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Improving health outcomes is the goal of every practitioner. Finding the solutions for challenging chronic conditions often requires precious time, extensive research, and sometimes even trial and error. Join Rob Lutz, the host and founder of Today’s Practitioner, as he interviews recognized experts and shares their knowledge and proven treatment protocols. Peer to peer guidance can be the most direct path to finding effective solutions for the conditions impacting your patients.
Rob Lutz 00:02
Hello, and welcome to the OneMedicine Podcast, with Today's Practitioner. In each episode, we share the expertise of a respected thought leader. Some you'll know, and others you'll probably meet for the first time. We cover topics important to you, always with a focus on improving the health outcomes of the patients you treat, while expanding your understanding of the many healing modalities being used today.
Rob Lutz 00:25
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the OneMedicine Podcast. I'm Rob Lutz, your host and the editorial director of Today's Practitioner. Dr. Andrew Campbell is our guest, and we'll be discussing his recommendations, a protocol he's developed for a six-month toxic mold detox plan. This episode is sponsored by DetoxPure Elements, and we'll have some information about them in the show notes as well. A quick bio on Dr. Campbell before we get started. Dr. Campbell is a medical clinician, researcher, and internationally recognized expert in clinical immunology and toxicology. He specializes in treating complex chronic illnesses related to toxic exposures, including mold and mycotoxins, Lyme disease, pesticides, industrial chemicals, and immune dysfunction. Dr. Campbell has published more than 100 peer-reviewed studies and textbook chapters, and has lectured nationally and internationally for over 25 years, including at Oxford University and Harvard Medical School. He has served as medical director and advisor to multiple clinical and laboratory organizations, and has been named Top Medical Consultant of the Year in 2020 by the International Association of Top Professionals. His clinical interests include toxic effects of chemicals, mycotoxins, toxic mold, Lyme, and publishing studies on these topics. You might be interested to learn more about mycotoxin testing by watching the previously recorded webinar with Dr. Campbell. I'll provide a link to that in the show notes, and it can be found on todayspractitioner.com in the webinar section, as well as the Mycotoxin Resource Center. So, welcome, Dr. Campbell. Please feel free to elaborate on your background and providing you the context for today's discussion. Welcome.
Andrew Campbell 02:05
Thank you. Thank you for having me and allowing me to share this time with you and everyone else. I appreciate it very much. I think that there's a lot of information in medical studies, but there's also a different kind of information--the internet, social media, Dr. Facebook, Dr. Google, and all these other places that sometimes take things to another direction. In medical school, I was taught something very important. Throughout medical school, it was repeated. "In God we trust. Everyone else has to show data." So when there's people that say this works, that works, and the other, I said, "I'm so happy for it. Can you show me any published studies on this?" But they say to me, "I'll get back with you." That's when I know they probably won't.
Rob Lutz 02:52
Exactly. Yeah. Well, you know, I think this is a really important topic, but you know, just out of curiosity, how prevalent is toxic mold exposure, and the related issues here in the US?
Andrew Campbell 03:04
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine 25 years ago said it was more than 60% of public buildings had water intrusion, and therefore probably mold. Now that was 25 years ago. That's the New England Journal of Medicine, a very prestigious--probably one of the most prestigious--journals. Since then, studies have shown, especially now with climate changing, with more floods, more hurricanes, more heavy rains, all these things going on all over the world, that it's becoming more and more prevalent. One of the things that I did when I was in school in Switzerland, my brother was at the university there, learning how to become an architect, and I asked him about 10 years ago, I said, "Why is"--and this is a worldwide problem. The World Health Organization calls mycotoxins the great masquerader of the century. So I asked him. I said, "Why do we have so much water?" He says, "It's construction; it's not weather." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Everybody uses, you know, bricks today, they use cement block, which absorbs moisture, wood, drywall, etc." I said, "Well, what did people use before and not have this problem?" He said, "Stone." He says, "Anything can grow on a stone. All you got to do is wipe it off and it's gone. Nothing grows into the stone itself."
Rob Lutz 04:35
Makes total sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think.
Andrew Campbell 04:37
So.
Rob Lutz 04:37
In New England here--sorry to interrupt, but I was just gonna say how prevalent it must be here, because, you know, you see ice dams in the wintertime and water damage. And these are older homes in a lot of cases, and even some of the modern homes that are, I think, are so--you might have been alluding to this, as well--they're so sealed, right? You know, you don't want air coming in or air going out, so whatever's in there, it's really kind of stuck in there.
Andrew Campbell 05:00
No, that's--you're exactly correct. And there are now several articles that have been published saying that this is really a public health issue, because so many schools, buildings where people work, shopping malls, etc. And if you go to the National Institutes of Health website on molds, they actually are finally recognizing that it affects cognitive function, not only asthma and those kind of problems, which it does, but also depression, anxiety, cognitive function, etc. They're finally recognizing it and putting it on the NIH's website, so that's a good thing. They had 16 studies listed where they got this information from. The eighth is a study that I published with a group of other doctors in a medical journal, and we looked at 120 people that were working in an abandoned mall. The state government--I'm not going to mention what state--rented space out so that a certain group of workers could work out of that space, and they used to have to cover their computers and printers with plastic over the weekends, just in case it rained. So, you can imagine--and of course, part of the title of the study was "The Immunological and Neurological Effects of Molds and Mycotoxins."
Rob Lutz 06:34
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 06:34
And I've been doing this for, since the early 90s, so it's been--and you can see by the color of my hair that I've been, that it's been quite a long journey. And in the beginning, people didn't want to believe it.
Rob Lutz 06:48
Yeah. Well, you know, obviously, so there's a lot of, you know, mold and moisture and things like that in the homes and buildings that people are working in. So I'm just curious here, what are some of the common symptoms you hear from patients that have this issue.
Andrew Campbell 07:04
Well, it's been well established now in medicine for about 25, 30 years, the first place these mycotoxins go to is the brain. Where do these mycotoxins come from to begin with? When there's moisture somewhere, molds will begin to grow. They're just like seeds in a little packet. You've got to put it into a pot, put some dirt into the pot, water it, and eventually get a plant or a flower of some kind. Well, it's the same with molds. So, once they get wet, they start to multiply, and when they multiply, they release spores into the air, and those spores carry mycotoxins. Now, human hair is about 100 microns thick. These spores are two to four microns thick. So, they go to the--you inhale them, and go to the deepest part of the lungs, go right into the blood, and to the brain first. So, your symptoms are foggy brain, a great deal of fatigue, short-term memory loss, headache, sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression, sometimes loss of balance, etc. We also know from published studies, and taking it throughout the spectrum of life, starting with children--studies from Tufts University School of Medicine, and 172 children with autism versus 60 without autism, and what happened? They had mycotoxins in their system.
Rob Lutz 08:34
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 08:36
The 172, on blood testing. And then in the middle--I mean, adults, say. There's multiple sclerosis. Well, a study published at the Rutgers University School of Medicine in New Jersey showed that 70% of multiple sclerosis patients have gliotoxin, a particular mycotoxin, in their system. And they were--when they published that, they were very excited, because that means there's a treatment for it. And I have treated many, many patients with MS, multiple sclerosis, and they're well.
Rob Lutz 09:16
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 09:16
They don't have it anymore. Further on in life, we know very well that it can cause Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. And studies show that Lou Gehrig's disease--amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, medically speaking, but it's Lou Gehrig's disease, it's more commonly known--5% is caused by genetics, 95% by mycotoxins, according to published studies.
Rob Lutz 09:45
Wow.
Andrew Campbell 09:45
So, across life, these mycotoxins, as the World Health Organization says, the great masquerader, and these masquerade as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme is a big one, breast implant illness, things like POTS, dysautonomia, depression, and anxiety that does not respond well to medications, etc. There is a chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of a major medical school in the United States who does the blood testing for mycotoxins with MyMycoLab, and treats them for mycotoxins, and they get well again, instead of--because they didn't work, the antidepressants, anti-anxiolytics didn't work. Now the second place I go to is the gut. What do we get there? Ulcerative colitis. Crohn's disease. Published studies show that treating patients with Crohn's--inflammatory bowel diseases is what they're, include SIBO, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, etc. They found mycotoxins in the body--in the blood from the blood testing--and treated them for mycotoxins, and then these problems went away. So you know, it's the great masquerader.
Rob Lutz 11:13
Yeah.
Andrew Campbell 11:13
Of the century, because people, and you know, doctors--I mean, if a gastroenterologist sees a person and diagnoses them with ulcerative colitis, they're gonna go by the book.
Rob Lutz 11:27
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 11:27
They're not gonna think of mycotoxins, and that's not their fault. It's just that nowadays, strangely enough, 50% of a doctor's time--this was published in a study--is spent filling out insurance forms instead of reading journals. They have to fill out.
Rob Lutz 11:27
Think what they could do with that time. Yeah.
Andrew Campbell 11:47
That's right.
Rob Lutz 11:49
Yeah, so a question for you. You know, so mold is everywhere. You mentioned all sorts of conditions that are very common in the U.S., right? And sometimes the treatment that the practitioner is going as, you know, the first approach don't work. Would you suggest--and we don't need to go too deep on this--but would you suggest that they do some kind of a test for mycotoxins early on in a process when one of these practitioners is treating a patient for some of these things? Should it be a normal test for a practitioner to consider?
Andrew Campbell 12:25
I think that any healthcare practitioner, regardless of their degree and training, etc. etc.--I mean, I have chiropractors that are excellent clinicians, you know.
Rob Lutz 12:36
Absolutely.
Andrew Campbell 12:37
MDs, nutritionists, etc., who really listen to the patient versus the usual 7 to 11 minutes standard.
Rob Lutz 12:47
If you're lucky.
Andrew Campbell 12:49
If you're lucky. If you're lucky, I was taught that it takes 30 minutes to do a good physical examination. How are you going to do that--all these things--in less than 10 minutes? So.
Rob Lutz 13:01
Yeah.
Andrew Campbell 13:01
You know, medicine.
Rob Lutz 13:01
Don't get me started on this topic.
Andrew Campbell 13:04
So yes, I think that if you're suspicious, I have a 14-page form that I have every new patient fill out. I want to know if they were born by cesarean section. Why? In natural childbirth, the first thing the mother experiences is water breaks. It could be at the grocery store. It could be at home, anywhere, okay. And that water contains bacteria, lactobacilli. Why? Because the birth canal, especially the end of the birth canal and the outer parts, can contain candida, and this lactobacillus kills the candida if there is any. So, the first bacteria in baby's mouth are mom's bacteria, and that helps start the microbiome in the gut, and the gut contains 70% to 80% of the immune system. Now, what happens with cesarean section? The first bacteria in baby's mouth come from instruments or hospital personnel, and those don't make a microbiome. The third thing is the first two, three days of mom's milk is colostrum, in which antibodies are passed on to the baby, which protect the baby from viruses and bacteria, etc., but it also contains a sugar called an oligosaccharide that the baby's stomach cannot digest that goes on and feeds the new microbiome that's forming, so now.
Andrew Campbell 14:40
These normal-birth babies have this microbiome, etc. What happens to C-section babies? They're known to have more allergies, more difficulties to tolerating milk and other foods, and having problems responding to different kinds of bacteria and chemicals. Where does that come from? So I want to know those things. I don't care if you're 60 years old. It's important to know about why, because then you can fix the microbiome. Studies done at Reading University in London by Dr. Simon Cutting--Dr. Cutting did studies on the common probiotics. What are they? Lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, and in various colony-forming unit amounts. This one has more than that one, and blah blah blah. The lead found that more than 90% of those die in the stomach to the acidity. Why? Because the acidity in the stomach is part of the innate immune system that we're all born with. Babies crawling on the floor, where people walk with their shoes they bring from outside, and baby puts everything in their mouth. Do they get infected? No, because whatever they put in their mouth dies in the stomach from the acidity.
Rob Lutz 14:41
Pretty amazing.
Rob Lutz 15:54
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 16:04
And that all makes sense, of course. So, when these folks are thinking they're taking a probiotic, they're not really. So, he looked, what--and this is 10-, 12-year-old studies, he looked--what can make it? A spore-forming bacilli, so by taking spore-forming bacilli, and again, I don't care if you're three years old or 60 years old, that's going to help your microbiome, and there's that big, important connection, the gut–brain connection. So, all this is part of making a human being well again. That makes sense.
Rob Lutz 16:46
It does make sense, yeah. So we know this is prevalent. How many patients would you say you've treated for this?
Andrew Campbell 16:51
Over the last?
Rob Lutz 16:51
Over the years.
Andrew Campbell 16:51
30? Five thou--tens of thousands.
Rob Lutz 16:51
Yeah.
Rob Lutz 17:01
Okay. So you know, what I wanted to do was just kind of establish: this is common, it could relate to a lot of other things practitioners are seeing patients for. You've seen a lot of this, and you've treated it very successfully. And it sounds to me like this protocol that you've developed is something that other practitioners would like to hear about. And that's really, I'd say, the meat of what I'd like to dig into in our conversation today is this protocol. So, if you'd just kind of tee it up a little bit, tell me more about it. How did you arrive at it? You know, what's in it?
Andrew Campbell 17:12
Tens of thousands.
Andrew Campbell 17:35
Sure. there's four parts to it. Number one, the first rule of toxicology: get the patient away from the toxin or the toxin away from the patient. Otherwise, it's not going to work.
Rob Lutz 17:36
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 17:37
What does that mean? Let's change from mycotoxin to mercury, because mycotoxins are a molecule. Mercury is a molecule. Glyphosate is a molecule. Arsenic is a molecule. These are toxins. They're molecules. They're not alive. So, let's take mercury. Let's say you and I work in a lab where there's mercury fumes every day, and we start treatment for mercury, yep. But we're going to the lab and inhaling these fumes every day. It's not going to work.
Andrew Campbell 18:24
So, you know, and unfortunately, the entire industry of testing, inspection of the home is not a regulated industry. And I've had many, many, many emails--I get about 20 to 40 emails every day, seven days a week. And people say, "I had two inspections, I had my roof inspected as well, and my foundation, and they all said it was fine. Finally, I gave up, and I started ripping up the floors, and I found a ton of mold." This was a woman. Well, of course, women are smart, and they want their house to be fine. So, anyway, the point is, is first you got to get rid of the mold. And then, what do you do for treatment? There's three parts. As I mentioned a little bit ago, molds make spores, and these spores are two to four microns thick. Well, the spores carry mycotoxins. So the second point is kill the spore, so that there's no more mycotoxin. And you do that by taking an antifungal. Very simple. Now, there are several antifungals. People like to sometimes use the wrong kind, like for instance, fluconazole. There's two kinds of molds: one is single-cell molds, that's all your yeasts, baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, candida, those are single-cell. All the others--Aspergillus, Stachybotrys, Penicillium, Cladosporium, Physarum--all those are multiple-cell molds. So medications such as--antifungals such as itraconazole kills single- and multiple-cell. Well, if you take diflucan, it only kills this kind. It won't touch these. So, it's best to take--just like in antibiotics, you want a general antibiotic, not one that just hits one bacteria. Same thing. Third is eight specific supplements at specific dosages. What do I mean by that? If you read an article, or if you read any published studies on, like, vitamin C, they're going to tell you, "Use this kind of vitamin C at this dose, this often, for this long." They're not going to say, "Take vitamin C." So, it's very specific. So, there's eight specific supplements and vitamins mentioned in the medical journals that help the body revive itself and help get rid of these toxins.
Rob Lutz 18:40
Right. It's not going to work.
Andrew Campbell 18:45
Same thing with mycotoxins. You've first got to get rid of it before you start any treatment. It won't work otherwise.
Rob Lutz 19:01
Mm hm.
Rob Lutz 19:07
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 19:10
And repair the damage that was done. And the last, fourth, is an anti-inflammatory nutritional plan. I specifically didn't mention diet, because that implies losing weight. It's nutrition.
Rob Lutz 21:21
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 21:21
Today, if you go to any supermarket, it's hard to find something that's not wrapped in plastic, you know, or in a can, or etc., you know. We forgot how our grandparents and great-grandparents all the way back to Adam and Eve used to eat. So nutrition is vital for the proper functioning of the body. So, those are the four big steps.
Rob Lutz 21:48
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 21:48
And those steps are what has worked now for, since the early 90s for me. And my patients love it, because it's six months. I get emails all the time from patients. "I've been on this, so-and-so's protocol and such-and-such's protocol, and so forth and so on. I've been on the binder glutathione cycling and all that for three, four years now. I'm still sick. What do you think I should do?" I say, "Why are you waiting three or four years? Give it a try, and if it doesn't work, change." Right?
Rob Lutz 22:24
Do something different.
Andrew Campbell 22:24
Do something different. Don't keep doing the same thing. And then, you know, then I get the emails, "Dr. Campbell, I'm three months into your program, and I feel so much better. Thank you." Well, yeah, after suffering for all this time, of course, they're going to feel better, because it makes sense. It's not something big secret or big--it's not my protocol. It's from medical journals.
Rob Lutz 22:48
Yeah.
Andrew Campbell 22:48
And in all my videos, I put the references at the bottom of each section, so they can read it if they want to. And that's the issues that I see. There's a lot of misinformation about treatment, you know. Take binders; take this. Well, there's three studies on binders in humans. All three say it doesn't--they don't work in humans.
Rob Lutz 23:12
That's crazy.
Andrew Campbell 23:12
They warn people that if you take a binder, if you're on any kind of hormone--thyroid hormone, estrogen, progesterone, just, or whatever--it's going to bind that, no matter when you take it. Excuse me?
Rob Lutz 23:25
Don't take it. Don't take it.
Andrew Campbell 23:28
Makes sense. Then, there's studies that show that gliotoxin, the one I mentioned earlier, that 70% of MS patients have, if you give them glutathione, it increases the toxicity of gliotoxin.
Rob Lutz 23:44
Oh my gosh.
Andrew Campbell 23:45
I mean, this is a published study. I didn't invent any.
Rob Lutz 23:48
Right. Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit more, if you don't mind, you know, what specific supplements and vitamins? Which ones do you put into your protocol that--again, you've mentioned, you know, this is out of the literature, not something you made up yourself, but it's something you found that works. I'd love to hear more about that.
Andrew Campbell 24:05
So, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, probiotics. Okay, so spore-forming bacilli probiotic--there's basically one company that makes them. MegaSporeBiotic is the name of the thing. Second of all, I always recommend curcumin. It's a great anti-inflammatory, and there's a bunch of studies that show how it helps with the inflammation in the brain and in the gut and all over the body, and it's very safe to take. Then, we want to make sure we take melatonin, but not at these tremendous dosages, because it does the reverse at high dosages. It makes you worse. You just need three milligrams. These studies were published at the University of Texas, San Antonio branch, which did a lot of studies on environmental toxicants. And three milligrams of melatonin has been shown to help remove toxins from the brain, and that includes all toxins, but also if you have--you ODed, overdosed on a drug, it helps that too, so it's kind of like a vacuum cleaner for the brain, so to speak. I'm exaggerating.
Rob Lutz 25:25
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 25:25
You want to make sure they take magnesium. Now, I wrote--published an article on magnesium years ago. There's six different kinds, so you've got to choose the right kind. One of them is going to give you diarrhea, because in medicine we use it as a prep for colonoscopy. You sure don't want to use that.
Rob Lutz 25:46
No on that one. Not for this.
Andrew Campbell 25:49
Okay, because then you're going to look like the shuttle taking off. So we want to make sure that you take the right kind of magnesium, because it's needed in at least 350 enzymatic changes in the body and 3500 different protein interactions in the body. Not only that, but if you're low in magnesium, you can't absorb vitamin C, and that's the next one you want, vitamin C.
Rob Lutz 26:19
I'm sorry. So, what form of magnesium do you recommend?
Andrew Campbell 26:23
Well, there's three forms that you want, and the three forms are malate, you want a little bit of citrate, and the others, it depends on your age and your sex: male, female, if you're a child, a young adult, older adults, or elderly. Then, there's your B complex, and studies show that the majority of Americans are low in B complex. Now, when I say B complex, what does that include? B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, folic acid, and folate. There are seven of them. You've got to have these in you in order for things to work. And B stands for brain, B complex. Those are essential for the brain, as is vitamin D, D3. There's three types of D. The one that you absorb is D3. The others don't get absorbed. The D3--and that's what you want. It helps prevent Lewy body dementia. That's important.
Rob Lutz 27:36
Yes, you want that.
Andrew Campbell 27:37
Especially for people my age. Not for you. You're a young man. But, you know, when you hit the 50s is when you're looking at--that's when actually it is known that Parkinson's, Alzheimer, dementias, etc., start, but they're not clinically evident for another 10 to 15 years. So, you need to start doing these things when you hit 50. I think also, what's important--there's one more supplement. It's known as phosphatidylserine, and you had a wonderful article on it today in Today's Practitioner. A phosphatidylserine is an essential part of the brain, and it's showed that it helps in patients that have Alzheimer. Once they've taken it for 90 days, they now can recognize people, can make their own beds, take their own baths, feed themselves, prepare their own food, all these things that they weren't able to. They were basically wheelchair-bound and dependent on someone else for everything. Well, now they have.
Rob Lutz 28:40
What kind of dosage?
Andrew Campbell 28:43
Usually, you need at least about 300 milligrams morning and again evening, minimum.
Rob Lutz 28:53
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 28:55
There's almost--you'd have to take thousands of milligrams to make you sick from it.
Rob Lutz 29:03
Yeah.
Andrew Campbell 29:03
So it's a very safe medication, very safe. And that includes younger people, young children: PANS, PANDAS, autism, all those disorders. They'll help anything to do with the brain. What about Parkinson's and dopa--dopamine? Well, it helps restore those cells that make dopamine, so you know, it's all these wonderful things from phosphatidylserine. Then I get the questions. "Well, why not choline?" I said, "Have you read any articles where phosphatidylcholine does anything?" "No, but everybody talks about it." Wonderful. Okay. Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher in the last century said, "There's two kinds of fools. There's the fool that believes things that are not true, and then there's the fool that refuses to believe what is true."
Rob Lutz 30:04
I think there was another quote, "What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence," or something like that. I remember that quote. I'm not quite sure what it means, but it was an interesting one in philosophy class.
Andrew Campbell 30:15
Yeah, so those are basically your eight, but again, specific dosages, because again, the medical literature doesn't fool around and just say, "Take some phosphatidylserine," because they've done the studies. They did on this many people, that many people, that many, at different--this dose, that dose, the other dose.
Rob Lutz 30:35
This is why, you know, patients probably really shouldn't try to self-treat themselves on this type of thing. Right? They'd go on Google or, "Hey, here are these supplements I should take. I don't know what form, how much to take. Let's see what happens." And nothing good probably happens.
Andrew Campbell 30:54
Now, here's the other part of supplements, and this was a very difficult part for me in my practice for years. Where do I get pure supplements? Let me give you an example. Two months ago, in the journal Frontiers in Gastroenterology, there was a published study by Dr. Phillips and his group showing that an analysis of 386 alternative medicinal products were implicated in liver injury, and they really showed hepatotoxic botanicals, pharmaceutical adulteration, heavy-metal contamination, and undisclosed animal content. Three hundred and eighty-six. So, that is an issue. Now, four years ago, there was a study where they took 60 supplements, the most commonly purchased, took them to the lab to see what was in the bottle. Is that actually what's on the label? 11% of these 60 had in the bottle what's on the label. 40% had nothing in the bottle that was on the label.
Rob Lutz 32:10
That's how they keep prices down.
Andrew Campbell 32:12
Yeah, and then a year later, another study on 40 popular supplements showed--they were tested for pesticides and heavy metals, cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic. 93% had one or the other, or both. So, what does it--what do I recommend my patients? I can't--they can't afford to send it to some third-party lab to have it tested to see is there anything wrong with it. Well, these people came to me, and they said, "We have a--you know, you always recommend the same eight. Why don't you--we'll put it together, the same eight." I said, "Well, how do I know it's pure?" "Oh, we have third-party testing. We have certificates." Now, what I did is I had someone order a kit and bring it to me, the eight supplements. I sent it to a lab in Arizona to have it tested. I not only tested it for pesticides and heavy metals, I also tested it for insect parts and rodent droppings. You don't know, a cockroach falls in the mix, or you know, a mouse takes a poop somewhere.
Rob Lutz 33:26
If it's not a pharmaceutical clean room, then all that stuff could happen, right?
Andrew Campbell 33:30
Every single one of their products came back 100% pure.
Rob Lutz 33:34
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 33:35
That's what I want for patients. I don't want them having heavy metals.
Rob Lutz 33:39
Right.
Andrew Campbell 33:41
So.
Rob Lutz 33:41
It makes total sense, right?
Andrew Campbell 33:42
That's why--and these folks are detoxpure.com. They're the ones that do that, and that's a relief for me, let me tell you, because it was a struggle, honestly, for many years. You know, when I first started, there were like five supplements. That's it.
Rob Lutz 34:05
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 34:05
There wasn't any more. That was a long time ago, before you were born, but you know, or before your parents were born. Anyway, the point is, is that there was very little choices, and they weren't that good. But thank goodness, now we have something that we know has 100% purity, and that is a big relief for me.
Rob Lutz 34:27
That's great. Yeah, I think practitioners and patients need to be really careful with the supplements that they choose and the brands that they work with, you know, and get those certificates of analysis and third-party testing. You know, there's some good professional brands out there that do that type of thing, but most patients don't know. I know--I've had this conversation with my mother. Why is this fish oil so much more expensive than this one? Or why is this vitamin D so much more expensive? You know, you do get what you pay for in most cases. Sometimes you pay for more than what you're getting, but I think asking the right questions, if you're a practitioner, of the brands that you work with is critical.
Andrew Campbell 35:09
Well, sometimes though, I've--honestly speaking, and maybe I'm being pragmatic, but a lot of these supplement companies will say, "You want to make more money? We have to--we can help you make more money for you in your practice. You know, we'll sell you our products at this price, and you sell them at this price." I'm always suspicious of something like that.
Rob Lutz 35:33
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And a lot of MDs just can't do it. You know, there's--it's just, like yourself. You know, it's just not part of your thinking. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about different supplements that you recommend as part of your protocol, and the results that you see. Any words of caution to practitioners when they are detoxing a patient, or you know, for someone that's doing this themselves, let's say, if you tested positive for any of the different mycotoxins. Any words of caution?
Andrew Campbell 36:05
Don't use what is popular, use what is backed by medical science. That's the best thing I can say to people, because there's so much stuff out there. And I'll give you, for example--that's a sad one. One of the things that MyMycoLab does is that they provide a complimentary Zoom call when you get your test results. I'm on the Zoom call with a mother in the Northeast, and she's telling me about how she's been sick for years, and she tried this method with the binders and the cholestyramine and the herbals and the vat and the other. And her son got sick, because his apartment was contaminated, and he came to live with mom, because he couldn't work and couldn't get an income. And after they both tried these things, he became depressed, and he went on, got mixed up in drugs and started taking drugs, and then committed suicide. No mother should have to suffer through something like that. No father should either. The point being is that all those popular treatments, there isn't a single study that show they work.
Rob Lutz 37:34
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 37:34
But everybody uses them. "Oh, because so-and-so said so."
Rob Lutz 37:39
And they're desperate, right? They're desperate for.
Andrew Campbell 37:42
They're desperate.
Rob Lutz 37:42
And easily influenced.
Andrew Campbell 37:43
They're sick. They're scared. They're not--they don't know what's wrong with them. Well, let's help them, not take advantage of them.
Rob Lutz 37:50
Mm hm. That makes total sense. Well, is there anything else you want to add to kind of wrap up the conversation today? Any words of wisdom, pearls for the other practitioners on the other end here?
Andrew Campbell 38:02
I'll--just like I said about this poor lady and her son. I want to bring up a good one for you and close with that. This is a young girl, Mom and Dad brought her to me, 20 years old. They're from the state of Connecticut, and during the summer when she was 16, she got bitten by a tick. And these people have the economical wherewithal, they took her to the top guy in New York City who was famous for treating tick bites and Lyme disease. And he put her on several antibiotics and kept testing her, and the test came back positive, positive, positive, and kept giving more and more, eventually ending up giving IV antibiotics, and she was on those. And she graduated and went to college, and had to drop out her first semester because she'd come back from classes and crash on the bed, and just couldn't make it.
Rob Lutz 38:48
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 38:48
Well, they finally came to see me, and I tested her for mycotoxins. Why? Because your antibodies to Lyme are going to stay--Borrelia, to be specific--are going to stay positive for years after a successful treatment. That's how the immune system works. And I'm a clinical immunologist. That's normal. I tested her for mycotoxins. She lit up like a Christmas tree. Three months later, they came back. She was so much better, and the father and mother started calling me Dr. House. So, the point is, don't keep--if that nail isn't going into the piece of wood you're banging it into, don't keep banging that same nail with the same hammer.
Rob Lutz 39:59
Mm hm.
Andrew Campbell 39:59
Think outside it. Maybe it's not that.
Rob Lutz 40:03
Mm hm. No, I think that's great advice. You know, based on everything that you've shared with us today, this can present a lot of different ways. And if those treatments aren't working that traditionally do for some of those conditions, this is absolutely something that you should test for and treat your patient for and--so, we'll share some more information about the protocol that you put together in the resource center and on the website, but thank you so much for your insights and your information. And I know this would be very beneficial to our listeners in the audience here, so thank you so much, Dr. Campbell.
Andrew Campbell 40:39
Thank you for having me. Have a great rest of your week.
Rob Lutz 40:43
You too.
Rob Lutz 40:45
Thanks for listening to the OneMedicine Podcast. I hope you found today's episode interesting and came away with a few insights you can apply to your practice. If you're looking for the show notes, they can be found in the link below. If you want to go deeper on this topic, or anything else, please visit todayspractitioner.com and consider registering for our weekly newsletter as well. Thanks again, and I hope you'll join us next time.