Join Dr. Ted Achacoso as we explore the 7 Pillars of Health, a comprehensive framework that integrates various innovative health disciplines including Metabolomics, Epigenetics, Bioenergetics, the Gut Immune System, Exposomics, Evolutionary Biology and Chronobiology. Dr. Jill Carnahan and Dr. Ten Achacoso share their expertise and provide actionable insights on how these pillars work together to create a robust and resilient health system.
Key Points 🧬 The 7 Pillars of Health: https://homehope.org/pages/7-pillars-of-health
✅ 1. Metabolomics
✅ 2. Epigenetics
✅ 3. Bioenergetics
✅ 4. Gut Immune System
✅ 5. Exposomics
✅ 6. Evolutionary Biology
✅ 7. Chronobiology
Our Guest – 👨⚕️ Dr. Ted Achacoso:
Dr. Theodore “Ted” Achacoso is the founding pioneer of the clinical practice of Health Optimization Medicine and Practice (HOMe/HOPe) and Founder and Chief Science Officer at Smarter Not Harder, Inc. He entered college at the age of 15 and has trained, researched, taught, worked, or founded companies in biology (BS), medicine (MD), pharmacology/toxicology, interventional neuroradiology, neurology, medical informatics, sci-tech investing, groupware, AI-based FX quant trading, interventional endocrinology (anti-aging medicine) and nutritional medicine (board certified in both, Paris), psychedelic plants, consciousness, and pharma-grade supplements, including the Troscriptions brand.
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
233: Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill: Disease is Managed & Health is Optimized with Dr. Ted Achacoso
Dr. Jill 00:00
Welcome to Resiliency Radio, your go-to podcast for the most cutting-edge insights in integrative and functional medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Jill, and with 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 and practice, empowering you to transform your own health.
Dr. Jill 00:23
I am so excited, as always, about my guest today, but especially excited because we just had a 5/10-minute conversation and the energy is just flowing. This is going to be so good. Hopefully, if you're listening or if you're watching, you can feel this deep connection I already feel with my guest.
Dr. Jill 00:37
My guest is Dr. Theodore Achacoso. Dr. Ted. He's the founding pioneer of the clinical practice of Health Optimization Medicine and Practice (HOMe/HOPe) and Founder and Chief Science Officer at Smarter Not Harder, Inc. He entered college at the age of 15 and has trained, researched, taught, worked, and founded companies in biology, medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, interventional neuroradiology, neurology, medical informatics, sci-tech investing, groupware, AI-based FX quant trading, interventional endocrinology (anti-aging medicine), nutritional medicine (board certified in both), psychedelic plants, consciousness, and pharma-grade supplements, including the Troscriptions brand, which we've had your colleague Scott on the podcast. We're going to talk more today about that.
Welcome to the show!
Dr. Ted Achacoso 01:36
Thank you! Thank you. It's not as intimidating as it sounds. Entering college at 15 was actually fun. It's just really difficult because your emotional adjustment is different.
Dr. Jill 01:50
You know what? That's so interesting, but you're right. What a résumé! We can start with that, but I want to know the real you. How did it all start? What were you thinking back even as a teenager or 15-year-old when you entered college? And then, what is the story of your journey to all of these many, many different aspects of human performance, optimization of health, and everything in between?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 02:13
Yeah. What I encourage all my students to do is to remain curious about how the world works. We could probably never answer a few questions about the why or the what, like what happens after death. There probably will never be an answer to those, but there are answers to some things. One of my mentors said that science and technology are just like a wall that you push; every time you discover something, you push a little bit more about their model of reality.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 02:52
And what I learned at an early age is that there are several models of reality. If you're steeped in the science model, then you will see everything in that particular space. If you're steeped in the energetic model, you see everything in that space. If it's in the magical model, in its space. And all perspectives are valid. So I was curious about all of that.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 03:14
I was asking myself at the time: “If our eyes had UV sensors”—and I was 15 years old—”what would the world look like? What would the art that we appreciate look like? And how much value do we have of these paintings if they had no UV shading or whatever?” I was curious about those because they tied in directly to what we value as humans—what we truly value. That got me on the right foot, I would guess, into that whole process of just being curious, but more curious about “How does the body work?”
Dr. Ted Achacoso 03:54
I call medicine, in fact, body engineering. It's human engineering. For example, in medical school, questions that I was asking myself were like: “Okay, if I were to design, how would I design the nervous system such that when it grows, it innervates the skin?” When you take a look at embryology, you get curious and say: “Oh my God, it comes from the skin.” It's an invagination of the neural fold that comes from the skin and the nerve. Basically, your nervous system is coming in from your actual skin cells. These kinds of shifts in perspective that evolution gives you are the things that got me…
Dr. Ted Achacoso 04:42
The main fuel behind my curiosity really is how we evolved. How did we come to be like this? Right now, into what we're doing in the clinics, how much are we interfering into how we came to be like this? And how much do we have to hold back?—because the body has its own infinite wisdom of healing. It knows more than we do because it's been there for ages—the wisdom of the cell, the wisdom of the tissues, and the organs. They know how to heal themselves. They have their own timing. They have their own needs.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 05:17
And our big problem is that we have a symbolic self, which we call the ego, which is a process that controls everything. I don't know how many of your listeners have meditative practices. One of the things I encourage my students to do while walking is ask themselves: “What's walking this?—not who. What's walking this?” You're walking. You're not saying, “Oh, now I'm putting my foot forward,” and so on and so forth. It's just doing it all by itself. And if you take a look at the spiritual traditions, it's just all going by itself. There's no control. So that's a fantastic journey towards this direction.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 05:59
And then I said, “Is there any other dimension other than a physical dimension?” And that is revealed to you by deep meditation or psychoactive agents. I call psychoactive agents like psilocybin and MDMA and all of these psychoplastogens. They rewire your brain, such that—
Dr. Jill 06:24
They're just opening up new neural networks, right?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 06:26
You have the realities.
One of the most curious parts, Jill, that I found: I read in one book where the schizophrenic kids in one tribe—for example, a schizophrenic girl is identified—are identified by the shaman of the group and are trained early on and [who] said, “You are seeing other things that your playmates aren't.” They begin to train the kid as [though they are] seeing two realities at the same time, or two or more realities. They are not brought up as schizophrenic. Rather, they're brought up as future shamans who could see other dimensions of reality.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 07:11
It was interesting because now I had a different compassion for the woman screaming on the street. I live in Washington, DC. There's a lot of homeless here. And a lot of them have mental issues. When I step out onto the street and I see someone getting angry at someone imaginary that you could see, that's seeing another reality altogether. Our reality is all stitched up. I tell my students, “If the brain weren't compensating for the nystagmus of the eyes, we would see jagged images, but the brain is always compensating for that.” The brain is always also compensating for not seeing our optical blind spot. We live in an illusory world. Much of the claims [inaudible].
Dr. Jill 07:58
We do. We recreate it on our optical cortex. You know what's interesting about that? I recently interviewed a neurotypical talking about neurotypicals. And I thought: “I love that realm because, what is neurotypical?” Dreams and delusion are borderline neurotypical. If you really look at the geniuses that have created the most change in the last decade, most of them were either neurotypical or borderline schizophrenic. The insights, the wisdom.
Dr. Jill 08:30
And I want to stand here as a medical doctor, as you too: I'm not saying that we don't need to care for and treat patients who have mental illness. This is nothing of that sort. I want to be very, very careful because you need to see your doctor if you have issues. But the constraints of how we view the world, I have an open mind and am just like you in seeing: “Wait, this is a spectrum.” And we're all on the neurotypical spectrum; it's just a matter of how much. And I don't like labels because labels put someone in a box and they judge. There's a judgment with a label saying this is good or bad. And the truth is, what if some of our most genius, beautiful minds were those kinds that are on the edge of reality but bring to us insights and wisdom? I'm open.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 09:12
Yeah. As they say, words imprison you. And as they say when you're doing spiritual practices, concepts imprison you. You have to stay at the perceptual level rather than the conceptual level. I have a definition of genius and insanity that my students love, which is: Genius is the capacity to see patterns where others say there are not, while insanity is the insistence that such patterns exist even though they are not. So you have to really tread that line between the two.
Dr. Jill 09:53
And I just wrote down another definition I read just yesterday. I'm going to read it. It is similar in a different realm. “Genius actually means attendant spirit, being in the presence of something unseen but near it. It really is a definition of the wholeness of the Divine, another way of acknowledging the unseen stream we all swim in.”
Dr. Ted Achacoso 10:11
Right. The unseen stream.
Jill, many of the things that I start stem from a frustration, much like you. It starts from a frustration.
Dr. Jill 10:27
You see a problem without a solution and you say, “What else can we do?”
Dr. Ted Achacoso 10:32
And this problem was like a slap on my face. This was probably 15 years ago. I was lecturing physicians—about 500 physicians—on the mitochondria. It was going to be a two-hour lecture, etc. So I asked the regulatory commission to provide CME credits because it was a long lecture, etc. And the response to me was: “Mitochondria? Physicians already know about that. So no. No CME credits for you.” It was a slap on my face. I took that very personally. And I said, “This is [as] if that whole field hadn't developed anymore ever since we graduated from medical school.”
Dr. Jill 10:27
Right. Like it's done.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 11:14
Yeah, yeah.
And I tell my students also that when we were growing up, the bone marrow was the largest immune system of the body. Now we know it's the gut. Things are changing all the time and nothing is really permanent. That's why I started Health Optimization Medicine and Practice. Health Optimization Medicine at home is for physicians. Health Optimization Practice is for non-physician healthcare practitioners. Because I do find that non-physician healthcare practitioners are more committed to their clients than doctors are committed to the health of their patients.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 11:54
The premise of this is very simple, really. As I said, even when I finished my board certification in Paris in anti-aging medicine, traditional medicine, I took nutritional medicine over there as an aside, because at that time, it wasn't offered here in the United States. The second reason is that “How will I be believed here in the United States when there are so many who are corpulent? So I could land and everyone, ‘Hmm.'” Anyway, it was still all disease-oriented.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 12:27
I said, “Let's go down to the level of the cell.” At the level of the cell, it underlies all of the tissues and organs of the body. And I said, “Who takes care of your nucleus, your mitochondria, your cytoplasm, your microtubules, your cell membrane, and the networks among them?” And I said, “There's no one.” I liken it to—okay, you go to your oncologist because you have cancer. She'll kill all of your cancer cells and also kill or weaken a lot of your healthy cells.
Dr. Jill 12:56
Yeah, the good rapidly dividing cells.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 12:58
Yeah, the healthy cells. So I said, “There has to be a specialty that takes care of the healthy cells.” And that's what was missing in our medical school. Just because the body is functioning, we are already immediately thrust into pathogenesis. It's like, we don't even know how the body functions optimally. We're already saying, “Okay, this is how the car breaks down,” without even knowing that, “Hey, every 3,000 miles, your body should get this.” A car is better because it has all these lights and warnings that say: Your windshield wiper fluid is low. Yeah, your car will run. Or your tire pressure is mildly low. Your car will run, but it will not run optimally. And I think that's what's missing.
Dr. Jill 13:44
I do too. We have this trajectory in the ICD-10, disease state, but what about way before then? In your learning and your board certifications, I'd love to know, especially for the listeners to hear—we have this traditional training—what was surprising to you that you learned that we were not taught in medical school?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 14:01
Okay. I actually participated in the ICD-10 creation. I was just shoved in there because it's done 10 years ahead of time. The making is done 10 years ahead of time. And like, “Holy shit!” I said: “This thing is really geared for payments. It's not geared for disease at all.” That's the big realization that I got. It has nothing to do with diagnosis. I said: “When did pregnancy become a disease? And when is frostbite a disease?” But all of this was all geared towards: How do you pay for these services? That was the biggest letdown for me. When you said that was the realization, I said, “Okay…”
Dr. Jill 14:51
To realize we had a disease care system, not a healthcare system, right?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 14:53
Yes!
Dr. Jill 14:55
I think patients are shifting. Especially since the pandemic, people realize the government, the healthcare system, and the insurance companies are not keeping us healthy. We realize that more and more. There's a shift. But I love that you say that for those listeners who maybe don't realize [it] because it is not a system that's going to keep you healthy. You have to take the initiative.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 15:14
No, it's not at all. Because the very thing where you do your classifications is exactly how you pay for these diseases.
So, this really got me thinking, Jill: “What if I started a new specialty or a new certification program where you ask, not ‘What's the root cause of disease?' but ‘What's the root cause of health?'” So I shifted: What's the root cause of health? And that's what Health Optimization Medicine is all about.
Dr. Jill 15:43
Wow.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 15:51
So we're going down to salutogenesis. It's really very simple. If people only knew that this is really simple. It's difficult because now we have to really get inside the cell and see what the cell's doing. We measure their metabolome or metabolite levels. And particularly because of an influential paper, for me at least, that was put out by Robert Naviaux—
Dr. Jill 16:16
Yes. The cell danger response. I love the work, yes.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 16:19
Yes. That became the basis for why I started Health Optimization Medicine and Practice.
Dr. Jill 16:26
So let's pause there. I want you to describe it for our listeners because that's so critical. It changed the trajectory of my career as well. Can you just summarize the cell danger response for those listening who haven't ever heard of that?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 16:36
Yes. The cell danger response is as follows: Let's take it from a usual evolutionary point of view. The cell under stress from whatever—physical, emotional, chemical, even your husband or your wife—will respond in just eight ways to the stress. What it will do is use metabolites to drive that response in order to protect itself. The metabolites drive the cell danger response, whether or not it's going to be acute, where your body will use its resources to quell down the cell danger response. Or it will become chronic if you are unsuccessful in removing the chronic stress. So that's the cell danger response.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 17:34
It's very fundamental, which, by the way, reminds me, Jill: When I saw that article, it reminded me… I don't know if you used Robbins as your textbook in pathology medicine. It was very funny that on the first page, there was this long footnote: “The cell can only undergo the following changes when it's dying.” And it's like, necrosis, necrolysis, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I memorized that. And in our first pathology exam, it was fill-in-the-blanks for all of those 12 basic changes. It's like, “Why don't we go to the basics—to the fundamentals?” So if they have that for pathogenesis, we also have that for salutogenesis. For me, the optimal levels of metabolites—
Dr. Jill 18:20
Now, once again, I'm going to pause real quick. Salutogenesis—those who are listening are maybe like, “Okay, what is that?”—just define that term because I get what you're saying; I want to make sure our listeners are following you.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 18:28
All right. Pathogenesis is the root causes of disease. Viruses, bacteria, etc.—those are pathogenesis. Salutogenesis is the root causes of health. When you take a look at the root causes of health, you don't have a goal now. In disease, you have to either be cured or you have to be maintained on meds for your disease if you have a chronic disease. But in salutogenesis, it's always after optimization. You have to optimize health periodically. It doesn't stay there.
Dr. Jill 19:04
The law of entropy is always in effect.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 19:07
Right. So you see that in pathogenesis, whatever you do—drugs, surgery, etc.—has to work for the population. Your drug has to work for a population. Your intervention in surgery has to work for the population. That's why there is evidence-based illness medicine. But in health optimization medicine, in salutogenesis, we are evidence-informed.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 19:35
One time I had an argument with a really prominent cardiologist, and I said: “Well, your patient asks for rosaries every time in the hospital. Is that evidence-based?” And it just shocked him that I would ask a question like that. Then he asked me: “This thing about this metabolism mitochondria, is that evidence-based?” I said, “When you were studying biochemistry, did you ask for evidence for these things?” And the angrier he got, of course. But it's just pushing back. When you get to the root cause of health, then suddenly it has to work for that person. It now becomes personalized medicine, so you are now giving your protocols to that person only.
Dr. Jill 20:21
I love that you say that because for years and years, people [have been saying], “What's your protocol for this, Dr. Jill?” I don't do protocols. I listen to that patient—that n of 1—and I personalize and then change if it's not working. But I am doing a protocol individual[ly]. I don't call it protocols. But I love that because it's so powerful. When we practice personalized medicine, there is no one-size-fits-all. It's actually detrimental to the patient if you have that blinder on to think that there's one protocol for one condition. It doesn't work that way.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 20:51
It's funny because [for] two of my patients, there was a newspaper picture once where I was standing with two postmenopausal women. It basically, in gest, said: “Dr. Ted's girlfriends—postmenopausal women dripping in diamonds.” But the key there is that I saw them at a party and they were talking to each other, and it's like: “Oh, what is Dr. Ted giving you?” “He's giving me this.” “Oh, he's not giving me that; he's giving me this.” I said: “It's different. Each of you has different needs and therefore you're not given a one-size-fits-all.” That's the difference in personalized medicine.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 21:35
For me, optimal means to drive back what your cell needs to between 21 and 30 years old. I call that metabolic neotenization. Us, it's like, “Oh, we accept aging gracefully.” But your basic cell can survive and thrive if you give it what it needs—if you give it exactly what it needs. I tell the patients also: “Hey, we don't do the illness medicine cutoffs. We do the cutoffs between 21 and 30 years old.” I define the one for health optimization to be age 21 to 30 at the 50th to 75th percentile. I'm even kind there. In Europe, it's 25 plus/minus two standard deviations—age 25 years. It's basically moving your entire metabolic network to that particular period in time where your health was supposed to be optimal.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 22:41
What's interesting is that for evolutionary-derived values, of which I'm very strict, like vitamin D—I like to drive vitamin D 50 and higher because that's evolutionary-derived. It's been there for 600 to 700 million years. The receptor has been there. I don't have the right to say, “Oh no.” And it's just so frustrating to see articles even coming from Harvard two, three years ago still asking, “What's the optimal level of vitamin D?”
Dr. Jill 23:09
Right. We know that. We know, don't we?
What would you say are the most common things that you're seeing related to our environment and the world that we live in and the stresses?—because I think we're seeing more and more patterns related to this. And then after that, let's talk about: What would be some of the practical ways that patients could start to think about changing those patterns?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 23:33
You're talking about exposomics now—your exposure to all things. And it's very important because we think that we are separate from the environment. No. If you're together in the family, you become part of the environment of your spouse and your children. Your children will view you as part of their environment. For me, the way I internalize that is a beautiful diagram that I saw when I was a biology major: When the stomata of the leaves of the plant is blowing out its oxygen and a person breathing and exhaling carbon dioxide in the cycle, it's like, “Wow, I'm an open system!” I'm basically an energetically open system. That image alone made me say: “Wait a minute! Someone's got to stop cutting down the trees in the Amazon because that's the earth's lungs.” When you consider the earth as a living being, that's the lungs of the earth. Someone's got to stop polluting the rivers because it's the earth's circulatory system. You could see the tidal changes and the changes in ocean current, etc. You then begin to think a lot bigger.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 24:50
Much of the triggers that we have, the things that have crept up recently, are heavy metals in our food. I have lots of mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. Cadmium has seeped into our water from the rebars in the 1940s that were coated with cadmium and they've now gotten razed into the ground and got into the water system. Mercury has always been a problem with fish. And then arsenic. I have a funny story with this one because the wife called me—her husband had high arsenic levels—and said: “I am not poisoning my husband.” [laughter] Remember Arsenic and Old Lace?
Dr. Jill 25:43
Yes, yes.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 25:44
But anyway, that's the first area of stressors that we have. The second area of stressors that we have that we are not paying attention to is phototoxicity. The light. This is how we conquer the night and this is how a lot of chronic problems began. There's an epidemic of insomnia. There's an epidemic of sleeplessness around the world. And basically, because we have removed the part that says: Okay, time for you to go the parasympathetic, guys. We have incurred on that a lot—the way we have incurred on, say, the territories of mosquitoes that have malaria by slashing and burning or going through the site. These are our human incursions. In fact, we're now called the Anthropocene Age. We're actually changing the whole environment as a species.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 26:38
The other thing that we have not paid attention to is electromagnetic radiation. These are very real. For example, I advised a leukemic patient to move away from high-tension lines, etc. The leukemia improved. But because he got a new house again with the high power lines because his kid had to go to a better school and so on, therefore, the leukemia just started to deteriorate again.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 27:16
There are many things like this, but one of the most insidious things that we don't notice are the people right around us. They can be extremely toxic, and that will deprive you of the best years of your life. I am known to counsel couples, for example, to do a sleep divorce. If you are getting bothered by your partner's snoring, then go sleep in another room. Go sleep in another room. I can't forget the study where they put an IV catheter, and for each snore, there was a spike in cortisol. That was a really interesting study.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 28:06
The main part of this, Jill, I think, is that our bodies are definitely paleo. It is made for nomadic existence. I joke around that the females were the ones who invented weightlifting because they had to carry kids, they had to carry water, they had to pick up fruits, etc. There are some women in weightlifting. It's men who developed aerobics because they had to run. HIIT was running after a rabbit that would stop and then run again. It was HIIT if you were pursuing an elk, for example. That's long-distance running. So men were into aerobics. It's not the other way around.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 28:42
You could see that we are definitely a paleo species. Therefore, the main problem is the impedance mismatch between the world that we have created to where our bodies—the make and model—are no longer being adapted. And that's what we're trying to do with Health Optimization Medicine: What are the science and technology remedies that we could have to bring us back? Say, EMF remediation, the lights that follow the sunlight outside.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 29:13
I grew up in the tropics, so I have almost equal day and night. And here I have seasons. Like, “What do I follow?”
Dr. Jill 29:20
“What do I do?” It's interesting. I want to mention that with jet lag, I'm an absolute pro at hacking jet lag. And it's so simple, and most people think it's so complex. It's literally your sleep-wake cycle related to light and darkness and food. If you control the food and the light and darkness, you will never have jet lag.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 29:39
Oh, I just discovered a new hack, which I tried because I go to the Philippines anywhere between two to five times a year and stay there for 30 days. And I have to be on to be able to see patients right away or when lecturing. The light that we know, but the food—I eat my dinner here at around 7:30 at night. There's now a 13-hour difference. But at the time I tried this as well with the time difference. I normally don't eat breakfast here. I anchored one meal, so I ate breakfast there at 7:30 in the morning, and my body had a better adjustment.
Dr. Jill 30:17
It's night and day. I always calculate what I'm going to eat, and I skip because when you get on most planes, you're getting on a night flight, at least to, say, Europe, and they're serving you dinner. That's like the morning over in Spain, for example. You have to tell them no. I put on my blocking glasses. I don't eat. And then I wake up when everybody else is sleeping on the plane and say, “Okay, I need coffee, I need…” I've never had jet lag when I do that—when I have my meals according to the time I'm going to. And then I block out the light when it's supposed to be dark because my retina knows the difference. And it's funny because it's not about taking melatonin or sleep aids. It's literally about light and food.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 30:53
And it's quite interesting for people who travel a lot and go the long haul miles that I do, is that when it's noon over where I'm going, it's midnight here. It's so difficult to eat at noon because you feel like throwing up because your gut is essentially like: No, I'm closed for business.
Dr. Jill 31:17
Like, “Wait, no, no, no.” Yeah.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 31:21
That's the thing: Our bodies are not intended for jet lag. You put that in as an example.
Jill 31:25
And actually, that's a physiological stressor that we push through. But we can make our way easier if we use light, use the Schumann frequency of the earth, grounding, and use the food, and avoid sugar and alcohol. I think those are real detriments as well.
Dr. Jill 31:43
What do you see? You're such a visionary. I can tell with all that you've done. First of all, I'm a fan of methylene blue and some of the new things you've done with Troscriptions. I want to talk about that. Maybe let's talk about that. And then I want to talk about the future—what else do you see coming on the horizon?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 32:03
I formulated the products of Troscriptions because I needed them. The first thing is that I needed to have an equivalent of anti-ADHD medication, which is not addicting and when I land, I'll be on. And that's a source—the Blue Cannatine. I put methylene in blue there to be an electron donor to the Krebs cycle. And then I looked at nicotine and said, “Well, this is a forgotten nootropic.”
Dr. Jill 32:32
It's acetylcholine, right?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 32:34
Yeah. It's like, “I don't know why people are so afraid of it.” And it's very little that I put in there. It's only like one milligram. In fact, it was very funny; I was talking to an FDA lawyer. He was like, “Oh, no, you can't put it there.” And I said, “Well, you're selling gum with four milligrams by the 400 pack at CVS. Why can't I put one milligram in here?” Then he said, “Well, if you put it that way.” [laughter]
Dr. Ted Achacoso 33:01
Good for you.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 33:03
It's very, very interesting how lopsidedly we look at these things. You can buy gum at four milligrams for 400 pieces, but you cannot buy one single thing with one milligram in it intended for me. Most of our inventions are for my needs. Most inventors say that “necessity is the mother of invention.” But for me, it's actually laziness is the mother of invention.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 33:31
The next one, for example, Just Blue, pure methylene blue, was a request from our consumers. They noticed: “Hey, we saw some studies that [show that] it's being used in cognitive decline, and we see our parents having cognitive decline.” So that was a response to that. And I studied what was being used in the studies being done at NIH, and I said, “I can do this.” Eight milligrams are used for cognitive decline; sixteen milligrams for Parkinson's. That's why Just Blue is 16 milligrams.
Dr. Jill 34:00
I'll just tell you my experience: I've been 20 years in functional/integrative medicine and have been using methylene blue for the tough cases with Lyme and Babesia. We know it's an antimicrobial. But very high doses. And there are a lot of side effects associated with above 50 milligrams. So I've been dealing with that. And I've had these great, profound changes with these very low doses, like in Troscriptions. I'm using it in POTS dysautonomia.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 34:23
Oh, thank you!
Dr. Ted Achacoso 34:25
That was also a request from practitioners. We have a 50-milligram troche that's practitioner-only because practitioners like you know very well how to use it. And you can quarter them.
Dr. Jill 34:35
But I'm finding the lower doses are better. I like the lower doses better all around.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 34:38
Yeah, you can quarter them. That's the reason why they're troche. It's a good delivery mechanism. You can quarter them. You could halve them depending on the dose that you want to use.
Dr. Jill 34:49
Tell us about the new immune one, because I find that fascinating.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 34:51
Yes, yes. I formulated that for sleep because it's an adenosine mimic. It's cordycepin from the cordyceps mushroom. And the pure one, they studied it for sleep. It induces deep sleep because that's something that I have only two or three minutes of a night. Now I have like 53 minutes, 54 minutes, nightly, which is pretty good.
Dr. Jill 35:19
Oh, I get that question a lot from someone who's tracking on their Oura or their Fitbit or their Garmin and they're not getting good deep sleep. I use PMF at the Schumann frequency, but I love the idea of this adenosine receptor. So you're saying that you have seen it—at least n of 1, personally—increasing deep sleep.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 35:36
Yeah. And it's been studied in humans to do that.
I looked more closely at the molecule and out came all the research on it. It's been studied for breast cancer, for chronic asthma, for [being] all-around neuroprotective. When I formulate something, I want it to be anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective at the same time. And that was the first thing that came up. It is basically a neuroprotective agent.
Dr. Jill 36:14
Do we know the mechanism of that cordyceps analog for… is it T cell function? Or do we know any sort of immune mechanism?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 36:19
No. We don't know the immune mechanism. We know the apparent anti-cancer mechanism, but we don't know the immune-boosting effect yet. We don't know the immune-boosting effect yet. It's very funny, and I should say this because I worked on this for a year, trying different things out and looking at all the literature and seeing what was really happening: The price of cordyceps then was 1x because we were using the pure 100% pure extract. And then, by the end of the year, it was 5x because all of the studies [inaudible]—
Dr. Jill 36:56
The research had come out.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 36:58
Yeah. The research came out. And even increasing the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood, they say athletes should take this. And I tell them athletes should take this at night before they sleep because sometimes it really makes you sleepy. So, that's the genesis of that. And the future will have a lot of those that are geared towards practitioners because the patients or the clients need better handling because these are now higher doses of things.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 37:35
For example, we are going to have a sort of knockout formula called Trosomna that's coming up, which affects the same receptors as Ambien. It has agarin in it. And it has two milligrams of agarin per [inaudible], and eight milligrams may get you high. These are the kinds of things that I'm very, very aware of. That's why this has to be prescribed by—
Dr. Jill 38:09
Regulated. Exactly. Yeah, it makes sense.
Amazing! I love, love, love your curious mind and your ability to put so many different areas together. And I love that you've developed these products because, like I said, I'm in clinical practice using them and recommending them. If you happen to be listening and wondering, just know the show notes are going to have everything you need as far as Troscriptions and details. We'll be sure to link up all the products we talked about today. I love that. But I love the bigger picture of what you're doing.
Dr. Jill 38:36
Any last bits of wisdom for someone with salutogenesis who's like, “Where do I start?” Do you want to give us a couple of tips on what to start if they're out there listening and want some tips on living well and optimizing their cells?
Dr. Ted Achacoso 38:49
Yes. It's going to be in your notes. Go to homehope.org and take a look at what we have to offer, what we're all about. You'll see there about salutogenesis, neotenization, [inaudible]—all of these new terms that are already there but have not been introduced. But for those who say they cannot afford the testing, this is what I tell them: Sleep well. Hydrate well, sun well, ground well, eat well, relate well, and love well. Those are the key ingredients to health.
Dr. Jill 39:32
Wow! That's the mic drop point. I couldn't say it better. And I love that you ended on love. I know we had a conversation before about the spiritual essence of how we show up and how that is part of the healing. I would just echo that, if you're out there listening, I love the order—the sleep starting and the love ending—but they're all so critical.
Dr. Jill 39:55
Dr. Ted, thank you, number one for coming on the show and number two for all the brilliant work that you do and continue to do. It is a delight to have you. And thanks again for coming on.
Dr. Ted Achacoso 40:04
Thank you for having me, Jill.
Dr. Jill 40:06
You're welcome.
So much fun, guys. Thank you again for listening to this episode with Resiliency Radio. Of course, you know you could find all the transcripts [and] all the episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts or watch on YouTube. You can also find all the downloaded transcriptions at JillCarnahan.com. Please stop by, leave us a review, and join us again next week for another episode.
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