
What if chronic inflammation isn’t just a symptom, but the root cause of autoimmune disease, metabolic dysfunction, and even brain fog?
Loading summary
Quaker Protein Oatmeal Advertiser
Start your day with Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal. The instant Oatmeal. Ready to help you tackle whatever your day brings. Like wrangling your toddler into their car seat. That was fun. Coaching your sixth grader soccer team.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Go girls.
Quaker Protein Oatmeal Advertiser
And carrying all the groceries in one trip. Try Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal granola and bars. Great taste and a good source of protein. Quaker bring out the good.
Celsius Energy Drink Advertiser
5Am I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change and head to work. Meetings, workshops. One more Celsius. No slowing down. Working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now@celsius.com Ugh.
Depop Advertiser
You said you were over him, but his hoodie's still in your rotation. It's time. Grab your phone, snap a few pics and sell it on Depop. Listed in minutes with no selling fees. And just like that, a guy 500 miles away just paid full price for your closure. And right on cue.
Dr. Josh Red
Hey, still got my hoodie?
Depop Advertiser
Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on Depop. Where taste recognizes taste list. Now with no selling fees, payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.
Dr. Josh Red
I had a patient, one of my first ones when I graduated. I walk into the room and she just starts bawling. And the husband says, if you can't help my wife. Wife, I. I don't know what's going to happen to her. She's at her wits in and, and she shared the story. She said, you know, my son was asked to draw a picture of, of me at school. And he came home and I pulled it out of his backpack and it was a picture of me in bed. And she said, what's this? Honey? Says, that's you, mom. Cuz you're always in bed.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Wow.
Dr. Josh Red
Even if I prescribe thyroid hormones and nothing's being done to the mechanism, which is the autoimmune disease, this patient will continue to feel terrible, continue to have all their symptoms because their immune system is rapidly still destroying the thyroid, as if there's a huge fire in your home and the fire alarm is going off and all the conventional doctors are doing is just turning off the fire alarm and they're doing nothing to the actual fire. And this is absolutely crazy for patients because they go from doctor to doctor to doctor. They're herded around like sheep. They're giving Thyroid hormones. Nothing is being done to the mechanism and they still feel really sick.
Podcast Co-host or Announcer
All right, on today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to reverse.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
And heal all inflammatory conditions and all autoimmune conditions. I brought on my friend, Dr. Josh Red, and we're diving deep into what are the top foods that are secretly causing inflammation. What are actually the biggest inflammatory triggers from a hormonal standpoint standpoint, we'll talk about those exact hormones. If you have hormone imbalance, this is also something you don't want to miss. And then we're really going to walk you through the foods that reduce inflammation, the supplements.
Podcast Co-host or Announcer
We're going to talk about cutting edge.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Therapies, everything from stem cell to peptides to other forms of regenerative medicine. Therapies that you may have not even heard of yet. And really excited about this episode, we're.
Podcast Co-host or Announcer
Going to dive deep on how to.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Heal the root causes of inflammation and immune system problems. Dr. Jo Josh, welcome to the show.
Dr. Josh Red
Thanks for having me.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Well, man, I'm really excited to have you on because I've started watching some of your content on social media. I've seen that you've got multiple practices, you're working with a lot of really well known celebrities and athletes and getting really great results. And I was just really intrigued by looking at something that I've seen and I know you've seen the same thing as well. There are so many conditions that are inflammatory, that are autoimmune, that are exploding. You know, when we look at the stats over the last 30 years, more and more people are dealing with these types of autoimmune diseases. First question, maybe this is a hard one or maybe you already know the answer, but what do you think is at the root of the autoimmune explosion?
Dr. Josh Red
Inflammation is a big one. But the mechanism driving inflammation could be blood sugar imbalances, cortisol defects, estrogen. We're exposed to so many different things that drive and mimic estrogen and that's a big trigger. And then we have environmental issues and then we live these high stress lives and we're not eating real food, we're eating just processed garbage. And our immune system is wondering what the heck is going on here? And that's causing our immune system to become overzealous, that's causing inflammation to be at an all time high. And now we have this inflammatory autoimmune crisis that's going on and it's only getting worse. Even in my clinic over the last 17 years, we see such A high volume of patients over my 10 clinics from Pretty much all over the world. And even there, we're seeing just an increase in volume and an increase of younger people developing autoimmune conditions. It's pretty alarmin and kind of scary. For sure.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah. You know, I remember when I first opened my practice, this was the end of 2007 in Nashville. I think the things that surprised me the most were a few things. One, I started working with a lot of kids in the autistic community, and I was just surprised at how many kids were being diagnosed with this. I was really surprised at the number of women with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hypothyroidism and hormone conditions, just generally, but also just the number of the sheer number of people dealing with autoimmune disease. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. And, you know, one of the things that I see and you kind of referenced this, is there are kind of several pathways or dominoes that can be tipped that kind of start to push people towards this. I think early in my career and even today, I believe that this leaky gut, inflammation of the gut lining is a big cause. But even what it starts from there, there's things like, as you mentioned, there's cortisol, there's insulin, there's estrogen, there's these hormones. And so that's one of the things I picked up that you said is it seems like you mentioned three hormones there that are all related to this explosion and autoimmune conditions.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah. And when we're treating these autoimmune conditions, they're the biggest triggers as well. So when somebody has an autoimmune condition, if they have unrhythmatic cortisol, if they have blood sugar imbalances, if they have estrogen dominance or too low of estrogen, those three are the biggest triggers that we see. And as we tackle those three, we see the autoimmune response come down. But you mentioned where autoimmune conditions are exploding like crazy. But here's the thing. Lots of them are diagnosed with autoimmune disease, but there's a huge subset of population of females and males that actually have an autoimmune reaction. Right where their immune system is attacking some form of tissue. They have a ton of symptoms and problems. They go to a number of doctors to try to figure out what in the world is going on with their body and why they feel the way they feel, but they're not diagnosed. And the reason why is because they don't have any permanent tissue damage yet. So, like, for example, with Hashimoto's, there's a lot of people that will have Hashimoto's autoimmune reaction, but where their immune system is destroying their thyroid rapidly, but it doesn't cause a permanent low thyroid. And so the doctor doesn't do any form of treatment. They don't give them a thyroid hormone. They don't do anything. They just wait until it's permanently destroyed and then they start the treatment. That's the same way with rheumatoid arthritis, with ms, with a number of other autoimmune conditions. So we have a massive amount of people who are suffering with autoimmune disease that are actually diagnosed. But I truly believe we have about 10 to 15% more of the population that has an autoimmune reaction and has no clue because they don't have permanent tissue damage. And that's kind of the scary thing for a lot of people.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think maybe one example of this is, you know, when you start to see a lot of people with a lot of multiple food sensitivities. Yeah, right. I mean, I think sometimes that's an early sign. A lot of people with, you know, these early GI issues, you know, one thing in particular is you're talking about hormones. You know, I recorded a. Did a show. I've done a couple shows on this on hypothyroidism. And specifically the number is Approximately they believe 80% of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's. Right. It's the autoimmune form. That's the same thing I know that you probably see in your practice. What do you think the reason for. For that is? And what do you do when you have somebody come in with hypothyroidism in their practice? I think most of the time, people in conventional medicine, they're really just focused in on TSH and T4.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
But one thing I've heard you talk about is those are not the hormones, the primary hormones you should be looking at to get to the root of hypothyroidism.
Dr. Josh Red
No, no. And you're exactly right. So if somebody has Hashimoto's, their immune system is dest the thyroid, and then it eventually causes a permanent low thyroid, and you'll see a TSH number that will increase. Sometimes it actually decreases too, which makes it even more problematic. But if the, if the doctor sees that the TSH has increased, they'll prescribe a thyroid hormone, which is important every cell in your body has a thyroid hormone receptor. And so thyroid hormones are definitely needed if you have a permanent destroyed thyroid. Right. But the mechanism is the actual autoimmune response. And so even if I prescribe thyroid hormones and nothing's being done to the mechanism, which is the autoimmune disease, this patient will continue to feel terrible, continue to have all their symptoms, because their immune system is rapidly still destroying the thyroid. It would be as if there's a huge fire in your home and the fire alarm is going off, and all the conventional doctors are doing is just turn off the fire alarm and they're doing nothing to the actual fire. And this is absolutely crazy for patients because they go from doctor to doctor to doctor. They're herded around like sheep, deep. They're giving thyroid hormones. Nothing is being done to the mechanism. And they still feel really sick.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
And they feel like they're crazy. They've lost hope. They have so many different issues. And then here's the maddening thing. When you have an autoimmune disease like Hashimoto's and nothing's being done to calm it down, you're more likely to develop another autoimmune condition. So then it can turn into rheumatoid arthritis or Ms. Or celiac disease or Crohn's or ulcerative colitis. And now they have a myriad of symptoms above and beyond just thyroid and autoimmune symptom. And they feel crazy. So, like, for example, I had a. I had a patient, one of my first ones when I graduated. I walk into the room and she just starts bawling. And the husband says, if you can't help my wife, I don't know what's going to happen to her. She's at her wits. And she shared this story. She said, you know, my son was asked to draw a picture of me at school, and he came home and I pulled it out of his backpack, and it was a picture of me in bed. And she said, what's this? Honey? Says, that's you, mom, because you're always in bed. But this is the reality of these patients. Nobody realizes how sick they are. They've lost hope. They feel like they're crazy, and their symptoms are just getting worse and worse and worse. And they're really, in my opinion, one of the most neglected patient populations in our country, hands down.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
You know what you're sharing with me right now? It really hits home because this reminds me of part of my childhood, because my mom was diagnosed with cancer around 40 and so this was when I was around seventh grade, went through chemo and then for the next 10 years. But really throughout high school, my mom was sick and tired and always wanting to be in bed. I mean, she was very, very sick. And doctors, first they threw thyroid medications at it. They said, you have hypothyroidism, you have chronic fatigue syndrome. Later it was anxiety, depression. So then it was like, well, here's an anti anxiety drug, here's an antidepressant drug. And so my mom was so sick and so tired and so overwhelmed throughout a good part of my childhood. And I remember that. And she was going to, I mean, the amount of doctor's visits she went to regularly, it was like every month it was a different doctor, a different doctor trying to figure out what was going on. And the only thing that ever happened was, here's a drug, here's a drug, here's another test, here's another drug. And nothing ever changed until finally this was when I was essentially about to graduate and we really radically changed her diet and I was actually diagnosed with cancer a second time. And, and we finally went to the root cause. And then now she's really healthy, she's in her 70s, she's doing great. But there's so many people out there today that are just completely lost in this medical system. And to your point, you know, part of what happens is they get prescribed a drug so they think, oh, this is fixing me so they don't make any of the other changes they need to. And so they're actually getting worse in these other areas.
Dr. Josh Red
Yep, yep, it's, it's absolutely maddening. I mean, you know, more than anything, it's. What a cool story though, that you experienced what your mom went through and so you went a completely different route from a healthcare standpoint, probably with her as a big motivation for you, right? Which is. Oh, yeah, that's incredible. And it's so good to hear that she's doing it as good as she is. But yeah, as we sit and listen to our patients day in and day out, it is just horrible to hear the stories that they experience. But there's simple changes, and this is probably even more maddening. It's not like we have to change the world for them. There are simple, tiny changes that we can correct and we can change that will significantly improve their quality of life.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Well, walk me through, let's walk through some of those changes. You know, maybe your top three or top five things you think that people can start doing today.
Dr. Josh Red
So the first thing And I just released the book. The 30 day inflammatory reset is just avoiding inflammatory foods. Right. That could be one simple change that you can do that could significantly improve your quality of life and calm down this inflammatory process.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
What are some of the biggies there?
Dr. Josh Red
That this is kind of a cool thing too because I had somebody ask me, isn't almond milk bad for you or isn't this bad for you? And I think there's a lot of people really confused at what's bad, what's, what's good. The cool thing about my clinic is we see around two to 300 patients a day over the course of those 10 clinics. And so for the last 17 years, we kind of have our own research center in house and we're testing labs, we're testing inflammatory markers, we're testing antibodies, we're testing, then we're implementing the treatment, then we retest and we go through that process. So sometimes when I look at research and I try to apply it into a clinical setting, it's absolute garbage. It doesn't work as you know. Right. And then sometimes we look at research, we apply it and it's fantastic. But for us, what's cool is I don't have to guess, I don't have to depend on an influencer or somebody else to know if something's good or not. Right. So what we've seen is the number one trigger for autoimmune patients is gluten, hands down, no questions asked. The second trigger for autoimmune patients is conventional dairy. Conventional dairy full of hormones, pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, you name it. That's a massive trigger and it has similarities to different parts of our body. So to give you an idea, like the gluten protein and the casein protein can mimic self tissue because it's so that protein structure is so similar to that of the thyroid, the intestinal tract and other parts of our body, brain, you name it. Right. So those are really common ones. Sugar, high fructose, corn syrup, anything that's going to spike. Insulin, that's going to be a big trigger. A really common one too. That doesn't, I don't think is talked about much is alcohol. Yeah, alcohol is one of those things that is really inflammatory to the brain, really inflammatory to the gut. In the old days we thought, okay, you can have two to three glasses of wine and be fine. Now we know with my patient population, I don't allow them to drink alcohol at all. You have this, the brain and then you have this web of neurological tissue that's Below the brain that engulfs the whole intestinal tract, called the enteric nervous system. And even when alcohol exposes that enteric nervous system even slightly, it kills neurons. And we only have a certain amount of neurons in our life. Right. And so as we drink alcohol and it kills those neurons and the enteric nervous system, then it causes gut motility, it causes leaky gut gut, it causes brain inflammation, even just slight exposure. So for our patient population, we, we have them avoid alcohol as much as possible, but those are probably the, the most common ones that trigger our patients. Soy in our country is a lot different than soy, let's say in Japan and other places of the world. And it's, it's. I wouldn't be eating soy in our country even if I didn't have an autoimmune disease. But that's a really common trigger as well. But those are probably the top food triggers that, that, that flare things up.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
That makes sense.
Dr. Josh Red
So I would have them avoid inflammatory foods like that. And then something is, that's really simple but is really impactful, is just stabilizing blood glucose.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
So we have our patients wear a continuous glucose monitor. And then we want to see blood sugar levels 80 to 130. No matter what you eat, no matter what you do, if it drops too low or it spikes too high, you're going to have an autoimmune flare up. Plus you're going to actually put a ton of stress on the adrenal glands, which are the stress gland. And your reproductive hormones will be stolen away just simply from unstable blood sugar levels. And so we can fix a ton of things by, if I stabilize glucose and that's the only thing I do, then all of a sudden this inflammatory process decreases. Now reproductive hormones start to thrive. All of a sudden, adrenal function and cortisol defects start to improve, and the patient's quality of life is significantly better.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Let me ask you this question. So one thing that I've noticed is that in the majority of patients I work with, if we change diet, high protein, high fiber, mostly real food, lots of meat, fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, that sort of diet, most blood Sugar will stabilize, A1C will improve, and so many other things get better.
Dr. Josh Red
Thousand percent.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
But there is about 10 to 20% of people that even within getting their diet really clean, the insulin in A1C doesn't get to exactly where I want it to be. What have you seen is kind of that other thing that might be out there that keeps a 1C from getting in balance that's not diet related.
Dr. Josh Red
That's a great question. A1C is directly correlated with inflammation. So if there's other physiological processes within the body that aren't functioning well that are driving inflammation, then it would be hard to get their A1C in check.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
So to give you an idea, if somebody has a methylation problem, which 40% of our country has, and let's say they have a severe enough one, then homocysteine can increase, which can also increase blood sugar levels and also cause problems. There's also some patients that have immune resilient issues. Let's say they have intestinal permeability problems, leaky gut, and they're absorbing certain proteins in the bloodstream that they shouldn't and that causes and exacerbates inflammation and autoimmune response. There could be really healthy foods for you. That could be really healthy foods that my immune system reacts to.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
And if we don't address those or identify those, then it can cause the A1C to increase as well and cause inflammation to increase. On top of that, if somebody has a high stress life.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah. Now this is the biggest one that I see typically, but these others are really good.
Dr. Josh Red
If somebody has a crazy high stress life life cortisol will increase, which pumps out blood sugar levels. So we'll have somebody sleeping that maybe has past trauma or lives a high stress life, doesn't get into a parasympathetic response and they're sleeping, have not eaten anything, and their blood sugar levels spike above 200 just from cortisol. Right. That's a really, really common one. There's a number of other imbalances too that will drive blood sugar levels outside of that, but those are probably the most common ones that we see.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Podcast Co-host or Announcer
Do you have hormone imbalance, weight loss resistance, low energy and sleep problems, and you're tired of being told your labs are normal when you know something isn't right? This new test flips the script and my team knows exactly what to look for. I'm currently offering a simple at home blood test that actually tests for the right things. Targeted biomarkers including hormones, thyroid and metabolism. Plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to review your results and discover ways that you can work with the Health Institute to finally find lasting healing. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, you know, I mean, your point related to methylation, that's really interesting. And this is why I Think personalized medicine is so important. Important. I feel like even within the natural health space, of course, conventional medicine for so long it was like we're going to completely ignore all nutrition. And then you had more of this sort of integrative medicine. And what started happening there, I think is that you have the American Heart association, which is follow a low fat diet. And then you had other people saying, oh, everybody needs to be carnivore, everybody needs to be keto, everybody should be vegan. And one of the things I learned, and I see you practicing the same way is, is no, everybody is a unique individual. What works for this person doesn't work for this person. I noticed this early on too because I started realizing, okay, my patients with, if I had somebody come in with example, like maybe cancer or fatty liver disease, okay, their diet is actually pretty different than somebody with ibs.
Dr. Josh Red
Totally.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
You know, like ibs, I'm like, only eat soups, only eat cooked food. Like it's a very, very gentle diet versus, you know, we're focusing more on detoxification pathways and other things with it, maybe fasting even, you know, with some of these other groups. And I've heard you talk on fasting a little bit. I'm, I'm curious your, your opinion on it. And do you have everybody fast? You only have certain people fast. I'd love to hear your kind of. That's a great philosophy.
Dr. Josh Red
That's a great question. We see so many different patients and we've never had a patient get worse by eating every two to three hours a day. Meaning if I put my patients on an anti inflammatory diet and then I have them eat breakfast and then a snack and lunch and snack and dinner and snack and stabilize glucose, I never see people get significantly worse or get, you know, get worse from that. Right. I see patients though, if I put them into the fast, or one of my doctors does and they shouldn't be into a fast. I've seen patients get jacked up from fasting.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yes.
Dr. Josh Red
Right.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
I think fasting can be incredible for the right patient. But we have to monitor and see does this patient have, have blood sugar imbalances and cortisol defects to the point that their adrenal glands are so damaged from a low caloric intake of food. We see a lot of female populations that come into our office and they just don't eat enough and their adrenal glands are literally just imbalanced because they don't eat enough. And so basically they're under this huge stress response. They steal away Reproductive hormones, they cause inflammation and other blood sugar imbalances just simply from a low caloric intake of food. So if I put those patients on a fast, I'm gonna make their condition way worse, right?
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Well, yeah. And I don't think what people realize is fasting is a type of stress. So you have people come in, especially with chronic fatigue and hypothyroidism, and their bodies are just worn out. And then you're kind of saying, well, now I'm going to put another stressor on you.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah. And we have a ton of patients where we'll put into a fasting response and they'll improve really, really well. In fact, in fact, I'd say 85 of our patients can fast and do really well with fasting if we coach them through it. But there's about 15 of our patients that we have to correct imbalances, improve overall physiology before we even want them to fast. Otherwise we could put them into more of a condition, an inflammatory state that could be problematic for their.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
And this is why working with a great practitioner can be so beneficial is having somebody coach and guide you through. It's like, I think about anything in life, life. It's like you're better having a coach, you're better having a doctor, you're better having a mentor, somebody who's going to walk you through how to best do it, especially if your condition's complex and there's some basic things like, hey, I want to lose 10 pounds and I'm all generally healthy. Okay, well, that's one thing. But you know, with, with what you're talking about, people with severe autoimmune issues, oftentimes and inflammatory conditions, it's so, so helpful to have somebody. Yeah. You know, I think about this with infection, like if somebody has Lyme or mold or parasites, there's really a very specific process and protocol that you're going to do sometimes very different in phase one or phase two, if you're following the ideal, you know, ideal protocol.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah, definitely. No questions asked. I think that's really important too, is there's a lot of patients where we might do one thing and the next patient we might do something totally different. Right?
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
And we want to be as specific as we can for those patients so that we can, can help them and educate them and show them what to do and what not to do long term so that they can be the experts on their own health and they don't have to rely on all the conflicting information within the world. For sure.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, I heard you Mention that you felt like coming out of or during COVID that there was a spike in certain types of autoimmune types reactions in some of your patients.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah. And this is no question. So during COVID we would run an autoimmune panel on patients, and we could see the top 25 autoimmune diseases in our country. We could see if that spiked or not. I was doing a medical program in Chicago where we would see a ton of autoimmune patients. And I was at the school, and we would have students behind me and then clinicians behind me, kind of seeing how I treat autoimmune patients. And Covid hit right in the middle of that. And for fun, we were already testing autoimmune panels on every single patient. What we found is there was about. I just remember one day I would ask the patient what their symptoms were and when they noticed the onset of their symptoms. And there was a day where I saw about eight different patients, and I'd asked them, what was the onset of your symptoms? You know what they said? No COVID vaccine.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Oh, wow.
Dr. Josh Red
And they said, I got the vaccine. And two days later or one day later or 12 hours later, I started to develop all these symptoms and problems. Problems.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
And there was one day where we had about eight of those patients and had this. I had the students behind me, the clinicians behind me, and we're like, oh, crap. I think the vaccine is actually inducing an autoimmune disease in these patients.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Wow.
Dr. Josh Red
And in that area, lots of people knew that I had gone to Chicago and I was there. And so we were seeing a massive amount of patients with really strange symptoms and not immune symptoms. And so we started to do these tests on these patients, and we started to see autoimmunity. They didn't have autoimmunity before, and now all of a sudden, they had autoimmunity explode. The most common antibody that we saw. This is scary. The most common antibody we saw with these patients after a vaccine was cardiac peptide antibodies, which is antibodies to cardiac tissue. And they were having a ton of different heart symptoms, cardiovascular symptoms, and problems there. And those of all the panels that we ran, that was the most common autoimmune reaction that we saw post COVID vaccine. Now, I'm not anti vax, I'm not any of this stuff. We did have patients that would get Covid, you know, the illness itself and develop an autoimmune disease from that. But we saw a ton of patients who would get vaccine, get the vaccine, and then develop an Autoimmune disease, pots, things like that as well.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah. You know, I had Dr. Peter McCullough on the show and I believe he's a cardiologist and he talked about this and he saw the very same thing in numerous patients. And so one thing I was so surprised by the whole thing was the amount of people that I'd known before that were, I would call very healthy people that were sent into a spiral. One person in particular I'm thinking of, and he is built like you, really fit, incredibly healthy. And he just went for a two year spiral of just being incredibly sick until finally we were able to build him back up and get on the right protocol. Now he's 100% again and healthy and well. But it was shocking. I had my uncle, he was a professor at the University of Maryland, and he went and got in. He ended up having, A few weeks later, died of myocarditis, had a heart shut down while walking around a track. And, and again, I just was, was completely healthy, very fit, very active. And so there was so many examples like that.
Dr. Josh Red
I was talking to somebody yesterday and she said she got vaccinated, she got the co shot, developed type 1 diabetes right after.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Wow.
Dr. Josh Red
But this is, this is the thing where just being able to understand this stuff, being able to do the research back then we had the published information and we wanted to push it towards different research, you know, research schools and things like that. But no, but nobody would take it on. Oh, yeah, it was, we couldn't talk about it, we couldn't share it, any of that stuff. And it was really alarming that here we are, we're seeing it in clinic, we're seeing the problems, but yet we can't talk about it. And I think there's risk to pretty much everything that we do, but the fact that we couldn't even like, like open up and share, hey, this is what we're seeing. We would get blasted by individuals that would see us, we'd get blasted by medical, you know, practices that would see us. It's kind of a crazy time that.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Was, you know, here's the other thing, and I'm not mad about it, but I've never received an apology, you know. You've never received one, anyone. Because I think about, I had the same thing when, when, when all this was going on, I started really getting out there and saying, listen, listen, no matter what type of virus it is, you want to up your vitamin D, up your zinc, do quercetin, do a number of things. I walked through and A lot of this was based on just what I knew from natural medicine and Chinese medicine and just saying, hey, these things will be good for everybody. And then I had somebody write an article about me just saying how unscientific I was because there was no research on these things specifically for this exact virus. And it's just crazy to me, but even now we're sitting here and all of the people that were so wrong about it, there still has been no accountability with it. But you know what? I will say this. Things have changed radically. I mean, the perception people have now of the media and the World Health Organization, I don't know if you saw this just came out today. We just. I don't know the exact terminology here, but basically the United States just stepped out of the, of the same level of partnership they had with the World Health Organization. Just basically separated ourselves from the who. I just saw saw this morning.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that, because I graduated school, I started my first autoimmune clinic, and I was saying that I could help autoimmune patients, Hashimoto's patients, with diet, lifestyle, nutrition. And I honestly believe half the public hated me and the medical community, they would bash me like crazy because I'm saying diet, diet, lifestyle, nutrition and your environment play a lot bigger role in your health and your autoimmune condition and your diabetes and your chronic conditions and inflammatory conditions. And I would get in, people would call the board and I'd get investigated consistently because I was saying that. But. And so half the pop, I just felt like I was on an island all by myself. Right. You were obviously out there, but we didn't have social media like we did before, but. And then covet hit and all of a sudden it just like 85 of the population then got on board. Everything completely shifted. And now we're not crazy, we're not clowns. Right.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
You know, I always say, I mean, I used to be like the 10th doctor people came to see. And now sometimes it's. And now more often than not, it's the first, you know, so cool.
Dr. Josh Red
It's kind of fun to see how it shifted. It's unfortunate how to be that thing that caused it, but it's so great to see now people are becoming educated.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, that's right.
Dr. Josh Red
Nutritionists, moms, dads, they now know more about nutrition than probably most doctors do because they're educating themselves and they know they have control of their health. It's way better than what it used to. It's no longer we're just like dictating care from a conventional standpoint. Now the roots are becoming more educated.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
You think about the average and my listener for this show. I know it's a very educated audience. They're reading and I think about a lot of people that listen to my show. They're listening to several podcasts a week, so probably over a hundred podcasts over an hour, getting in depth information. They're reading articles. The amount you can learn in one year. If you're listening to podcasts and reading articles regularly from experts, your knowledge is going to grow exponentially.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah, I love it. And I think that's one of our biggest goals too, with our social media, our platform, with what we're doing, and even within our clinic. I want our patients to be the expert in their own health. I want them to know more about autoimmune conditions by the time we're done with them than their doctor does. And they do. Just that education portion of it is the goal for ours.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
I want to jump back into this idea with autoimmune disease and inflammation, the thing happening here. Can you walk us a little bit through maybe the process of what's happening? Typically when somebody starts having inflammation and then at what point does it sort of trigger this autoimmune reaction or how does that work in the body?
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah, that's a great question. So inflammation is a common term that we hear that is pretty confusing. I think lots of people share about inflammation, but we don't really know what is inflammation. And really, for most doctors out there, if I teach them on immunology and I had them write down immunological pathways, they probably couldn't do it. Right. And so something to make sense is inflammation, when it's acute or short bouts of time, could be really beneficial and life saving. Right. If we have brain injury. Yes.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
A bacterial virus, a bacterial infection, a virus or whatever that may be. Inflammation for that period of time can be fantastic. Fantastic. Right. Over a prolonged period of time, though, inflammation can be absolutely detrimental. It can destroy our own body's tissue. It can be really bad for the cardiovascular system. It can be really bad, bad for the brain, for the intestinal tract and all that stuff. But really what it is is high doses of inflammation over a prolonged period of time is just an immune problem. That's it. It's the immune system being overzealous and now being exposed to things that it's not used to. And so it's ramped up and now we have these inflammatory pathways that are really, really high what research is showing though is if we have this overzealous immune response due to inflammation and our immune system's kind of going crazy, within about five years we're almost 100% likely to develop an autoimmune condition. And that's where if we don't calm down this inflammatory process, if we don't improve our inflammatory lifestyles, then we're almost 100 likely to develop an autoimmune disease just from that. But it's our immune system becoming a little bit overzealous over time, getting worse and worse and worse. And then within five years, now instead of attacking a virus or a bacteria, it now develops antibodies to self tissue and now we have self tissue damage and autoimmunity that onsets. I believe that this process happens for five to 10 years before we're even diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. I truly do. And you mentioned too, where we, you know, food intolerances, oftentimes we can have this overzealous immune system and we can start reacting to food proteins and then our, every time that we eat, our immune system flares up. We have food intolerances and we have what we call loss of oral tolerance where our immune system is destroying food proteins and then all of a sudden it can now turn onto self tissue and start to destroy self tissue as well. So I think we have a period of time where we have an overzealous immune response. We have food intolerances, we have leaky gut intestinal permeability. Our immune system is exposed to proteins and synthetic molecules in ways that it's never been before. It's super confused. And then those proteins and molecules mimic self tissue and our body doesn't know if the difference between self tissue or these bad proteins or molecules.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, it's almost like the body is saying, okay, listen, I've tried to clean this up. I've tried to fix this problem by getting rid of this one protein. Now I've got to try other things because it's been five years now and this problem still isn't fixed. I mean, our bodies have this incredible wisdom and innate intelligence to know, hey, you know, I've got to fix this problem. I mean, there's an invader here and that's why people have to make sometimes pretty significant changes to their diet if they want to halt this.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah.
Podcast Co-host or Announcer
Hey, if you want practical, science backed guidance for living a healthier, longer, more vibrant life, you need to check out the biohackit podcast. It is hosted by my good friend Aman Hasan and it brings a thoughtful, compassionate perspective to wellness that so many women have been looking for. Every week, Aman breaks down the latest research in longevity, hormones and metabolic health in a way that's clear and easy to understand leads to important conversations around women's health, fertility and the steps women can take to protect their energy, balance their hormones and support long term well being. She talks with top doctors, scientists and health experts about natural healing, nutrition, lifestyle choices that make a real difference. Ann sits down with entrepreneurs and thought leaders to explore how they stay strong and grounded and resilient in their personal lives and their work. If you want a show that speaks directly to health challenges women are navigating today while offering hope, clarity and real solutions, tune in to biohack it every Thursday. Wherever you listen to podcasts, it is one of the most educational and uplifting shows in the wellness space and I.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Think you're going to love it. I'd love for you to share because you cover this in your book, but what are maybe the top five or 10 or some of your favorite foods? So we talked about what to get rid of. Let's get rid of the casein, let's get rid of the gluten, the ultra processed foods, the excess sugar, especially processed sugar. What are some of your favorite foods that people should be eating to help reduce inflammation?
Dr. Josh Red
So I love meats, proteins like chicken, turkey, lamb, fish. Those are fantastic. Classic minimal patients react to any of those foods. The majority of our patients do incredibly well with that. And just having enough protein will stabilize glucose will do a number of things for our body to improve. In fact, a lot of our patients, they're just not getting enough protein when they come in. And just like you said, improving protein, improving fiber also, then their quality of life significantly changes from that. Vegetables, fruits, beans, peas, nuts, seeds. Most of our patients can have those healthy oils like avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil. Those tend to be really, really well and patients tend to do really well with those. And then ironically, coconut milk, almond milk, majority of our patients do incredibly well with those. There's healthier versions than not with not the additives and sweeteners and things like that.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
There's a brand I really like called Elmhurst and they've got like two ingredients.
Dr. Josh Red
Yes. So great when you can look at the back of the bott, just two real whole food ingredients, you know we're doing well. They're almonds and water, you know, we're doing well. Yeah, but we see such a high volume of patients and we put that list together because that is what we've seen over the last 17 years. We've seen what causes inflammation, what improves inflammation. And those foods most of our patients do incredibly well with. We'll have some really, really severe patients where we'll have them avoid nuts and things like bell peppers and other, those, you know, those things. But that's just a small portion of patients where we even start there. But we'll typically do a food intolerant tolerance test and then dive into the anti inflammatory diet from there and rock and roll.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah. One of the things I know you also recommend in your practice is, is supplementation. What are some of the most beneficial supplements for A1C for insulin specifically? What are some of your favorites for inflammation there as well?
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah, A1C. Again, there's a few things. So A1C Berberine is fantastic. Bitter melon is fantastic. Doing things to calm down inflammation is great for A1C. Remember, inflammation and A1C kind of go hand in hand. When we have foods that are inflammatory specifically for us, we're going to see blood sugar levels in a 1C increase. And so ironically, even when it comes to type 2 diabetes or diabetes in general, just calming down inflammation can improve the A1C. And that kind of goes in with our autoimmune patients. So some of the best things that we can do for inflammation is supplementation. Something that's easy is vitamin D. Vitamin D increases regulatory T cells, which decrease inflammatory cytokines and Th17 cells, which is really the cell that's the worst for our autoimmune condition.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
Ironically too, most people don't realize this, but vitamin D is what's called a negative acute phase reactant. And so when somebody is really high in inflammation, you're going to see vitamin D really low in labs, even if that patient is, is taking vitamin D or in the sun.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
Because high inflammation will decrease vitamin D as well.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Oh, wow.
Dr. Josh Red
Liposomal glutathione, I love it decreases TH17 cells, it improves the intestinal lining, it improves brain inflammation and improves liver detoxification, which is really common problem that we see with our autoimmune patient population. A lot of them just, they have impaired phases one and two of detoxification. That's it. And glutathione can improve that. Liposomal turmeric. And liposomal resveratrol is incredible. And typically we like the liposomal form because it absorbs about 40 times more than just a standard turmeric. On top of that, we talked about methylation. Methylation is A key driver for autoimmune and diabetes. And so methylated B vitamins could be really beneficial for those individuals. Yeah, I love pre, pro and postbiotics for the intestinal tract.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
We have the cells that line the intestinal tract get fueled by postbiotics, which is something called butyrate.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
And so providing patients with a high dose of butyrate can be really beneficial to, to impair that intestinal lining. But when I prescribe supplementation, I don't try to do everything all at the same time. When a patient comes into us, they'll have anywhere from 10 to 15 different imbalances that are driving their autoimmune condition. And they would be on a hundred different supplements. If I was trying to improve everything all at one time, what we typically do is we'll tackle the first, most important thing that's going to have the best hormetic response or the best response for the other imbalances. And we might spend a month or two just having the patient take three to five supplements just for that one mechanism. And then as that improves, we'll shift gears and we'll start working on the next imbalance that we found. And then as that improves, we'll shift gears and go from there. And so over the course of about six months to a year, a patient will just be on a selective amount of supplements that's improving those imbalances one by one while we're teaching the patient diet, lifestyle, nutrition, neurology, all those things so that they have control of their health from that point on.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
For sure. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to ask you about is peptides. I actually did want to throw this one out there. One other thing. And I, I, you know, we, we practice very similarly a lot, a lot of what we do. We started using BPC157 even orally, and seeing some good results just the past year with gut inflammation. Love that. I want to talk about another peptide, and that's the GLP1s.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Is this something that you recommend in micro dosing? Do you not recommend it at all? What are your opinion, what's your opinion.
Dr. Josh Red
On GLP1s for autoimmune patients? I love GLP1s for the right people, people. And we do microdosing. So from a research stance, this is another thing too. Right. Where I don't have to rely on other people's research. I don't have to rely on anything else from a medical standpoint or influencers. I can identify research, I can implement it into our clinic and then I can assess if that patient improves or if the patient doesn't. If the patient doesn't, I can immediately text 15 different doctors and say, hey, hold off on this. We're going to switch gears and go to something else. Right, Right. We're constantly trying to advance and improve. So if I treat a patient the same way as I did two years ago, I failed my patient population. I always want to research in advance and make sure I'm not a clinical dinosaur. Right. What we're seeing with GLP1s right now is that if we microdose them, it could substantially decrease inflammatory cytokines, it helps stabilize glucose and improves cardiovascular response, improves the brain function. And so I. We see in our patient population that if we microdose GLP1s, it can have a significant impact on their autoimmune condition. We don't do massive doses. Our intent of doing GLP1s is not to lose weight. I don't care about the weight loss proponent. If I put the body into a really good state, they're going to naturally lose weight on their own. Right. What I'm utilizing GLP1s for, though, is to decrease inflammation, improve their overall physiology, and to decrease inflammatory cytokines. And we see a significant amount of patients improve, and then we retest their labs and we see the improvement from there. There's a ton of other peptides, too, like you said, BP157, TB500. There's so many different other ones that if, if prescribed correctly, can have a significant impact on autoimmune conditions as well.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
Dr. Josh Red
1. One that we are finding to be just absolutely insane is gh. Ghk.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Copper. Cu.
Dr. Josh Red
Copper.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
CU Copper. You're right. What we found here is that most people use it for hair, skin and nails, and that's it. But we're finding that it has so many more benefits than that. With our autoimmune patient population, we're finding that it significantly decreases inflammatory cytokines too. So not only does it help with hair, skin and nails, but it helps calm down the autoimmune response rapidly.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Oh, wow.
Dr. Josh Red
On top of that, it helps improve mitochondrial function too. So I think this is one of the. One of the peptides that maybe isn't as well known, but it's going to be really well known here in the future. And we're seeing it with our patient population where they're improving quite substantially just from that one peptide.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
That's amazing.
Dr. Josh Red
There's so many other cool things that we can do on top of peptides, where we do ozone therapy, or there's a, there's a thing called ebu, which is like ozone on steroids.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, I saw this. We actually have, I'm opening a clinic here in a couple of weeks. We're doing it, we're doing, going to have an EBU ozone unit. And that really is amazing. Talk to us about ozone just by itself for a minute. And then also what EBOO is specifically.
Dr. Josh Red
So ozone, where we expose a patient's blood to ozone therapy and oftentimes it's run through a laser as well, and then it runs through a filter and then we put it back into the body and it can significantly improve inflammatory cytokines. But it's incredible for mold, bacterial infections and viral infections, which are really some of the key drivers for why autoimmune disease starts to begin with. Right. And so we're finding that if patients do consistent ozone therapies with us, their autoimmune response, their inflammatory markers improve quite a bit just from that alone. Let alone diet, lifestyle, nutrition, environment. If they just came and did ozone therapy, they would see those, those patients improve. IBU is, is kind of like an ozone therapy on steroids where we filter a 30 year blood volume in one situation sitting. So we basically take blood from one arm, it goes through, gets ozonated, goes through a laser, it gets filtered and then goes through the other arm and it filters the 30 year blood volume in one sitting. And it's like doing six ozone treatments in one.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Wow.
Dr. Josh Red
You know, there's a few patients that may not benefit from doing that, that intensive ozone therapy if they have too low blood pressure or too low blood sugar levels. But for the most part, we see a ton of really good benefits from just that one treatment. And then you throw in peptides, you throw in hyperbaric chamber, you throw in stem cell IVs now. And the stuff that we have access to to improve an autoimmune patient or really, really sick patients is so much better than what it was even five years ago. And it's incredible to see the advancements that we're making year in and year out. And it's pretty fun.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
It is. Well, what is maybe something that you're just now, and maybe it's something you've already said, but becoming aware of, starting to utilize that, you think in 10 years is just going to be incredibly mainstream in medicine.
Dr. Josh Red
I was doing a degree at Johns Hopkins with a emphasis on molecular biology and immunology, and I was in one of my professor's classes, and we were going through stem cells, and in his lab specifically, he could sever a mouse's spine and make it quadrupled and then inject stem cells and it could fully walk again. And I was sitting there in class, I already had, I think, seven clinics. And I was like, dang it, I gotta go back to school because this is gonna change.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
It's the future medicine. I absolutely agree with you.
Dr. Josh Red
And so from there, I told my wife, I said, honey, I've already gone to like eight years of school at that time, like graduate school. I said, honey, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to go back to school. And she said, well, why? And I told her the thing and she's like, all right, let's do it. And so I went back to medical school, a natur medical school in Chicago. And then I did a residency afterwards in just regenerative medicine and stem cells. And already in that period of time, it's already advanced every single year. We're going to be able to do, you know, we're not there yet, but we're going to be able to do things with stem cells that nobody could possibly comprehend. Yeah, we're going to be able to cure cancer. Paraplegics, quadriplegics will be able to be healed just from stem cells. We're already seeing a lot of joint dysfunction that we're able orthopedic stem cells into joints, backs, facet, joints, discs, you name it, where we see quite a bit of improvements just from that alone. And we're doing stem cell IVs now with autoimmune patients and patients with chronic inflammation. We're seeing a lot of benefits from that. You know, as, you know, Lyme's disease and those suffering with mold or sirs, those are really, really hard patients to treat.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Treat. Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
In fact, there was a long period of time where we wouldn't even like, accept Lymes and SIRS patients just because I didn't want them to pay money and us not be able to help them as best as I could.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Right.
Dr. Josh Red
But now with ozone therapy, Eboo peptides, stem cell IVs, now we're seeing our Lymes and our SIRS patients improve quite substantially just from those treatments.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, you know. Yeah, yeah, it incredible. I mean, the future of medicine's incredible. Yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, I mentioned this to you. My wife from. We were moving and we have a two year old and so she's constantly using her hand and wrist and lifting and she ended up getting the tenosynovitis in her wrist and thumb and she's eating really clean, doing up a part of it is too. I mean, she's, you know, taking care of a two year old, five year old. She's constantly bothering it. She went in and we have a good friend of ours who does regenerative medicine and ended up getting a exosomes along with growth after injections. And it was amazing. Just, you know, five days later, she's like, wow, this is like, it's almost like might spend my healing up by three months.
Dr. Josh Red
It's really, really, really cool stuff. We'll have our athletes that, you know, strain their hamstring really bad, may not even be back to play for six weeks and they're back playing in two weeks. Right. It's, it's pretty cool stuff to see the benefits that stem cell injections and stem cell therapy do now. Now as far as transparency, we'll have about 20% of our population that just don't respond to stem cells for one way or the other. And we don't know why that is. About 50% of our patients do incredibly well with stem cells. And then there's about 30% of our patients that do good and then oftentimes need more injections to kind of move that needle forward. So there's still a lot of ground that we have to make when it comes to stem cells. But every year, year it's getting better. Last year, the stem cells I used weren't as effective as the ones I'm using now. And it's just advancing, getting better and better, which is pretty cool. And I think in 10 years from now, it's going to blow things out of the water if conventional medicine, if, you know, the regulatory boards don't somehow figure out a way to completely ruin it. Right.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, they're trying. They're trying. But yeah, the good news is I do think that right now, now with the current regime, things are getting opening up more.
Dr. Josh Red
Absolutely. It's, it's a lot better now than ever. And, and they're huge proponents of stem cell therapies. Yeah, they're part of the reason why stem cell therapy is going to be advancing as fast as it is, whereas the, the, the previous administration and, you know, kind of try to stop all that.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, you know, I know. I think it was up until maybe it was, I want to say you could do stem cells in certain areas or maybe, maybe it was even 2000, maybe it was even in the 2000s, but you could do Stem cells in knees in certain areas. And then pharmaceutical companies came in and basically said, well, no, you know, yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
And then we had everyone going to Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, everywhere, you name it, to do stem cell therapies. But now it's coming back to where we can, we can do it again.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
I'm going to say the United States should be on the leading edge of this. But yeah, people were going there and they were going to Europe, they were going to Germany, they were going to Switzerland. It's like, we should have that access. Same access here.
Dr. Josh Red
Yeah. Thirteen developed countries and the US Is worse than healthcare. We're dead last in healthcare and we're triple the cost by everyone. You would think that we in America would just dominate and do incredibly well with all the resources that we have. But unfortunately we have organizations that want to make money and want to stuff information and, you know, but I think we're in the place right now where we're. This is getting better and better and we have, you know, some of the right people in place where we're advancing it and we have huge voices, moms, dads, you. Where we have big influencers now that are putting up the fuss and, and people at home now are making it different. Yeah, you know, moms and paws in just small, remote areas because of their voice, because of who they are. They're. They're making changes. Like the community is changing it from the bottom up now, which hasn't ever happened. Dude.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yesterday on Instagram, asking my followers to go and call your local reps. We're in the state of Tennessee, I'm in Nashville here. But because, you know, these pharmaceutical companies were trying to slip it or sorry, actually the food companies, agricultural companies, Monsanto specifically and Bear were trying to slip in this glyphosate being immune to any sort of of legal damages, any damages that they were doing and harming people and kids. And so, you know, we had everybody calling their local reps in the state of Tennessee here.
Dr. Josh Red
Is that not bananas, by the way? Yeah, that somehow we can absolutely destroy a population's health. In my opinion, that's one of the biggest triggers for autoimmune diseases. And yet we can destroy a population's health and then just all of a sudden be immune to any adverse problem. It is absolutely bananas. And if you understand Monsanto and all the stuff that he does, the whole process is absolutely maddening. Where they made their own research, they wrote their own research, and then they tried to get approved, but they had other companies make it look like other companies were doing the research and that they were the one ghostwriting the research church.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
I mean the crazy part is them doing that. I don't think there was ever any repercussions for what they did there with falsifying that information and acting like it was yet done by a third party research when it was all made up.
Dr. Josh Red
Doing that and nothing was done. And not only that, now they're trying to go to the Supreme Court to figure out if they can be immune to having any adverse.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
That's right.
Dr. Josh Red
Problem. When so many people are getting sick by their product, it's just absolutely maddening. But you're right, those in Tennessee, those throughout the country can stand up. We're sick of it. We don't want, we don't want to deal with this anymore. That's not right. That's unethical. That's a problem. We need to fix it and we're uniting to do that, which is pretty cool.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah. And it's, by the way, it's not just the state of Tennessee. I know it was Kansas, I think Florida. I mean it's, it's going to be every state at some point. So be, be on the lookout. There's there for people posting and just, you know, just make one call, you know, send one email and just, you know, that's how you make changes is you, you flood inboxes, you use your voice for, for good. And, and I was going to say Dr. Josh too, you know, I want, I want to let people know too about your book. You've got a new book out called the 30 day inflammatory reset. And I think it's a great book where people can really learn your methodology for, for how to reduce inflammation using food based medicine. What are some of the first things one, I know that bookstores and bookstores nationwide. So I encourage Everybody, go to Amazon.com, go to your local bookstore and check out Dr. Josh Red here, his book the 30 Day Inflammatory Reset. But what is maybe one big takeaway from the book or a reason why people should go out and buy your book?
Dr. Josh Red
Here's the thing. The last 17 years we've seen such a high population of patients, but there's some patients that maybe don't have access to us or can't afford it. And so, so I put everything that I've learned In the last 17 years into that book. We teach you what causes inflammation, how to test for inflammation, how to improve the inflammation. And then we take you through a path to where we teach you what foods to eat, what foods not to eat, how to add foods back in selectively. We kind of hold your hand through that process. The book in itself is kind of like two books in one. One with a lot of literature and research and then at the end a full on cookbook and path to kind of navigate you through that process. It's been kind of fun. Released it two weeks ago. It hit the number 10 on USA Today, was the 10th selling best book. But now we're getting a flow of messages of people saying, I've been doing your book for two weeks. I had these symptoms. I felt like this for the last 10 years. Now for the first time in my life, I actually feel good again. So it's been kind of fun to see just a massive wave of messages and emails of people who are actually utilizing the book and it's changing their life. And that's really the purpose where sometimes people can't afford to come and see see Red River Health and Wellness. Right?
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Yeah.
Dr. Josh Red
Or maybe they don't have access. But now what this book does is it allows you to kind of see what we do and it takes you through that roadmap to see if it will help your overall health. Right.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Well, I love it. Well, I want to encourage everybody, go out and check out Dr. Josh, Red's new book. Also want to encourage you follow Dr. Josh on Instagram and social media. He's really active and has so much great content out there as well. I want to say, hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh AX Show. Remember, each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, spiritually and take your health and your life to the next level. I want to thank Dr. Josh here for coming on. Hey, if you're watching on YouTube, let us know. Hey, what is one of your biggest takeaways from some of the wisdom that Dr. Josh shared with us today? Again, this has been an amazing show, amazing podcast. I wholeheartedly agree with almost everything he said, especially in terms of of how he practiced and helps people using personalized regenerative medicine. So thanks again Dr. Josh and thank you for sharing. Thank you so much for subscribing here to the show as well. And we'll see you on the next episode.
Dr. Josh Red
I saw this app. I got a hit. In the new Limited Series DTF St. Louis, Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini style star as three suburbanites who.
Podcast Host (Possibly Dr. Josh Axe)
Spice up their love lives.
Dr. Josh Red
Wow. Don't miss the new HBO original limited series DTF St. Louis, premiering March 1 on HBO Max.
Celsius Energy Drink Advertiser
My dad taught me a lot, including how easy it is to forget to cancel things. So I downloaded Experian, my bff. Big Financial Friend Experian could help me cancel my unused subscriptions and lower my bills, saving me hundreds a year. Get started with the Experian app today. Your Big Financial friends here to help you save smarter. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed $631 a year average savings with one plus negotiations oneplus cancellations paid membership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details.
Quaker Protein Oatmeal Advertiser
Experian this Precedence Day upgrade the look of your home without breaking your budget. Save up to 50% site wide on new window treatments@blinds.com blinds.com makes it easy with free virtual consultations on your schedule and samples delivered to your door fast and free. With over 25 million windows covered and a 100% satisfaction guarantee, you can count on blinds.com to deliver results you'll love.
Dr. Josh Red
Shop up to 50% off site wide, plus a free professional measure during the President's Day Mega Sale Last chance happening right now@blinds.com terms apply.
Podcast: The Dr. Josh Axe Show
Episode: How to Reverse Autoimmune Disease in 30 Days | Dr. Josh Redd
Date: February 19, 2026
Host: Dr. Josh Axe
Guest: Dr. Josh Redd
This episode delves into the explosive rise of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, exploring their underlying drivers, practical steps for reversal, and cutting-edge treatments. Dr. Josh Axe interviews Dr. Josh Redd, founder of Red River Health and Wellness and author of The 30 Day Inflammatory Reset, discussing real patient experiences, dietary and lifestyle interventions, hormonal factors, and advancements in regenerative medicine.
"Our immune system is wondering what the heck is going on...causing our immune system to become overzealous, that's causing inflammation to be at an all time high. And now we have this inflammatory autoimmune crisis."
"If it drops too low or it spikes too high, you're going to have an autoimmune flare up. Plus you're going to actually put a ton of stress on the adrenal glands..."
"High doses of inflammation over a prolonged period of time is just an immune problem...within about five years we're almost 100% likely to develop an autoimmune condition."
"I put everything that I've learned in the last 17 years into that book...Now for the first time in my life, I actually feel good again."
Fire alarm analogy:
“All the conventional doctors are doing is just turning off the fire alarm and they're doing nothing to the actual fire.” ([01:51], Dr. Redd)
Unaddressed autoimmunity breeds more autoimmunity:
“When you have an autoimmune disease like Hashimoto's and nothing's being done to calm it down, you're more likely to develop another autoimmune condition.” ([09:42], Dr. Redd)
Fasting isn’t for everyone:
“Fasting can be incredible for the right patient...But if I put those patients on a fast, I'm gonna make their condition way worse.” ([22:14], Dr. Redd)
On the healing power of food:
“There are simple, tiny changes that we can correct...that will significantly improve their quality of life.” ([13:14], Dr. Redd)
Advocacy and empowerment:
“I want our patients to be the expert in their own health…they know they have control.” ([32:09], Dr. Redd)
Educational, passionate, and deeply empathetic. Both Dr. Axe and Dr. Redd connect on their personal experiences as practitioners and with family members, ultimately seeking to empower patients with real-world, actionable solutions. They balance clinical wisdom, patient stories, and cutting-edge science.
If you or a loved one are struggling with autoimmune, inflammatory, or “mystery” health conditions, this episode provides validation, hope, and a clear roadmap—both immediate steps and what’s on the horizon in natural and regenerative medicine.
Resources Mentioned: