- Okay, real quick, Mike,
I wanna talk about Dr. Kharrazian.
- Yes.
- And Dr. CRO, the giveaway that are giving away.
- We are giving away six different programs of his
from Hashimoto's disease to gut health, cognitive decline,
auto immunity, and one on saving your brain.
We're also offering a 40% discount.
You can use the code name Bob and Brad.
Everything is down below in the description box.
And without further ado here's Dr. Kharrazian.
- Yeah.
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- Welcome my friends to the Bob and Brad podcast.
My name is Mike Keen and I'm a physical therapist assistant.
Our guest today is Dr. Datis Kharrazian.
Dr. Kharrazian is a Harvard medical school trained
and award-winning clinical research scientist,
academic professor, and world renowned
functional medicine healthcare provider.
He develops evidence-based models to treat
autoimmune, neurological, and unidentified chronic diseases
with non-pharmaceutical applications.
His clinical models of evidence-based medicine are used
by several academic institutes and thousands
of healthcare providers throughout the world.
Dr. Kharrazian is an associate clinical professor
at the Loma Linda university school of medicine.
So without further ado here is Dr. Kharrazian.
The first topic of discussion is Hashimoto disease.
So what is it?
And what are some ways people can try and treat it?
- So Hashimoto disease for most people
they just think hypothyroid, like is your thyroid working?
And everyone at some point may have
known someone who's a diagnosis
of hypothyroid or someone's taking thyroid medication
and maybe runs in their family.
And basically hypothyroidism is really
an autoimmune disease.
And most people that get diagnosed don't really know that.
So hypothyroidism just really means your thyroid
gland is not working and when your thyroid is not working.
And, you know you can start to have
slow metabolism can have really bad circulation,
cold hand, cold feet.
You can start to have brain fog.
You can start to have hormone imbalances.
And these hypothyroid conditions typically turn
on in females more than men.
Strong proponents of females that age 40, 35.
Now it's even getting younger.
And then all of a sudden a person's been
healthy their whole life.
And all of a sudden everything's going the wrong way
and they're frustrated and nothing makes sense.
And they finally, you know, read online.
They have a lot of symptoms.
Maybe it's constipation is their initial symptom.
Maybe it's just really dry hands in skin.
Maybe it's fatigue.
And they finally get evaluated and they, you know
probably beg their doctor to get a thyroid test.
It's not part of conventional testing, which is a shame.
And they finally they're diagnosed with hypothyroidism.
What they don't know is
that really what they have as Hashimoto's disease and
the reason they don't know that is because
you would have to do a test called an antibody
test to determine that called TPO thrombopoietin.
And it's just not routinely part of the insurance model.
So when you get diagnosed with hypothyroidism, there
no point to do it, 'cause they go, you know, 95%,
90% people have hypothyroidism
and Hoshimoto's why would we spend the extra $400
to this antibody test?
Doesn't make sense and insurance model
just to waste money for no change in treatment.
So when someone gets hypothyroid diagnosis, you know
they basically are told
come back every single year and we'll see
if your medication is, you know, enough for you.
And what they basically don't understand is
the guidelines that the Endocrine Society
had put together for hypothyroidism was you're gonna have
your thyroid destroyed further in the next year.
Your immune system's gonna continue to destroy that gland
and the dosage you have now may not be enough.
So let's have you come back
in a year and see if that's enough
of the dosage you need to manage your symptoms.
And you know, it's, for some people
they have a thyroid destroyed three months
after the appointment and they're going nine months
without having that replacement,
the right amount of replacement and they're gaining weight
and having depression, all these symptoms and oh, you know
it's not time for your annual thyroid workup.
You're just a random number someone put together,
just because it correlates with the annual physical exam.
So the fact is that many women and some men,
mostly women that they get diagnosed
with hypothyroidism 'cause female predominant disease.
They're frustrated because they're
not being managed properly.
First of all, they don't know they have autoimmune disease.
Second of all, they're being told to come back
once a year to make sure the thyroid hormone,
the dosage is correct for them.
But you know, that's just a random
number of people put together.
So once a person develops Hashimotos, they really
have an autoimmune disease.
Their immune system is attacking their body
and it's typically not just the thyroid gland.
And then there's a web
of dysfunctions that take place when someone
gets hypothyroidism, which is really Hashimoto's disease.
And one of them is there's a gene uniqueness.
So some people get wound sensitivity
they start to react to foods.
They start to lose what's called immune tolerance.
So they start to develop food sensitivities to many foods.
Now for the first time in the life
they're reacting to foods they never reacted
to before.
Those common ones are gonna be wheat and dairy.
They get really bloated, they get really swollen.
They get really inflamed and even get brain fog.
They shouldn't eat those foods.
They start to have chemical tolerance issues where
their immune system can't tolerate chemicals as much.
They start reacting to various chemicals.
They may be like sensitive to certain smells and being
around perfume or varies for one person to the next.
And as they continue to this web of dysfunction
that takes place in Hashimotos, they get brain inflammation.
These, these Hashimotos patterns turn
on inflammatory mechanisms that turn
on the immune cells in the brain called microglia.
So now they have brain fog and can't think
and can't focus and they get depression.
And these inflammatory models of depression with Hashimotos
they don't respond to anti-depressants.
It's not a neurotransmitter deficiency.
It's a brain inflammatory response that's involved.
So then, you know, they're frustrated.
And then their gastrointestinal tract becomes less efficient
from the inflammatory responses.
They get intestinal probability.
It's part of the vicious cycle of it.
And they kind of go down this vicious cascade
where now not only is their metabolism an issue
but their hair is falling out, their circulations off.
They have brain fog and they have depression.
Everything they're eating is causing bloating extension
and they go back
and then maybe they'll have the physician go, hey
maybe you need antidepressant.
Here's an SSRI or here's Wellbutrin
here's Prozac or something like that.
Oh, it didn't work.
Let's try another one before they know they're
on list of other medications for that.
And then for every little cheek complaint they have
instead of treating auto immunity
they're using a single drug for single symptom.
So now for their bloating
they need another medication for their, you know
for their depression, for their, you know
gallbladder symptoms, they may get all these other issues.
And when people with Hashimotos
there's other autoimmune disease
that start to get churned on too.
So many patients with Hashimoto's
start to get like pernicious anemia, B 12 anemia.
They get antibodies against them
protein that carries B12 across their intestines.
And there's about 5% of Hashimotos people.
Many people Hashimotos get antibodies to their actual brain.
And specifically in area of the brain called the cerebellum
they started to get dizziness and vertigo
and nausea and they become the weird patient, right?
They become this weird patient
in the healthcare that is now frustrated and has gone
from like one department head to the next department head.
And they don't know what to do with them.
And, the patient's completely frustrated.
And this is actually the first book I ever wrote.
The first book I wrote was Why Do I Still
Have Thyroid Symptoms When My Lab Tests Are normal?
And I went into like, hey, the science actually shows
that you actually have an autoimmune disease
called Hashimotos no one's telling you that
because run the antibody test to confirm it is not part
of the routine healthcare system.
You can easily do it yourself and see you have it.
And you really need to manage this
from an autoimmune perspective.
And then when we walk into the medical healthcare system
there is no auto immunologist, right?
We have a cardiologist, we have an nephrologist
we have a psychiatrist, we don't have an auto immunologist.
We have the rheumatologist for joint diseases,
but not for these complicated autoimmune diseases.
And then the endocrinologists will just say, hey
you have an endocrine disease.
We'll just do what we always do.
We're gonna manage your hormones, but they normally know
or know what to do with the autoimmune part of it.
And unfortunately there aren't very effective drugs
for these autoimmune diseases.
They just severe immune suppressive drugs like Cortisone
or what they call Biologics, which shut down immune system.
And so there's a level
of frustration people have when they go
through this path of Hashimoto's,
but diet nutrition lifestyle can make a huge impact on it.
Well published and many, papers
and they just don't know what to do.
So they're, frustrated and they're confused.
And it's like, you know, the gene type
of Hashimotos is very common to have an HLA D QG type
as a gene type two and six, which many people
Hashimotos have that makes them very sensitive to gluten.
So some of of these people finally learn, hey
I'm gonna go adopt a gluten-free lifestyle
and maybe 30% of their symptoms go away
for some people, maybe it's greater.
There's even studies published that show in clinical trials
they have a subset of their patients completely
going to complete remission with no symptoms
after, during gluten-free diet.
Sleep makes a huge impact on how to
autoimmune disease in general.
Sometimes just understanding how important sleep is
with the person who's got Hashimotos
and they really get into a regular schedule
and really focus on getting good sleep instead of being
on the phone all night or being on the internet all night
and not getting much sleep and trying to get up too early.
Their immune system starts to calm down and
you know, they may start to take some things to
support their gut immune system and the gut barrier
maybe some nutraceuticals or things to help them
digest their food much more efficiently.
And all of a sudden their gastrointestinal system
is functioning better.
And then these little steps
as you start to add them up, can put a person
into remission where they feel a lot better.
They're not cured.
You know, this isn't like a quackery altered medicine.
You know, medicine can't cure you
but these vitamins can.
- Yeah
- It's not about, it's like you
have an autoimmune disease suppression.
You have certain genotypes
you have certain susceptibilities, various lifestyle,
dietary factors can change how they express.
So let's work on what's current.
And let's see if those applications work for you.
Like another common gene uniqueness
that people have Hashimoto's disease have is they have
vitamin D receptor site polymorphisms,
which basically means their vitamin D receptors
aren't very efficient.
So they need much higher levels
of vitamin D than the other, than the average population.
So they may need to get the vitamin D levels
like above the 50 range
on a lab test versus 25 range or something.
And then vitamin D is very powerful mood modulator.
So they can start to take some vitamin D, maybe
notice they have some improvements in their quality of life.
So that's where Hashimotos comes in.
And that's been a big part of my focus
because when I was looking at, you know, having interest
in dietician lifestyle and what people with chronic disease
like autoimmune disease can do, obviously I had touched
on Hashimoto's 'cause it was the most common one.
And many people are out there.
And the current statistics show one in 12 women
in their lifespan will have autoimmune disease turned
on and doesn't mean they get
like a full blown rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis
but they start to make antibodies against their own tissue.
And the most common one,
the most prevalent one in females is Hashimoto's.
So all that people, yeah.
- Is there a reason why it's more predominant
in females than males?
- Yes. When you look at autoimmune diseases
there's a whole area of research where they're looking
in autoimmune diseases in males and females
and most there's some autoimmune disease.
They're exactly equal with male and female distributions.
One like, type one diabetes, just as many men
and just many female get the same disease.
For some diseases like Hashimoto's it's for sure.
Like 90, 80, 90% female, 10, 20% male.
And no one really knows.
Obviously the, the biggest theory is just
you know, hormones, reproductive hormones,
sex hormones may play a role
but no one's really identified the exact mechanism.
And it's still an area of investigation research.
They can just map out and
tell like which disease have a greater preponderance
for males or females.
And Hashimoto's is for sure the most
most expressed in female autoimmune disease in the world
and the most common autoimmune disease in the world.
- So in your book where you talk about
what is it called again on thyroid?
- Oh, Why Do I Study Thyroid Symptoms?
- Yeah.
- I know in your other book
Why Doesn't My Brain Work?
You kind of have dietary rough guidelines.
Are those in that book as well?
- Yes. And you know, it's, so that's a thing to it.
People sometimes get frustrated.
There isn't an exact protocol for every person.
You just have to understand the concepts
which concepts apply to you.
But yeah, I mean, I try to get the information
out as much as I can out there to in books.
Also my website, drknews.com, that I have a lot of articles.
I have some online programs to teach people, suffering
you know, going through the steps of what they need to know
and how to apply some of these strategies to their life.
Right. And that's a problem.
Cause you know, I've spent
over 20 something years, teaching post grad education
healthcare professionals, what happens is, you know
there's just the ones that really understand it.
They all end up with waiting lists of practices.
No one gets to see them and they're, you know
not cheap 'cause they, they incorporate a model of diet
lifestyle insurance companies don't cover.
And then there's not enough
of them around because not many people wanna practice.
It's, a very hard way to practice
to sit down with someone and do detailed history
of their diet and their lifestyle and what the factors are
in new labs and then develop an individualized
personalized medicine approach is tough to do.
So I think what's happening now is just people
need accurate information from evidence based research
and then how to apply that into their life.
Then how to find out what's unique for them.
And then everyone has to go through their own experiment.
Like some people that have autoimmune diseases will be very
very sensitive to lack of sleep.
Some people autoimmune diseases will have a severe issue
not so much with sleep.
Doesn't really flare up their autoimmune as much
but it could be with dietary proteins.
Someone else could very, very sensitive to chemicals.
Someone else could really have their autoimmune
disease flare up when they get like common cold
and they have those issues, you know?
So some people could have their autoimmune disease.
Very, very, very much expressed when
the gastrointestinal system is just functioning.
You know when they have things
that disrupt their gut microbiome
maybe they went on antibiotics
or maybe their diet was just bad
for a while and their autoimmune disease
is really flared up.
So everyone's a little bit different.
So there's not everyone that has the, even
with the same autoimmune disease has the same dietary
and lifestyle mechanisms that work.
And this is where the world
of personalized lifestyle medicine comes in.
And this is another area of research
which is very difficult,
because when you look at medical research,
medical research is focused
on this concept of developing the best evidence.
And the best evidence is for sure, from a
randomized double blinded placebo randomized clinical trial.
That that's how you really know something is
working compared to a group that is everything's the same
except the intervention for a period of time, right?
That's the best design.
But when they do randomized clinical trials though
the other goal is to have generalizability
that it's as generalizable to the whole population
as much as they can.
It's not individual.
And autoimmune diseases are all about individuality.
It's not relates to generalizable.
Now certain things like just shutting
down the inflammatory response in autoimmune disease works,
and they do clinical trials with
different types of medications that way.
But when you have one group of autoimmune
disease people that have extreme reactions
to certain dietary proteins
versus other different patterns and have various uniqueness
to different variables that are involved
it gets really hard to, you can design the study.
It's just that when you try to live
what's called statistical significance.
You need such a large example
and it just doesn't become feasible and no one's funding it.
And this is the problem.
And then the other key thing is
with one person that's autoimmune disease in their
life process, things can change.
They can all of a sudden react to different foods.
They can, all of a sudden have sleeping issue
that trigger their autoimmune disease that it wasn't before.
You know, they can have other autoimmune
diseases turn on so they start with Hashimotos.
Now they have some MS.
Multiple sclerosis type patterns that are starting to
express or make it.
And they start to get herbal inflammatory bowel disease
like an IBS Crohn's autoimmune disease against their gut.
And they, and then they may be more
sensitive to some dietary triggers
that they weren't to before some large ulcer were formed.
It's like a dynamic ongoing thing it's being done
in research circles with what are called N
of one studies where they're looking at multi variables
and doing what's called Beijing statistics to evaluate them.
But it's still, new area of research
and they're still trying to figure out how to do it.
So when you have like people that don't understand research
like let's say an older generation MD
that's just doing what they've always been doing.
You go, I don't read anything besides
randomized double controlled studies.
And you're like, well, you can't
answer every study design question that way.
- Right.
- And it's like, dude, you get away from my world.
You're like, don't even understand.
But at the end of the day, people are suffering
and then these people are, can be authorities.
And they're like, ah, you know
I'll turn around some lifestyles.
There's no evidence for that.
And it's like, you have no idea what you're talking about.
And then the, the public suffers.
Right.
- All right.
All right.
So where can people find you at
on your websites and where can I get your books?
- So my website is drknews, darknews.com,
'cause my last name is Kharrazian,
and that's really hard to spell.
So we use drknews, and then I had do have free
content on that, including a Gluten In The Brain book.
So if there's a free online brain book
you wanna check that out for listening.
And we have lots of podcasts and videos
and information trying to educate the public.
And the goal the website is to,
you know, educate the public
and let them eventually know about the books I written.
I written two books, one on the brain, one on the thyroid.
And we have some online courses on the brain, thyroid,
for food sensitive allergies,
to try to get information out to people.
But hopefully it can be a good educational source
for those that are interested in, these topics.
- All right.
Well thank you for joining us.
- Okay, thanks Mike. It's a pleasure, and talk to you soon.
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