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Expert Interviews
Dr Lynese Lawson: Beyond Testosterone Lecture
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<blockquote data-quote="Nelson Vergel" data-source="post: 51448" data-attributes="member: 3"><p>PART 2</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Next, let's talk about how we treat cardiovascular disease. Statin drugs are the first line of treatment for elevated lipid panels, but again, if a person has a high cholesterol level and they have zero plaque in their arteries, and we look at other inflammatory markers such as a cardio CRP and they have very little inflammation, then it shouldn't be just a knee-jerk reaction to just prescribe a statin. Now, there are so many people who are totally anti-statin and I'm not anti-statin at all but I think that statins should be prescribed for people who really need them. Some people do need them. For example, if you have a lot of plaque in your artery, you have a lot of inflammation. For example, the cardio CRP level should be less than 1. If it's between 1 and 3, that puts you at an average cardiovascular risk. If the cardio CRP is greater than 3, it puts you at a high cardiovascular risk.</p><p></p><p>You want a statin for its anti-inflammatory benefits and it helps to stabilize and calcify plaque, but if a person does need a statin, then they really do need to take a high dose of CoQ10, Coenzyme Q10. It's an enzyme that we make in our bodies but statins deplete the production of CoQ10. When you have low CoQ10 levels, that predisposes one to heart failure. It has been said that heart failure is primarily due to a CoQ10 deficiency and so many people are on statins who don't need to be on them and there are people that do need to be on them but they're not taking any CoQ10. If you're going to give the drug, you need to make sure that you're not going to get the side effects of what that drug can do by decreasing the CoQ10 levels in production.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Yeah. Low levels of CoQ10 can also affect muscle regeneration and there's a lot more myopathy and muscle-related issues with people taking statins. They will complain of pains and aches.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Absolutely. Yes. There are even some genetic test that can help determine risk and treatment. Specifically, some of the advanced cardiovascular labs do a genetic test to predict whether a person will have a statin myopathy or not. If a person needed a statin and we knew they were at risk for the myalgias that go along with it, a lot of times they need to be given CoQ10 even prior to starting a statin and also magnesium as well. That is a good point that you made earlier about the myopathy. You do have to be real careful about the muscle pain that can occur with it and it does happen.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Good point. Before we go on, I know the statin industry, the pharmaceutical industry has been pushing for the use of statins even for people with lower LDL levels, why are so many doctors prescribing them instead of looking at other ways to address the problem or even the diagnostics of it? What do you think they're such a barrier? Is that only pharmaceutical lobbying or the education lectures and CME programs that doctors take? Why is the cardiology world not embracing issues around looking into other factors before statin therapy, before they actually jump into that treatment?</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right. There's a lot of money that is involved in the prescribing of statins. It's a 40 billion dollar industry. The other thing is that I think a lot of doctors, they don't know and they don't know that they don't know, and that's just what they've been taught. The other thing is that they don't realize that 60% of people who have a first time heart attack have <u>normal cholesterol levels</u>. They've just been trying to think that the cholesterol is the enemy and we know that is not the case because we even need cholesterol to make our hormones. We need it to make our testosterone, our estradiol, all of our reproductive hormones.. They don't have time oftentimes to really look at other risk factors. They have 6 to 8 minutes. I think there are multiple reasons why they continue to prescribe statins in spite of the lack of supporting evidence but I think it's just because that's what they've always done. The pharmaceutical reps come in. They tell them about a new statin and that's just the only tool in their toolbox.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Yeah. Anyway you see also they're barriers to getting the insurance companies to pay for some of the diagnostic test that go beyond just a lipid panel .</p><p></p><p>Lynese: That is true.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: That really gets in the way of for even doctors to ... They're working within the insurance reimbursement system to even trying to use this diagnostic test. Also they'll get validated eventually but yes, we already know the insurance situation in this country. Even though we're having more access, there are more limitations on what they pay for.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Exactly. Yeah. One thing I want to point out, and this is when I learned about the thyroid and the cholesterol link. I had a lady a few years ago and she ran up the stairs to my office and she worked out every day and she played tennis every day and she was really healthy. She wasn't overweight. She didn't have any signs of hypothyroidism at all, but her cholesterol was 385, but her Free T3 was 1.9. I really like to see it in the high 3s, low 4s. I said, "You know, there must be some connection between low thyroid function and cholesterol."</p><p></p><p>I validated the test result since labs do make errors, so if a lab test doesn't make sense, you do have to repeat it sometimes. Then, I treated her with the equivalent of 1 grain which is 60 milligrams of Armour Thyroid and her cholesterol came down 200 points. It came down from 385 to 185 in 6 weeks, and that was just giving thyroid medications. You have to have a broad understanding of what could be going on with the patient, why do they have elevated cholesterol levels. I see people who have low testosterone levels who have elevated cholesterol levels. You've really got to look at in a lot of different areas.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: That's a very good point, very good point. Anything else you want to expand on this slide?</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Not really. I will say one thing. I see men who come to me that have Low Testosterone. They're on a statin, they have a cholesterol level of 119 and they're fatigued and their testosterone levels are low. I tell them, "You can't even make testosterone if your cholesterol levels are that low." We could go on about this for hours but just know that there are other reasons for cholesterol levels being high other than your body is just taking too much of it and you need to lower it with statin.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Good. Good point.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: I think we mainly covered most of what's here but I will say that a lot of people come to me who have high blood pressure and they are on 2 or 3 different blood pressure medications. I learned this from Dr. Stephen Sinatra. He's an integrative cardiologist. He has a book entitled Reverse Heart Disease Now. He uses hawthorn, magnesium, D-Ribose, and CoQ10 to lower blood pressure. Those are 4 different supplements that one has to use in order to bring the blood pressure down but I've seen it work beautifully. I would rather get to the root of why my blood pressure is high than to just give a blood pressure medication. It was kind of funny, I had a lady call me the other day. We optimized her hormones and she had been on 3 different blood pressure medications. She called me and she said, "Do these hormones lower my blood pressure?" She said, "My blood pressure, it's really low now." I said, "Well, we can probably start to wane you off of some of these blood pressure medications that you're on. She's off all 3 blood pressure medications and as again, I said, she was on 3 of them. Even just balancing hormones can make such a huge difference in our overall health, blood pressure included.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Weight loss which also when you get your hormones balanced, you also tend to have some weight loss too and that controls blood pressure too. Blood pressure medications affect sexual function in men.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Absolutely.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: A lot of guys, we have over 14,000 guys on Excel Male, they're terrified of blood pressure medications and looking for other natural ways to decrease blood pressure. Some of them do have issues with increased blood pressure with taking higher doses of testosterone and other things too. It is a big, big topic in my world.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right. I know. Offline, we can talk about some of the things I've done to improve blood pressure. We can talk about that but there definitely are options beyond just taking a blood pressure medication.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Thank you.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: We're on a home stretch now. CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. I'm really very excited about this. It's also called the Biotoxin illness. I learned about this about 18 months ago. I had a guy that came into my office and he had a left-sided tremor. He had a tremor in his left hand and his left leg. He had been treated for Parkinson's disease, but his wife said, "He's not getting any better with the medication. I think that it's something else." She actually said, "You know, I've been reading about mold toxicity." I didn't really know that much about it at that time but again, I'm always interested to learn something new.</p><p></p><p>Chronic inflammatory response syndrome is a response that people have. It's inflammation that's due to being exposed to inflammagens, molds, toxins that are in a water-damaged building. Not only just water-damaged buildings but even certain fish like red snapper, grouper, amberjack, eel. They can contain a toxin called ciguatera. Some of us genetically are just unable to clear our bodies of those toxins so the toxins begin to continue to circulate throughout the systemic circulation and can cause a lot of different issues and health concerns. Some of the concerns mimic what's going on with low testosterone levels. We can look at the Biotoxin pathway, that's the next slide.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Interesting topic that nobody talks about.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Obviously, we're not going to go through every single step of this Biotoxin pathway but over on the left-hand side, it says the body acquires the Biotoxin or toxin-producing organism from food, water, air, or bug bites. We test for HLA genetic susceptibility. That's the human leukocyte antigen that's on chromosome 6. On the left-hand side, we have a desired outcome and a healthy patient. If the patient is not HLA susceptible to not being able to clear toxins, what will happen is the adaptive immune response will respond. Understand that we have 2 types of immune response. There's adaptive immune response. The adaptive immune response sees the foreign invader, sees this toxin, develops an antibody, and gets rid of it. It specifically targets that toxin and eliminates that antigen or that foreign agent that has entered the body. That's what you want to happen. Adaptive immune response is like a trained sniper. It's very targeted. It picks off that particular toxin and gets rid of it.</p><p></p><p>Next let's look at what happens at that point if a person is HLA susceptible meaning that 25% of people, believe it or not, are genetically not able to clear these particular Biotoxins. What will happen is that their adaptive immune system is not able to remove the toxin then their innate immune system takes over. The innate immune system, I liken that onto someone in a room that's blindfolded with a gun or a rifle or a machine gun and he's just shooting at everything, just trying to take out everything. This is when people start to develop autoimmunity and there are tests that we do that I had never heard of other than when I started to study this over the last 18 months but there's TGF-&#946;1. There's C3a, C4a. It's a complement system.</p><p></p><p>The one that is most important down in the middle with those orange arrows going off from it, it says reduced MSH, that's melanocyte stimulating hormone. When a susceptible person is exposed to toxins that they cannot rid their bodies off, they will develop low melanocyte stimulating hormone levels that can cause all sorts of issues in a patient. It can cause sleep disturbances, chronic pain, gastrointestinal issues, and prolonged illness. Believe it or not, it can also even cause low testosterone levels, low hormone levels in people. It can also cause people to become leptin resistant. I've had patients who are weight loss resistant and they'll me, "I've gained 30 pounds over the last year. I've not eaten anything any differently. I exercise all the time." They might not have a lot of the symptoms that most people have who have chronic inflammatory response syndrome but I have looked for Biotoxin exposure in these patients and a lot of these patients who have weight loss resistance actually have CIRS.</p><p></p><p>It's really an interesting field. I've had patients with fybromyalgia and fatigue and they really had CIRS. I've had patients with migraine headaches, because what will happen is this inflammatory response will cause certain parts of our brain to develop edema and so you can see certain fingerprints when you look at an MRI. There's an add-on to an MRI called a NeuroQuant. With this test we can see changes in the brain. We can see changes in the blood work. There's a new cutting-edge genomic testing that will be available, well, it's actually available now. It's very expensive but we can see exactly how to treat a patient and it's the best that we have in offering personalized medicine. When you think about 25% of people being susceptible to developing this type of inflammatory response, I'm just seeing so many people who are being treated based upon their symptoms but were not getting to the root of the issue.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: I'm really looking forward to getting this test done myself. I'm telling you. Obviously, I have an immune deficiency myself and I do have inflammatory issues. [inaudible 00:43:40] carrier. I'll be writing something about my experiences. I'm going to be using your services for this for sure.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: I'll definitely tell you all of the test that you need. It can be a scary thing for people. My mother, and I'll close it with this, but I knew about CIRS and probably it was meant for me to know so that I could really help to save my mom's life.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Really?</p><p></p><p>Lynese: She lived in Michigan. I knew her basement was moist. I know she used dehumidifiers but she told me one day, "You know, I've been really emptying these dehumidifiers every day, all 3 of them. One of them had some black sediment in it." I thought, "That sounds like mold." Although not all molds are black. Stachybotrys is black, but there are other molds that have no color at all. Then you can have patients or people who can live in a home with black mold growing all up the wall and they don't get sick, but then there are others that will. Anyway, I did her lab test and I found out they were worst than anybody's test that I had ever seen before.</p><p></p><p>Next we tested the home. That's another long story and I don't want to keep people online too much longer, but we actually tested her home looking at a test that looked at the DNA of the molds that were in her home. For example, it's called an ERMI test, Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. The scale goes from -10 to 20. You really want to see that ERMI score below 2. My mother's was 19.3 so I knew there was a really bad problem. I had somebody go out and inspect her house who was really qualified person to look for areas for water intrusion and breaches in the building envelope and what not. The woman told me, she said, "You mom's house is beautiful. It doesn't look like there's an issue, but it's like a super model with bone cancer. Because her house was so bad and her labs were so compromised by this immune response that she was experiencing, she had to get rid of everything porous, furniture, mattresses, you can wash your clothing. It's really an interesting field. The sicker the patient is, the more aggressive you need to be with the remediation and some people have to move out of their home, but it's really a fascinating field.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Your mom feeling better?</p><p></p><p>Lynese: You know, believe it or not, my mom really didn't feel bad. She had a little bit of a sore throat, and I really think it's because she was in really good overall health... You can have, let's go over the symptoms actually, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, depression. These are diseases that CIRS is easily confused with. In the case of my mother, I really believed and I can't validate it or verify it, but I really think it's because her hormones have always been balanced. We have her blood sugars under control. She's on Metformin. She takes fish oil. She does all of the things that we do in a integrative practice and so I really think that kept her from really being ill.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Good. Some doctors actually even minimize the existence of these issues. Obviously we're talking about education again.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right. Actually Lyme is a Biotoxin. The borrelia causes the toxin to be maintained in the body and the immune response reacts to that toxin, but believe it or not, a lot of people that I've seen with Lyme disease actually have CIRS. Get this, there's a girl who's 15. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She came to me for IV vitamin treatments. Her doctor had sent her to me for that and so we did that. She felt a little bit better but she really wasn't getting as healthy as her mother wanted her to be. The mother came to me and said, "You've got to look further. Something else is going on." We did the blood test to look for CIRS but we did an MRI of her brain and looked at the NeuroQuant that I mentioned before. There are certain fingerprints on a NeuroQuant that are indicative of mold toxicity and there are certain fingerprints that are indicative of Lyme disease.</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying she never had Lyme, but Lyme wasn't what was impacting her health at that point. We discontinued her antibiotics. We treated her for her mold toxicity, and there are a lot of steps to doing that, but she had been home schooled because she wasn't able to really ... She didn't have the stamina and energy to be in school full time but I just found out that she has gone back to school now. She went back this fall. It really made a difference in her overall health.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Wow. Great success story.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Go to the next slide?</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Yes, I will just say a little more about diagnosing CIRS. I think I'm just going to say this briefly because I could go on and on, but there's a visual test that you do. There is a website called VCS Test, Visual Contrast Sensitivity testing, so VCSTest.com. It tests what is going in with the optic nerve because when you have CIRS or chronic inflammatory response syndrome, the optic nerves don't get good blood flow and so your visual perceptions of certain images and being able to distinguish certain patterns is compromised. One of the things that we use to monitor a patient's improvement is their VCS test. There are 37 symptoms that are associated with CIRS, if a patient has 8 or more symptoms that are on that list of 37 and their Visual Contrast Sensitivity test is positive for Biotoxins, there's a 98% chance that that person does have CIRS. It gives us more information. It's just a multisystem, multi-symptom disease, and we have to use multiple methods in order to diagnose it. VCS testing is one that we definitely use. We can go to the next slide.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: This is such a new field, at least for me.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right. Let's summarize on the topic of diagnosing and treating CIRS. I talked about ERMI testing. I talked about genomics. I talked about the MRI with NeuroQuant. I didn't specifically talked about each lab. There are a lot of steps. It's a 12-step program to treating a patient who does have CIRS. We won't go into all of that but one of the key things we want to do is if the CIRS is really due to being exposed to a water-damaged building, you have to remove the patient from exposure. Then we do use binders such as Welchol and cholestyramine to help bind those toxins and get them out of the body through the GI tract. It's a big process to treating these patients but the outcomes are just so wonderful when the patients get better. Their MRIs, their brain actually improves, so that's really exciting as well.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Wow.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: All right. I think I've already said all of that. The bottom line, Nelson, is each of us is genetically unique and different. We can't treat patients in a cookie-cutter fashion. We have to look at each person and provide the best personalized approach for that particular patient because all of us are different.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: I really have to thank you because I do a few of these lectures online with different doctors and today you have brought a very different view of other factors that could be impacting a lot of my audience that they have no awareness of. I'm one of them. This CIRS topic, completely new to me.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right. I'm happy to share what I know. I've learned a lot about it and I'm happy to share it with you and anybody who's willing to listen.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Yeah. I really want to thank you. I can tell this is going to be the first of several lectures with you because I'm sure you can talk for hours about different topics.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Yeah.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: I definitely wanted to do one specifically focusing on women. Although my site is called ExcelMale.com, we have a folder forum section that is called Excel Female, it's for women, because every man has a woman that they care for either a spouse or their mother.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Right. Exactly.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: When they come in to my site, they end up asking questions about how ... Our guys are actually starting testosterone. They feel better and it makes a huge difference. They're feeling better and their wives or their girlfriends are still not feeling as good as they are, so I'd bring them up to that level. I'm seeing more and more interest even to educate men about women's health for that purpose. I'm definitely going to be bothering you again for another one of these.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: It's not a bother at all. I love to do it. I'm happy that you invited me to do this. It's been a lot of fun. We'll be talking.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Yeah. One more thing. How do people get a hold of your clinic, website, phone number?</p><p></p><p>Lynese: My website is ProactiveWellness.com. Our phone number is 703-822-5003. You can even email at <a href="mailto:info@proactivewellness.com">info@proactivewellness.com</a> and someone will respond to you if you have any questions.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: Thank you so much once again and we're looking forward to the next one.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: Thanks Nelson. Take are.</p><p></p><p>Nelson: You have a nice weekend. You take care. Bye.</p><p></p><p>Lynese: You, too. Bye.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nelson Vergel, post: 51448, member: 3"] PART 2 Lynese: Next, let's talk about how we treat cardiovascular disease. Statin drugs are the first line of treatment for elevated lipid panels, but again, if a person has a high cholesterol level and they have zero plaque in their arteries, and we look at other inflammatory markers such as a cardio CRP and they have very little inflammation, then it shouldn't be just a knee-jerk reaction to just prescribe a statin. Now, there are so many people who are totally anti-statin and I'm not anti-statin at all but I think that statins should be prescribed for people who really need them. Some people do need them. For example, if you have a lot of plaque in your artery, you have a lot of inflammation. For example, the cardio CRP level should be less than 1. If it's between 1 and 3, that puts you at an average cardiovascular risk. If the cardio CRP is greater than 3, it puts you at a high cardiovascular risk. You want a statin for its anti-inflammatory benefits and it helps to stabilize and calcify plaque, but if a person does need a statin, then they really do need to take a high dose of CoQ10, Coenzyme Q10. It's an enzyme that we make in our bodies but statins deplete the production of CoQ10. When you have low CoQ10 levels, that predisposes one to heart failure. It has been said that heart failure is primarily due to a CoQ10 deficiency and so many people are on statins who don't need to be on them and there are people that do need to be on them but they're not taking any CoQ10. If you're going to give the drug, you need to make sure that you're not going to get the side effects of what that drug can do by decreasing the CoQ10 levels in production. Nelson: Yeah. Low levels of CoQ10 can also affect muscle regeneration and there's a lot more myopathy and muscle-related issues with people taking statins. They will complain of pains and aches. Lynese: Absolutely. Yes. There are even some genetic test that can help determine risk and treatment. Specifically, some of the advanced cardiovascular labs do a genetic test to predict whether a person will have a statin myopathy or not. If a person needed a statin and we knew they were at risk for the myalgias that go along with it, a lot of times they need to be given CoQ10 even prior to starting a statin and also magnesium as well. That is a good point that you made earlier about the myopathy. You do have to be real careful about the muscle pain that can occur with it and it does happen. Nelson: Good point. Before we go on, I know the statin industry, the pharmaceutical industry has been pushing for the use of statins even for people with lower LDL levels, why are so many doctors prescribing them instead of looking at other ways to address the problem or even the diagnostics of it? What do you think they're such a barrier? Is that only pharmaceutical lobbying or the education lectures and CME programs that doctors take? Why is the cardiology world not embracing issues around looking into other factors before statin therapy, before they actually jump into that treatment? Lynese: Right. There's a lot of money that is involved in the prescribing of statins. It's a 40 billion dollar industry. The other thing is that I think a lot of doctors, they don't know and they don't know that they don't know, and that's just what they've been taught. The other thing is that they don't realize that 60% of people who have a first time heart attack have [U]normal cholesterol levels[/U]. They've just been trying to think that the cholesterol is the enemy and we know that is not the case because we even need cholesterol to make our hormones. We need it to make our testosterone, our estradiol, all of our reproductive hormones.. They don't have time oftentimes to really look at other risk factors. They have 6 to 8 minutes. I think there are multiple reasons why they continue to prescribe statins in spite of the lack of supporting evidence but I think it's just because that's what they've always done. The pharmaceutical reps come in. They tell them about a new statin and that's just the only tool in their toolbox. Nelson: Yeah. Anyway you see also they're barriers to getting the insurance companies to pay for some of the diagnostic test that go beyond just a lipid panel . Lynese: That is true. Nelson: That really gets in the way of for even doctors to ... They're working within the insurance reimbursement system to even trying to use this diagnostic test. Also they'll get validated eventually but yes, we already know the insurance situation in this country. Even though we're having more access, there are more limitations on what they pay for. Lynese: Exactly. Yeah. One thing I want to point out, and this is when I learned about the thyroid and the cholesterol link. I had a lady a few years ago and she ran up the stairs to my office and she worked out every day and she played tennis every day and she was really healthy. She wasn't overweight. She didn't have any signs of hypothyroidism at all, but her cholesterol was 385, but her Free T3 was 1.9. I really like to see it in the high 3s, low 4s. I said, "You know, there must be some connection between low thyroid function and cholesterol." I validated the test result since labs do make errors, so if a lab test doesn't make sense, you do have to repeat it sometimes. Then, I treated her with the equivalent of 1 grain which is 60 milligrams of Armour Thyroid and her cholesterol came down 200 points. It came down from 385 to 185 in 6 weeks, and that was just giving thyroid medications. You have to have a broad understanding of what could be going on with the patient, why do they have elevated cholesterol levels. I see people who have low testosterone levels who have elevated cholesterol levels. You've really got to look at in a lot of different areas. Nelson: That's a very good point, very good point. Anything else you want to expand on this slide? Lynese: Not really. I will say one thing. I see men who come to me that have Low Testosterone. They're on a statin, they have a cholesterol level of 119 and they're fatigued and their testosterone levels are low. I tell them, "You can't even make testosterone if your cholesterol levels are that low." We could go on about this for hours but just know that there are other reasons for cholesterol levels being high other than your body is just taking too much of it and you need to lower it with statin. Nelson: Good. Good point. Lynese: I think we mainly covered most of what's here but I will say that a lot of people come to me who have high blood pressure and they are on 2 or 3 different blood pressure medications. I learned this from Dr. Stephen Sinatra. He's an integrative cardiologist. He has a book entitled Reverse Heart Disease Now. He uses hawthorn, magnesium, D-Ribose, and CoQ10 to lower blood pressure. Those are 4 different supplements that one has to use in order to bring the blood pressure down but I've seen it work beautifully. I would rather get to the root of why my blood pressure is high than to just give a blood pressure medication. It was kind of funny, I had a lady call me the other day. We optimized her hormones and she had been on 3 different blood pressure medications. She called me and she said, "Do these hormones lower my blood pressure?" She said, "My blood pressure, it's really low now." I said, "Well, we can probably start to wane you off of some of these blood pressure medications that you're on. She's off all 3 blood pressure medications and as again, I said, she was on 3 of them. Even just balancing hormones can make such a huge difference in our overall health, blood pressure included. Nelson: Weight loss which also when you get your hormones balanced, you also tend to have some weight loss too and that controls blood pressure too. Blood pressure medications affect sexual function in men. Lynese: Absolutely. Nelson: A lot of guys, we have over 14,000 guys on Excel Male, they're terrified of blood pressure medications and looking for other natural ways to decrease blood pressure. Some of them do have issues with increased blood pressure with taking higher doses of testosterone and other things too. It is a big, big topic in my world. Lynese: Right. I know. Offline, we can talk about some of the things I've done to improve blood pressure. We can talk about that but there definitely are options beyond just taking a blood pressure medication. Nelson: Thank you. Lynese: We're on a home stretch now. CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. I'm really very excited about this. It's also called the Biotoxin illness. I learned about this about 18 months ago. I had a guy that came into my office and he had a left-sided tremor. He had a tremor in his left hand and his left leg. He had been treated for Parkinson's disease, but his wife said, "He's not getting any better with the medication. I think that it's something else." She actually said, "You know, I've been reading about mold toxicity." I didn't really know that much about it at that time but again, I'm always interested to learn something new. Chronic inflammatory response syndrome is a response that people have. It's inflammation that's due to being exposed to inflammagens, molds, toxins that are in a water-damaged building. Not only just water-damaged buildings but even certain fish like red snapper, grouper, amberjack, eel. They can contain a toxin called ciguatera. Some of us genetically are just unable to clear our bodies of those toxins so the toxins begin to continue to circulate throughout the systemic circulation and can cause a lot of different issues and health concerns. Some of the concerns mimic what's going on with low testosterone levels. We can look at the Biotoxin pathway, that's the next slide. Nelson: Interesting topic that nobody talks about. Lynese: Obviously, we're not going to go through every single step of this Biotoxin pathway but over on the left-hand side, it says the body acquires the Biotoxin or toxin-producing organism from food, water, air, or bug bites. We test for HLA genetic susceptibility. That's the human leukocyte antigen that's on chromosome 6. On the left-hand side, we have a desired outcome and a healthy patient. If the patient is not HLA susceptible to not being able to clear toxins, what will happen is the adaptive immune response will respond. Understand that we have 2 types of immune response. There's adaptive immune response. The adaptive immune response sees the foreign invader, sees this toxin, develops an antibody, and gets rid of it. It specifically targets that toxin and eliminates that antigen or that foreign agent that has entered the body. That's what you want to happen. Adaptive immune response is like a trained sniper. It's very targeted. It picks off that particular toxin and gets rid of it. Next let's look at what happens at that point if a person is HLA susceptible meaning that 25% of people, believe it or not, are genetically not able to clear these particular Biotoxins. What will happen is that their adaptive immune system is not able to remove the toxin then their innate immune system takes over. The innate immune system, I liken that onto someone in a room that's blindfolded with a gun or a rifle or a machine gun and he's just shooting at everything, just trying to take out everything. This is when people start to develop autoimmunity and there are tests that we do that I had never heard of other than when I started to study this over the last 18 months but there's TGF-β1. There's C3a, C4a. It's a complement system. The one that is most important down in the middle with those orange arrows going off from it, it says reduced MSH, that's melanocyte stimulating hormone. When a susceptible person is exposed to toxins that they cannot rid their bodies off, they will develop low melanocyte stimulating hormone levels that can cause all sorts of issues in a patient. It can cause sleep disturbances, chronic pain, gastrointestinal issues, and prolonged illness. Believe it or not, it can also even cause low testosterone levels, low hormone levels in people. It can also cause people to become leptin resistant. I've had patients who are weight loss resistant and they'll me, "I've gained 30 pounds over the last year. I've not eaten anything any differently. I exercise all the time." They might not have a lot of the symptoms that most people have who have chronic inflammatory response syndrome but I have looked for Biotoxin exposure in these patients and a lot of these patients who have weight loss resistance actually have CIRS. It's really an interesting field. I've had patients with fybromyalgia and fatigue and they really had CIRS. I've had patients with migraine headaches, because what will happen is this inflammatory response will cause certain parts of our brain to develop edema and so you can see certain fingerprints when you look at an MRI. There's an add-on to an MRI called a NeuroQuant. With this test we can see changes in the brain. We can see changes in the blood work. There's a new cutting-edge genomic testing that will be available, well, it's actually available now. It's very expensive but we can see exactly how to treat a patient and it's the best that we have in offering personalized medicine. When you think about 25% of people being susceptible to developing this type of inflammatory response, I'm just seeing so many people who are being treated based upon their symptoms but were not getting to the root of the issue. Nelson: I'm really looking forward to getting this test done myself. I'm telling you. Obviously, I have an immune deficiency myself and I do have inflammatory issues. [inaudible 00:43:40] carrier. I'll be writing something about my experiences. I'm going to be using your services for this for sure. Lynese: I'll definitely tell you all of the test that you need. It can be a scary thing for people. My mother, and I'll close it with this, but I knew about CIRS and probably it was meant for me to know so that I could really help to save my mom's life. Nelson: Really? Lynese: She lived in Michigan. I knew her basement was moist. I know she used dehumidifiers but she told me one day, "You know, I've been really emptying these dehumidifiers every day, all 3 of them. One of them had some black sediment in it." I thought, "That sounds like mold." Although not all molds are black. Stachybotrys is black, but there are other molds that have no color at all. Then you can have patients or people who can live in a home with black mold growing all up the wall and they don't get sick, but then there are others that will. Anyway, I did her lab test and I found out they were worst than anybody's test that I had ever seen before. Next we tested the home. That's another long story and I don't want to keep people online too much longer, but we actually tested her home looking at a test that looked at the DNA of the molds that were in her home. For example, it's called an ERMI test, Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. The scale goes from -10 to 20. You really want to see that ERMI score below 2. My mother's was 19.3 so I knew there was a really bad problem. I had somebody go out and inspect her house who was really qualified person to look for areas for water intrusion and breaches in the building envelope and what not. The woman told me, she said, "You mom's house is beautiful. It doesn't look like there's an issue, but it's like a super model with bone cancer. Because her house was so bad and her labs were so compromised by this immune response that she was experiencing, she had to get rid of everything porous, furniture, mattresses, you can wash your clothing. It's really an interesting field. The sicker the patient is, the more aggressive you need to be with the remediation and some people have to move out of their home, but it's really a fascinating field. Nelson: Your mom feeling better? Lynese: You know, believe it or not, my mom really didn't feel bad. She had a little bit of a sore throat, and I really think it's because she was in really good overall health... You can have, let's go over the symptoms actually, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, depression. These are diseases that CIRS is easily confused with. In the case of my mother, I really believed and I can't validate it or verify it, but I really think it's because her hormones have always been balanced. We have her blood sugars under control. She's on Metformin. She takes fish oil. She does all of the things that we do in a integrative practice and so I really think that kept her from really being ill. Nelson: Good. Some doctors actually even minimize the existence of these issues. Obviously we're talking about education again. Lynese: Right. Actually Lyme is a Biotoxin. The borrelia causes the toxin to be maintained in the body and the immune response reacts to that toxin, but believe it or not, a lot of people that I've seen with Lyme disease actually have CIRS. Get this, there's a girl who's 15. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She came to me for IV vitamin treatments. Her doctor had sent her to me for that and so we did that. She felt a little bit better but she really wasn't getting as healthy as her mother wanted her to be. The mother came to me and said, "You've got to look further. Something else is going on." We did the blood test to look for CIRS but we did an MRI of her brain and looked at the NeuroQuant that I mentioned before. There are certain fingerprints on a NeuroQuant that are indicative of mold toxicity and there are certain fingerprints that are indicative of Lyme disease. I'm not saying she never had Lyme, but Lyme wasn't what was impacting her health at that point. We discontinued her antibiotics. We treated her for her mold toxicity, and there are a lot of steps to doing that, but she had been home schooled because she wasn't able to really ... She didn't have the stamina and energy to be in school full time but I just found out that she has gone back to school now. She went back this fall. It really made a difference in her overall health. Nelson: Wow. Great success story. Lynese: Right. Nelson: Go to the next slide? Lynese: Yes, I will just say a little more about diagnosing CIRS. I think I'm just going to say this briefly because I could go on and on, but there's a visual test that you do. There is a website called VCS Test, Visual Contrast Sensitivity testing, so VCSTest.com. It tests what is going in with the optic nerve because when you have CIRS or chronic inflammatory response syndrome, the optic nerves don't get good blood flow and so your visual perceptions of certain images and being able to distinguish certain patterns is compromised. One of the things that we use to monitor a patient's improvement is their VCS test. There are 37 symptoms that are associated with CIRS, if a patient has 8 or more symptoms that are on that list of 37 and their Visual Contrast Sensitivity test is positive for Biotoxins, there's a 98% chance that that person does have CIRS. It gives us more information. It's just a multisystem, multi-symptom disease, and we have to use multiple methods in order to diagnose it. VCS testing is one that we definitely use. We can go to the next slide. Nelson: This is such a new field, at least for me. Lynese: Right. Let's summarize on the topic of diagnosing and treating CIRS. I talked about ERMI testing. I talked about genomics. I talked about the MRI with NeuroQuant. I didn't specifically talked about each lab. There are a lot of steps. It's a 12-step program to treating a patient who does have CIRS. We won't go into all of that but one of the key things we want to do is if the CIRS is really due to being exposed to a water-damaged building, you have to remove the patient from exposure. Then we do use binders such as Welchol and cholestyramine to help bind those toxins and get them out of the body through the GI tract. It's a big process to treating these patients but the outcomes are just so wonderful when the patients get better. Their MRIs, their brain actually improves, so that's really exciting as well. Nelson: Wow. Lynese: All right. I think I've already said all of that. The bottom line, Nelson, is each of us is genetically unique and different. We can't treat patients in a cookie-cutter fashion. We have to look at each person and provide the best personalized approach for that particular patient because all of us are different. Nelson: I really have to thank you because I do a few of these lectures online with different doctors and today you have brought a very different view of other factors that could be impacting a lot of my audience that they have no awareness of. I'm one of them. This CIRS topic, completely new to me. Lynese: Right. I'm happy to share what I know. I've learned a lot about it and I'm happy to share it with you and anybody who's willing to listen. Nelson: Yeah. I really want to thank you. I can tell this is going to be the first of several lectures with you because I'm sure you can talk for hours about different topics. Lynese: Yeah. Nelson: I definitely wanted to do one specifically focusing on women. Although my site is called ExcelMale.com, we have a folder forum section that is called Excel Female, it's for women, because every man has a woman that they care for either a spouse or their mother. Lynese: Right. Exactly. Nelson: When they come in to my site, they end up asking questions about how ... Our guys are actually starting testosterone. They feel better and it makes a huge difference. They're feeling better and their wives or their girlfriends are still not feeling as good as they are, so I'd bring them up to that level. I'm seeing more and more interest even to educate men about women's health for that purpose. I'm definitely going to be bothering you again for another one of these. Lynese: It's not a bother at all. I love to do it. I'm happy that you invited me to do this. It's been a lot of fun. We'll be talking. Nelson: Yeah. One more thing. How do people get a hold of your clinic, website, phone number? Lynese: My website is ProactiveWellness.com. Our phone number is 703-822-5003. You can even email at [email]info@proactivewellness.com[/email] and someone will respond to you if you have any questions. Nelson: Thank you so much once again and we're looking forward to the next one. Lynese: Thanks Nelson. Take are. Nelson: You have a nice weekend. You take care. Bye. Lynese: You, too. Bye. [/QUOTE]
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Expert Interviews
Dr Lynese Lawson: Beyond Testosterone Lecture
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