As the world continues to grapple with the aftermath of the Covid19 pandemic, LONG COVID has emerged as a significant health concern. Many individuals who have recovered from the initial infection are experiencing lingering symptoms, including fatigue and other debilitating issues. Dr. Bruce Patterson, a renowned expert in the field, will provide invaluable insights into the latest research surrounding LONG COVID. He will shed light on the underlying mechanisms of this condition, focusing on the role of macrophages and endothelial damage.
Key Points
- Key patterns in the immune system related to cytokine levels in diagnosis of long-COVID
- Updates in successful treatment options for those suffering from fatigue from various causes including long-COVD, Lyme disease and ME/CSF
- Why atypical macrophages and endothelial damage may be at the root of most chronic infections and fatigue, including long-COVID
Our Guest – Dr. Bruce Patterson, MD
Bruce Patterson, MD received his undergraduate training in molecular biology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He then received his MD at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine followed by a residency in pathology. During the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Patterson began investigating cellular reservoirs of HIV-1 using molecular and in situ cell based technology patented in his laboratory and used today around the world. Dr. Patterson determined that enough HIV virus was present in infected individuals to account for the massive destruction of the immune system. This paradigm altering work was published in Science in 1993 and featured in Scientific American, Rolling Stone, and on the Discovery Channel. Dr. Patterson has authored over 150 manuscripts and book chapters focusing on single cell biology and diagnostics. Dr. Patterson was formerly Associate Professor of Pathology and Infectious Diseases and Director of Virology at Stanford University. He currently serves as CEO and founder of IncellDx Inc., a growth-stage company that has translated his research discoveries into state-of-the-art single cell diagnostics in Cancer, Immuno-Oncology, and Infectious Diseases especially COVID.
https://www.covidlonghaulers.com/
https://theradiancediagnostics.com/
Dr. Jill Carnahan, MD
Dr. Jill Carnahan is Your Functional Medicine Expert® dually board certified in Family Medicine for ten years and in Integrative Holistic Medicine since 2015. She is the Medical Director of Flatiron Functional Medicine, a widely sought-after practice with a broad range of clinical services including functional medical protocols, nutritional consultations, chiropractic therapy, naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, and massage therapy.
As a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and toxic mold illness she brings a unique perspective to treating patients in the midst of complex and chronic illness. Her clinic specializes in searching for the underlying triggers that contribute to illness through cutting-edge lab testing and tailoring the intervention to specific needs.
A popular inspirational speaker and prolific writer, she shares her knowledge of hope, health, and healing live on stage and through newsletters, articles, books, and social media posts! People relate to Dr. Jill’s science-backed opinions delivered with authenticity, love and humor. She is known for inspiring her audience to thrive even in the midst of difficulties.
Featured in Shape Magazine, Parade, Forbes, MindBodyGreen, First for Women, Townsend Newsletter, and The Huffington Post as well as seen on NBC News and Health segments with Joan Lunden, Dr. Jill is a media must-have. Her YouTube channel and podcast features live interviews with the healthcare world’s most respected names.
The Podcast
The Video
The Transcript
180: Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill: Key Updates in LONG COVID with Dr. Bruce Patterson, MD
Dr. Jill 00:12
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill! Today, you're in for a real treat for multiple reasons. In this post-pandemic era, we have more complex chronic illnesses than ever before and more sequelae of this virus called COVID, and today we're going to dive deep with one of the world's leading experts. If you listen to us on iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube, please stop and leave a review. There are many more episodes that you can find there.
Dr. Jill 00:42
Today, without further ado, I want to introduce my guest, Dr. Bruce Patterson. Dr. Bruce Patterson, a medical doctor, received his undergraduate degree and training in molecular biology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He then received his MD at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, followed by a residency in pathology. During the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Patterson began investigating cellular reservoirs of HIV using molecular and in situ cell-based technology patented in his laboratory and used today around the world. He determined that enough HIV virus was present in infected individuals to account for the massive destruction of the immune system. This paradigm-altering work was published in Science in 1993 and was featured in Scientific American, Rolling Stone, and on the Discovery Channel.
Dr. Jill 01:35
Dr. Patterson has authored over 150 manuscripts and book chapters focusing on single-cell biology and diagnostics. He was formerly Associate Professor of Pathology and Infectious Diseases and Director of Virology at Stanford University. He currently serves as CEO and founder of IncellDx, Inc., a growth-stage company that has translated his research discoveries into state-of-the-art single-cell diagnostics in cancer, immuno-oncology, infectious diseases, and especially in our topic of today, COVID. Welcome, Dr. Patterson. That is quite a history! I'm so glad to have you here today.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 02:11
Thank you, Dr. Jill. It's a pleasure to be here.
Dr. Jill 02:14
And I mentioned this before we got on: You have quite the journey. It's interesting because you were at Northwestern and I was at Loyola, so we were both in Chicago for some time during residency and training. But on this journey through all that you've been through, tell us first of all, how did you get into medicine? Then, what was your path to all the scientific discoveries that you made through the years with HIV?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 02:40
It's a family affair. My grandfather and my aunt are both PhD scientists. My aunt was a classical virologist from the '60s and '70s, back in the day, when we didn't have all this great molecular biology and you had to grow the viruses on chick embryos. That was her thing. I think I was about 17 or 18 and I went to her lab and she showed me an electron microscope with a magnified virus 100,000 times. I was sold. I was like, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
Dr. Bruce Patterson 03:22
What's interesting is that back then, they called it the Norwalk agent. It's the norovirus, which is a cruise ship virus that landed on a few cruise ships in port unexpectedly. That was the start of it. Then, of course, molecular biology was in its infancy. I had been riding that molecular wave as it infiltrated medicine all that time. The interesting thing is that the AIDS epidemic pushed the envelope on molecular medicine, molecular diagnostics, and those techniques—much like COVID, as we'll talk about. It has pushed the envelope on new-wave immunology techniques and discoveries.
Dr. Jill 04:13
I love that because it's been such a lifelong [journey]. And you can tell. I always say that curiosity is the mark of genius. But you clearly had that way back at 14 or the first time you looked at the microscope. Especially in a new era of medicine with these complex and crazy viruses like COVID, you have to be curious and think outside the box to get the answers that you've been coming up with. I read a little bit in your bio about your work. You made some massive discoveries with HIV. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?—because I think it's fascinating.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 04:47
When I first started in HIV [research], there were two different things: Patients were dying of these horrible immune deficiency syndromes [such as] Kaposi sarcoma, lymphomas, etc; then, of course, there was this virus. But putting it together: Is the virus causing AIDS? That was the big question when I first started. There were even very prominent scientists saying that the HIV virus doesn't cause AIDS. My training in molecular biology and pathology was instrumental in saying: “Maybe we're just not finding it. Maybe we're missing it.”
Dr. Bruce Patterson 05:39
I think that was the big thing that I was working on at the time: “Maybe we can't find it. I'm going to try and do molecular biology in these single cells of the body instead of fluids, etc., and try to find where the virus is hiding.” We were able to do that and quantify that, which allowed a lot of early work in antiretrovirals. I was just talking the other day about my involvement when they were developing the protease inhibitors and figuring out that it took people that had CD4 counts of single digits—7 or [even] 10—a few months of therapy and they were back up in the hundreds. It's one of those moments that you never forget. You look back and say: “Wow, that changed the course of everything, as HIV-infected individuals are living healthy, long lives now.” They still have it, but we've been effective at treating it with drug therapy.”
Dr. Jill 06:54
It is amazing that you have that background. Again, now we're in this new era where we need to think outside the box. What's the big overview? COVID is such a different thing than we've encountered before. Do you want to frame it? I told you before that we have a lot of physicians and people interested—patients and clients. Give us a framework for this virus. Why is it so different from things that we've experienced in the past?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 07:18
It's different but it's not in some ways. I was in China in January of 2020. We developed a new immune profiling test with over 150 different biomarkers, both cell-based and plasma-based for looking at CAR T therapy in cancer. We were in China talking to a company over there in Shanghai. I was supposed to go to Wuhan the next day to visit another lab, another customer of IncellDx's. It was canceled because there was this virus and everyone was talking about it. I saw one of the really, really early papers on this virus and some of the lab results. The immune system was just on fire. As we later learned: The cytokine storm.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 08:27
In immunology, we have all these different arms of the immune system: The adaptive immune system, humoral cellular immunity, hypersensitivity, etc. But this was clearly an innate immune response, which is what our body has when it hasn't seen an infectious agent before. It was heavily macrophage-burdened, meaning macrophages were playing a very significant role. That was one of my major areas of research on HIV. You had this massive immune activation of macrophages and the production of interleukin 6 and TNF-α, which were part of the initial pathogenesis in acute COVID. And elements of that still exist in long COVID as well and are part of what we target with some of our diagnostics as well as some of our therapeutics.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 09:32
In our first study of acute COVID, we found that the CD8 T cells were just as low as the CD4 T cells were in HIV. Acute COVID patients with the alpha variant were supremely immunosuppressed. That is the nugget that people aren't considering as we're dealing with the post-acute sequelae of COVID—people are immunosuppressed to varying degrees with acute COVID. What does that do? It reactivates chronic herpes family viruses: EBV, CMV, HHV-6, herpes simplex, etc. Also, in patients who have either undiagnosed or poorly treated Lyme, the bugs start to replicate again. What happens is that all this is going on and all of a sudden we find that there's this post-infectious syndrome that has fatigue, brain fog, post-exertional malaise, joint muscle pain, headaches, etc.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 10:47
That's all well and good. We first described it in long COVID. But the fact of the matter is that all of those chronic inflammatory diseases have the same primary symptoms. Symptom-based diagnosis of long COVID is highly, highly nonspecific. It could be long COVID. It could be long Lyme, as we call it. It could be ME/CFS. It could be fibromyalgia. It could be long vax. All of those have the same primary symptoms. The necessity for a diagnostic was critical. The fact is, we have it and nobody is saying, “We have a diagnostic for long COVID.” It's absolutely absurd. We published it two and a half years ago, this signature for long COVID.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 11:39
We developed the Long Hauler Index, and it's still highly sensitive and highly specific for long COVID. Now, in our latest paper, we can differentiate long COVID from Lyme, ME/CFS, long vax, and fibromyalgia. And you know what? It is the most critical tool that we have. I hate to be long-winded, but—
Dr. Jill 12:02
No, this is so relevant. I get excited because you're right. I deal with this complex, chronic disease—ME/CFS, long Lyme, long COVID. I heard you speak in depth about the cytokine patterns, which we'll talk about, and your lab tests and how to differentiate. I've been using your lab tests for a while, but the more data that you guys bring out and the more patterns that you're showing us, [the more] it is a game changer for those of us dealing in this chronic world. Because [of them] we can say, “This is much more likely to be your Lyme or Borrelia reactivated,” or “It's more likely to be a true long COVID panel.” And it's treated differently.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 12:37
Absolutely. Another important aspect is the negative predictive value. As physicians and scientists, everyone loves to talk about sensitivity and specificity. As I used to teach residents both at Northwestern and Stanford, I always said that sensitivity and specificity work after-the-fact statistics. You do a study and you look back and say, “What was the sensitivity and specificity?” But as a physician, you get a lab report; you're looking at a number and a test result. What is going through your mind and what you're saying is, “What are the chances of that being positive?” Or, “What are the chances of that being negative?” What your mind is doing is [considering] positive predictive value and negative predictive value.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 13:26
Having a negative predictive value for long COVID of 98%, we can say, “Who doesn't have long COVID?” And you know what? In the days of all this inflammation and the major symptom being fatigue, it's almost as important to say, “Who doesn't have long COVID?” as it is to say, “Who does have long COVID?”—because as you say, the treatment is subtly different. We had this other discovery, which showed that all four of those chronic inflammatory conditions have vascular inflammation at their heart. But there are also subtle differences and subtle changes in this drug combination that we just submitted to the FDA for our clinical trial.
Dr. Jill 14:18
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Dr. Jill 15:17
Gosh, there's so much I want to cover here. First of all, just for those listening, what you're talking about is the innate immune system, which I've been dealing with for decades with mold and Lyme and complex chronic illness. Most of our patients have had some things like that or know someone who has. Many of our physicians who listen treat these conditions, so a lot of our listeners are going to be aware of that. But just to frame it, this is this arm of the immune system, like you said, that's the first activator or first responder that maybe doesn't have antibodies already made or those kinds of things. It's typically cytokine-driven. It's like the activation of our own systems and cytokines are killing us because they're in this cycle of activation.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 16:01
Right. It's an imperfect system and it's just trying to do something. My colleague, Joe [inaudible], always talks about damaging immunity. The reality is, yes, some of these inflammatory products that are indeed trying to help clear up a virus, clear up a bacterium, or otherwise are tissue damaging. IL-6 and TNF-α are two great examples. Our February paper showed that TNF-α is the major driver of fatigue. If anyone remembers, with acute COVID, fatigue and respiratory symptoms were the major findings. But when you looked at the pathology more closely, it was blood vessel inflammation. What was happening was that these activated non-classical monocytes and macrophages, where we later found the S1 protein months after infection, bind to blood vessels through the fractalkine/fractalkine receptor.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 17:16
One of the reasons we use statins is because they decrease fractalkine so they don't bind the pro-inflammatory white blood cells to your blood vessels and cause endotheliitis. The other thing is that maraviroc, the CCR5 antagonist, is elegant in the immune system because it does two things: It restricts the migration of inflammatory cells all over your body, including through your blood-brain barrier; it also repolarizes monocytes and macrophages away from that pro-inflammatory phenotype, where it's making interleukin 6 and TNF-α. This drug combination we use is exquisite in terms of targeting the pathways that are underlying the symptoms in long COVID, long Lyme, ME/CFS. That's driven by the fact that the blood vessels are inflamed and dilated. What do dilated blood vessels do? [They cause] headaches, migraines, brain fog, and tinnitus.
Dr. Jill 18:19
Post-exertional fatigue.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 18:24
Hot and cold sensitivity. I can't tell you how many times on telemedicine I've seen a patient come on with a blanket over their shoulders because they're so cold. Temperature regulation is just completely thrown off. And that's my window into their blood vessels before I even look at their lab report.
Dr. Jill 18:46
That makes so much sense. Because of your research, I've been talking to patients, [mentioning] that COVID is like a disease of the endothelium, which is what you're saying. At the core, there's macrophage activation. Let's talk just briefly because one of the things you're testing in your panels as well is the retention of the spike protein in these atypical macrophages. Part of the problem is that they become activated, and then they go. Do you want to talk just a little bit about what happens in the macrophages with that spike protein?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 19:16
Flashback to 2020. [inaudible] 158-file marker panel. We used it on acute COVID, and we followed these patients: 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. In 90 days, a lot of them got better. They were home. But by no stretch of the imagination was their immune system the same. It was abnormal, but it was abnormal in a very different way than in acute COVID. That's where we used machine learning and AI to say, “How is it different? Why is it different?” That's where we found this signature for the long COVID. The Long Hauler Index is interleukin 2 plus interferon-gamma divided by CCl4.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 20:07
If you look at literature from the early 2000s [on] atherosclerosis, when non-classical monocytes bind to blood vessels and migrate into the blood vessels, what's liberated are type 1 cytokines, interleukin 2, and interferon-gamma. It happens to be the numerator of our Long Hauler Index, which was found by machine-learning in AI 20-something years later.
Dr. Jill 20:36
Wow! Unbelievable. Also, I've heard you speak multiple times about this triad of vascular inflammation with the sCD40L, the CCL5/RANTES, and then the VEGF. Are those the three? Can you tell me about those and what pattern you've seen with that triad?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 20:54
That was very helpful because the first protein of the thrombotic pathway and blood vessels is sCD40L. CCL5 and VEGF—
Dr. Jill 21:02
That's like the instigator. You know the macrophages have activated the endothelium if that is elevated. Do you see the timeline as well? Do you see that up first and then the rest of them follow over time?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 21:14
Usually, by the time the patients come to us, they've had long COVID for three months or 18 months. I just had a patient; she had it for three years. It was an unbelievable telemedicine session a couple of days ago that, after eight weeks of therapy, she was 95% back to normal after having suffered for three years. These stories are almost daily during our telemedicine of patients getting better. The reason is that we're treating the underlying cause and we're not treating [inaudible]. Anyway, these macrophages bind to the blood vessels.
Dr. Jill 22:02
Let me just be clear for those listening—because a lot of people think the virus is still around—the virus is long gone, correct? This is not about the virus retaining its fragments and then activating the immune system. Is that right?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 22:12
That's been debated [inaudible]. It's an RNA virus. You don't expect it to be around for a long time. It doesn't have the latency machinery that the chronic herpes family viruses have. We were the only ones who'd done whole-genome sequencing of the entire SARS-CoV-2 genome. We did that in the non-classical monocytes when we published that two years ago. Then we looked into the tissues of long COVID patients before all these reinfections were going on. We found fragments just like we found in monocytes and macrophages. Those fragments represented less than 5% of the genome.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 23:04
My point is that you can't build a building with 5% of the bricks. And all the techniques that they're using to say, “There's viral persistence in tissue,” which I believe… We published it. There's the persistence of fragments of RNA and the persistence of protein S1 in the non-classical monocytes. But at the end of the day, they're all using techniques like droplet digital PCR, very short fragments, or in situ hybridization, [which are] short fragments. They're not doing whole-genome sequencing. And it's a big stretch. I keep saying this over and over again: We can talk about persistence; I love talking about persistence. But it's the persistence of fragments or, as [inaudible] said, “viral debris.” I love that. But the fact is, there's a huge difference between persistence and replication competence.
Dr. Jill 24:04
Yes. It makes sense to me. Even on a microbiome level, we know fragments like LPS cause a massive immune response. We can have fragments of viral particles that cause an immune response, which is very different from the virus continuing to replicate.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 24:20
And the Paxlovid trial failed at several universities for long COVID. The reason is that there isn't any viral replication, except for the caveat. We published this in 2021: We found viral replication out to 87 days in one long COVID patient who had very low CD8 counts—at three months, which is the cutoff for long COVID. I'll always admit that if you're at three months or four months of long COVID, yes, there could be viral replication. But when you're talking [about] 6, 12, 18 months, or three years, you're not going to see it. I'm still waiting for that paper that says, “Whole-genome sequencing reveals alpha variant RNA in long COVID patient three years after infection.” I haven't seen it and it's not coming.
Dr. Jill 25:20
That makes sense. I've been doing 20 years of chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, long Lyme, and all those things before COVID and we've been seeing these immune dysfunction activations. And the same question has been [raised] in the Lyme community. Yes, we know these spirochetes persist, but is it truly that infection, or is it the immune response that's creating inflammation? I agree. I think more and more we're determining it's this long immune response and a dysfunctional and weakened immune system that's more likely to be part of the culprit than just purely the infection.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 25:52
Absolutely. I brought that question to the Lyme community. Articles show the cell wall peptidoglycan in the arthritic joints of patients with Lyme [disease] or arthritis. I'm like, “Those are just setups for phagocytosis by monocyte-macrophage lineage cells and persistent presentation to the immune system.” That would be another mechanism for post-treatment Lyme disease, chronic Lyme disease, whatever you want to call it, where your refractory antibiotics… That's where we come into play because we found the blood vessel inflammation in chronic Lyme.
Dr. Jill 26:35
Yes. And you kind of alluded to it, but I want to be clear for those listening. First of all, you can determine, through the Long Hauler Index, the likelihood. And what are the percentages of sensitivity and specificity of how accurate that test is? This is the Long Hauler panel, the Cytokine 14 panel, through your lab. Tell us a little bit about that and the specific cytokines and patterns.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 27:02
Like I said, machine learning in AI brought our 158 panel down to 14. We're now using that in all of our machine learning for different immune conditions. Now we're getting a little bit into some of the autoimmune diseases, like Sjogren's and others. When I look at a panel, I look at several things. Number one, I look for the sCD40L, CCL5, and VEGF pattern of vascular inflammation. Undoubtedly, I'm going to find it. There are different [levels of] severity. Maybe they just have sCD40L, like you said, at the beginning or maybe there's a little bit of lingering VEGF. That's the first thing I look for. The second thing I look for is the Long Hauler Index. Is it in the normal range or is it elevated?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 27:53
How elevated is important based on our new algorithms. When I start searching for Lyme patterns, my three bullet points are elevated interleukin 8 plus elevated interferon-gamma, elevated interleukin 13 plus elevated interferon-gamma, or a Long Hauler Index greater than 6.
Dr. Jill 28:16
Okay, that makes sense.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 28:17
If it's [inaudible], it's probably long COVID. If it's really high, I'm sending it off for Lyme testing.
Dr. Jill 28:27
I'm having this aha [moment] listening to you because I've been treating Bartonella, Babesia, and Borrelia forever. What I know about Bartonella in particular is that I'll use VEGF as a marker of activity. And I haven't because I haven't had access to your panel for that long. I've been regularly using the other vascular markers and some of the new stuff you just mentioned. But it makes sense because Bartonella in particular causes more vasculitis than any others. Again, I only knew about the VEGF, but this is making so much sense because what I was starting to see was my own little, tiny one-marker indicator of vasculitis, which is what you're seeing in different ways with COVID. We have the symptoms' buckets. It's the same for Lyme, long COVID, and chronic fatigue. And you're basically saying that now we can look at cytokine patterns and say which is which.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 29:21
Exactly. The latest in this is coming out in a new paper, which I should be sending off to a preprint server after the holidays. But we have a new Lyme index, much like the Long Hauler Index. The Lyme index, interestingly, in the numerator is TNF-α and interleukin [inaudible]. TNF-α, we published in February in our outcome study with treating long COVID patients. TNF-α and interleukin 2 are the major drivers of fatigue.
Dr. Jill 30:01
Now you can start to correlate which cytokines are a representation of those symptom clusters, like migraines versus fatigue versus brain fog. It's fascinating. [inaudible] for a second, but did you say IL-2 and TNF-α are the two that are the most correlated with fatigue?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 30:18
Yes, it's in our February paper in Frontiers in Medicine. That was a 20-patient study: Maraviroc, statins, and long COVID. We did five different symptom scores: Fatigue, dysautonomia, neuro, cardiac, and shortness of breath, or dyspnea. Then we looked at our entire panel and looked at those biomarkers and how they would respond to 6 to 12 weeks of maraviroc and statins. We expected the fatigue score to go down and maybe even dysautonomia, because we've seen a correction of those symptoms. All five symptom scores went down with statistical significance. But most importantly, we didn't stop there; we told our biostatisticians to then correlate what symptoms correlated with reductions in what biomarkers. We closed that loop of infection-inflammation-symptoms-treatment, infection-inflammation-symptoms-treatment.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 31:28
I have not seen that circle closed for any other marker in any of these chronic diseases. Especially early on in long COVID, “Oh, there's this autoantibody and that autoantibody.” My first question was, “Okay, what symptoms does it cause?” If you bring that autoantibody down with IVIg, for instance, do the symptoms get better? No one closed that circle. It was important for us to close that circle between biomarker, symptom, and treatment with a very targeted approach, with our two drugs at the actual proteins that are causing the symptoms—not the symptoms. For instance, here's a great example. This new paper comes out [on] serotonin. “We did this clinical study”: “Long COVID patients are responding to Prozac because it elevates serotonin.” Do you know what the most important thing is that lowers serotonin levels? Chronic inflammation. Cytokines lower serotonin levels, interleukin-1 beta, and TNF-α.
Dr. Jill 32:51
Yes. IL-6 too. All the studies on depression and IL-6, right? I don't know that that correlates with serotonin, but depression absolutely correlates in the studies with IL-6.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 33:01
I'm glad you mentioned them because, from a mental health aspect, among our 40,000+ patients, the amount of anxiety and depression is incredible. Their physician wants to throw them on this and that—this drug, that drug. But at the end of the day, when you resolve the inflammation, it goes away.
Dr. Jill 33:27
Yes, I've been known to say that I think that all depression and anxiety are organic in nature in the sense that there's some other cause for them. I shouldn't say all, because there are always exceptions—genetics and stuff. But I feel like more and more that toxic load, infectious burden, cytokines, and immune inflammation are at the root. I would say that with 80% of my clinical mood disorders and any sort of psychiatric diagnosis, frequently, if we get to that root cause, it's a game changer.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 33:54
It's amazing. I just read a paper the other day about dysautonomia and Lyme. All of a sudden, [with] long COVID, we opened this Pandora's box for these chronic inflammatory conditions. You know what? There were differences that allowed us to model that. But there are also a lot of similarities. You see anxiety and depression in chronic Lyme. All of this stuff is starting to come together under the rubric of an altered immune system and chronic inflammation.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 34:37
Here's another example: PANS/PANDAS. I probably have somewhere around 50 PANS/PANDAS patients. The classic was, “Let's immunosuppress them and then give them IVIg.” The problem is that it's post infectious and you don't know if the infection is cleared. They always say PANS/PANDAS is from strep and recurrent strep. Well, you know what? I have a handful of PANS/PANDAS patients who all have a chronic herpes family virus that, when it reactivates, ticks the symptoms and everything gets worse. When you suppress the chronic herpes family viruses, it gets better. But the other thing we found in PANS/PANDAS, and the reason why I think it was hit or miss for IVIg treatment, was that there's a chronic inflammatory component that nobody had ever identified before. So just taking away autoantibodies wasn't doing it. It wasn't doing it because there's also pretty significant chronic inflammation. But when you treat chronic inflammation, for instance, with maraviroc and statins, and then you do IVIg at the same time, these kids are responding.
Dr. Jill 35:56
I love that. When you talk about IVIg, I have a lot of patients that are on that and they do well. But here's the deal: We think it's just the immune system, but the truth is, it has a very potent anti-inflammatory mechanism as well. The same with the statin; it's kind of an equivalent. We're thinking about this cholesterol issue. That's really the side note. It's really this anti-inflammatory. Maybe you could talk briefly—because you alluded to this—about statins. Your mechanism of action is much more directed to the endothelium. What is it that blocks exactly? You mentioned it earlier with the statins.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 36:26
There is a protein called fractalkine. It's made by [inaudible] cells. Believe it or not, these pro-inflammatory non-classical monocytes have a fractalkine receptor. To keep them from binding to the blood vessels and causing inflammation, let's down-regulate fractalkine. Well, statins down-regulate fractalkine. We don't use cholesterol-lowering doses of statin.
Dr. Jill 36:59
Yes. You use quite low doses, right?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 37:01
[inaudible] I'm like, “No, we're not giving you massive doses of statins for the rest of your life.” It's 6–12 weeks with a quarter of the dose that you would give for cholesterol lowering. It's just an exquisite anti-vascular inflammation agent. It's a great combination. We're making it into a single pill. Maraviroc and like I said, our RCT will…
Dr. Jill 37:29
Which statin did you choose for the trials?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 37:32
We chose atorvastatin. The reason was that when I was treating kids with long COVID, they responded so well. I would say 6–12 weeks—people with more neurologic symptoms maybe even longer than 12 weeks. But [for] kids, some [with] as little as four weeks [of treatment], and they're better—they're completely better. Four to eight weeks is about the standard for kids, because they probably don't have a lot of other comorbidities. But I was using atorvastatin because there are studies published on the safety of atorvastatin in kids. They were getting better faster, so then I started to use atorvastatin for adults.
Dr. Jill 38:18
Would sCD40L be the main marker of that fractalkine inactivation or is there any correlation with one of your cytokines with knowing that the…
Dr. Bruce Patterson 38:31
I wish we had fractalkine [inaudible].
Dr. Jill 38:32
Right. That's what I'm wondering. How do we know for sure?—even though we can understand the mechanism and see that. Is it that triad that you mentioned before?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 38:38
That's right. Yes.
Dr. Jill 38:41
So the sCD40L, the VEGF, and the CCL5/RANTES.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 38:45
[inaudible]
Dr. Jill 38:48
Okay, got it. In that way, you know if someone has those high, it's very likely they have the fractalkine and the atypical macrophages. I suppose it could be another mechanism besides long COVID, but that mechanism is absolutely involved in most long COVID, right?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 39:04
Absolutely. It's also involved in chronic Lyme, ME/CFS, and maybe many others. We've had some significant success with Sjogren's syndrome.
Dr. Jill 39:20
Yes, I've been seeing that too. Let me take the jump here because I'm in this functional world and seeing the diagnoses. POTS dysautonomia is at an all-time high for all of these underlying reasons. Is that because of the vascular inflammation? Is that usually the link to POTS?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 39:37
Yes. When blood vessels are inflamed, they dilate. When they dilate, your blood pressure goes down. When your blood pressure goes down, your heart rate goes up. It's classic physiology. The other thing is that I've seen infiltrates of the inflammatory cells around the vagus nerve.
Dr. Jill 40:00
Yes. We're going after these vagal nerve stimulators, which is a nice idea, but I'm like, “That's not going to fix the root cause,” right?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 40:09
There's so much out there on what works, but most of them are very transient. [inaudible], vagus nerve stimulation. There's this microclot stuff for a while. I'm not a big supporter of that because the anticoagulants aren't working. We tried Plavix a year or two ago with all of our protocols, and it wasn't adding anything. Microclots are difficult to look at. I've seen pictures of microclots, and as a pathologist, I said that those look like epithelial-mesenchymal transition cells or EMTs.
Dr. Jill 40:58
You can hardly even tell under a microscope, huh?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 41:03
Yes, don't give me a microscope because [inaudible]. These EMTs are formed when there's tissue damage. Of course, if there's an acute COVID—
Dr. Jill 41:16
That makes so much sense, because at the core, our immune systems are damaging the endothelium, and that's this whole cascade. The only reason the clots happen is because it's our repair mechanism trying to repair the damage to the endothelium. So it's doing what it's supposed to do, but of course, in the…
Dr. Bruce Patterson 41:34
Absolutely. Then these epithelial cells fuse with macrophages and cause an EMT. Do you know what they express? CCL5 and CCR5. Then they migrate to areas of inflammation.
Dr. Jill 41:41
Are macrophages expressing VEGF, or is that just a signal to get more blood flow?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 41:58
They express VEGF. That's why when you talk about the tumor microenvironment in tumors, and the inflammatory infiltrates that come into the tumor microenvironment, you're talking about producing high levels of VEGF, which allows the tumors to increase their blood supply. And do you know what directly decreases VEGF? Maraviroc. [inaudible] All of this is just exquisite. As I was sitting there in a hotel room in China, I was thinking about the cancer literature and our work on cancer and CCR5. I initially started with some of the early trials of maraviroc, vicriviroc, and others in the early 2000s for HIV. But then we started talking about this more exquisite role in the immune system, basically as the quarterback. It's telling the immune system's cells where to go and when to go. It can be both good and bad.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 43:07
It's our job to exploit the good aspects of it. The bottom line is that it's not immunosuppressive. Everyone is throwing people on steroids. Yet again, another long COVID paper in Nature with low cortisol. I'm like, “Because everybody's on steroids.” Steroids and LDN. It's like a reflex: “Here's your LDN. Here's your steroids.”
Dr. Jill 43:36
We're not going to the root. In my world, if I could, I'd love to use curcumin, lumbrokinase, or any of these things. Is there anything that you've seen that has any effect even remotely close to the medications that you've been successful with that are in the realm of natural agents?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 43:55
It's a good question. Patients come in with lists of those agents. My first question is: How's that going? But you know what? All kidding aside, we've looked at some of these agents with our panel. We have a non-subjective means to test anything and everything for its anti-inflammatory activity that would contribute to improvement in the pathology. It's hard to say. I typically tell patients: “Don't stop. You don't have to stop.” It's neither here nor there. But the only one I talk about is turmeric, because turmeric, for some reason, increases blood levels of maraviroc.
Dr. Jill 44:50
Interesting. So that's a nice synergistic effect. That makes wonderful sense. One other question that I know people are thinking [about]—because we talked about mast cell activation and it's obviously connected—is this because we get cytokine activation, mast cells are part of our immune system and they're becoming activated and prostaglandins and histamine are part of this? Can you correlate how that fits in at all, if anything, with the whole idea of mast cell activation?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 45:15
Having been in long COVID [research] for so long and [seeing] some of the early theories, mast cell activation was one of them. People took various agents. They weren't that effective. To me, if there was a lot of mast cell activation, I'd see elevated interleukin 13 in everybody.
Dr. Jill 45:41
And you did say that just with long Lyme, that was one of the patterns with… Was it IFN-γ and interleukin [inaudible]?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 45:49
[inaudible]
Dr. Jill 45:50
Okay. Maybe in that particular subset, there's more mast cells than not. Fascinating. What is the future? You and your lab are doing some incredible work. This is a game-changer for those of us out in the field practicing medicine. What do you see for the future? What things are going to be coming out? What's next?
Dr. Bruce Patterson 46:12
We've had so much good news, especially in this last quarter of the year. Number one, we're seeing broad reimbursement [inaudible]. That makes us extremely happy. Now it's not just a long COVID test. Originally, we were coding it as long COVID. But the fact is, now that we have the new algorithms to detect chronic Lyme and have suggestions for ME/CFS, I presented at this meeting about a month ago that there may be five different immunotypes based on cytokine profiles that we discovered for ME/CFS. There may be five flavors at a minimum, immunologically. We all know that it's very heterogeneous. We don't know what the underlying cause is. But we're starting to map that out on an immune profile level so that we can use targeted therapy and ME/CFS, which are independent of a virus, bacteria, or whatever could be causing it.
Dr. Jill 47:27
That's exciting because I think sometimes the toxic load and infectious burden, which I'm dealing with on this level, [make] it so hard to determine exactly what. But if we can go straight to the immune system and say, “This is what's happening,” and we know what to target, it does matter but it almost doesn't matter what the original cause was.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 47:42
Right. I tell that to people frequently. At the end of the day, my initial thoughts are, “I don't care what's causing this, because the immune abnormalities are causing your symptoms, and I'm going to take care of those.” So coming up at the end of the year is reimbursement for the test, which is very, very exciting. The fact that we now have these patterns that separate and define long COVID, Lyme, ME/CFS, and even fibromyalgia is all very exciting so that we can treat them because they are treated differently. Then, most importantly, great work by my team at IncellDx in getting our trial design for maraviroc and statins and long COVID. [With] all of that written up, all the additional information, all of it's been submitted to the FDA. We're excited that 2024 will get our trial underway and hopefully, at some point, get approval. The good news is they're already approved drugs, so it's a different pathway where we're looking at efficacy as a major focus. It's going to be an exciting year. It's all been springboarded by the use of this diagnostic in chronic inflammation. It's resulted in great patient outcomes. And that's the thing that gets me.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 49:32
I've gotten letters, calls, and everything. This one girl, who is 12 years old, wrote me a letter on colored paper with colored pencils: “Thank you, Dr. Patterson, for making me better.” You get one of those and you're like, “Okay, all that work” that for me started in the late 80s in viruses “was all worth it.”
Dr. Jill 50:00
I love that! And that's such a great way to end here because, truly, that's why you and I do what we do—to see the patient's faces and see a change in their health. That's the reason I get up every day and I know for you too. And it's a long road sometimes. But I just want to say that I've been in this role for a long time in my little, tiny window of functional medicine as an MD, but I see the value. And to me, not only this conversation, this podcast, and all the work that you do are profound. This is a game-changer. If you're listening, you just listened to history being made, and it's going to continue for you if you stay tuned to the studies that Bruce Patterson's work and group are putting out.
Dr. Jill 50:40
I just want to say, on behalf of all physicians out there like me, thank you truly because this is the kind of game changer and these are kind of those pivotal moments, like when the cell danger response came out and we understood that and some of these things are always game changers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Where can people find your work, your information, and the lab? Give us some websites, places, and resources where they can find you. And we'll list these if you're listening or you're driving. We'll list them everywhere this podcast is shown.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 51:07
www.CovidLongHaulers.com is the best place to get a hold of us or me. It's a functional website. We're about to launch a physicians' link so they can order the test directly for their patients. That's where all of our publications, talks, etc. reside. Of course, if you search on YouTube with my name and long COVID, you'll probably find just about everything we've ever talked about.
Dr. Jill 51:48
Thank you, as always. We're recording around the holidays so thank you as always. Once again, here you are, taking time very close to the holidays to share this great information. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your work. Thank you for your intelligence, genius, and curiosity. I hope I can continue to support the work that you're doing.
Dr. Bruce Patterson 52:06
Thank you.
![204: Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill: Can our Minds Spontaneously Transform our Health? Bruce Lipton Dr. Jill 00:00 Hey guys, I am so excited to announce that the movie that you've been waiting for, the documentary Doctor/Patient, is now available for rent or purchase at DoctorPatientMovie.com. Check out the trailer here. 00:13 Dr. Jill: When I really knew something was wrong, was when I started having trouble walking up the stairs. I was supposed to be grateful and happy and healing and well and thriving, but I did not feel that way. I was so sick. Like always, I wanted to find an answer, and I had to figure it out. And I had to figure it out to save my own life. So I dove in. 00:38 James Maskell: Jill is the leading voice in biotoxin illness and chronic conditions that are driven by toxicity. 00:43 Bree Argetsinger: Oh my gosh, you're dealing with mold? You have to work with Dr. Jill Carnahan. 00:47 Patient 1: Dr. Jill is the first person that actually began to shed some light on the problem. 00:53 Dr. Jill: What I do is listen to the patient, and we together talk about what else is possible. 00:59 Patient 2: I don't know why I'm crying. 01:02 Patient 3: She saved my life. 01:06 Dr. Jill: The deepest lessons and most profound insights come in the suffering, come in the dark moments. Self-compassion is the healing transition that shifts something inside of us. It's actually the thing that we need most in order to heal. 01:26 Narrator: Doctor/Patient—available now at DoctorPatientMovie.com. Dr. Jill 01:36 Hey, welcome to Resiliency Radio, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in functional and integrative medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Jill. In each episode, we dive into the heart of healing and personal transformation. Join us as we connect with renowned experts, thought leaders, and innovators who are at the forefront of medical research, empowering you with knowledge and wisdom to overcome illness in your journey to optimal health. Dr. Jill 02:02 Hey guys, if you don't already know, if you've been around me at all, you know my movie, Doctor/Patient is now out. You can view it, share it, gift it, or rent it at DoctorPatientMovie.com. Be sure to check it out and then I would love to hear your feedback after you've had a chance to watch it. Dr. Jill 02:19 Today, I am deeply honored to have guest Bruce Lipton here with me. He's a PhD, a cell biologist, a lecturer, and an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. We were just talking before we came on about how he has been a leader [for] decades before a lot of us in functional/integrative medicine came along. And I am so excited! If you're a doctor listening—and I know I have a lot of audience there—you are in for a treat. If you're a patient, you're also in for a treat. Stay tuned. Dr. Jill 02:47 Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem cell research at Stanford University. He's a best-selling author of The Biology of Belief—if you haven't read that book, it's a classic now—The Honeymoon Effect, and the co-author with Steve Bhaerman of Spontaneous Evolution. Bruce received his prestigious 2009 Goi Peace Award from Japan in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. Bruce, it is a true honor and delight to have you here! Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 03:17 Jill, I am a happy person to be here because this audience that I get a chance to talk to, to me, is a very important audience. These are the cultural creatives that are paving the way for the future that we need to get into very soon because we're facing an evolutionary upheaval at this very moment. Whether you watch the news, surf the web, or even look out your window, the whole planet has experienced chaos at every level of it. People are focusing on the little chaos, like focusing on the trees, without pulling back to see the biggest thing that's happening and nobody's saying the words. NASA—Let me just say NASA's words. NASA has recognized that within the next 20 years, civilization is facing—and this is my emphasis here—an irreversible collapse. The reason is so mathematically simple. Let me give the math. Dr. Jill 04:16 Sure. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 04:17 Science has recognized that to continue living just the way we're living—just say, let's every day live the way we're living today on this planet—it takes 1.6 planet Earths to provide the resources for today's civilization. The simple math is this: There's one Earth subtracted from 1.6, and we're recognizing: "Where the hell are we getting the extra points?" Dr. Jill 04:39 We're in a deficit. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 04:40 And that deficit is leading to the destruction of the web of life. We have to also recognize this: Even though the Bible is giving us some fanciful story that nature was created and then humans were added on top of nature—no, we evolved from nature. We are nature. If nature goes down, humans go down, because we are part of this web of life. Our separation in our consciousness [that causes us to believe] that we can dominate nature, I say, "How's that working?" I say, "We're facing an extinction." That's a biological reality at this moment. It's called a mass extinction. It happened five times in the history of this planet: Life was thriving, [then] mass extinction. It knocked it all out and then it started again. We are there because of our behavior. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 05:33 And I say, "Our behavior is based on our consciousness." I go: "Okay, wait a second. Is that New Age?" I go: "No, let's stop. No New Age here at this moment." [In] 1927—day one, quantum physics—Max Planck, the founding father of quantum physics, states: "The mind is the creator of our life experiences." Quantum physics—the most valid of all the sciences today in the sense of its predictions and accuracy. Quantum physics. And it's still the belief in quantum physics: Consciousness is controlling this. And I go: "So if consciousness is controlling this, then why are we in such a mess?" The answer is: We have been programmed, and the programming has disempowered us all. It has disempowered us as patients. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 06:28 I go: "I'll give you a program that disempowers you right now." I say, "What is it?" "It's called genetic determinism." That was what I was teaching in medical school: Genes control the character of life. I go: "Did we pick the genes as far as we know? No. But if we don't like the characters we have, can we change the genes? No, can't do that." And then let's just add a little tidbit: Genes turn on and off by themselves. And I say: "You put those together and what have you done? You have told the patients that their lives are not in their control, they're controlled by their heredity, and that they're victims of heredity. Which is victims of what? Genetics. And what does a person know about genetics? Nothing. Who does know something? The doctor. Aha! The program is: When it comes to health, people do not trust themselves." They say: "I need an expert opinion. I'm not knowledgeable." They accept the truth from somebody else. Dr. Jill 07:28 I so love the direction that you're going here because, as a physician, one of the most important things I can do is empower the patient and make sure that they don't think that I am the end-all-be-all. [I want them to know] that we are collaborating and that I listen to them, and I say: "How do you feel about this treatment plan? Where do you want to go?" Granted, if I have wisdom, I can give them that information, but they still get to make that decision. But so many patients are outsourcing that wisdom to someone. Or, at least paternalistically and historically, that has been the way. And what we need to do is take control of our own health. Dr. Jill 08:00 How many patients have gone through a loved one with breast cancer—I'm a breast cancer survivor, so I can speak on this—and they're told, "You have the BRCA gene and you need to have a bilateral mastectomy"? I'm going to be strong about this because I disagree. That's an action out of fear. To each his own, so if you've been out there and have done something based on your genetics, there's no judgment here. But what we're saying is that you actually have control over the expression of those genes. So why don't you go into epigenetics for those who don't know what that means and tell us a little primer on epigenetics and why we have more control than we think? Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 08:34 Okay. The most important thing—and this is all scientific, so this is not any new age BS here, folks, this is science—I say: "What is it?" The belief that genes turn on and off is a completely false statement because a gene is a blueprint to make a protein. The proteins are the building blocks. Proteins wear out; you have to replace them. So you have to have a blueprint. It's called a gene. I go, "It's a blueprint!" I go, "Why is that relevant?" I say: "Go to an architect's office. She's working on a blueprint. You ask her, 'Hey, is your blueprint on or off?' She would look at you like, 'What are you talking about? There's no on and off to a blueprint.'" I go: "Aha! Aha! A gene is a blueprint. What you want to find out is: Who's the architect who reads the blueprint? The blueprint does not read itself. There's an architect." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 09:24 I saw this in my research in 1967. None of you were probably old enough to know what I'm talking about—1967! But I was cloning stem cells. Let's give the real name of a stem cell: An embryonic cell. It's an embryo's cell. It replaces things that are broken and gets a new one. I go: "So what? I clone the stem cell." I say, "What's that?" I say: "You put one stem cell in the culture dish. And then what? It divides every 10 or 12 hours." So first there's one, then there's 2, then there's 4, 8, and 16. A week later, [there are] 30,000 cells in the petri dish. What's the most important fact? They all came from one parent. I have 30,000 genetically identical cells. I split them into three petri dishes—one, two, three. Each dish has 10,000, 10,000, 10,000, all genetically the same. We grow cells in a culture medium. Ah, this is going to be the tricky part, for when you get this, the world changes. I'm going to come back to it. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 10:27 I say: "A culture medium is what the cells grow in in the lab. And I make it up by putting the chemistry or culture medium. Since I'm creating it, I can change some of the constituents. So I make three different versions of culture medium, A, B, and C." So I say, "So what?" Each one represents a different environment because the cells live in a culture medium. So I say: "Okay, dish one, environment A—the cells form muscle. Dish two, environment B—the cells form bone. Dish three, environment C—the cells form fat cells." I'm doing this experiment. I'm teaching genetic determinism, and I'm watching the cells and going— Dr. Jill 11:10 Wait a second. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 11:11 —"Wait a second, who controlled the activity?" They were all genetically the same. What was different? The environment. The chemistry of the environment selected the genes. The genes did not select themselves. Then, all of a sudden, I said, "Why is this important?" It's a revolution! I'll tell you why. Genetic determinism: Victim. The new science, epigenetics, which I'll explain: Master. Why? Because you control the environment. It's the environment that controls the cells. It's called epigenetics. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 11:48 [There's a] simple reason why the name [is what it is]. What do we call skin? Epidermis. Why? What's under the skin? A layer called dermis. What's the skin above the dermis? Epidermis. Epi: Above. Epigenetics: Control above the genes. I go, "Whoa, the control is not in the genes." I said: "No, it's to control the environment that the genes live in." I go, "Well, wait, I control the environment." Aha! If you control the environment, then you control the genetics. And that's all of a sudden where the new science comes in. The genetic determinism: Victim. Epigenetics: Master. You control your genes. So basically, what I saw back in 1967 was, "The genes didn't make this decision." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 12:48 Now let's just jump ahead a second here because that's a basic science. And then I'm going to give you this, which you're totally aware of: You are a skin-covered petri dish. You have 50 trillion cells under your skin and you have the original culture medium. What is a culture medium? I didn't say it before, but I'll tell you where it is: A laboratory version of blood. When I grow human cells, I concoct a culture medium based on the constituents of human blood or mouse blood, depending on which cells I'm growing. What's the point? You are a skin-covered culture dish with what? The original culture medium. You have the blood. The blood carries the chemistry, which activates the genes. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 13:34 So the first point: Scientifically, it doesn't make a difference if the cell is in a plastic dish or a skin dish? I said, "No, it's the environment." And I say the environment in your body is the blood for the cells. Then come two questions that blow the game into a new evolution. Question number one: What controls the chemistry of the blood? The answer is the brain. It's the chemist. The big one—here it is, hold on: What chemistry should the brain put into the blood? You know what it is? Whatever picture you hold in your mind, the brain translates the picture into complimentary chemistry that matches the picture. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 14:25 I say, "So why is this important?" The picture in your head becomes material in your body. You manifest what you're thinking. I go: "Wait a minute. Would I manifest this life? Would I manifest my cancer?" I go, "Yes." I go, "You say that so affirmatively." I go: "Quantum physics—the most valid science principle number one [is that] the mind is the creator of our experience." I go: "Well, epigenetics is the biological component of that physics mechanism." Epigenetics is how the mind adjusts the genetics of the body. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 15:05 And I go, "We're facing a healthcare crisis on this planet." I go, "Yes, we are facing a healthcare crisis." And I go, "What's responsible?" We put all the money into science. You know what we're looking for? We're looking for the gene—the gene that controls that problem. Guess what? Less than 1% of all diseases on this planet have any connection with genes. Wait, then that means only less than 1% of what we diagnose as disease is connected with genes. I go, "Yes, that's a fact." Then what is really contributing to the worldwide crisis in healthcare? The answer is: Stress is 90% the cause of disease, minimum. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 15:54 I go: "Okay, come on! How could that do that?" Let's give the biology because it's not New Age again. You're ready? When you're in stress, you're in threat. When you're in threat, you engage a protection response. I say, "What is a protection response?" The protection response is: When you perceive stress, you will release stress hormones, adrenal hormones. I go, "Yes, so what?" Well, what do you think the adrenal hormones do? They prepare the body for fight or flight. I go, "So what?" I say: "First of all, there are three stages to take a body from health, happiness, joy—I'm in the garden, I love my life—to 'Ah! A sabertooth tiger's chasing me!'" I say, "So I have to switch from growth, boom, into protection." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 16:41 How does that happen? Three steps. Number one, stress hormones cause the blood vessels in the gut to constrict. Why? Because most of the blood is in the gut. I say, "Who cares?" I say: "Ah, but the blood is a source of energy. So if you need energy, you need blood." So I say, "So what's the point?" I say: "Most of the blood is in the gut, taking care of the body, cleaning, fixing, repairing, nourishing, and doing all those things. But the moment stress hormones come in, the blood vessels squeeze shut. People feel it in the body." "It's queasy. I feel very queasy when I'm in fear like this." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 17:16 I say: "But some people say butterflies in the stomach. Why?" The fluttering of the blood vessels shutting down—you can feel it. And it's a fluttering. And what's happening? The blood is being pushed to the arms and legs, and that's where I need to run away from that damn tiger. So number one, redistribute the blood. Where do I take it from? [From] growth and maintenance to protection. So I'm not funding growth and maintenance when I'm running from the tiger. I go, "No, you're not." Number two, the immune system is to protect me on the inside. If I'm being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, then what's the value of the immune system? Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 17:55 I'll give you a scenario. Come on, doctors, listen to this. The patient's got a bacterial infection. They're going to have a real bad case of diarrhea coming up here and they're being chased by a saber-toothed tiger. How would you split the energy of the body? How much to support the immune system and how much of that energy to run away from the saber-toothed tiger? I'll give you a second. Okay, thank you. The answer is, of course, who cares about the immune system? If the tiger chased you, the bacteria are not your problem anymore, that's for sure. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 18:26 Listen, stress hormones shut down the immune system to conserve energy. And you know damn well that when people are sick, sometimes they don't even have the energy to get out of bed because the immune system uses a hell of a lot of energy. If you're being chased by a tiger: I can't support the immune system because if the tiger gets me, who cares about what's happening in the interior?—it's not mine anymore. It's so important—in fact, therapeutic—that when they transplant an organ from person A into person B and they don't want immunological rejection, they give the recipient stress hormones before the operation. That restricts the function of the immune system so it doesn't immediately reject the foreign graft. Ah, so stress hormones are used therapeutically to shut off the immune system. So I say, "Yes, what do you think stress does automatically?" That's number two. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 19:21 Number three, conscious processing is slow compared to reflex behavior. Conscious [processing] is like, "Oh, let me think." Reflex is boom! Boom! Like that. The point is, if you're running from a saber-toothed tiger, conscious processing is going to delay your nervous system because you'll be thinking. When that tiger is coming, guess what? Remember the role of the stress hormone—to squeeze the blood vessels here? They squeeze the blood vessels in the forebrain. I say, "Why?" Because it stops the blood flow from going to the conscious mind. Where's it going? The hindbrain—reflex behavior. Result: We become less intelligent in the fear process. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 20:11 So I say: "Let's put these all together. I shut down growth, I shut down the immune system, and I shut off conscious awareness." I go: "When was that system formed?" "Oh, a couple hundred thousand years ago." I say: "What was it responding to?" "The saber-toothed tiger?" I go: "So what was important?" "If you escape that tiger for five minutes or ten minutes, there's no more saber-toothed tiger, no more stress." So it was used for five to ten minutes. Shut it down [for] five to ten minutes; we'll come back later. In today's world—you know the whole thing—every day, every minute, we're in stress. The system was never designed for chronic stress. It shuts down the vitality, health, and maintenance of the body. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 21:01 The stresses of this world are responsible for over 90% of healthcare crises. This is recognized by the American Psychological Society: 95% of visits to doctors' offices [are] stress-related. I was a programmer. And I'm not proud now because, when I programmed, people used to believe in genetic determinism. I go: "No, no. I was wrong. Epigenetics, okay?" But we've been programmed to be victims. Dr. Jill 21:32 Yes. First of all, I think doctors are starting, at least in my realm of functional/integrative—we're talking epigenetics; we're using this. And I just want to share a personal example to bring home what you just shared. It's so important. Many of my listeners know that at 25, I had breast cancer, then Crohn's disease, and then autoimmunity. I'm the poster child. What I remember very clearly is that in my 30s, I got mold-related toxicity. My immune system was terribly trashed and overactive and I was under high stress. I remember one day walking along and realizing: "This stress that is in my body is actually killing me." I had the mentality [of] "beating cancer," "fighting cancer," "fighting this," "fighting that"—fighting, fighting, fighting—which is your saber-toothed tiger [description]. I was in fight or flight. Dr. Jill 22:16 The day I realized that was the day I realized I could also reprogram my immune system through my thoughts. That day I started thinking [up] a new paradigm, thinking about these little yellow minions being my immune system. They were helping escort mold toxicity out of my body without this fight because, [in] fight or flight, there's no healing. And now, today, I'm healed from that and from mold-related illness and all of this. But it's really that moment when I realized I could change my thought process, change the function of my immune system, recover from Crohn's, cancer, and toxic mold, and no longer fight. Dr. Jill 22:53 And the most important message, as you brought home, is that when I'm sitting with a patient, if they're in fear, if they are in fight or flight, and if they are feeling unsafe in their body, there is no amount of pills, supplements, IVs, nutrition, or even good advice that I can give them… Unless they go to that place of unsafeness, that place of fear, that place where they're still somatically running from the tiger. We have to change that, and it starts with this. Dr. Jill 23:22 So I love, love, love that you framed this. And I just want to give you credit because you've been doing this work for decades before anyone else was talking about it. And now we're seeing it. And finally, doctors in my field are starting to acknowledge and talk about it. But even in my field, functional medicine is a lot about supplements, diet, and lifestyle. That's all great. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 23:40 Well, that's environment! Dr. Jill 23:41 Right? Right. Actually, that's the thing I was going to mention too. My specialty is environmental toxicity, so I know the petri dish of how it affects our bodies. But I do believe, as you're saying, that this reprogramming of our mind… Do you have any stories or examples, maybe from your book, of a patient, client, or somebody who has read your book who really took this and changed from there? Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 24:03 I've got hundreds and hundreds of letters from people who've written. There were two things about this. Let me express it even in my personal life. I understood this from a scientific point of view. Man, it was in my laboratory, my research. It was repeatable; I could do this all the time. It took 23 years before science caught up with that observation. I [inaudible] a lot of other things in between to conform. And the reality is that our own understanding about our frailty—it's an understanding. And then I give an understanding of, "No, we're very powerful." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 24:42 I was so happy to go and find an audience of doctors and people: "Let me explain how to create the most wonderful life. Here's the science!" And then they'd come to my lecture and they'd look at me and go: "Lipton, your life doesn't look that good for a guy who says you know this." Oh my God, I was caught. You know what it was? Talking the talk, not walking the talk. I knew the science. It was in my head. Did I make it part of my life? No! I say: "So what was the point? I don't care how smart you are; if you don't make a part of your life, it's irrelevant." Totally! Then all of a sudden, when I caught myself going, "Oh, do as I say, not as I do," it's like, "I can't do that!" So I had to say: "Stop lecturing. Start living your life with the principles you are telling other people. Live this now." How long did it take me to change my life? Oh, within a month, my life was completely on a whole different spectrum. And it was like, "Now, of course, I start talking about it again," because it was real. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 25:47 Let me just give a simple understanding, a scientific understanding, and that is this: The mind is not one thing. "Oh, the mind." I go: "No, not the mind. There are two minds. And they're interdependent, but they have different functions." The conscious mind, the latest evolution: The prefrontal cortex, right behind your forehead, [is] the seat of the conscious mind. What's that? The conscious mind is your source, your personal identity, your spiritual place. What else is it? It's creative! That's what makes humans different than all the other animals. We can take ideas, boom, build them, and create in the conscious mind. What about the subconscious mind? Oh, the original one? Hard drive, programs, habits, stored behavior. Thinking? Uh-uh. Just behavior—program. Dr. Jill 26:38 The subconscious has no way to differentiate truth, right? It does whatever you tell it to do. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 26:44 No, well, the subconscious doesn't do what you tell it to do; it does what it tells it to do. The subconscious is the autopilot. I say, yes, the mind works, but you have to understand that when I'm in the conscious mind, that is the creative side. That's the side with wishes, desires, and aspirations. What do you want? Conscious mind. Subconscious mind: Program. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 27:09 I say, "So what's the issue with our life when it comes down to it?" The monkey wrench that blows the whole thing out is that when the conscious mind is thinking, it's not paying attention to the outer world. A thought is inside. When you're present, your conscious mind is looking at the world and engaging the world. Right now, in front of it, I'm engaging it. But if I'm thinking, my conscious mind is no longer looking out; it's looking in because a thought is on the inside. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 27:38 So I say, "Wait, what if I'm driving the car and I have a thought?" And I've got to tell you, in fact: Then you're not driving the car. "What do you mean? No accident or nothing." I say: "Driving is a program. You don't have to think about driving." In fact, most of the time, if you've been driving for a long time, you never think about the details of driving. It's an automatic behavioral program. It plays when you're not paying attention. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 28:02 I go: "Aha! When the conscious mind is thinking, it's not paying attention to the outer world. Why? It's inside." So I say: Walking, driving, talking, doing your job—hey, those are habits. You've been doing it all—whatever [it is]—for a long period of time. You don't have to re-learn it. It's automatic. Do you even have to think about walking? No, you didn't even have to say: "Oh, I'm going to walk from here to there. I'm going to get that." I say: "Walking is automatic. You don't think about it—program." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 28:37 So then comes the number and this is scientific: Ninety-five percent of the day is the average person's amount of thinking. Then what does that represent? Biologically, only five percent of the day are you creating your life with the conscious mind's wishes and desires. Ninety-five percent of the day your life is coming from programs that you downloaded mainly before age seven. And I go, "Where did I get the programs?" I go: "Before age seven, your brain is not primarily functioning at the level of consciousness, which in EEG terms is alpha, beta, and gamma. When you're under seven, you're operating primarily at theta, which is just below consciousness." Theta—imagination. Hey, the tea party: Pour nothing into the cup. Drink the nothing. "The best tea I ever had in my life!" That's imagination. That's theta. That's what kids do all the time. They can have imaginary friends. They play with them all the time. It's imagination. Theta is hypnosis. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 29:41 I go, "Why is that important?" How many rules does it take to be a member of a family? How many rules does it take to be a member of a community? Now we're talking thousands. I go, "Why is that important?" I said, "Well, teach an infant a thousand rules." I go: "They can't read a book. They can't sit in a classroom. They can't understand a video." I said: "How are they going to learn?" Nature took care of that. Nature gave the first seven years theta, which is hypnosis. You want to know the behavior? Watch your mother, watch your father, watch your community. Watch their behavior; download it. Now it's your behavior! Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 30:19 So the behavior that's in your subconscious mind didn't even come from you, did it? Nope, it came from other people. And did they answer your wishes and desires—what you'd like? Not necessarily. So then, are there programs in there that give you what your wishes and desires are? Not necessarily, no. In fact, I say, "So what about these programs?" Sixty percent of the things you downloaded as a kid—sixty percent of the subconscious programs [are] disempowering, self-sabotaging, and limiting beliefs. And you operate ninety-five percent of the day from them. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 30:53 Ah, but here's the monkey wrench you didn't catch! Why am I using my subconscious programs? Because my conscious mind's not paying attention; it's thinking. Well, then, do you see the programs when they come out? I go: "Nope! You're the only one who doesn't even see the program!" Why? Everybody else around you is responding to your program. You're not even paying attention [to] what the hell is coming out. Sixty percent of it [is] disempowering yourself. So the issue is this: We are not controlling our lives. Our program controls our lives. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 31:28 I say, "Oh, this is a new science." I go: "Scientifically, this is valid. This is understanding theta activity, downloading programs, conscious, subconscious, blah, blah, blah, blah." But the Jesuits knew about programming for 400 years. They would tell their followers, "Give me a child until it is seven, and I will show you the man." Oh my God, that's 100% right! The programming is before age seven, and 95% of the life is the program. They knew it. They created Catholic schools to help the programming go along. And that idea is never lost because if you can watch an infant today, which I've seen carrying an iPad, interacting with a program on a computer, that's far better programming than Jesuits could ever have thought of. Dr. Jill 32:17 Yes, it's clear, isn't it? That's a really good transition because one of the things I see as the biggest crisis in healthcare is environment, but it's environment that is no longer socially interactive or present. We're numbing ourselves out with machines, with iPads, and with phones. They are designed to create an addictive behavior, so they're tapping into some of those subconscious programs, right? Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 32:40 And let me just add this to that: It's not just that behavior, but it's also creating disempowering behaviors. So these programs—as you were just going to say, and I'll let you have it back again—were not designed to help us; they were designed to control us. Dr. Jill 33:05 Yes. And sell and control. Yes, so we are pawns in this new world of technology that is neurodynamically designed to be addictive. If you haven't seen The Social Dilemma, that's a great place to start in your education on social media and the impact. I do want to talk about this. One of the things you just got done saying is that before seven, we're programmed. I totally understand and believe that. But the truth is, we have the power to change that programming. Tell us about that. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 33:36 Most everybody out there has changed that programming. I say, "You've already done it." I say: "What, the movie The Matrix, being a documentary, everybody's programmed?" Yes, of course, that's the foundational belief of the movie and the reality. And in the movie, they offered the red pill. And I say: "What was the red pill? You get out of the program!" Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 33:54 I go, "Almost everybody out here right now listening has done that." I say: "What was the consequence? How did it happen?" I'm going to tell you. Falling in love is a red pill. I go, "What do you mean?" Because when you first fall in love, you stop thinking. Biologically, you stay present; you stay in the conscious, creative mind. You've waited for this person your whole life. They're there. What, you want to start thinking and then ignore them? Are you kidding me? You stay up conscious. You stay mindful. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 34:23 I say, "So what happened?" I say: "Your life up to meeting that person: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You meet them [and] 24 hours later: 'Oh, man, life is beautiful. Life is so wonderful. Hey, the food's really good. That music is even better than I ever thought it was.'" And even the crappy job is not so crappy. I said: "What'd you do?" You made honeymoon. What's honeymoon? Heaven on earth. I said, "What was your heaven on earth?" Whatever you wished and desired. You and a partner coming together when you're both wishing and desiring, you're sharing the same wishes and desires, you manifest a honeymoon. Oops, I dropped something, but okay. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 35:01 Is the honeymoon already there? I go, "The honeymoon's always there." I said, "Then how come you don't have it?" Because when you start thinking, you then go back to subconscious control, the default. And the problem is, why do 50% of marriages end up in divorce? The answer is this: Marriage has started with the relationship of two conscious creative minds sharing together a belief in creating a honeymoon, and it ends when thinking enters into the people and they start playing their regular programs, which are 60% negative. The partner hears these programs. The one saying the thing doesn't hear it; the other one hears it. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 35:43 I love the response. When somebody comes out in a relationship and the loving partner hears some kind of BS come out of their other partner, they look at them and go: "Who are you? Where did you come from?" What? It was never part of the behavior. And then, all of a sudden, it shows up. And the more thinking, the more that negativity shows up. There's a point where a partner will say: "That's enough. That's not why I signed up here. I signed up because we had a great honeymoon." After you started thinking, this thing went right down the tube. The point is, that's what reality is about. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 36:18 So the idea then becomes simple, which is the obvious thing: "What if I created all programs that represented my wishes and desires—if I had those programs?" I said: "Oh, you know what? Whether you're consciously creating those wishes and desires or your conscious mind is off in left field, your subconscious will be manifesting the wishes and desires. And guess what? A honeymoon is not a short period. A honeymoon is every day of your life for as long as you live." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 36:46 Does it work? Personally, I had some very bad programming when I was young because my mother and father had a dysfunctional relationship. I downloaded my father's dysfunctional behavior. I played it when I couldn't see it. The result is that I couldn't get relationships off the ground. Then I understood the nature of the programming. Then I understand the nature of reprogramming. Around 50, I met my partner, Margaret. We just celebrated 28 years! And I'm not selling just a relationship; I'm talking honeymoon for 28 years. To wake up every day in my life and go: "Oh my God, I'm still here. Oh my God, I have another day to smell the roses, to have a piece of cake, to enjoy the love, watch the environment, and love my life." I celebrate life. Jill celebrates life. What's the result? Where's the illness? What illness? Dr. Jill 37:45 Yes! I love that. There are some points that I think are so crucial that you just made, number one, being present with our partners, watching them in real time and observing them. So often we create a program of them, a template, and then we don't expect them to change. Or, we expect them to behave the same. And when we're in real time, present with another person—whether it's a friend, family member, business associate, or lover—we can respond in real time. And that's part of that co-creation that you're talking about. It's crucial. Dr. Jill 38:15 The other thing is that with illness, I find one thing that was—I'm sure this is related to the program, [and] I'd love your comments—I never identified with the cancer. I never became the cancer. I never made that part of who I was. Even now, I'm like, "Oh yes, 20 years ago, I had cancer." And of course, it's real, but it's almost foreign because it was never part of me. And I really believe that's a huge part of why I overcame a very, very aggressive cancer at the age of 25—because it never was my identity. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 38:44 Yes, let's just talk about this. The first thing is that I'm going to give a fact of science [to] which [a person might say], "He really said that?" And I'm going to say, yes, I'm going to say this. There's not one gene that causes cancer. There's not a gene [where], "You have this gene, you get cancer." The one scary one for women, of course, [is] the breast cancer gene. I go, "So what?" I go: "Women who carry the breast cancer gene don't necessarily have to have cancer. As a matter of fact, nearly half of them don't get cancer. But they have the gene." So then I say, "Then where did the cancer come from?"—because those who have the cancer with the gene and those who are healthy with the gene have the same gene. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 39:20 What's the difference? The answer is this: Cancer is correlated with a gene, not caused by a gene. Cancer is caused by disharmony in the system. Disharmony is the source of disease. Harmony is the source of health. Disharmony means your programming wasn't really good, and you're responding to things in a negative way that is going to cause a breakdown of the system. That's where the stress comes into it. So the concept is this: The image—even if once you tell a woman, "Yes, you have the breast cancer gene," what the hell image do you think is going to be in her head? The answer is: Cancer. I go: "Yes, but isn't the function of the mind to take the image of the head and turn it into reality?" I go, "Absolutely! What's the consequence?" Ninety percent of cancer has no genetic linkage at all. Dr. Jill 40:14 Yes. That was the biggest question I got as a 25-year-old. Every single person, to a T: "Oh, did you have genes?" No, I didn't have genes. I had a dysfunctional system when I was in my 20s. That goes into a whole other lecture that I could give, but I was not living consciously. And there were some things, stress-wise, that were contributing. And it was the environmental toxic load. So all of these things are the petri dish. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 40:38 And more than that, there must have been the two programs. Eighty to ninety percent of all people will not test positive for two beliefs. Number one, and I think the most important, is the belief, "I love myself." Eighty percent of people will not test positive for that belief. Number two, and this is the one where the healthcare crisis comes from: "I am safe." When you have a picture of fear, then the chemistry of fear is to manifest the fear. When they say "This is it" and [show you] a picture of the tumor and everything, then you make the chemistry of the tumor. Then the idea is that we have to own quantum physics. Consciousness is the source of our life experiences. We have to understand the nature of epigenetics. Consciousness is the source of what controls our genes. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 41:07 The third thing that I think is part of the Renaissance that we really must emphasize at some point is Newtonian physics, which separates physical from non-physical, matter versus energy. It's an illusion. It's not real. But it programs us in a very bad way because the program says: "Whatever is made out of matter can only be affected by matter. Whatever is made out of energy can only be affected by energy." And I say, "So what's the consequence?" I say: "The body is matter. And what do you think the whole foundation of the pharmaceutical company is? The body is matter and we make the matter to fix the matter." Dr. Jill 42:16 Yes. What's the matter with that? [laughs] Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 42:18 Three hundred thousand people die in the US every year from prescription drugs, that's what's the matter with it, when less than 50,000—I think 30,000—people die from illegal drugs. We have a war on illegal drugs, and 300,000 people dying from pharmaceutical drugs is called the cost of doing medicine. I go: "That's damn expensive! We don't need that." Simple law of science: If a drug works, it only works because you already had a receptor for that drug on you. Do you think nature put receptors on cells, waiting for the pharmaceutical company to make a drug? No, come on, man! If you have a receptor for a drug, it's because you have a receptor for a drug that you make. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 43:01 I go, "I can make any drug." Of course, because any drug works because you have a receptor to connect it. If you have a receptor, then you obviously have a signal that will bind to that receptor. Then you say, "Well, it's not working." And that's where everything gets screwed up because that system isn't working and then you go right away: "Oh, the body is defective. The genes aren't working right. There's an interference with the physical." I go, "Yes, there was an interference because it didn't start down here; it started up here." And once you start to understand this, yes, treat the body if there's an immediate need to treat the body, but the process of treating the patient is treating this part. Knowledge is power. They do not have the knowledge of who they are. They're programmed [to think]: "I'm a victim of my genes and I have no power." I go, "Well, there's your problem." Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 43:54 And the issue about it is that you guys are in the front of the evolution that says: Okay, I can treat the patient, but I've really got to treat the consciousness of the patient. Why? Because, as quantum physics says, consciousness is the source of this creativity, and as epigenetics says, consciousness is the source of this expression. You cannot leave that out. Dr. Jill 44:18 You just talked about two beliefs that I think are critical and it's a great place to kind of wrap up. The first one is: Do we love ourselves? Do we really, really, truly love and accept ourselves? I have written a book and done a movie on that message. The heart of healing is: How do we show self-compassion and love? Because that is the only way that our cells will respond in health. Dr. Jill 44:41 The second thing was so crucial too, and that is the fear and the unsafety. This is where a physician in the office can make all the difference, because if they add to that fear message, guess what? That's just adding to that patient's unhealth. So one thing we are obligated to do as physicians is create a safe environment and teach that patient how to start to feel safe in their body. With those two beliefs, maybe in the last couple of minutes here, could you maybe give us some practical advice for somebody who's like: "How do I start doing that, Bruce? How do I feel safe in my body? And how do I love myself?" Because that, I couldn't agree more with you, is really the core message here. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 45:19 I'll tell you, let's get right to the root of why people do not love themselves. The answer is: Because parents act like coaches on a sports team. I go, "What does that mean?" A player isn't doing well. What does the coach say? "Oh, do better." No! The coach says: "That's not good enough. Who do you think you are? You don't deserve to be on this team." Well, a player is older than seven. They're in consciousness. They understand that the coach is saying, "You better do better!" Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 45:47 Now let's say the parent is the coach and the kid is under seven. There's no consciousness operating. What's operating? Hypnosis, programming. So when the father says, "That's not good enough, you don't deserve this, you're not lovable, you don't belong," blah, blah, blah—acting like the coach who says, "This is going to make them do better"—if the kid is under seven, you just programmed them to self-sabotage because the subconscious is going to create 95% of their life. And if I get a program "I do not deserve," when I'm thinking 95% of the day, what the hell program is running? "I do not deserve." So I could say something so stupid in my corporate structure or something, and somebody says, "That guy doesn't deserve to be here." And then, all of a sudden, I'm kicked out of the structure. Why? Because I myself made behavior to conform to "not good enough" and to not love myself. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 46:41 This is why that one's so important—because if you can't love yourself, I'm going to be honest, you can't accept love from somebody else. I go, "Why?" Because they say they love you, but in your mind, you're going: "Well, they don't know me, man. I know I'm not lovable." And you'll push them away. And then you'll find yourself with nobody around. And guess what you'll say? "You see?! I'm not lovable!" [inaudible] You just did that. And when it comes to "Do I have any power?" the answer is: No, it has been systematically deprived of them. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 46:59 I've got a minute; I've got to say this because this is really cool. There's a power struggle in the world. It's always been this way. There are three levels of power. Number one, caveman. Who's the biggest badass with the biggest club? Whatever they say, do it. They've got the power. Evolution came along. There are people then who control the resources that you need. And all of a sudden they say, "If you want those resources, you've got to give me something for this." And you know what? The ones who had the resources paid the caveman to hit you over the head if you didn't pay for the resources. Dr. Jill 47:53 A personal hitman. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 47:55 That's the king who owns the resources with an army of cavemen. Then I say, "But the last of the power struggles came down to 'knowledge is power.'" And it was recognized that, yes, that is the supreme power of everything. Knowledge is power. The first thing the church of Rome did was acknowledge: "We are the source of infallible knowledge. We are the source of truth. We say it; it's true." Well, you say, "I don't care." The point about it was that people gave up their power to the belief. And I say it here very quickly: There's a code behind the power brokers. I call it the powermongers' credo. I say, "What is it?" Are you ready? Give them the fear for free and then sell them the antidote. Dr. Jill (pre-recording) 48:46 Hey, everybody. I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, Unexpected: Finding Resilience through Functional Medicine, Science, and Faith, is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming a life-threatening illness and the tools, tips, tricks, hope, and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein-Barr, and mold- and biotoxin-related illnesses. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy, stop by ReadUnexpected.com. There, you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine and finding resilience. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 50:59 "What do you want me to do? Put a mask on? Sure. I'll mask on. I can't visit my mom, who's dying in a nursing home?" "No, you have to give that up because you can't do that." "Really?" Dr. Jill 51:09 Yes. If you're controlled, then fear created the biology of illness. It really, really is a great analogy. Bruce, this has been so fun to dive deep. I love talking to you. I love your enthusiasm. I love your wisdom. And I love most of all that you were so far ahead of the curve because people are kind of coming along to this belief. But the truth is, you were one of the very first ones writing and talking about this. And I'm just grateful that way back in the day, in the lab, you saw this and started writing about it. Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. 51:44 I can't be any happier than I am for myself! I have a different life! I have a different life than before that discovery. Dr. Jill 51:53 Yes. And it transforms us all, too. I have many stories, the same thing, of me continuing to transform because of this knowledge. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for spending your time with us today!](https://www.jillcarnahan.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Bruce-Lipton-Biology-of-Belief-Can-Your-Mind-Spontaneously-Transform-Your-Health_-WEB-1.jpg)
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