Maximize Patient Outcomes and Practice Profitability with Robotic Laser Technology

TruGen3 May 31, 2023

Tyler: Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Love to see everyone joining in. We’re just gonna wait a few more seconds for everyone to join in before we get started. All right. Okay. I think we’ll go ahead and get started. Awesome.

Welcome everyone to the Tuesday webinar series. My name is Tyler Mikson with Chiropractic Economics. And in today's webinar, it's gonna be compelling clinical strategies to address seasonal allergies and beyond. This webinar is brought to you by TruGen3.

Our presenter for today is going to be Dr. Chris Meletis. He is an educator, an international author, and lecturer. His mission is changing world's health, one person at a time. And Dr. Meletis has authored 18 books and over 200 national scientific articles. Dr. Meletis has also served as the dean of naturopathic medicine and the chief medical officer for seven years for the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. And he is also the American Association's… Oh, I’m sorry. The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians awarded him the 2003 physician of the year. And he has a deep passion for helping the underprivileged, and spearheaded the creation of 16 free natural medicine healthcare clinics in the Portland metropolitan area. Without further ado, Dr. Meletis, I’m gonna hand it off to you.

Dr. Meletis: Thank you very much, Tyler. And welcome everybody. It's exciting to talk to you about allergies, kind of, sort of. Because I have allergies, I never look forward to allergy season except it's some of the most beautiful times of the year. So, today we’re gonna learn about what to do about allergies, some helpful hints for ourselves, our family, our patients, and we’re gonna have some very simple takeaways. But my challenge to myself is to provide a pearl that you have never heard about. So, hopefully, you’ll get more than one along the way. But I’ve been doing this for 30 years, so hopefully, I’ve learned something. As I learned something from everybody, hopefully, you’ll learn something from me today.

We’ll talk about adaptogens, botanical supplementation. That’ll be part of our conversation, but there's gonna some very practical sides of things in addition to that. We’re gonna talk about secretory IgA. We know secretory IgA coats our eyes, our nose, our throat, our lungs, and our GI tract. Very important during allergy season, but for our immune system year around. Most of you work at very close proximity to human beings, doing cervical adjustments. They’re breathing on you. And the reality is how do you take care of your secretory IgA, so you can show up to work? And how do they show up for work? Because, once again, mucus membranes. And we’re gonna talk about some simple dietary recommendations. And when I say simple, it's we’re not talking about the ABCs or food pyramid, but we’re saying what should you not eat during a given season? So, is ragweed season in your area, now, or in the near future? There's certain foods you’re gonna learn about today you probably don't wanna be eating if ragweed has your number, has, what, the number of your friends and your family, and your patients. We’ll also talk about the interaction between foods and seasonal allergies, and sinusitis, and allergic rhinitis.

We know the word, -itis. That's inflammation. Bursitis, tendinitis. Well, when people have allergies and food sensitivities, a lot of times they’re gonna have more aches and pains, that achy breakiness. And then in addition, whenever we get irritated, something comes to my eye, my eye will water. Something comes up my nose, my nose will water. And we get bad food, it’ll exit one way or the other. But mucus is both a friend and a foe. And so, with mucus, what we wanna do is have enough to flush things out, but we’ve all had a runny nose, maybe a viral illness, allergies. But then, all over sudden, starting to turn color. You have [inaudible 00:04:01] green… So, we’ll talk about that too today, and how having a daily routine of supplementation's very important year around, 365, 366 on leap years.

So, if I was to say allergies, you’d say, "Gesundheit." Sneezing mostly, maybe itchy eyes, maybe a scratchy throat. But sometimes it's brain fog. Sometimes it's asthma. Sometimes it's eczema, because we know the term "atopic triad," A-T-O-P-I-C, atopic triad, hay fever, eczema, asthma. Hopefully, we control that, so our patients don't get all three of those. But the reality is, allergies happen, food sensitivities happen. And when our inflammation goes up, we’re not the best us we can be. Our patients are… And of course we all know, healthier patients, happier patients.

So, if I sit here and took a deep breath, hopefully through my nose, because after all we’ve all been hearing about breathing through your nose increases nitric oxide levels. So, you don't wanna be breathing through your mouth. You wanna be breathing through your nose. But easier said than done during allergy season. But if you think about, we’re ingesting air. In fact, if all of a sudden I couldn't breathe, it's called air hunger. We all know that term. So, we’re ingesting air, we’re ingesting food. But 60% of all food allergic reactions occur from cross-reaction with food and pollen. We’ll chat more about that. So, if you controlled your environment in terms of what you’re breathing, foods will become a little less problematic. The only thing is, we can't choose when we can or cannot breathe. So, avoiding foods also helps us lessen that burden when it comes to allergies and food sensitivities.

And I’ll give this classic example. Every once in a while, I get a creative imagination and say, if I was this person, AKA, had hair, was that flexible to get down, let alone up from there. But what's the problem with this person? Their little blue backpack. They packed away some organic Nutella hazelnut butter. So, they had some non-GMO soy, they have some celery, some apples, for which surely are to put their Nutella butter on? And they have carrots. But that's exactly what they don't want to have while sitting in the grove of birch trees. And you’re saying, "Chris, what are you talking about? Those are all reasonable." And you can argue the soy. You can argue one or more of the things. But if you look here, what do we see? Birch trees cross-react with all these things. So, no matter where you are in the country, you want to know what pollens are in your area. And we’ll talk about that too, and a very easy way to know.

So, patients are coming in suffering. You tell them to go check out this website, which I’ll mention, but now, birch trees, we just got done with birch trees up here in Oregon. But what should I not eat during birch season because of the cross-reaction? Can't control the fact that my dark blue car was lime green from birch pollen. But I can control the foods which I’m consuming. But it all comes down to [inaudible 00:07:04] hitting our mucus membrane. So, if I have enough secretory IgA, made by our body every day, the proverbial Scotchgard, Armor All of our bodies, life is great, but what lowers it? Well, I wrote my undergraduate thesis in 1988, at Reed College here in Oregon, on psychosocial stress and immunosuppression. So, the more stressed out we are, the lower our secretory IgA, and the more susceptible we are.

So, there's a way to increase that IgA. You’re actually gonna waterproof yourself a little bit more against the world. But we can't control stress. We’ve all survived about three years of extra stress, and all the news feeds, but all that stress of just hearing the news feeds and all the things that we couldn't control also made us more susceptible. So, theoretically, we should have all went just "Om," and just zenned out during that time. Easier said than done, once again. But look at ragweed. Ragweed's gonna be very prevalent in the Southern states, but also some other places in the country. If you’re going out on a picnic, don't have melon, don't have zucchini, don't have cucumber, and don't have a banana before you go out. And same thing with mugwort. So, if you can know where those pollens were, would that be helpful? And we’ll chat about that. So, 95% of birch tree allergic patients also suffer from allergies to celery or carrots. Interesting. So, once again, food, inhaled. So, that's important. And that's really the takeaway on this slide.

But now we go for peaches. Let's imagine you’re really peachy in Georgia. Well, 55% cross-reaction. If you have a peach issue, apples, plums, pears, cherries, apricots, and almonds can be problematic. So, now, can you imagine if you had some nuts with some peaches and some dried cherries? Problematic. Or if you have a cantaloupe issue, avocado, banana, kiwi, watermelon, and peach. So, 92% crossover there. That's in the peer-review literature. So, once again, seeing that there is this big reaction that occurs with various foods. So, now, why am I talking about foods? Aren't we talking about seasonal allergies, Chris? Yes, but remember, we can't always choose when we can breathe, but we can choose foods which we can consume, and that's important.

And it comes down to the straw on the camel's back. So, we want to have great secretory IgA levels. So, all the stress, we need to figure out, how can I bump up my IgA levels to protect my mucus membranes? "I can't control my stress any more than I could control my breathing, Chris." And the reality is, you might have some carrots in your life, you might have some apples in your life, some non-GMO soy, some hazelnut filberts. But lo and behold, you ate that celery, and it had your number. But that's not the only thing in this picture. That camel's breathing too. And that's that seasonal allergy side of things. So, now, I’m not gonna eat these foods if I’m already got a runny little camel nose, as a result of, once again, knowing I can control things, avoid the proverbial straw on the camel's back, lessening total burden.

So, we breathe, and once again, we should be breathing through our nose. We all know this, and if you haven't known it before, you’ve learned it a lot, most recently, breathing through your nose increases nitric oxide levels. Why is that important? Well, because nitric oxide levels vasodilate, they expand blood vessels, they help with neurotransmitters, they help with a myriad of things, including sleep. And what can't you do when you have a stuffy nose? Sleep very well. And so, when we get stuffy, we’re not able to exercise with our nitric oxide inducing nasal breathing. And so, now imagine if some of the shows and commercials we see to tape your mouth. Well, not if you have no nasal capacity. So, our goal is to see how can we keep those nasal passages open?

And so, up to 80% of people who suffer from birch pollen have food allergies, we know that as a fact. And also, in addition, what we find is, in a Westernized world, the developed world, birch pollen is a form of the allergic [inaudible 00:11:15] most commonly accompanied with food allergies. So, when we look at that and we look at birch trees, and we look at things like Nutella, and V8 Juice, with carrot, mango, or applesauce, or soy, we’re seeing that cross-reaction. And so, with all of that said… And all these slides, by the way, are going to be made available for you. So, you can actually have them, you can refer to them. And, at the same time, it's gonna be several other resources that, as we go along here, will be made available to you, including a list of histamine-rich foods, and a series of lectures I give that are very in-depth on everything from sports, athletics, of course, CBD, a whole series of lectures on CBD, and inflammation as well.

But [inaudible 00:11:57] if I told you there's certain foods that your patients are eating that if they could avoid them while they’re suffering from allergic rhinitis, or sinusitis, or eczema, they can lessen their problem. [inaudible 00:12:09] have done this for 30 years, have created this list. So, first off, when we look at histamine and allergies, once again, it could be a runny nose. If that's the only thing you have, you’re lucky. But you can see IBS can be a problem. Chronic headaches can be a problem, shortness of breath, anxiety, unexplained dizziness, fatigue, heart palpitations, all from histamine. So, by avoiding these foods, lo and behold, you can start alleviating some of the histamine burden. After all, we all know the term antihistamine, but all an antihistamine is is a mop. It's mopping up the mess. What we wanna do is prevent the mess.

So, if all of a sudden we know we’re gonna be bombarded with environmental allergens, we also want to avoid these foods. And I, silly me, the Greek part of me, and I’m half-Greek, half-German, well, actually, 48% of each, [inaudible 00:13:04] DNA. Well, I was eating spanakopita, little spinach pies, every day for breakfast and lunch in all my crazy weight loss ventures. And it's not only is spinach amongst the dirty dozen foods, it is also high in histamine. So, eventually, my allergies were getting worse and worse and worse. But I was fueling that with the food I was eating. And you can see, the same thing with smoked and cured foods. Aged cheese, and my favorite cheese was a sharp Tillamook cheddar, because we’re known for our Tillamook cheddar cheese here in Oregon. Now I go for a mild cheese, because I’ve learned that these foods really do me in.

And likewise, things like wheat germ, and cinnamon, and citrus can also cause more histamine release. And at that same time I was doing that weird spinach diet, I was drinking 64 ounces of black tea per day. Iced, unsweetened black tea. That blocked my DAO, diamine oxidase. So, my body makes DAO, your body mixed DAO every day, unless you have some odd genetic mutation. And so, as a result, that DAO was being blocked, I was stirring up the spinach, I was having nuts, I was having aged cheese. And it's like, no wonder I started getting itchy, and all of a sudden, as those allergies [inaudible 00:14:17] and I was getting ready to give a big lecture in another part of the country, so I was gonna get on an airplane, I actually had avocado, in the form of guacamole, and kiwi about three nights before I actually was supposed to fly out, and I got [inaudible 00:14:32] and my lips swelled up, my tongue swelled up, my face swelled up, and it was pretty hard to breathe.

And needless to say, I did myself in. So, this is very real, I’ve experienced it. So, this is a handout that, at the very end, you can see where to ask for it. It's a beautiful little handout. It goes into also some nutrients you can do to also support your histamine degradation as well. So, this is my favorite thing to refer to, pollen.com. Here's the United States, figure out where you are, and see how hot of a mess you are. I just moved back to Oregon. We spent four months in Arizona, and while I was in Arizona, of course, lucky me, I was all red, with all the different pollens because, of course, it's warmer. But now if I typed in Oregon City, Oregon… There really is a place called Oregon City, Oregon. You can see what yesterday was. The scale here's up to 12. Twelve is the max. That's the crescendo.

And so, you see yesterday was medium high. Today, 7.9. Tomorrow… So, you can type in your zip code or your city into pollen.com, it's a free site, and you can identify how bad things are, and what foods or substances are available. I also have cross-reactivity sheets you can ask for, which helps you tell food versus environmentals, and environmentals within environmentals, so you can also ask for, that I’ve created for my patients over the years. Welcome to use them with your patients as well. So, this is a five-day forecast for Oregon City, Oregon. And so you can see which day do I not wanna go outside? Thursday. Thursday by far is the worst. Monday would’ve been the best to go out and do something, but sometimes it’ll spike up to a 9, 10, 11, 12, and it's just like, all of a sudden, like, "Okay, I’m not going outside." So, once again, you can't choose when to breathe, but you can choose how much to breathe the stuff that you don't wanna be breathing. So, pollen.com.

So, once again, presents in all kinds of ways, but it could be a headache, could be forgetfulness, and also attention deficit. It can also worsen dementia, and it definitely will worsen inflammatory processes. Histamine and the cytokines, we learned that term a lot during the COVID era, well, all of these things stir the cytokines. And if you’re doing IgT testing, we know it also triggers alternate complement pathway. But wait. There's more. Where, if I say mucus, moisture, or warmth, I say Petri dish. So, guess what? We have mucus in our bodies, all over the place. Respiratory tract, genital, urinary, throughout our GI tract. We’re moist, and we’re warm. So we’re Petri dishes.

And so, what happens during allergy season, you start with a little runny nose, but you got a little stress or a little cold or bacteria came by, or resided in you, but you’re worn down enough, and you got enough mucus. So, one of the keys here is to control mucus. So, the more irritated my eye is, and I give my eye a lot as an example, because we know about watering eyes and itchy eyes with allergies. Well, the more irritated it gets, the more mucus it creates, the more secretions it makes. Same thing with our nasal and our lungs. So, we have to control that mucus, and there's ways to do that. One is that secretory IgA. We have a potential solution for that. But also, once we get that thick, gooey mucus, that post-nasal drip, how do we get rid of it? We have a potential solution there as well.

So, here's our sinuses, serving a wonderful function of, hopefully, not collecting too much mucus, because [inaudible 00:18:14] what's gonna grow things. But they’re moisturizing our air. And as we learned, and have been learning more and more, nitric oxide levels are induced when we breathe through our nose. It's also important, when we’re supporting nitric oxide, also to have a very healthy oral microbiome. And part of that is not using Listerine and other strong antimicrobials in your mouth every day, because it kills off your friendly bacteria that make nitric oxide. When you were 20 years old, and if you’re still 20, lucky you, well, you are making the highest nitric oxide of your lifetime. When you get around 50 or older, that would be me, I’m making a fraction, less than half of the nitric oxide that permeates the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in my body.

So, there is a product, it's called Tru Immune Support. We’ll talk about the ingredients. As you can see, vitamin C and zinc and astragalus, and EpiCor. EpiCor is an important one, and I have a story about that. Olive leaf, berberine, N-acetyl cysteine, garlic, and citrus bioflavonoids. So, when I was lecturing in Chicago, about 15, maybe almost 20 years ago, [inaudible 00:19:22] 18 years ago, I was sitting with a gentleman that actually owned the original factory that EpiCor was discovered in. And remember, back in the early 2000s, insurance premiums started rising for all of us, for our personal insurance, for our health insurance? Well, they actually did a study. They found this group in Iowa, and they were not ill. And I was like, what? What do you mean they were not ill? So, the office workers were more ill, but the laborers that were actually putting this yeast nutrients into the feed weren't ill.

And they found that the yeast was nibbling on the nutrients, and spilling out this substance they’ve now called EpiCor. The workers were inhaling it, and it actually was helping them not need healthcare. Like, hmm. Go figure that. That's the story. So, what they did was they looked at EpiCor, and they’ve studied it extensively. So, it all started way back when, with, at EpiCor, and by chance serendipity, why aren't these people getting ill? And so, now they’ve done double-blind randomized placebo-controlled studies, and they’ve found that 25 healthy individuals consumed 500 milligrams, so 0.5 grams, every day, or a placebo for five weeks. And they found a mild increase in salivary secretory IgA. Remember that Scotchgard [inaudible 00:20:42] your body? So, whether it be allergy season, cold season, a year-round, don't we want to fortify our defenses of our body? And the answer is yes. And so, minor complaints also that the individuals were suffering from actually also went down, and it supported our mucus membranes and healthy red blood cells. So, that sounds like a pretty good daily thing to do.

And then they look at the immunogenic yeast-derived EpiCor, and a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial again, and they looked, and they found that during the highest pollen count period, weeks one through six, EpiCor significantly reduced the mean severity of the airway symptoms, including a significant reduction in nasal congestion. Like, wow. So, one of the many ingredients in Tru Immune has a lot of research on it specifically with this. And remember, how was it discovered? By chance, in a Iowa manufacturing [inaudible 00:21:43] factory. Now, it's a patented, registered, trademarked ingredient, and one of many things that do the lifting in the product. So, and then he also found a significant reduction in total number of days in congestion. And their conclusion was this yeast-derived product appeared to be safe and efficacious. So, once again, individual results will vary, but it's part of my daily regime, it's part of my sister's daily regime, which is dealing with cancer right now, and many of my patients are on EpiCor on a daily basis, year around, just to create that Scotchgarding, waterproofing of the mucus membrane. Just make us a little less susceptible. I’m not making a claim on cancer and EpiCor. Just trying to keep her immune system strong while she's going through her therapies.

So, then we look at the antioxidant bioavailability of EpiCor, another double-blind study. And they found here, EpiCor consumption has been shown to increase erythrocyte hematocrit, boost mucosal immune protection, reduce cold and flu symptoms, reduce seasonal allergy symptoms, and the need for rescue medication. Yay. And, increased salivary secretory [inaudible 00:22:56]. Like, okay. All wonderful. Also with T-cells and natural killer cells. It's like, okay. This is a nice, once again, another study. And that's good. They’ve done so many studies, and as we know, as functional medicine providers, lots of times what we like to use just don't have the studies, but this has studies.

And then let's move over to astragalus. If you’re familiar at all with Chinese medicine, astragalus is very well-known. Astragalus is one of these oddball herbs. When I say oddball herbs, it possesses qualities that are also often attributed to another category. It's known as an adaptogen, but an immune adaptogen. We usually know of adaptogens from an adrenal perspective. Ginseng, and rhodiola, and ashwagandha, and maca, as great examples of adrenal adaptogens. Well, astragalus helps modulate the immune system. And as we can see here, astragalus was shown, in this study, to actually help with seasonal allergies. So, once again, this is a product I personally use, this combination of [inaudible 00:24:05] year around. But, once again, for seasonal allergies, why wouldn't I use it during allergy season, and why would I only keep it on my shelf during cold and flu season? So, from the time kids go back to school to spring. Well, now it's also important during spring time.

And so, in patients with the seasonal allergies, due to weed pollen and so forth, the [inaudible 00:24:28] revealed a significant number of positive signals making a therapeutic effectiveness, which should be further tested, of course, on larger trials. Always larger trials. And vitamin C, our friend. What do we have in common with a guinea pig, a fruit bat, the [inaudible 00:24:43] little bird, and primates? We cannot make vitamin C. Our kitty cat makes vitamin C, our dog makes vitamin C. But we cannot make vitamin C. We have the ability to make vitamin C, except for one of the enzymes, one of the four enzymes, that's to convert blood sugar into vitamin C's been shut off. So we must go toil in the fields and suffer. So, vitamin C is important. If we were to say, and all of a sudden, magically have the need to be equivalent to howler monkey, what would a howler monkey and us have in common? A need for vitamin C. And per kilogram of weight, they must consume about 88 milligrams per kilogram.

So, the average-weighted person, that's not overweight, that would equate to 5,000, 6,000 milligrams of vitamin C. We have a goat in your back pasture. When they get stressed, they make up to 13,000 milligrams of vitamin C. We fall short. Of course, we all know about scurvy, but the research shows here that vitamin C has lots of antioxidant effects, anti-inflammation effects. We don't make it. Our adrenal glands are high in vitamin C, and so we don't consume it, so we’re supplementing a good diet. So, even a modest amount on a daily basis is helpful. RDA is 60 milligrams for a non-smoker, 100 milligrams for a smoker. Way too low. But at least, let's cover the basis of recommended daily allowance that, work on the synergy of the formula, as you can see, [inaudible 00:26:10] with lung infections per the study, what's that, COPD study as well.

And so, like, hmm. Let's support the mucus membranes. Let's support our stress response. Because once again, when we get stressed, our immune system goes down, and we all know that. When I was a younger fellow and I ran the naturopathic university for seven years, I was super stressed, but I always dodged the bullet on being ill, until I took a vacation, and some of you might experience this. I took a vacation, all of a sudden, I’d get sick. And it's like, and my analogy was I slowed down enough that they caught up with me, the bacteria and the viruses that wanted to get me. But clearly, it was a stress response, emotional response, and my body was able to get ill, because I allowed it time.

And getting ill is a good thing. For those people that don't get ill regularly, they don't get a cold and so forth, I actually worry more about them, because you want to have a good, strong immune response. Remember, as children, and if you have kids, you know, they get sick, they get a really good temperature, and then they’re back to normal. But that, running through that immune challenge, or that gauntlet, actually a great thing. If you don't actually get ill that often, often you have to wonder how strong is my immune system, because maybe I just don't have the energy to present. I’m still sick, but I’m just smoldering. So, once again, strong immune system, very, very important. Zinc, we know it's important. Some of us like to look at fingernails, and look at the little white lines that occur on fingernails as a thought of maybe that could be a zinc deficiency. We see that a lot with children going through rapid growth, or people that chronically are ill, they start getting little zinc dots, and that's just a clinical observation I’ve made.

So, zinc's important, but most of us don't eat enough seeds and nuts and sources of zinc. And so, zinc is a gatekeeper. And nearly 30% of the elderly population's considered to be zinc deficient. Well, who were the individuals most susceptible, or amongst the most susceptible, during the last era of viruses? Well, elderly. And so, after the discovery of zinc, a deficiency in the 1960s, [inaudible 00:28:13] clear that zinc is an essential foundation for the immune system. And for gentlemen, important for the prostate. So, once again, colds, illness, but once again, a daily regime. Zinc ions are involved in intracellular signaling of innate and adapto-immune system. And as you can see down here at the bottom, this is description of zinc homeostasis-related effects on the activation of key signaling molecules, as well as epigenetic modifications are included [inaudible 00:28:39] of zinc as a gatekeeper to the immune system.

Remember, we all have a genetic susceptibility, but it's diet and lifestyle that hold the trigger on genetics. It's called epigenetics, as we all know. As you can see here in yellow, imbalanced immune reactions occur with zinc deficiency, and they favor allergies and autoimmunity. So, a cold, flu, and a susceptibility to an illness, or allergies, zinc is a player within our body, and once again, why it's important in one's diet. Then we get to the thing which has been looked upon as being potentially banned in the future, regulatory-wise, N-acetyl cysteine. Well, N-acetyl cysteine, of course, is a great amino acid. It helps produce glutathione levels, but it's our best friend. Remember that Petri dish I was giving you an example? Why did I show you that Petri dish? That was all very disgusting. We don't really want to think about our snot, our mucus, in that way. But we are warm, we are moist.

But N-acetyl cysteine, and this is from the peer-reviewed literature, you can see, reduced disulfide bonds. And the way I give the example for my patients, put my two hands up there, I touch two fingers. I said this is a disulfide bond. I said, how is these molecules of mucus gonna rotate around a disulfide bond? They’re not. So, they’re very thick and very tenacious. Now, all of a sudden, if that disulfide bond's been broken, now, all of a sudden, the mucus is liquidy. So now I can expectorate it, I can blow it out. It also reduce the inflammation, oxidative stress. This is also in the formula. And it increased sputum [inaudible 00:30:21] Mmm. Makes me think of a Pyrex container in the kitchen, doesn't it now? A reduced viscosity, better airway clearance, and improved forced expiratory volume, lessens shortness of breath, lowered adhesion of bacteria to our mucus membranes, and add that along with some secretory IgA improvement, and lowered exacerbation.

So, I’m like, wow, this is pretty cool, NAC. Plus, it supports your glutathione, which is important for your airway. As we all know, it's an important antioxidant for the entirety of our body. So, we look at NAC as a mucolytic, and you’ll see here in the bottom little pink area, it says, the mucus hyper secretion can be initiated by an acute event that results in epithelial injury, neutrophil activation, and release of chemokines. So, once we get inflammation going on, and irritation, then we start getting dumped with lots of mucus. So, N-acetyl cysteine actually is used in a drug form, called Mucomyst, in hospitals, that breaks up mucus as well. But it's a mucolytic, ability to break up mucus is important. Supporting the glutathione is also very important, and we can all use more glutathione. We live in a very toxic world. If you’re successful enough to have a new car, remodel your home, all the off-gassing alone, you’re gonna need more glutathione to support the phase one and phase two detoxification.

We are dying from our own success in our modernized, successful, materialistic world. So, once again, N-acetyl cysteine, supporting glutathione levels. If that was the only reason we took it, it would be a good thing. Then, in the formula, there's also berberine, garlic, oregano. And these are antimicrobial by nature. I’m not gonna go into great detail, but it's good to tidy up the mess. And the way that I give the example for my patients is the concept, if I’m in a messy office, I can tidy up, but every once in a while a little dust is gonna come in. That's where the HEPA filter, or the little swifter, or the damp rag comes in. Well, this is where berberine, garlic, and olive leaf comes in. And as you can see here, interesting tidbit. My family comes from Greece, and they’d raise olives and lemons and oranges and almonds. I actually, when I was a little kid, I went over there and worked there for a while.

But you can see, the olive, and the [inaudible 00:32:39] has 1 to 10 milligrams per gram. The leaf, of all things, like, I wonder which ancestor said, "Let me start eating the leaf," or make a tea out of the leaf. Well, lo and behold, they were right on the money there. So, once again, we can thank our ancestors, and now the modern scientists, for validating what they figured out a long time ago. So, what about the human microbiome? We talk about the microbiome all the time. My 19th book, which I’m just about done with, is on the microbial mucosal milieu. We have a skin microbiome, we have a sinus microbiome. We actually even have a brain microbiome, which we never even thought about, because we all learned about the blood-brain barrier.

There's a placental microbiome. There's a blood microbiome. There's all these microbiomes. So, we have to look at, well, how do we work [inaudible 00:33:25] Well, EpiCor also helps with the microbiome. Remember how we were talking about secretory IgA? How it's been researched also for allergies, but also has been shown to help with helping altered gut microbiotal tissues become more balanced. And once again, think leak leaky gut, leaky brain. And if we have a leaky gut, unhealthy friendly bacteria, we’re not gonna create butyrate. That's our short-chain fatty acid, which helps maintain those tight junctions, so the healthier our gut can be. So, anything along those lines of supporting the GI tract. So, that's the extra bonus of regular use of EpiCor. They also talk about improvements in bloating, the distension and all these other benefits. And all bloating distension is, is a sign that we don't have a happy tummy.

And we know that we have about a hundred trillion bacteria and microbiome factors in our gut. And we need to make sure we always have a good neighborhood watch there. And EpiCor, and supporting the immune system is vitally important. There's research showing that the microbiome affects the gut. In fact, lots of times, when kids get recurrent infections when they’re ill, they’ve started that slippery slope, because now their microbiome is messed up. Now they’re more susceptible to [inaudible 00:34:40] or allergies. And so as a result, we want to create a good, healthy microbiome, which creates the short-chain fatty acids. And by the way, on those that love geeking out, I mentioned short-chain fatty acid, butyrate. Butyrate actually crosses through the intestinal lining, goes down to the mitochondria, the citric acid cycle, and helps create more ATP to sustain the GI tract and the body's energies.

So, the lung and gut microbiota and pathologies, as you can see here, here's a GI tract lining right there. There's antigen, bacteria, fungi. You all know the term SIBO, S-I-B-O, for bacterial, SIFO, S-I-F-O, is fungal overgrowth. And there's also archaea, which is something which we don't talk about very much, more of a archaic bacteria, or microbe. And it's all of these things are triggering our immune system. And you’ll see here a lot of Th2, Th1. And you see where my little cursor is? There's gonna be a little musical note that will resonate with you in a moment when I talk about Th1 and Th2. So, what should I do? Which button should I push, as I’m driving, with pollen all around me? And, as I mentioned, pollen on my dark blue car. Well, this is the button I should push. Recirculate.

Let the air filtration system of the car take off the burden. Don't have your windows down, don't be pulling it in. I tell my patient, they’re like, "I never thought of that." And these are PhDs from Intel, and brilliant people that are executives, as well as the average Joe and Jill, with good common sense. They’re like, "You know, I’ve never thought of that. Hmm." And so, the other day, we were driving along in my wife's car. Her car automatically turns that one off. My car allows me to keep the recirculate on. And I says, "It's not on, is it?" She says, "No, it's not." She said, "How can you tell?" I said, "I can smell the pollen." So, once again, turn that recirculate on. And talk about ringing true to things, well, what about Mozart? You said, "Mozart? What about Mozart?" Well, first off, before we get into Mozart too much, Dr. [inaudible 00:36:53] M.D., PhD, very well-respected researcher, found out microwave radiation, you know, so, standing there watching your microwave go around, bad idea. We already knew that.

And our cellular phones, our computer work, all increase our atopic dermatitis, our eczema risk, and our allergic burden. Let's not even go into 5G. But lo and behold, what they found was an atopic dermatitis, which is eczema, with latex allergy, listening to Mozart reduced skin wheals, induced by latex but not histamine, whereas listening to Beethoven failed similar results. So, now, when I’m working [inaudible 00:37:31] and creating slide presentations, what am I listening to? Mozart. Because I’m Mr. Allergy, and this allergy season right now in Oregon is terrible. And so, Mozart actually quiets things. By the way, they also play Mozart for baby development, and also for studying and learning. So, whatever the benefit of Mozart, Mozart it is. I, not a Mozart kind of fellow. It's not my genre. But now my wife will walk in when I’m working on a project and she says, "Oh, allergies." I say, "Yeah, it's allergies." So, Mozart. Something simple. Play it on YouTube. I play the six-hour chain, on a loop.

So, we have the Tru Immune. The Tru Immune has the vitamin C we’ve discussed. It has the zinc, the astragalus, which is the adaptogenic immune herb, as well as, of course, it has its immune properties beyond allergies. EpiCor, remember, microbiota, secretory IgA, direct studies on the impact on colds and flus. You can find the research. And you want that research, you can actually just reach out to TruGen3 and I’ll have that contact information. I’ll be more than glad to share that. The berberine, the garlic, all very important because they are an antimicrobial. Olive leaf, being a good Greek, I gotta represent olive leaf.

And then we got the N-acetyl cysteine, improving glutathione levels, detoxification pathways, mucolytic. And so, this is a foundational thing that you can use 365, 366 on leap years. But then, you want to control inflammation in our practice. What brings our patients into our practice? Aches and pains. Well, VESIsorb technology is a special polloid that actually allows for many times higher absorption. When it comes to VESIsorb and CBD, 4.4 times, this is research, 4.4 times higher bioavailability. It's all about not only what are we taking on the label, but what's getting absorbed. So, sinusitis, allergies, cold, inflammation, aches and pains, muscles, skeletal items. So, [inaudible 00:39:38] definitely a consideration. Of course, also with the VESIsorb technology allowing for that polloid delivery, [inaudible 00:39:46] omegas, most of us are low in omegas, we know that. I’m not telling you anything you don't know.

We’re high in omega-6. We’re pro-inflammatory. Anytime we have an -tis, sinusitis, allergitis, allergies, rhinitis, bronchitis, all those -itises. Once again, basic foundational things we all know about. Now, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. We figured it out as ancestors way long ago. Don't stare at the sun. You can go blind. Well, we’re staring at a blue, bright screen all day long. Welcome to being modern guinea pigs. So, what about lutein? What about supporting our body? Because now we’ve gone from paper to doing everything on our computer, even for our charting most of the time. Once again, another burden, a modern burden, so take care of the eyes. It's very important. And then the [inaudible 00:40:35] plus curcumin, the [inaudible 00:40:37] is actually a CBD, the one that's 4.4 time more bioavailable. These can all be used individually. They can be synergistically. They’re also just great tools to know about in your practice.

And I just finished a three-day continuing medical education in Oregon. We have to have over 30 hours a year of continuing medical education. So, we were talking about the inflammatory side of things, how important omegas are, how important a CoQ10 is for mitochondrial function, let alone a person's on statin drugs. How important curcumin is, for a myriad of things, immune, as well the inflammation, and of course, CBD. And the fact that we are unique creatures, in that, as mammals, we have CB1 and CB2 receptors for CBD. [inaudible 00:41:22] So, we wanna eliminate identified cross-reactive events. We’ve chatted about that. We want to keep our homes and door windows closed. Keep the bad allergies out. Ideally, like, I’m running an Austin air filter. Also, I have an AirDoctor air filter.

So, once again, make your home a safe place. Make your office a safe place, where people feel better in it, because all of a sudden the air's really clean and pristine. And, of course, some of us did that during the COVID era. It's actually great just to do all the time. It lessens our illnesses, and allow that mechanical device to take the crud out of the air, both for our lungs and our sinuses. Once again, we don't want to create that secretion to mucus. Air conditioner rather than open a window, if you have allergies. Keep track of the pollen count. That's pollen.com. And don't go outside unless it's necessary on windy days, because windy days brings the other county's stuff and pollution over to you. Obviously, when there's air quality issues, like ozone, like, and down in Phoenix, or a fire, we wanna of course keep things tight and closed.

The recirculate, which we chatted about. And once again, these are, makes a great little handout. And shower before you go to bed. Easy for me to say, because it doesn't take very long for my hair to dry. But even I have to rinse my head and my face before I go to bed on a high pollen count. Always, whether it came by my eyes, my nose, my throat during the day, well that pollen actually's not going to bed on my pillow. And guess what, I’m no better than Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street. I’m gonna snuff that stuff up, and I might as well have slept underneath the trees with all the rest of the pollen. And supplement a healthy diet and lifestyle. We call them supplements for a reason. We can't substitute for a healthy diet and lifestyle. We learn to supplement it. But this is why the immune formula was put together the way it was, is to augment a 365 immune support. Great for allergies, because we don't think of our immune system until we get that sinusitis that's turned yellow-green. But once again, would it be better to fortify the body? And the answer is yes.

And so, whatever the season, a healthy immune system's important. This was so overplayed during COVID, it's unbelievable. Immune, immune, immune, immune. But remember, our immune system takes energy on a daily basis. It's a surveillance. It's like a scanner at a store, identifying friend or foe. And we want to basically quantify and minimize challenges that our body's not prepared for. The best plan is a prepared plan.

So, I’m gonna open up for questions in a moment here. If you want a copy of the histamine handout, cross-reactivity handout, you have more technical questions, definitely you can contact TruGen3. You can see the information here. There will be a discount code, which I plan on using too, Immune365. And I participate in creating this formula. I believe in this formula. But the reality is, science speaks for itself. So I’m gonna open up for questions.

Tyler: All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Meletis. We have a few questions, so I’ll go ahead and get started. So, first question I have is, "Do you ever combine over-the-counter allergy pills, if needed, with Tru Immune?"

Dr. Meletis: Yes. I do myself as well. So, there's certain times when the total burden or my own stupidity exceeds my ability for just my body to deal with it, no matter how much I’ve supported. So, I have to put the fire out and get rid of the mucus. So, I’ll use an over-the-counter Zyrtec, or Claritin, or Benadryl or whatever. So, there's time and place where I’ll do that, or I’ll do a nasal spray. I’m very big on nasal saline also, to flush out the sinuses, because whatever went into the sinuses, you don't want it to sit there all night long and fester. So, yeah, not a problem with interacting with those interactions.

Tyler: All right. Awesome. Thank you. We have another one. "With food sensitivity testing versus ‘true allergies,’ IgE, what is the value of doing this testing?"

Dr. Meletis: Actually, I do a lot of education on environmental testing and food testing. At usbiotek.com, there's a whole series of lectures you can watch there. And so, the true allergy, I’m glad the individual commented on allergies versus sensitivities. In the M.D. world, the only thing that they generally worry about is allergies, which are IgE. True allergies. IgG are what I call hidden, or food sensitivities. These are things that could creep up on us. And what's interesting about IgG immunoglobin in our body, the half-life is 21 to 25 days. So, you’re gonna have a little food here, a little food a few days later, but it still has a memory because it hasn't even gone through a part of it's half-life. So, it has a second effect, much like waves on a seashore, lots of little waves will stack up, and then wash up on the shore and get ya.

And so, IgG testing is vitally important. So, lots of people will say, "Well, I’ve done IgE testing and I’m still miserable." Which is the true allergy, the IgE. And so, as a result, what you end up doing is [inaudible 00:46:25], well, I didn't find anything that was really bothering me. That's because the IgG testing is vitally important, because those are the sneaky ones, like the sneaker waves. So, I do IgG, as well as IgE when necessary. But the IgG are the ones that are often in our diets. We don't even know it until we do the test, and then we find out there's a problem. And when we’re looking at cross-reactivities, you find that IgG, or IgE lists, then you know what to attract, pollen.com. You also know the cross-reactivities of foods that might be also making things worse, or environmentals.

And on a random tidbit, as I’m [inaudible 00:46:58] giving a long answer for this one, is, you know that if you have a cat allergy, you should not eat pork? Or let's say you go to a friend's house that has a cat, well you don't wanna eat canned Spam, bacon, or pork chop, because there's a cross-reaction. Likewise, if you have a dust mite allergy, crayfish, shrimp, krill, and all the crustaceans, they cross-react. If you ever looked at a dust mite underneath a electron microscope, or you Google a dust mite, and images, it looks like, those do look like a little crustacean. And so there's certain cross-reactions there that you wanna be aware of as well.

Tyler: All right. That's very interesting. Thank you for that. I have another one. "Epicor, that you discussed, was it really discovered by a chance in a feed factory, and can you share more about that?"

Dr. Meletis: Yeah. So, when I was back in Chicago at dinner, I was just, like, really? Is that really how it was discovered? And so what's interesting was they actually had a former EPA and FDA retired folks do an epidemiological study because they want to figure out how can we save money in America? So, they actually went in and studied these folks, and then one of the individuals that was being studied was a gentleman that was married to a nurse that worked in the ER. So, you can imagine what her exposures were. Yet he never got sick. And they also had kids, which, I have, now adult kids, but I call them vectors of disease transmission. You know, they bring a cold home, and you get the adult version of whatever they have most of the time. And so they actually studied it based on the fact that their utilization of insurance was so low they thought it was worthwhile to look and see what's this magic sauce, so to speak, of are they doing something? Are they doing tai chi before they start work? Are they all having lunchtime meditations? And lo and behold, there was the EpiCor that they were ingesting through their nasal passages. Amazing story.

Tyler: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. Another one is, "Do you have a concern about taking vitamin C or zinc on a daily basis?"

Dr. Meletis: On vitamin C, if a person took massive doses, not the amount that's in one's diet, generally, but if they were mega-dosing on vitamin C, and they have a history of kidney stones, yeah, I’d be aware of that. Of course, if you’re on a medication or a drug that precludes you from taking vitamin C, let's say you’re on chemo, and you’re doing doxorubicin, or a cytoxin, or some drug that works by creating free radicals, you wanna let the doctor know. But the small amount that's in this product, non-issue. And the zinc, we plow through zinc all the time. Every time we fight off something immune-wise we’re using zinc. We use zinc for our structural integrity, for our bone enzymes, alkaline phosphatase. And for those of us that have had kids, or have kids in our practice, if we were to look at their blood work, their alkaline phosphatase blood work, on a comp metabolic, comprehensive metabolic panel, well, their reference range is 300, 400.

Whereas, for adults, we cap out around 130, 140 [inaudible 00:50:00] the reference range. That's because they have active bone growth, also dependent upon zinc. And we use zinc for so many co-factors, plus zinc helps push out copper in the body, and excess copper is not a good thing. So, I think a modest amount of zinc on a daily basis is great. For those people with sensitive tummies, zinc can upset it. So, if you have a sensitive patient, they can take this product, or any zinc product, with food, it’ll minimize symptoms. But very well-tolerated for the vast majority of people with not any problem.

Tyler: All right. Thank you for that. I have one more question and it is, "Are there resources of other lectures you’ve given, and where can you listen?"

Dr. Meletis: Certainly. So, there's several lectures I give. They’re all free, on demand. First off, there's lectures at trugen3.com, on CBD and other topics. Then, at usbiotek, U-S-B-I-O-T-E-K.com. And I lecture a lot on allergies there and so forth. But then if you want really heady information about the mitochondria, sports athletic, GI health, then I’d go to naturalmedicinejournal.com. And once again, just feel free to reach out to TruGen, and they’ll give you all these things spelled out for you. But these are all great lectures, so if you wanna fall asleep, and listening to my voice, there's opportunity abound to listen to my lectures.

Tyler: All right. Thank you so much. And that will conclude the Q and A section of this webinar. And Dr. Meletis, I just wanna thank you so much for sharing all your expert knowledge with us. And then I also wanna let everyone know, again, that this webinar is being recorded, and we will have this webinar recording posted within 24 to 48 hours. So, just be sure to check out Chiropractic Economics, or chiroeco.com/webinars, and you’ll be able to find a recording for that. We’ll also be sending you an email, usually a day after the webinar. So, expect at 2:00 p.m. around tomorrow Eastern Standard, and we’ll be able to include any more information, so you can reach out to TruGen and also get a special offer and everything else. But Dr. Meletis, do you have anything else you’d like to say?

Dr. Meletis: I just applaud you each for being the instrument of change for your patients. Together, we’re going to have healthier, happier people, which makes for better humanity. So, keep on being you, and it's just a privilege for having you spend time with me, because together we’re all stronger and better. Thanks.

Tyler: Thank you so much, Dr. Meletis.

Filed Under: Chiropractic Practice Management, Health, Wellness & Nutrition, Webinar Full Version