Episode #157: The Survival Paradox with Dr. Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Why You Should Listen

In this episode, you will learn about “The Survival Paradox: Reversing the Hidden Cause of Aging and Chronic Disease”.

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About My Guest

My guest for this episode is Dr. Isaac Eliaz.  Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc is a recognized expert in the field of integrative medicine, focusing on cancer and complex conditions.  He is a respected clinician, researcher, author, educator, and mind-body practitioner.  Dr. Eliaz partners with leading research institutes, including Harvard, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Columbia to co-author scientific studies on today’s most serious conditions.  He has spent decades studying meditation with an emphasis on healing and deepening the mind-body connection.  Dr. Eliaz is the founder and medical director of Amitabha Medical Clinic & Healing Center in Santa Rosa, California.

Key Takeaways

• How is the body's ability to survive often a major contributor to a state of poor health?
• How can we learn to breathe deeply in the midst of fear, anxiety, and panic?
• How does feeling safe lead to lower levels of oxygen and create an environment for infections and even cancer?
• Can limbic system retraining shift one from a state of survival to a state of harmony?
• What is the "architect of the survival response"?
• Can galectin-3 be tested for with traditional labs?
• What is the role of galectin-3 in the formation of biofilms?
• Can targeting galectin-3 flip the inflammation switch to the off position?
• How does an individual survival focus make us sick?
• How can galectin-3 be reduced with modified citrus pectin (MCP)?
• How might MCP act as a prebiotic and support the microbiome?
• How important is exploring and resolving trauma in order to improve health?
• How might therapeutic apheresis be a tool for reducing galectin-3?
• What is the role of galectin-3 in kidney and liver health?
• Is galectin-3 involved in hypercoagulation or hyperviscosity?
• Does galectin-3 play a role in neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or ALS?
• Can a focus on mental and emotional health improve our detoxification capacity on a physical level?
• Does the body detoxify more efficiently when inflammation is reduced?

Connect With My Guest

https://SurvivalParadox.com 

Interview Date

November 23, 2021

Transcript

Transcript Disclaimer: Transcripts are intended to provide optimized access to information contained in the podcast.  They are not a full replacement for the discussion.  Timestamps are provided to facilitate finding portions of the conversation.  Errors and omissions may be present as the transcript is not created by someone familiar with the topics being discussed.  Please Contact Me with any corrections. 

[00:00:01.11] Welcome to BetterHealthGuy Blogcasts, empowering your better health. And now, here's Scott, your Better Health Guy.

[00:00:13.21] The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or as information to facilitate self-treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health-related decisions with your own personal medical authority.

[00:00:34.14] Scott: Hello everyone, and welcome to episode number 157 of the BetterHealthGuy Blogcasts series. Today's guest is Dr. Isaac Eliaz, and the topic of the show is The Survival Paradox. Dr. Isaac Eliaz is a recognized expert in the field of integrative medicine, focusing on cancer and complex conditions.

He is a respected clinician, researcher, author, educator, and mind-body practitioner. Dr. Eliaz partners with leading research institutes, including Harvard, National Institutes of Health, and Columbia to co-author scientific studies on today's most serious conditions.

He has spent decades studying meditation with an emphasis on healing and deepening the mind-body connection. Dr. Eliaz is the founder and medical director of Amitabha Medical Clinic and Healing Center in Santa Rosa, California. Now, my interview with Dr. Isaac Eliaz.

Dr. Eliaz and I had an earlier discussion in episode 54 nearly four years ago now.  I am super excited today to talk with him about his new book  “The Survival Paradox: Reversing the Hidden Cause of Aging and Chronic Disease” which has already garnered rave reviews from Deepak Chopra, Dr. Josh Axe, and many others. Thanks so much for being here today, Dr. Eliaz.

[00:01:57.10] Dr. Eliaz: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me; it's always such a treat to talk to you.

[00:02:00.27] Scott: You as well. As much as our body's ability to survive is critical, isn't being in a survival mode or surviving at any cost isn't that a major contributor to the poor state of health and the epidemic of chronic illness that many experience today? What is it about this period in time that seems to keep so many of us in this constant survival mode?

[00:02:27.14] Dr. Eliaz: Yes. This is really the survival paradox; the same mechanism that allows us to survive is what really gets us sick. To take a step back, we know in integrative medicine for decades that inflammation drives practically every chronic disease and also detrimental outcomes of acute diseases like the cytokine storm in COVID.

I think that the COVID really brought inflammation to the forefront of conventional medicine. But is really inflammation that cause? Inflammation is really the movement; it's the result. What really drives inflammation is our survival response, and that's really the paradigm shift contribution of the book, which is a result of decades of researching, clinical work in meditation and contemplation.

So what do I mean? The survival paradox is innate within us because it's built within us. Every living being, every cell, wants to survive. So if it's so innate within us, it has to be automated, and it's automated through our autonomic nervous system, which is autonomic; we can't control it. So the sympathetic response responds in second, the sympathetic system, maybe in a fraction of a second, and then it's balanced by the parasympathetic response. But if we are on a sympathetic drive, if we are constantly under stress, under drive, under threat, it will have detrimental effect on our neuroendocrine system, immune system, etc.

The problem is also a biochemical survival response, and this biochemical survival response is driven biochemically, and it's a very big topic for the survival paradox; it's more than just health.

It's driven by our survival protein, galectin-3, and galectin-3 rises very quickly, and I've done a lot of research on this and published some very important papers lately. So what happened? The survival protein doesn't need to have a big effect; it's enough that it goes up by 50%, 25%, and you get an avalanche of cascade of interleukin-6 going up one thousandfold.

So the same thing that started the survival response doesn't turn off, and this practically affects every chronic disease, every acute disease. From cancer to immunity, to biofilm, to infections, to name it, and that's why it's such a big topic.

[00:05:06.24] Scott: So being in then this state of sympathetic dominance, stress hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, they can impact our immune system, they affect our metabolic function. How does that sympathetic dominance drive poor health and what we might call dis-ease?

[00:05:25.11] Dr. Eliaz: It drives us because it puts us into a survival mode. Now our body is built to be in a survival mode, and to do this, we have to produce energy in a much more efficient way because we are in survival.

So we are able to produce energy 100 times faster. We do it by shifting from normal peaceful, balanced mitochondrial function to glycolysis, where we produce energy 100 times faster but at a heavy cost, right? Every glucose produces only two molecules of ATP instead of 36; the end result is lactic acid, hypoxia in the cell that pushes a compound called hypoxia-inducing factor, that blocks, it enhances an enzyme called the PDK, blocks PDH, and we shut down the mitochondria.

So this is a mechanism in stress, that's a mechanism in diabetes, that's a mechanism in inflammatory diseases, that's a mechanism in cancer, even if there is enough oxygen in the body, the Warburg effect.

This mechanism, for example, we'll talk about later, just to kind of get us aware of it; this mechanism of shifting into one being stimulated AMPK being abnormal and these are all the same pathways is very present in Lyme disease.

That's why you can look at certain botanicals like honokiol have a major shift into a sympathetic, through parasympathetic, by moving from glutamate to GABA, and also has an enormous anti-infectious benefits while balancing our metabolic system.

So the body is smart; the body needs to survive at any cost. One thing that is very important, and we'll talk more about it later today, I hope, is we have to appreciate the body wants to survive; the body will always do the best it can at the moment. It may not be the right thing an hour later, a week later, a year later, a generation later.

[00:07:35.10] Scott: You say that when we are faced with something like a cancer diagnosis, that fear, anxiety, and panic, the part of that survival response that those actually feed the cancer, that we need to essentially become that person who, and you say "inhales the smoke from their burning house deeply, while staying calm and positive."

So how do you guide your patients to be able to do this? How do we stay calm and positive, breathing in deeply when the house around us feels like it's burning down?

[00:08:07.12] Dr. Eliaz: So in the book, in The Survival Paradox, where chapter one, I give an example of a woman who survived for many years with metastatic lung cancer. I actually say that it's hard to ask somebody to relax when the house is on fire. So we have to reduce the fire, and that's the value of detoxification, of changing habits.

So transforming the survival paradox is a life journey; it's a life journey that never stops and keeps up unfolding; it's amazing. When we are starting to learn how to transform and actually how to free the survival products, then we have a greater quality of freedom in our life.

We are less bound, we are less constricted, and we'll go into in greater depth into a little bit later. But the result is there's more space; when there's more space, everything moves slower. From a physical point of view, speed is distance divided by time.

When the space becomes bigger, we have a center; everything is moving slower. So things move slower; we can take a deep breath. Things slow down, our metabolic system changes. So now I'm focusing on medically, of course.

But the same thing happened in our mind, and we'll get to it later because you have some great things you brought up before the interview that I really want to elaborate on; I don't want to spoil and touch on it now.

[00:09:40.05] Scott: It's funny that you mentioned taking a deep breath because even just listening to you talking, that's exactly what happened. Even before you said taking a deep breath, I was already as you were talking about creating space; I was already feeling calmer and more centered and grounded. So this is a fun conversation.

You connect a lack of feeling safe to a metabolic shift that changes oxygen levels in the body. I think for many people, in the Lyme and mold and other conditions, that feeling safe in the world, feeling safe in our environment, is something that is really important, that we often don't feel safe.

So I want to talk a little bit more about how does a low oxygen environment create a terrain not only for cancer but for chronic infections like Lyme disease, like coinfections? If we're in that hypoxic or low oxygen state due to not feeling safe, what are some of the tools that we can use that can lead us to feeling safer?

While we're doing that deeper work, can we also benefit from maybe some physical interventions that can address hypoxia while we're learning how to be more parasympathetic, learning how to create more space?

[00:10:55.17] Dr. Eliaz: Yes, I mean, this is the whole healing process you just described. So just for people who are listening or watching, if you hold your breath, and at certain point, you feel like you don't have enough air and you keep holding, you're going to get tired, you're going to feel a real crisis, that's the concept of not being able to take a deep breath.

So one of the issues, for example, when I work with cancer patients, I try to find out what is the reason that they cannot take a deep breath. Because if the cancer patient and the cancer cell, if the cancer cell took a deep breath and had normal oxygen functioning, the glycolysis, aerobic glycolysis will just meltdown, and the cell will turn into a normal cell.

So we have this idea, so when we are under stress, and we're under danger, when you don't feel safe, there are a few things we can do. One is we can fight. So fight is our inflammatory response; now, it's very important to identify each person will have a tendency to go in a certain direction.

So people, for example, have a tendency to fight, the C-reactive protein will be higher, the interleukin will be higher. They are fighting people; they'll have stronger resistance. Then there are people who will run away; they will flee away, right? This is the fear. There are people that hide; how do we hide? We hide one by not acknowledging that there is an issue, kind of pushing it away, and by creating a coating around ourselves, by boxing ourselves.

How do we call it medically? We call it biofilm. So if you look at the Lyme patient and the mold patient, they are often, I don't want to stereotype, but often these are very sweet, kind people who don't have strong boundaries, don't get strong boundaries, they get affected by the outside.

They get affected by allergies; they get affected by mold; they get affected by infectious agents more than other people. Because there are boundaries between their defense system and the outside is not strong enough.

So, for example, if you look at these people, you will see that the C-reactive protein will be low. But the TGF-beta will be very high because they are producing fibrotic markers and not inflammatory markers. In fact, sometimes, our galectin-3 will be abnormally low, and when you treat them, the galectin-3 will come up a little bit to normal.

CRP will come from non-detectable to like 0.3, and TGF-beta will drop. That's when I know that the patient is doing better. From my perspective, I can diagnose a tick-borne disease just by the ratio of these labs many times. So for the mold, for the Lyme people, we need to really be able to melt the biofilm. But to melt the biofilm, we need to be able to deal with what's out there and be able to clean it up.

That's why detox is a profound process that is over, it often is overlooked in the name of different methods and techniques, and we really don't understand what detox is. Detox is the first step in creating a change. When we come to this world, what is the first thing that we do? We take a cry; we inhale, we exhale, right?

We let go, we detox; what is the last thing that we do in this world? We exhale, and we leave our body. Now when you detoxify, you create space because you clear some, and the space allows for nourishment. So really, once you detoxify, you can afford the process of transformation that will eventually bring healing.

So, for example, in the book, you see in the end there are three chapters. Detoxification, which really introduces a model of detoxification in a deeper way, all the details are in the appendix and then healing the scars of survival.

This is really where we shift our survival patterns that; you had some great questions, and I hope we get to touch on them all. Then we can go into transforming and freeing the survival paradox, which is done through our mind, through meditation, through connecting with our heart. So when we can do this, we really can create a change.

So if we look at people who have mold sensitivity or Lyme disease, they have often repeated symptoms, right? They kind of flare-up, they get better, they flare-up. So their being has learned to expect step number two when step number one happens. They create a certain pattern that they repeat. For example, they have a certain symptom.

The patient will associate it to something happening to them; I just had a mold exposure, now I'm going to get the next symptom, and then it goes. We need to change these habits; we need to mail them away. This is really part of changing the survival response, transforming the survival paradox. Once we connect to it in the most authentic way, then we tap into our infinite healing potential. We do have infinite healing potential.

One of my most, the sentence I like to say, my one of my favorite ones when I teach meditation and healing, is not everyone is going to be a miracle, but anyone can be a miracle. I see it very dramatically with patients with mold, with severe mold sensitivity; when you are able to really reduce their burden and create an opening for them, they can really shift.

[00:16:59.21] Scott: I love in the book how you go into detail about a lot of these tools we can use in this realm meditation, breathwork, acupuncture, osteopathic work or cranial work, even using sound and visualization and tools like that.

I want to talk a little bit about the limbic system, and so in my mind, the limbic system is the safety center, the alarm switch in the brain that really is looking for is the environment around us safe? When we have limbic system impairment, I think of that then as having a hyper-vigilant alarm center that is constantly raising an unnecessary red flag, constantly raising this unnecessary alarm.

So I'm wondering if you have used tools like Annie Hopper's DNRS or Ashok Gupta's the Gupta Program. Have you found those helpful in being able to make that shift out of survival and into what you term harmony?

[00:17:58.23] Dr. Eliaz: So what you are describing is exactly the survival paradox. Where we get caught in a certain pattern of survival. In my book, I share my own story. I'm named after my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor. He fled with my grandmother and my mother which was four years old; he died from stomach cancer at age 50, I think in 1952.

When my grandmother, who was the only survivor, died at age 98, in early 2000s, on her grave, my mother suddenly said, you know if he was buried next to my grandfather, my mother said your grandfather had eight siblings, five of them were killed by Hitler. This was never mentioned to us, never mentioned, because this was like put aside.

This is what he carried; he couldn't digest it in his stomach. I'm named after him; I'm the first child, the first one in the next generation of Holocaust survivor. Since a very early age, despite doing much martial arts and being a yoga teacher, I always had pressure in my middle of my chest.

When I would touch, I mean you can see if I stood up, you'll see like right here, it would always be extremely tender. I knew that there is a deeper meaning with it. Through my work, through my meditation works on my healing through the transformation of patterns, I was able to connect with the Holocaust trauma that I was carrying from my grandfather through epigenetics and genetics. A few years ago, when I really released it, it's gone. If you look, my chest is open now like it has never been in my life; this is Scott; 60 years later, I had scoliosis, it totally opened.

But the amazing thing when I transformed it, my mother, who could never watch TV programs about the Holocaust, was able to suddenly watch programs without me mentioning to her what I went through. These are the multi-generational healing.

So the limbic system is one aspect of it, and these systems, I mean Bruce Ecker, has a remarkable neuropsychological system called Memory Reconsolidation where you really change your memory patterns. In integrative medicine, it's about healing the scars of survival.

So we heal them psychologically, we heal them mentally, we heal them emotionally, and we heal them physically. So, for example, neural therapy, Dr. Klinghardt really brought into this country; it's an amazing system. So I use it with homeopathic, with acupuncture, with healing, with my bigger package. But practically, every patient that you inject a scar can be 20 years old, 30, 40, 50 years-old scar, the scar with procaine, 45 minutes of numbness, and it's gone. With some homeopathetic, but honestly, it's probably not a must. The scar always gets smaller. Sometimes by 10%, sometimes by 60, 70%. But what's most amazing, it never comes back.

Whatever you reduced, stay reduced. How is this possible? So yes, people talk about membrane potential; they're getting lost in the biochemistry. Basically, you are cutting the input from the tissue to the limbic system, to the brain. The narrow pathway that tells the body contract, there is a trauma is numbed, and the body regroups in a different way. So psychologically, it can be called memory reconsolidation, many systems.

So we have to recognize, in the book, I go over in-depth into it. So from my perspective, it's very exciting that there are these systems which are based on people with their own healing experience, and it deserves a word of warning, okay. When somebody makes a system based on their own experience, it's always limited to their own experience.

So if it didn't work for you, it doesn't mean that the approach doesn't work. So working with the mind is like entering into a space that is boundless, boundless in time, and boundless in space. I'm saying it as somebody who was trained by the greatest Buddhist masters in the Himalayas, who was their doctor, who spent ten years during half-day retreat, 20 years two months a year of retreat, and continues to study and practice every day and teaches meditation and healing.

So right now, this whole approach of reprogramming the limbic system is very important. Why is it relevant now, Scott? Because we are under constant state of stress. So part of the melting of our fixation of our habits is melting our isolation, melting our biofilm, and what drives the biofilm, the skeleton of the biofilm is galectin-3.

Because it creates pentamers, into these pentamers you get all the inflammatory compounds, all the liposaccharides, all the oxidized glycolipids, glycoprotein, heavy metals, oxidized lipids, and they create this isolation, this microenvironment where mycotoxins can stay, neurotoxins can hide, Lyme spores can hide, viruses can hide, because everyone wants to survive.

We want to survive, and the spirochete wants to survive. So when we melt this isolation, we give an opportunity for things to change. That's why for example, a very common feedback from Lyme patient to take a Pectasol, my modified citrus pectin, says, wow, we actually feel better when we are doing it. Why? Because we are melting this isolation, we're not getting the regular reactions.

So yes, it's an amazing journey where inflammation is just a symptom. Inflammation is the movement; inflammation is a kinetic energy. The survival response is really what drives it, and the big question is where does the survival response come from.

[00:24:33.11] Scott: So let's dig into that more, let's talk more about galectin-3 then. So in the book, you say the architect of the survival response is galectin-3.

We talked about that in our prior interview as well, so how does this survival protein lead to contraction, to isolation, and to disease? Can we think of galectin-3 as a measure of the state of our alarm system or how hyper-vigilant our system is?

[00:25:01.19] Dr. Eliaz: Yes. So galectin-3 is our survival protein. It's a molecule that starts the survival response, that embryonically it will help to generate normal cells, and during our life, it helps us to repair injuries and survive through inflammation and fibrosis. So if you look at the role, so now we know that galectin-3 is a causative factor.

We knew it's a causative factor in the early-mid 90s when blocking it with modified citrus pectin affected cancer spread in animal models. Then, it got a lot of interest as a diagnostic, then I made some important discoveries about its role in inflammation of fibrosis and blocking it. Now it's clearly a causative factor with a slew of major papers.

So what happens? If you look at galectin-3, it's involved practically. It's got in every disease. If you look every organ, but interesting enough, putting aside cancer, autoimmunity, it is a big role in infections, in sepsis. I just published two landmark papers with a large group of investigators, one of them considered the number one expert, ranked expert in the world in sepsis AKI from a critical care point of view, John Kellum.

We showed that when patients come to the intensive care unit with sepsis, with no pre-existing conditions. So no kidney disease, no heart disease, no cancer. The level of galectin-3 at time of admission will determine who later on will get acute kidney injury and who will die. When we took the most acceptable animal model, which is called rat CLP cecal ligation puncture.

We had over 60% mortality during the process, but when we gave them the MCP a week before, we couldn't give it after. The mortality went down to 20%, the rise in interleukin-6 was completely attenuated. We showed the same thing in another AKI model with perfusion injury. Like you don't get enough blood, and then the blood comes back.

Very much will happen right when you don't breathe, when there is no oxygen, even for a short time. So there are some amazing studies now showing animal studies, for example, that if you create an injury in the kidney, galectin-3 goes up. It travels to the heart, and it will create heart fibrosis, damage to the heart muscle. If you use mice that don't produce galectin-3, it will not happen, or you block it without MCP.

But when you take such a mice, we cannot produce galectin-3, and you inject bone marrow, just bone marrow, who can produce galectin-3. The injury in the kidneys will send a message to the bone marrow. The galectin-3 will then travel to the heart and cause heart damage, and that's the kidney heart relationship that so many people die from.

So in COVID, 40 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID have AKI, 50% of them will die. So galectin-3 is the driver. If you asked me and it wasn't the same thing 15-20 years ago. What is the most important supplement everybody needs to take every day of their life? I will tell you with no doubt, not because I'm involved with it, modified citrus pectin.

Because galectin-3 drives aging and drive chronic disease and drives this imbalanced cytokinesis storm. Addressing it if you have symptoms and you don't have symptoms is of huge importance.

[00:28:52.00] Scott: So if we wanted to look at our level of galectin-3. Are the existing tests that you can get through, let's say, LabCorp, for example, are they sensitive enough? Is there a certain range, not necessarily out of range, but a more optimal range for supporting health?

[00:29:12.06] Dr. Eliaz: This is a great; I can't tell you how good is this question. Because the normal levels from LabCorp are based on a study on congestive heart failure. Where abnormal is either above 17.8 or above 22.

When somebody has a galectin-3 of 17.8, you are really worried. So as someone who probably tested more galectin-3 than anyone, I'm less relying on galectin-3 for my recommendation. The reason is, first of all, they are different between the different platforms; if it's still a manual platform or an automated platform, you get different levels.

I know it from my experience. But also, because of the different expressions of MMP-9 of metalloproteinases, some people have more pentamers, and some people have more monomers. Now the galectin-3 antibodies M3/38 that reads Galectin-3 level will read one if there are five of them or one of them. So you can have more monomers, you'll get a higher number of galectin-3. But actually, it's not that you have more.

Sorry, you'll get a lower number because five of them are already as one. So really, who should address galectin-3? Everyone. Now, when would you look at galectin-3? One, if you find elevated galectin-3 with no explanation, you've got to look for a fibrotic or inflammatory process. Two, when you find that a patient's symptoms relate to changes in galectin-3. Let's say cancer metastasizes more, galectin-3 goes up.

They get better, galectin-3 goes down, then you can follow up on it. Three, from a balancing act. When you look at galectin-3 in relationship to CRP, to TGF-beta. But basically, addressing galectin-3 is essential because it's really our starting molecule, our starting signal for so many diseases. It's true; undressing galectin-3 is a true act of supporting longevity.

[00:31:18.23] Scott: So does reduction of galectin-3 through the use of modified citrus pectin, does that commonly lead to a decline in TGF-beta 1 as well?

[00:31:31.15] Dr. Eliaz: Oh yes, absolutely. In fact, sometimes, you will not see a reduction in galectin-3 because galectin-3 is not eliminated; it is just blocked by modified perspective. So it cannot act, the pentamer gets broken down, and you will see a reduction in TGF-beta, definitely.

[00:31:51.01] Scott: So if we talk more about these chronic infections, you talk about isolation formations where galectin-3 creates these microenvironments, the pathogens then can hijack galectin-3 to create a shield that allows them to then evade other therapeutic agents or interventions or supplements or antimicrobials. So is this different from a biofilm, and is it the case that galectin-3 is actually playing a role in the formation of the biofilm?

[00:32:22.15] Dr. Eliaz: No, galectin-3 plays a critical role in the formation of biofilm, and we know it. We know that the bacteria uses galectin-3 to create a biofilm especially aggressive bacteria, and attach to the intestinal wall. For example, we know that modified citrus pectin enhances antibiotic cephalosporin; it helps to fight infections, it's a prebiotic.

So definitely, galectin-3 is the backbone of the biofilm. We pay attention to different compounds, but it's really like the bus that takes different compounds and brings them to different places.

But through the pentamer structure that we know, we know the structures through five of them are touching through ligands and creating this shield, the galectin-3 can create a microenvironment that allows a bacteria to survive. COVID is a phenomenal example.

Unfortunately, I wrote when the COVID started, and I told people you got to take modifies citrus pectin because it will regulate the cytokine storm, which has been my research for decades. But remember the concept of the survival protein, well guess what? The spiking protein of the COVID who also wants to survive is practically identical to galectin-3, the n-terminal. Where do we have the highest density of galectin-3 receptors in the body? In our lungs.

So when you use something like modified citrus pectin, you are reducing the inflammatory response of infections such as COVID. You can also neutralize the spiking protein in general, and then we try to get clinical trials, we're not able because, you know, pharma controls this field. But a very important paper from Mexico City, from a colleague of mine, that we did some research in Harvard when she was there. We published some papers.

She took a significant number of patients who came to the ER with COVID, and regardless of this of the lung involvement of how sick they were when they came, the level of galectin-3 at time of admission determines the severity of the patient who will go to the ICU and who will die, same thing.

So we have to remember we are not the only ones who want to survive. COVID want to survive, our microbiome wants to survive, and that's the balance between harmony and fighting that's transforming the survival paradox. That's the value of the microbiome, looking at it from a point of view of interdependent relationship, between all the habitats of the microbiome, some say up to 100 trillion and our body and ourselves.

There is a mutual support; there's a mutual in Hebrew we say … mutual guarantee. This happens, so it's very important in line you know my approach. If somebody has acute Lyme, first, I will use antibiotics. But for chronic Lyme, the last thing I want to hear is that a patient got antibiotic therapy because you have put them in a defensive survival mode.

These patients are very hard to heal. When I talk about Lyme, I talk about completely healing, like going back to life. Because if you didn't disrupt the whole balance, you have a chance to get to harmony. It's not that antibiotics won't help chronic patients, but they won't really completely heal you. See, they get better, and then they relapse. The real healers are the ones who really didn't get antibiotics for too long.

So this is a very important understanding, and we have to understand our defense mechanism, our boundaries that we talked about, and the relationship within our body and without our body, and I want to explain one word on this.

We tend to overlook the fact that we have; I don't know why they say 37.5 let's round to 50, 50 trillion cells in our body. It's got 50 trillion, thousand times thousand times thousand times fifty. Each cell has, I didn't know it, you know how many reactions a cell has every second? Okay, between hundreds and thousands and one million reactions a second, can you imagine?

So you got 50 trillion, with one million reactions a second, and the body works together. Because the cell knows it has its role, it comes into life, it functions, and then it lets go, right?

Yet, at the same time, every cell has a boundary; every cell has a membrane; they decide what goes in and what goes out. I'm going to expand on it; it's very important with every disease, with a little bit of time, the mind and philosophy and spirituality and physiology and health.

So within this, when a cell decides that it doesn't want to die, it goes into a survival mode. It says, well, how am I going to not die? I'm going to get a message to die from the outside. I'll create a microenvironment, and I will create my own colony and give myself my own blood supply. And the toxic environment, how do we call it? We call it cancer.

Or it goes and attacks a distant organ; we call it autoimmune disease, which you are right; it's triggered by infections, by toxins, by abnormal survival response. So in this sense, every organ, if you look at our body down to the cell, every cell wants to survive. The cell takes nourishment, and let's go of what it doesn't want; that's detoxification and nourishment.

In the changes in the membrane, you have transformation. The only organ that functions differently is our heart. The survival of the heart requires for the heart to take everything that everyone didn't want, all the byproducts, all the suffering, all the negativity from the cell that they don't want, the heart takes. It connects to the universe with the breath, and the heart gives it without discrimination.

What so I mean without discrimination? The aorta is a stiff artery; it gives blood everywhere. Who does the heart nourish first? The heart first nourishes itself through the coronary arteries. So the heart nourishes itself in order to nourish others and this part of nourishing others. That's the transformative role of the heart. The reason why I want to plug it in this moment because this takes the work with the limbic system to another level.

Because when you work with changing habits and mental habits, which is very useful, we look at the movement of mindfulness. Mindfulness is extremely beneficial because everybody is rushing, but mindfulness is a system of effort; there is somebody mindful of something, and every effort has a limitation. The heart flows with no limitations.

So it's really the movement from mindfulness to heartfulness that allows us the true transformation, the true freedom, and that's taking meditation to another level that is not easy to come by. From this point of view, mindfulness is really create a great basis for this, and that's what we do during my retreats when I work with people.

You can see cancer markers getting better; you can see traumas going away. You can see epigenetic effects melting your way because everything changes all the time; that's really the amazing journey of healing.

[00:40:17.23] Scott: One of my goals in doing this podcast is to give people hope, and so just kind of predicting how some people might interpret your comments about antibiotics, making it more difficult to recover from chronic Lyme. I think what you're saying is if that's the sole focus of your treatment, then the chances are you will ultimately relapse.

But if you then start to incorporate a lot of the tools that we're talking about in this conversation, look at things more holistically. I don't think you're suggesting that because someone did antibiotics that they cannot recover, correct?

[00:40:51.16] Dr. Eliaz: Absolutely not. I don't think I ever told you my tick-borne disease story. I mean, I can mention it, because it kind of, so when I decided to come to California to study Chinese medicine in 1988, I came to check Chinese medicine school, and we went to Clearlake the day before I flew back with some friends.

I've never been in Clearlake since; I think the next morning, I said, hey, I want to meditate for an hour outside. Then when I got on the plane, I had stiff neck. When I landed in Israel, I had 40 fever, 104. My liver enzymes were at the thousands, close to ten thousand.

Luckily, one of my mentors in medical school, an amazing internist. They had a nurse in the ICU with a Rickettsia disease. They actually took a drop of my blood, and they did, exactly did what you call like darkfield microscopy that you do whole, no, you actually do it in medicine also, and they recognize a rare Rickettsia called Rickettsia conorii.

Nobody in the 88; wasn't documented. Of course, Lyme was around; nobody knew. I bet you had all the other diseases. Luckily for me, doxycycline for two weeks didn't work. So they gave me Synthomycin, Chloramphenicol, which can suppress the bone marrow. It's not used anymore. It's illegal; for two more weeks, and I think these four weeks saved me.

I remember I was so sick, not getting better, people thought, what my god? Then one of my students called me said Isaac, where's your mind? I remember I just sat, and I said a switch, and I snapped out of it. It took me 15 years that whenever I was stressed in a survival mode, I would get Scott this thirst, where I could drink a gallon of water, and it won't be enough, and flushing and could fill the liver, and it healed.

So absolutely, we always have choices no matter what we have done. We just have to allow ourselves to explore different venues in a discriminative way, but without bias, without a preconceived idea. Because preconceived ideas are limiting, and limitations is part of the survival response, it's part of having an opinion.

[00:43:23.21] Scott: So we've talked about chronic illness that it has a chronic inflammatory component, in some cases, that can be driven from pathogens; in others, it can be environmental toxicants that are all protected in these biofilms.

So they can continue to stimulate the immune system so that inflammatory switch never switches off. Even at low levels, that can continue to keep that inflammation kind of primed. There are people now that are using SPMs or pro-resolving mediators as well.

So I'm wondering if targeting the reduction of galectin-3 can that lead to flipping that inflammatory switch to the off position? Where do things like SPMs fit into the conversation?

[00:44:07.03] Dr. Eliaz: Yes, absolutely. The thing is that inflammation is really what drives aging, in this micro-inflammation. This subclinical inflammation, it's really the culprit, and it's definitely driven by galectin-3. So integrating it into other methods is extremely important. This also ties into the whole idea of EMFs, the ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.

Some scientists will say we can't prove a direct damage, well, it's not about the direct, immediate damage; it's about the ongoing slow cooking of the membranes, of the extracellular metrics, you know it is so important.

So in order for the cell to get better, the extracellular matrix is to change, the macrophages to turn away from being inflammatory. Galectin-3 drives M2/M1 inflammatory macrophage. Inflammatory macrophage will excrete galectin-3.

So whatever is your regimen, if it's antibiotics, if it's different supplements, if it's emotional work, if you address galectin-3, you will always get better results. Because you're allowing the medicine to get to the places where it's not getting, and you're moving the tissue from a survival response to a relaxed response that is more efficient, that is more regenerate.

Usually, there is synergism between MCP and pretty much everything. Because what it does, it allows the body to address what's needed to be addressed, and we also look into the process of detoxification.

So it allows it to be addressed on the biochemical, physiological, structural way, and then with our mind, with our intention, we allow it to be addressed with what we want to change. That's very important in the preparatory phase of detoxification.

[00:46:07.13] Scott: So you brought up the EMF piece; I wonder is there a connection between electromagnetic field exposure, and the level of galectin-3. Does that potentially lead to a rise in galectin-3? Is it possible that reducing galectin-3 then might make some people less sensitive to EMF exposure?

[00:46:27.13] Dr. Eliaz: It's especially important for reducing the side effects and probably also for the reduction of exposure. The reason is that the results of all this micro-inflammation is fibrosis dysfunction, no oxygen, tissue gets inflamed, and galectin-3 drives fibrotic.

It's a profibrotic agent, so absolutely. So, for example, I developed a product called Cellular Shield specifically for EMFs, but initially, I developed it is because I'm flying a lot. People are not aware that the most powerful radiation is cosmic radiation in the planes.

So I created it as a preparation so in order to reduce oxidative stress. So yes, when you take galectin-3, you reduce the abnormal metabolic pathways that are being disrupted by EMF. Then intracellularly, you can help through dietary changes, like through a low glycemic index, through promoting autophagy and cleanup; that's the value of intermittent fasting, through a metformin or honokiol or berberine.

Honokiol is the king of them because it can differentiate a normal cell from an abnormal cell based on p53, and it can behave differently. So absolutely, we have the intracellular effects, and we have the greater environmental effect outside the cell where galectin-3 is driving it and modifies it respecting health. Yes, so the answer is yes.

EMF, yes, the EMF, not just the EMF; it's just the speed of reactivity that we are required to really live in. If we don't answer a text in 20 seconds, somebody gets upset. I remember when I used to go to retreats like I didn't have in the smartphone until 2010, and it was sure a mistake to get one.

But I would go and retreat for eight weeks, and I would have like a satellite phone, and I would go to the top of the mountain every three weeks and turn it on and make one phone call, and if there were any patient issues, then I'll go back for three weeks. Now, I mean no way I can do it, I mean.

[00:48:41.17] Scott: How does an individual survival focus potentially make us sick? Why is it important to create greater social connection and to create community? How do you suggest building connection and community in a world that doesn't always make that so easy?

[00:48:59.07] Dr. Eliaz: Wow, you know, one day, I was working in our field. We live out of town, and my older daughter, who is an ordained Buddhist Lama, we were talking about the conflict in the middle east. She was telling me, daddy, until every Jewish Israeli won't feel the pain that the Palestinians have, and until the Palestinians don't feel the pain that the Jewish people have, we won't have peace.

So it's really about this ability to understand that we are a community, we're interdependent. So, Scott, we're talking about the biofilm today; we talked about the cells, but let's talk about ourselves. So when I teach, for decades, I've been teaching a diagram that looks at the time, time from the past coming to now, what we have done in the past even in this lifelike trauma, like limbic pattern.

Also a little bit harder to understand, time from the future coming backward. But what happens, we are, what we experience now is a combination of our genetic makeup and our epigenetic makeup. There's a beautiful saying, the Talmudic saying in Hebrews, it says ….. which means everything is predetermined, but we have the choice.

The predetermined is a genetics; the choice is the epigenetics. So if we look at ourselves and let's say every generation is every 25 years, and we go back 1500 years, we get to an infinite number. So infinite number of genetic information made us, each of us.

There is not the theoretical mathematical possibility that each person living on this earth, at some point in the past, had a mutual parent, sibling, relative; it's impossible; it's infinite numbers. So we all have this interdependence. We realize it when we have less of a self-focus. Then the survival, individual survival, start to melt.

Survival still exists, but now it becomes survival of the community, a little bit bigger. But then, within the community, we still have to listen to each other, right? Like the United States right now, the world is so divisive, so much in the right, left, vaccine, no vaccine, there is no dialogue, no tolerance. Why there's no tolerance?

Because each person is reacting from a survival place. So when you do, for example, with mindfulness, you slow down, and you make the survival response be different, more tolerant. With limbic training, you get the same. But the real level of transformation and when you realize everything is free, everything is free, everything is changeable.

Nothing is permanent; that's the only truth we have, that everything changes. When we tap into this, which is not easy, that's when true transformation happens. Part of it, yes, is a mutual respect, mutual support, open heart; it's the most powerful healing tool. You know what? It's within each of us because all of us have a heart.

So physiologically, the heart knows how to do it. Because we physiologically can do it, it's much easier to learn to connect with our heart than to change, for example, mind meditation techniques; why? Because our heart is already doing it physiologically, we just step into the movement of transformation from dirty blood into clean blood, through connection with the universe, and we put the emotional, psychological cycle, spiritual understanding.

Then tolerance, love, and compassion become our responsiveness; instead of anger, struggle, fight, that becomes our reactivity. The difference between responsiveness to reactivity.

[00:53:06.13] Scott: Wow, that's a lot.

[00:53:08.12] Dr. Eliaz: I know.

[00:53:10.07] Scott: Good stuff.

[00:53:11.26] Dr. Eliaz: Well, when I read the topics, you were talking about, wow, I mean, there's a lot. 

[00:53:15.21] Scott: Let's talk just for a minute, coming back to the conversation around aerobic metabolism versus anaerobic metabolism or glycolysis.

You mentioned that it can lead to lactic acid, that impacts our mitochondria which is the key to essentially energy production for everything in the body can be at the root of many chronic diseases. How do we get the body out of anaerobic glycolysis and back to aerobic metabolism?

[00:53:42.13] Dr. Eliaz: So a lot of what we talked about, we have to take a deep breath. So a deep breath from a nervous shifting to a parasympathetic place. So let's talk for a moment about it, and then I'll get to the stuff that you want to know more about metabolically.

So it's hard for us to recognize the space between thoughts because one thought leads to another thought, a reaction to reaction. But what is easier for us is to recognize that after we exhale passively, there is a small gap before we inhale.

So when we meditate, when we try to pay attention, and we breathe deep, we want to pay attention to the exhalation, and can you know, we let go. Then this small gap between the exhalation and inhalation, we just rest, and our being expands.

When we do this, when we create space and people can feel it, people with chronic fatigue, with fibromyalgia, suddenly there is space in the tissue. When there is space in the tissues, there's no pain. Pain is an alarm that something is going on. So that's the value of creating the space. So the same thing happened in the cell.

When our mitochondria is functioning normally, when we have the right nutrients, PDH needs thiamine and lipoic acid. When we are not driven by too much sugars, which is really what is sugar? You eat it, and you get a spike; it's an immediate reactivity of energy.

When things don't go up and down, insulin that doesn't get messed up and cortisol, there is more sense of spaciousness, the body is timed to produce energy in an efficient way. The antioxidative systems can clean the oxidative stress; glutathione is working properly. When we get into a place of stress, of glycolysis, that's when things get messed up.

That's the value what you asked about autophagy, The intermittent fasting gives the body a break to take a rest and clean up the mess, and that's why intermittent fasting is such value, and there are so many different protocols.

Some people do it every day, some people they can do like a day, two weeks, many do it longer, because you got to drain your glycogen reserves, so you start creating some changes. It is as fundamentally different from ketogenic diet, so it's important to understand.

[00:56:19.12] Scott: So let's talk a little bit more about modified citrus pectin. If we know that galectin-3 is unhealthy, and we're looking to block galectin-3's expression with something like modified citrus pectin.

The difference between regular pectin as I understand it is it doesn't necessarily get absorbed into the bloodstream at all, where the modified citrus pectin does get absorbed and has more of a systemic effect. So I'm wondering, is there any potential benefit in the future to having a liposomal modified citrus pectin?

[00:56:53.06] Dr. Eliaz: No, not really because it's a carbohydrate. So it gets very well absorbed, it's not lipid-soluble, it's water-soluble, so actually, it will probably interfere. You don't want it to just penetrating into cells. What we have shown with our modified citrus pectin is that it does get absorbed into the blood.

We actually used fluorescent antibodies to the specific molecules and were able to show, and we know that half-life is about eight to ten hours, maybe 12 even. So there is no need to, and we know there is lasting effect, for example, from the animal, from the animal studies that even giving it before the injury, it affected the outcome of sepsis.

So yes, it's really now on our modified citrus pectin. I think over 75 published papers. We just got accepted in any day; I think even, I expect in the next few days will be published in Nutrient, which is one of the better nutritional peer-review journals almost impact factor 7 I think.

I'm the last author of a multiple center trial in the effect of our MCP in recurrent prostate cancer with phenomenal results; people will see it in the literature.

[00:58:18.23] Scott: Is there, when we're using MCP, I don't really think of it as much of a binder as having a lot of these other properties that you talk about. I know with more traditional binders like charcoal, people say you need to keep it a couple of hours away from food and away from supplements, and medications, and so on.

So, how forgiving can we be with MCP? Can we just throw it in a smoothie? Can we take it with other things, or do we need to separate it in a protocol?

[00:58:44.27] Dr. Eliaz: You can be completely forgiving. It's my assumption before I did the studies on absorption that I thought it can be separated. It does not need to be separated; we are changing our whole strategy formally.

Even before I say 10-15 minutes before food, it's a very powerful binder of heavy metals, it can attach to lead like nothing else, and mercury and uranium, I mean, we've published all of this. We've seen increased excretion in the urine.

So you got something which is the proven, published, not too many of them, heavy metal chelator, which at the same time reduces inflammation and the abnormal immune response that is created by all of these toxins. That's why it's such a mega compound to be used with other substances, definitely.

[00:59:40.04] Scott: I was interested earlier as well when you talked about MCP also as a prebiotic, that it also potentially can help support the microbiome, support the beneficial bacteria in our gut. If I understood correctly, that MCP might itself have some antimicrobial properties.

So when we're in this realm of Lyme and chronic infections, and potentially a damaged microbiome from prior antibiotics and so on. Talk to us just a little bit more about how MCP might support the microbiome, but also might help with some of these chronic infections.

[01:00:18.07] Dr. Eliaz: Yes. So MCP, I think we have five or six papers, most of them with the USDA, is showing the prebiotic equalities of MCP how it helps to regulate the microbiome, it promotes the growth of healthy bacteria, and it inhibits the growth of abnormal bacteria like stuff arrows for example.

How? By melting the biofilm, by not allowing the bacteria to hide. The body has a lot of healing capacity; you know, in the book, there are dozens of stories of amazing patients how they healed. But the body needs to have the chance to heal, and if the bacteria can hide and create its own microenvironment, then it's how to really get to it.

So what the MCP does, it exposes the bacteria, and then it can enhance the immune response. One of the thing with galectin-3 is that galectin-3 will suppress, so galectin-3 will cause T-cell mortality, apoptosis. Into a normal cytokine will go down, and it will inhibit the transformation of a B-cell to a plasma cell, so we can produce antibodies.

So, for example, I have some cases of people, let's say post-vaccine, post side effect of vaccine, where significant side effects and no antibodies, zero. Then I get to treat them, MCP is a leading compound, and they get better. Six months later, they just came like six months later; they show up with antibodies against COVID. Six months later, after not having it, why?

Because we reduce the inflammation, and we allow the B-cells to really turn into plasma cells and produce antibodies. So that's the beauty of harmony, of harmonizing and modulating the immune response. We know, for example, in cancer, that if galectin-3 levels are elevated, PD-L1 inhibitors will not work in a non-small cell lung cancer; they will not respond.

It's well known, Merck knows it you know; it doesn't respond; there are amazing graphs; you see there is no response, tumor will come keeps on growing. So why? Because the tumor creates a microenvironment, it escapes, and it uses galectin-3 to evade the immune system.

That's why it's really, galectin-3 is really quite the ingredient; nobody expected it. I collaborate with Avraham Raz, which really is the father of MCP and in lectins from the late 80s. We published a very important paper together.

When we talk, we say no; nobody expected this to be so big. Until suddenly, I had this sense of inflammation and fibrosis. I realized, wow, it's much bigger than cancer, it's really driving this process, and then it crystallized into this idea of being the survival protein.

[01:03:26.23] Scott: You've talked about the role of galectin-3 in cancer, so we understand that modified citrus pectin could be a good adjunct in cancer therapy. I want to shift though a little bit into how commonly do you see emotional trauma as a contributor to cancer and how important in your work with your patients is exploring and releasing past traumas in order to improve or potentially move past the cancer condition completely?

[01:03:53.26] Dr. Eliaz: It's extremely important, it's well published, you know a lot of the work on mind, body, cancer was done by a dear friend of mine. Lorenzo Cohen from MD Anderson, who's a brilliant guy and also very spiritual capacity.

Because when we work on our emotions, when we work on our traumas, we shift this survival response, and cancer is the classical survival response. There are so many studies really show it. So addressing the emotional part, the psychological part, is very important. It's not always easy, and it's not always what we think it is.

That's part of allowing whatever is there to arise. When I talk about meditation, one of my favorite saying is meditation is not what we experience, is our relationship with what we experience. So whatever arises for us, whatever emotion, how we react to the emotion, that's where the survival response is abnormal, and that's what needs to really be shifted.

One of the issues, part of this the oncology system is that it's so driven by crisis management, by really by heightened survival for good reasons, that it's not easy to really shift. And in the book, the chapter on cancer, because what I do is the largest chapter from the conditions, I tell some really amazing stories about patient.

It's really how they overcame and change the outcome and how they transformed emotionally, mentally, and healed. Some people can heal, and the disease goes away, and some people heal, and they still die, but they still heal. We all die one day, and that's why the healing journey is an amazing journey.

[01:05:54.24] Scott: Another tool for reducing galectin-3 is one that you and I took a personal journey through together many years ago, that is apheresis. I believe you were the first person doing that in the United States.

So I'm interested in having you share a little bit about how apheresis is a health-supporting tool. Then how has it advanced or evolved since we work together about eight years ago?

[01:06:19.04] Dr. Eliaz: So therapeutic apheresis is a fascinating, powerful, underused tool. Where we take the blood, it's similar to dialysis, but a little bit fancier, very safe. We separate the cells from the plasma, and we filter the plasma. In the United States, the devices use them are LDL apheresis, for taking out inflammatory lipids. LDL, lipoprotein A, which is very important, C-reactive proteins, some fibrinogen, and many of the growth factors like TGF beta, VEGF are being removed. Only a little bit of galectin-3, 10-15%. What we do in our process, so it's really something I specialize in, and in a unique way. So during the process, we enhance the detoxification process during the apheresis.

On a research basis, I'm actually working on developing a column for just removing galectin-3, just galectin-3, a few micrograms. You can't even see, and we know from our studies, it shifts the outcome because you block the inflammatory process from the beginning in a dramatic way.

So the beauty of apheresis, and it kind of relates to what we talked about, is that we take our blood, and for a determined amount of time, it can be hours, days, our blood is the way it used to be when we were like teenagers, totally cleaned, totally in you.

What it allows a little bit similar like the limbic system; it allows us to regroup, it allows us to reorganize in a different way. So I'm finding it more and more beneficial, specifically, Scott, for mold exposure. Where you just, people just cannot get rid of it but mold it's sticky, now it's flame, it's lipid-soluble. The apheresis just pulls out the mold toxins in a very significant way. So people with mold exposure, it's not always, but sometimes, it's truly dramatic, truly dramatic.

[01:08:27.18] Scott: With the caveat being, of course, that people still need to address the source of their mold in their water damage building, right?

[01:08:34.24] Dr. Eliaz: Of course.

[01:08:36.09] Scott: We're always looking for the workaround there.

[01:08:38.29] Dr. Eliaz: Absolutely. So that's the idea, we give them a chance to address it because they really get a window when they don't have to fight this enormous amount of toxicity, and then they get a chance to recalibrate.

It's all about yes; I personally always do apheresis myself; it helps me to address some of my issues and recalibrate. Yes, it's a remarkable process that is highly underused; what I'm doing on a research level, and that's why I'm considered a disruptor in the field, is usually apheresis is used for, is esoteric. Guillain-Barré, graft-versus-host, homozygous hypercholesterolemia.

We are developing our method for sepsis and AKI, 500,000 death, 4 million cases a year, no treatment. So we are really taking something simple and powerful, and we're going to apply it to incurable, very common health conditions. Now what we find when we address galectin-3, that we can really help chronic kidney disease really.

Especially if it's not end-stage, if somebody is stage four, they already have significant reduction in kidney function. But they still have energy in the kidney, the kidney from my perspective, there's enough inflammation. It's not totally fibrotic. I see this patient turning around.

[01:10:14.10] Scott: That was actually my next question; you talk about in the book that kidney disease impacts 14% of the population, 38% over age 65. That there can be impairment of blood flow, autoimmunity, infections, chemicals, medications that this can be a damaging mechanism where inflammation and fibrosis are really being driven by galectin-3.

So I'm wondering, taking that stage four type scenario out, is it possible that in many of these cases, that stopping the inflammation, stopping that fibrotic process can lead to a reversal of the kidney condition and an improvement of kidney function, kidney health?

[01:10:57.25] Dr. Eliaz: At one level or another, I've seen it in every single patient. Some of them is a little bit, some I don't appreciate, like let somebody with an autoimmune nephropathy with eGFR of 6. They are supposed to really be in dialysis; they deteriorate really fast. They come, and they bring them up to nine.

Now, if you showed it to a nephrologist, they will say you're crazy; it's impossible. But the ones who have early on, who come like at stage three, when it's mainly vascular, you can do one or two apheresis and give them MCP, and you see it turning around. Then it will hold for a year or two. The pattern is there; they may have to repeat one more time.

Kidney chronic kidney disease is a treatable condition. If I get my column, if I go through the developmental and FDA approval, first of all, I got to tackle AKI sepsis, too many people are dying, 11 million a year. But my next topic is going after CKD because these are people who are robbed of their life.

I mean, often it's post-AKI, post-surgery, sometimes it's not diabetes, hypertension, it's the most common. But suddenly, they're on dialysis; there's no quality of life. These are treatable conditions these are treatable, and if I get a chance, I will demonstrate it. I can see it with my work now; I know that with the right apheresis, it can turn around. I've seen enough cases myself.

[01:12:27.26] Scott: In the Lyme disease, mold arena, looking at Babesia, heavy metals, I think of hypercoagulation as a significant player in these conditions. I also tend to think of hypercoagulation as maybe a slightly lesser presentation of a biofilm, that hypercoagulation and biofilms are somewhat associated.

We get this thickened blood; the viscosity of the blood then also leads to lowered oxygen and nutrient delivery and less ability to remove toxins and waste from the system. So is there a connection between hyper-coagulation and galectin-3?

[01:13:11.19] Dr. Eliaz: I don't have to tell you, everybody, who knows you are really smart. It's really in the same box. Hyperviscosity, atherosclerotic plaque is a biofilm, it's just made of galectin-3, who creates…, and it creates different lipids and calcium exactly the same, and we know sometimes bacteria high there.

Same hyperviscosity, the same mechanism, for example, galectin-3, will bring blood vessel growth, will allow thrombocytes to adhere, will allow them to attach to the blood vessel cell and create a plaque, so absolutely. It's all interrelated.

One of the markers that is overlooked now with the PSK9; there's more interest is lipoprotein A; lipoprotein A is nasty. Unfortunately, the only thing that really takes it out is the apheresis; it removes most of it. It's really a silent killer.

[01:14:14.16] Scott: You talk about detoxification as being so critical in recovering from these complex chronic conditions. I've always thought about detoxification and drainage, probably from my mentoring with Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, that that's such an important thing for us to look at.

What's interesting in this conversation with galectin-3 is it has a role in affecting the kidneys; it has a role in affecting the liver.

So you know these critical detoxification organs that we have, it sounds to me like we can unburden them by reducing galectin-3 so that they then have more ability to focus on detoxification of other things that are going on in the body.

So I'd like you to comment about that, and then, is galectin-3, if we look at the liver. Is it playing a role in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, for example? Or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis disease, for example? Talk to us about the connection between the liver and galectin-3.

[01:15:15.09] Dr. Eliaz: When we look at the detoxification process, it has multiple parts. The first part is preparation. So when do we detoxify? We detoxify every time. Our exhalation is twice as long than our inhalation, so we detoxify more than we nourish.

We spend more time exhaling than inhaling. So that's the process that goes all the way in this sense; you're so right. If we address galectin-3, we both reduce the inflammation on the tissue level that produces toxic byproducts, and we help all the eliminating organs.

Lungs IPF relates to galectin-3, kidneys relate to galectin-3, and of course liver relates to galectin-3, we will get within a moment. So now, within this process, we go during our life, if we have time and opportunity, through a more targeted detoxification.

When do we do it? If we after a disease, after treatment, or from a seasonal point of view in the fall and in the spring. Detoxification is a different flavor in the spring and the fall; I won't go into it right now. So for the ones who are detoxifying, before we detoxify, let's take a moment and think what do we want to detoxify.

What do you want to get rid of? Physically toxic, emotionally, pattern, obstacles, you just prepare yourself. Then we need to expose what we want to detoxify. To expose, we have to melt the biofilm; we have to melt the lattice formation.

MCP plays a key role, then we have to bind, and again, MCP plays a key role in other binders. Because MCP will also bind systemically. Like MCP will dissolve the arteriosclerotic plaque, they are close to 20 different animal studies showing that all kinds of atherosclerosis heart, kidneys, aortic stenosis, when you give our MCP, it improves. It reverses the damage, okay.

Then, of course, we have to support the phase one, phase two liver detoxification. The phase one and phase two is between discharge and elimination. We throw all the garbage from the kitchen drawers on the floor, and then we have to be able to clean it. The cleanup is all this elimination organ that you mentioned.

So yes, we have to support them. That's why MCP is so important, specifically for liver; galectin-3 plays a key role in NASH. In fact, there's a drug that past phase two and is in phase three; it had some side effects, so I don't know if it would get approved. But there's a lot of interest in NASH, with galectin-3 blockers. It's definitely an area where MCP can be of great benefit.

I'm happy that you brought it up because people are not aware, right? So many people are not aware of non-alcoholic; everybody thinks Hepatitis C. I mean, it's a much bigger, hundred million people, and I mean, the percent of population of united states that has either the early state or NASH is insane. It's really the un-talked-about epidemic right now.

[01:18:39.17] Scott: You talk about neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS; that these conditions generally have high levels of oxidative stress, high levels of inflammation from the host immune response. That also then leads to lower blood supply to the brain, eventually possibly brain damage in some cases.

How does galectin-3 fit into the neurodegenerative disease conversation? Does galectin-3 play a role in the formation of amyloid plaques or in microglial-driven inflammation, or even in the loss of blood-brain barrier integrity?

[01:19:17.10] Dr. Eliaz: All of the above is the short answer. If you look at the Alzheimer plaque, the concentration of galectin-3 is 20-fold, compared to normal neural tissue. If you look at studies where you cut the spine and create, you create damage, or you look at LPS, lipopolysaccharide-induced neural inflammation, and you give an MCP, you attenuate the response, you stop the inflammatory response.

So how is it? The microglia in the brain, okay, and the astrocytes are the unique relationships. There are the cleanup cells. They are very similar to the macrophage in our circulation; there are really the macrophage of the brain.

So just like galectin-3 stimulates macrophages to be inflammatory, galectin-3 will stimulate microglia to go out of control and to cause damage. So you will see galectin-3 involved with Alzheimer's, with Parkinson, with pretty much every neuroinflammatory disease.

It will also disrupt the blood-brain barrier. The other compound that works very well with MCP specifically because it has an intracellular effect and has a great penetration to the brain is Honolkiol. So MCP and Honolkiol is a great pair to use together to address neural inflammation.

[01:20:46.03] Scott: One of my favorite topics is the extracellular matrix; very few people ever talk about that. Again, I think I learned about it from Dietrich Klinghardt.

You've already mentioned the matrix in this conversation, but I want to look at it maybe from a slightly different perspective, which is talk to us about the importance of exploring what we want to let go of from a mind-body perspective, and how our mental and emotional health may impact our detoxification capacity on a physical level.

So if we have an encumbered or burdened extracellular matrix, can there be a mental, emotional contributor to why that is the case?

[01:21:27.20] Dr. Eliaz: Yes, so a huge one. In Buddhist meditation, there is a practice called the Tonglen. Where you take suffering and pain, and you exchange it with love and compassion, which is really what the heart does.

One of the insights that I had, it was going to be in my second book, it was going to be my first book, which I wrote in Hebrew called Open Heart Medicine. I am teaching about how to do this; it wasn't taught before, inside our body.

So we have a way to harvest all these traumas, to bring them to our heart, and to transform them. When we do this, we work on the extracellular matrix, and then we get into the cells because it's the same dialogue between discharge and elimination that you talked about the organs; it's the same dialogue between the cell and the environment.

You can't allow a cell to discharge too much to the matrix without the matrix being functional. That's again why you got to melt this lattice formations, because otherwise, you're going to get the toxins released from the cells, and they're going to get stuck in the microenvironment; that's where people get healing crises when they do detox. It's really not a necessity.

So we need to keep the flow going; when we look about flow, the uneven blood flow, like you mentioned hyperviscosity, when there is turbulence, you get inflammation. What is the opposite of movement? It's death; it's lack of movement. What is it medically? It's called fibrosis; the tissue is rigid, it's not moving, it's not changing.

So we got to address the matrix; we got to address the connective tissue. Cancer is very smart; cancer utilizes cells in the connective tissue to rob energy, to make exchange of energy, as part of manipulating the environment, as part of creating the microenvironment. But if we expose a microenvironment, if we open it up, we cancel this risk, we mitigate it.

That's the value, like when I teach meditation, and again, to the more advanced students, and once they have some basic tools, then we go and we experience the somatic power of really the power of the heart. You know what, I'm going to stand for a second, and I'll show it to you, so the people can see. So after you meditate, we're going to skip it; you just put your hands on your heart.

You feel the heat of the heart, and the heat of the hands, pericardium eight, where the heart opens. For some people, it's the first time they connect with this amazing heat of the heart. You just let it flow wherever it needs, and you will feel the heat of the heart going everywhere in your body, healing whatever is needed. So that's called, that's just a taste.

But when we do this in this part of meditation and healing, we do it through different generation cycles, Chinese medicine, seasonal, visualization, and because what we don't recognize, the largest electromagnetic field in our body comes from our heart, hundred times greater than our head. So we focus on mindfulness and thinking, no, it's good, but it's minimized, it's self-focused.

The electromagnetic field of the heart at every given second gets to every cell in our body, but more than this, it goes to people around us. We have a heart-to-heart connection; it's not a theory, and that's why the value of the heart healing itself, the value of the heart healing us and healing our communities, and it's really when we connect with our hearts that things melt away. The biofilm melts away; atherosclerosis melts away; everything melts away.

[01:25:37.01] Scott: The other concept around detoxification that I learned about from Dr. Chris Shade several years ago was this idea that detoxification is impaired in the presence of inflammation. So reducing inflammation is already a detoxification strategy.

So just kind of tying these things together, if I'm understanding correctly, using something like modified citrus pectin, that is addressing galectin-3, reducing inflammation. That inflammation reduction in and of itself is also then allowing the body to start detoxifying more efficiently.

[01:26:13.15] Dr. Eliaz: Absolutely, because you get better blood supply, you get oxygen, you get energy. So one of the key thing detoxification, which is the last step I didn't talk about actually, after this phase one, two. We got to support the energy systems of the body.

So if you regulate the metabolic function, the mitochondrial function by using MCP, which upregulates AMPK, downregulates mTOR, through different receptors in the membranes, through insulin receptors, I don't want to go to elaborate on it.

Then suddenly you get a better metabolic process, you are able to do better cleaning, there's less congestion, the pH goes up, everything is functioning normally, absolutely.

[01:26:53.15] Scott: I want to come back to your comments about lipopolysaccharides. So we hear people in functional medicine talking about LPS, microbiome imbalances leading to lipopolysaccharides that then lead to inflammation. Was I understanding you correctly to say that modified citrus pectin can essentially bind to lipopolysaccharide?

[01:27:18.21] Dr. Eliaz: So, galectin-3 carries lipopolysaccharides to different places in the body. It's one of the ligands that binds to it. But what galectin-3 does it fuels the inflammation caused by lipopolysaccharides.

So in the rate study, the injury to the sacrum created a terrible peritonitis. Unfortunately, that created a flush of inflammatory compounds, including lipopolysaccharide. We just measure the interleukin-6 as a marker. When you block it, you shut down the reaction from the top; it's an upstream regulator.

It's like there's a water fountain, there's like a waterfall of LPS and different cytokines and TNF alpha, and NF kappa beta, and when you close galectin-3, you shut down the process. So I've shown in these studies, we're publishing two big critical care journals, that when we blocked galectin-3, we attenuated interleukin-6, we attended kidney damage, and we attenuated a mortality in rates when we did the same model, and we actually took out galectin-3 with apheresis.

We practically eliminated the death, from 90% to 10%, one treatment. So this is a power; this is why the galectin-3 is such a mega regulator of the process, an upstream regulator. It's really important.

We tend to chase symptoms, so we tend to change this cytokine, and that cytokine, galectin-3, is addressing the issue from the source, and what you did so well today, you really painted it from an emotional point of view, from a spiritual point of view, from a mental point of view, because it's one complex dance, it's one complex movement. In each of us, Scott has our own combination that works for us.

[01:29:17.16] Scott: So before we get to our final question, I want to kind of bring the conversation to a close, getting back into those higher levels, the spiritual, the mental, the emotional. You say that when we're in survival mode, we are self-focused, which creates isolation, contracts our life experience.

You say that letting go of the survival drive is a process of freedom and expansion, where giving up is a process of contraction and despair. How do we learn to let go of these survival tendencies?

[01:29:49.28] Dr. Eliaz: So it's very innate in us. It's very deep in us, it's a life journey, and each of us can learn at a certain capacity. So the first thing is by slowing down, and that's where mindfulness is so important; that's all this limbic system and reprogramming.

We create a space; when we create space, it changes our mental reaction, our emotional reaction and naturally changes our biochemistry, in our physiology, in our autonomic nervous system response. So that's the first step.

The real secret is when we learn to connect with our heart and to truly recognize the impermanent change in quality in everything. As human beings, we have the capacity to do it. So in one second, we can sleep; it doesn't always stay like this. But it's a very revealing experience. It connects to the understanding that anything and everything is possible.

Anyone can heal. I look at my, and I write in the book, I tell a story about a patient who I didn't expect them to heal from terminal cancer because I didn't think that they have it in them. But their siblings headed in them, and they pulled them out of the toxic environment, and they were literally days from dying.

Until they went back to the old habits, they were convinced by their family, another part of the family, to come back to the toxic and then the cancer came back, and they came back, I told them miracles don't happen twice very often. But it's this ability and the understanding that everything shifts; we always have options, we always have choices.

We just have to see the door, and to see the door; we have to be open-minded but truly open-minded. This means, like for me as a physician, as a healer, giving up on concepts I believed in. There are a lot of things I do now that 20 years ago I would never consider doing. But it's part of letting go; it is not being afraid to know that you are wrong.

That what you thought was not correct; there are better ways of doing it. Then just experience this ongoing integration. That's where information is transformed into wisdom. It takes time.

[01:32:19.16] Scott: My last question is the same for every guest, and that is what are some of the key things that you do on a daily basis in support of your own health?

[01:32:27.21] Dr. Eliaz: So, it goes two ways, because depends how busy I am; I'm a little bit busier. I try to meditate every day. I actually meditate every day, and I serve a very meditation practice. I try to carry, like this conversation, I was meditating during the conversation; it's part of me. I try to read as well as I can. I put a lot of emphasis, when possible, on intermittent fasting.

I try to exercise, especially to walk. I started jogging, which I really hated all my life, but it was a great experience of my mind, where I couldn't run even 300 yards and within three weeks ever, even when a teenager, suddenly I ran like 11-12 miles. I could run; I'm just going to go to the clinic; it shows how the mind shifted.

I love swimming, so I spend a lot of time when I can go, and I spend some time in Hawaii, and I swim every day. I make sure that my life is filled with meaningful things, with making a difference in people's life. I try to practice being kind within the context of my life, of my consequences. I stay humble about trying to about what I know, what I don't know. Every day is a new learning experience.

[01:33:57.15] Scott: Well, I've known you for many years now, and I think you definitely walk the talk. I think you've been an amazing mentor to me and an amazing teacher to many. I'm excited about the new book, the survival paradox; I really urge people to go and get it.

It goes into so much more detail than we could ever even begin to talk about here. Dr. Eliaz, just want to thank you for all that you do and honor you for the difference that you make in this world. So thank you so much.

[01:34:23.28] Dr. Eliaz: Thank you. Thank you for bringing such great points out of the book that, beyond what even I wrote really, I really enjoyed. Take care.

[01:34:31.25] Scott: Thank you.

[01:34:32.24] To learn more about today's guest, visit SurvivalParadox.com.

[01:34:43.07] Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a positive rating or review, as doing so will help the show reach a broader audience. To follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or MeWe, you can find me there as better health guy.

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[01:35:17.16] Thanks for listening to this BetterHealthGuy Blogcast with Scott, your Better Health Guy. To check out additional shows and learn more about Scott's personal journey to better Health, please visit BetterHealthGuy.com.

Disclaimer

The content of this show is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any illness or medical condition. Nothing in today's discussion is meant to serve as medical advice or as information to facilitate self-treatment. As always, please discuss any potential health-related decisions with your own personal medical authority.