Inflammatory Bowel Disease with Dr. Kim Crawford: Rational Wellness Podcast 368

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Dr. Kim Crawford discusses Inflammatory Bowel Disease with Dr. Ben Weitz.

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Podcast Highlights

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Dr. Kim Crawford is a nationally recognized, board certified Internal Medicine and anti-aging specialist who uses a Functional Medicine approach to help patients overcome various chronic disease, including Inflammatory Bowel Disease.  Dr. Crawford herself was exposed to high levels of environmental mycotoxins, which attacked her GI tract and this resulted in CIRS, leaky gut, and eventually Crohn’s disease, which for her was a totally life-altering autoimmune disease.  Her website is KimCrawfordMD.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.

 

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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’ll be speaking with Dr. Kim Crawford about inflammatory bowel disease from an integrative perspective. Inflammatory bowel disease, of which Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common conditions, is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that leads to damage to the mucosal lining.  Crohn’s disease can affect any part of the GI tract, including the mouth, esophagus, stomach, and even the anus, and it most often affects the portion of the small intestine closest to the large intestine, and there tends to be patchy areas of damage, and the damage may reach through multiple layers of the intestinal wall.  Ulcerative colitis occurs usually only in the large intestine and the rectum. Damaged areas tend to be continuous and usually start in the rectum and spread into the colon and is usually only found in the innermost lining of the colon. Of course, Dr. Crawford, you can correct me if I’m misstating. 

Dr. Crawford: Good job, Dr. Ben.

Dr. Weitz: And then I wanted to read a couple of sentences from a blog post written by Dr. Crawford about the current allopathic conventional medical care [00:02:00] for inflammatory bowel disease. She writes in this blog post: “Crohn’s disease treatment starts off with brain and gut damaging corticosteroids.  Then we add in immunomodulators like Methotrexate and Mercaptopurine and eventually biological agents, which are TNF alpha inhibitors like Remicade and Humira and the story’s about the same for ulcerative colitis. All these drugs are super toxic, and none of them are curative, and their long term use not only causes severe side effects, but can lead to cancer.”  Dr. Kim Crawford is a nationally recognized board certified internal medicine and anti aging specialist who uses a functional medicine approach to help patients overcome various chronic diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease [00:03:00] like Crohn’s disease. Dr. Crawford herself was exposed to high levels of environmental mycotoxins from mold, which eventually attacked her GI tract and resulted in a chronic inflammatory condition, leaky gut, and eventually Crohn’s disease, which for her was a totally life altering autoimmune disease.  Dr. Crawford, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, I should say Dr. Kim.

Dr. Crawford: Okay. Thank you, Dr. Ben. And excuse me if you hear a dog barking in the background. I do collie rescue. I have four rescue collies here. Somebody might bark a little. It’s not a patient with a respiratory condition. I have four, four big collies here.  So anyway to your point about the treatment It’s not just, let’s say with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s the allopathic medicine, the GI guys and girls start out with hydrocortisone, but [00:04:00] not bioidentical hydrocortisone, which is what I use. They start out with synthetics like prednisone or Medrol, and you’re not only just dealing with the synthetic hormone, you’re also dealing with capsules that may not be compliant with the dietary restrictions that I use for inflammatory bowel disease. And you’re dealing with fillers. These toxic capsules and fillers are in all pharmaceuticals. Some are actually not as bad as others. For instance, if you need a Tylenol, it’s better to take a Tylenol that is a name brand rather than a generic because it has safer for-your-gut fillers.  That’s just one little tidbit for your viewers there. But anyway, going back to how…

Dr. Weitz: So interesting. So you’ll use a bioidentical cortisol, cortisone, that’s different than Prednisone?  What’s the difference?

Dr. Crawford: Bioidentical hormones, okay? And I am board certified in functional medicine and one of the 12 modules is just hormones and it’s not, and if, I have a blog where I talk about all the hormones.  Everybody thinks about male hormones and female hormones, like testosterone, estrogen. Oh, and there’s other things, but we don’t know what they are. There’s about a hundred hormones we have to think about. One of them is our body, our adrenal glands make cortisol, or we can get bioidentical, meaning the body recognizes it as what you would be putting out, so the body doesn’t get upset.  We use bioidentical hydrocortisone in functional medicine. And when somebody flares they’re, I may use a little bit of bioidentical hydrocortisone. I may use methylene blue, which is an amazing anti-inflammatory, very powerful antioxidant product. Turns your pee blue, but that’s the only side effect.  And it’s also being studied, interestingly enough, for other conditions, neurodegenerative conditions. 

Dr. Weitz: So interesting, so you use methylene blue?

Dr. Crawford: Believe it or not, the dye, methylene blue.

Dr. Weitz: It’s been talked about on other functional medicine podcasts and I don’t know all that much about it.  What is the type of, is there a type of methylene blue or is there a way…is it a oral, is it an injectable? 

Dr. Crawford: The injectable is only necessary for people with a condition for which methylene blue was used decades ago. And so I use an oral form and I use a liposomal, so liposomal preparations get into the bloodstream faster.  Okay. So I’ll use, I use a liposomal preparation, but people who are there they go. Sorry. Thank you. People who are flaring really do respond to methylene blue and, it is over the counter, but I would just advise people not to, with inflammatory bowel disease, not to treat themselves.  But certainly if you want to, if you want to ask Chat GPT about methylene blue, Chat GPT, I’m sure will have a lot to say. Sorry.

Dr. Weitz: What’s the dosage of methylene blue that you typically use? 

Dr. Crawford: Anywhere between 25 and 50 milligrams twice daily when somebody’s flaring.  That’s the dose I’ll use. And again, I find that liposomal just tends to work better than regular.

Dr. Weitz: Is there a particular company that you like it from that makes a good product?

Dr. Crawford: I have a compounding pharmacy that I use, that compounds it for me.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, okay. Interesting. When you get a patient in your office, what’s the first thing that makes you suspect that they might, this might be somebody dealing with inflammatory bowel disease?

Dr. Crawford: Before I actually see somebody, I know what the diagnosis is [00:08:00] because my first visit with somebody is a very long visit. We go over many things, everything from exercise to sleep to stress habits. And what makes me suspect it quite frankly, most of the people that come to me have been treated by, allopathic doctors and are on a biologic and they have been switched, a biologic will tend to work for 18 to 24 months, then they’ll switch them to another, then they’ll switch them to another.  And they’ve been through this a few times and maybe they’ve had COVID one too many times and maybe they keep getting other infections.  They’re a bit immunosuppressed and they just, and they read that, gee, maybe I can get off of this stuff. And half the patients with IBD that come to me are already diagnosed.  And the other half I see a lot of patients with CIRS, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, or mold related illness what I had. And and when I had it, I was, nobody even knew what it was or knew how to treat it. So I had to figure [00:09:00] that out. I had to figure out when I developed Crohn’s, which I now could go back and block myself from getting, which is what I do if I see it brewing in a CIRS patient or a chronic Lyme patient.  I had to figure that all out too. So I really, a lot of times they’ll come to me and say, and they’re starting to get GI symptoms and I see that their CRP, Which is a lab that I’m, I know you’re familiar with, it’s a inflammatory marker and most people think it’s a coronary marker, but it’s really a better marker it’s the first thing you’ll see bump up in just about any autoimmune disease.

But somebody who’s trying, I say trying to develop, because it doesn’t just happen overnight, okay, trying to develop inflammatory bowel disease is going to have, maybe they’ll have a little belly pain, a little blood if it’s you see some diarrhea. It’s not, don’t get nervous. It’s not necessary IBD if you have diarrhea, people that are exposed to [00:10:00] mold or any other toxins by definition have leaky gut and you need to have leaky gut in order to develop inflammatory bowel disease.

So patients, you said, what makes me think they have it? They either come to me diagnosed or they come to me having had an exposure or something that people don’t realize. They come to me after a long period of stress, when they’re stressed, and their catecholamines are up, the neurotransmitters that make our heart go faster, the sympathetic side of our nervous system and their cortisol is up.  And cortisol actually, not only kills brain cells, it kills the lining of our gut. And so just a sustained high cortisol or a period, if somebody is going through a divorce or if somebody has a, loses a parent or any other, tragic thing that gets us all upset and stressed and raises our cortisol, makes us stressed, upsets our sleep.  That [00:11:00] is going to give somebody leaky gut.

Dr. Weitz: So as far as your workup for testing for a patient with inflammatory bowel disease, besides the CRP, I’m assuming you’re using like the high sensitivity CRP, what other labs do you run and do you recommend colonoscopy or other testing?

Dr. Crawford: I do complete labs on everybody, which everybody tells me is 20 tubes of blood.  Sorry, Barkadar. I hope you’re, I hope your viewers are dog lovers. I have two dogs myself, oh good job. Adopt, don’t shop. I check full labs because everybody with an inflammatory disorder, okay, is going to have other things that just the inflammation causes. For instance, if you’re inflamed, You’re going to be plaquing your arteries.  If [00:12:00] you’re inflamed, there’s going to be a diminution of output of the hormones that you need. If you’re inflamed, there’s going to be impaired enzymatic pathways. For instance, your SIRT1 pathway can be impaired, and that’s the pathway that controls glucose and cholesterol. I deal with the inflammation, just everybody gets a vagal nerve stimulation device because everybody’s in sympathetic, sympathetic side of the autonomic system is the, escape the wildebeest side.  And then the parasympathetic side is the rest and digest. And so I want people to get more into the parasympathetic side. Everybody comes to me, their cortisol’s are up, they’re in sympathetic overdrive. And that’s why one of the first things I do, I need to calm everything down I have them get a vagal nerve stimulation device.  I have them start managing their stress. Just about all of them are not [00:13:00] sleeping well.

Dr. Weitz: For listeners who don’t know what a vagal nerve stimulating device is. Can you explain that for a bit?

Dr. Crawford: I’m very, yeah, very sorry. I do have a blog on that. If people want to go to kimcrawfordmd. com, there’s a blog on that.  Basically it’s. A little handheld device and, oh, here’s an old one I have right here. And you just hold it against your neck, two minutes, twice a day. And it stimulates the vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve in the body. And it goes all through the nervous system. And if you’re feeling stressed and you put this little zapper on your neck, it will make it’ll increase your GABA, which is a neuro hormone that makes you feel calm. That’s the neuro hormone that goes up. If you take a Xanax or a Valium, which you shouldn’t take, you should use a vagal nerve stimulation device or use some liposomal GABA. Anyway, so that’s a vagal nerve stimulation device can help people fall asleep, can help [00:14:00] people get back to sleep and can reduce their stress levels.  And it’s been found in studies lately that people with inflammatory bowel disease tend to be higher stressed than the average bear. And and so everybody needs help with their stress and their sleep. Just losing one night of sleep will bump up everybody’s inflammatory markers.  Losing a week of sleep will make somebody, not a, not, a whole week of sleep, but let’s say somebody gets really bad sleep for a week for whatever reason. That’s enough to flare them. So it’s really important to manage stress, manage sleep. Everybody’s on the Uber rings, kick, it really is important.  Sleep is important. Stress management, diet. Exercise, all those basics have to be covered for everyone, but especially for the patient with inflammatory bowel. And let me go back to your last question about diagnoses. If someone is flaring, The traditional [00:15:00] literature, American Journal of Gastroenterology even, is saying don’t scope them.  Don’t get a colonoscopy if you’re flaring. And there is some GI docs that are still scoping people that are flaring, but you can actually perforate somebody who’s flaring. And it’s really, if you get a, what’s called a Fecal Calprotectin it’s a stool sample that’s very diagnostic. If somebody has an elevated CRP and sedimentation rate which are two inflammatory markers, and they have a high fecal calprotectin along with the symptoms of Crohn’s or UC, you can basically make the diagnosis without a colonoscopy.  You can also do. MRE imaging and imaging studies if you need to look at the small intestine, then you would need to do that with Crohn’s but just to make the diagnosis, just as I said before, you can make it without a colonoscopy with biopsies are needed for a definitive diagnosis [00:16:00] and to make sure you’re diagnosing Once in a while, you’ll get a crony that will bleed, and you need biopsies to make sure you’re diagnosing Crohn’s, not Ulcerative Colitis.  So that’s why you would need a colonoscopy with biopsies, it’s just for the definitive diagnosis. But for my purposes, if somebody’s really sick I don’t want to, obviously, first do no harm. I don’t want them to have anything done to them that’s going to make them worse, obviously. Yeah. ,

Dr. Weitz:  Have you used that Prometheus lab for inflammatory bowel disease?

Dr. Crawford: Prometheus Lab? I use LabCorp. They Okay. Thus far, LabCorp has given me what I need. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: There’s some specialty lab thing for IBD.

Dr. Crawford: Yeah, there, you know what, there are so many companies that are opening up, they’re offering specialty labs or specialty, microbiome tests.  There’s one good one, and it’s the one I use. Which one do you like? It’s [00:17:00] actually, it’s, the company is, Enjoy, I N J O Y. And what’s cool about them is they give you a report that’s really actionable. Foods, probiotics, prebiotics, and they break down for you. What are the, what’s in your microbiome?  That’s bad for your inflammatory bowel disease. That’s bad for your metabolic state. They look at, how much you your microbiome produces three important free. Short chain fatty acids, say that three times. Short chain fatty acids. 

Dr. Weitz:  Butyrate, propionate, and acetate, right?

Dr. Crawford:  Good job.  Yeah. How many people know that? And it’s important to be producing enough of these things. And have enough good bacteria and not have bad bacteria. And, I, this company uses a, uses AI. It’s the only company I know of that does microbiome testing that’s using AI. And you get a subscription for, I think it’s 1.99 a month, and you can you put your symptoms [00:18:00] in and you get, and you can ask the chat bot questions. And there’s a little bathroom beacon. It’s quite interesting. And it’s a three sample test and it’s enjoy. You can find it in your app store and you can use my code DrKim10 and get it and get a 10 percent discount.

Dr. Weitz:  Interesting. Yeah. I’ve never used that.

Dr. Crawford:  Very important to get a good microbiome test. Yeah, even I, when this test finally got perfected and I did my test, even I found I had one, I had too much of a bacteria that was good to have if you had Crohn’s and the reason I had it was because I was eating, um, too much high fat dairy, which is not supposed to be AIP compliant, but as a re entry food, I was able to eat it, but anyway, I found only because of this [00:19:00] microbiome test, which is why I keep eating it. telling everyone, you really, you don’t know what’s in your gut unless it gets tested.  I tell everybody, you, you got to do at least one because if you’ve had any sort of disorder, what, whatsoever, it’s generally can be traced back to the microbiome and the data is evolving, but you’re reading studies, the same studies I’m seeing that, we’re, they’re linking it to obesity, metabolic health sorry, we have Arthur.

Dr. Weitz: It’s okay.

Dr. Crawford: Ob, sorry, obesity, me, meta metabolic issues. Inflammatory bowel. You know what let me ask my husband to let to Sadie quiet.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Dr. Crawford: You can, maybe you can cut that out.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, I’ll cut that out.

Dr. Crawford: Sorry. I’m so sorry.

Dr. Weitz: What are the what are some of your favorite strategies for when you see a [00:20:00] patient and let’s say you see them and they’re having an acute flare?  What are some of the things that you like to use?

Dr. Crawford: In an acute flare, I, they go on a very strict AIP diet. Okay,

Dr. Weitz: what is AIP?

Dr. Crawford: Okay, Autoimmune Protocol, and people can find copies of that all over the internet.

Dr. Weitz: So this is an autoimmune paleo diet?

Dr. Crawford: It it is an autoimmune diet. It’s not a paleo diet because paleo diet.  But it’s similar and here’s why it’s similar. It’s similar because it’s no grains, no beans. The typical paleo, but paleo implies we want you to eat a lot of meat. And I don’t want anybody to eat quote a lot of meat. That’s just not good for you. But I would say to take out

Dr. Weitz: greens, beans, and then you also

Dr. Crawford: You take out initially you have to take out everything that’s paleo.  Okay, you look [00:21:00] at a paleo diet and in it’s alcohol, caffeine, and don’t hate me because I do allow you to re intro that back in. I am not coffee free anymore and I am not alcohol free anymore. So don’t worry, you won’t be either. But it’s paleo, which is No grains, no beans, no alcohol, no caffeine, no dairy.  And then also dairy and then no, no nightshade vegetables and nightshade spices and nightshades. You can Google what are nightshades, but it’s basically peppers and peppers, tomatoes, potatoes. Those are the big ones. And then you have to look at your spices. That was one of my problems is I like hot, spicy food.

And so my whole diet had to get much more bland than I wanted it to be. But I will say that we do what are called re intros when somebody says, Stable, and they’ve been in a nice remission, and one of the re intros is, this is going to [00:22:00] sound strange, but people can’t usually tolerate hot coffee, but they can tolerate iced coffee, and but and But some people can’t, and there were coffee alternatives, like there’s a company, Tachino, that makes coffee ish.

Dr. Weitz: Interesting,what’s the, why do you think that they can tolerate cold coffee versus hot coffee?

Dr. Crawford: That hasn’t been studied, and I just think, I just tried this on myself. And so it was an experiment because I just love coffee. I just love it. Okay. And I have some patients now sipping iced coffee.  And it hasn’t been studied. I don’t know, but. But, heat or hot food does cause peristalsis, whereas cold food causes less peristalsis, or, moving things along the segments in the small intestine and large intestine, so it might have something to do with the peristalsis.  I don’t really know. But but it’s not AIP compliant. So anyway, you asked about if somebody comes to me and they’re in a [00:23:00] flare, right? They’re immediate AIP. No, but even if people think they’re eating AIP, they’re usually not because for instance, Eggs are off it and they’re eating eggs, but you can have duck eggs and quail eggs on AIP.  So there’s that. Or they’re having some, they’re having some dairy and initially we have to cut out all dairy. 

Dr. Weitz: You take out nuts and seeds. Yeah,

Dr. Crawford: nuts and seeds, just like paleo. And those are a re intro that many people can re intro. So it’s not like you’re, you’re going to be without all these things forever, but just till you get out of your flare.  When somebody’s in a flare, they get the, all the peptides that I use, which are about five peptides. They get low dose naltrexone. They, now they get methylene blue. They get bio they probably get bioidentical hydrocortisone. And I also use if it just depends if I can’t get them out of the flare, which not good, hasn’t happened yet, but if I can’t get somebody out quickly after the [00:24:00] flare, I’ll have them come to the office and I’ll give them IV exosomes which are the little nanopods that they get out of the stem cells.  And then that will nuke the flare right there. Really? Interesting. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: And It’s the first time I’ve heard using Exosomes for IBD.

Dr. Crawford: Oh yeah, it works wonders. Yeah. And it also and also if somebody wants to consolidate I use exosomes for many conditions, but for IBD and CIRS, they’re very useful.

Dr. Weitz: Interesting. Have you used ozone?

Dr. Crawford: Yes what people aren’t really fond of ozone even though it really, it does work. You have to have a sealed gut to be able to, to get Really the best effects. And so that means you already ha have to have had a couple of weeks of one of the peptides I use that seals the gut but oz ozone.  What people don’t [00:25:00] understand about ozone is you can go to the doctor’s office and get IV ozone for whatever that doctor charges. Per pop. Usually one 50 to two 50. Okay. Or you can use ho ozone and use intra rectal ozone, which actually works great when somebody is flaring.  You just have to use a real low dose. But int Rectal Ozone gives you 75% of the results that IV will, and it’s. for pennies on the dollar. And you can do it yourself. And so I personally have used intrarectal ozone. And I do have a few patients, but most patients are just ooeyed out at the whole prospect of sticking a tiny little catheter up their butt.  They just can’t take it. They can have diarrhea 25 times a night, but they won’t stick a little catheter up their butt. Go figure. But yeah ozone is helpful. And there are other modalities which are additive. There’s a lot of conversation about red light [00:26:00] therapy.  Red light therapy, if somebody’s flaring is helpful. And the easiest way to get red light therapy, easiest and quickest and cheapest, without having to go find a doctor, is join a Planet Fitness. Get a black card membership and that’s, I think it’s 25 bucks a month and that allows you to use their red light pod, which is a very good red light pod and you can go every day.  You could go twice a day. 

Dr. Weitz: And it’s just like a full body red light thing? 

Dr. Crawford: Yeah. Okay. And you just get in the pod and join a plan of fitness and use their red light pod. There you go.

Dr. Weitz: There you go.

Dr. Crawford: Yeah. And people ask about hyperbaric oxygen. That’s a little additive, but not a lot.  And people ask about cryotherapy. It’s a little additive, especially if there’s a lot of fatigue. That helps fatigue, not a lot. I, for fatigue, I’d rather just give them NAD trochees. NAD is the, there’s a lot of buzz about NAD and nicotinamide mononucleotide. And [00:27:00] that’s, Inflammatory bowel disease, just like all inflammatory diseases, is a mitochondria disease, a disease of the mitochondria, which are the cells of respiration. And there’s less ATP, adenine triphosphate production from your mitochondria. And so that’s why people with inflammatory disorders, including IBD, feel fatigued and you give them NAD and boom, that, that fixes the fatigue. So would you ever prescribe a biologic?  Oh, hell no. Are you kidding me? I write, I prescribe pharmaceuticals every once in a while if they’re needed. For instance, for hypertension, I use metformin for glucose control, not for anti aging because there’s really no subspecialty called anti aging and the data on continuous glucose monitoring and metformin use really isn’t there for age extension for life extension or [00:28:00] cellular life extension.  But I do use metformin if somebody’s blood sugar isn’t controllable with, for instance, berberine, etc. But would I, When I developed Crohn’s, I thought to myself, there is no way in the world I’m taking a biologic and and I thought I’m just gonna look around PubMed and try things and figure this out, which is what I did.

Dr. Weitz: Do you find that a percentage of your patients with IBD also have SIBO?

Dr. Crawford: You know what because they’re CIRS patients. Okay, just about everybody who’s living in a moldy house and the mold mycotoxin mix is always, it’s mold, mycotoxins, dust mites, actinomyces, the endotoxins, other bacteria, and they, a huge proportion of those patients get SIBO and SIFO.  Huge percentage. probably 80 percent. Of my just Crohn’s or just UC patients who are not [00:29:00] moldies I would say it’s less than 50 percent, but I do, I do check for that.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. So what do you do when they have mycotoxins, you test for mycotoxins and you put them on like a mycotoxin detox protocol?

Dr. Crawford: It’s a bit more complicated than that, but a lot of doctors test for mycotoxins in the pee and Which is silly, that’s not diagnostic. That tells us, that tells us you’re eating American food. American food is loaded with mycotoxins. From grains to beans to coffee to milk.  Mycotoxins are in every, are in everything. So if you’re peeing out mycotoxins, unless it’s a very unusual one, like for instance, gliotoxin, which is made by Stachybotrys, which is normally not found in the food supply. So if somebody’s got a lot of That one you can infer they’re getting it environmentally, but the way you test for Sears is you check the innate immune system.

You check [00:30:00] labs that conventional doctors don’t check, a TGF Beta 1, an MSH, an MMP9 things that other doctors probably haven’t even heard of. And then the first thing I do is, there’s two patients in mold. The house or, or the house in the house, who knows people have more than one house, they have a workplace.

So we’ve got those patients to deal with. And then we have the sick person who’s a patient, but you have to have all those environmental patients. clean enough to support the detoxing of the patient. And the first thing that has to happen that I see patients that come to me and other doctors haven’t fixed their guts, and if they’ve got a leaky gut, which by definition they have, they’re going to, and they’re given binders before they’re gut sealed.  then the binder binds in their GI tract and it goes right out the leaky gut, right into the bloodstream, and there’s leaky gut means you’ve got a leaky gut brain barrier, goes right into the brain, and so everybody who [00:31:00] comes to me who’s somebody’s put on, yes, who’s somebody’s put on detox agents, they’ll tell me, Oh, I 10 minutes after I take it, I feel terrible.  Yeah, because you’re binding the toxins, and then you’re releasing them into your bloodstream. That’s why you feel terrible. So anybody out there who’s taking binders, who hasn’t had their gut fixed, That’s why you feel lousy after you take the binders. So right. Yep.

Dr. Weitz: So you got to fix the gut first,

Dr. Crawford: fix the gut.  And then I do a lot of tissue repair with peptides and everybody’s hormones are messed up. Everybody’s inflamed. I do my thing for inflammation. Everybody’s having sleep issues because of a of a number of things that happen in Sears. Yeah. Gotta fix the sleep. As I mentioned before, lack of sleep is very inflammatory in and of itself.  But back to the topics you want to talk about, Ben.

Dr. Weitz: One of the things you mentioned on your website was that there are natural ways to inhibit TNF alpha besides taking [00:32:00] biologics. Maybe you can talk about some of the nutritional supplements that can be of some benefit here.

Dr. Crawford: These will tend to lower what I’m going to mention, but they don’t necessarily have a clinical impact.  So I would tell people, don’t think you can treat yourself with, quercetin and curcumin and resveratrol. Those are the big ones, the TNF modulators. Those are all very good supplements, but they’re not necessarily going to make a clinical difference. Okay. They might make a little, but curcumin, for instance, is not AIP compliant.  So when I have people that come to me taking a whole bunch of curcumin, a lot of times they’re just exacerbating their inflammatory bowel disease.

Dr. Weitz: Oh, interesting, huh?

Dr. Crawford: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: My experience has been the opposite on that one. I find curcumin very helpful for inflammation within the gut.

Dr. Crawford: Okay. Okay. [00:33:00] Inflammation in the gut is one thing, but if they have a diagnosis of inflammation related

Dr. Weitz: to an inflammatory bowel disease.  Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Dr. Crawford: We’ve had you know what? So many of my patients have way more than just inflammatory bowel disease. And, have so many other things going on because they usually have chronic Lyme or Sears along with inflammatory bowel. And they, and sometimes, like half the time they’ll have, They’ll come to me with two or three autoimmune diseases.  There’s a lot more than just inflammatory bowel going on. Sure. 

Dr. Weitz: Patients who have one inflammatory bowel autoimmune disease are more prone to others.

Dr. Crawford: Absolutely. And once you get leaky gut, you are, you are genetically, there’s all, it’s who in your family had an autoimmune disease? If you get leaky gut.  You gotta be very careful.

Dr. Weitz: Does pretty much all your patients who come to see you for IBD end up on this [00:34:00] autoimmune diet? Or do you sometimes test for food sensitivities and and, customize it that way?

Dr. Crawford: You know what people with Sears develop food sensitivities and people with at a more rapid rate than people with just IBD, but people with IBD develop food sensitivities.  Now, there’s food sensitivities and food allergies. Sure. IgA mediated, IgG mediated, and IgE mediated. And the IgE mediated are like the peanut allergies. And that’s very rare. That’s, that’s a medical emergency. And so you’ve got to test if you believe there’s any IgE, throat closing, wheezing, hive, if there’s any of those reactions.

You check IgE levels to the foods you suspect and you get somebody an EpiPen, blah, blah, blah. If somebody just has food sensitivities, many times someone will come in to me with a [00:35:00] laundry list of food sensitivities. And rather than do, immunoglobulin testing to every single food, I give patients a choice, but they tend to know which foods are bothering them.

And the thing about food sensitivities in association with either Sears or Chronic Lyme or inflammatory bowel, etc, is they tend to reverse. And of course everybody needs to be on AIP. That’s like the The foundation of, that’s like step one of treating an autoimmune disease. And let me mention that there’s a Facebook group you can go on to, to find recipes, just look up autoimmune protocol.

It’s a really good Facebook group. I’m not trying to give Mark Zuckerberg more business here, but it’s a very good Facebook group and you can get recipes and Please cook something and send it to me. Cause I hate to cook. But anyway, yeah, I look at these recipes and I go, Oh, that looks great. Maybe I can find somebody to make that for me.

Dr. Weitz: I know. How [00:36:00] long do you keep your patients on the autoimmune diet or do they stay on nap for life?

Dr. Crawford: Until we can reset the genes with CRISPR. Autoimmune diseases go into remission, but you don’t cure them. What you can do with the exosomes, if somebody has got the finances and they want to do it, is you can calm it down because that, what’s in the exosomes mix that I get, and I, I can’t go into that because the FDA isn’t crazy about us using these things.  Isn’t great. The FDA just quite frankly, isn’t crazy about. functional doctors using things that are not pharmaceuticals. I’m just going to put that out there. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m just saying pharmaceutical companies want you to buy pharmaceuticals. And there’s been a, like a, they’re going after certain things.  And now and now they’re looking at hemp products, which is where [00:37:00] we get CBD products, which are. which are also very useful for people with inflammatory bowel disease for pain, for sleep. There’s, really great sleep CBD products. They’re thinking

Dr. Weitz: about taking those off the market.

Dr. Crawford: They’re talking about that now, and they just took off some peptides. And they’re looking at exosomes. So I don’t like to really. Talk about it a lot, but I will say that that exosomes not only can get somebody out of a flare, but they can make them flare less.  Somebody with Crohn’s this hasn’t been studied. I’m just going to give you, I’m not big on doctors using anecdotal information, but I will tell you 15 years, which is how long I’ve been treating this I’ve just noticed that stress and lack of sleep is way, it flares my Crohn’s patients way quicker than it flares my UC patients.  It flares them too, so everybody, not to sound like a broken record, but everybody has got to do active stress management and [00:38:00] active sleep management. as well as dietary management and exercise management. I have one kid who’s a I’m just going to say that he’s a, he’s going to be a professional athlete.  And if he plays his sport too much, that can cause GI problems, because all the, The catecholamines, the, the adrenaline epinephrine that’s released when he is playing his sport. That, that’s hit in the gut. So everything really, about the lifestyle has to be managed.  And my favorite expression to use is don’t let this get your cortisol up. Whatever the news is, don’t let it get your cortisol up. ’cause that means you’re damaging your brain and you’re damaging your gut.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. Um, so let’s see what else you you talk about other things that can reduce TNF alpha and you mentioned ice baths, saunas, things like that.

Dr. Crawford: Yeah again, [00:39:00] not incredibly clinically relevant, ice baths and saunas are both a form of what we call hormesis, and we know that hormesis is really good For the human organism and hormesis is anything from timed eating to intermittent fasting to HIIT, high intestinal in high intensity interval training.  Sauna use ice plunges. All of that helps every inflammatory condition will raise your happy hormones, may extend cellular longevity, so all of those modalities are actually good to put in clinical practice for anybody. I would recommend it. say that, you don’t want to do all of them at once.  For instance cold plunges are quite good, but you don’t want to start doing HIIT, intermittent fasting, cold plunges saunas. You don’t want to start that all at once. If [00:40:00] you don’t know where to start, get a good functional doctor. And I think probably some coaches know how to talk you through these modalities too.

Dr. Weitz: You mentioned Methylene Blue. Can you explain what Methylene Blue is, and how that can be beneficial, and what dosages you use, etc.?

Dr. Crawford: Methylene Blue was discovered as a dye. And that sounds ooh, that’s disgusting. It was used

Dr. Weitz: to look at at Slides under a microscope, right?

Dr. Crawford: When I was in medical school we used to draw blood, put it under a microscope and, and look for certain bacteria with it.  So that was the use of the original use. It’s now been repurposed and it’s given as a medication. And functional doctors are using it for for different reasons. It’s being studied as a antibacterial and an anti malarial. There are definitely antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal properties to it.

It hasn’t been fully studied, [00:41:00] but but I will tell you on a personal level, I don’t take antibiotics. If I think that something is needed or I will take some Methylene Blue because antibiotics are really kind of death to the microbiome. If you need them, if it’s a life threatening thing, go ahead, but but if it’s not life threatening, don’t think that every time you get handed a prescription for antibiotics that you actually need it.  Really, think about it before you take antibiotics, proton pump inhibitors Motrin, Aleve any, all of that stuff is just really bad for your gut. 

Dr. Weitz: Methylene blue, is this, you use an oral formulation or an injectable and in what dosage and then how long a period of time do you use it for?  Is this something you do ongoing?

Dr. Crawford: If somebody’s flaring, this is one of my flare meds. Okay. If they also have a neurodegenerative condition as as is associated with Sears, which is what I see a lot of, I see a lot of people that have been diagnosed with [00:42:00] Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, but they really have severe.  Sears. And and this is being studied. Methylene blue is being studied for neurodegenerative conditions and I’m following that data. And sometimes even before data is published and finalized, I’ll use something if it really looks promising and it looks good. I’ll use it for flares. And as a nice side effect, it’s going to help clean up, clear up their noggin and I’ll use between 25 and 50 milligrams twice a day.  I use liposomal preparations work far better than just the over the counter powdered stuff you can get. And if you’re getting stuff over the counter, be very careful because what’s in the capsules and What’s the capsules are made out of, okay, may be toxic and the fillers that are being used may be toxic.  And that, that really is the case for the bulk of the pharmaceuticals out there. So when I get things compounded, I make sure I get a clear dye free veggie cap. And I make sure [00:43:00] that the fillers that are used, those are the inactive ingredients. If you’re looking at the label, And I’ll make sure that the fillers are non toxic.  For instance this isn’t going to sound toxic.

Dr. Weitz: Methylene, Methylene Blue is over the counter or it’s prescription?

Dr. Crawford: I get it. I use prescription Methylene Blue. Because I like Liposomal. I’m just saying people can find it. Okay. Over the counter. I wouldn’t recommend using it. But, people are going to use what they’re going to use.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. But it is available over the counter. Okay.

Dr. Crawford: I’m pretty sure it is. Yeah.

Dr. Weitz: Okay. And so methylene blue has an anti inflammatory effect. Is that its main benefit or what?

Dr. Crawford: It’s a potent antioxidant and it’s a potent anti inflammatory. Yeah, those are the two properties. And you asked about IV use.  IV isn’t necessary. IV is only needed in certain blood disgraces that have nothing to do with what we’re talking about, but [00:44:00] for our purposes, it’s oral. Yes.

Dr. Weitz: All right. And then talk about low dose naltrexone, LDN.

Dr. Crawford: Yeah, low dose naltrexone. People know naltrexone as an, as a, Probably they’ve heard of it or a related drug.  Narcan can, as something that reverses opioid ingestion, excess ingestions. But low dose naltrexone, not the 50 milligrams that’s used to reverse, reverse problems, but very low dose, meaning I start somebody at 0.5 milligrams. Okay. Work, work my way up. That, causes the pituitary to release growth factors and pain stopping factors and endorphins and enkephalins, which are like your natural pain relievers.  And those, Mod, help modulate the inflammatory response. So [00:45:00] LDN, and people can Google, or ask, don’t ask chat, GPT. I don’t know what chat, GPT is going to tell you. But there are websites on what does LDN work for? Are you a candidate for LDN? And LDN, just like everything else, can be used. prepared in a good way that’s not going to harm your gut or a bad way that’s going to harm your gut.

So when people tell me, Oh, I got, they come to me and they tell me, Oh, I got this cheap LDN and it didn’t seem to work. And then they show me what they got. They got something with a toxic filler. Sometimes I’ll see like filler is brown, dried brown rice, which doesn’t sound toxic. But if you’ve got, if you’ve got inflammatory bowel disease and you take a capsule of dried brown rice, It could flare you right there, just that one capsule.

So LDN has to be prepared correctly. It has to be made not from the crushed tablets because the [00:46:00] tablets have bad fillers in them. So you have to get LDN that’s made from powder and they put it with clean fillers in a clean capsule and then you go up very slowly or it can mess up your sleep.  That’s why I go up slowly on the dosing.

Dr. Weitz: All right, good.

Dr. Crawford: Okay, and so that is another component for most people of their therapy.

Dr. Weitz: It sounds like there’s a lot of things that can be used. And do you often use a lot of these all at one time or you pick and choose?

Dr. Crawford: It’s very dependent on the patient.  An ulcerative colitis patient is generally easier for me to get under control than a Crohn’s patient. So maybe they won’t need all five peptides, but the Crohn’s patients, they all need all five peptides and they all need to more carefully manage their stress. And they all need to do the vagal nerve stimulation more than the UC patients.  It’s, but it’s, I individualize. When you see, [00:47:00] when you see a patient, you individualize their therapy and I individualize the therapies that the patients I see as well.

Dr. Weitz: All right, great. So I, I think that’s the questions I had prepared. Anything else you want to tell us about?

Dr. Crawford: No, I just let me see. When we talked about, I don’t want people to get, diseases. Okay, so let’s talk about. So we don’t

Dr. Weitz: just cure them from their autoimmune disease, we want to make them healthier.

Dr. Crawford: You know what? I don’t want them to get an autoimmune disease because I can’t cure that right now.  I can. Quasi reset the epigenome with the exosomes. We can wait for CRISPR, but I don’t want to wait till people get these diseases. I want them not to get it. So how do you not get inflammatory bowel disease? What are the things that cause leaky gut? The main things. Okay. They’re eating ultra processed foods, the standard American [00:48:00] diet, so the first thing is you got to eat a healthy diet.  Second thing, we talked about how high cortisol can damage your gut line and give you leaky gut. You want to manage your stress. Number three, you want to avoid toxins. You want to make sure your house is not moldy. 50 percent of the houses in the U. S. are moldy. 25 percent of the people in the U. S. have the genetic makeup to develop Sears.

So you do the math, that’s millions of people walking around with other diagnoses and they’re just not getting the help they need and they’re not getting the mold cleared up in their house. And this goes to everything from mold to the bad types of seaweed that wash up to heavy metals, everybody should know by now not to eat tuna fish every day.

Like somebody running for president, I won’t mention names. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. But toxins, stress, lack of [00:49:00] sleep eating a bad diet. Those are really the main, those are the main reasons people get leaky gut. If you just take a look at your lifestyle, and if you need help, get a lifestyle coach.

Or, somebody who can help you with the big things. What should you eat? How should you exercise? How do you sleep better? How do you manage your stress better? Those are all the things that can keep you healthy. Manage your environment, get a nice air purifier, make sure you don’t have mold.

Mold sniffing dogs, by the way, I’m obviously a dog fan, but mold sniffing dogs, find mold 95 to 99 percent of the time and human inspectors find the mold about half the time. Oh, really? Really. I’ve had so many patients where they have a, the human inspector comes in and here’s the whole inspection report and here’s the samples and this is the mold it shows and then I put them on treatment and then, and then three months later.

I think [00:50:00] they’re doing well, and then all of a sudden they flare. And what’s the problem? Get a mold dog. The mold dog comes in and goes woof in the bathroom, and it’s behind the, and there’s more mold behind the tiles in the bathroom. I’m mentioning all of this just because it all ties back to inflammatory bowel, because a lot of people who develop mold illness will, if it runs in their family, will develop an autoimmune illness.

Dr. Weitz: We didn’t touch really on the on the microbiome. And I know you like to do a microbiome analysis, you mentioned, and then work on improving the health of the gut. So we didn’t talk about

Dr. Crawford: that. I don’t think we

Dr. Weitz: really did. Yeah. We just mentioned that you like to use a a certain microbiome analysis, but let’s talk about that.  And you get this microbiome analysis, this stool test,

Dr. Crawford: which

Dr. Weitz: is using old genome sequencing. Is that what it’s using?

Dr. Crawford: Yeah. Okay. And it’s basically sequencing your entire Microbiome. Okay. But it’s categorizing [00:51:00] it very nicely. And you can see if you do it, if you do it, you’ll get a report and everything is categorized for, not only just do you have a normal amount of firmicutes to bacteroidetes ratio.  The two main kingdom types of command, all specter kingdom. Yeah. Kingdom, Order, Class, Phylum, Genus, Species, but, the two kingdoms, do you, and then do you have enough diversity? And so you want a diverse microbiome. And then are you making the short chain fatty acids?  And then it goes through the sections. Here are the bacteria that you have or you don’t have associated with. inflammatory bowel disease. Oh, and here’s what you can do about it. And here’s the ones associated with metabolic disorders. And here’s what you can do about it. So the whole report basically has you altering your diet, maybe adding certain prebiotics.

For instance I will look at somebody’s report and I will look at the suggested foods and I’ll come up with okay, [00:52:00] once a week, I want you to make up your. Prebiotic Smoothie, and then here’s the probiotic I want you to take because this is what’s, and then here are the foods I don’t want you to eat because you got too much of this.  And for instance, a typical prebiotic smoothie recipe would be and I try to make it easy for everybody, is you grab a bag of frozen organic spinach, and you grab three apples and then you grab a can of unsweetened pineapple. That’s like your basic, nothing fancy here and you mix it all up.  It tastes just fine. You put it, you get little glass bottles, you freeze them, and every day you take one out for the next day. And you, if you take that with your probiotic, you’ve got a prebiotic and a probiotic, and your probiotic is going to take hold quicker. We know, for instance, Ackermansia is a probiotic that is essential for maintenance of the [00:53:00] gut lining.  And it’s amazing. Some people have none when you do their microbiome analysis. And so obviously those people, you give them that, but so it’ll take hold better. I have them drink whatever their prebiotic profile is in their report. I’ll have them do a smoothie that will, that will cover it.  And help their acromantia, if that’s the probiotic, take hold quicker.

Dr. Weitz: What about some of the prebiotic products on the market?

Dr. Crawford: There is nothing, I have tried them. There’s nothing that I find palatable out there.

Dr. Weitz: Okay.

Dr. Crawford: So I just have found nothing palatable. There are oligosaccharide, fructosaccharide mixes that are used for infants.  And that’s actually palatable. But it’s got too much, I call it goulash, when they put extra stuff that they don’t need to put that there’s too much goulash in the the commercially available. That’s why I have everybody just make their own. No [00:54:00] preservatives, no, no chemicals, no junk.

Dr. Weitz: And then how do you decide which probiotics to use?

Dr. Crawford: I will look at their profile, right? I will see As an example this one company I use, Enjoy, and my code is drkim10 for a discount. Okay. They will tell you you may have heard the term psychobiotics. And if you haven’t, it’s a term you’ll be hearing because we know that depression, anxiety manic depressive disorder, schizophrenia.  All sorts of things that we call psychological disorders are really neurological disorders and they’re, and they are primarily based in the gut. All things really do start from the gut. And so the psychobiotics are the things that will increase your good hormones and the things that you want. And one of the things I mentioned was GABA, Amino Butyric Acid, which is the thing that makes us [00:55:00] relax.

And this report measures your GABA. Now, we know in the literature that there are certain strains of bacteria that will produce GABA. And so I will pick a probiotic for a person who’s anxious and can’t fall asleep at night, that person needs more GABA. And I’ll give them a prebiotic drink with a probiotic with strains in it that are known to increase GABA.  That’s just a one of the four examples. But there’s a whole bunch of things that I take into consideration. And the data is evolving. Every week, even in the mainstream literature, I see probably 10 articles. In my functional literature, I see probably 30 articles talking about the relationship between the microbiome and other parameters of health.

Dr. Weitz: One of the tricky things though is, you can do one of these as stool analysis and see, say the patient is low on a, lactobacillus rhamnosus or [00:56:00] something. And then, but unfortunately, most of the data doesn’t show that if you take a probiotic with lactobacillus rhamnosus, that it becomes a permanent resident.

Dr. Crawford: That’s why you take it with a prebiotic drink. And just about everybody has enough of that, of lactobacillus remnosus. The plantarum is available, and that helps bloating. There are You know, Adalentis is available. That helps GABA. And again we’re really just at the beginning of the probiotic, prebiotic, and functional foods.  And this is going to be a thing. Functional foods. We’re just starting to explore those avenues. And AI is really helping this company. I think AI used correctly. And if we teach the chatterers, if we teach them what they need to know, which [00:57:00] is don’t come kill us, please.  But if we control AI, then it’s a useful tool for us. And so this company is using AI to go through tens of thousands of articles and be able to give recommendations like right on the app. And I will check it out just to, if I read something in the literature, I’ll check it out just to see did they tell the app that yet?  And usually they have, so it’s pretty cool. Okay, cool. We’re just starting. The reason that, that there’s there’s no real guidance about this is because we’re just at the cusp, what’s available for probiotics. It’s just, it’s 1 percent of what we’re going to have in another 10 years.

Dr. Weitz: So mention a couple of your favorite probiotics. Do you like the spore based probiotics? Do you use the Acromantia? What kind of products do you like?

Dr. Crawford: If somebody doesn’t have enough diversity which is, a lot of people, like I use, for instance, if I [00:58:00] can mention a company, I use Designs for Health.  And if somebody wants a discount. designs for health account, they can go to kimcarfordmd. com and go to the page where there’s products and If you use Designs for Health link under my product list, that gives you something like a 15 20 percent discount on everything. And for Designs for Health, I like their, they have a line called ProBiomed.  And those they have a sporulating probiotic called Probiospore. So for diversity, you want a sporulating. You want a lot of bacillus bacillus subtilis. You want bacillus coagulans. And there are, I think there are two other companies that have good sporulating probiotics. Rebel Health Tribe had one or has one and then there’s another company so 

Dr. Weitz: Microbiome Labs has the Megaspore.

Dr. Crawford: The Megaspore probiotic that’s a good product. [00:59:00] Exactly. And so for diversity you, you always want to sporulating. I always check like somebody can have too much acromantia. So I would say you know check your microbiome before, ideally before you start any probiotic.  So check and see, do you need acromantia? And if you’re deficient, I would recommend acromantia. And then the other, I’ll use ProBiomed that, the ProBiomed 50 or 100 because those there are lactobacillus strains and bifidobacterium strains that will help with the serotonin and GABA and that will help with metabolic stuff and that will increase your metabolism.  amount. If you have a really low level of Firmicutes I really want that level up. And this is a little controversial because high Firmicutes are found in obese patients or people well over their ideal body range. But on the other hand, if you [01:00:00] look in the blue zones and you look at those microbiomes, The Blue Zone people who all, there’s people with

Dr. Weitz: the longest Dan Buettner.

Dr. Crawford: They’ve all got high firmicutes. And they’re all thin, they’re thin, they eat they don’t eat a lot of meat. That’s why when we talked about paleo, that’s why I say I’m not a fan of a lot of eating a lot of meat for multiple reasons, for from a health standpoint it’s not a good idea to, from an inflammation just an inflammatory, and we’ll just leave it at that standpoint, it’s not a good idea.

And here’s the other thing about when you’re eating, when you’re eating animal products, whether it’s dairy or meat chicken, beef, whatever. or whatever it is you’re eating what those animals were fed. So if they were fed grains, those grains, are there, are the grains GMO grains? Were they sprayed with pesticides?   Were they sitting in silos covered with mycotoxins and the animals have ingested [01:01:00] mycotoxins? I figured out how to treat CIRS looking at the veterinary literature because they were treating animals who were getting Mold Toxin Related Illness, so everything that the animal eats, you eat, which is why I always say you must get grass fed everything, chickens, free range chickens that walk around and eat grass and lay eggs and Become your meal if you want it to become your meal and beef, beef if it’s fed grains, you’re eating the same grains the beef is, you’re, you’re, if they’re injected with hormones and antibiotics, you’re eating that too that’s why organic, it is more expensive, but if you’re trying to be a healthy person and not develop inflammatory bowel disease, You’ll eat organic, and you’ll eat organic with not only your meat, but with your grains, with your fruits, with your vegetables and an easy rule of thumb about what to get organic is if you can peel it and eat the inside, [01:02:00] then it doesn’t have to be organic, but if you can’t peel it, like you’re eating an apple or you’re eating a strawberry, those have to be organic.  If you get a sweet potato and you take off the skin, that doesn’t have to be organic. That’s the rule.

Dr. Weitz: Sure, or you can go to I’m drawing a blank on the clean ten or the Yeah, the dirty dozen. Dirty dozen, yeah.

Dr. Crawford: I’m just saying if people don’t have access to that list and they’re at the grocery store and they’re looking, that’s a way to think about it.  Sure, absolutely.

Dr. Weitz: If you’re not going to eat the outside of it and it’s covered in a shell, you’re going to get less of the pesticides inside.

Dr. Crawford: like an avocado.

Dr. Weitz: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, great. A lot of great information. Thank you so much for sharing with us, Dr. Crawford. And how can viewers and listeners get in touch with you?  What’s your website, etc.?

Dr. Crawford: It’s Kim Crawford, like the wine 

Dr. Weitz:  Is your wine called Kim Crawford?

Dr. Crawford: There’s a guy in New Zealand that owns a vineyard, okay? And he makes a good Sauvignon Blanc. Oh, okay. And I get three, three texts a week with people sending me Kim Crawford wine and asking and saying, Is this yours?  I wish. So they can go to kimcrawfordmd. com. And I do one off consults. If you just want to want a 45 minute to 75 minute consult, I do those. And then I’m still, I do get a lot of applications on a daily basis, but I do. So I don’t take every new applicant as a new patient, but I do get you situated and I help you and I do answer every single person that, that gets in touch with me.

Dr. Weitz: That’s great. Thank you so much, Dr. Kim.

Dr. Crawford: Thank you, Dr. Ben. Lovely being with you.

Dr. Weitz: The same.

Dr. Crawford: Bye.

 

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Dr. Weitz: Thank you for making it all the way through this episode of the Rational Wellness Podcast. For those of you who [01:04:00] 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, cardiometabolic 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.