Breaking the Code of Chronic Disease with Dr. Andy Barlow: Rational Wellness Podcast 354
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Dr. Andy Barlow discusses How to Break the Code of Chronic Disease with Dr. Ben Weitz.
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Podcast Highlights
2:18 The difference between traditional medicine and functional medicine is that traditional medicine tends to focus on the symptoms whereas functional medicine tends to focus on the root causes. When you go to see your traditional medicine doctor for your seven minute office visit they focus on your symptoms and will often prescribe a different drug to treat each symptom. With a Functional Medicine approach we attempt to identify and address the root causes of dysfunction and disease. Let’s say you have a patient suffering with depression, using a Functional Medicine perspective, we might investigate gut health by doing a stool test because of the gut-brain connection. In fact, Dr. Barlow’s first book is Highway to Health: The Roadmap to Overcoming Depression, Anxiety, Insomnia, and Chronic Pain through the Gut-Brain Connection. The goal is to restore order to get the body back in a state of homeostasis, to optimize the recovery and the health status of this human being that’s sitting in front of us.
5:45 Molecular mimicry. If you go to your conventional medicine doctor with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, you will get a prescription for thyroid hormone, which is very helpful. But Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease in which your immune system is attacking your thyroid. And if you don’t figure out some of the root causes of the autoimmune condition, then your immune system will continue to attack your thyroid gland. Some these causes may include gluten sensitivity via a mechanism known as molecular mimicry. The immune system creates antibodies to gluten and then because gluten is similar enough to thyroid hormone, these antibodies then attack your thyroid.
Dr. Andy Barlow is a certified Chiropractic Neurologist and an expert in Functional Medicine. Dr. Barlow has identified specific codes that unlock the mysteries of chronic health problems. He is a two time best-selling author and his new book is The Code Breaker: Unlocking the Mysteries of Health and Vitality and Establishing the Foundation for a Disease-free Life. Dr. Barlow’s website is BarlowBrainandBody.com.
Dr. Ben Weitz is available for Functional Nutrition consultations specializing in Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders like IBS/SIBO and Reflux and also Cardiometabolic Risk Factors like elevated lipids, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. Dr. Weitz has also successfully helped many patients with managing their weight and improving their athletic performance, as well as sports chiropractic work by calling his Santa Monica office 310-395-3111.
Podcast Transcript
Dr. Weitz: Hey, this is Dr. Ben Weitz, host of the Rational Wellness Podcast. I talk to the leading health and nutrition experts and researchers in the field to bring you the latest in cutting edge health information. Subscribe to the Rational Wellness Podcast for weekly updates, and to learn more, check out my website, drweitz.com. Thanks for joining me and let’s jump into the podcast.
Hello, Rational Wellness podcasters. Today, I’m excited to be speaking with Dr. Andy Barlow, and we’re going to be speaking about how to prevent various chronic diseases like autoimmune diseases using a chiropractic functional medicine approach. Dr. Andy Barlow is a chiropractor, a certified functional neurologist, and an expert in functional medicine. He’s identified specific codes that unlock the mysteries of chronic health problems. He’s a two-time bestselling author, and his new book, The Code Breaker: Unlocking the Mysteries of Health and Establishing the Foundation For a Disease-Free Life, was recently published. Dr. Barlow, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Barlow: Dr. Weitz, thank you very much, and just so that you know, I’ve gotten three published books now.
Dr. Weitz: Three.
Dr. Barlow: Actually, all three of them have gone number one.
Dr. Weitz: Wow, that’s great. Congratulations.
Dr. Barlow: Thank you so much.
Dr. Weitz: What’s the key to that?
Dr. Barlow: Well, I think it’s just wanting to help people that nobody else can help. I see patients from all over the United States that come in to Tupelo, Mississippi for chronic health problems, everything from early onset dementia, brain fog, movement disorders, balance disorders, just things that you … I think most healthcare professionals see this. If the patient has a problem, yet their tissues or their body hasn’t deteriorated to the point where there’s actually a classical diagnosis. So it’s like, “Well, we don’t know what to do with you,” or you’re professional patient or you’re just looking for attention. You don’t really have a problem, it’s just in your head because we can’t find anything wrong with you.
Dr. Weitz: Even if they do have a diagnosis, still, the point is, what are we going to do about the underlying causes of the problem instead of, “Here’s a symptom. We’ll treat that with this drug. Here’s another symptom. We’ll treat that with this drug”?
Dr. Barlow: That’s the difference between functional medicine and traditional medicine. Traditional medicine often just treats the symptom. So you go to the doctor, you get a seven-minute office visit. Once you wait an hour and a half in the waiting room and an hour and a half in the actual exam room, you go in and watch your symptoms, and then here’s a drug for that. So they’re more symptoms-based. In what we do is we look at the overall underlying cause of the dysfunction. So we want to identify and address the causes of dysfunction and disease. We want to get it before it gets to a disease process.
So one of the things that happens is that’s a misnomer. People think that you’re either well or you’re sick. What happens is through this wellness over time, this may take decades sometimes where a person is in a state of dysfunction, but yet they’re not diseased yet. This is where we come in as functional healthcare professionals is we want to find out where is the dysfunction because let’s say somebody comes in with, I don’t know, depression. It could be fibromyalgia. If I have 10 patients with depression, I could literally sit here with them and go, “Tell me what your doctor has said about your gut health,” and they look at you like, “Well, nobody’s even talked to me about that.”
Well, my number one bestselling book is about that. I actually have it right here, so Highway to Health: The Roadmap to Overcoming Depression, Anxiety, Insomnia, and Chronic Pain through the Gut-Brain Connection because, see, the latest research shows that in order to optimize a person’s brain, if an individual has depression, you actually have to address their gut function as well. See, that’s the problem with, again, traditional medicine, not trying to belittle anybody or anything, there’s a time and the place for that. The point is here is with traditional medicine, they segment the body into 11 different organ systems and they study that. When we were in chiropractic school, we studied them separately. Then they have specialized fields like for neurology or cardiovascular or gut health or … Well, there’s 11 different systems, so we could go into all that. The point is that they study them individually as though they function as an independent structure.
So see, my heart just can’t beat on its own. My gallbladder just can’t produce bile when it feels like it, and my pancreas just can’t release enzymes because, “Hey, I just feel like today just pumping out more enzymes,” because we know that’s not conducive to health. So instead of looking at each one of these organ systems as independent and working by themselves, we understand in functional medicine that they work together for the body as a whole. So the goal, again, is you look at what’s the doctor’s goal. Traditional medicine is treat the symptom. From a functional medicine standpoint, our goal is to restore order to get the body back in a state of homeostasis, to optimize the recovery and the health status of this human being that’s sitting in front of us. That’s the biggest difference.
Dr. Weitz: By the way, I don’t think there’s any reason why conventional medicine and functional medicine can’t exist side by side. In fact, I think most patients would be best suited having a conventional doctor and a functional medicine doctor. If you go to your conventional doctor and you get some medication that helps you deal with some of the symptoms, there’s nothing wrong with that because we don’t want to be in a state of distress. The problem is just addressing those symptoms is not going to prevent the underlying pathophysiology. If you have, for example, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition, your immune system, your body is attacking your thyroid. Getting your thyroid regulated with proper thyroid medication can be super helpful, is going to make you feel better, is going to allow your body to function better. However, your body’s going to continue to attack your thyroid unless you figure out the underlying root causes of why your immune system’s become dysregulated. So there’s no reason why a person shouldn’t have a functional medicine doctor like yourself, as well as a conventional doctor, and we can work together.
Dr. Barlow: Also, for example, you brought up Hashimoto’s, hypothyroiditis. So what’s typically going to get treated there is a person’s going to have thyroid symptoms, if you will, and then they’re going to get some type of levothyroxine or some type of thyroid medication. Now, when we are dealing with this autoimmune disorder, thyroid, most of this is going to be linked to gluten sensitivity. See, people don’t know what they don’t know. So it’s, “I have a symptom, I’m going to this doctor, I’m getting treated, I feel a little bit okay or a little bit better, but really not to my feet level.” Then we come in and we do all of this metabolic testing to find out the root causes because, again, it can be multifaceted, but I’ve discovered that through research and going to seminars for functional medicine that, basically, gluten sensitivity is one of the major drivers of this. I write about that in my third book, The Code Breaker, and there’s a condition that’s called molecular mimicry. So the example that I use in my book is … My first name is Andy. So if we think of Andy, A-N-D-Y, let’s think of that as a protein. Proteins comes from or a peptide comes from protein, so that’s a peptide. See, each individual letter is an amino acid, so A-N-D-Y. There’s a lady that’s in town here, she’s a mortgage broker, and her name is Andi, but it’s spelled A-N-D-I. So see, if we just happened to be at the same conference somewhere and somebody yells across the room, “Hey, Andy,” guess who’s going to look or both are because the name sounds familiar.
So when it comes to molecular mimicry, what happens with gluten? Then we have, let’s just say, thyroid peroxidase or thyroid gland, thyroid hormone. I write about it in my book. I know the exact numbers, but we’ll just use the number 300. So there’s about 300 amino acids that are linked into the gluten protein. Then there’s a little over 200 amino acids linked in thyroid hormones. See, if we have five of these amino acids that link up together and your immune system attacks those five amino acid chains, and anything in your body that looks like those five amino acids it’s going to attack, and it could be your thyroid, it could be your cerebellum, it could be your myelin sheath, which leads to numbness and tingling, pins and needles in the feet. That’s just one example. So typically, if people come in with the chronicity that they have, we may run up to 10 different labs, 10 different individual labs to specify and just finely tune what is the multifaceted, and that’s the key point there, multifaceted. Instead of using a silver bullet to try to treat the symptom, we realize with these chronic problems you need more birdshot. Instead of one pellet coming out, it’s multiple pellets coming out. We’re going to do multiple blood tests to find out what it is that’s causing this person to dysfunction and have this health crisis that they’re in.
Dr. Weitz: You know what? Since you brought up this example, I guess I first brought up Hashimoto’s, and you started talking about these blood tests, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to drill down into how a clinician is going to order these tests, what these tests are really going to help us to manage the patient because I know if I order a blood sugar test and I see that they have high blood sugar, I know what to do with that. I know to help them to reduce their carbohydrates, et cetera, but I’m not always sure what to do with the results for some of these other panels. So can you go through some of the specific panels and then give us an idea, just an example because every patient’s different, of a result that might come out for a patient with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and how that’s going to help you to manage a patient differently?
Dr. Barlow: Okay. Well, one of the things that … Well, let’s just start with the first code in my book, which is chronic inflammation. So you look at what people do in their life that can trigger chronic inflammation. One of the things that I require patients to do is when they come in, they have to eliminate fast food, processed food, sodas and diet sodas. Basically, this is real simple when it comes to processed food. If you go and you go to the grocery store and you pick up a bag, and on that bag, you look at the product, which most people don’t. My thing is like this. If it has more than four, leave it in the store. That is, you read on the ingredients-
Dr. Weitz: More than four, leave it in the store. That’s a good one.
Dr. Barlow: So I may need to trademark that. I’ve never heard anybody say it before, but I like … So you see, it’s easy to remember. So more than four, leave it in the store. So you pick up a bag of Doritos, I don’t know how many different products is in there, but I’m sure it’s 12 to 15. We go by the rule of four and say, “If it’s more than four, leave it in the store.” See, let me give you an example just to go off to the side and make a lateral move here when it comes to cardiovascular disease. The latest research shows, this is a 2021 study, I believe, it’s either 2021 or 2022, but there’s 121 million adults in America that have cardiovascular disease, 121 million. That’s 48%. Now, here’s what the heart association states. Now, this is, again, you don’t know what you don’t know, and that is, according to the American Heart Association, 90% of this, 90% is preventable if a person takes responsibility for their life, but see, most people don’t want to do that.
I can tell them what to do like, “One of the things that’s going to destroy your body, I don’t care what the symptom is, it can be Hashimoto’s, it can be cardiovascular disease, numbness and tingling of the feet, you got to stop eating fast food. You got to stop eating processed food. You got to stop drinking sodas.” Then I hear people go, “Well, I’m drinking diet soda.” Well, that actually can lead to cancer, and there’s a little neurotransmitter in your brain that’s called glutamate, and it excites that, and that causes brain fog, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and people can’t sleep just from the side effect of drinking that diet soda.
So if we stop doing that, limit our refined carbohydrates like bread, cereal, pasta, and then we start eating, oh, here we go, green leafy, real food, fruits, and then we drink water, just the standard. The great standard to do is eight glasses of water a day. I know if you want to get specific, if you take your body weight and divide it by two, let’s just use the number 200. So a human being weighs 200 pounds, divide it by two, that’s 100 ounces of water a day. So if you want to cleanse and detox your body, the easiest way to do it is by drinking adequate amount of water and getting fiber in your diet. Eat green leafy vegetables, eat more fruit. Then I tell patients all the time, “Do what I just asked you to do and see how much your life changes in one month,” because that has to do with inflammation. So here’s one of the things that our viewers can look at is with blood sugar 85 to 99, and I talked about this in my book, that’s the optimal functioning range. There’s a difference between … Can you see the screen okay?
Dr. Weitz: Yeah.
Dr. Barlow: Okay, because I can’t see my picture on here, so I wanted to make sure. So optimal functioning range 85 to 99. So once we get outside of this range from 100 to 125, this is what is called insulin resistance. See, again, this is the-
Dr. Weitz: Also known as pre-diabetes.
Dr. Barlow: Absolutely. Absolutely. So it’s like what you don’t know, you don’t know, and this could be very devastating, but you can stay in this plate, in this world right here for years if not decades. Here’s the crazy thing about this, Dr. Weitz, is that just insulin resistance can cause plaquing in your brain, the amyloid beta protein, and that plaquing is called protein aggregation, and that can lead to Alzheimer’s just because of this because it triggers inflammation. Then once you get over 126, that’s going to be type II diabetes. Now, the key thing is-
Dr. Weitz: That’s why they refer to Alzheimer’s as type III diabetes.
Dr. Barlow: Absolutely, it is, absolutely. See, again, most people don’t know that. They go, it’s like, “Well, my blood sugar’s managed,” and I’m like, “Well, how are you doing that?” They’re taking medication. I’m like, “Well, what you’re actually doing is you’re artificially manipulating your lab values to make you feel good. Give everybody a kumbaya hug,” because if you look at the side effect, what is it? Ozempic, that new drug Ozempic that-
Dr. Weitz: Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Barlow: I guess people, they lose weight. People don’t want to hear the side effects, but if you look up the side effects, thyroid cancer, pancreatic cancer, multiple types of cancer and pancreatitis on top of that, and all you have to do-
Dr. Weitz: Intestinal obstruction because the way it works is by slowing down your intestinal function, your motility.
Dr. Barlow: Absolutely. Then so again, instead of taking personal responsibility, it’s easier to go out and destroy my life and take a pill and think you’re doing something great for that.
Dr. Weitz: I’ve already been talking about what I call POS, which is post-Ozempic syndrome. We’re going to have all these people who lost weight taking Ozempic, who didn’t change your diet or increase their exercise or do anything else, and they’re going to come off these drugs and their metabolism is going to be way more screwed up than it was before. Their digestive system’s not going to be working properly, and we’re going to have to try to get them fixed.
Dr. Barlow: Absolutely. Again, it’s just about taking personal responsibility. Somewhere along the line as Americans, we’ve stopped doing that. So again-
Dr. Weitz: “I don’t want to change my diet or exercise, I just want to take this pill or this shot.”
Dr. Barlow: You can’t even make this up, but years ago when I was … I play racquetball four days a week. When I was at the gym, one guy, literally, you cannot make this up, but he goes, “The reason that I take statin drugs,” I think it was Lipitor, but whatever the name of it was, he said, “because that way I can keep my cholesterol under control and I can go out and I can eat Burger King, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, drink the soda.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t really think that’s what that was designed for.” So we got our A1C, and see, it needs to be 5.3 or below. Now, one of the things that happens when that gets too high, then this is called AGE or Advanced Glycosylated Endproduct, which means this is going to cause inflammation. Now, there’s a difference between acute inflammation, which I talk about in my third book, The Code Breaker, the difference between acute inflammation and chronic. Now, acute is actually serving to heal the body. So if I twist my ankle, of course, it’s going to swell up. The inflammatory processes are going to come down to my ankle and start the healing cascade. I use the acute inflammation like a fireplace in your home. It serves a purpose.
Chronic inflammation is like a wildfire. It destroys everything it touches. So if you have this inflammation which is in your blood, I ask patients all the time, “Where does your blood go? Everywhere,” so brain joints, nerves, tissue, organs. So A1C. C-reactor protein, it needs to be below, and all this is on your Labcorp blood work is 1.0 or below. So see, if it’s higher than 1.0, you have chronic inflammation in your body. Homocysteine. Homocysteine should be, and this is one thing a lot of people don’t know, it needs to be 7.0 or below. There is a direct correlation that the higher this number is, a direct correlation between cardiovascular disease and dementia or neurodegenerative disorders, which could be depression, anxiety, brain fog or movement disorders. So see, we can pick all of this up on any of our blood tests. So that’s inflammation. I say one of the major triggers, major triggers to inflammation is leaky gut. See, that’s the major trigger. If the viewers, not now while you’re viewing, but afterwards, if you go on the internet and you Google percentage of Americans with leaky gut, if I were to ask you, how many people do you think have a leaky gut in America percentage-wise?
Dr. Weitz: I would say 70%.
Dr. Barlow: You’d be close. 90%. So see, 90% of people have leaky gut. Now, here’s what’s important. Now, see, we can do a Cyrex test. It’s called Cyrex Array number 2, and we can actually rule in or rule out leaky gut. Now, there are certain protocol that we use to actually help heal the leaky gut, but just think about it from this standpoint. Patient comes into the clinic with a chronic health problem. They have depression, anxiety, insomnia. They can’t sleep at night, chronic pain, numbness and tingling in their feet and, “Oh, my left knee hurts.” So we go in and go, “Okay. This guy has to be completely inflamed.” Now, the question is, what’s triggering this inflammation? Diet could be more than likely because they’re eating an unhealthy diet. It’s called the standard American diet or SAD diet.
Dr. Weitz: Correct.
Dr. Barlow: That’s going to trigger an inflammatory cascade in the body. Then we end up, we have a leaky gut. 90% of people are going to have a leaky gut. So it goes into, “Hey, shouldn’t we actually look at this? If 90% of Americans have it, and that’s what the research state, shouldn’t we look at this?” Now, the reason you don’t see this on a TV commercial is because there’s no FDA-approved drug to treat it. So nobody wants to talk about it. So you take this Cyrex 2 test to your traditional doctor, and it’s the eyes rolling in the back of their head shoulder shrugs, scoffs because, see, they don’t know anything about it because they weren’t taught that because medicine is run by big pharma now. So let’s get for real. Anybody that doesn’t understand that is hiding under a rock. So big pharma controls medicine. There’s no FDA-approved drug to treat it, so it’s like let’s just ignore it.
What happens? Patients are actually suffering with this. See, this is another thing most people don’t know, and I talk about this part in my book. We’re ranked 37th in the world in overall healthcare. See, if I went out to the mall and just did a survey and go, “Where is America ranked in overall healthcare?” most people would probably say we’re number one. See, again, we’re actually 37th. Now, this is the amazing part. That’s not even the amazing part. We spend 4.5 trillion with a T, $4.5 trillion a year on this so-called healthcare. 17.8, maybe 17.3% our gross domestic product is spent on this disease care system. That’s what I call it. I don’t call it a healthcare because, see, nobody’s talking about healthcare. You and I are talking about healthcare, “Here’s what you need to do to regain health.”
See, again, it’s, what are the goals? When you go to a doctor, that’s what I ask everybody is, “What’s the goal of the doctor? What’s your goal when you come into the clinic?” Because if you just want to treat the symptom, that’s failed miserably. Now, if you want to reclaim your life, you want to optimize your recovery, you want to restore your health, you’re in the right place because we’re going to do this metabolic testing. I do a head-to-toe 7-point brain, body, gut exam. We combine neurology and functional medicine together to actually heal this person. So inflammation is a big trigger. Then the number one contributing factor to inflammation is going to be leaky gut. Now, another one that most people don’t know is we look up mold. It’s called mycotoxins. This is another one. I know I live in Mississippi, but the average, if you Google percentage of households that have mold, what would you think the percentage is there?
Dr. Weitz: I guess it depends on what the criteria is because mold is universal everywhere. You’re going to find some somewheres growing on your sidewalk, growing somewheres.
Dr. Barlow: Research showed that 70% of homes in America have mold. See, these are high numbers here. So shouldn’t we test for these numbers? Shouldn’t we test to see if this person has mold to start with? Because see, what happens in my clinic, I’m actually shocked when people don’t have mold in their body. If you look up stachybotrys chartarum, just that one mold product spore can actually trigger almost any health problem that a human being has from-
Dr. Weitz: A lot of people are surprised they have mold because they think only people who have old homes that aren’t kept up well, and the reality is the new construction methods are to insulate our homes, so they hold in the heat or keep the cold from coming in or keep the heat from coming in so they’re really sealed and insulated. If there’s any water leak, that gets between the walls and there’s no venting based on the new construction rules, and so you’re much more likely to have mold than you would’ve in an older home.
Dr. Barlow: So one of the things, see, when we look at these numbers because the patient will ask me, “What do you think is causing this?” I’m like, “Well, I can probably tell you about 20 to 30 different things that’s causing it, but we don’t know for sure until we run the actual test.” So you got inflammation, major cause of inflammation, it’s going to be leaky gut, mold. Gluten sensitivity is going to be another one. We can actually … I encourage everyone to do this, and I’m going to share this with you, I’ve been running this one test for 17 years, and it’s called EnteroLab, E-N-T-E-R-O lab.com. So E-N-T-E-R-O lab.com, enterolab.com. Entero meaning gut. Enteric nervous system is where it comes from.
So if you order panel A2 … Now, here’s another one of those taking responsibility for your health. Anybody can do this. You don’t have to be a doctor to order this test. Now, to order Cyrex testing, you do have to be a doctor. You have to be a licensed physician to be able to do that. Now, this test here is going to look to see if you carry a gluten gene, to see if you carry the celiac gene, to see if the gene had been turned on, if you have malabsorption issues, sensitivity, milk, eggs, and soy. So you got a lot on this test right here. This test is $425, I believe. This is a huge investment in your health, and it’s about taking responsibility.
Now, again, and I wrote about this in my second book, I’ve had 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, I’ve only had three patients in 17 years that we ran this test on that didn’t have a gluten sensitivity or, I’m sorry, that didn’t have a gluten gene or a celiac gene. So see, we need to let that sink in because if you have a gluten gene and it actually has become activated, you can actually test this on this same test, and this can lead to virtually any neurological disorder. Research shows, meaning depression, anxiety, movement disorders, numbness and tingling in the feet, stomach, gut, liver, gallbladder, depression, anxiety, all of that directly linked to gluten sensitivity.
So say you have patient going all over the place from doctor to doctor to doctor and they’re treating a symptom, and then this one actual trigger right here, this one code can cause a myriad of health problems. This is multifaceted here because if you actually have this problem, it can cause so many different neurological and chronic health disorders from headaches to movement disorders to pain, to cognitive decline. That’s just from gluten sensitivity. So that’s a test that we run. Now, also, another one that we run is going to be environmental toxins. I think people have completely overlooked that. Now, without going into too much detail here, one of the things that we have-
Dr. Weitz: This is another one of the Cyrex tests that you read?
Dr. Barlow: It’s the Cyrex 11. So if you look at your lab test, Labcorp, there’s a test on there that’s for liver, and everybody should have this test ran. They can pull their Labcorp test that’s ran by their doctor, and you look under the hepatic ALT and it’s going to say AST under the liver score. Now, what happens here is when your liver is damaged, it starts to produce these enzymes. This is called AL for alanine, amino acid, amino transferase. This is aspartate amino transferase, so short, ALT and AST. This should not be above 24. Now, this is the optimal range. It should be 24 below. Now, if you look on your lab test, it’s going to say something like 11 to 40. They call that the normal range, normal. Normal is your sick range. If you’re not familiar with what normal looks like, go to Walmart, and you look at all these fat people that can barely walk, that’s in these little go-kart or whatever you call them, and they’re like, “Oh, well, what’s wrong with you?” and they’re like, “Oh, they said I was normal.” So anyway, I can talk about that for another 30 minutes.
Dr. Weitz: By the way, those normal change.
Dr. Barlow: Yes, absolutely. See, normal, statistical, so not to try to confuse people, but to educate here, and again, you don’t know what you don’t know, for the lay person, they keep coming into my clinic and go, “My lab results are normal, but I’m still having all these problems.” Well, we have to define what normal is. As a society, we keep getting sicker and sicker. So as we send people to these labs, they take a statistical analysis. So I’m just throwing a hypothetical number out. 10 people go to this lab, I’m sorry, 10,000 people go to this lab, and then they find out, “Well, the average range here on this AST for your liver enzyme is point 11 and 40.” See, these would be normally sick people that are going to get this test.
The optimal range here is 24 or below 24. So if it’s above 24, then our liver is actually producing, it’s damaged and it’s producing enzymes, and those enzymes are being detected in our bloodstream. Now, why is that important? Because we have a phase one and phase two liver detox. So when we take these toxins into our body, which most people aren’t even aware that for ladies, just makeup that you put on your face or whenever you color your hair, those plastics, pesticide, herbicide, if you’re spraying your yard with roundup or pesticide, you have to detox from that. If your phase one, phase two liver detox is not functioning properly, you can’t get rid of these toxins.
Now, here’s the amazing thing. When you can’t get rid of these toxins, the term for that is called a neo antigen, which means that your body produces actually a new antigen that your body, that this can lead to cancer. This is what the research shows. So just because of your liver not being able to detox plastic, just for example, appropriate, I’m not saying … This is why we run the test. Do you have this problem or not? Because with my wife, her phase one, phase two liver detox is functioning properly, but we ran the test on her, this Cyrex 11, and I just told her, I said, “We get to the plastics, you’re going to light up.” She came back crystal clear. The reason it was clear is because her phase one, phase two liver detox was able to detox from these environmental toxins that’s come in.
I’ll use phase one, phase two as this example. Let’s say at Christmas, we’ll just use that as an example, you have a lot of people coming over to your house, but what happens if you can’t get the garbage out of your house? Well, it piles up. So that would be your phase one liver detox. You got this toxin that you can’t get out of your body, and like the garbage that you can’t get out of your house, it becomes putrid and everything gets stinky and terrible.
Now, the phase two is when you can actually take the garbage to the road, but waste management doesn’t come and bring it up. Then you’ve got neighbors complaining now. So see, we’ve got to be able to get our toxins from phase one through phase two, and then we have to excrete it through urine or feces. So if we can’t do that, then these toxins start to build up and we actually can test that through Cyrex Array number 11. So what we have to do with these toxins, number one is we have to clean the liver. That’s the first thing.
Dr. Weitz: How do you clean the liver?
Dr. Barlow: We have a liver detox. We use Apex Energetics, which is a company that’s out of California that we use for … We call it, we have a 10-week detox. So the 10-week detox that we use is we get a double whammy because we’re actually able to help with the leaky gut and we’re actually able to help with the liver enzymes and phase one, phase two liver detox. It also helps with pancreatic enzymes and the whole gut function.
Dr. Weitz: What does that consist of?
Dr. Barlow: That’s a lot. I have a handout on that, so it’s a lot. If you’re a doctor, you can actually call Apex. Is this going out to doctors or just going out to everybody?
Dr. Weitz: Well, it’s going out to everybody, but a lot of our audience is functional medicine practitioners.
Dr. Barlow: Okay. So if you’re a layperson and you call this company up, you have to be a doctor. So I can give you the contact information. Give me just a second. I didn’t know I was going to have to look this up or I’ve already have-
Dr. Weitz: Oh, no, you don’t have to look it up. People can look up Apex Energetics.
Dr. Barlow: It’s Apex Energetics. Then after years of working with all of this, and just from the scientific research, I’ve come up with the 10-week detox to help clean the gut and the liver. So it’s a combination of leaky gut and liver detoxification as well. So again, we’ve got to detect, we’ve got to look and see, do we have plastics, herbicides, pesticides? Do we have mercury that’s in our mouth? I have mercury that’s in my mouth, but guess what? Right now, I’m not having any antibodies that are attacking that. How do I know? Because I’ve ran all these tests?
The next person that comes in may have amalgam, but their immune system is overreacting, and it’s actually attacking the mercury that’s in their mouth. If that happens, which I do have a patient that happened to, this is why you need a traditional doctor because I have to send them to a holistic dentist to actually get this mercury out of their mouth. So whenever we … For example, Cyrex Array number 11, when people come in with dementia, early onset Alzheimer’s, brain fog, see, again, what you don’t know what you don’t know, that can hurt you because there’s a bacteria that’s in your mouth that’s called porphyromonas gingivalis or P. Gingivalis. That can lead to heart disease, lung disease, and Alzheimer’s. How many people are going to link your periodontal issues to Alzheimer’s?
So again, when people say, “I’ve got this cognitive decline, what can cause it?” I’m like, “Well, inflammation, blood sugar, leaky gut, bacteria that’s in your mouth, bacteria in your gut, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to test and find out what your code is.” The way I explain this is when I do an outside talk, and this is why I came up with the book, The Code Breaker, and for anybody that’s watching, they can actually go online to thecodebreakeronline.com. I actually have about a 20-minute video of each one of my chapters. Of course, I would highly recommend you buy the book, but you go online to thecodebreaker.com and this is what it’s going to look like. This is the first video. The first one is on the brain. You don’t have to log into that, but everything else after that, you’ll need to log in. So I talk about how the brain works, what you have to have to have optimal function. The reason I came up with the name Code Breaker is after doing my second book, which I swore I was never going to write another one after the second one, but The Code Breaker because it was an-
Dr. Weitz: We can’t see your phone.
Dr. Barlow: Phone, yeah. I talk about that in my book about it. When I do outside talks, I hand my phone to somebody and I go, “I want you to unlock my phone,” because there’s a certain code for this particular phone. Now, your phone may look exactly like mine, but the code to unlock this is completely different. Now, this phone only requires six codes, but they have to be punched in at the right frequency, the right order. In your body, I’ve determined that there’s seven codes. Now, there’s minor codes beside, but there’s seven big codes. See, that’s what we have to do and we actually have to do the test. See, if I gave you the code to my phone, you can unlock it in two seconds because I gave you the code.
See, everybody has a code or multiple codes just like a phone that’s causing their chronic health problem, and that’s where we use the Labcorp, EnteroLab and Cyrex in combination to find out what is this person’s code that’s causing them malfunction. Again, we’re not just doing functional medicine, we’re actually doing functional neurology together. So we want to do a neurological exam to find out which neurological pathways are impaired, and then we’re going to stimulate those neurological pathways through using certain modalities for each neurological pathway, and we’re going to create what is called neuroplasticity. However, I tell patients all the time, “If I give you a ball-peen hammer and I tell you to come over here and hit this wall, that’s a trigger, and I can’t rebuild that wall until you stop hitting it.” See, all the triggers that we’re going to do the metabolic testing with, that’s going to tell us what’s the ball-peen hammer that you’re having that’s destroying your body. We have to remove that trigger, and then we can create neuroplasticity and actually help the body heal.
Dr. Weitz: That’s awesome, Doc. I know you have a hard break at 9:00, right?
Dr. Barlow: Yeah. So let me just go over this real quick and then I’ll … So we’ve got inflammation, blood sugar, environmental toxins. We have autoimmunity, vascular health, and if I didn’t say environmental toxin, then-
Dr. Weitz: Then trauma.
Dr. Barlow: Trauma is a big one. So let me end with this if you don’t mind.
Dr. Weitz: Absolutely.
Dr. Barlow: So what we have here, and I do talk about this in my book, if you want to order, of course you can go on Amazon and just type in Dr. Andy Barlow and three books will pop up, and The Code Breaker is the that’s in. So there’s three stages to autoimmunity. This is stage one. Stage one, and Cyrex has a lab that we can run here that’s called Cyrex Array number 5, and it tests for 25 different tissues, everything from brain to heart, to liver, to bone, to … So for example, let’s say somebody comes in with knee pain, and we’re going to use this person, actually a real patient. I went over their blood work about two weeks ago, and they have autoimmunity. They have antibodies against cartilage, osteocytes, and the actual bone, the joint itself. So there’s three different antibodies that’s attacking the joints in this particular person. Their knee pain is actually the worst. The point is it can actually give us an explanation as to why is your body healing slower than everybody else’s. Well, you have an autoimmune attack to your joints, but here we go. So you got this stage one. This is when your immune system is producing antibodies, but there’s no symptom. This is called silent autoimmunity.
The only time that’s typically going to happen, nobody’s going to pay for this test to go, “Hey,” most people won’t. My wife has something like that, but most people want just go, “Hey, I want to invest in my life and I want to see if I actually have these predictive antibodies which can destroy my body and my life.” These predictive antibodies actually show up more than 20 years before a person actually has end-stage pathology. Now, stage two, this is where most people are going to be hanging out right here because their immune system is producing antibodies, meaning that your immune system is over-aroused, it’s producing antibodies, your antibodies are attacking your own tissues that can trigger then lead to an autoimmune disorder. Then this person now is having symptoms. They go to the doctor and, see, they don’t have enough tissue that’s damaged yet, so the doctor’s like, “We can’t find anything wrong with these. You are normal.” See where that comes in? Normal. Again, this could be 20 years from here to here.
Dr. Weitz: This is the key. This is pointing out the difference between healthcare and sick care. Our insurance-controlled sick care system doesn’t even allow the doctor to treat you until you’re sick because then you can have a diagnosis that’s billable because when you have predictive antibodies, at that point you don’t have a certifiable diagnosis so you actually can’t be treated, but if you want to prevent these diseases like autoimmunity from happening, we’ve got to get these diseases in stage one and stage two before the tissues are damaged.
Dr. Barlow: Right, because again, it’s called predictive antibodies. Then what is the gateway to autoimmunity? The gateway to autoimmunity is leaky gut. So in my book, I talk about in autoimmunity, there’s a 30-70 split, which means that 30% of any type of autoimmunity is linked to genes, but then the 70% has to do with environmental epigenetics, which damages our genes. Then the crazy thing about epigenetics is even though you may damage the cell on the gene, once you remove the trigger, the body can heal. Then leaky gut, because leaky gut causes inflammation, confuses the nervous system and it starts attacking the tissue.
So stage three is terminal. That means we’re producing antibodies. Then we have enough tissue destruction that we actually have a name for that. It could be rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, ALS, MS, those kinds of things. Again, once you get into this, this is greater than a 20-year process, and this person has suffered for 20 years and their doctor’s like, “Well, you’re normal. You’re just looking for attention. You’re just a professional patient. You don’t really have anything wrong with you. We’re going to send you off to the psychiatrist because you actually have anxiety,” and it’s like, “Well, if I did this for 20 years and nobody could help me, I’d probably have anxiety too.” We have seven codes. Those seven codes are in my book, The Code Breaker. So you can go online to thecodebreakeronline.com. I have the videos on there for each chapter, but also, it would help if you buy the book so you can read the book and then go online to each chapter. Each chapter is in the neighborhood of approximately 20 minutes long, and there’s a video to each chapter.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you so much, Dr. Barlow. How can listeners and viewers get in touch with you and find out about your programs?
Dr. Barlow: Well, thank you. All right. So there’s two things they can do. Number one, if you’re a patient or you have questions, you can call my clinic. The lovely lady is up front that’s going to answer the phone is Sandy or Nikki. They’ll answer the phone. My office number is 662-844-1414. So again, 662-844-1414, and you can leave a message, we’ll call you back. Then also for doctors who would like to attend my seminars, I actually have online seminars and live seminars. They can go to barlowbrainandbody.com. That’s barlowbrainandbody.com. Let’s see if I have this up here. This is what this is going to look like. In two weeks, I’m actually giving a seminar in my clinic, well, two weeks from today, in my office on balance disorders, peripheral neuropathy and knee pain, and the metabolic components to all of those. So we want to address the symptom, yes. We want to know, “Hey, what is wrong with you?” I call it the blinky light. “What’s the main thing that’s causing harm or dysfunction or lack of enjoyment and mobility in your life? What is that?” Then we also want to address the whole body and find out, just like with autoimmune disorders, hardly anybody just has one autoimmune disorder. When we start running these tests, we find they have, in some cases, multiple tissues that are actually being damaged. So you can call my clinic as a patient or you can go to barlowbrainandbody.com. There’s a contact information for doctors on that website, and that’s the best way to get in touch with me.
Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Excellent. Thank you so much, Dr. Barlow.
Dr. Barlow: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who enjoy listening to the Rational Wellness Podcast, I would appreciate it if you could go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and give us a five-star ratings and review. If you would like to work with me personally to help you improve your health, I do accept a limited number of new patients per month for a functional medicine consultation. Some of the areas I specialize in include helping patients with specific health issues like gut problems, neurodegenerative conditions, autoimmune diseases, cardio metabolic conditions or for an executive health screen and to help you promote longevity and take a deeper dive into some of those factors that can lead to chronic diseases along the way. Please call my Santa Monica Weitz Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition office at 310-395-3111 and we’ll set you up for a new consultation for functional medicine, and I look forward to speaking to everybody next week.
