In this episode, Joe Fier welcomes integrative medicine expert Dr. Nikol Hopkins for an eye-opening conversation about gut health, toxins, and the power of personalized medicine. Dr. Nikol Hopkins breaks down what “leaky gut” really means, why gut health is more than just what you eat, and how environmental toxins can disrupt your body’s natural balance. Personal stories and simple analogies make this episode a must-listen for anyone seeking practical steps to support their gut, minimize toxic exposure, and understand testing options for optimal health.

Topics Discussed

1. The Importance of Gut Health: Why the gut is the body’s gatekeeper, its protective lining, and what happens when it’s compromised.
2. Leaky Gut Explained: What intestinal permeability means, how it’s connected to inflammation, and why it matters for whole-body health.
3. Toxins and Their Impact: Which toxins (mycotoxins, heavy metals, PFAs) are most disruptive to gut health, and how they infiltrate the body through food and environment.
4. Common Culprit Foods: The five most likely foods to trigger issues—dairy, corn, soy, sugar, and wheat—and how elimination programs can provide clarity.
5. Mycotoxins in Food and Coffee: Surprising sources of mold toxins, including grains and coffee, and why even quality roasting doesn’t always protect you.
6. How to Heal and Support the Gut: Practical steps including elimination diets, supplements, and the power of personalized testing.
7. Testing & Interpreting Data: The value of toxin panels and personalized analysis to create an effective avoidance and healing strategy.
8. Everyday Detox Strategies: How to start reducing exposure—like swapping out plastic kitchenware, nonstick pans, and processed foods for safer alternatives.
9. Taking Action in Your Home: Step-by-step advice for making your space healthier, from air and water purification to investigating food packaging choices.
10. The Role of Personalized Medicine and TPE: How Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (TPE) and MD Lifespan’s protocols can be a next step for those at the end of their rope with chronic illness.
11. Advocating for Your Health: Why you have to be your own health advocate in today’s world and take small steps to protect you and your family.

Resources Mentioned

1. Super Gut by Dr. William Davis: https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/product/super-gut/
2. Environmental Working Group (EWG): https://www.ewg.org/
3. Made Safe: https://madesafe.org/

Connect with Us

1. MDLifespan Website: https://mdlifespan.com/
2. Subscribe and Listen: https://mdlifespan.com/the-tpe-blueprint-podcasts/
3. Guidebooks: https://mdlifespan.com/guidebooks/
4. Follow on Instagram: https://instagram.com/mdlifespan
5. MDLifespan Toxin Testing: https://mdlifespan.com/toxin-test
6. Use code “podcast200” for a discount.

Did you enjoy today’s conversation? Give us a follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode! We’d love to hear about your own journey to better health—share your thoughts and questions with us on social media, and leave a review if you found value in this discussion.

Disclaimer: MDLifespan PlasmaXchange protocols are designed to support general health and wellness. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information provided on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not replace medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before beginning any new health program, especially if you have a medical condition or are taking prescribed medications.

How many toxins should be in your body right now?

Zero.

So why are so many people inflamed, foggy, and feeling bloated?

Because your gut barrier is only one cell thick, and when it starts

leaking, that means toxins can now slip into your bloodstream and

trigger a full body immune response.

So my guest today is Dr. Nikol Hopkins, and she's gonna break down exactly what

leaky gut actually is and how mycotoxins in everyday foods can make it worse.

And the practical first steps you can use right now to reduce your

exposure and start feeling better.

All right.

We are here and I'm excited for this episode personally

because it's something that I don't know much about.

Yeah.

So,

Nikol Hopkins, you're

here with us.

got one and everybody should be taking care of it.

Yeah.

The gut.

I know.

Well, I, I'm gonna learn why we're all gonna learn why, and I know you have

some, you know, some personal stories as well, and you're, you're so intertwined

in the MD lifespan and what Dr. Savage has been doing for, for a long time.

And you have a really cool background.

And, and I'm curious of that as well.

'cause you know, you've worked with some big businesses, but Yeah.

You're a doctor yourself, you know, mark, I mean, it's like you have

this whole interesting mix, so, um.

I guess when it comes to, let's talk about the gut thing.

Like why is this so important as it pertains to toxins and I guess just

the world around us right, right now?

Well, I think the biggest thing with toxins is that, or actually

with the gut, is that it is what keeps everything out of your body.

Okay?

Think of it this way and.

Many of the listeners are gonna know this.

The, the digestive track starts in the mouth, goes down the esophagus, small

intestine, large stomach marlin says en large intestine, and then out.

It should never come into contact with the inside world, should never come into

contact with the outside world, okay?

And there, there are these magnificent cells that are literally one cell thick,

and that provides the barrier between the outside world and the inside world.

The problem is when there is a breach in the system, when there's

a breach in that, in those cells, and they start to separate.

My favorite analogy with the GI track is like tuck pointing and brick.

So when you are brick.

And the mortar starts to separate, and then all of a sudden you have

the infiltration of water and it gets into your, uh, into your,

your, um, your walls or wherever, and it starts to create problems.

It's very similar with the gut.

When things start to slip through those cracks, it gets into the bloodstream

and then it creates an immune response.

All of the cells, the white blood cells, the immune defenses start to encircle it

and they create an inflammatory process.

And that is a 50,000 foot view,

Okay,

that makes

sense.

Where toxins play a role or where, where toxins really create a problem.

And Paul and I had a little bit of a discussion about this is what comes first.

Is it the toxins have just, you know, bombarded, bombarded, bombarded the

cells until they separate or do the cells separate and allow the toxins to get in?

I don't know if anybody can answer that.

Mm-hmm.

What I do know, and what I do see is that when there is, um, a significant

amount of intestinal permeability, which is what we call it, or leaky gut,

Yep.

you have rise to all kinds of gastrointestinal disorders.

There's something called sibo.

There's something called sifo.

SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth growth.

Okay.

Yep.

ffo, which is kind of where the mycotoxins come in, is small

intestinal fungal overgrowth,

Ooh.

and it just changes the entire milieu of the microbiome.

Now, what's the microbiome again?

50,000 foot view.

It's basically the neighborhood in your gut, and you wanna have more good

neighbors than you have bad neighbors.

The problem with mycotoxins is it literally, they literally can

change how many good guys you have versus how many bad guys you have.

Actually changing them, like

modifying

yes, yes, yes.

Because it actually destroys, it destroys those cells, for example.

And this is where I have my little list.

You ready?

So one of the questions was, what toxins are most disruptive to the gut?

Okay.

Um, the big ones I see are Fumonisins, the Ochratoxins and

the Aflatoxins and B1, especially.

Now why those, those mostly are found not only in the environment,

but they're also found in food.

Coffee, right?

that coffee grains like oats, corn, barley, wheat, um, a lot of 'em

that are stored in the silos that are used for grain, for feed, for

cattle, feed and, and uh, animal feed.

Um, so not only is it what we eat, but it's what we eat eats

So it can get passed down from a cow, let's say, and

all the way through our food, through the cooking process to our own guts.

And that's, that was something that was really upsetting to me.

Not, not that they eat what, you know, what we eat, eats

them or they eat whatever.

Um, is that a lot of the stuff isn't neutralized by cooking.

That was actually an aha.

'cause I learned this about coffee recently, actually researching for one

of our videos, and that was one of the things is like the roasting process

does not take out what you just said.

The, uh, you know, the, the different ty toxins that can come through from

the mold growth and, you know, because the common misconception is like, oh

yeah, I get a lo local roasted coffee.

I'm like, well, that doesn't matter.

it's all the

beans that, you know, it's where they got shipped from and, and all that.

exactly.

And whether it's shade grown or whether it's organic, was it on

the right side of the mountain or the left side of the mountain?

And, you know, we'll talk more about this probably a little bit

later, but it's the 80 20 rule.

Which is basically, you know what, 80% of the time you need to

implement strategies that are going to, uh, help you with avoidance.

You have to, you have to,

Everybody.

but 20% of the time it's like you can't, you have to have some wiggle room.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe it's 70, 70, 30.

For other people, maybe it's 90 10.

For others, it, it depends individually on, on who you are and what your symptoms

are or your illness is, but getting back to mycotoxins in your microbiome.

So mycotoxins promote the growth of pathogenic bacteria.

That's more bad guys than, than good guys.

Okay.

Mycotoxins interfere with the tight junctions, which we talked about that line

your GI tract, which are very important to keep, that your lining pristine.

And the thing that's awesome about the lining of the GI tract is it does

regenerate every seven to 10 days.

Really?

Okay.

So you can eliminate stuff that's noxious to your gut.

It can regenerate fairly quickly.

Now with that being said, there might be a spot here that's bad

and then it gets healed, and then there might be a spot over here.

So it's a constant process.

It's not, it's never one and done.

Hmm.

yeah, and I don't wanna get away from your list, but to keep that lining

pristine, my brain goes immediate too.

Like, wait, how can I keep it pristine?

Like I'm sure it's taking, keeping inflammation down, I'm

assuming is probably the, the first or the biggest culprit.

Right?

yeah.

The big one is, well, so it's what's causing inflammation?

Is it access?

Is it the heavy metals?

Is it something that you eat, that your body has a sensitivity to?

So figuring out what those are.

Yeah.

And that's where personalized medicine is amazing because we take

the time to figure all that out.

whether it's, you know, doing the, your, you know, the, the total

toxin test or doing a comprehensive digestive stool test, because then I

can determine based on your results, what, you know your zonulin levels are.

And again, I'm getting into the weeds here and maybe this is another, another

conversation, but there are markers that we look at that give me a very good

indication of what's actually going on.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

you don't have to necessarily do, always do a food allergy or a food

sensitivity test because there's probably five to 10 things that

most people have difficulty with.

We know what those are, but some people really want that objective data.

Could you tell me or, uh, share what those most common ones are, just so,

uh, we can at least have that in Irv mind.

Yeah.

Dairy,

Uhhuh.

corn, soy.

sugar

and wheat.

basically everyone's gonna have some kind of reaction,

at least the the percentage is very high.

That

one of those things is five things

exactly.

a culprit.

Interesting.

we'll do an elimination program where you pull those things out and you basically

do various supplements, some medical foods that are geared towards detoxification

and also geared towards inflammation.

And, um, you get everything to kind of calm down and then you start to

reintroduce some of these aller more allergenic foods or problematic foods.

And then you wait for some, you wait for the, the patient to give you.

A response like, oh man, when I ate X, Y, ZI blew up.

I had bloating, I had a headache.

Because when you pull stuff out for like 20 days, 21 days or 28 days, the

inflammation drops really quickly.

And then in the meantime as I said, the medical foods.

You're taking l-glutamine, you're doing other nutrients, vitamin

A, there's a whole list of things that you, that you take in order to

support your GI tract and heal it.

And then when you start to reintroduce things, you wait

to see what the reaction is.

I see.

that's good enough objective data for enough people to say,

yeah, I'm staying away from that.

Because if you're eating all these things, like if you're eating dairy

and you're eating, you know, let's say you have a grilled cheese sandwich.

And then you get a headache or you get constipation or diarrhea,

you don't know what it is.

Is it the dairy?

Is it the cheese?

Is it the wheat?

Is it the butter?

that's a

how you, and that's how you kind of have to parse it out.

I'm

just thinking with all of these ingredients, like just wheat,

uh, oh, I'm looking at sugar.

I mean, that it's everywhere.

You know, it's so prevalent in all the foods and stuff that

you wouldn't ever even think of.

I mean, corn as well, I mean, all this stuff, dairy, uh, I'm sure there's this

combo effect thing happening that people, I mean, you know, it's, it's kind of like

when you hear, I don't know, maybe it's just like, that's just how I always feel

and so it's almost tough for people to,

this was my absolute favorite thing that I have ever, ever had as, as a, as a doctor.

And that was when I first started doing this work.

I worked for an amazing do.

mm-hmm.

uh, he had some kids in his practice and I, I did one of these, one of

these detoxification programs with him, or an elimination program.

He was six six.

And he comes into my office after we, after he was done, and he said to me, and

he was the most earnest child, and he's like, Dr. Nikol, he goes, you don't know

how bad you feel until you feel better.

Hmm.

I was right on the verge of tears.

I mean, he had, he had done so well and he felt so much better.

You know, he was always congested.

He had stomach aches.

He was, you know, he had to stay home from school a lot and he

was a trooper and he did it.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

6-year-old.

But let's get back to these mold things.

Okay.

Yeah.

Specifically increase of bacteria known as bactes, which

is associated with I-B-S-I-B-D.

And IBS and IBD are so rampant and it is one of the most, to me,

it's a very complex, um, disease, if you wanna call it a disease,

well, it's termed a disease because there's so many arms and legs to it.

But again, you know, we've never, or I have never really looked specifically

at what's the role of mycotoxins?

What is the role of toxins of any kind, contributing to some

of these, these syndromes.

And you know, when I was doing, when I was getting ready to do this, I really did.

You know, it wasn't a deep, deep dive into the literature, but I

was just like, I didn't know that.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know that.

And the thing that I love about this work is that I. Personally

learn something new all the time.

And I love to research things

It's

the perfect position for you because you're seeing everybody's data too, right?

You're

helping people interpret their toxin tests and evaluate what

the next best step is for them.

Like there's no better person than you to be that one.

The people that are coming to us now

are sick.

Hmm.

They are sick, and they are smart about what's going on with them.

And I would say probably 80% of them have been referred to MD lifespan.

By their physicians, whether it's a do, an MD who's doing personalized medicine, a

naturopath, a chiropractor, I don't care, that have these people have hit the wall,

Hmm

they've done detoxes, they've done binders, they've done EBOO.

They've done every single kind of protocol that they possibly could do.

TPE for a lot of these people, I don't mean to sound dramatic,

is a last resort, and that's why it's always the next best thing.

Always.

The next best thing.

and that's what I wanted to ask as well, unless did you get through

your, the list of everything there?

Oh, oh, this is a really important one.

Okay.

yeah.

I don't wanna skip it.

Ochratoxin,

Tell me about those.

Yeah.

it can wipe out a keystone Bacteria known as lri.

Have you heard of that one yet?

I have, but I don't know what it

That's okay.

This isn't a quiz.

Okay, thank you.

So the, the only reason I know about El Rui is because I read this

book, which is called Super Gut.

Do you know William Davis?

Dr. William Davis.

I've heard the name.

I, I do know the name.

Let's see.

So he's written a couple of books.

Um, his, his big one was, um, wheat Belly.

Uhhuh.

I read his book because I was really trying to understand more of the ins

and outs of SIBO and sifo, and he has a tremendous amount of, of knowledge and

information anyway, like short short, I read it, never had heard of Lite.

And he actually has this whole process where you can ferment dairy

using the L Rooty capsule and you can basically ferment any probiotic.

Uh huh.

and you ferment it for 36 hours and going from 20 billion colony

forming units to 300 billion

Wow.

three, six hours.

I'd never heard of El root eye.

And so I started doing it myself.

And I make that and I make some other whatever, yogurt.

You can't really call 'em yogurt 'cause it doesn't have the true yogurt things in it.

But anyway, I've seen a marked difference in terms of my own digestion because

like, I, you know, I live in Mexico.

I went through a period where I had, um, e coli

Wow.

you know, I knew basically the things to do, but it wasn't going away.

It wasn't going away.

It wasn't going away.

So I finally had to, I, I, I did one round of antibiotics.

Which I try, I try never to do, and then I got better.

But then, you know, living down here,

you just are kind of at the mercy of, you know, of our vegetables and fruits

and, you know, they use pesticides down here still and, and that sort of thing.

And even though we, I try to do mostly organic, sometimes you just can't.

So anyway, but I found out about that particular one

because it's called a Keystone.

A Keystone probiotic.

And it's important because when l rooti is gone, it's gone.

Like out of the,

Yeah.

The

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it takes a long time to repopulate the gut with it, which is why doing

this fermentation of 36 hours and creating this massive amount, it

helps to regenerate it over time

so

you're kinda like overloading the gut

Exactly, exactly.

And the reason it's important is because it helps to improve

the intestinal barrier.

Remember we talked about leaky gut, and that's, it strengthens the gut.

I'm gonna do some extra research and Yeah, definitely.

That's something new on my radar.

So when the gut is compromised, you know, circling back to that, and you've got.

Heavy metals.

You've got, you know, PFAS, you've got whatever, any, any or all of the

above slipping through the cracks.

Yep.

It's gonna get into the bloodstream.

When it gets into the bloodstream, it's gonna go where it's gonna go,

whether it's to the brain, whether it's to, you know, other organs.

It's just, it's, it's, that's how things go from point A to point B.

The outside

just became inside now,

Exactly.

Or actually the inside really got in the outside, came in and got into

places where it's really not supposed to

go because

the role of, they're called microvilli, they're like these little finger-like

projections is when food or whatever drops onto these, it literally.

The digestion process, it goes down into these little microvilli

and they further break it down.

And that's when it gets into the bloodstream.

When it gets into the bloodstream like that, when it's completely

broken down, no problem.

But if a piece of chicken slips through there, not completely digested, that's

when it mounts an immune response.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because it's viewed as a foreign invader.

So all of these toxins, because they're small and they can get through, they

create an immune response because it's not supposed to be there.

And that's

where, yeah, depending on what DNA and other factors, it basically

flips on whatever thing that was maybe hiding inside of you from

hereditary or whatever it might be.

Exactly.

And if you can't, if you're not a good detoxifier, then everything backs up

is that all biologic?

Like, is that just hereditary, you know, um, detox pathways, or is

that No, the, the detox pathways are actually called the cytochrome P four,

fifties p and it's, it's a whole process.

It goes to the liver.

Um, there's all different organs of detoxification, but where the problem

comes into play is when you have, if you're a rapid metabolizer or a

slow metabolizer, for example, um, people, like, for example, people

might have very, might be a very rapid detoxifier of caffeine, so

they can drink a lot of caffeine.

And it goes right through them.

And then there's other people that are slow detoxifiers and they have a little

bit of caffeine and they get a headache.

It's the same with alcohol.

I mean, there's a number of things.

Drugs, same thing.

Yeah.

So it depends on what your detoxification pathways are.

how do you recommend people start?

Uh, you know, you, you mentioned the, the dairy, corn, soy, sugar, wheat and like

a 21 day kind of, um, elimination diet.

But like, where would you steer people towards.

if they start with those five things, and that's a, that's asking a lot.

I know.

That's what I was gonna

say.

I'm like, That's like the keystone, you know, pieces of

don't do it the week between Christmas and New Year's, or you don't do it, you don't

do it in December, let me put it that way.

Not if you wanna eat chocolate chip cookies.

Um, yeah.

Yeah.

And, and I think most people know that sugar is toxic and

that it's not good for you.

And,

Yeah.

you know, and that's one of the hardest things to, sugar and alcohol are two of

the hardest things to, to kind of dial back on, especially during the home.

and I feel like something sustainable.

'cause like you said, you mentioned 21 days, so it takes, it's not a long time,

but at the same time, it's a long time.

If, if someone's cutting out a KE sugar, for instance, or wheat.

And I guess it's so tough when you don't have the numbers in front of you, right?

Like a toxin test.

And yeah, maybe, maybe you can speak on that, because I know you're doing a

lot on, you know, you're interpreting a lot of data these days, but like the

importance of knowing your own data, and then actually talking with someone like

yourself that actually can interpret.

What that is.

it's fascinating.

I love looking at those tests and part of it is, you know, when I,

when I talk to somebody and I'm, I'm gonna be doing more of that next

year because of what we're doing,

yeah,

just with really promoting it, because I think it's an excellent tool.

But again, you know, a lot of the people that come to us are

already, have already done one.

Now, they might not be recent, but, you know, it's still very directional.

that's true.

Yeah.

So what I do when I get one, you know, I, I go through it before I even, you

know, I always like to go over them and I make notes to myself so that

when I talk to somebody, they're gonna ask questions, um, like, what is this?

What is this?

How, how did I get this?

You know, I don't, I don't look at all of them, but what

I do is I look for patterns.

And the big ones are this, you always look at the reds.

So it's, it's organized in.

Red, which is greater than 95% of the, you're greater than 95% of the population.

Then the other one is, is yellow, which is 75 to 95% of the population you have.

And then the last one is green.

The misconception is that green is good.

No, green is not good.

There's no toxin.

That's good.

And to paraphrase, Dr. Savage, no toxin and no toxins in your body,

that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He quizzed me many times.

On how many toxins do you naturally should he have in, in your body?

Zero.

Yeah.

We were laughing about that this morning actually in our staff meeting.

Somebody brought that one up.

And it's true.

Um, but I, I'm actually always, I'm actually always thrilled when

I see someone's test that only has like, I don't know, seven.

Seven toxins total and like maybe one, I had two reds.

That's it, huh?

Oh,

two reds and I had like, I don't know, 11 yellows.

But the patterns I'm talking about is okay.

I had two, two reds.

One was lead and the other one was the atrazine, which we

talked about the golf course.

So I play golf two to three times a week, or I did until things got

really busy here and I'm like, okay, I know atrazine is a, is an herbicide.

There's no lawns in Mexico.

And then I'm thinking, ah, it's a golf course.

That's a good

point.

that was one.

down pretty quick.

Yeah, it did.

And the other one was lead.

And even though we, you know, there's no leaded gas anymore, there's diesel

fuel used, used here and lead is is a component of diesel exhaust.

So I had a high lead and.

Who knows if it's, if it's that in particular, but you know, and then

the other pattern that I look for right away is, okay, how many of

your yellows are about to turn red?

Hmm.

Like, how close are they to the line?

And the same with the green.

And I always tell people, again, green doesn't mean good, it just

means a mild exposure and we need to see where you are and how many

might go yellow and how many might, how many of you yellow might go red.

Yeah.

And then we just kind of go from there.

And you know, most people, as I said, are aware of a lot of their

symptoms, so I don't really have a lot of time to correlate those

symptoms or those, you know, the findings to what their symptoms are.

Other than that, we have a really good general idea.

Of what causes, you know, what some of these causes are and,

and what people are ailing.

The big one again is mycotoxins, because they're everywhere.

Yeah.

No, I, I started spotting my own, you know, because I had a grand total of,

was it 22 toxins, and I think it was.

It's either five or seven in the red.

It was up there.

And yeah, I, on the mold side of things, at least for me, well, it was interesting.

My wife and I both did a toxin test and, um, we compared in the, in the one that

was in common between the two of us.

'cause we had molds that I was surprised by, but it happened to be coffee.

That's why I did more of a deep dive on

coffee.

the Axin,

Yeah.

Yep.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And that, that was the one that we shared.

And I was like, Ooh, interesting.

So now I've been all about getting the cleanest coffee and sort, you know, and

that's a whole nother adventure in itself.

That's why I,

Oh, absolutely.

And not only that, it's like, okay, well how many, how much?

You know, how many BPAs did I have?

Do I have, I didn't have any.

I was shocked.

Well, I had some, but nothing, nothing.

That was big because my husband and I got into this big fight because one of

the things that I, that, that I also tell my patient, my, or the people

that I do, is like, don't freak out.

Okay?

Just don't freak out.

This is a roadmap, okay?

And now that we know what you've got, we gotta figure out what your

avoidance techniques are gonna be.

Because before you can get in for TPE, because not everybody can do it.

They can't.

So we gotta develop your avoidance plan, okay?

Clean air, clean water, clean food.

Get his, get rid of every single piece of plastic that you possibly can.

And for me what that was was coffee pot.

Oh, that was plastic.

Oh yeah.

You know, the, I had a ham, whatever I, I que in our, with the, with

the plastic thing, the whatever.

And I said to my husband, we can't use this anymore.

Well, he's, you know, he was, he was none too, none too pleased with that.

So I looked around and I, we had talked about a, a percolator coffee pot.

It's all stainless steel,

Then we tried one and it didn't, we, I, it didn't turn out that great and

I can figure out most things and it was just like I bought a French press

Uhhuh.

and I was very reluctant to do it.

'cause I thought this is gonna be a pain in the butt.

But you know what, it takes as long to make a pot of french press

as it does for my cuisine art

because we, yeah, we did a side by side one morning and it's

the, the coffee is fabulous.

So

now I concentrate on my organic coffee and we need to figure out, somebody

needs to figure out a little wand that, like a UV wand or something that you

can wave over your coffee to destroy all those tox and put, I don't know if

Oh, that's

a

great idea.

Someone's gonna come up with it.

Yeah.

I put it out in the universe.

Yeah, you did.

Uh, what other, before we wrap up here, because I, I do wanna tease and say you're

gonna be back for more episodes if you like it or not, Nikol, bringing you back.

Um, because I know we're gonna deep dive at least I'm assuming, 'cause

from our previous chats, we're gonna deep dive into all these little things

that you just kind of mentioned.

So like, you know, in your house, what are the things that

you could do for avoidance?

Um, you know, avoiding these toxins as best as you can.

You know, your

food, your air, water and all that.

I think that's very fascinating.

It's very practical.

It's something that we can all do.

And I think it's like one of those things, once you know

it, then you're just like, oh,

dang it.

Yeah.

So, there's a team of, of folks working on a, a book for, um, for the practice and

also for, you know, for the TPE people.

That kind of goes through, you know, what are the, what are the next steps,

you know, uh, I researched the, the appropriate, you know, air filters and

water filters and blah, blah, blah.

And I, I scrubbed 'em against consumer reports versus this particular website

here, because to be honest, you have to be really mindful and careful of who

you're reading, who you're looking at, and what the research actually means.

For example, consumer Reports is fabulous for electronics and those kinds of

things, but they don't go as deep as we would in terms of like some of these

different chemicals that are in things,

Mm-hmm.

if that makes sense.

I went and looked at other websites like Made Safe or Environmental Working Group.

And kind of scrubbed all those things against that.

So the, the, the information that's there is gonna be, you

know, really usable, usable stuff.

But what I did when I got mine back, and this is what I tell everybody,

is, you know, pick, pick a room,

Mm-hmm.

And for me it was the kitchen because I'm in the kitchen a lot.

So I literally took every piece of plastic Tupperware and got rid of it.

I had some really, I mean I had some really nice big Tupperware bowls

that I've had for 25, 30, 40 years.

One of 'em was my mom's that actually is still in a cabinet because it

was my mom's, I don't wanna throw it

Sure.

I got rid of all of my, um.

Teflon pants, frying

Oh my God.

That's the first thing that had to go for

mine.

Yeah.

Is teflons

Yeah.

non-stick?

Yep.

Exactly.

And it was like, oh God.

I knew, I knew it was gonna be a challenge because there is an art

to using a stainless steel fry pan.

But once you, once you figure out how to do it, and that's what we're

gonna do in a video is how you do it, because it's pretty simple.

Once you know what you're doing.

And I will tell you, you can learn anything on YouTube.

of

course.

so the big thing is we wanted to make sure that this whole intestinal

permeability concept, leaky gut

is understood because it sound like that's, I didn't understand

it, but the fact that we're, we're basically hanging on with this

whole one cell, seal, essentially

around our gut.

And if that thing is compromised, then all sorts of bad stuff can

happen, and it could trigger all these different things, even if you're

feeling pretty good right now, Right.

Like you have all these factors, so,

Well, and it's the same for the brain too.

It's like, you know, there's, there's, you know, you can have leaky

brain too, and that, you know, that that's kind of, you know, bringing

this whole thing back is there's something called the gut brain axis.

So what affects your gut's gonna affect your brain,

Wow.

Yeah.

It's a direct line to it, right?

mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

maybe we go through that connection on a future episode too.

I think we're, we're, we're creating a little breadcrumbs here, so

Oh, definitely.

where would you say their next step is?

Like where would you say, Hey, go do this, a practical thing, and, um, and then you

know, you're going the right direction.

Mm-hmm.

We definitely, you know, implement your avoidance techniques.

You know, if you don't have a water filter, get one, start somewhere,

whether it's a, you know, a, a pitcher, you know, plastic pitcher.

Just make sure that you are vigilant, vigilant with changing your filters out.

I had a, I had a patient who got really real sick because she never changed

her filter and it was full of mold.

Oh yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

So water.

You know, open your windows.

If you can get a good air filter and there's recommendations in the book that's

gonna be gonna be available, um, you know, start to eliminate ultra processed foods.

Do 80 20 again.

Just, you know, pick a room, get on it

Hmm.

little bit at a time.

Don't overburden yourself.

Don't drive your family crazy.

My husband and I just bickered about stupid crap for weeks.

Every time he went to find something.

Where's my glass?

I threw it away.

Where's my, I threw it away.

Where's my, I got rid of it

I had the same thing with my wife too.

We did it years ago too.

And, um, but once you understand, I mean, but yeah, like don't just start

up heaving your house, you know, doing that without maybe communicating.

Why,

Yeah, it's, and it's overwhelming.

And it's overwhelming to the pocketbook.

Pocketbook too, you know, to the extent that you can put

everything in glass, do it.

So what we'll talk about next time too, is because I worked for Kraft Foods,

I know.

Uh, that's

I used to go to the plants, the craft plants for things like when I worked in

promotional marketing and we like more seeding contests or whatever, and I would,

you know, you watch how stuff is made and

when stuff is filled, like whatever, if it's ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise

or whatever, hot food goes into plastic.

So, exactly.

So you, if you can buy something in glass over plastic, do it

that's a reframe for me actually.

'cause like Yeah, you don't think much about the mustard bottle.

That I know is in my fridge right now that says craft on there.

It's like, how did that get filled?

Steaming hot.

exactly.

Molten, Molten, hot, whatever.

So, you know, the grocery store that I shop at, at here in town in, in

Mexico, in San Miguel, um, I actually consciously looked for mustard

mayonnaise and ketchup in glass bottles.

And I found them, and two of them were Heinz.

Which Heinz is a, is a, it's Heinz craft.

Not that, not that I am particularly brand loyal, although I am.

Uh, and um, there was a Heinz mayonnaise, so I thought if I'm not

gonna make my own mayonnaise, people are like, how do you have all this time?

Well, I was semi-retired until I came back to work with Paul, with Dr. Savage.

Um, but it's a game for me at this point.

It really is.

Again, it, it's almost like, and I think, uh, Dr. Savage sees it

this way, or he is talked about it.

It is like you, you almost had to, 'cause he came outta

retirement as well, you know, and

he saw, I'm like, holy moly, there's like all this stuff.

Now I could do something about the data that, you know, the tests is

like, you know, TPE as a treatment and then all the different protocols

because we know more now and have the ability to actually help people.

So I'm assuming, I'm just assuming over here and that that's probably

why you came out and you're like, okay, we got something bigger to do.

Well, it, it's interesting, and I'm not sure that Dr. Savage

even is aware of this, but he has called me, he has conscripted me.

This is the third time, the first time I was living in Seattle, I had already

worked for Dr. Savage and I left.

To move to Seattle to be with my husband.

We had just gotten married, and

it's always the week between Christmas and New Year's when he calls me.

And this last time, it was a week between Christmas and New Year's

and my phone, I still have his, his number on my phone obviously.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, did I do something?

Why

do wrong?

me?

I'm doing this new thing.

And he's like, he just expects us all to know what he knows,

which is another thing.

And it's hilarious because like, I'm doing this, it's called, it's called Apheresis.

And I'm, I'm writing it down.

I'm like, what the And he's like, he's

just telling me he's so excited.

He goes, I need you to come back.

I'm like, okay.

You don't, you don't say no, you're just like, okay,

It's exciting.

And you know, it's actually, I mean, he's on it, obviously, you know,

Oh my gosh.

And even like at the staff meeting this morning, I mean the, the stuff that is

happening and how quickly it's happening.

But there's two things.

Number one,

yes, we're growing quickly, but we're, we're, we're growing intentionally

and people are getting better.

Mm-hmm.

And one of the big things that I realize, and it, they said it this

morning too, was like, we are, we, we know toxins at MD Lifespan.

We know toxins.

We know how to get rid of 'em, and we are the best at doing it.

Period.

we are, we are.

And we are the industry leader.

And I think that's only going to be proven.

The, the, the more like next year is going to be, I think a really

amazing year for people, for patients, for people who are looking,

because people are looking for us.

Mm-hmm.

They're looking for therapeutic plasma exchange, and this is where they're

coming, is they're coming to us because of all the stuff that we're doing.

You know, our protocols.

They're so incredibly well designed and thought out, and

our nurses, have you done it yet?

Have you done TPE

I've done three sessions I'm done with.

Yeah.

I've done it all.

I'm like, I, I exactly what you're saying.

Yes.

It's,

Did you go to Denver or did you go to Magnolia?

Denver.

So, Dr. Jill's place

and I, Angela gotta give Angela a shout out.

She's my nurse.

She's been on the podcast here

reluctantly, but she was on here.

Yeah.

I mean, our nurses are phenomenal and I,

and

And,

and I will back you up and say like, 'cause I'm in a bunch of different spaces.

This isn't the only thing I do.

Like, I'm in the tech space, I do a lot of with, uh, AI and, and stuff there.

And I'll tell people and just my friend circles, you know, my, the,

um, the, my, my parents' golf circles, you know, where they're, I was

telling and I show 'em my pictures of me holding the, the plasma bags.

And what I didn't immediately, where I'm like, whoa, hold on, tell me more.

What do you do?

I've heard kind of about this or, you know, I'm just very

curious about the topics.

So I think this whole thing of toxins and plastics and all that is becoming more

mainstream for the right reason, is that

we, we need to be aware of what we're putting in our bodies,

even if we're not choosing to.

But then now there's actually a mechanism to get it out, like.

Exactly, exactly when before it was like, and, and, and this is, I'm not

throwing any shade on these processes, you know, but doing a detox and then,

you know, doing binders and doing EDTA and doing chelators and doing Ebo and

doing all these things, they all work

to

a point.

a point.

there's, there's someone that, um, listen to this podcast.

Uh, Angela was telling me about a, a patient that said he is tried everything,

EBOO included and all that stuff, and realized it just wasn't helping.

And, um, actually chose to do TBE because of the crazy deep dive

research, but also of what he listened to on this, on this show

And ended up getting tb.

And I think it's gone really well from what I

well, I'll tell you too, Dr. Mansour, that particular one was phenomenal.

I learned so much from that.

And then the other thing that I wanted to shout out too was,

um, your buddy from, uh, Aqua

AquaTru, the Water

yeah.

mean she nailed it when she said, you know, you gotta be your own.

You gotta be your own EPA.

That's right.

She

Well, you know what I'm gonna add to that?

You need to be your own USDA.

You have to be your own FDA, you have to be your own c, d, C. Well, I don't wanna

be CD, C 'cause that's just a little too

much.

But,

Yeah.

and unfortunately, and I, you know, I don't wanna get too political,

but, you know, with all of these standards being rolled back and

the government allowing more toxins because they're putting corporations

over citizens is what's happening.

You know, I, I get, I get notifications from Environmental Working group, from

this group, from that group because part of it is I really needed to learn about

toxins because I didn't know, I didn't know about toxins the way that I do now.

And I'm not a toxicologist at all.

And thank God we've got toxicologists on, on our, on our board and, and whatnot.

But, you know, you have to be aware of a lot of this stuff because

the government, the government's not looking out for you anymore.

You have to look out for.

You, your family, and your other loved ones.

And that's just kind of where it's at.

let's wrap on that note, because

you're absolutely right and, uh, do your own research, everyone.

I think, uh, hopefully this was a great start.

If you're new to the conversation, if you're not, then,

um, thanks for hanging out and, and,

yeah, there's so many great guidebooks and we have the ai, you know, uh,

digital twin of Dr. Savage, all these, there's so many resources where you

can go deep dive and learn a lot more.

So,

Yeah, I think so too, and I think people are getting a little

bit more comfortable with that.

But you know what, they still wanna talk to the live person and that, one thing

I do wanna, I do wanna say about Doc is, uh, you know, I don't, I don't get the

benefit of really spending a lot of time with people when they, you know, like I,

I, I do their 30 minute, uh, total toxin tests and I was doing some information

calls, but man, I gotta tell you, when he.

When he does his evaluation for patients that are gonna, that want to get the

next step and like really talk about TPE, he really spends the time to

review all of the lab work, whether it's stuff that we did or, or from

another doctor so that when he talks to you, you know that he's got your

Yeah.

at heart.

Yep.

I've seen some of the recordings and yeah, it blew me away of

how deep he goes into these con.

I'm like, wow.

Okay.

So.

Yeah, yeah,

Well, we'll, we'll, we'll give all the links and ways to Yeah, if you

want to jump in because definitely, you know, it's all about personalized

medicine, knowing your data, but also what to do with it and next steps.

So, Dr. Nikol, I appreciate you very much and we went down

all these different angles, but

you know what?

There's more to come.

I can't wait to see, uh, the edited copy.

So anyway.