In part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Jill Crista, she talks about how neuroinflammation is triggered in PANS and PANDAS and autoimmune encephalitis by seemingly trivial phenomena.If you have a child triggered into behavioral “regression” by a seemingly trivial situation, this podcast can help you understand why.
Dr. Crista emphasizes that Gut Health is the place to start. If you are struggling to understand where to start when healing your child’s gut, be sure to download my free ebook here:
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Disclaimer: The information in this Podcast is for educational purposes only. Vaishnavi Sarathy, Ph.D. is an educator, not a doctor, specifically not your child’s doctor. Please consult your physician before implementing any supplement or diet recommendations.
Audio Transcription:
Vaish:
Let’s delve into part two of the world of neuroinflammation caused by infection with Dr. J. Krista. I am vaish chemist and functional nutrition consultant and science educator, as a mom to a rather stopping point for Down syndrome and autism, who happens to be nonspeaking. It was just a few years ago that I felt helpless at what appeared to be said dysregulation, severe gut issues, apparent lack of communication, extremely low energy, and disinterest in anything that I offered. Sit and I have since traveled through 1000s of lessons learned about the gut, the brain, and the extreme importance of assuming intelligence. He now lives a motivated regulated life for the most part, filled within his words, I quote, gory ambition. And it is my mission No, actually our mission to make sure that this regulation is accessible to all.
I present this podcast functional nutrition and learning for kids in order to bring to you the lessons that have changed my life. So if you’re a mom, dad or teacher who believes that equal education, sound, nutrition, and a regulated mind are the birthright of your child. And if you’re looking for answers to help your child find regulation and focus on the box learning and nutrition strategies that have helped kids with down syndrome, autism and ADHD thrive, you are in the right place. A good place to start right now if you are new, is to check out my free eBook at www.functionalnutritionforkids.com/guthealth. It has a lot of actionable information that you are not likely to find outside.
Now, this is part two of a two-part conversation. Dr. Jill Krista is a naturopathic doctor best selling author and internationally recognized educator on neuroinflammatory conditions such as mold, lime pandas pans, and post concussion syndrome. She is passionate about helping people recover their health after exposure to toxic mold. She is the author of this book, break the mold five tools to conquer mold and take back your health and also support small sick people through her membership inspire. She also provides online training for medical practitioners wanting to become more literate. Now do check out part one of this podcast which is episode number 72. where Dr. Krista talks in much detail about mold, and also about how to identify neuro inflammation specific to OCD. lesson on I’ve heard you talk about the first three steps in avoiding any infectious trigger being avoidance, avoidance and avoidance of the trigger. Right. So which is why it’s important to find the trigger now what can we talk quickly about what avoidance means in strap in mold and perhaps in other infections? Yeah, sure.
Dr. Jill Crista:
So I guess I didn’t get past mold on the causes for this, but you know, obviously, it’s going to be tick-borne illnesses. So that’s not just Lyme, that’s co-infections like the BCM bartonella Palace and virus, you know, some of these things that you can get within 15 minutes of a tick bite. And then there are the normal communicable things that kids get all the time coxsackie strap, and I don’t know about you, but my families have been so happy during the pandemic, in that people are starting to wash their hands, people are starting to clean things in public spaces, you know, these kids, their, their resistance to going out of the house is their wisdom, that they can’t tolerate any more load that they have a leaky barrier here and they can’t tolerate more infectious load. And that’s sometimes why the impounds we see food avoidance because when we do eat, we get bacterial endotoxin.
If you have a leaky brain that doesn’t make the kid feel good because that bacterial endotoxin has more chance of getting up into the brain and causing inflammation. So their food avoidance is then being really smart. So the bacterial
Vaish:
Endotoxin is related to how can you talk a little bit more about how that is related to food? I’m just super cool. Yeah, I’ve been looking into the picky eating and pandas connection and which I hadn’t before and I was kind of astounded to see how the OCD almost translates to food.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yes, and it’s, it’s their brilliance. It’s not something wrong with them. That is their brilliance. Absolutely. I think if we can step back as a frustrated parent and as a doctor wanting to fix everything and say what is their body really saying what are they trying to tell us with this you know, neuroinflammation can tweak a nervous system and so things don’t necessarily always make sense. But why that compulsion? Why that spot so for a child who is you know, picky eater, that’s again started to get started the gut because what they’re telling you is sometimes the nervous system sometimes it’s just the swallowing mechanism is off because swallowing is a very complex orchestra of neural impulses. So sometimes they’re really afraid of choking because they know that they’re having swallowing issues.
There’s a little dysautonomia that is out of sync there. So that’s, that’s one piece. But the other pieces, if you have a kid with a really leaky gut, they’re telling you, I can’t handle any more food that may have may stimulate bacterial endotoxin, which all of us get all of us healthy people, we get a little more LPs in our brain, Michael polysaccharide, which is bacterial endotoxin, after we eat, that sort of food coma is. So if you have a leaky brain, though, more can get up there. And you also already have a brain that’s primed for inflammation. And so when it gets there, it causes a bigger burst of neuroinflammation than a normal neurotypical person. So that’s the trying to quell inflammation before eating is really important.
There are things that we can do like cabbage juice, cabbage juice feeds the specific cells lining the gut, have, and it doesn’t taste all that bad. You know, if you take fresh cabbage juice, it’s not like stinky cabbage, you know, it’s actually kind of tasty. So we can use things like that like you can burn cabbage juice and have a little bit of that before they eat. feverfew is one of my favorite plants for pre-dosing before we eat so that we’ve knocked down the neural inflammation, and help the nerves maybe move better for the swallowing mechanism. And then they can eat. So yeah, some of the picky eating is just eating in general, they just don’t want to do it because their brain says, I can’t handle it. It’s too hard. Yeah.
Blood Sugar is a real deal with these guys. So ideally, what we’d be doing is frequent small meals. So know your kid, don’t be you know, if your doctor is saying, okay, they’re having blood sugar crashes, we need frequent small meals for your kid, they may need one massive meal a day. And you pre-dose and you get everything ready. You know, you do the, the fish oils or the resolvins. And you do the feverfew and you do, like, okay, we’re going to get ready for this. And then need everything you’re gonna need in 24 hours, which is not ideal for blood sugar. But for some kids, that’s the only way you’re going to get them to eat.
Vaish:
Yeah, yeah, I’ve actually seen that on occasion, not one meal, but two meals a day for my son specifically, he that actually helps explain a lot of things because he used to have, he still has this massive, massive lunch, dinner, whatever you want to call it at 330 and he just wanted after that, and the next he eats is almost at 11 in the morning.
Dr. Jill Crista:
So yeah, and there’s a whole lot of science behind that. So intermittent fasting is a way to lower our LPs it is a way to cause our brain to detoxify our brain detoxifies while we sleep on it, these kids have sleep issues, and because they’re they don’t get a chance to be hungry before bed, because we’re so worried about the meeting, you know, they need to get hungry for bed so that they can that LPs level goes down, the neuroinflammation goes down, the gut can rest and then when they go to sleep, their brain can drain more efficiently.
Vaish:
There’s such an innate intelligence in these kids that we think there isn’t right especially these are the kids that come with 10,000 labels and they come with all sorts of and they’re the kids that are actually showing way more intelligence but their food choices than we are. Yes, Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah, my son. It used to drive me crazy. He would not eat leftovers and he wouldn’t eat food once it cooled down and I’m like, I am not a short-order cook. This is gonna go and then I learned about histamine. Yeah, and he has histamine issues and it was just like, oh my goodness, you were so wise. You know, he knew that once that food had sat around it increased histamine once it was leftover it increased histamine. So if you guys have a kid with histamine issues from mold and neuro implement inflammation, you know, kids with ASD have histamine issues.
It doesn’t have to just be a pandas pans mold thing. My little trick there was then the minute I made it, and I like to cook things that can freeze. Most of it goes in the freezer immediately. And then I could pull it out of the freezer and think and cook and he could eat it right away and it didn’t have as much as to me. So just those little time saver tips to be able to do the hard work of the diet because the diet is so key. Yeah, after going around to you know, big sweets, you know, my kids had lots and lots of big. So I got to talk to lots of parents.
The ones that were their kids were faring the best there was kind of some things that I saw some trends and that was that they had the diet on board, and they got their kid outside every day. Those were huge. And that can feel like you’re being a really mean parent because a lot of these kids have sensory issues. So sunlight can be painful, but you just kind of titrate it you started a minute and then you go to two minutes needs You know, and
Vaish:
It’s delicious cyclic kind of not vicious maybe, but it feeds into itself right. The less you go, the less you’re able to go and the more equal, you’re able to go.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah, yeah, and one thing I see with CBT is they don’t talk about outdoor. And that’s one of the most important things is that we get outside. I think that the first CBT thing that we should be doing is outside exposure.
Vaish:
There is. And I think I’m sorry for taking the detour with food, but I’m not sorry, because I and I think I apologize for going a few minutes beyond our time, but I do want to bring it back to that discussion about I think we’re talking about the different triggers. And you mentioned strap human, you mentioned tick-borne illnesses and of course, you already mentioned mold and there could be other infections too, I guess any viral, bacterial, or fungal infections could be a trigger for this whole cascade of neuroinflammation moving to autoimmunity, right?
Dr. Jill Crista:
There are some that particularly go to the brain, so mycoplasma pneumonia is one, chlamydia, pneumonia, coxsackie Candida, but once the, the microglia, which is the immune system of our brain gets primed.
Now anybody inflammation can so if they, you know, stub their toe or something like that, and that starts paying a little inflammation, inflammatory process. Now the body says, Oh, we have to make more chemicals to heal this. And that can affect those primed immune cells, because they are they have their tags out to say, let us know when something’s going on. And we’ll activate because we’re already primed and we’re ready to pounce that this is the story
Vaish:
Of children that have something really minor happened to them but result in you know, in a cascade of what looks to be behavioral major behavioral changes.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Because something the thing that primed it happened far before. Yeah, and now they’re primed. And now some systemic inflammation can trigger it and teeth are a huge one.
I want everybody who has a special child to make sure you have a very good dentist, and a cranial sacral therapist, to do a treatment to reset the cranial system after every dental treatment. But there is so much harbored strap lime loves the teeth. It’s tubules and tubules of its favorite food. So we see a lot of times that dentition either teeth coming in or losing teeth can be the thing that that Prime’s it or that triggers those primed microglia Yeah, so have a great dentist interview interview interview and get all the stick dentist and let them know, you know, this is I have this is what’s special about my child. And before dental treatments to homeopathy do those things that call neuroinflammation, get ready for the treatment, and then have a cranial sacral therapy scheduled right after if possible or soon as soon after as possible. Okay. Yeah.
Vaish:
I know. I’m trying to mentally sort through my questions so that I don’t, you know, it’s severely exceeded the time of this podcast,
Dr. Jill Crista:
But Yeah, go ahead.
Vaish:
No, one of the questions that I had was, you know, we were talking about I think we started by talking about avoidance, but is for example, the burning question on my mind does always like especially when you have an infection that’s obviously not mold but any other infection you have to start with antibiotics. Is that always the first step? Because that seems to be in a lot of my patients. I go and see some functional doctors, it starts with antibiotics and they’re really scared of antibiotics. So that question always comes back to me. Now, obviously, I think so. But it depends on what your doctor says.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah, it really depends. So that we have learned that what I call to guard the gates which is sinus and mouth, oral treatments of things that protect that child from strep. strep is a little unique, even if it pans. strep can then flare the pounds even if it didn’t start with strep because strep has a certain unique thing that it can do it can ride the olfactory bulb, and it can cause inflammation in the brain. So that’s one of the really unique things about strep. So in my patient base, we guard the gates with sinus treatment, even if it’s just swabbing the nairs they can tolerate a nasal spray, that’s great. Maybe it’s an Essential Oil Diffuser by the bed. A lot of them have EMF so make sure you’re using one that’s a low EMF or maybe a passive diffuser, a dry diffuser.
Something where we are keeping this area the sinus area and the mouth area. So mouthwashes like xylitol, dental side, and toothpaste, this holds the space so to speak, you know and guards the gates and that needs to be done repeatedly. And especially after it’s a morning and night and after any kind of exposure. So if they’re in a carpool or something like that we’ve had a kid get strapped in a carpool and it flared the child with pandas who was doing fine up to that point. So guarding the gates is really important as then whether to do antibiotics or not. This is where we get into conventional medicine and how they handle it. We do see these antibiotics are used prophylactically that’s their version of guard the gates. My version is to use plants and drugs if we need it, I mean, I am not against antibiotics at all my children needed them. I have kids that I see who are in such a bad flare, they need that support of antibiotics, maybe steroids. So SSRIs
I mean, we just you meet the kid where they’re at. And what I’ve seen is the level of disruption, we need to go with the level of force. But plants work very, very well. I have a thing I call botanical avatar, you know, like if, if we have the perfect remedy, it would be antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant because the brain needs that antioxidant to turn that turn off those activated immune cells. It would have some balancing of the neurotransmitters in the brain that would help heal the gut and probably protect the kidneys because we do see that strep infections and strep reactions that go out of the immune can affect kidney function. That’s what I’m seeing here. Is there a perfect remedy out there? Yeah, there is there are like eight to 10 plants that are out there that can do just this. So one of the big things is Oregon grape root, it contains berberine Oregon grape does all of those things.
It’s an anti strap, it’s anti-inflammatories antioxidant, it sets the neurotransmitter balance higher on the GABA and glycine and lowers on the dopamine and the glutamate is an excitatory thing it protects the gut and hit that protects the kidneys this it’s a bitter so it starts all of the detoxification things and it’s just saying it helps your digestion Why are we not you know let’s start there. And then we can use other anti-Nan neuro inflammatory measures to help with that but you know we have these avatars these plants that are like Pick Me me me I want to help and the only hard thing is it’s hard to get into a kid because it tastes you know so that’s where we hide it in the savory sauces and you can fdose it in a tincture form that’s it this you know liquid tincture and have the kid be part of the solution to I have kids come into my Minda scenario and I say smell this bottle you know drop out into little things and smell and taste this is the one you need to take whatever these other things would if we mix it in because we can put ginger we can put orange or we could put licorice which is very sweet. We could put bilberry which is an anti neuroinflammatory they get to make their remedy up and then they are part of the solution to
Vaish:
I love that everywhere we’re kind of coming again and again to you know to the intelligence of the child and it’s something that I think we I totally couldn’t tell you what I needed but I have noticed that and I’m probably and parents will notice that as your child is on an anti-inflammatory diet as your child is doing less addictive foods like sugar, dairy gluten, all of that they become more intuitive right now.
My neurotypical daughter if you put a bowl of ice cream like it’s if you don’t even put it if you hide it it’s still gone but if you put a bowl of ice cream in front of my son he’ll actually push it away because he doesn’t feel good if he eats sweets he used to be pretty addicted but he’s developed this sense of things where he reaches out for sour foods he reaches out for sometimes bitter foods he does not reach out for at least actually does I can’t remember what sweet foods he reaches out for he doesn’t even like pancakes but yeah
Dr. Jill Crista:
It’s interesting when you get the things chilled out and you start to put give them some control they really they know it but yeah I mean the addiction can be intense. I had a four-year-old that you know in the middle of the night three o’clock in the morning her parents found her that they have the pullout freezer you know she’s sitting in the freezer with the ice cream eating
Vaish:
and I can see that I can’t even see that my January
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah and I thought okay, well this dairy thing is really yeah so and I think another thing just for parents just to take away is really respect yeast. Like if you’re not doing something anti-yeast, I would in most of my on a
Vaish:
regular working with Yeah, it is I find that every now and then I have been guided by a site and protocol with my son it kind of stage starts going into these giggly fits and it’s pretty obvious now by now that when the East comes, we know.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah, yeast is a biggie. And it’s, along with maldis the hidden thing and we don’t really respect it because we’re like, oh, it’s part of a normal Flora so we don’t worry too much. It can go right through the blood-brain barrier. So if there’s an overgrowth, you’re gonna see it in the behavior.
Vaish:
Thank you, Dr. Jill. I think that I mean, I was just trying to build a big picture of what you said. And I mean, there’s a lot, but I think you’re talking about guarding the gates of our body. I think that kind of ties into a child feeling safe and a child, you know, you know, the lack of safety that you often talk about when a child is exposed to mold or strep, or any kind of neuroinflammation, when that triggers this constant feeling of anxiety and feeling under attack. I was going to ask you, I’ve been loving this string theory, if you will, of medicine, which has the cell danger response, right? Or which does everything come back to them? Do you think everything comes back to a kind of an innate feeling of fight or flight? Or? I know it’s not always the same as cell danger response, but I was just wondering, no matter where you go, it seems to like come back to that point.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah, and that I agree, I think that and you know, we can go very esoteric with that as well and energetic which is, you know, the sense of safety as a sense of being held and in the world. And what do you see with these kids, when they get neuroinflammation, you see regression for them to want to go back to being some of them even in the womb, you know, they’re just like, I want to crawl back inside of you. You know, like, yeah, so a sense of being safe and being held. And it’s really difficult to do that, as a family when you have a child who is wreaking havoc on everything on the pets on the other children, and you know, everything’s turned upside down. It’s really hard as a parent to continue to, to remind yourself that the biggest medicine we can give is a sense of safety.
Vaish:
Yeah. I think that is a perfect line to end our part.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Here we go. Yeah, it’s hard to do when you’re just like, Oh, we got to do this special diet. But yeah,
Vaish:
I think that holds for the parents too. And I as, as you do, the diagnosis you do as you do everything, you know, maybe the cranial osteopathy as you do the different modalities because unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be one road to healing.
Dr. Jill Crista:
There is Oh, yeah, and go slow one step at a time, one thing at a time, you know, this doesn’t all have to happen overnight. And that’s where I think the stress happens because you can’t make those changes when you’re in a flare. Not too many changes anyway. And in in those cases, you may just need the big thump of antibiotics or the antimicrobial herbals. And that’s the fight that you fight on the daily basis of just trying to get that into a child and then you get things chilled out, you know, and feverfew or ibuprofen it doesn’t matter they’re both doing the same kind of thing so you know get things chilled out and then you start
Vaish:
and then we’re done. Yeah Yes. How can parents reach you Dr. Jones, how can they work with you?
Dr. Jill Crista:
Yeah, I’m not taking new patients I’m no longer taking any new patients because I really want to take what’s all in here and put it into a class and into a book so they can go to my website though for information that’s Dr. Crista calm that’s Dr. car I sta calm and I’ll be taking the next couple months off I won’t really be on social media and educating and that kind of thing because I really want to just get this out so people have to
Vaish:
I can’t wait please do even in just a relatively short podcast I’d really be looking forward to your book is there a resource that parents can find a practitioner that they can work with you.
Dr. Jill Crista:
I don’t have I do have that for mold I trained well literate doctors and a lot of the Doc’s that are willing to actually go do this extra training for mold literacy are more open to the other things as well like that’s on your website and that’s on my website on find a doctor I will be it says monitor doctors and I will be starting to create a resource for pandas and pans just because that’s my other you know specialty just so people can find other doctors who are taking patients because I think that’s a it’s very frustrating when you’re a parent but the goal of my book will be here all the things you can do at home and then here’s the things to talk with your doctor about because there’s so much we can be doing in home care.
Yeah, yeah, because there aren’t enough doctors who understand this condition and even those of us that do are busy arguing about the right way to do anything
Vaish:
Oh no absolutely yeah we’re all
Dr. Jill Crista:
like wow I don’t know I would do that different and that’s perfectly fine because every time and maybe
Vaish:
Try everything as a parent I would say that try something new find the one doctor that works for you try it if that doesn’t go somewhere else, right? Yeah, yeah. Good. a fair chance.
Dr. Jill Crista:
That a fair chance. Yeah, it’s hard because there’s a lot of Doctor hopping too, but you know, yeah, yeah. Yep. So I do have a little mini-course called pandas fundamentals. It’s it doesn’t have doses or anything because at the time, I wasn’t sure what my liability was. So that’s, that’s one limitation of that. But it does lay out kind of my whole theory. Like-kind of the plan more how to approach things and the corset will be much more detailed. actionable. Okay,
Vaish:
Thank you so much. And I will put whenever your course is ready, please let us know and I will make sure that parents have access to that I personally can’t wait to get my you know, get a look at your book and your course. Great. Thank you for being here.
Dr. Jill Crista:
Absolutely thank you for the invitation and for helping me spread the word about this other way of doing things.
Vaish:
Thank you for listening. As Dr. Krista mentioned, diet and gut health matter more than anything when you want your child to thrive, so make sure you check out the free ebook at functionalnutritionforkids.com/guthealth. Signing off. I’m your host Vaish. See you next week.
