helpful for individuals is to produce another energy source for the the brain uh and those would be
ketones and you make ketones when you don’t have as much sugar to use as fuel
and then fat turns into ketones ketones kind of as a clean running fuel in the brain it can
make a big difference in cognitive decline and even individuals that are suffering from kind of minor brain fog they will realize when if they go into a
ketogenic State they you know get rid of um you decrease the amount of carbs that
they eat down to maybe less than 40 grams a day um then they they will start
making more of these ketones and their brain can clear and they can be more um
have better cognitive function um so that’s a treatment for a
symptom or that’s a treatment for kind of an um a progressed process when we do keto we really emphasize how important it is to keep
having enough plants in the diet so that um those antioxidants and the magic that
happens with plants and all their molecules that turn on our own immune system and make our immune system healthier that those are still
there and um so but a lot of people go like man I I I just don’t want to get rid
of my sugar you know I don’t want to get rid of all my carbs uh can I just have more fat
and then it’s going to be helpful and no that doesn’t work it doesn’t work um because there’s two things that are really important here cognitive decline is
is forced forward by um sugar disregulation sugar is you know while
our brain uses it as a fuel high sugar definitely can be a harm to our brain um
and and I think it’s and you certainly can’t get into ketosis if you are eating
sugar now there are supplements you can have that you can have pre there are like pre-formed ketones or you can use something like medium chain
triglycerides and that will convert into ketones and so yes you can get a little
bump in the brain but you’re going to miss out on the benefit of decreasing
the sugar in your diet but that is one of the ways to get around that just
increasing fat in general um probably won’t make any difference and probably will make could be detrimental so it depends upon your the kinds of fats and the amounts
of fats uh we would customize depending upon your apoe status
uh that’s one of the genes that’s very important in the progression dementia um but it’s also um very important in your vascular health and so what’s good for
one person is not necessarily good for another person um that’s the that’s a
challenging part of all this so um all right so the
um now so how would you help a patient with a known mitochondrial disorder oh
that’s a great question um well actually we’re pretty there’s a lot of answers to
this so you may know that I I am the lead educator for mitochondrial medicine
for the institute for functional medicine and um everybody that’s certified in uh functional medicine has gone through my course and had to endure
my lectures on function um I love the mitochondria and they are the
powerhouses of the cell and um they are these little organel that are inside
every cell that make the energy that’s necessary for that cell to do its work
no matter what that cell has to do so um there are primary mitochondrial disorders
um and those typically are genetic abnormalities they can occur very be become known very early in life and they they have some terrible
manifestations often early death um and then some of those primary mitochondrial
disorders kind of emerg in teen years or in adult years and they almost always
have a lot of neurologic symptoms with them um but they have a a strong genetic
component to them but largely we’re dealing with something called secondary
mitochondrial disorders and a secondary mitochondrial disorder means that your
genes or um maybe you had some not the uh best mitochondrial genes but
it was because you got exposed to environment toxins infections life
stress not sleeping um you know bringing in pesticides herbicides Pharm
Pharmaceuticals um many many the list of what injures mitochondria is huge it’s
pretty much anything that is can be used to kill something else uh
is going to affect the mitochondria because it’s a great way that’s how pesticides and herbicides almost always affect the mitochondria because that’s their
job they’re trying to kill something that’s living uh and going after mitochondria are a great way to kill something so um you so the first thing is to really
understand what are we dealing with here is this a primary mitochondrial disorder which not usually what we see at our Clinic because those are usually severe
and and you’re going to see your pediatrician internist probably way before you’d get to us and then the secondary mitochondrial dysfunction is
really around what’s underneath this what are the things that are inhibiting
mitochondrial function and for that it’s really good to know mitochondrial function um we’re really proud um we’re like literally the first clinic in the
world to use um what I believe is the next Generation mitochondrial test um
it’s called the me screen um and it’s we’re just just barely rolling this out
yet uh the me screen is where the University of uh San Diego mitochondrial
research department has partnered with Maxwell clinic and we have helped them to um devise a take their Laboratory
test um it’s actually called the seahorse which is a a bench research
tool that can take a sample from a person run it through this and expose
that sample to various challenges and measure the actual mitochondrial
function in that sample it’s really groundbreaking because until now we’ve
been had to kind of look at a shadow of a shadow to understand mitochondrial function and now we’re getting to actually test um that the body’s you
know composition your your the stuff you’re made of uh to understand how
mitochondrial function and so there’s about 10 major components
in different ways the mitochondria can dysfunction so you want to understand
what are you treating um this is because most all like mitochondrial supplements
that are sold out there usually have a whole bunch of things in them because
it’s kind of um a shotgun approach um because the knowledge of what to do has
not been very clear uh because the testing has been pretty challenging and so um how to treat a
mitochondrial disorder depends tremendously on what that mitochondrial disorder is because there are hundreds of ways a mitochondria can be
disordered so you find the cause and address the cause and you have to be
patient mitochondrial dysfunction you shouldn’t even begin to wonder are you
getting better until six months of therapy and often times it should be one to two years of therapy um I emphasize with the clinicians that I train all the
time you have to tell your patients don’t expect to take this and feel energized if you did you probably just took some caffeine you know it’s easy
to give you know there’s so many terrible supplements out there that are just filled with stimulants that yeah you take them oh I feel I feel energy the s
sensation of being more awake and alert does not correspond with the amount of
of molecular energy your cells have to do their work so be very cautious about
you know we see this happen all the time with like a multi-level marketing company is almost always going to lead out their product line with some kind of
a stimulant I’ve seen that happen about 20 times in my career already and uh because
people oh it makes me feel good gave me energy no it probably actually robbed you of energy long term because the best way to make energy is to rest
please get your sleep prioritize your sleep in order to get your sleep get morning sunlight um you know recognize that you need recovery we get far less
sleep than we used to as humans so um be so consider that so um I’m this is one of
the challenges when when people ask me what seems like a simple question well how do you treat mitochondrial disorder um marketing would give you a
simple answer medicine should never really oversimplify things it’s our job
to make the complex more simple and achievable um but if if there’s a
one-size fits-all solution um it’s probably more in the category of
marketing than it’s in the category of medicine unfortunately so
um so um I’m going to pop here so I recently had an episode of slurring
my words which lasted less than five minutes I went to the ER got an MRI scans and EKG and other tests and they said they found nothing significant
possibly a TIA but they’re unsure of that uh as you know I’ve been on IV
kation therapy for many years how should I deal with this in the future what preventive measures do you recommend in the circumstance thank you love this man
that sent this in this man has taught me a lot about the power of IV cation uh
one of my patients who was doing uh kation um with other clinicians um gosh
you know as I just to share that you know I think two quadruple B bypasses
maybe three um you know and he just kept getting worse from a cardiac standpoint
worse from a cardiac standpoint started doing ivation and and started to have a median Improvement in his cardiac function the ivation removes toxic
metals from the body it removes lead cadmium Mercury and those types of
things and it also is a very potent antioxidant helps the blood vessels
open up and um can be really tremendously helpful for many people with cardiac
disease and hugely impressive data on reversing uh renal dysfunction so early
kidney disease uh published in the New England Journal of Medicine published in the anals of internal medicine um showing individuals with early kidney
disease uh when you start chilation therapy it stops the inevitable
progression of renal failure and and maintained individuals uh without
additional progression for five years and that was as long as the study went on it’s one of these studies that needs to be replicated um and this needs to
become standard of care and available everywhere and easily um it’s a such an
inexpensive therapy when you compare it with years and years of dialysis so I’ll
get off my soap boach about IB culation but um um this individual has taught me
so much very thankful to him and um and and he’s told many other people about IV
cation and how it’s turned his life around turned out turned out that as he got better and better he needed less and less IV cation so he could you went down to
needing it every week to every two weeks to every month every couple of months um and maintaining a lot of other supplements and things like that to help
his other situ his other uh all other aspects of his health so but this is a
this is a hard question right you know yeah it sounds like a TIA a transient es
schic attack which would be where a blood vessel is um uh either developed a
clot um or for some reason not enough um uh oxygen was flowing to a part of the
brain for the period of time it was the right thing to do to go get checked out because um Strokes can be um you if it’s a blood clot um we have ways of
dissolving those clots and we have ways of of you know treating a brain attack
um so getting checked out for Progress for persistent symptoms is really
important and you got to do it right away so um so if it happens again I would go back to the ER um and knowing your history that of a lot of blood
vessels uh issues um I would certainly you know take another look at how
much inflammation is going on in the bloodstream is there evidence that you have had uh micro clotting going on because there’s a whole bunch of um
plots that can occur in the blood uh you the blood just gets sticky and um you
want to know that if that’s the case we just see where’s the source of the clot and um their um medications may be important there sometimes uh supplements
ninas is an extract of uh soybeans fermented soybeans that actually has
been shown to be helpful at um breaking down fibrin so that there’s less blood
clotting um uh making certain that there’s enough omega-3 fatty acids
present so there’s good lubrication and decreased inflammation in the blood vessels um all of these are just some general comments you know this is not
have know this person so I’m making more direct comments to uh to him in that way
but you always take your brain seriously you know and sudden changes of slurred
speech and you know sudden disorientation loss of movement of a limb or things like that get go to the ER this is our Western medicine is
amazing at treating a severe acute disease I’m so thankful we have every
tool that exists out there so um um okay the um the uh all right
um trying to a couple other things here here uh yes this talk will be posted on
YouTube so you can see it again at some time if you like um again if you have any questions or Maxwell Clinic uh interested in Maxwell care or anything
else we do here text 2024 to 615 370 0091 I get my radio voice on for that
one um and then um then the okay
okay I’ve been hearing a lot of talk around methylation panel testing in order to test patients for ideal supplement usage oh my gosh that that’s
interesting I’ve heard this a couple of times I don’t know where what marketing push is going on right now somewhere uh supplementing for optimization versus
supplementing just a supplement can you give your opinions on methylation testing and supplementing for individuals okay um I taught methylation since 2003 and um and uh we’ve been doing
genetic testing for like MTHFR and such uh since that time uh we have I I think
me methylation is when you take a single carbon atom and attach it to another
molecule and because we are carbon-based organisms um the ability to attach
another carbon onto another mole Ule is pretty fundamental for life
we have there’s only one molecule that does the job of methylation and that is Sam e ideno methionine and Iden methionine will take a single car it’s
a carbon donor and it will then interact with a very specific enzyme one of over
200 enzymes in the body that are called methyl transferases that will very specifically
direct that carbon atom to be attached to a very specific um separate atom or
separate molecule right and uh so it’s a highly contr methylation is super highly
controlled and uh and so when people talk about methylation they’re usually
never going to mention what I just said to you they’re instead going to say that
um they’re going to talk about folates and b12 and trimethyl Glycine and um the
various amino acids that are carbon donors that give their carbon over in a roundabout way to
Sami so I think it’s way more important to think about Sami because Sami is we
already talked about has a single carbon group but the other part of Sami is ATP
which is the energy molecule in your cells so your cells make make energy
that’s how there your might con make energy and part of that energy is to make ATP and that ATP gets attached to a methyl group and now that becomes Sammy and that’s
the raw material to do this important job of methylation we should be focusing way more in
mitochondria than we should on B12 and fate Etc um that’s that’s what
I’ve viewed over the years now um we have run many many methylation panels
over the years um we have I think we’ve utilized about six
different Labs from across the world one of my favorite Labs is actually in Denmark for doing this testing um it can require shipping samples on dry ice um
we’ve sent samples to Baylor School of Medicine to look at these things um and
this it’s really challenging because whenever you’re looking at the markers of methylation a lot of them are quite fragile and um the processing of a blood
sample can be really uh that that can cause um abnormal results to come back
so I think you know simply you know getting a B12 and a folate level checked U something called your MCV uh is useful if that is high that’s
an indication you could be having a deficiency of B12 and folate uh it could
also be a indication you have high lead those can be useful things but please be
aware of marketing over medicine um I think that you know there’s there’s please really consider getting your
health care in the context of a relationship um Laboratory Testing can
only tell you so much it’s really being listened to being understood about
what’s going on in the whole of my life what’s my diet My Lifestyle what’s going on with my gut what’s going on with the hormones What’s happen happening with
my toxins what’s happening with how my blood vessels are carrying in you know things from one place to the other what’s going on with your body composition
what’s happening with your behaviors your beliefs your stress system that all factors into your methylation believe it or not and so um
while let testing can be useful um I I think that that smells of a marketing
campaign to say you know uh we have to treat you only according to your numbers um
so um uh yeah there was there was a group called mthfr.net that uh it started up
and this Gene MTHFR just got all kinds of attention so much attention and the
the founder of that group is somebody I had taught early on and um and they
started out very powerfully that man everybody needs more methylfolate everybody needs more of this and then they got as they realized that wow
patients aren’t getting better matter of fact some are they kept changing their tune and changing their tune until now they’ve backed off entirely uh to what
is just a good medicine I think looking at the bigger picture um which I think
is how a lot of people go through their their learning process of holistic
medicine because you know when you have a heart to to to help the person and you have a philosophy that is holistic unfortunately a lot of
practitioners too quickly believe that holistic means they treat the whole list
and if they don’t yet have enough Tools in their toolbox then you can kind of
start to um treat everybody the same way so okay um another question here um what
could be the cause of elevated blood glucose and A1c that appear not to be related to diets
oh this is interesting we would love to know more details here but what are the causes of elevated blood glucose and A1C
that appear not to be related to diet so blood glucose oh my gosh blood glucose
is so important and it’s so important that the two hormones in the body that
we call your major hormones because there’s really only two that without them you die very quickly and that’s cortisol and insulin and cortisol and Insulin are
constantly playing tug ofor with your blood sugar and cortisol is going to raise
your blood sugar and insulin is going to bring down your blood sugar it’s going
to take blood sugar and put it into your cells cortisol is going to take sugar from inside your cells and put it into your blood and um and because the brain
wants to have a very steady amount of blood sugar it’s going to um uh it will
raise cortisol any time it doesn’t feel like it has enough energy
so anything that raises your cortisol will raise your blood sugar and so that
can be a sleepless night if you’re not sleeping well that may
be very important cause of you having um elevated blood glucose it can also be
um infections so if you have an elevated um if you have like you know this if
maybe you get the flu or covid or or some of the other chronic infections
that can raise your blood sugar tremendously then um other things are
acute stress so just I you we had a patient I remember when you’re in our
clinic in Clarksville who almost got in a car accident just before coming in and
we measured their blood glucose first thing in the morning of fasting and it was crazy High um and that was a result of acute stress they came back in the next
week did it again and never saw that elevation again but just that acute stress put it up um anything that will make inflammation will increase your cortisol
and cortisol will then increase your blood sugar likewise if you have a deficiency
of insulin so you you may not be making enough insulin so measuring insulin or
something called um C peptide which is a kind of a the the uh the waste product
of of insulin metabolism um those are things we can measure to see are you
actually making enough insulin and then very important is insulin resistance
because um if you are repeatedly if you’re constantly stressed if you are
have inflammation sleep deprivation all of these are going to kind of push your
blood sugar up chronically um that will also lead to
changes in your cells that will not allow blood sugar to come into some of
those cells we call that insulin resistance and um and then there the
tug-of wh happens again so the cells feel like they’re getting starved so
they will send out signals to raise the blood sugar to bring them more sugar so
it’s it’s useful to think of the tug-of war between cortisol and Insulin when
you’re thinking about blood sugar and blood sugar regulation okay great question that
was great all right so um uh postco times two years
TSH which is your thyroid stimulating hormone escalated to 39 that’s high and estrogen low do we
continue a synthetic T4 uh TSH normal now but feel terrible um or can estradi be increased to
help the thyroid produce its own thyroxin uh female 62 hysterectomy
bilateral ectomy in 2004 thank you okay um that’s kind of there’s a lot of detail
in here let me see if I can make some help so first of all fale 62 years
of old um have a bilateral oomine meaning that both ovaries were removed
in 2004 so if if you had been without estrogen for a long period of time
because you didn’t have any ovaries to make it they would be expected for your estrogen to be low now um one a great book I think one of the biggest travesties
was a women’s uh the Women’s Health Initiative um that castigated the
use of estrogen replacement therapy for women um there’s a whole book on this
called estrogen matters um look up the author tavas t v r i s um if you want to
really dig into the the anyway just how this whole how estrogen became such a
controversial topic when it really shouldn’t be estrogen can be very helpful for women to protect bones and vascular and brain and um and uh but
it’s Frau with lots of um very strong opinions um and because whenever we make a
strong statement in the world like oh I’m that’s good or that’s bad we reinforce a belief system in ourselves and scientists do this you know when
everybody some calls themselves an expert be careful because experts usually have their ego
attached to whatever they have said before and they’re not going to be very receptive to new information I’m sure you have all experienced that when
you’ve met up with some experts in your life so coming so I just want to say
that estrogen is important um and the real evil thing in that whole study was the fake progesterone the progest in um um that called proa that’s what caused most
of the abnormal factors and I don’t think anybody should ever take that natural progesterone can be very very safe uh as a hormone in general and
again talk with your doctor and get uh individualized therapy here okay so with
that as a context um when estrogen goes up your need for thyroid hormone also
goes up so when um women start on estrogen replacement therapy they often
also has to have to have extra thyroid hormone when um but estrogen does not uh
giving estrogen will not increase your thyroid hormone or help the thyroid
produce its own thyroid hormone more effectively I expect what happened when
you got covid is that you developed a thyroid itis and inflammation of the
thyroid and it stopped producing thyroid hormone maybe like it needed to and then
your brain which makes your TSH your thyroid stimulating hormone is really a
brain hormone that floats through the bloodstream comes to the thyroid and tells a thyroid hey thyroid um make more T4 and T3 the active thyroid hormones and um
and then when that immune challenge is there and there’s inflammation the thyroid actual thyroid
hormone levels can go really high and they can come really go then plummet really low um they requires careful monitoring and an adjustments uh for
back and forth so um I I I I feel like there’s probably a ton more questions
you have in followup here but in general the estrogen is not going to treat your thyroid thyroid is it’s own thing um and understanding how your immune system is
behaving remembering that gosh you know like 60 to 70% of your immune system
lives in your gut that’s why you have to pay attention to gut function whenever
you’re going to deal with any kind of immune regulated disease um I think that
those are some of the places that you can go and and look further if you’re interested in working with us at Maxwell Clin iic um again text 2024 to uh
61537 0091 um and there we go um and H you’re welcome you’re welcome H glad glad to
get some feedback um love to just have everybody on and talking about all this stuff uh but we Al also want to protect confidentiality for people uh because
you know I I think it’s very sacred anything with regard to your health is sacred it’s something that you should we always want to take very seriously and and
carefully um consider you know who you are and the challenges that are going on in your life um and keep that confidential so um great um and let’s
see here I got time for just a couple more let me make sure I haven’t missed any on here the
um um okay great okay the the question that um um uh fatigue uh oh you know fatigue
happens to be our number one diagnosis at the clinic last year uh fatigue kind
of comes along with almost every other major medical problem I also teach in
The Institute for functional medicine on fatigue and something most people don’t think about is that there’s kind of three flavors of fatigue and this could
maybe help you a little bit in thinking about fatigue if you’re challenged with it the first flavor is just sleepiness again you got to get more
sleep you have to give yourself more time now you may be giving yourself more time and not able to sleep well then come talk to us because we got to figure that out
because you’re not sleeping if you’re just not sleeping it’s very hard to move the needle on
fatigue or anything else so let’s get that taken care of okay but the the two other forms of fatigue um one is peripheral fatigue this
means it’s actually mitochondrial fatigue you’re it’s actually your lack of making
enough cellular energy to do the job you can imagine like you know doing curls
and pull pull pull pull pull and the muscle is just busting out and it’s you
know swollen and it’s you know you are running out of cellular energy
to make that muscle contract we call that peripheral fatigue
and then there’s Central fatigue and Central fatigue is actually a complex emotion most people don’t think of fatigue as an emotion but it’s really
useful to think of it that way because a complex emotion is one that um what is an
emotion emotion is a really important part of our being’s intelligence
that calls out to us to tell us something that we need to know emotions come out of the sum total of our brain body experience and they can give us uh
information uh to preserve our health so pain is also a complex emotion pain is
like it should tell us that hey something’s wrong here uh take it easy or don’t do that fatigue is an emotion that lets us know or is warning us that we may
be running out of energy and when we start to run out of energy then um if we run
totally out of energy well then we die so we always want to keep some Reserve in the tank so fatigue is that signal to let us know that the the needle is getting
closer to the maybe like the fourth of a tank left signal make sense
okay so fatigue if we recognize that that that is a brain-based fatigue so
it’s a perceived um lack of energy a perceived lack of the ability to do work and so many times
people that have had a head injury or individuals who have had some type of emotional trauma or individuals who are suffering from chronic
inflammation all can have this Central fatigue and I was really impressed we do IV
ketamine here uh to treat um depression anxiety individuals who have suffered
from trauma in their life PTSD individuals who want to improve
their life experience uh IV ketamine can be really incredible and uh one of the
most amazing things we got to see is the resolution of a person’s
really decades long fatigue after having IV ketamine what did this teach us it
was like well this person was able to change their neurologic perception of how much Reserve
they needed to keep in the tank because if you’ve gone through a
trauma and you’re in a space that you are you’re always wondering like well
when is that next shoe going to drop then you’re going to want to keep a
lot of extra energy in that tank so you may have a lot of physical energy but you just don’t want to use it and I will say I actually experienced a fatigue
like this in my own life where I’ve now recognized that the symptom of fatigue
sometimes for me can be something that is a manifestation more of fear of like
oh my gosh what’s going to happen I better I you my brain better give me a
signal to stop doing whatever I’m doing so that I have enough energy for whatever else might come next so um honoring this is really important it’s
one of the reasons cognitive behavioral therapy can actually be very helpful for fatigue narrow feedback can be helpful especially if there’s been a head injury
involved um ketamine can be very helpful especially in psychological trauma or
when people are feeling very stuck um this is part of depression fatigue goes
like with depression like you know peanut butter and chocolate and um the
it’s hard to sort out one from the other and both of them are signals that your
body is giving to your being saying hey um something isn’t right here go seek
help um go something needs to change and uh need to protect yourself in some way
so I want to really emphasize how important it is to honor your life EXP
experience uh every one of you have your own individual life experience you have
a you there’s nobody like you on the planet you are a sacred being um you are
of infinite value and and I want you to sit with that for a second recognize how
important this thing called your life is you you’re a bunch of molecules that are
aware of Their Own being that’s pretty crazy and so you should have uh you you
deserve to experience the highest level of life um that all those little
molecules bouncing together can can create so I want to uh leave you tonight
thank you very much for such great questions wow we had so many and um was glad to be able to get to almost all of these and um and the uh really thankful
for all of you thank you for teaching us as clinicians if your patients out there
thank you because as patients you are our teachers and um you know the most
important things that we can ever know about how to help you come from you so
thank you for um sitting with us as we would strive to do our very best to um
help you be your best so again if you have any question questions you can text
us at the Maxwell Clinic main number 615 um 9 37091 and text 2024 it’s a new year and um so
I wish you well bye-bye
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