Doctor Thinks He Knows What Causes Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS! | Mark Hyman

there's very strong compelling evidence at this point that back bacteria are the cause of neurodegenerative diseases [Music] [Applause] welcome to the doctors pharmacy this is doctor Mark Hyman that's pharmacy with an FFA RM Acy it's a place for conversations that matter and if you care about your brain today's conversation will matter to you because it's with dr. Jay Lombard who was an extraordinary physician neurologist psychiatrist author speaker and friend of mine who I met probably gosh close to fifteen years ago I don't even know it seems like a long time ago and you were teaching

a course on a functional medicine approach to neurodegenerative disease and that's see I'm listening to my mind was just completely blown and we're gonna go through what we learned then and what we know now almost a decade plus later about how to fix and treat very tough brain diseases things that there really is no good treatment for in conventional medicine things like ALS and alzheimerís Parkinson's ms/ms all these horrible diseases that we really struggle dealing with so he's integrating a whole series of things that are pretty unusual for a doctor he's written a book called

the mind of God about spirituality faith medicine he integrates understanding of the biology of our human being our psychological components our existential components in a very complete holistic treatment of the person he's a very unique guy and he's written a lot about all sorts of things including the brain wellness program which was a great book he wrote years ago which is how I got to meet him and recently the mind of God which was featured in The New York Times a great article about you in the New York Times my very good congratulations and exploring

the difference in the relationship between faith and science he's appeared on lots of TV radio shows including Larry King Live that was awhile ago yes CBS News the Food Network dr. oz and he's been the chief of neurology at Westchester Square Medical Center the Bronx Lebanon Hospital and clinical assistant professor at New York Presbyterian and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and he has a practice in Tarrytown New York which is fantastic so welcome dr. Lombard to disclaimers I'm not a psychiatrist and I really know nothing about the brain oh wow okay well I thought you

said you were trained in psychiatry trained in psychiatry yes okay so you're not technically a psychiatrist if you learn enough about psychiatry you know just enough to be dangerous yeah well you know it's often you know psychiatrist to be brainless all right now it's mindless I hate exactly you try to bring those two things together and I think that's why actually has failed so we were we were discussing and we've talked over the years about the challenges of dealing with this sort of epidemic of broken brains brain disorders that we in medicine really struggle with

a typical line for neurologist was adios diagnosan adios you know you can diagnose the disease but not much we can do we'll see you later and good luck but now that's all changing and you're doing pioneering work looking at the relationship between things like inflammation and our gut microbiome and mitochondria and all sorts of stuff that just seems sort of marginal in medicine but now has come to the center and is allowing us to think about these conditions in a new way and patients in a new way and you are at the leading edge of

that you you have thought differently about this than almost any neurologist sideman I mean we've had David Perlmutter on the show and others but you know this is this is your sweet spot is a sort of intersection of all this emerging science emerging therapies and putting them together for patients in a way that really helped to make them better so I think that is that's the goal all right so just just to dig in a little bit let's start at 30,000 feet why have we failed so miserably at addressing these neurodegenerative diseases that are affecting

literally millions and millions of people the United States and around the world and causing untold suffering to patients and their families that's a very simple answer we're treating symptoms not pathophysiology why I love IFM yeah yeah so functional medicine yeah functional medicine is really about treating the cause exactly and not the symptom right and that's what we're good at in medicine is treating symptoms but the disease process continues that are new those symptoms yep even though the symptoms suppressed right right exactly so it's fine if you have a broken leg and you want to take

painkiller you don't care your legs still broken you don't want to hurt right but for these kind of conditions we just spent so much money and research in the wrong direction hundred percent so what what is really the root of these things you were you were sharing with me before we got on the show that Parkinson's and ALS and MS and Alzheimer's there's so much in common they're almost the same disease with different manifestations like the same tree trunk with lots of different branches right that's right how does that work well I think that you

know there's been a lot of research recently really quite quite frankly from IFM which kind of led into Institute for functional medicine right yeah right that that basically talking about you know the role of the microbiome in chronic disease so I'd theosophy I was I was very skeptical of that that whole thing until I saw my first patient with ALS who told me that he had SIBO yes okay and I'm like what is that right I was like I was like what is SIBO neurologist I think it happens south of the neck you're like what

I don't know right so I said I go look you see Bo there ALS here he goes no my ALS is being caused by my Seba and what is SIBO what what well he didn't know I didn't know at the time what if Cinco was okay that's I gotta get to the punchline so what what is SIBO good question so what is SIBO but I sort of started thinking like a microbiologist instead of a neurologist meaning that my patients tell him he has an infectious disease that's a social with ALS since he's one person instead

of trying to divide and conquer that he has you know SIBO and has ALS what if SIBO and ALS were somehow related that was the first question i started with when addressing this particular patient most people don't know what SIBO is so what is it what is Cibo yeah small intestinal bacterial overgrowth so it means bacteria are growing in your small intestine well you want me to answer that quick what SIBO is right there were no Sasebo ins is that isn't that isn't that whether the the convenience stores in an airport SIBO or Sasebo means

that you've got bacteria growing in your small intestine or it's not supposed to be it's supposed to be the large intestine and when you eat food it ferments quickly and you feel bloated distended it will call food baby and it can cause a whole host of other problems it's been fibromyalgia to depression to heart disease I mean pretty much everything right so right so okay so now so now I'm thinking about kind of bacterial be the cause of ALS now this is at this point you know a completely unfounded theory that you know people have

told me to this day I'm still crazy for thinking this okay so anyway I don't think so good so my second patient with ALS had ulcerative colitis and ALS well and I said oh this is interesting so they're looking at ulcerative colitis sounds like wow also we have colitis looks like it's immune mediated not it's autoimmune but immune mediated from bacteria you guys are looking at all this gastroenterology literature about ulcerative colitis and Crohn's oh my god oh my god it's the same bacteria yep so I got all sort of colitis from c-diff right exactly

exactly almost died from it and it made my brain network Wow it's just amazing that you're sharing that with me because you know I look I'm in Neurology I don't think that ulcerative colitis I don't think about Crohn's I don't think about fecal transplants I don't think any of that right well so I'm like okay I'm thrown into this thing where if I believe that c-diff is the cause of ALS I gotta kill this disease man I got I got a I'm like a disease hunter like I'm gonna I'm gonna nail this disease right so

what happens so like the Indiana Jones of Medicine you're screwed my patient I'm gonna get yours my best friends I get former FBI agent so it's like that psycho serial killer that's what they do right they get all the evidence and then they kill him or they arrest him at least yeah all right first day hopefully firstly you gotta kill not arrest that's a whole separate conversation but anyway so I started putting together how c-diff neuro pathologically can produce motor neuron disease because I had it was sort of established what those pathways were in order

to convince my colleagues that they should look into this kind of connect the dots between stuff that goes wrong south of the border there and the gut to the nervousness what happens to your brain correct they're actually connected right there's a whole thing called the second brain which is your gut yes and your brain brain which is your brain right and they're all connected through all kinds of hardwired it's one body right one body isn't that holistic medicine that you treat the patient that's why I joined a holistic doctor because I take care of people

with a whole list of problems why because you have the all those problems right I mean there's this horrible phrase in medicine it's called comorbidity right which means right you have multiple a chronic diseases that aren't related like oh you have heart failure and diabetes and hypertension and you have kidney failure and you have you know this and that and Alzheimer's they're not related they're just happen to be showing up in the same person at the same time oh it's a coincidence right nonsense right are all connected right feels like it was a coincidence treat

and I saw an old doctor who actually pay as soon as a patient of mine like oh that's not a coincidence like this would be something of value for that but yes it's not a coincidence that these diseases occur in one person because they're interrelated to each other so I start asking that question how how are these separate conditions what's the mechanism how does it right so here's the mechanism the mechanism is protein aggregation that's a fancy word what does that mean protein aggregation means that that chronic disease by definition whether it's neurological or or

cardiovascular even or even cancer these are where proteins are malformed the protein funny-looking proteins have damaged their they admit they were injured or right produced in ways that are right and that's the common factor in every neurodegenerative disease meaning that they're misfolded proteins it's like a lawyer Mills amyloid tau alpha synuclein all of the different you know proteins are associated with you know they our pathology for those diseases they're all protein misfolding disorders okay well why they misfolding like what's what's stopping them from from folding properly and what controls because because it's not only the

amino acid structure out of a protein in matter you mention a three-dimensional structure of the protein how that interacts with receptors and how it interacts with other proteins and how it interacts with your cell membranes everything is all 3-dimensional world right it's not two-dimensional so I so I thinking okay what what is causing the proteins to misfold okay and I think this is well known it's not something I discovered so this is actually well known that missmiss folded proteins are caused by microtubules dysfunction and microtubules function is caused by by other things as I said

lots of things that cause microtubule dysfunction but guess what bacteria produces primary microtubule dysfunction as its pathology c-diff 100% many other bacteria might do that too you know I looked for that question and I could not find as strong and evidence of a direct a-to-z link between Clostridium Clostridium actually makes a toxin that you can actually test for yeah called Rho kinase so Rho kinase I said what was real kinase do well how is real kinase producing little fad lethality wait what's good enough yeah Leith ality Venus deadliness right of of cells and it does

it by poisoning microtubule associated proteins what's a microtubule microtubule is like the like the architecture of this house think about all of the scaffolds and all the the walls everything makes this house of framing the framing if it's a framing of the cell but more it's not just the framing of the cell it's in charge of all of the the export/import you know the border conditional Trading come right and reproduction I mean how cool is it has that function right yeah it's all about reproduction for microtubules as well so it has interphase not just with

ALS but also cancer so if you look at the cancer data a these are these are protein aggregation disorders as well different proteins obviously right but possibly the same mechanism what's causing those misfolded proteins I was like okay I'm not ready yet for this I mean like even its conversation but I've not begun to look at evidence of c-diff and cancer yet because right now I have to focus just on neurodegenerative diseases yeah but in that case so so so we're at the potential you know issue that you know how do we prove this basically

then what causes besides CDF though there's other things right the closet right the inflammation and well information as a result of infection you're saying you're saying there's one cause that would you see deer for all neurodegenerative diseases in order to prove that I Poth assess two things have to happen going forward two things the first is we have to establish that there is c-diff in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease mm-hmm guess what that studies been done yeah it also showed that there was some hoop for brains hoop for brains is that was that

like is it true website or something where do you made that up of rains there's another way to say it but but but more importantly clinically clinically I mean look people could say oh it's an epi phenomena right like the brain is you know already decomposing of course you can have the bacteria emerging when the person's dead they are argument right maybe it's not that cluster room is causing the disease but it's just it's there for the ride as it eats your brain up after you're dead right that's that's what the mean up meaning if

they find out an autopsy but maybe it's like it doesn't mean that it was there when they were living yeah right so fair enough that what that means is that we have to demonstrate so they ran for the hills as soon as a person died is that it I guess I don't know true probably unlikely exactly yeah but but in fairness to that sort of counter punch what what the medical community would ask for going forward is especially clinically like we can make a decision that that we think that this is definitely c difficile in

you know a patient with the disease like Alzheimer's right to make that conclusion clinically you have to have absolute 100% evidence that that bacteria is actually causing that disease mmm with some with some you know yeah obviously not every disease is going to you know test positive and not only are is a challenge here that the majority of patients who test for c difficile who have dementia Parkinson's Alzheimer's and what-have-you have negative tests for c-diff in their stool in their stools right and so people that are sort of looking at this picture with me if

you will are saying exactly that well it can't be c-diff because we're testing c-diff in the stool and it's not there i say well guess what it went uptown okay used to live downtown but it likes uptown more why because a we give them PP is which they love that that alkaline environment acid blockers acid blockers like and what previs and what we give them that they love most of all antibiotics mmm see diff loves and is actually an antibiotic associated infection because no I got it for my bad tooth and I ended up getting

yep see diff yep that's I mean that if that's not a word of warning to all the listeners I don't know what it is yes exactly right seat base is called antibiotic associates c-diff so I started asking patients with neurodegenerative diseases if they had a prodrome and they first started getting sick and all across the board I mean like symptoms that happen before they got of course well you asked yes questions like that right guys like I want to know like what they did is it as a baby basically you know even though they're 70s

a lot of why you ask I don't know I've asked my mom that question you know younger patients you could ask him that question to stay with their parents and I say to them you know I asked them three questions I go did you have a lot of antibiotic exposure before you got sick sick 100% it's like not it's the it's like it's like I could I know the ants before even ask the questions just a question of how many antibiotics they had yeah and what corseted about I say had in the second question that's

worthwhile to ask clinically is do you have trouble actually mounting a fever so that's that's a that's a question that I was surprised by the answer that most I mean not most but most my patients basically have said no you know what I have no side you really never get a fever Mike oh okay so which is not a soy a good thing that's right it's not a good thing at all because the only thing that actually will treat spores right is is heat heat if you look at if you look that's why we get

a fever right fever because it's your body's mechanism for killing and it's it's you know I make a joke with people I say them all the time I said you name one disease that that humans have cured cured like oh you know if they always mentioned infectious diseases because that's that's that is the truth we've heard infectious disease but the only thing that actually cures disease is our endogenous mechanisms you know fever actually fever and sleep basically are the two endogenous mechanisms of holistic medicine and I just means stuff that you do yourself your body's

doing it for you yeah but you have to help the body do that you can't be staying up late and taking pee pee eyes to watch you know Seinfeld episodes you can't you can't have your like pizza followed by your prilosec and stay up all night watching Game of Thrones correct yeah now in imperfect disclosure yeah that sounds like I've done all of those except I actually do eat the pizza when I'm watching those shows I gotta work at myself basically okay doctor treat yourself Yeah right but anyway yes so so this this whole conversation

is fascinating to me because from a functional medicine perspective you know many roads lead to Rome in other words just because you know the name of the diagnosis of the disease doesn't mean you know what's wrong with exactly and the truth is there can be a 10 or 20 causes for this same disease right and I you know I think that's probably true even a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's so yeah that mnsure that we're not we're not saying that every single person with Alzheimer's has c-diff right or that that's the cause because it could be

something else exactly Lyme disease or 2 percent it could be yeah heavy metal no I think the these sort of like the the the Devils in the details if you will right meaning that that yes I think there's very strong compelling evidence at this point that back bacteria are the cause of neurodegenerative disease it's not not my yeah Saudis we talked about Rudy tanzy who's a Harvard scientist one discovers of some of the priests inulin genes which are the genes that show that people are risk for early Alzheimers he actually said they were discovering all

these microbes rain which we thought was sterile right and that we had this blood-brain barrier that protects us right and you're saying and he's saying that that barrier is not always a hundred percent and that stuff can leak through not only have a leaky gut but you could have a leaky brain look bacteria doctor scare people bacterial of the brain why 25 percent of the body's glucose is used by the brain they know where to eat they go into you know lepen or that fancy restaurant is downtown like that everyone else is eating downtown they're

getting you know our brains can bacteria live on ketones a hundred percent but not but not wait that's very important they prefer simple sugars why because they're lazy right they what they want you know they want instant gratification so they like sugar better than ketones like ketones and ketotic diets work for some of these neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and even ALS and the kind of cancer and that's right that's right and I think one of the mechanisms to be honest with you is that ketones actually improve firstly they improve mitochondrial function but they're not a

good substrate for bacteria they're they're great substrate for us bacteria don't like them because they like they like eating fast food basically yeah so right um sugar and wheat fat that's right okay so I so this is just a breakthrough idea and and this isn't just an idea you've actually treated patients using this approach they've seen some really extraordinary things yes so can you share with us you know a little bit about this case you were sharing me earlier about ALS which is a horrible condition Stephen Hawking had a it was called Lou Gehrig's disease

after the baseball player essentially it's where your nervous system is affected by the killing of the neurons in your spinal cord which makes you basically paralyzed you get fasciculation we're just twitching you eventually can move your arms and legs you're in a wheelchair you need a respirator you wouldn't wash it on on you on your worst enemy it would not work you know it's like a slowly getting paralyzed yeah that's right and and never has there been a treatment that has stopped or reversed it right and you're saying that you've seen patients where this has

actually happened so well we are in the process of validating that sort of that data yes so yes we need more studies yes we need to do research on multiple patients but even if there's one patient right where you've seen a change it raises the question is by weights maybe go crazy by the way because you know I am so I'm finally glad to be a neurologist you know being a neurologist is like being a nihilist or a masochist diagnosed now - yes right what's worse than s like diagnosed and let me you know let

me not tell the patient that they have ALS let me let me treat them for you know like a you know a syidp picture because they don't want to actually make that diagnosis people it's it's the hardest diagnosis you could make for formation because everyone knows als is incurable disease right I mean it's a 100 percent slight not even pancreatic cancer is better well you have a five percent chance of living at pancreatic cancer you have zero chance of living through this disease zero so so Mason your hypothesis that it's infectious yes it plays a

big role if not is the main role right you know I personally shared on unspotted I went to a place in Mexico called Santa Fe where I and my wife both went through this treatment called hyperthermia which essentially is where they heat you up to 107 degrees which sounds crazy and is scary I could actually we did both fine and it killed a lot of infections that we had matches amazed I'm right my wife her viral loads of very tough to treat infection yep called cm became plummeting down yep she felt much better I felt

much better and it and and and so this is a therapy that it's not much used in the in the United States but is used widely in Europe is nice in Mexico and other countries as a therapy for some of these types of infections diseases and even cancer right so how does the how does the theory work behind this with something like ALS well the idea is that you know fever is the the way of actually denaturing spores so that's a big sense can you unpack that you are so human cells have their proteins that

that you know either fold properly or not fold properly at a certain temperature right bacteria have their own temperature zone like their ideal climate and spores have another ideal climate right meaning that to kill a spore a spore is like a baby Baxter where's the baby bacteria and that's what I believe personally is the reason that patients have amyloid accumulation that the spores are creating this protective cover against antibiotics that actually is in fact the amyloid being produced mu lies like the armor for the bacteria yes they're like the you know the the bomb shelter

yes that the the biofilm is the bomb shelter for these little baby bacteria yep and so how does hyperthermia work to disrupt that and so what is what is that because teacher so it works hypothermia works by it's a very narrow window of temperature meaning if you give too much temperature you can actually hurt normal cells as much as you know bacterial cells if you don't give enough temperature you've done nothing so it's like Goldilocks it's like Goldilocks you gotta just right you have to get it exactly right okay and that's part of the way

that the hyperthermia technology has been developed is by really understanding that the brain itself can provide feedback on the the tolerability for human cells because brain cells are gonna tell the brain hey this is pretty hot in here we don't know fry your brain like can you turn the thermostat off now so the part of the part of the device actually is to to get the brain temperature back into the feedback system where it's self-regulating so that you never reach a point where the temperature is harmful to your own cells mmm and and so you

know the often in places where they do this they they'll give at the peak of the temperature they'll give antibiotics or antivirals right does that make sense they give antivirals or yeah to give antimicrobial treatment to patients when they're at the peak of the fever because the idea is that it's sort of fly yes for a cute infection yes I would I would argue the time or well if the Lyme is acute certainly I mean I don't think that that uh I mean I think you have you weary of the of the issue that by

you know you robbing Peter to pay Paul for instance let's say that C diff is let's say well it's progress like say this is a polymicrobial disease okay as opposed to a like lots of different books less different bugs as opposed to just one ringleader that everyone else is following okay so Lombard believes it's it's that that C dip is the ringleader okay and all these other guys Lyme HSV they just get tagging a ride because it's such a great killer that it's like okay great well we'll take the leftovers no problem here we'll take

the leftovers so my concern is clinically that if we start treating patients you know with you know bacterial drugs like Graceffa and whatever it is for chronic Lyme yes you're addressing chronic Lyme removed c diff gets worse yes exactly yeah exactly so the heat alone is enough to disrupt the seed if it's well we haven't demonstrated that yet to be quite frank but what what's been demonstrated is that by applying hyperthermia that were able to actually see improvement in clinical symptoms of patients with ALS people's muscle strength is a progressive disease so it gets worse

and worse and worse every visit they're worse right you're seeing patients a it stops or gets better which never happened correct right so this is a major breakthrough i think so major breakthrough and and this is not something new it has been around for a long time and so where in the world is most the research being done on hyperthermia for ALS period I mean it's mostly so they're mostly research on hypothermia actually is cancer research so as they call it chemo thermia chemo hypothermia so you people can look up a lot of data on

on how hypothermia affects cancer but as far as I know there's zero data until now applying hyperthermia frail we will be the first people to actually talk about applying Hypertherm for treatment of ALS what about things like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or MS well the difference in those diseases are that in Alzheimer's right it's very difficult to induce hypothermia and in a patient with Alzheimer's disease why because you need to be compliant the treatment itself is you know it's fairly rigorous as as you you know from your sleep sleep right we don't want to put them

to sleep though right because we're concerned about protecting their brain so you know you have a patient who's got you know and staged Alzheimer's disease for instance I don't see how this is gonna be held early but early a hundred percent early early in fact I will talk later not about the case now because I we're really just the beginnings of this case but yeah I think it'll be applicable for Alzheimer's disease as well have you seen any patients now reported or not literally not anywhere now but your service a theory yes it's still a

theory an MS what about ms ms there's data on actually the opposite right which is how do you induce hypothermia right because an MS it's a you know it's an inflammatory disease obviously right which by the way I also believe is caused by Clostridium but not not c-diff it's especially important to actually identify at that stage that this is bacterial so there I don't know what there yeah so what what what is the idea with MS that you you wouldn't want to use hyperthermia that you wouldn't want to use heat because it makes it worse

well because remember when you heat up a patient with MS what happens they usually get worse so the trick is maybe not enough right well it's not enough that's right maybe you haven't reached the threshold to actually you know use the body's fever mechanisms against links to MS and epsilon IR s and other infections there's links to Alzheimer's and I herpes virus infections and right so yes the whole principle is applicable for all those diseases but we don't know yet if it is applicable yet until we clinically demonstrate that right but yeah I think that

this is going to be a treatment it's going to be very important for a lot of different diseases mark this whole theory that the body has a mechanism for dealing with this and it has these own proteins in Iraq that are produced in response to heat and they're things we learned about a medical school they're called heat shock proteins I learned something very important about heat shock proteins from dr. les ler because remember that you know people looking at how to induce hypothermia right so there's all sorts of research it's actually even a drug in

clinic for ALS that is the the the mechanism of action is based upon increasing heat shock protein through a pharmaceutical agent so I was at this lecture and I've you know I thought I thought I knew everything basically and I learned that actually you can induce about MD stood for medical deity is that it medical theater yes yes exactly we all got that training truth is we know close to nothing that's why I said the beginning of this talk I you know like I'm thanks for inviting me but I really know nothing just disclaimer but

anyway so yes actually in ms the the goal is to induce heat shock protein through hypothermia mmm hypothermia so you get people cold not people the brain the brain right how do we do that at chill the brain kill the brain how do you do that yeah ice blocks around the head no no um well invite you up and you could you could see for yourself what that looks like alright dunk your head nice water no no no none of the above okay so we have to be in mystery here the mystery about what the

device looks like yeah it's it's it's basically the same concept as building a hyperthermia device except remember now that technology itself is was developed basically for anesthesiologists mmm those are developed at Yale by dr. Abreu who's the the person who actually discovered a way of measuring brain temperature objectively externally okay so that that's kind of where this whole thing started from the be honest yeah and we don't just stick electrode in your brain you can literally map it out from the outside you could map it out from the outside so the ability to do that

now allows a clinician to not only you know heat the the body to create hyperthermic states but through other types of modalities to actually cool the brain safely externally mmm with the same in the same way meaning that you can actually apply a small device to a region of the of the skin periorbital location and you could actually change the temperature of the brain through this what's called a brain thermal tunnel and that also creates shock protein 70 note and I did a track protein I didn't know that until I was in Australia that's amazing

so you're hopeful about the future of neurology sounds like it's the first I've been hopeful about anything in my life to be honest you yes that's true yeah well this is a fundamental shift in our thinking and treatment yes so so besides treating for example is ALS patients with hyperthermia there's a whole lot of other thing if you do yeah those are the other things that that seem to be effective or that are working that I do yeah so I've at the stage in my life where I well I shouldn't say anything political but I

realized that that I can sort of you know I have to say my swimlane meaning as a neurologist you know I always thought like okay only I'm only to see patients with neurological problems and how to get my my head around that that's I'm holding myself back from there is no such thing as neurology it really isn't right just one human organism that's right and everyone needs it's a good model that that my my friend Jennifer told me I should put everyone needs a neurologist right that'd be a good tagline everyone needs a neurology yes

cuz everyone has a brain that's right right so anyway so I started thinking about pediatric brain cancer and I have a very dear friend of mine who are supposed to meet today and she lost her son to pediatric it's it's called DIPG which is a brainstem glioma that's adorable they're bald yeah you can't resect out of the pons so I start thinking about you know okay well you know if we can do this for ALS let's think about if we can do this for for for cancer based early but those are very early innings in

terms of thinking out what that means then what happened did you nothing yet you know this is all theoretical at this point I'm just sharing with you where I'm going with this but you you know you take a page from a West so if I as a functional medicine doctor would take a patient they have less I would look at everything because it's a disease of inflammation it's the disease of oxidative stress it's a disease of of often challenges with the gut microbiome right right so I would look at everything maybe heavy metals or overall

a mall maybe there's environmental toxins that are triggering it I really think it's just one thing well I would challenge the guy I think it's probably cost Rydia and okay right right and and so what else do you do for these patients besides you know thinking about this kind of innovative treatment like what are the things that you would do to help well I'm still thinking about how to eliminate cluster to him to be honest with you but but orally until transplants well okay so that was the that's the thing that works you know people

are listening the disease c-diff is a terrible infectious disease cause diarrhea and kills 30,000 people a year most antibiotics are not that effective and even the ones that work are not really fully effective whereas when you when you do a fecal transplant basically taking the poop out of a healthy person and putting some of this disease it literally is like 98% effective on the first try right my concern is that if if these infections are primarily colonized bacteria if it's not see let's say it's c diff NH pylori and you know whatever the bacteria it

is it's fecal transplant may not be the way of addressing c diff in the ileum why because the good bacteria don't they that they're not really good climbers they're not good rock climbers they like hanging out you know where they where they used to hanging out right so you put in a transplant of all this healthy bacterium they like it didn't they're not going up north that they're perfectly comfortable going down south which means that the bad guys may never get a look at the good guys in those patients so I spoke this with of

course you know fmt surgeons because I wanted to ask them this question so there's a lot of data for FM t being looked at right now using oral fmt basically like poop pills poop pills right you know and so I said I asked the question that a good immunologist would ask them right which is okay how do we know if you put a good guy in a bad neighborhood okay they you got it right and you know what the answer was that we've seen exacerbations in our studies of patients with ulcerative colitis when we've tried

to have autoimmune diseases yeah that's right right so in other words this this is complicated stuff it's very complicated yep so yeah I remember I had a patient with MS once years ago and she reported to me you know I think as a doctor your Java says listen carefully not to come in with a bunch of preconceived ideas about what you learned in medical school it's true or not true because often it's not true and the this patient had an incredible exacerbation or worsening of her MS symptoms whenever her gut started to becoming wacky she

started bloating getting distended was uncomfortable and then her MS symptoms would get were right and I was like oh this is not a coincidence right this is important data exactly and I knew if I treat her gut I treat her gut and her MS got better I kind of know what I was doing at the time I just like right you know I don't make people's gut out of a miracle doctor I'm saying like let's try this because it's not gonna hurt you and it could help you so let's see what happens and it's so

striking when you start to apply these foundational principles of restoration of health and balance in the system all sorts of things get better yep and and in a way you're you're resetting the equilibrium through things like hyperthermia and the right treatments right right because at that stage but you use diet your supplements use other lifestyle factors exercise sleep like what what else do you do as a neurologist when you see these complicated patients how all these lines I have a mentor who's now teaching me that so because you know quite frankly I'm I'm in sort

of that model you know of you know kill the disease find the magic bullet and we're done yeah right but I understand a lot of what should be done I can tell you the thing that I'm most interested in as far as neuroprotection like say this yeah if you said to me there's one molecule that you could be king of metagenic sore king of whatever that you would you would promote hey listen up this is important guys one molecule one your life well don't let's not say that either cuz I've been sort of the magic

bullet of course right of course it's Toro deoxycholic acid well that's a big word what is that stuff so you buy it at the G and C or I don't know probably all Mart at this podcast I'm showing not with my label on it by the way but yeah so Tutka is actually something that retains you studying for ALS so let's give you know credit where credit's due and what tadka is is secondary bile acid yeah a bile acids are the things that help you digest fat but they also where all the toxins come out

of your body through your liver right exactly and the other so this is helping you eliminate toxins 100% and the other fancy part of the secondary bile acid is that it's attached to taurine which is my favorite amino acid in neurology whenever i give i FM talks they say what's your top supplement that you recommend tori it's always taurine which is very relaxing for the brain and calms it down right well it affects aquaporin receptors right which affects sleep sleep hygiene is something that i do educate patients on so i don't want to think that

people I'm not totally holding six I am you know but about food - food - yeah I think food is a unlocks only in my own diet I don't know there's any patient trust me talking about it now no I think that the ketogenic diet is a very important organ tation strategy for patients with neurodegenerative disease is a hundred percent so have you used it in patients with these disease month I know because don't forget I've only been in practice now for you know I only have like four patients at this stage in my life

what do you mean weren't you a practicing neurologist forever I was but you know I left and I did other things in my life basically you know Jenna mind and things like that so I'm back clinically really only the last year so I feel like a student again which is kind of cool right to be like a student would you take very difficult case I only take the most difficult cases if you're if you have like you're like the Sherlock Holmes of Neurology right and yeah my my assistants decided on a Sherlock Holmes you know

icon for my website but yeah you like that - yeah you do okay what about dr. Watson dr. Watson okay I like that too sure isn't that it wasn't this last was a sidekick yeah so called the Watson clinics people think I discovered DNA it's perfect or what's on Watson clinics it's great so I think they were we're in a real new era in Neurology and and truthfully I don't want to be sort of you know making light of this conversation as a neurologist look I you know I chose the wrong profession to be honest

because I'm a very sensitive person I take every every person's problems to heart too much so where I've become depressed if when people die with these diseases and that's a depressing place to be because you know I'm blaming myself it's not my fault that they're dying right but I still blame them I blame myself I couldn't fix them correct and so when you say are you you know are you happy now I am you know more than happy mean that I finally feel like I have tools to treat patients with with these kinds of diseases

that will die without without treatments basically so I'm very very optimistic for patients that have these diseases especially not that I don't think they're applicable for all stages of these diseases I think it's much much more difficult to reverse a patient with end-stage Alzheimer's right I mean it's almost like you know it's like I'm sorry someone needs a new heart if their hearts all damaged from a heart attack right it's hard to fix that yeah that's right but but I'm very I'm very optimistic both about you know Dale's work on sort of you know understanding

the risk factors and how to intervene before disease and also what we can do once patients have you know onset of those diseases as well so in in these conditions there there is a way forward and the the hyperthermia concept is fascinating how far we from actually being able to do that in America it's happening in Europe it's happening in Mexico at scale what are the obstacles and opportunities that are had in using hyperthermia and neurology and other conditions in America I think the the obstacles in my opinion are to establish clinical validity for these

conditions like are we doing research on it is it happening in America research is happening yes and and doctors and scientists are starting to look at this yes so how far are we from actually seeing this in the news or as a treatment in America very close very close yeah so if you're listening and you know someone ALS or you know someone with MS or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's they're there there is hope is what you're saying 100% yeah yeah and you know in functional medicine we do we do make a lot of progress but I

think there are things we just don't know and I think this whole connection between the inflammatory pathway is the the microbiome and the brain is uncharted territory that we're now exploring right and there are a lot of ways to intervene including the idea of hyperthermia there's other therapies poop pills maybe you know we have a whole new way of thinking about these conditions and we always have to write you know medicine has to be iterative can't be static so so let's back up a little bit because I don't think people really understand how you get

a leaky brain and what that is and how does that connect to a leaky gut and what are those things right so that conversation earlier today by the way so I'm very fresh up on this concept so leaky gut is both a cause and a consequence of dysbiosis right so choose this over the SIBO which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth which is a full of bad bacteria that are looking to make things worse not only in the gut but also in the bloodstream the despise is basically your your your happy garden in your gut has

been taken over by weeds exact causing right happy that's right and those weeds it's crowding out the good stuff and causing all kinds of problems I and those weeds want to grow and guess what prevents them from growing is the mucosal barrier right so like okay well it's the lining in your gut right so they've basically release you know certain protease enzymes that break down the proteins in our gut so they can actually go into other places looking for their food or if it's a wheat analogy to grow beyond just a good little Pacman I'm

gonna chew up a chewing up all the intestinal lining so you can sneak through and get into the rest of the body that's right that's right that doesn't you know when you got bacteria and nasty proteins in your blood your body's like that and it's right creates what well pretty formation it produce inflammation but also produces disease yeah and I'll tell you missing storage is secondary to the inflammation right right so one of you know one of my interesting stories about about ALS is that they asked me they said this is like a really crazy

hypothesis right that somehow Clostridium is causing ALS I said I realize it's crazy right now but but it won't be crazy for long looks like they got dr. berry from Australia who decided that h pylori was the cause of ulcers I was advised to do the exact same thing I was like I'm sorry I'm not eating right how did he did that h pylori yeah he would I'm sure he would say do not do that but people thought he was crazy because it was like oh this bacteria was around like just like it's around and

Alzheimer's and ALS and people thought it was just a secondary thing it's not the right thing right so they kind of ignored it and they laughed at him when he said just these bacteria are causing ulcers right and he won the Nobel Prize no yeah I'm gonna prove to bye-bye sucker right of these bacteria getting an ulcer curing a mini body and yeah you're right for that he won the Nobel Prize I'm afraid that they won't give me an old prize unless like unless I do for myself okay here's C diff okay yeah I took

that can we speed up Alzheimer's you know whatever else and then then I'll cruise in my bloodstream or CSF whatever biomarker you need to know that I'm infected No thank you no that's a little too risky yeah that's right you can do an animal model you know they're so well they're all animal models that actually show this so I think that's already been established as well that there are animal models that if you give them bacterial infections that you can recapitulate or or we produce if you will the pathological changes that occur in neurodegenerative diseases

so that's where there and how does it how does that connect to the leaky brain right okay so this was like in medical school this was like this is an enviable barrier like nothing gets through except nutrient there's blood brain barrier goes yeah right okay you've got a wall between like you know so if you'll need to understand actually when I lectured I FM I always talked about this to the practitioners is that leaky gut and leaky brain are synonymous they are there they are basically the same anatomical structures that exists both in the brain

you know endothelial cells that barrier it's a barrier right it's and the barrier it has exactly the same types of glial cells that regulate what's going in or not they're sort of the keeper the security guards right saying hey bad bacteria don't go in here so what happens is the bacteria actually are smarter than us quite frankly meaning that I'll tell you how how much smarter they are in us by an anecdote and which is at one of my patients who I present this theory to so why if you think that that that this bacteria

is causing ALS why don't you call the CDC I said good idea so I right she didn't know who I would actually called when she was in the office right I did I called grazie I call the season okay no problem ding ding ding ding you know so I end up speaking to someone there and he was very respectful and he said to me you know I'm gonna take this back to my working group and I'll let you know what they think of your insane hypothesis that that c-diff is closing ALS I said ok great

give me a call back like whenever you whenever you feel like it you know there's no time set for me it's like did he call you you call me back and somebody said he said that the group doesn't feel that c-diff has enough evidence of it being anything other than enteropathy giin I said really that means it only affects her it only affects the gut use all these big words I keep everything translated I said only belongs in the gut yeah I said well how about other cluster DM species do you think those are only

enteropathy genes and he said no I said well guess what neither a seed if it's not only an anthro pathogen and the way that it becomes the way that it moves from the gut into the bloodstream is true leaky gut I say have you seen the leaky gut data I never heard a leaky gut data I'm like ok so let me ask you one last question before I hang up this phone I said do you not believe that other intro pathogens like e.coli can produce meningitis of course they can I go well you're just contradicting

yourself you're saying that at anthro pathogen can't produce meningitis and the same breath you sang oh but of course ecoli is an anthro pathogen that produces meningitis which way do you at the CDC man right I'm some crazy neurologist come on answer that question and of course that was less than it took any of my phone calls true well don't confuse me with the facts right yes it's tough paradigms are tough to break is very very tough you know Billy billions of dollars and decades building up the paradigm turns out to be really falls right

the paradigm of Medicine today which is siloed it's segregated it's not understanding these interconnections and I think we're in this convergence right now it's just super exciting which is the tremendous amount of understanding we're having about systems biology and and what we call network medicine which I also call functional medicine the emergency of our interesting of the omics revolution right that the genomics the metabolomics the proteomics and the microbiome yeah she's blowing a lid off Oliver yeah options disease why artificial intelligence which has enables us to gather all that data we've called big data and

crunch it in ways it makes sense of it where we came and see I mean the average doctor you know you look at your blood work you got 20 xxx of things you look at fine what if I gave you a million data points to look at I'll forget it the doctors not gonna be able to do it but again you're gonna do it and you get quantified self metrics where you can measure things that the body's doing and you put all it together and it's changing the way we're gonna be practicing medicine going forward

and we're gonna be able to sort of make much more rapid evolution of understanding of things like what you're talking about well III agree except that I think AI has double-edged sword because my concern with AI is that if doctors let's say AI comes up with the ideal formula for you know treating every disease let's say it's an AI I need H I - Thank You human in Tel Aviv you may filter right it just gives you stuff to think about Ryan you have to make your decision thank you right yeah 100% agree yeah you

know we don't want computers treating us but we do want them buddy I'll help run CH the data and little patterns that otherwise we can't see all you're talking about is that you've noticed a pattern in the literature that connects bacteria to main our Jennifer Z's in the ice yeah then you're following that trail right and you noticed it but you know a computer Megillah notice it a lot faster than you you just kind of have the luck of the insight right but the truth is that that we can actually start to use computers to

start to look at all this data map it out read every study connect the dots in ways that we just can't you're saying hey I'm a help me confirm that seed if it's the root of of all these times a Lily who like what see we call Watson Watson so it is a really an amazing moment in medicine where scientists and doctors like you are trying to connect the dots about diseases that we're really hopeless and for which we felt helpless and now are hopeful so thank you thank you so thank you you've listened to

the doctors pharmacy this is dr. Mark Hyman and we've been with dr. Jay Lombard you can learn more about his work at dr. Jay Lombard comets dr j lombard LOM VAR d comm you can learn about his practice in Tarrytown New York which I certainly would see him if I had a neurological problem and you can also get his book which is called the mind of God neuroscience faith and search for the soul which we know too much time to talked about but it's a fantastic book that maps out the connections between purpose and meaning

and health which we now know is actually scientifically driving healthy disease in fact there's an article a couple of weeks ago in the journal American Medical Association said that if you had more purpose in your life you live longer who knew purpose is life yes purpose is life so thank you but listening to doctor pharmacy if you love this podcast we'd love to have you leave a comment and hear from you we would also love you to share it on Facebook and social media Instagram with your friends and family and if you subscribe to podcast

please subscribe us podcast list every week and we'll see you next week on the doctors pharmacy [Music] [Applause] hi everyone its dr. Mark Hyman so two quick things number one thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast it really means a lot to me if you love the podcast I really appreciate you sharing with your friends and family second I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called marks picks every week I'm gonna send out a list of a few things that I've been using take my own health to the

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