Parasites & Mold with Dr. Jessica Peatross

This week on the Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by Jessica Peatross.  Dr. Jess Peatross on the podcast. Jess is an outspoken medical doctor online that talks all about stealth infections with grace.  

People seem very interested in parasites. There was a time one of my parasite-themed podcasts had the most downloads for the year. I find them to be more annoying than interesting these days but Dr. Jess has a way with words and held my attention thoroughly.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

•  Types of foreign invaders from worms to flukes to chagas in the bloodstream from insect bites
• Worm life cycles and how they upregulate things like itching 
• Why worms are more active during the full moon
• How tricky parasite are to kill and how they can recur for months
• Why we get sick in the first place

ABOUT GUEST:
Dr Jess is a previously board-certified internal medicine hospitalist who left her position as a hospital medical doctor to chase root cause answers for her patients. Today she is a force in functional medicine and has launched nutrigenomic targeted supplements as well as her membership platform, Wellness Plus, which helps everyone learn to be their own best doctor. 

WHERE TO FIND       :
Instagram :  dr.jess.md
Tiktok : drjessmd
Website : drjessmd.com

 mysoulcbd.com/drjess

Website :

On IG:

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:

https://www.christabiegler.com/

On IG: instagram.com/anti.inflammatory.nutritionist/

Shop our Favorites

christabiegler.com/shop

Loving the podcast? Leave us a review and ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY NOW!

Sharing & reviewing this podcast is the BEST way to help us succeed with our mission to help integrate the best of East & West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story. Just go to https://reviewthispodcast.com/lessstressedlife

Have a question that you want to be answered on the Podcast? Submit it here:  https://www.christabiegler.com/questions

Work Together: christabiegler.com/fss

Shop our Favorites:

christabiegler.com/shop

Transcript

[00:00:00] It's really important to think if I'm having these mystery symptoms, that a test isn't found anything is wrong, and I'm not crazy. I know there's something wrong. My body knows there's something wrong. Please don't discount yourself or let people gaslight you. Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness.

Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance. Have let a lot of us down we're overmedicated and underserved at the less trust life. We are a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional Western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

All right. Today [00:01:00] on the Less Stress Life I have Dr. Jess, who is a previously board certified internal medicine hospitalist, who left her position as a hospital medical doctor to chase root cause answers for her patients Today. She's a force in functional medicine and has launched Neut Nutrigenomic targeted supplements, as well as her membership platform Wellness Plus, which helps everyone learn to be their own best doctor, which I love that line.

Welcome, Dr. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. So when I was sharing a little bit on Instagram this morning, I mentioned that I feel that you are the MD who normalizes parasites and mold a little bit. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about those things and then what you're currently into.

So I'm gonna just jump straight in, but before we do. I think sometimes we don't always get to hear people's story and that really connects us to them. And so I wanna hear about how you went from being an MD to a like stealth infection enthusiast, right? Oh, [00:02:00] enthusiast. I like that. Okay. So I would say I've had a wild ride and most of my life I believed conventionally.

Don't get me wrong, I was definitely one of those docs who drank the Kool-Aid and really got my flu shot every year. I was a. School and even when I worked in the hospital, I ate all the cafeteria food, I did all the things for years before there started to be cracks in the system for me.

And really when I was a hospitalist, that means, we ran codes, we admitted everyone from the emergency department, unless it was an acute. Surgery and I had to know something about everything and so it was really stressful and we worked long hours and really saw, got to know the repeats that came to the emergency department a lot and after almost seven years of doing that, I really just started, I had questions like, why don't we have Coke and Pepsi contracts in the hospital and why are you feeding?

Food pyramid process, factory farm meat to cancer patients. And why are there Doritos and bag chips here? And I had so many [00:03:00] questions and I really got pushback from the hospitalist team and other doctors. It wasn't like they were curious like me, it was that they were said the system is broken.

This is the way it is. Be that cog in that will. And I wasn't married. I didn't have a husband, I didn't have kids. So I was in a position where I didn't feel locked in as much as I think other doctors do. So I was able to bounce and say, you know what? This isn't aligned with how I'm believing what I'm seeing these days.

I really don't have to be here. This is my own choice to continue to torture myself when I'm not aligned anymore. So I quit. And I got trained in first gsen therapy and then ozone, and then a lot of different herbs and nutrition along the way with different mentors and functional medicine in general. I shadowed a lot of naturopaths and worked at Whitaker Wellness and studied under Doctor Julian Whitaker for a couple years, so that was helpful too.

And really I just kept asking why until I couldn't ask why anymore [00:04:00] and what that led me to. Big gun steal infections, industrial toxins and trauma like you mentioned. . You mentioned you started with Gersin Therapy and Ozone. How did you come across those first, and this brings me back, I think of my own exposure to ozone.

Back when we got married, someone brewed us up some ozone. We had picked up like what felt like the nastiest cold in the world a week before our wedding, and someone brewed us up some ozone water and in a half hour we were better. I've actually never found ozone quite that strong sense, but at that time my interest was so peaked.

And I'd love to hear how you decided on gsen therapy and maybe. Tell people what that is if they're not familiar. But that's not, no. You obviously got introduced or inspired to do that first. Yeah. I think there are different paths to awakening for people and my path was diet nutrition, which I think a lot of people go down that path.

And so that was the first questions I started asking the hospital actually were about why are you feeding these things to sick people? So since diet was where I was [00:05:00] changing and understanding how you could really modify genes and modify your chronic illnesses and health, Food and nutrition.

So I really was interested in how I could learn more about that to help people, because I didn't see the regular system or myself helping people like I wanted to, and that made me not as happy as I should have been probably. And so I think really I decided on AUR in therapy because I had gotten into learning online from people on social media, and I would go check out their outlandish claims and be humbled because a lot of times they were correct and I was the one wrong.

And so I had people. Continuing to mention gin therapy to me. Every time I would talk about studies about cancer patients or case studies, and I finally went to research it on my own merit and to saw was really impressed with the legacy, how long it'd been well steeped in, not just the US but other countries as well.

And so I decided since they had a really robust training program, that would be the next logical step for me [00:06:00] in my training about how the body holistically. I heard two really valuable things there. One is that success leaves clues, or if you continue to see the same message popping up again and again, pay attention and then humility.

And that's kind of the thing that we are missing so often, which is why there's really such still a canyon between different practitioners sometimes is just. Humility, and maybe listening to patients and believing part of evidence-based medicine is the patient's experience. Amen. So then that brings us into, so you've jumped straight into kind of some more intensive therapies right away, and as I said at the beginning, I feel like you really normalize some of these next level stealth pathogens, et cetera.

So let's get into that a little bit. So with normalizing parasites, I tend to point people over to the C D C website and ask them to Google c D C epidemiology of pin worms, . And so 50% of people, if you have children or you work in any kind of institution. [00:07:00] So that helps me normalize it with clients right away.

What would you say to people who say I've been tested for parasites and it doesn't show up because testing is not so awesome for parasites. I don't really have a perfect test for parasites. I wish I did. I wish I could tell people this is the go-to that'll get it every time for you, but that just doesn't exist in our world, unfortunately.

And that's because parasites are as old as we are, , and they're not bad at their job, which is being caught and found because they want to live off your nutrients. They don't wanna kill you. They wanna live off your nutrients and use you as a. And so they're really stealthy for that reason on purpose, even from our modern day testing.

If you guys are looking in a regular stool test, let's say your doctor order is an O Parasites or O N P, those really have to be done multiple times over weeks to even come close to being accurate. You have a pathologist and histologist in the lab. Pulling apart and looking at a tiny sample [00:08:00] that you provide.

And if they don't see eggs, larva, worms, anything like that in that tiny sample with just a person examining, then you're deemed, free of parasites. And that's just not always the case. So I really look into some more of the functional testing, the test that does the testing that does a little bit more specificity and sensitivity in getting the patient the more accurate result, and the ones that test a wider variety than what, eight to 10 tests normally look at.

Yeah, and even those are not perfect, right? So sometimes I always say, you must listen to symptoms as much or more than you listen to tests. So let's talk about just a handful of really dead ringer parasite symptoms that like you listen to it and you're like, oh, we must make sure we're accounting for that as well.

I think that's really important in all testing, whether it be mold, parasites, line, whatever it is, it's really important. Let's trust that point to match up symptomatology. Crucial. Crucial for any good practitioner and client to be doing that with themselves. [00:09:00] So I would say with signs and parasites, there's a lot, but here's the few I think of off the top of my head.

So you mentioned pin worms. With pin worms, people definitely are gonna have rectal itching. Even candida can do that, which is a yeast for people and a lot of the other parasites. Two, some parasites have full life cycles in the body and they don't just stay in one place in the gut. They may go into our lip, into our system, our systemic lymphatic system and fascial system.

They may be in the joint fluids, they may be in other places besides the gut. So really we're gonna have systemic symptoms. We may get rashes, we can may get eczema because they are nocturnal and wake up at. When we have cravings, and it's a stress on the body when parasites move around at night, so people will clinch their teeth, so often they'll have sore jaws, tmj, clicking jaws, things like popping, maybe ear ringing is another symptom.

Dairy sensitivity, especially for a strong OID infection. Lots of mast cell activation, SSTA. Problems, digestive issues, irritable bowel [00:10:00] syndrome. These are just a few of the symptoms I look for with parasites and any sort of like creepy crawling muscle twitches or vesiculations at nighttime too. And the dead ringer for me is, Worse around full moons.

So I think most people may have heard that one. And that's because there's a big bright moon out in the sky. People produce naturally less melatonin and they produce more serotonin. And serotonin is talks to parasites. So that communication helps them be more mobile. And so they're more active around full moons at night inside our bodies, which keep us awake and sometimes.

I was gonna ask that's my dead ringer is did the symptoms present a little bit before, during, and after the full moon? And so that brings up, you brought up the lifecycle of the parasite. So full moons, are on monthly life cycles. I always thought it was because they hatched at the full moon overall.

, will you talk a little bit about different parasite life cycles? Because sometimes I see things like cyclical fever syndrome that's on a [00:11:00] monthly cycle and then you treat for parasites and it goes away, or, but I think that there can be all types of life cycles. If you're having every two weeks vomiting, wouldn't you maybe suspect parasites or don't they have all different life?

Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head with that last one. They have all different types of life cycles. Like for example, if we're talking about an ecto parasite, one that uses a vector. So let's say, the famous one is something like a ticker, a mosquito, right? Transmits something via the bite to a human right, and then they make something called the spores, which enter the liver and infect the liver cells called hepato.

There's some replication there. The liver cells actually rupture and release these SPOs when they're released. There's actually a sexual cycle that can take place inside of a human, and then there can be a transmission back to the mosquito. And this is just one life cycle of, let's say, a malaria parasite, right?

But there's so many other life cycles inside humans. Like for example, strong [00:12:00] OIDs is another one that has a full life cycle inside of ahu. Some of these get inside of bile ducts and clog our ducts and lymphatic circulation, which, I don't mean to scare anyone here. It sounds so disgusting talking about it really does, but it's the truth.

These are things we think happen in Third World. And I just wanna remind people that parasites don't realize that there's boundaries in, borders. They don't understand that, right? . So to really think that we're not ever, vulnerable because we're in the United States is shortsighted.

For example, I think just to of close up your question, for strong OIDs, which is a big gun, that can cause a lot of problems for people, a lot of different symptoms for people. There's a al form that is a larva. And these things can move from the small intestines to the liver, to the lungs during their life cycle inside of a human or a dog or wherever it may be.

It's really important to think, if I'm having these mystery symptoms, that a test isn't found anything is wrong, and I'm not crazy. I [00:13:00] know there's something wrong. My body knows there's something wrong. Please don't discount yourself or let people gaslight you. Please say this may be something that doctors aren't taught in their daily, regimen of school.

What else could be here? And this is something that I wanna put people onto because it's missed a lot. Yeah wanna talk about recurrent symptoms after protocols and then vector points also. So let's say someone is doing really well on a protocol and they stop their protocol and they have symptoms around a full moon, right?

All the things we talked about, because clients often ask, can I get this again? Sure if you had it once, you could get it again. And I've seen parasites be very sneaky and annoying and improved, but still, hang on. And so what's your advice to people if it feels like they've been doing a couple of months of protocols?

I will usually have them alter a protocol and then do it, target it just around the full moon for a couple months so we're not having so much fatigue from taking things or whatnot. Cuz it, it's not. For anyone. But what would your [00:14:00] advice be to someone who's seen really recurrent symptoms after going through protocol where they were having some success and then they're seeing it crop back up a little bit?

So common, it's more common that happens than not, I would say so. I'm glad you asked that question cuz a lot of people think, oh, I did a parasite cleanse, I should be okay. And it's just not realistic because we just mentioned life cycles and like you said, there can be cyclical symptoms that happen when eggs are hatching or when there's reproductive cycles or when the perhaps things are migrating.

From different areas of the body. People can be very sensitive to things like that. If you guys did a parasite cleanse and you thought you were good and symptoms start popping up around, usually around a full moon or a new moon or something like that for people, then you know, that's not unusual.

Do not beat yourself up. Because normally if people are really riddled i'll, I've kept people in parasite cleanses up to four to six months. And then, we'll, we have to repeat it sometimes even, and that's because sometimes things have scores that are protective. Sometimes they have protective mechanisms.

If you don't get all the scores or all the larva or all the eggs, things are going to [00:15:00] continue to replicate if there are hospitable conditions present. For them to be replicating. . Let's talk a little bit about vector points and then let's talk about hospitable conditions, because that's really the holy grill grain.

So let's go there next, but about vector points. So speaking of being in the United States, we're not immune to. Having parasites, so cool. We've checkmarked that box. But vector points can be dogs, it can be water. What are some other, I think sushi. What are some other ones that you see a lot that people

Don't say sushi. Everyone tells me this. It's I literally, it's one of my least favorite things to tell people besides your house has mold. Yeah. Because they, they literally are devastated about sushi, but you're exactly right. , I think there was this study that I read recently. 70% of all the sushi restaurants in the big five cities in the US like Houston, New York, LA had mislabeled the sushi fish for a lesser quality fish.

That's just one way you guys [00:16:00] that it could be happening, letting pets lick you in the face. Lick you in the mouth. That's definitely an exposure. It can be a transmission and if you're vulnerable, if the conditions are hospitable. I do wanna keep giving that a little disclaimer at the end.

Other ways, drinking river water, creek water that may be contaminated is a good place to get something like Giardia. Infected meat. Undercooked meat, really. Certain types of produce. Everyone thinks meat carries parasites. Produce. Absolutely. We've had recalls of produce that can carry things as well.

It's really all about are there toxins present to have parasites there digesting organic waste. . And so that condition is present in animals and produce in meat. Then yeah, you might have an exposure. Absolutely. Vendor cooked fish is a big one, like we mentioned with sushi. And then really another place are ticks and vectors.

Mosquitoes. There's been studies done in Germany now that are pretty convincing that show mosquitoes can carry. Co-infections and bacteria like Lyme from larval stage all the [00:17:00] way into an adult mosquito stage. And so we think there are other vectors possibly now besides ticks, which can carry, something like Baia, which is a microscopic parasite.

Fun on the note of mosquitoes, I can't help it. These things pop in my head. What would you say about, because these are like those funny little things that there's not, that, is there a good answer for this? What do you say to people who say, I am a mosquito magnet and my husband never gets a mosquito bite?

Do you think that represents something with blood pH or so? Yeah, I do. How could it not? It's so remarkably and vastly different between people and I don't ever get bit and they love my fiance, for example. It is one time we were walking on a trail. It was a very heavily traffic trail as well, and he said, I feel things crawling on me.

Took his shirt off and they were 12 ticks on crawling on his torso, and I didn't have one. So to think that they don't know who they can infect or who they wanna bite is I think selling them short again, they obviously tell pheromones are [00:18:00] different, blood chemistry, pH chemistry. There's something that literally tastes sweeter to them about certain people.

And if you have a large reaction when you get bit, it's not necessarily a bad thing your. Teeing something and reacting to it, saying There's foreign particle or poison in me. I have to worry about people who have problems when they get bit and their body doesn't react to it. Yeah, when I have just observed this, it's I think there's just opportunity there, right?

Like maybe there's a little bit of fungal overgrowth. Maybe things like you said are a little sweeter. Like you also said, there is a terrain thing, so let's talk about terrain, which is this holy grail conversation. If your immune system or if your terrain was good, then these. Chicks aren't on you, then these mosquitoes aren't on you.

Then these parasites don't find such a hospitable home to take up residents. So let's talk about that big kind of elephant in the room of what kind of makes up terrain for people. That's such a big question and a great question because I'm sure there's some people out there listening who are like, what the [00:19:00] heck is a terrain?

Cause we've been taught all about germs in germ theory. But we really have tossed terrain theory to the side, and that's what I was addressing when I was in the hospitals complaining on early on in my career, was about the food. We are feeding sick people, and that's part of terrain theory. If you guys think that diet and nutrition matter to health, you believe somewhat in terrain theory.

If you believe that heavy metals and industrial toxins and things that are in our air water. Soil, even maybe in our minds, can influence health in our long-term chronic conditions. Then you believe somewhat in terrain theory. So terrain theory is the belief that what we put in our body, what we think about what we eat, drink, how we move, who we connect with.

All of these things and experiences have the potential to epigenetic. Turn up or turn down gene expression. They don't change the sequence of the genes, but they put a little tag, almost like an [00:20:00] outfit change on your genes. I like to call it outfit change. People relate to that. So this tag actually taught, makes the gene talk to our body differently.

And we now know that experiences and trauma and heavy metals and steal infections like candida and mold and parasites, all have the potential to epigenetically change our genes for the better or for the. And that's really our terrain, which should empower people should say, oh my gosh, we have the potential if we're educated to put health in our own.

There's a lot of opportunity. It's not oh my gosh, I have to address 10 things and not one thing. But there's just a lot of opportunity. So we will come back to this emotional health as well. But you just mentioned another kind of sneaky thing, which is mold. So I used to think that mold. Was most prevalent when you saw it be really loud when you were having major increase in allergies or major increases in illness or chronic sinus stuff, or just really significant symptoms.

But in the last year or two, I've taken much more interest in mild to moderate [00:21:00] mold or sneaky, where it's just man, you are gonna have relapsing symptoms or just annoying things if you're exposed to some fungus and whatnot. Cause you already have a almost like a community inside of you. So I wanted to.

Talk to you about was some of the weirdest symptoms that you see. People will ask me this and I've been trying to develop a little bit more of a streamlined questionnaire, but it just touches every system. so much. So some fun but weird symptoms I see are like the tongue sores, especially from citric acid because citric acid may be grown on mold or it may come from a good source or itching at the back of the.

Or nap, especially at night, which can be partially parasites. Like you said, parasites are more active at night. I wanted to ask about that. So that's why we sometimes see itching increase overnight. But what are some of the kind of funkiest symptoms for mold that people wouldn't necessarily think is from mold?

So thinning of the crown of the head, thinning of the hair there. Especially for men, if you gotta think about it. If you have something [00:22:00] inflammatory in your cranial cavity, your sinus cavity, That inflammation absolutely affects the hair growth there too. So I've definitely seen what people might consider balding or thinning of the hair due to a mold exposure.

I've definitely seen like pins and needles, sensations, like what we would call neuropathy in the field, but it feels static shocks or pins and needles, sensations on the arms and legs, especially when people lie still at night, and that's literally mitochondrial damage happening. Another famous one, a lot of people out there may not know this, but it's famous with practitioners, is the inability to hold the urine.

So mold inhibits something called anti-diuretic hormones. So when that's inhibited the floodgates open, it's the same hormone that's inhibited when someone is drinking. So it's a little bit like running the bathroom cuz you have to break the seal. And this really bothers people cuz they go up three or four times in the middle of the night often.

To do this severe anxiety, severe depression. They've [00:23:00] linked major depressive disorder to mold as well. They even think that ghost sightings and some hallucinations can be due to mold . So those are probably the one weird ones off the top of my head, I guess I would think of cause that symptoms, urinary symptoms like.

So it's like a catchall for so many things. Yeah, it's annoying. So I think the real work is the education around mold addressing it because it's internal and external. And so somewhat, I feel like everyone wants to know then once we start talking about mold, about testing their home. But the challenge is it's a.

A big box because home inspections aren't very perfect at all. Unfortunately, the testing's not amazing. And the best home inspections are many thousands of dollars, which just adds to stress and total emotional burden, which is nees negates healing, of course. So what would you say practically practical advice here and then also.

Emotional advice because this becomes whether we like it or not, we're all very emotional beans and this becomes in [00:24:00] every single person, it becomes an emotional overwhelm for a moment, I always say, let's back up and try to make it easy, but practical and emotional advice for this. No, that's great. I love the way you broke that down because it really is the worst part of my job to tell people they have, I think you have mold in your home and I think we're gonna have to do something about it, cuz it is thousands of dollars a lot of times for people, like you said.

So if people are renting or they're able to get out of their home, oftentimes that's what I recommend. It's just because the remediation. Deal with finding the right people, being out of your home, throwing away belongings, all that stuff can be really hard on people altogether. So there's really not an easy an, I wish I had the easy button answer to this for people, but there's just really not.

I will say I really liked we inspect. That's Brian Carr's company. That's national. Again, everything. Isn't cheap, but I can guarantee that there's someone that we can trust who will look out for people and their analysis will be the right thing for people to do. I also like home restoration.

They're really great too, and I believe [00:25:00] they're national as well. And so there are some national companies who actually specialize in mold and keep up with the science and keep up with the very new science that's coming out. Cause mold has really only been studied for about the last 10 years or so. And then really for people, you really wanna cut, make sure everyone cuts out everything porous in the home.

Mold seeps down below baseboards, it can hide behind walls. It's usually not visible in a home, so anywhere you find it, that's porous needs to be cut out and really porous furniture needs to be thrown out as well. Couches, mattresses, especially drapes, things like that. And you really have to watch out for carpets, which usually aren't.

Sick and they hold a lot of mold spores and mycotoxins as well. Really great air filters can be like gold for people, especially if they're remediating and they're trying to mop things up or they're vacuums, sealing things in a basement or whatnot. I really love, air Dr. Austin Air Filter, a Sea at Air filter.

Those work three different ways and I love all three of them, and I think really people need to, if you're really [00:26:00] sensitive, It's useful to get your genes checked, especially if you're living in a house with mold. And the reason I say this to people is because there's eventually everyone has to get out of the exposure, whether it's remediation or moving.

But if you do not have H L A D R, which is a genotype, that predisposes you to being sicker with mold illness because your body can't recognize the mold scores to get them out as. So you're gonna really spiral in a moldy home and these people cannot get better well inside the mold, the water damaged home they have got to leave to heal.

So that would be the difference between people with H L A D R or not. Some people can stay in the exposure a little bit longer and kinda get back on their feet. But guys, I don't have an easy answer for this. I don't. It's the modern day building techniques that are a problem. . And I just think we have to educate ourselves around recognizing it early, because I don't know if there's an if, but a when.

And so just awareness. It's hard not to get a little crazy for a minute and then of tamp it down and [00:27:00] say, all right, what are some things we can do to mitigate things before there is a huge problem. So you brought up H L A D R. So I wanna talk a little bit about. Overall, but a couple more things on any flags for current or past exposure, right?

Are there things that direct you more toward, I think it's here right now versus, I think it was a previous home overall. It's tricky. I kind of wanna look at people's genes to be sure, but in general, people who don't get better out of what, when you think they're out of the exposure and you checked everything else, and this is likely something to do with a current exposure, whether in their.

Their work environment, their home environment, somewhere they're going on a daily basis. If you start detoxing people, getting them sweating, getting them pooping, their liver working, taking binders, all the things I do for people and they still continue to relapse or they're not all the way better where you think they should be, then that warrants either gene testing or looking at the house or the work because there's some sort of continuous exposure there.

[00:28:00] Something that I've. And that will usually tip me off on the note of relapse, et cetera. Current exposure and genetics, and I think this really ties a little bit to genetics and maybe terrain, is what about when one person is more affected in the household than the rest, or one partner more than the other?

That makes it hard for some people because especially if they're not on the same page with health and healing, it. One person, not believe the other one. I've seen this so many times. So yeah, this happens a lot actually. This is very common. So one person will be spiraling out of control with their immune system, be sick all the time, never feel well, and the other person may have a runny nose and a cough.

Or allergies, quote unquote, allergies, right? And that we see that quite a lot. And sometimes maybe one of the kids will be sick, not all of the kids too. And that's because they've gotten, let's say, the mom's genes who has sensitivity to mold or water damaged building, sick building syndrome, and the father doesn't.

And so we actually see this a lot, [00:29:00] however, Say that if they don't get out right when the one person gets sick, eventually it will get the other person too, and that's because it takes they don't have genes for sensitivity. But if you're in a continuous exposure, it slowly chips away at your health too.

Over time. So I wanna talk a little bit more about genetic testing and interpreting it because I used to do more genetic testing and I abandoned it in terms of overwhelming clients and looking at what's actually currently happening versus genetic expression. But you're bringing a different tool to the table a little bit.

I have often thought in the past, we shouldn't just supplement based on a gene, but you're bringing a little different, so let's talk a little bit about that. Was that something you came back to, or was that something that you always used and never abandoned? The gene testing. . Yeah. H L A D R is a genotype that actually Dr.

Richie Shoemaker started to make. More famous for us. He really did a lot of research and published studies into mold illness and sick building syndrome in general, [00:30:00] and he noticed there are people who reacted much more violently to things like mold wars than other people. Eventually, no matter what genotype you are, if you're in the exposure long enough, it does.

Skip everyone and chip away to everyone's health. But these people are like canaries in a coal mine. Their body cannot recognize mold spores and get rid of them properly, so it just builds up in their body. They usually have a number of different autoimmune conditions or labels if they've had a mold exposure over time, and I really love this.

Tool or it's a blood test. It's a simple blood test to look to see if people are, how they're gonna do, if they can't get all the exposure right away. It does change. Change my treatment plan. I'm a little bit more aggressive with these people too. Interesting. So you're only looking for H L A D R on a blood test.

Yes, you're gonna look at their HLA status, their genotype status. Thank you for sharing that. Oh, of course. So speaking of emotional burden, there's a lot to be said about this, so I'm gonna of come back to even. People like I heard it from the [00:31:00] beginning of your story, which was, it was a really stressful environment.

It's hard to heal. And I wanna come back to that cuz it's such a big, that's such a helpful thing when we're thinking about redefining what healthcare is. But let's start with, let's continue on the mold pathway or the parasite pathway a little bit. I love this expression. That. I've heard people say that people are doing all the cell core protocols, but not addressing their emotional health, and so they're not gonna go anywhere.

So what are your thoughts on the emotional burden? And then I have some follow up questions about the real problem is when you don't realize that you have stress. Yeah. That's so true because we get, stress is an insidious thing. It happens slowly over the years of our life and builds, and we keep burying things.

And so it's not something that happens overnight and is so drastic to us. So many of us have a hard time seeing ourselves, A and B. It's a slow and insidious process, so we really don't see ourselves, and that's what happens with a lot of stress people. I'll see people who had. Traumatic childhood upbringings and really it seems like [00:32:00] that stress continues them throughout their life.

And we, in the medical community and in general, have done a really poor job at. Stressing the importance of stress, seriously, no pun intended, or telling people the truth about how, traumatic events can affect our genes. We have one of the most famous studies out there is a study done on adverse childhood events or ACE scores, and the more you have, the higher the chance of severe autoimmunity requiring hospitalization later.

So that goes to show us trauma. It does matter, and trauma has been shown to be passed down through genes and in generations. And so it's very important as this can epigenetically tag our genes differently and make our genes behave in different fashions than they would've normally before that stressor happened.

And what the studies show is. There are increased methylation tags, which increase a lot of adrenaline type of neurotransmitters in people, and this happens with more trauma. I think when I [00:33:00] started doing this kind of work, I was so ill-equipped for the emotional burden and stress, not only for myself, but.

More for my clients and then that as an empath that transferred. How do you help people? Because sometimes pointing out to people that they've got stress isn't less stressful for them. So how do you help people, or what do you refer them to? Especially, when they feel like, yeah, I've got stress, but I can't do anything about it, or I don't notice or, Just part of who I am.

Yeah. A lot of people say there's nothing I can do, I have to pay this and that. Or I have kids and I have responsibilities. So I understand For a lot of people it seems like an impossible feat. So I really try to give people practical solutions. Breath work on YouTube is free.

We just have to make time. Usually it's one of two things. It's either, if it's not time, then you're paying a little bit more. If you aren't paying more, then it's a little bit more time. That's usually the compromise we have to make here. You're lucky if you can get one, both of those things at the same time.

, so breath work is free. Sunshine and movement in the body [00:34:00] is free for people. Really. I look to people to try and get to rest and digest, so just sitting down before you eat your meal. Hopefully it's a healthy, organic meal as best you can do and taking a deep breath. Centering and grounding yourself and being grateful for the food that you're about to eat.

Thanking your body for digesting really helps the body digest more, really helps your stress and gratitude is the answer to a stressful life. So there are small things people can do to rewire their brain and to help mitigate stress. So this perspective quite, isn't quite as hard on the.

. I wanna go back to the beginning of even your story and the story I see so often and the story of many listeners, which is, maybe I'm working in a hospital and the whole thing is very stressful and it's part of the culture there and it's. All lauded and applause and whatnot, but there's probably people listening to this that really resonated with just feeling like if it's not everyone, if it's not 90% of practitioners that are currently in healthcare, we're [00:35:00] seeing like a record of leaving healthcare and not a lot of signs.

Insight that it's being reinvented. What do you say to the practitioner that feels a pull away from this broken system but they feel afraid? Oh, it's so many. I've had so many people private message me and just say, I don't, I see through this. I don't know how I'm gonna keep doing this. I feel stuck in the system and that's so I wanna give people out there hope who see through this and say, what?

Why don't the doctors do anything? They see it to you guys. A lot of them, they just are stuck and they're afraid, like you said, cuz it's really scary to speak out. It's the majority of your peers. It's really scary to do something different when you rely on money to pay debts and your kids schooling or whatnot.

So if you guys are out there listening to, you're a practitioner, that feels pulled away. I understand. I really sympathize with you. I felt the same way, and that feeling only grew until I decided to jump. So really, if you're that type of person, make sure that goes back to the other thing. Make sure you get back into rest and.

[00:36:00] Because there's a Bible verse that says, be still know that I'm God and I'd really take that seriously and that, how are those intuitive hits supposed to come to you if you're constantly spinning your wheels out and having a flurry of thoughts, so nothing. Intuitive can come through for you. . And that intuitive inspiration is where creativity and ideas come from.

And that's where I think my ideas come from is it's not from me and I take time to try and get in that silence so that. I can be bestowed with that knowledge that lets me be able to know that my next best move, because obviously I can't tell every doctor out there what the next best thing is for them.

But I can guarantee you that you have to dig deep, find what you would be doing if money didn't exist, engineer your perfect life, and the reverse engineer it backwards. So you have to know what you want first and what it looks like before you get it. Yeah. If that makes sense. Oh, that was so be. The way you shared that.

Thank you so much. And I [00:37:00] heard, and I think it's important to say, you don't have to go it alone. Sometimes what you don't know you don't know. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. If I could go back and talk to myself years before I went into private practice, it's oh, here were my people, right?

Here was my people overall, but. There are an abundance of trainings. If you wanna just dive in and see what fits the initial things I did, or the initial mentoring and trainings I did, I actually felt like a fish outta water cuz I wasn't with people that had like similar backgrounds and whatnot.

And that's okay. So not everything is like a home run and all of our ex. Experiences, those form what we become later. So there's a reason I don't practice the same things that I first trained in. It didn't feel right and it felt, and I used the things that didn't feel right to not do those in my own practice.

So everything is, you still learn from it. That's beautiful. I was gonna ask you a little bit more about Nutrigenomics, but I feel and I was gonna also ask you like, what are you into now? What is peaking your interest? Because sometimes as practitioners, as you learn more [00:38:00] or as one of my entrepreneur friends says, there's a perpetual boredom sometimes of you wanna be challenged new things.

So what are you kind of of feeling like you're into right now? What am I challenged with? I will say the whole covid thing challenged me to really get people better and to help people who had been injured as well from things. That was a challenge for me. What I'm into right now, I would say really actually training the trainers.

And that's because I feel I've been really inspirational to a lot of lay people and who've been able to heal themselves. But to really change the course of medicine and the way healthcare the trajectory is going, I feel very strongly that we have to train the practitioners. And I see it goes with the question you ask, how do we help the doctors who are stuck?

That's the answer I'm trying to figure out. , because I see that they do need training. They're hungry for it. There are many of them that would leave if they knew where to. . So I'm trying to work on that. Yeah, I feel like that's a natural trajectory. Help the people and then grow in the knowledge and then, help the people.

Help [00:39:00] the people. So it's a natural, it's a natural thing that you see very frequently. You mentioned a couple times I get this question a lot, so I'm gonna ask this last one. I people say how do you stay on top of current research? I'm like, I just go to PubMed and look for things. Is there a place, because you mentioned a few studies, which was lovely, and so is there a place where you feel.

A lot of things are not what you wanna see. So is there a place where you go and you find things? Or do you do it like I do, which is, I wanna know something, I just go to PubMed and look for it. . Yeah. I'm like you. So if I wanna know, I know that this is probably helpful for people listening.

I, if you type in anything with the words N C B I behind it, it brings up all the PubMed studies. And I can type any in myON and. Exercise in c b I, it brings up all published studies for me. So I'm usually looking somewhere like that. And then often I'll go even in certain forums like Cure Zone or somewhere like that to, cuz it matters to me to hear what the people are saying.

And anecdotal experience matters to me as much as double [00:40:00] blinded. Peer, placebo controlled, peer reviewed studies. For me, it matters that much to me that they're, I hear the people are doing well with the research as it's shown. So that's what I usually do. Yeah. That is a beautiful place to stop.

And I just remember we had gotten cut off and I had Two or three random fire questions. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna ask those from listeners just to take it back to instead of this nice, beautiful ending, let me take you back to some challenging client questions. So I thought this was such an interesting question.

This person asked, I feel finger and toe pain 20 to 30 minutes after my carboxy binder dose. What is that pain mechanism of action? And her next question was, if eating burned food is a carcinogen, then why aren't we worried about taking so much binder or charcoal as a matter of benefit versus risk? And I was like that was a thoughtful question.

burns food. Binders aren't burnt food. They're not at all. They're fulvic and humic acid with poly electrolytes and amino acids charged. [00:41:00] So the body reacts quickly and it reacting quickly is what you want. So the it binds and pulls things out, activates the Nerf two pathway, things like that.

So I wouldn't say it's anything close to burner food, but as far as taking carboxy and then there's so foot pain. I'd love to know more about the character of the foot pain, but we don't have that luxury here. So I would say it's definitely pulling something from your toes. . It's definitely activating, pulling something.

There's lots of things that settle in the feet, including parasites, bacteria, barella is one in particular. Hookworms are one in particular. And there are lots of toxicities that enter the foot, which is what plantar fasciitis is. . So there could be something like that going on too. Yeah, very interesting.

And then oxalates will usually settle in the hands of heat if you've got mold stuff. So that kind of makes some sense. I've got, I think there's just one more loss of taste after starting herbs in an alcohol tincture for mold. Any thoughts on that? I wonder what, I guess I would have to know what kind of herbs are in an alcohol tincture.

I don't think I can probably answer that [00:42:00] without knowing. It's interesting, there's an alcohol tincture from mold. I don't even know what that would be. , at all. Actually. I wonder if it's something that was treating something indirectly, but I'm not quite sure there sometimes pulling things.

People definitely have told me they've had weird. All the time in their nasal microbiome. There is a microbiome there, just like there's one in your gut too. There's one in the oral cavity and the nasal cavity, and I've had people smell metals. I've had people smell sulfur. I've had people lose their smell and have be able to only smell garbage.

So these things I've heard all the time. So I would say you're pulling something or you perhaps have a virus that you're not aware of. . Oh, so many interesting random, funky symptoms. You've done, you've been so generous today. Where can people find you online? , I can continue to learn from you. No, you were great.

This was a great interview. Thank you for having me. So you guys, I have hierarchies to following me or interacting with me online. I would say, I put out [00:43:00] a lot of free information on social media for everyone. So Dr. Period, Jess MD is my handle on Instagram. Same on TikTok. And then I'm also on Facebook if people are still doing that, Dr.

Jess, Jessica Petros, and then lots of free information on there. I also have my website, which gives a free How-to Kill Bind Sweat, as well as some blogs and some questions that I answered for my audience, just like you did on the F faq. And that's dr jess md.com. And then finally my Wellness Plus app, which is where I teach people how to be their best doctor.

And that's app dot dr. Jess md dot. Yeah, and it's very affordable. People wanna learn more from you. Thank you so much for coming on today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me so much. Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission. To help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story, just go to.

This podcast.com/less stressed life. [00:44:00] That's review this podcast.com/less stressed life, and you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.