Ep 623: Is Brain Degeneration a Myth? With Dr. Greg Eckel

What if everything we’ve been told about Parkinson’s disease and brain degeneration is wrong?

For decades we’ve been told that neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s are progressive, irreversible, and caused primarily by the loss of dopamine. But what if that’s only part of the story?

In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Jannine Krause sits down with Dr. Greg Eckel, naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, neuroregeneration pioneer, founder of the Academy of Mind-Body Medicine (AGEMED), and author of Defying Parkinson’s, to challenge conventional thinking about brain disease.

After losing his wife to a neurodegenerative illness, Dr. Eckel began questioning everything he believed about medicine. That journey led him to a revolutionary perspective:

The brain doesn’t simply degenerate, it runs out of energy.

In this episode we’ll explore how restoring mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation, supporting gut health, balancing the nervous system, and addressing environmental toxins may help create new possibilities for healing, not only for Parkinson’s disease but also traumatic brain injuries, cognitive decline, and optimizing peak mental performance.

If you or someone you love has Parkinson’s, memory loss, a traumatic brain injury, or simply wants to improve brain health, this episode will completely change the way you think about the brain.

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Greg Eckel

02:45 The diagnosis that changed Dr. Eckel’s life forever

08:20 Why Parkinson’s isn’t just a dopamine deficiency

14:30 The biggest misconception about neurodegenerative disease

20:10 The brain doesn’t degenerate—it loses energy

27:15 Mitochondria: the missing piece of brain health

33:40 Gut health, inflammation & environmental toxins

40:30 Why conventional medicine manages symptoms instead of restoring function

47:20 Regenerative medicine and the future of neurological care

54:10 Lifestyle strategies that support brain regeneration

59:15 Optimizing brain performance—even without disease

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Key Takeaways

The traditional model of brain disease may be incomplete.

Rather than simply accepting degeneration, Dr. Greg Eckel encourages us to understand how the brain’s energy systems influence function, healing, and resilience. By supporting mitochondrial health, reducing inflammation, improving gut health, and restoring nervous system balance, we may be able to shift what’s possible for patients living with neurological conditions—and for anyone seeking better cognitive performance.

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Connect with Dr. Greg Eckel

🌐 BrainRegen: https://brainregen.com

🌐 AGEMED: https://agemed.org

📚 Book: Defying Parkinson’s

📱 Instagram: @brainregen

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Connect with Dr. Jannine Krause

Check out Dr. Krause’s Website for more resources and subscribe for more conversations on functional medicine, longevity, brain health, hormones, nutrition, and natural strategies to optimize your health.

Be sure to Like, Subscribe, and Share this episode with someone who wants to protect their brain and age with vitality.

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Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

Jannine Krause (00:00.994)
Dr. Greg Eckle, welcome back to the Health Fix Podcast.

Dr. Greg (00:05.127)
Thanks for having me back.

Jannine Krause (00:06.946)
My goodness, it’s been last time I talked to you, it was like right before COVID hit. And I was in New Jersey and getting all my training for some acupuncture things. And now it’s like wow, life has changed so much since we last talked. And you are now out of Oregon and over into Utah, I believe.

Dr. Greg (00:11.666)
Wow.

Dr. Greg (00:26.227)
That is correct. I’m in coming at you from Park City, Utah. Migrated from the Great Northwest and you know a little bit more central, a little bit easier to get to for folks on the East Coast, that’s for sure.

Jannine Krause (00:40.876)
Yeah, you know, with daily salt with daily salt lake flights from most places. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. And of course, if someone’s an outdoor person, we got skiing, we got biking, we got hiking. I mean, you are in the mecca of all the good things.

Dr. Greg (00:46.279)
That’s right. Yeah.

Dr. Greg (00:55.151)
It is it is you know, I raised my family in the Northwest. I love the Pacific Northwest, and it was time for a change for this guy. And the mountains were calling. I’m six minutes from hiking, biking, all of those things. I I’m actually fresh back from hiking Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. kitty, my wife and I just did that 19,341 foot peak.

the highest mountain in the continent of Africa. And I credit a lot of our prep work here at elevation in Park City to helping with that. Yes.

Jannine Krause (01:35.484)
my goodness. Yeah, yeah, I bet that helped. I bet that helped. Holy cow. How was it? Like I’m I’m curious. I know lot of people do it and and I’ve never actually got to sit down with someone and be like, what was your favorite part? Like what like what your mind?

Dr. Greg (01:49.179)
you know, I was just telling some of my staff this morning, it’s first day back in, and it was the color of the sky right before the sun rose. the sparkling of the stars was there are not words to put put into the awe. Like it’s where awe or inspiration comes from. That’s what I felt like as we were hiking.

We s got up at midnight and we hit the summit at eight AM. that’s the top of the mountain, then we had to get back down. But right before dawn, that sparkle of the stars was really so so intense. I I love that part of it. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (02:35.701)
man, see those are the things like you can’t capture that on a on a like a a video or even a picture. That is like forever in your memory, which is so cool. so cool. So for folks who are interested in in hiking Kilimanjaro, you’re like, yes, absolutely do it. And what kind of training what might what they want to think about?

Dr. Greg (02:44.282)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Greg (02:54.812)
So it’s interesting. so I did hypoxic training. So I’m I’m at you know about six thousand feet here in Park City. A lot of Olympians and top performers come to elevation to train. But we actually did hypoxic training, so 15 minutes twice a day for 30 days prior, where we cut our pulse oxygen down to 80 percent. So measuring on pulse ox, 80% oxygen, which is

Kind of similar to what happens at elevation. They’re still the same oxygen concentration. It’s just the pressure is different. So you don’t get as much oxygen into your blood. That was helpful. now I did put this in up and coming therapies in my Defying Parkinson’s book, which it increases erythropoietin.

erythropoietin is kind of stimulates red blood cells, which is the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. So there are there is research on hypoxic training for brain neuroregeneration, so for neurogenesis creating new neurons in the brain. So we did, and the the study’s not done, I did a little case series on kitty and myself.

we did mitochondria testing blood work before and Panoe, so looking at VO2 max. Then we did midpoint mitochondria blood work looking at reticulocyte count, erythropoietin, and then at the end a full panel of blood work, another VO2 max, and a mitochondria test. So I I’m gonna put that together in a white paper. Yeah, sure. It’s a N of two.

but it looking at okay, well, what kind of effect can just 30 days of hypoxic training do for erythropoietin and reticulocyt count, which increases red blood cells so that as you go up in elevation, you have more oxygen carrying capacity. Oxygen feeds the brain. So it was kind of a two-fold, kind of fun little science experiment on ourselves.

Dr. Greg (05:05.08)
but also in the in the grand scheme of things to really look, hey, is this something that we want to put in for folks when we’re talking about how do you regenerate your brain?

Jannine Krause (05:15.805)
hoping you’d say something about that. I was hoping that was gonna come out because you know it’s it’s something that, you know, circulation being an acupuncturist and and you know all about this as well. You know, it’s like circulation is the master, right? And and thinking about oxygen and how can we provoke more circulation. I think an N of two is better than N of zero, so why not?

Dr. Greg (05:17.884)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (05:25.671)
Yes.

Dr. Greg (05:35.332)
That is correct. You gotta start somewhere. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (05:38.164)
Absolutely, absolutely. So one of the reasons why, you know, of course we want to be thinking about adventures like Kilimanjaro or even just going hiking in in some higher altitude. Why not? Also a reason to visit you in Park City, as we have it. That’s now established.

Dr. Greg (05:50.086)
Yeah. Yes. Would love that.

Jannine Krause (05:55.022)
So I I think we I I could develop your whole travel division of your of your practice now. so all that being said, let’s dive in a little bit to this whole thing of Parkinson’s, dementia, blood sugar, how much of these things, you know, if we’re weighing it out, because this is kind of one of the big questions that I get too. Is it toxins? Is it is it blood sugar? Is it both? Is it you know, what are all the things? What do we need to be thinking about?

Dr. Greg (06:25.234)
Sure. So there, you know, this is the kind of the topic du jour as we’re seeing an aging population, right? Some are calling it the silver tsunami, with the with the baby boomers get you know moving into their later stages of life. And so then there’s the the children of the boomers that are watching their parents maybe develop some cognitive decline. The stats on this are staggering by 2030.

It’s predicted half of the population over 65 years old will develop some type of cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment, dementia, Alzheimer’s. So, and then the rates of Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative conditions are on the rise. What is going on with this, right? So it’s one, it’s scary. There’s not a lot of good news there. Now, this is happens to be my topic, and what we’re really into is how do you regenerate the brain?

We have found three big buckets really for all neurodegeneration. So you’ve got environmental toxicity, which we’ll unpack. You have trauma, mental, emotional, physical, and ancestral, which has made it a little bit more broad and difficult to get into. And then you’ve got infections. So you’ve got molecular mimicry with viruses, bacteria, and then there’s mold, you know, Lyme disease, these things that can affect.

Jannine Krause (07:38.583)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Greg (07:53.171)
Cognition and the brain. So all three, it’s usually multifactorial. And you know, a lot of people are calling Alzheimer’s diabetes of the brain. I would put that in environmental toxicity of those three big buckets because and we can talk about that of like, well, how do you assess what do you need to get done? Because currently it’s horrible. Like, I’m seeing young 60-year-olds given

The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s said, go get your affairs in order. And it’s quite depressing what if that comes up for you. But you know, the the glimmer of hope or the silver lining is there is a lot to be done that are the low-hanging fruit that everybody listening can really get into. and it’s the non-sexy stuff. So we’ve got the three big buckets. We can talk about testing and what goes into all three of those, how we assess it.

and then what can we do when we discover what what’s creating or what’s that cause? What’s the root imbalance here for us?

Jannine Krause (08:56.949)
Yeah. Well let’s do it. Dive into all of Please, please, for all the listeners.

Dr. Greg (08:59.032)
Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let’s start with environmental toxicity. So, which is always an uplifting topic to start with. I remember as a student in the late 90s getting into environmental medicine, and it was like, geez, this is depressing. Like we are we’re swimming in a toxic soup. Now, the good news is we’re human beings and we’re very resilient, we’re adaptable, and

We have a lot of ingenuity. So there are a lot of things to look at here. Now, I and I don’t want our listeners and viewers walking around thinking they’re toxic. Now that said, when you look at let’s just t take pesticides. So glyphosate, big news. you know, bear paying out billions of dollars for on cancer cases with glyphosate. Glyphosate is a pesticide.

it’s actually even used in organic wheat on the harvest. So it’s not made in manufacturing, but as they harvest the wheat, they get a higher yield if they put glyphosate on it, which is just not right. It’s like, wow, you know, they’re finding glyphosate in Cheerios. So children eating breakfast cereals, which I do not

recommend actually because of the diabetes of the brain and also this levels of toxicity. paraquat is another one. The US is the last nation to allow paraquat to be used in farming. Vermont just banned it. I hope that other states follow suit. it has been banned worldwide. gosh I was just reading a an article of

illegal grow farms in California for marijuana pot that are importing chemicals from China to raise the outdoor marijuana which is then getting into medicinal marijuana and it’s like wow it but kind of buyer beware here of I know some folks have you know have medical marijuana cards and think hey this is a botanical medicine.

Dr. Greg (11:21.276)
But if it’s not organic or certified and they’re not even testing for these chemicals, so okay, so that’s one. Those are pesticides. There is TCE, trichloroethylene. This is a product in dry cleaning, big concentration around the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi, Camp Lejeune in South Carolina. There’s a lot of cases for

cancer and Parkinson’s coming off of that military base because of trichloroethylene. not causative but correlative, adding into the body burden, creating neurotoxicity. living close to a golf course, higher incidence of Parkinson’s. Well, what’s that? That’s pesticides from the golf course getting into the water supply.

Now that said, all of those things are water soluble. So you’re able to detox. So one of the things over the last 25 years of my practice is really focused on the terrain of, well, okay, how hospitable is your body? So there are a lot of things that you can do to prep your body. So number one, if you are overweight, you are storing toxins in your fat.

And that’s a slow burn, leads to inflammation, leads to insulin insensitivity, so that diabetesity of the brain. and you’re carrying those toxins. So you’ve got to address that. You know, when we look at metabolic dysfunction, that’s driving a lot of this brain neurodegeneration. So

You know, metabolic dysfunction, what does that mean? It means your hormones aren’t working well, it means your liver isn’t processing or detoxing well. possibly you have methylation issues like with the MTHFR gene, which about 30 to 40 percent of the population has one copy of that, less have two, but that’s like limiting your detox pathways. So you’ve got to assess that.

Dr. Greg (13:40.241)
And we assess that with looking at the clearance of the liver, phase one and phase two route of elimination. It’s called the cytochrome P450 cycle. for those fact finders out there. but there’s a phase one and a phase two sulfation, glucaronidation, sulfation, ways the body detoxes. So looking at simple things like sauna.

You know, the the statistics on sauna are really phenomenal. It’s just getting in the sauna, getting your body hot, and sweating. that’s important. Being well hydrated. So making sure you’re drinking half your body weight in ounces of water. A lot of people aren’t doing that because their sleep is off, or for men their prostate is enlarged and they’re having to pee a lot, or women have the it’sy bitsy bladder syndrome.

Of having to pee a lot, pelvic floor dysfunction. So there all of these things get layered in that first category of environmental toxicity. Then you look at, you know, sugars, we’ll call it the white death. sugar consumption in North America is off the chart. so looking at your hemoglobin A1C, which is your three-month window of your sugars.

Looking at insulin sensitivity, looking at your fasting glucose. So the these come on just general panels, so you can get that in a general blood work, but you want to make sure that you’re not pre-diabetic and that you are eating whole foods. You know, there’s a comment, you’re not going to supplement your way out of a bag of potato chips.

So we really need to look at seed oils. I mean, so much so on the diet front, I reluctantly had to create the Eccle diet. I did put it in defying Parkinson’s. while that topic or title of the book is specific for Parkinson’s, it really outlines the Eccle protocol for brain regeneration. I picked on Parkinson’s, but it goes for Alzheimer’s, dementia, all of the other neurodegenerative states because it is

Dr. Greg (16:00.858)
I’m treating people, not conditions or disease processes. So possibly even looking at a continuous glucose monitor, a little patch. It took me a little while to to do that myself, but ever since I did it, probably right maybe around the last time we l last talked, Dr. J. I do it every year now, one to two months as a reset and a a curiosity to make sure

Jannine Krause (16:19.502)
Dr. Greg (16:29.156)
I know what food is doing to my sugars. You don’t want to have massive glucose bumps because then insulin follows, then neuroinflammation. It’s also anti cancer, a lot of things for regulating your sugar balances in your body. Environmental toxicity, so we test for that. We look at heavy metals also in that category.

Jannine Krause (16:39.245)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (16:57.446)
When you look at mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and lead, some recent research came out, or well, it wasn’t 2024. my team here kind of forwarded some it was some methylation data for levels of metals influencing your own stem cell expression in your body and having it low levels of metals to help regulate.

Jannine Krause (17:18.699)
Dr. Greg (17:26.6)
histamine and methylation process, which is a detox pathway to allow your own stem cells to do their job better. So again, this level of toxicity, environmental toxicity is such a big player. looking at mold, I’ll put kind of put mold in environmental toxicity and in infection category there at the third bucket, but I’ll talk about it here in the first bucket because you know half of the buildings in North America have had some water damage. And

And mold is pretty ubiquitous in our environment. So just because you’re exposed to mold doesn’t mean it’s a problem. However, if you have the genetic predisposition for problems with it, so there’s an HLA array that you could get in your blood, andor looking at your genetics, you are more sensitive to molds. and so we we have to rule them in, rule them out.

if you have any like chronic fatigue or brain fog

You might want to consider if you’ve already gone down, like, okay, it’s not thyroid, it’s not B vitamins. You want to consider maybe, maybe it’s mold. so environmental toxicity, you can check that on the white blood cell differential in the blood work. trying to think in that environmental toxicity front. Any questions there? I know I’m just kind of stream of consciousness with you, Dr. J.

Jannine Krause (18:58.018)
Yeah. No, I love it ’cause you you I didn’t want to interrupt you ’cause I’m like, okay, he’s got a good flow. We can we can hear like all all the info. Like you know, a lot of what I get is like, all right, what’s your favorite testing? You know, what what do you like to use for micronutrient? What do like to use for looking at toxins? You know, what what are your favorite companies or or whatnot?

Dr. Greg (19:20.25)
Yeah, so on the on the metal front, I’ve really been with Doctor’s Data. there was David Quigg, he’s retired, but he was their kind of controller and just super brilliant toxicologist. and they’ve carried on. So our database, I should talk about that. we you know, this is the age of big data and

Really seeing after 25 years of practice and having an electronic medical records pretty static, even though it’s electronic, we’re really looking to accelerate the change and we created a Prometheus AI based off of our data. So having the same testing has been very beneficial because we’re comparing apples to apples rather than bouncing around. So I like that we do a pre and a post challenge test.

I don’t like the hair analysis. I I know a lot of people would want to arm wrestle me on that. I used to split tests, so when I first started practice, I I was a preschool teacher before getting into medicine, and so I I treated a lot of children, especially on the spectrum, and there was a metal metal burden correlated there with fo kids on the spectrum.

Jannine Krause (20:20.43)
Test.

Jannine Krause (20:34.594)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (20:41.418)
in particular I found that they have trouble eliminating metals out of their body. And so we would split test hair analysis and urine challenge test. And the hair analysis analysis would show nothing, and then the the urine challenge would show, hey, you’re positive for metal toxicology here. So

I just reverted to we’ll we’ll just do challenge tests. So we do a pre and a post. So that pre-test gives us a mineral analysis as well in the urine of an array of essential minerals. you know, we’re not testing in the in the serum in the blood, red blood cell, magnesium. you can get that in the blood, but we’re looking to kind of streamline it for people so it’s not just

I I find a lot of integrated functional medicine testing or providers t treat tests and not people. So we’ve taken a a thorough history, looking at diet diary, nutritional analysis. Pretty much everyone, you know, I I’m started working on my diet in nineteen ninety-six. I’m still working on my diet. it’s a it’s a work in progress, right? So it’s not perfect, but we we’re all

Jannine Krause (21:58.734)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (22:01.092)
working towards the state of nirvana with nutrition. So we’ll we do the pre and the post testing. I do a urine test for cortisol. So a lot of times stress r plays a role in that trauma component. So that second bucket when we look at mental, emotional, physical or ancestral trauma, that’s the piece of

Jannine Krause (22:08.44)
Okay.

Dr. Greg (22:29.932)
Nervous system is not settled. And you know, daily life, the headlines, the skies falling because of AI, all of these things create stress on our system. And if we’re in stress, like if you watch mainstream media, you’re put into stress because one, I think you’re easier to control because you’re not accessing your frontal lobes.

You’re back in your limbic and amygdala, the reptilian brain, which is reactionary, waiting for that shoe to drop, maybe trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep, waking at 3 a.m., really wired but tired feeling. So we we look, there’s a diurnal variation of cortisol throughout the day. It should spike in the morning and then decrease throughout the day.

That’s a regulated adrenal gland. Everybody’s talking the vagus nerve these days. And you know, from the body keeps the score to Amy Atkins’ book, The Biology of Trauma, great work and awesome pathways at healing nervous system, but that’s a piece of the puzzle. Of course, if you had, you know, a lot of adults don’t identify with trauma, whether it be capital T or little T.

Jannine Krause (23:28.376)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Greg (23:46.973)
But we do know, from the adverse childhood experiences, the ACE scores in North America, really no one gets out of here alive. it is a traumatic event of of life, this learning environment we find ourselves in. And then to make that job a little tougher, you look at ancestry, might not be your trauma, but it could be your great great great great grandmother’s trauma. Maybe it was the you know, potato famine out of Ireland or

Holocaust survivors out of Nazi Germany. there was a great famine in Montreal that a lot of research is coming out. They had a deep freeze and people went into starvation mode because they couldn’t get the food delivered there. And now they’re looking three, four generations post and there was epigenetic changes that happened to their great great great great grandparents and that’s expressing itself now genetically.

on their platform. So that that’s made our job a lot harder really tracking that down. So we do tie that into a urine metabolites with cortisol, looking at how are the hormones getting balanced. So we get the hormones in the blood work, we get hormone metabolites and a urine test. That one we’re also assessing that phase one route of elimination on the liver.

Jannine Krause (24:51.469)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (25:15.844)
We also get a organic acid test on that as well, looking at B12, B6, dopamine. there’s a marker called 8OH for environmental toxicity. If there’s any environmental toxicity creating any genetic damage for you today, then you have to that kind of opens up a new pathway, like we gotta investigate what is causing that.

And then we do a microbiome test as well. So looking at that gut brain access, there is tremendous amount of research coming out around patterns in the gut microbiome and the influence on brain health and other health, by the way. But looking at if you have a leaky gut or inflammation in the bowel that is gapping your tight junctures of the bowel, which then creates

complexes into your blood that ramps up inflammation that goes to your brain, creates a leaky blood-brain barrier that leads to neuroinflammation. So that gut brain access needs to be assessed as well. That could be from environmental toxicity, it could be from diet nutritional issues creating inflammation, maybe some allergies or sensitivities to food. could be from the glyphosate from non-organic food. So we

We do recommend folks eating the environmental working group. They do a great job of the dirty dozen every year of at least do those twelve vegetables and fruits as organic minimally. looking at seed oils as well. Seed oils get oxidized and damage mitochondria function. so that’s in the trauma front.

And then we look at that third category of infections. So there’s this, you know, if you go to PubMed and type in molecular mimicry for Parkinson’s, you find hyp hypothyroidism, so functional hypothyroidism, you find viruses: Epstein Barr, Cytolomegalo, Herpesimplex virus.

Dr. Greg (27:34.897)
I think eventually we’ll see the COVID virus on there as well for that post-viral syndrome. I’ve seen a lot of acceleration from COVID vaccine and COVID virus creating that neuroinflammation and kind of pushing people into early cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s.

all of the atypical Parkinson’s conditions like multiple systems, atrophy, progressive supranucleopalsy. I mean, these things just roll off the tongue, right? so they they those are the three big buckets and those are the testing. So we’ve got environmental toxicity testing, we’re testing cortisol hormone levels.

Jannine Krause (28:10.446)
Just

Dr. Greg (28:25.162)
we’re looking at the microbiome, and then we’re also doing a full comprehensive blood work panel that really is looking for that molecular mimicry, but then your vitamin D status, vitamin D is not named well. it’s more than just a vitamin, it’s a pre-hormone precursor, it’s anti-cancer, it’s an epigenetic change agent. So you want that to be really in an optimal level too. So

Those three big buckets, those are the testing.

What do you got?

Jannine Krause (28:59.47)
Well, I mean, I think I think a lot of people are like, Okay, that’s a lot of testing and obviously you’re you’re testing the person in front of you, not just doing all of them just to do is is, you know, a big

Dr. Greg (29:09.872)
Right. Well, so one com one component on that is you know, I know it is a lot of testing and a lot of people ask me, like, what can I take, doctor? And I think it’s the wrong question. So, you know, I did put a compendium of nootropics, which are substances that help brain health, but it’s a it’s a shotgun American approach. Like, if some is good, more is better. And

Jannine Krause (29:21.699)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Greg (29:38.457)
really I like the Chinese philosophy of the zhang of the formula or direction. There’s an emperor, empress, generals, and assistants, everybody to move in a certain direction. And less is more, because your your liver has to talk, you know, process it, your innate intelligence has to understand where are we going? And so you really want to look at the precision. And I think it’s worth it to it’s not a a

There’s a minimum detect phase, is what I call it in the ECL protocol, which is the those are the base minimum. Now, there are some specialty tests that I think about for people. so there are plasmologens. So I I’ve got Dayton Good now wrote a book probably five years ago called Breaking Alzheimer’s, and pretty dramatic title.

Jannine Krause (30:26.915)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (30:31.206)
But it’s all about plasmologens. Now, what are plasmalogens? I did not learn about these in medical school. They are 25% of the cell wall, every cell wall. And it’s basically there is a over 400 papers, probably more at this point, because that was five years ago, linking low plasmologens to all states of neurodegeneration. Now I don’t start with this test.

Jannine Krause (30:38.115)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (30:58.948)
Some say, well, why not? But you know, there is a limit of testing. And I am assuming most people are deficient in them. However, it depends on where you are in the gradient of diagnosis, how severe, how far progressed. if dementia Alzheimer’s is your worry, I would consider doing a prodrome sciences test. It’s plasmologen testing because it’s

This is basically brain food. Now, Dan was very wise. I got to talk to him about right as he was publishing two seminal papers, and he presented at the World Alzheimer’s Conference in Denver. I believe it was 21 or 22. And he showed, can you increase low plasmalogens in the blood? The answer is yes. And it just happened that.

Everyone that had low plasmalogens was somewhere on the contingent of mild cognitive impairment, dementia, Alzheimer’s, somewhere on that continuum. They all 100% moved down the ladder to less severe to no disease status with adequate plasmalogens in their blood. Now it was so that’s pretty wild that.

Jannine Krause (32:13.048)
Wow.

Jannine Krause (32:18.476)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (32:19.836)
People haven’t really heard about it because it was pretty significant finding. So it is it’s worth looking at, especially if that’s one of your concerns, you’re right. You know, i it can be reversed with adequate nutrition or nutritionals. So that’s plasmalogens is one of those kind of add-on tests that I think about.

I also think about mitochondria testing. So we know all of these neurodegenerative states, the mitochondria, if you remember back to ninth grade science, it’s the kidney bean-shaped organelle in the cell. Don’t glaze over just yet. it’s just the energy factory. And so you can actually measure functionally what’s happening with the mitochondria. Are they efficient? Are they

getting taxed by anti by oxidation or free radicals or reactive oxidative species. and then there can be some interventions from that too. So those are, you know, a couple there are other specialty labs that we’ll put in, probably too detailed for our conversation here, but just know there are a lot of options that a clinician can go in. Now again, I’ve seen folks that have been to the concierge doctors and they get

$10,000 worth of testing and the testing starts to contradict each other. And it’s like, well, if you would have just taken a thorough history, probably could have streamlined this and then gotten a better path or program plan for you. So I know I evaded the question on what to do, but it is we’re getting there. We’re getting there. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (34:04.076)
Yeah. Well, I mean, it makes sense. And and yes, there that is, you know, one of the complaints I hear from a lot of folks. Like, if I go to this specialist, that means I’m gonna have all this testing. And like I myself included have seen conflicting, you know, tests. And and then it’s like, all right, you know, what do I do here? How do I deal with this? Now interesting you mentioned the plasmalogens because I had interviewed Dane like right around that time too, probably not too long after I I interviewed you before COVID. And one of the interesting things

That I’m curious about in your practice because my practice has shifted quite a bit. Now it does seem like we’re entering into the realm of many people, you know, from the hormone realm that I used to specialize in and still do. I’m going into the dementia and and Parkinson’s and what’s going on neurologically. So going back to the plasmologens, what have you seen in your practice in terms of results? Is it mimicking what Dane’s getting? Like how how is it showing up in your practice?

Dr. Greg (34:45.991)
Okay.

Dr. Greg (35:00.762)
Yeah, it’s I see it more so it’s not it’s a part of a program and it’s less of the one trick pony. Now I I think the way that Dan does it, you know, he has an inpatient facility up in Calgary, they’re pumping like gobs of this stuff into people. He’s getting different results than what we’re seeing, but I see it more as a complimentary of retesting, making sure we’re getting adequate.

Jannine Krause (35:10.158)
Sure, sure.

Dr. Greg (35:27.544)
levels in the blood. I I haven’t seen it be the the miracle cure, but I definitely see it contributing to improvement of cognition. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (35:36.172)
Okay. Well, and and obviously, you know, I mean, everyone who’s listening, I’m not not one to ever say there’s gonna be that one magic pill, because there isn’t ever. Like, stop looking for that. but when it comes to looking at advanced therapies, because a lot of people are talking to me now that we know about stem cell, now that we know more about IV therapy, you know, a lot of folks will come to me and go, Okay, so my toxic levels are off the charts. I’ll give you, for example, my a lot of folks I see in Wisconsin, farmers.

Dr. Greg (35:44.304)
Right. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (36:06.22)
So now we’ve got we’ve got the mold toxin from the silos, from the corn, and we’ve got on top of that, we’ve got glyphosate, we’ve got, you know, all all of them. and so what I’ll get is they’re like, Okay, I need a detox, I need IV therapy. I would love for you to speak to like your protocols around detox, and you you probably are getting there anyway. So I’m gonna just let you kind of

Dr. Greg (36:06.598)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Greg (36:16.208)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (36:28.208)
Yeah. So there, you know, there’s there’s multiple levels to detoxification. So I think when most people hear detox, they think, Am I gonna be on the toilet all day? That’s a colon cleanse, right? And I I like to move upstream to the liver because the liver is the detox organ. obviously you’ve gotta have a bowel movement every day. So we start with the five amunctories.

Which is just the way the terrain of how your body naturally detoxes. The skin is the largest organ. So doing dry skin brushing, brushing from the peripheral before a shower, you’re sloughing off the old tissue, but you’re also stimulating lymph flow with that. and you’re going towards the heart. So from all of the appendages towards the heart, just like three to five minutes of dry skin brushing.

Jannine Krause (37:10.158)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Greg (37:20.85)
Breathing is a the breath, the exchange of oxygen to carbon dioxide, making sure you’re breathing properly. Like so many of us have learned to hold our guts in, and just breathe through our like when I ask people to take a deep breath, their chest goes up and down. It’s like, no, they need to take a deep belly breath, because the deep belly breath, it contracts the diaphragm, pulls on cranial nerve ten, the vagus nerve, and puts the body into a

Parasympathetic activity, which is rest and digest and repair. So that’s how the body repairs is getting into that parasympathetic activity. So breath work actually helps with that. Box breathing, like four, four, four, four. So you breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four.

That’s I mean, it works for elite military crews to regulate their nervous system. It should work for us Janes and Joes in the general population. So lots of different breathwork avenues to pursue. hydration, so the kidneys, third route of elimination. You’ve gotta have enough water to float your boat. So it sounds much more elegant in pinion Chinese than that statement for.

hydration to have adequate bowel movements, but also to flush toxins from your system. So you’ve got to have good hydration. you know, so one test for that is the skin turger. If you pinch your skin, it should just go right back down. If it tense up, you know you’re running dehydrated. oftentimes you could see that on

You could see that on Blood Work 2, looking at kidney function labs as well. then you know, you’ve got the the sweating, you want to make sure you’re doing some sauna, especially because of the organophosphates and the pesticide class. You’ve got to get detox going. And then circulation, you gotta get your heart rate up. So

Dr. Greg (39:31.207)
There is a lot of research on high-intensity workouts. One of my favorite books is called the One Minute Workout. It’s more than one minute, but there was an exercise physiologist out of Toronto, you know, pinched for time, raising a young family and saying, gosh, this is ridiculous. I’m an exercise physiologist and I don’t exercise. So he wanted to find the minimum effective dose. And

In the book, he g goes into a four-minute warm-up, one minute of just go as hard as you can, and then four minute cool down. And you basically do two, three to four of those cycles. So it’s more than just one minute, but it’s a catchy title. but that’s all it takes, really, is increasing your heart rate will increase brain derived neurotropic factor, also increasing circulation. So we know in Chinese medicine, circulation is the

key of what goes into your blood and then how do you get it to the cells. movement is one of those things that does it. So, you know, making sure your emunctories are open and flowing, that’s the baseline. And everyone can do that. The other non-sexy stuff is, you know, looking at for brain specific, you want to have adequate rest. So I do recommend

Kind of tracking this a little bit, not to the point of becoming neurotic about it and or outsourcing your agency, but looking at, okay, are you actually getting into deep sleep? Are what is your percentage of REM? What’s your total sleep? Are you sleeping enough? No one thinks about smoking two packs of cigarettes a day in this conversation, right? I mean, some people still do, just over in Europe. And gosh, they smoke like chimneys over there.

Jannine Krause (41:23.79)
It’s cheap.

Dr. Greg (41:26.218)
I know it is. but that said, not having adequate rest or sleep is like the equivalent stress on the body of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. So, you know, having again non-sexy, but are you sleeping enough, right? So many people are busy or just can’t do it, or they, you know, it’s their me time or whatever those things are. But you know, if you’re running a deficit day in and day out.

That is definitely wearing on you. Going to bed after 10 p.m., and I’m guilty of that, starts burning your growth hormone. So, like that’s the a kind of the anti-aging molecule of your body. So, you know, you’ve gotta there are consequences to decisions, let’s say. So, but knowing what you’re doing, I think is the first step is having the awareness of.

Okay, I’m making a choice today to do this and you know, I’m gonna make up for it later. But if it’s just habitual and not conscious, you know, what you don’t know may be harming you.

Jannine Krause (42:37.102)
Absolutely. I think, you know, a lot of the foundations are things we skip over for the the new sexy, cool, you know, IV therapy, whatnot protocols. I think one of the things that I wanted to definitely ask you about is when someone’s a little bit more advanced in in this, you know, we’ve got some sundowners kind of things going on. We have difficulty getting them to go to bed at a regular hour. Maybe the family’s fighting a little bit with someone. What kind of things do you recommend in that case when you’re finding that

Dr. Greg (42:44.09)
Sure.

Jannine Krause (43:07.042)
whoever you’re working with, you know, whether you’re a practitioner listening or, you know, if you’ve got family members, you can’t get to bed on time. What do you do?

Dr. Greg (43:17.52)
Well, I mean, that’s a a huge I wish th there was one fix there, but that’s the whole system issue, right? Like that so that was probably a decade or two prior to really get at underlying causes. But that said, you know, I have seen folks in that scenario. I had I had a retired pharmacist come see us in Portland and

He was not able to do one plus one math. And this is a guy in his prime. he was able to do multiplication factors in his head, right? All kinds of complex math problems just in his head, doing, you know, with medication. So pretty significant high-stakes work. after coming through our program, he was able to do his multiplication factors again. His wife was in tears saying, We’ve got him back.

He’s playing with the grandkids. He’s back at the dinner table. His sense of humor is back. still don’t trust him with the checking book, but but really had he he got like he was oriented times three when he first started, couldn’t really remember my name, didn’t know where he was, came in in a wheelchair. One month later, he’s oriented times three, making jokes, doing math.

It it is possible, but we’re we did an EEG. We’re looking at past are there imbalances in a different region of the brain? Can we put some information back in there? There’s a a therapy that we do is called PRTMS. So it’s personalized repetitive transcranial magnetic stem. So when somebody is advanced, that would be an advanced symptom in my book and in yours.

You need more input into the system. So it’s like the eight hundred pound gorilla. What do we need to actually do over here to balance it out? So we really get into well, how do we significantly decrease the inflammation on their brain? We, you know, I’m guessing that person probably has a sweet tooth.

Dr. Greg (45:37.159)
So you’re looking at hormone imbalances, you’re looking at dietary imbalances, roots of inflammation acutely, and then are there stimuluses that you can put in with like hyperbaric therapies, right red light beds. we we are doing a home care program now.

with nutritional imbalances, bioregulators and some devices like we’ll use the brain tap, if they’ll wear it, right? So sometimes they get to that point where they sometimes they’ll get to that point where they’re just so far advanced that they’re not compliant to do those things.

Dr. Greg (46:52.71)
Welcome back. Yeah. So just for your editing component, it was four just forty five minutes on the timer.

Jannine Krause (46:59.055)
Okay, thank you. my goodness. Yeah, like what the

Dr. Greg (47:01.316)
And I I just f I finished the thought, so we should be good.

Jannine Krause (47:04.643)
Okay, yeah, ’cause it’ll record on it’ll hold on yours. I’ve I’m in the I’m not in the middle of nowhere. Like my house is in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know what’s going on. well anyway, we’ll we’ll we’ll keep that there. my next big question, ’cause cause I think, you know

Dr. Greg (47:08.422)
Yeah.

Jannine Krause (47:26.197)
When we’re dealing with sleep, that’s a huge factor. There’s a lot going on there, but it is one of the things that I tend to see. The other big thing that I really wanted to get an answer on from you, just to get your take on it before we tell everybody about your program and and and your book and everything, is that a lot of times folks will come into me and they’re having trouble with balance. They’re having trouble with mobility. And there aren’t a lot of places that

are going to be able to help that are, you know, that and I’m talking more Parkinson’s right now, but there’s not a lot of physical therapists that know exactly what to do in that case. And of course on my end, I want them to exercise, right? I want them to get their heart rate up. And it’s like, how am I gonna do this unless I get them in a pool, you know, or something. So what what you said you had a home care program. Do you have folks working with like the the fitness side of things? And and what do you suggest?

Dr. Greg (48:13.617)
Right.

Dr. Greg (48:21.756)
We do. So we have a a really big online program with coaching. So we we’re supporting people every week, week in and week out. So we do a balance board for folks. Dan Metcalf is my main coach with that. and you can do that even if you’ve lost the ability for motion and your balance is poor, you can do it sitting.

And then we also do qigong. Lori Regan is the past dean of Chinese medicine out of Portland, Oregon, and lineage holder of the Jinjang School of Qi Gong. And so she is my main coach, working on qi gung, which qi is energy, gong is work. You can also do that sitting or standing. very simple motions to get your qi or energy moving, which then moves your blood.

So the coaching really has been an enhancement. I think we have over fifteen hundred people in that right now. it’s growing. it’s a whole community of people making different choices to get different results. And we need that support because, you know, I’m asking people to change their brain and that means they have to become a new person tomorrow.

And that takes some work and encouragement and support. the other two coaches we do we do a nutrition coach, Dr. Erica Siegel, out of Portland, Oregon, has a an amazing two set volume of nutrition. I’ve got the Eccle diet in con in conjunction with that. again, to help people make different choices to get different results. and then we have Christina Marlett who does our mindset.

And also body awake yoga. So again, another movement yoga with regards to mindset, massive shifts needed there for folks. And then we also have physical therapists who specialize in craniosacral therapy and pelvic floor. They’re also training on Monday mornings on different exercises for getting body awareness and getting that movement because it is, it’s something that needs to happen every day.

Dr. Greg (50:39.102)
And so having that support I’m looking for. Usually I’ll have a red pom pom here. it’s been moved, but you know, we do cheer with a red pom pom. So imagine I have that right there. Yeah.

Jannine Krause (50:51.812)
my goodness. Well, fun stuff. And I and I mean I think those those are all the components you would want in a program. And it’s something that, you know, a lot of folks like you know, regular docs aren’t gonna be able to offer all that support. And this is why coming to a specialized program is incredibly important. And because it sounds like you’ve got a lot of folks virtual, folks could see you virtual. They wouldn’t have to necessarily come in for four.

Dr. Greg (51:14.566)
That’s right. Yeah, we start with a coaching program. So it’s a coaching relationship, not a provider relationship, up to a point of if we can get you qualified to come out for a brain camp. So we do see folks in all 50 states and worldwide really, in a coaching relationship. So, and then invite folks to Utah to become a patient where we do a week long program called a brain camp, and then we do a continued care after brain camp.

brain camp follow ups at one, three, five, seven months, retesting and retweaking and aligning to get the results. So, you know, what gets measured gets changed and

We’re we’re really looking for folks that are wanting to make a different choice to get a different result. So it’s definitely you’re you’re stepping out into the unknown with the Dr. Greg in Park City, Utah, and his staff and team. but I I think what you’re seeing is w you know, we’re starting to publish and transparently what our results are and which is beating what you get in the system because it th they’re just kind of managing your disease or illness there.

Jannine Krause (52:27.641)
Yeah. Yeah. And if someone ha is on medications, you’re okay with man you know, obviously scope of practice. We won’t jump you out of that, but you’re okay if someone comes in on meds and perhaps, you know, maybe they make the choice with their doc to wean off of them and things of that. Mm-hmm. Very cool. Very cool. And your book. Let’s talk about that real quick so folks know that they can grab that as well for some support there too.

Dr. Greg (52:32.082)
Yeah.

Dr. Greg (52:35.834)
Right. Yeah.

Dr. Greg (52:43.666)
Correct. Correct.

Dr. Greg (52:52.474)
Yeah. G got it right there. It’s my second book on the topic, Defying Parkinson’s. It’s on Amazon. It’s a bestseller in five categories. In fact, we even got it in neuroanatomy, neurology, and brain disease. number one bestseller. it has a ton of references. So the bibliography,

You know, I I get often asked, well, where’s the evidence, Dr. Eccle, for this? And I’m like, look, we’re going off of the research. It’s just you’re not reading the right publications. So

We’ve got it in there. we’ve got the phases of the Echo protocol. lots of practical advice that you could put in. I want it to be a reference manual, like to live on the coffee table, not to be put on the bookshelf, but people are referencing it often to see, okay, what’s next? What else can I do? Yeah.

Jannine Krause (53:52.495)
So huge. So huge. Well, thank you so much for coming back on. I sincerely appreciate it. And I can’t wait to get this one out for folks to learn more and work on the prevention aspect of things too. Since that is also something that’s really important these days as well.

Dr. Greg (54:07.954)
Massive. Thank you, Doctor J for having me back and always great to see you.

Jannine Krause (54:12.538)
My pleasure, my pleasure.