Low Dose Immunotherapy with Dr. Karima Hirani: Rational Wellness Podcast 045
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
Dr. Karima Hirani speaks about Low Dose Immunotherapy and Low Dose Allergy therapy with Dr. Ben Weitz .
[If you enjoy this podcast, please give us a positive review on Apple Podcasts, so more people will find The Rational Wellness Podcast]
Podcast Highlights
3:33 We discussed Low Dose Allergy therapy (LDA), Low Dose Immunotherapy (LDI) and the differences between them. Low Dose Allergy therapy has been around for 50 years, having been called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization in England. This was eventually brought to the US by Dr. William Shrader, who is one of the head people at the American Academy of Environmental Medicine. LDA is a form of Low Dose Immunotherapy using a proprietary formula of a broad-based mixtures of allergens (antigens) made immunologically active by the enzyme glucuronidase. It is used for allergies, but allergies can present as autism and using LDA you can see improvements in speech and language.
6:00 Besides LDA, her other top LDIs are yeast, Lyme, and strep for PANDAs. Rather than the traditional method of subcutaneous injections of the FDA, they are using it as sublingual drops, thanks to Dr. Ty Vincent. And they are using further serial dilutions of the FDA tincture that comes from the compounding pharmacy that makes it, since it is too potent. It ends up being diluted a quadrillion times, so it is really a homeopathic formula. The same T regulatory cells that are found under the skin are also present under the tongue. This is a way to train the immune system to build tolerance.
10:08 Dr. Hirani often finds Lyme Disease in her patients with autism and Lyme Disease is really a condition of immune dysfunction. The Lyme LDI seems to turn off the autoimmune component of the chronic Lyme disease.
12:15 Dr. Hirani explains that PANDAS found in kids is the pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric diseases after strep infection. She gets amazing results with LDI to create immune tolerance and this alleviates many of the symptoms. This also turns off such infections that create chronic illness. She will also often give such patients high dose vitamin D to help the immune system.
15:25 Dr. Hirani noted that if she gives a dose that is too strong and it can trigger a herx reaction. If she has an autistic kid and she gives too strong a dosage of strep LDI, it can trigger a strep infection and these kids will have strong reactions, so she may prescribe an antibiotic and she will use a rescue formula of supplements.
20:04 Dr. Hirani explains that in the last few years many more patients are testing positive for Lyme infections with the Western Blot and they will also often have a low CD 57, which is a marker of immune dysfunction. She will also often test her patients for Lyme, Epstein-Barr, cytomegalovirus, Human Herpes virus 6, herpes 1 and 2, mycoplasma, measles, mumps, strep, and varicella IgM titers. The measles, mumps, and varicella titers can result from the vaccines and these things can trigger an autoimmune disease in these kids, as these infections turn off and on.
Dr. Karima Hirani is available to see new patients by calling her office in Culver City at (310) 559-6634. You can get additional information about Dr. Hirani by going to her website http://www.drhirani.com/
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also specializing in Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure as well as chiropractic work by calling the office 310-395-3111.
Podcast Transcripts
Dr. Weitz: This is Dr. Ben Weitz with the Rational Wellness Podcast, bringing you the cutting-edge information on health and nutrition from the latest scientific research and Bible interviewing top experts in the field. Please subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast on iTunes and YouTube, and sign up for my free e-book on my website by going to drweitz.com. Let’s get started on your road to better health. Hey, Rational Wellness podcasters. Thank you for joining me again today. We have a very exciting show. We’re going to be interviewing one of my friends for a long time Dr. Karima Hirani. She has a thriving practice in Culver City. She is a medical doctor who specializes in functional and integrative care. Doctor, let me give you a little bit of introduction into her background and then we’re going to highlight a couple of therapies that she’s using in her practice, which are low dose allergy and low dose immunotherapy. We’ll also going to try to cover neurotherapy if we have enough time.
So Dr. Karima Hirani is board certified in family medicine, as well as in integrative and holistic medicine, as well as in clinical homeopathy. She holds a Master’s Degree in Nutrition from UCLA. She specializes in autism, ADD, and PANDAS in children. She also treat adults with chronic illness. She is an expert in specific types of treatment that she uses for her chronic patients, including low dose allergy therapy, low dose immunotherapy, and neurotherapy. Low dose allergy therapy and low dose immunotherapy are essentially ways to help individuals overcome allergies and food sensitivities to foods, chemicals, molds, toxins. This therapy can be used for whole range of chronic illnesses, including autoimmune diseases and chronic fatigue and Lyme disease, et cetera. So this is a type of therapy that helps to balance the immune system when the body is not able to tolerate certain bacteria, fungi, viruses that live within us that others can tolerate or maybe that your own body could have tolerated at a different point in time. This is certainly the case with Lyme disease and many other chronic diseases that many of us in the functional medicine world find coming into our offices very frequently.
Dr. Hirani, thank you for joining me today.
Dr. Hirani: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Dr. Weitz: Boy, we’ve known each other for a long time. How many years have we known each other?
Dr. Hirani: A long time, maybe 15, 20 years.
Dr. Weitz: Yes, yes. I remember going to all those Dr. Bland seminars and I would always get to talk to Dr. Hirani.
Dr. Hirani: Yes.
Dr. Weitz: So can you explain a little bit about the differences–What is low dose allergy therapy? What is low dose immunotherapy? What are the differences between those?
Dr. Hirani: So low dose allergy therapy has been around essentially for about 50 years now. It was first discovered in England. It was called Enzyme Potentiated Desensitization. It was brought to United States several decades ago by Dr. William Shrader. He is one of the head people at the American Academy of Environmental Medicine. He and many other doctors have been using low dose allergy therapy for several decades. What they’re using it for is to treat allergies. As you know as a functional medicine doctor, one of the most important things that we look at is allergies in our patients. Sometimes allergies don’t present as the classical symptoms, where you have the runny nose, itchy eyes, teary eyes, et cetera, sneezing. Allergies can present as chronic fatigue. Allergies can present as autism. When we treat with LDA, we see amazing things happen, anything from improvement in speech and language. To my adults patients, they are not tired as much anymore. Their brain fog is better. They lose weight, because when you have allergies or you have a chronic infection, it can cause inflammation and then it can lead to weight gain. So we see a whole spectrum of improvement by just giving the patient the LDA. Again, I have to really stress the fact that it’s not the typical allergy symptoms that you should be looking at. You should really be thinking of everyone as having potentially allergies and then to just give them a trial dose of the LDA. That’s usually one of the first treatments that I offer without even doing any functional medicine testing on my patient. I just give them the LDA dose and then we see what happens.
Dr. Weitz: What percentage of patients do you see some sort of positive response?
Dr. Hirani: I haven’t really like scientifically quantified it, but if I could just generalize, my top three most beneficial LDA-LDIs is LDA is one of them and then I have my other LDIs, which are really effective in my patients are yeast and Lyme and then Strep for PANDAS. These four seemed to be my most effective treatments.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. So my understanding of LDA is that this could best be described as a form of low dose immunotherapy and is a proprietary mixture of foods and other things that could create allergic reaction. Is that sort of the way to understand it?
Dr. Hirani: Absolutely, absolutely. Ty Vincent, thanks to Ty Vincent. We’ve taken it one step further and that traditionally, most doctors were just injecting in the skin. They were just using the original dose that you get from the compounding pharmacy because this proprietary mixture comes from one compounding pharmacy in the United States. What Ty Vincent has been doing and he’s taught doctors like myself to do is to make further serial dilutions of the actual LDA because many, many patients are extremely sensitive. The original tincture that comes from the compounding pharmacy is too potent. So that’s something that we’ve done. We’ve been able to help even more patients than we could by LDA by making the serial dilutions.
Dr. Weitz: Now it’s interesting because this is something that’s alluded billions even trillions of times, right?
Dr. Hirani: Correct, yes, like quadrillion, quadrillion times.
Dr. Weitz: Essentially, we’re talking about a homeopathic formulation. There’s really no real amount of the original compound sort of just the energy of it essentially, right?
Dr. Hirani: It’s the energetic imprint that’s been left in the mixture and that’s what we’re giving the patients, and I do it and I think Ty Vincent does it also. We do it sublingually. We’ve moved away from the subcutaneous injection because it’s very painful. It leaves behind big red bump and itchiness and swelling. Patients don’t care for that. So when we do it sublingually, we have the same T regulator cells that are subcutaneous that are under the skin. There are also under the tongue. So we’re basically training the immune system to build tolerance. That’s what we’re doing.
Dr. Weitz: In contrast with homeopathic medications, if a homeopath wants to give you a more potent formulation, he makes it more dilute. But with the low dose immunotherapy when you make it more dilute, it’s less potent, right?
Dr. Hirani: Correct, yes.
Dr. Weitz: I mean that makes rational sense to me. One of the problems I always had with homeopathy is to tell me you’re going to dilute it, another hundred thousand, million times and it gets more potent. It just totally is very difficult for my rational, scientific mind to wrap around.
Dr. Hirani: The way that traditional homeopaths look at it is when you further dilute it, it’s working at a deeper level. To me it makes sense because when we have to further dilute these potions and we give them to patients who can tolerate them, these are patients that are probably really affected at a deeper level than somebody who can just handle the original mother tincture. So to me, I see a correlation.
Dr. Weitz: So when you’re treating a chronic condition like … I read some of your blog posts and watched your video that you did at the Autism conference. So you often find Lyme disease as an infection that affects patients with autism, right?
Dr. Hirani: Yes, and my adult patients as well with chronic illness.
Dr. Weitz: So essentially, when you look at Lyme disease, you’re not really looking at it as a disease that is like a typical acute infection. This is something that’s really creating a problem because it’s created, the body is reacting, the immune system is overreacting to it. It’s not that the bacteria is actually eating away your tissues or things like that, right?
Dr. Hirani: Exactly. I think that there’s two processes going on. One is there is this infection that seems to turn on and off. When it’s off, the immune system thinks the infection is still there, so it’s mounting an attack against the patient. It’s this autoimmune phenomenon that is really making the patient really ill, so that the LDI, the line of the I that we give to the patient seems to turn off the autoimmune aspect of the illness. Does it ever get rid of the illness? We’re not quite certain, but we certainly seem to have amazing results just in curing all of these symptoms and getting rid of all of these symptoms from the fatigue to the joint pains to the brain fog. I mean, you name it, we’ve seen improvements. So the autoimmune concept, the reason why it makes a lot of sense to me and it may not make a lot of sense to a lot of doctors if they’re not treating PANDAS. Are you familiar with PANDAS?
Dr. Weitz: Somewhat.
Dr. Hirani: So if you understand PANDAS, for your audience, PANDAS stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Strep. So this is an autoimmune phenomenon that has occurred after a Strep infection. These kids can have OCD. They can have ticks. They can have aggression, ADHD, anxiety, bedwetting, whole host of symptoms that they can have. So this is an autoimmune response to this infection. When I first heard Dr. Ty Vincent speak and he was talking about the autoimmune concept of infection of these infections like Lyme and yeast and Epstein-Barr, it just like it rang bells in my head and it just made sense. I just dived into it and I’ve had amazing results in my chronically ill patients.
Dr. Weitz: Now this is a different way of thinking about infections and say the average person who thinks about a flesh-eating Staph bacteria, you have this bacteria, it’s eating away at you. Unless you get rid of it, you’re going to end up suffering dire consequences. In this sense, you’re thinking of an infection as the problem is not really the bacteria per se that’s damaging your tissues. It’s that your immune system is not tolerating it, right?
Dr. Hirani: Exactly. It’s the autoimmune aspect of it. For example, I’ve had patients who come in with oral herpes or with genital herpes. We’ll give them their herpes LDI and we will turn off the infection. So we can literally turn off active infections by giving the LDI to them. So what does that tell you? It tells me that there’s a huge autoimmune component to these infections and that a lot of these infections are probably they’ve been living with us for eons. Probably not causing us a lot of harm but for some reason in the last several decades, these infections are being threatened and so they’re coming alive. They’re creating all of this autoimmune havoc in the body and then creating all this chronic illness.
Dr. Weitz: So do you ever use killing strategies at the same time? Do you ever prescribe antimicrobial herbs, so that you can knock down the bacteria at the same time that you’re getting your body to be more tolerant of it?
Dr. Hirani: No, I don’t need to.
Dr. Weitz: You don’t need to.
Dr. Hirani: I don’t need to. It’s wonderful. Patients come to me from other doctors with this laundry list of supplements and herbs that they’ve been on. I don’t need to give them anything other than just high dose vitamin D, because the vitamin D seems to just really help the immune system and help the LDIs and the LDA work better. That’s really all I need. Now if I give a dose that’s too strong, say let me use PANDAS again, so I gave a Strep dose to a child and it was too strong for the child, it can trigger a Strep infection. In autistic kids, they can go bonkers. So in that case, I do sometimes need to prescribe the antibiotics and some rescue treatments to turn off the, we call it the herx reaction. So sometimes I do need to prescribe antibiotics, but it’s very rare or we have the parasite LDI. The parasite LDI is just a boon for my children, because they have classical symptoms of parasites from teeth grinding to foul-smelling gas to hair pulling, licking, chewing, mouthing. So when I give them the parasite LDI, if it works, it’s miraculous. It turns all of the symptoms off and the parents are thrilled. When it’s too strong, it can actually worsen all of those behaviors, so in which case sometimes I have to prescribe a parasite medication for them and a bunch of oral supplemental rescue treatments for them.
Dr. Weitz: So it’s interesting you bring up parasites. We know that there are some parasites where protozoans or even some worms that coexist in humans and actually maybe beneficial for us and there are others that can kill us. So how do you resolve knowing when you want to be tolerant, the difference between I want to be tolerant of something my wife does that’s really annoying to me as opposed to I don’t really want to just be tolerant of Charles Manson living in my house because it’s probably not going to be good to just be tolerant of it?
Dr. Hirani: Well, basically if you’re walking into my office and you have symptoms, you’re not tolerant of these organisms that are living in you. Then if you got classical symptoms, in adults it tends to be just a foul-smelling gas. I had one young woman. She is still a patient of mine. She had this habit of picking at her skin. She was picking away at her skin and she had all of this scarring and acne. I treated her with the parasite LDI and all of that picking went away. So if the patient presents to me with classical symptoms of parasites, you have to know what those symptoms are. If you give them the LDI, you’re going to turn it off and you’re going to be so grateful. The foul-smelling gas, I mean, how many patients have you seen that have problems with flatulence and foul-smelling? You give them the right dose of the LDI and you just turn it off, I mean it’s miraculous, so.
Dr. Weitz: I just read about some airplane. that had to have an emergency landing because some guy wouldn’t stop passing gas.
Dr. Hirani: He needs the parasite LDI.
Dr. Weitz: Once again, I just want to come back to the same thing. How do you know that it’s not a parasite that’s going to eat its way through your intestine and eat away at your liver and your brain? There are some parasites that are deadly and you don’t just want to be tolerant of them.
Dr. Hirani: I get what you’re saying. What you need to understand is that LDI isn’t going to kill these infections. LDI is just helping your body become tolerant to them. If you already have a tolerance, then that LDI is not going to do anything. It’s not going to make it worst. For example, like Ty Vincent says, he doesn’t really have any symptoms of Lyme but he tried one of the Lyme LDIs and he noticed that his plantar fasciitis went away. So he obviously had a symptom that he didn’t associate with Lyme. Again, if you don’t have any symptoms and I give you the LDI and you don’t have a problem, it’s not going to make anything worse. It’s not going to turn off the parasites. Does that make sense to you?
Dr. Weitz: Yes, it definitely makes sense. Treating somebody’s chronic conditions are so difficult. So when you get a patient with autism, how do you know where to start? I know that you said you find Lyme. Do you test for Lyme? Do you just try a Lyme protocol or?
Dr. Hirani: I’ve been doing this for a long time now so I can have it down to science. So I do do a whole battery of testing on these patients. Before I even get the results back, they all go home with the LDA, because like I said the LDA is one of my most effective treatments. When they come back for follow-up to do lab work review, I am now testing for Lyme through Medical Diagnostics Laboratories. A ton of these kids are coming up positive with the Western Blot whereas way back like maybe 10 years ago, nobody was turning up positive. All of a sudden, so many patients are turning up positive with Lyme. So this is very helpful to convince my parents. Before I was even doing the western blot or the MBL labs, I would just use the CD57 as a biomarker and everybody has a low CD57.
Dr. Weitz: What is the CD57?
Dr. Hirani: The CD57 is a white blood cell that gets rid of infection and also cancer cells. So in everyone that walks in my door, adult or child, the majority of the time I would say about 90% of the time, this biomarker is abnormal. It’s low and that’s a marker of immune dysfunction. Lyme disease, Epstein-Barr, CMV, even heavy metals have been shown to lower the CD57. So when I do this lab test and I show it to the parents or my adult patient, I tell them that, “Look, this could be a marker for Lyme and let me treat you with the Lyme LDI.” I do so and then lo and behold they’re better.
Dr. Weitz: So what percentage of the improvement do you see in kids with autism using your protocol with the Lyme LDI? Do you do other things or is that a protocol in of itself?
Dr. Hirani: So almost every kid gets the Lyme LDI. It may not be the second or the third, because sometimes they have active measles or mumps in their blood. So I check for IgM titers in kids that have been vaccinated. So if they come and they have anything that’s IgM positive, like either the measles or the mumps, now nobody is testing for this. I’m probably one of few physicians that’s doing this testing. I’m encouraging other doctors to measure this but if they’re not, shame on them.
Dr. Weitz: Well, so is that a test offered by conventional labs? Where do you got to tested it?
Dr. Hirani: Quest, LabCorp, they all do that. The LA County Department of Health doesn’t like that I’m measuring the IgM, because IgM means active infection. So they have to go through the process of calling me and finding out if this patient has active mumps or active measles. Usually, the child does not have any evidence of an active infection, but I know that it’s affecting their brain because these infections can cause an encephalitis. So when I see these IgM positive infections, sometimes even the varicella because these two vaccines, the MMR and the varicella were live viral vaccines. So sometimes these vaccines can trigger an autoimmune response and then the infection is turning on and off. So if I see these active infections and the titers are really high in the blood, I might first want to treat these infections. Or if the Strep titers are really high indicating PANDAS, I might want to treat with that first. So it really depends on what lab results show and then I go by all of that. So I usually go after, of course, the active infections first.
Dr. Weitz: So what’s your complete panel? Which different things are you testing for when you get a typical kid with autism say?
Dr. Hirani: So I test for Lyme. I test for Epstein-Barr. I test for cytomegalovirus. I test for Human Herpes virus 6. I test for herpes one and two. I test for mycoplasma and then I test for varicella. I think that’s about it and I check the IgG and the IgM titers, so.
Dr. Weitz: IgG and IgM titers for which particular vaccines or organisms?
Dr. Hirani: All of those that I just mentioned.
Dr. Weitz: Oh okay.
Dr. Hirani: IgG and IgM for all of those that I mentioned.
Dr. Weitz: I mean, you also do the measles-mumps-rubella.
Dr. Hirani: Exactly. The MMR, IgG, IgM exactly yes.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, and the varicella, right?
Dr. Hirani: The varicella, correct.
Dr. Weitz: What about other vaccines like influenza?
Dr. Hirani: So I don’t necessarily test titers for those if the parents tell me that my kid got the DTaP and then we lost him. We have the DTaP LDI. We have the hepatitis B LDI. I don’t use those quite as often as I use the MMR and the varicella. Now I do need to tell you that I don’t just treat the IgM. If the IgG, which indicates past infection and these IgG antibodies are super high in the blood, I will also treat those with LDI. I mean, we’ve seen just amazing things happen like I had two-year-old kid with active Epstein-Barr virus. We gave him the EBV LDI. Luckily, it was the right dose and he is talking now. So, I mean, when you treat these infections especially these active infections, it’s a big deal. Of course, infection is not the only thing we treat. We treat heavy metals, because these kids are loaded with heavy metals. So aluminum is huge in these kids.
As being a proud … I don’t now if you came across a recent study that was published just at the end of last year. It came out of England where they autopsied the brains of I think 10 autistic kids who had died for unfortunate reasons. They found shockingly high amount of aluminum in their brain. So we know that these heavy metals are also playing a role in these kids.
Dr. Weitz: Where are they getting these levels of aluminum?
Dr. Hirani: That’s the big controversy. You may have heard of the chemtrails. Have you heard about the chemtrails?
Dr. Weitz: No.
Dr. Hirani: So I think that’s something you need to really look into, because you see those planes flying above when it’s a clear sky? You see those planes?
Dr. Weitz: Okay, yes.
Dr. Hirani: They’re spraying aluminum on us.
Dr. Weitz: Really?
Dr. Hirani: It’s been purported that it’s for climate control. However, a lot of people question the truth to that because-
Dr. Weitz: How does it affect climate control?
Dr. Hirani: Yes, exactly, I don’t know. Why are we trying to control the climate, I don’t know. Basically, every single country in the world has chemtrails. These are chemtrails you can see in every country in the world yet nobody seems to question it. Nobody seems to care about it. Nobody is talking about it. [inaudible 00:28:01] from Malibu collect her rainwater two days in a row. She sent it to a lab that tests for heavy metals. The rainwater had 50 times the acceptable amount of aluminum in-
Dr. Weitz: Wow.
Dr. Hirani: So, yes, it’s coming down on us. The aluminum is coming down. Obvious sources of aluminum are also aluminum foil, non-stick cookware. All of these things are sources of aluminum.
Dr. Weitz: What about the aluminum that’s often found in vaccines?
Dr. Hirani: They’re definitely an issue as well, absolutely yes. We have to consider that as a concern for these kids.
Dr. Weitz: In fact, my understanding is the aluminum is often added to the vaccines as an adjuvant, meaning it’s something to actually create immune system reaction, because-
Dr. Hirani: You know what? The aluminum hasn’t been found to be a great adjuvant. It’s not a great adjuvant-
Dr. Weitz: Oh, really.
Dr. Hirani: … but yet they use it. There’s a really great book that you might want to read. It’s by Mayer Eisenstein. He’s an MD, PhD. He’s a pediatrician, sorry, he’s an MD, JD; I apologize. He’s an attorney. He had to go back to law school to protect himself because he’s not anti-vaccine, but he’s very pro educating his parents about what’s in the vaccines. He’s published a book showing you the effectiveness of these adjuvants and aluminum is really not a very effective adjuvant.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. So then you will administer a low dose immunotherapy of aluminum to help these kids?
Dr. Hirani: Yes. Again, we see amazing results. Even my Alzheimer’s patients, their cognition gets better, their thought processes in another language. The autistic kids their speech becomes amazing what we see with the aluminum.
Dr. Weitz: Once again, one thing I’m having trouble wrap my head around is you’re now creating a tolerance to the aluminum. Don’t you want to remove the aluminum?
Dr. Hirani: That’s something we don’t know for sure because we haven’t studied it. I personally think that by giving the aluminum LDI to the patient we’re actually helping the immune system remove these metals from the body, because these metals–it’s very hard to eliminate them especially if you have poor detoxification. I think that these LDIs are helping the body excrete them. I haven’t really done like a comparison study, some case studies on my patients to show like a before and after urinary porphyrins perhaps because that’s a lab test that we can use to determine if they have heavy metals. That’s something I definitely need to do and then I can really definitively say we did this LDIs and now the porphyrin levels have lowered so obviously it’s helping excrete these metals. So I personally think it’s doing that.
Dr. Weitz: Do you ever combine it with a heavy metal detox protocol of some kind whether that be glutathione or NAC or chelators or something along those lines?
Dr. Hirani: I combine it a lot. So I’m actually known as the chelating doctor. So I have a lot of experience chelating these kids from doing the transdermal, so topical to suppository to IV chelation, so I combine those a lot. Then I also have patients who don’t want to, parents who don’t want to do any kind of traditional chelation then we will just do the LDIs, and I have them on detox supplements as well, like glutathione, etc.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. Of those various forms of chelation, which one do you find to be the most effective?
Dr. Hirani: As far as the traditional?
Dr. Weitz: Yes, yes, but just stepping away from the LDI just for a second, even though I know that’s our main topic. We were talking about chelation. You mentioned suppositories and oral chelation, etc. Which do you find to be the most effective?
Dr. Hirani: So the IV chelation is the most effective. The number two most effective is the suppositories. The number three most effective is the transdermal. I like to start with the transdermal actually on the younger kids because it’s so non-invasive. It’s just a cream that parents can apply at home. I send them home with the mineral supplement. I tell them that it’s going to pull out the good stuff as well, so you need to replenish with the mineral supplement. Then you need to look at for yeasty and parasite behaviors, because remember that parasites and yeasts, they actually hold on to your metals for you. So when you’re chelating, you’re also removing the metals from the yeast and you’re removing the metals from the parasites. So these bugs are going to get activated and these kids will present with symptoms of yeast and parasites, so we have to treat with either LDI and/or prescription medications like for yeast or for parasites.
Dr. Weitz: Interesting. So one of the real benefits of using this low dose immunotherapy is not only is it especially effective, especially in the case of a skilled practitioner like yourself, but it has very low side effects. Isn’t that right?
Dr. Hirani: Exactly, exactly. So with the LDI, parents are usually very eager to jump on it and I’m happy to prescribe it because it’s very safe. There’s always the risk of having a dose that’s too strong and I warn the parents about that. I tell them that “Look, if that happens, you just have to email me and I will send a protocol to do that’s a rescue treatment protocol with high-dose glutathione, high-dose CoQ10, high-dose vitamin D. If those three supplements are not working, then I’ll bring them into my office and we do rectal ozone and we do an auto-urine injection and we do a foot bath. I find that the ionic foot bath is very, very complimentary to detox and to treating especially herx reactions in patients. So I have a whole host of rescue treatments that I offer in the office for patients to do at home should the dose be too strong. I haven’t had too many problems with children herxing from the heavy metal LDIs, as I have with, I’ve had more herx reactions from the infection LDIs than I’ve had from the heavy metal LDIs.
Dr. Weitz: For people watching this podcast who aren’t familiar with the herx reaction, can you explain what that is?
Dr. Hirani: A herx reaction is a reaction that you get after you’ve taken a particular treatment. So for example, even Lyme patients who were doing antibiotics can have a herx reaction. So when we give an LDI dose that was too strong, the patient can have a herx reaction. The herx reaction is basically a worsening of your current symptoms or an emergence of new symptoms that you never had before, or a re-emergence of symptoms that you had before but they’ve come back again and now you’re really ill from these reactions, the symptoms that you had in the past but now they’ve come back again, or you never had them and now you have them. Or you have symptoms already and now the herx reaction is making your symptoms just worse than what they were before you took the LDI. So that is the risk that we are taking. We’ve tried to come up with methods to lower the risk especially with the muscle testing.
I’ve identified 18 red flag symptoms that if the patients have any one of these 18 red flags, we automatically go 10C weaker on the dose that we find through the autonomic response testing to further minimize the risk of having a negative reaction. So it’s very important to have that discussion with parents because it is going to happen at some point with some particular LDI. We just have to reassure them that majority of the time, probably about 95 to 98% of the time, we’re able to reverse it.
Dr. Weitz: When the patient does have adverse reaction to this low dose immunotherapy, you have to wait a certain period of time and then give them a lower dosage or less concentrated dosage.
Dr. Hirani: Exactly. We tell the parents or we tell the patient that we need to wait now two months before we can retry this same LDI again, but we’re going to go 10C weaker or 20C weaker in terms of the dosing to really, because what I explain to them is if you herx from this reaction, that means you have a serious major issue with this particular bug or with this particular heavy metal and that we need to treat that again.
Dr. Weitz: With respect to kids with autism, I’m sure it’s best if you can get to these kids early. What about the parent who has a kid who’s seven years old, 10 years old, 16 years old and none of the treatments have really been effective. Is this something that at that point can still be beneficial?
Dr. Hirani: Oh, yes. Older kids, I have a 20-year-old kid and a 22-year-old kid that are just doing amazing. In fact, their dad is supposed to send me a video testimonial so I can post it on my YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/HiraniWellness. This kid, for example, his dad has left no stone unturned. His dad has tried everything out there for his kid. He has done chelation. He has done everything. He will tell you that nothing has helped his kid as much as the LDIs have helped his son. They can have a normal life now.
Dr. Weitz: He just started this recently, right?
Dr. Hirani: Two years ago, because I’ve been doing it. I just started it in 2015, so it will be three years now.
Dr. Weitz: Wow, that’s great. That’s awesome, Dr. Hirani. What is your YouTube channel?
Dr. Hirani: It’s just Dr. Hirani.
Dr. Weitz: Okay good.
Dr. Hirani: Dr. Karima Hirani.
Dr. Weitz: Okay great. So I think that was a great amount information for our listeners to absorb and very, very helpful. Is there any final thoughts you would like to provide us?
Dr. Hirani: Well, if your patients are out there struggling especially the adult patients with any kind of chronic illness, whether it’s IBS or chronic pain or brain fog, do give LDI and LDA a chance because it could be really life changing.
Dr. Weitz: For practitioners who are listening to this who’d like to investigate LDA and LDI, where should they go to learn more information or attain some of these products?
Dr. Hirani: They should contact the American Academy of Environmental Medicine. They should buy the LDA manual and they should attend one of the LDA courses at AAEM. Then they should also contact Ty Vincent and then buy his manual for LDI. When you buy his manual, he will also send you all of the LDIs and then in his annual he tells you how to make the further dilutions and how to use LDI. Nobody talks about the muscle testing. So if you’re new to muscle testing, I recommend you maybe check out Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt and take one of his courses on autonomic response testing. I’ve only taken level one. I don’t need to do all of the other levels because I don’t need to. The level one was good enough. So do think about using some sort of muscle testing to find the right dose. If you don’t and you’re just guessing like Ty Vincent and other doctors are, then you’re going to herx more patients than you want. So that’s my advice.
Dr. Weitz: It’s my understanding that these are over the counteri and can be recommended by chiropractors and non-MDs as well. Isn’t that correct?
Dr. Hirani: I’m really not sure about that because you have to check with Ty Vincent about that. With the LDA, I know you have to be an MD because you have to-
Dr. Weitz: The LDA.
Dr. Hirani: … order that from a compounding pharmacy. With the LDIs, it’s possible that you can get it from Ty Vincent. I don’t know if he is requiring you to be an MD. I don’t know because he never asked me for my medical license, so it’s possible.
Dr. Weitz: Okay, excellent. So for viewers, listeners, and practitioners who would like to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to contact you?
Dr. Hirani: Drhirani.com is my website. There’s a Ask Dr. Hirani a Question, so they can contact me there. So it’s D-R, Hirani, H-I-R-A-N-I dot com.
Dr. Weitz: Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Hirani. I’d love to have you back at some point and talk about neurotherapy.
Dr. Hirani: I would love to, I can’t wait, because these are two of my most amazing treatments on mother practice.
Dr. Weitz: Awesome. Thank you and so nice to touch base with you again.
Dr. Hirani: So much, Ben. It was a pleasure. Bye.
Dr. Weitz: Bye.
