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Dr. Deb Muth 0:03
What are the answers to your child’s chronic allergies, ADHD, or autism?
weren’t just in another prescription, but in restoring balance to their body chemistry. Today’s guest has spent nearly two decades uncovering those answers through integrative and biomedical medicine. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?
Helping children heal when nothing else seemed to work.
This is the conversation about science, compassion, and changing the future of pediatric care.
Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now.
The show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore regenerative breakthroughs, and empower you with the practical tools to heal. I’m your host, Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today’s episode is one every patient should hear.
My guest is Dr. Anu Usman Singh, Medical Director of True Health Medical Center in Naperville, Illinois, and the owner of Pure Compounding Pharmacy.
And for over 17 years, she has been pioneering evidence-based integrative interventions for children with ADD, autism, allergies, and complex gastrointestinal and metabolic disorders.
She’s not only a practicing physician, she’s a researcher who’s investigated copper-zinc imbalances.
metallonine dysfunction, biofilm-related infections, vitamin D in pregnancy, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Dr. Usman serves on the executive board of TACA, and is a faculty member at MAPS, training other practitioners in pediatric integrative care. So get ready for a conversation that will open your mind and heart to the possibilities of when medicine truly becomes holistic.
If you guys can insert the ad in here, that’d be great.
Well, welcome back. I’m so excited to have Dr. Usman with me today. I have known her for, oh my gosh, 15, 17 years, something like that. We’re aging ourselves.
Anju 02:32
Oh, yeah, when we were in our 20s, right?
Dr. Deb Muth 02:35
Yes, exactly. So, welcome back, and I am so excited for you to be here, because you have literally helped thousands of families over the years.
But I’d love for you to share a little bit about your journey, kind of who you are, what drew you into exploring integrative and biomedical approaches for helping children and families.
Anju 02:58
I think my journey is similar to a lot of you out there, the audience. I mean, we’re looking to help our families, and our kids, and ourselves, and I was doing my residency at Cook County Hospital, downtown Chicago, in the 80s.
And I thought, oh my goodness, if I could take care of the sickest patients, then I can take care of anybody. So I came from Indiana, and I went to Cook County, and my children, my eldest daughter, started having, severe allergies and asthma, really, really at a young age.
And I went to, like, my residence, and I went to my attendings, and I said, this baby is wheezing. And they told me, babies don’t have asthma.
And I said, she has all the symptoms of asthma. She has asthma.
And I remember with, in her crib, I would just nebulize her, you know, and I was like, what is going on?
And I figured out that she had a lot of food allergies, and I was nursing her, eating the foods that she was allergic to, and back then, in the 80s, you know, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have Whole Foods, and I just…
being a doctor, and I didn’t even know what to do, and I felt so hopeless. And I thought, gosh, you know, I’m a doctor, I have these, like, skills, I have… people I can talk to, and I still feel so… it’s so difficult. And then this… my particular daughter, the oldest one, her name is Priya, and she developed severe, asthma, and I couldn’t figure it out. She was in junior high. Every time she would walk into the lunchroom, she would have a severe asthma attack.
And I’ll be like, what’s going on? What’s going on? I kept her home over the weekend, she was better. I sent her back to school, she was bad again.
And we figured it out that it was other people eating peanuts.
Dr. Deb Muth 04:54
Severe peanut allergy.
Anju 04:56
And I went to the school, and I said, she…
can you, like, put her somewhere else? Can… they said, oh, no, that’s not fair to other kids and their food. And this was in the 90s.
Dr. Deb Muth 05:10
Yeah.
Anju 05:10
And so, I just…
You know, my heart goes out to families who are struggling to find answers for their kids, and my daughter Priya, the one I told you about, she ended up passing away from a peanut allergy.
And so, I’ve just…
Dr. Deb Muth 05:26
Yeah.
Anju 05:27
My heart goes out to parents and my own kids and their illnesses.
And so I just started working with families, with kids, and
It just kind of grew from there.
Dr. Deb Muth 05:40
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think being a mom who went through that yourself, and…
was seen but not heard, and turned away from the traditional medical community, you’re forced to start finding answers on your own. And we always feel like we’re on an island by ourselves in the medical world when we’re doing that.
Anju 06:01
Yeah, I, it was really hard when I found out, you know, about…
Integrative medicine, and just different…
ideas and approaches to diet and supplements, I thought, how come I wasn’t trained in any of this?
And…
Dr. Deb Muth 06:21
So angry when I learned some of the things that I learned in the beginning. I was like, same thing, like, how did they not teach us this? And then I think, you know, it’s my fault, was I asleep, was I not paying attention, whatever. And then you just realize, like, there’s this whole part of the human body.
That they just didn’t teach us.
Anju 06:42
Yeah, so then I… I, probably like you, we had to learn it on our own. There weren’t, like, classes or any way to learn this stuff
And I just reached out. There’s a clinic that,
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Pfeiffer Treatment Center?
Dr. Deb Muth 07:00
No.
Anju 07:01
Do you know Carl Pfeiffer from the attendees.
He has a clinic called the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in New Jersey. It was called the Princeton Brain Bio Center.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:12
And in the 70s, they did orthomolecular medicine for patients with ADD.
Anju 07:18
And schizophrenia.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:20
Mmm…
Anju 07:21
and depression.
And they used to categorize them in 3 categories, and at the time, they called them histopenics, histidelics, and pyrolurics.
Dr. Deb Muth 07:31
Okay.
Anju 07:32
Histapenix were low histamine patients.
Delix were high histamine patients, and pyrolurics were their own kind of category. We added another category of copper-zinc imbalances, and then we would categorize that population into high histamine, low histamine, pyrolurics, and copper-zinc.
Now we talk about under-methylation, over-methylation. Sure. So, under-methylation is the, you know, the high histamine people, they can’t clear the histamine. And the over-methylators are, you know, what we call about low histamine now.
And, and then pyrolurics and copper zinc. So…
I lost my train of thought, but in the 80s, when I was going through this, in the 90s, I reached out to the Pfeiffer Treatment Center.
He’s like, can I calm and just hang out and, like, see what you guys do? Because I need some answers.
And I started working there and, started doing research on copper-zinc imbalances, and I did it in children with autism.
And that’s how people started coming to me, and I kinda got, like. not famous, but I, you know, the word spread about, okay, we could talk about it, and Dr.
Walsh was the, you know, PhD there that did a lot of the research, so we worked together for 8 years.
Dr. Deb Muth 09:05
Isn’t it crazy to think that we knew about histamine issues way back in the 70s? You know, I got the pleasure of being trained by, environmental medicine doctors. Dr. Wayne Konetsky and Glenn Toth taught me about environmental medicine, and what we called histamine issues that we call it today, mast cell, right? But when I was learning in the early 2000s, it was labeled as chemical sensitivity. And so it was just people that would react to everything, and we really didn’t know why, and they didn’t necessarily have this very specific allergic reaction, but we knew they were reacting, and we would try to treat them, to lower the histamine way back then. And it’s taken all these years, 25 years, to get to a point where we understand mast cell activation now, and histamine issues.
And it’s really sad to me that it’s taking this long for us to identify things.
And we’ve all got our journey, and I loved back in those days, too, because as I learned, I would call people up and say, hey, I just got a patient from you, and they told me this great story, and I have other people, can I come see what you were doing? And back then, everybody was very open. They were like, yes, please, come, learn. Now everybody’s like, oh, we can’t teach you, we can’t give you our secrets, but…
Or pay me $20,000 to come learn with me. But back then, I mean, everybody was just… we were all in the same boat. We were all just trying to learn from each other.
Anju 10:36
Oh, yeah, oh yeah, and any bit of knowledge you got, you’re like…
Dr. Deb Muth 10:41
Yes.
Anju 10:41
God, you know, I learned this piece, and…
Dr. Deb Muth 10:43
Hmm?
Anju 10:44
We just kind of built from that. I keep thinking about back then, you know,
the under-methylators, over-methylators, copper, zinc, and then I learned about metals.
And then, as a physician, I was like, oh, okay, well, there’s mercury in vaccines, there’s aluminum in vaccines, and now I’m seeing these high levels.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:04
In my patients, now what happens?
Anju 11:07
And then we started, kind of, trying to get the word out about those things.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:13
Yeah.
Anju 11:13
And in 2000, a lot of the people that I knew put out a paper about, you know, mercury.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:22
And then…
Anju 11:22
And we all got on the Mercury bandwagon.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:25
Yes.
Anju 11:26
And did that for a while, and then we started learning about other things, like mitochondrial issues in chronically ill people, and these chronic infections, like Lyme disease, and so… and then now, you know, understanding mast cell activation, cell danger response.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:44
On endocrine, and adrenals, and hormones, and…
Anju 11:48
Yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:49
biofilms.
Anju 11:50
Biofilms, I started talking about that in 2007.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:54
And so then…
Anju 11:56
It just… it just kind of keeps adding, and keeps adding, and keeps adding, and it’s like…
Sometimes you think, how come I didn’t know about this back then? But I feel like it’s a process.
Dr. Deb Muth 12:06
It definitely is a process, and it’s amazing to see
how many people are researching different things, and they’re all, like, putting a piece of the puzzle together. And I think this is really important for our listeners to understand, is when you see a practitioner and they don’t have all the answers, this is why. It’s very complicated, it’s not black and white. And I’ve had patients over the years say to me, well, why didn’t you say this to me 6 months ago? And the truth of the matter was, I didn’t know
about it 6 months ago. Like, all of this stuff is just… it’s evolving constantly, and when you’re a practitioner like Dr. Usman and myself, you are learning every single day. Our training has never stopped from the day we stepped into integrated medicine, and you just… you keep learning new things, and sharing new things, and talking to new people, and that’s what expands our knowledge base.
Anju 12:57
Yeah, the more I learn, the less I feel like I know.
Dr. Deb Muth 13:01
Yes, me too. Every time I go to a conference, I’m like, how did I not know this? How am I stupid? And I know we shouldn’t say that word and call ourselves that, but sometimes you feel like that. It’s like, how did I not know?
Anju 13:14
Or you’ll see a patient, and you’ll look at them, and you’re like, how come I didn’t realize this about this particular patient?
Dr. Deb Muth 13:20
Yes.
Anju 13:21
Yeah, they present differently, see things differently. I think that’s why it’s good to find a doctor that you trust and that you can work with, because it’s evolving.
Dr. Deb Muth 13:31
Yes. And, you know, we have those patients that they come, and I get those. I call myself, like, a tertiary care center.
Anju 13:38
You know, you get those patients that have been everywhere, and seen every doctor, and then they’re like, you’re my last hope, you’re gonna solve all my problems, and…
I say to them. We’re a team, like, we’re gonna solve these together, but it takes time for me to unravel this puzzle.
Dr. Deb Muth 13:54
Excuse me?
Anju 13:54
And it… and sometimes, you know, there’s a few hits and misses along the way.
Dr. Deb Muth 14:00
Yup, but if.
Anju 14:00
If we keep at it, you know, we also say it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Yes. You know, if we keep at it, we can kind of figure it out together.
Dr. Deb Muth 14:09
Yeah, and a partnership, for sure, because without the feedback of the person you’re working with.
understanding, like, we do this, and this happens to you, it’s very complicated as a practitioner to then be able to figure out, what do we do next? I see more and more clients these days, they come in and they just want to ask me within the first 5 minutes of, what am I changing? And I’m like, I have no clue yet. Like, you have to tell me what’s happened since the last time we did something, and then we have to look at labs, and we have to look at this, and we… it’s a synopsis.
that we have to look at. You know, it’s not that black and white for us to be able to put the pieces together for them.
Anju 14:47
I think my most successful patients are the ones who are able to communicate with me.
Their ups and downs. Yeah. And they also use their own intuition. Help me guide them.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:06
Yeah.
Anju 15:07
So, there are some people that they just hear, you do it, and you tell me.
There are people who try to tell me everything.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:15
Okay.
Anju 15:15
Say, I want you to do this, do this, do this.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:17
Yeah, so I was like, okay.
Anju 15:19
I can do those things, but, you know, like.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:21
Yep.
Anju 15:22
think about blah blah. But, like, this… that collaboration.
and, intuition. I kind of feel like even though
I’ve trained allopathically as a traditional medical doctor. I feel like as I learn, I learn that being open and,
Letting go of fear.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:46
Yeah.
Anju 15:47
And, not trying to jump on every, like, new thing, and being.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:53
consistent.
Anju 15:54
and diligent. really helps.
Dr. Deb Muth 15:58
It helps a ton. We see that, too, you know, the latest…
Instagram influencer that’s talking about the latest topic, and all of a sudden, everybody sees themselves in there, and they must have that, but not realizing putting those connections together. It’s like when MTHFR came out, right? We were all so excited that this was going to be the detox gene.
And then we learned so much more about genes, and now MTHFR is very popular again, and everyone’s talking about it, but they don’t understand how some of those other genetics fit together. And if you don’t understand that, we’ve all done it, we’ve all made people worse instead of better, sometimes when we’ve given too many methyl groups together, or this supplement without this support before we knew that there was another gene that we had to support for that.
And I think it’s really important for people that are listening to us today talk about this, is don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Like, you really want to work with somebody seasoned who understands how all these pieces fit together.
Anju 16:57
Yeah, and I think that’s what individualized medicine is about.
And there is no magic here, a magic bullet.
I think that example of MTHFR is really good. Now, President Trump talked about Leukovorin.
Dr. Deb Muth 17:14
Yes.
Anju 17:15
in, and, you know, he’ll get up and say something like, leukovorin cures autism.
And then the rest of us are like…
Did you just say that?
Dr. Deb Muth 17:26
Yep, he did.
Anju 17:30
It’s folinic acid, it’s calcium folinic acid, it’s been around a long time. We’ve been using it for 20 years.
Dr. Deb Muth 17:37
Yeah.
Anju 17:38
But it does help a subset of people who potentially have what we call cerebral folate deficiency.
And some of those people are misdiagnosed as autism.
Dr. Deb Muth 17:50
Yeah.
Anju 17:51
So, are you treating autism, or are you treating cerebral folate deficiency?
same thing I could say about… I have a lot of cases of kids who recovered from autism.
and severe ADHD using chelation type of.
Dr. Deb Muth 18:06
up.
Anju 18:06
Approaches, or detox approaches.
again, did we treat their ADD and their autism, or did we treat their lead…
Toxicity or lead burden, and their symptoms of those things got better.
Dr. Deb Muth 18:20
Yeah.
Anju 18:20
So, like, to put a big, like, a label like, oh, ADD on something, or autism on something, I think it does a disservice
To the individuals, because it’s such a broad issue.
Dr. Deb Muth 18:35
It is, and I think the diagnosis has gotten to be much more popular these days.
And yes, thank goodness we’re getting better diagnostics, but sometimes we’re getting over-diagnosis, or like you said, it may look like one thing, but it could be something else, but because it looks like autism, they’re going to get labeled with autism.
And in some respects, that’s good, they can get more services that way, but sometimes we’re missing the actual picture of it. Can you talk a little bit about how autism is different than the cerebral folate deficiency?
Anju 19:11
Yeah, so there are some people that make an antibody to their folate receptor.
Dr. Deb Muth 19:18
Hmm.
Anju 19:20
So, to get folic acid into your cells, there’s a receptor on your cells.
Dr. Deb Muth 19:25
And then the folate has to bind to it, and then it lets it enter into the cells.
Anju 19:30
And there’s these receptors that allow folic acid to get into your brain.
Now, you and I know when you put folate in your brain.
On one end of the folate cycle, you help make more neurotransmitters. You’ll make something called BH4, and that’ll help make serotonin and dopamine, and then norepinephrine and epinephrine. So folate is really important for making your neurotransmitters, folate and B12.
On the other end, it’s like, another cycle on the other end of folate is our methylation cycle.
And methylation is so important for our RNA and our DNA, and making choline, phosphatoly choline, and making creatine for speech.
And helping us with all the precursors for detoxification.
So without folate in our brain, we can’t make our neurotransmitters efficiently, we can’t break them down efficiently, and we can’t detox our brain.
Imagine what that will do to your brain.
Dr. Deb Muth 20:36
Yeah,
Anju 20:37
And you will see symptoms like speech delays, cognitive delays, processing issues, poor attention.
All of those things. Excitation, anxiety.
All of those, and so if the folate isn’t getting into the brain efficiently, then we’ll have all these symptoms, and we’ll end up with diagnoses like these.
Dr. Deb Muth 20:59
Yeah, so is there a way that people who are listening to this can request a test to see if they make this antibody to folate, or is it more of a diagnosis of exclusion?
Anju 21:14
That’s a great question. When I first started doing this, like, 20 years ago, there was, like, a university that was doing this.
studies, and it was Dr. Quadros. He was the guy, and we would take samples and send them to his lab, and he would tell us about these blocking and binding.
Dr. Deb Muth 21:30
folate antibodies.
Anju 21:32
And if patients had positive blocking or binding folate antibodies, we would follow his protocol. And he’s done papers on patients with severe autism.
Where he found these folate antibodies, and then did spinal taps on the kids, and they were associated with this cerebral folate deficiency. the cerebral… spinal fluid.
And in his papers, he gave .5 to 2 milligrams per kilogram of calcium folinic acid, which is leukovorin. It’s a vitamin. And over a 6-month to a 12-month period.
The majority of those patients improved drastically.
Some of them regained speech, and some of them lost their autism diagnosis.
Dr. Deb Muth 22:26
Because they never truly had autism.
Anju 22:29
Well, they have autism symptoms, and that’s what autism is, but we call it autisms.
Dr. Deb Muth 22:36
Yeah.
Anju 22:37
And so now, like, we need the research to categorize these people. You know, what percentage of autism is cerebral folate deficiency? Yeah. What percentage of autism is, heavy metal.
Dr. Deb Muth 22:51
Bourbon.
Anju 22:52
And what percentage of autism is Clostridia overgrowth, or…
Dr. Deb Muth 22:57
Hmm.
Anju 22:57
microbiome… Dysfunction, and then there’s overlap.
Dr. Deb Muth 23:01
Right, yeah, Lyme and mold and viruses.
Anju 23:04
and infections, and you can see…
Dr. Deb Muth 23:07
injury from medications and things like that that happen, or birth traumas. Yeah, I mean, it’s not… it’s not as simple as what people think autism is.
Why do you think that we’re seeing so much more autism today than when you and I were kids? We didn’t see this that often. I know environment has a lot to do with it, but do you have a couple of things that you suspect are contributing to the rise of autism these days?
Anju 23:38
Yeah, I mean, that’s a million dollar question.
Dr. Deb Muth 23:40
Right.
Anju 23:41
And, just because I work with children, you know it’s not just autism that’s epidemic, and yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 23:49
You know that. I mean, it’s… it’s probably… if you add all the epidemics that are happening to children.
Anju 23:54
Autism still supersedes it.
Now it’s 1 in 33s, 1 in 35 boys, I mean, it’s…
children. It’s really sad. When I was in med school, it was 1 in 10,000.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:10
That’s crazy.
Anju 24:11
What’s causing it? I mean, obviously it’s multifactorial.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:15
Yeah, 80,000 chemicals in the environment that we never had before.
Anju 24:20
I, I, I, look, I’ve… 219 million.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:26
Oh my gosh.
Anju 24:27
I looked it up today.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:29
119 million different chemicals in the environment. Wow.
Anju 24:33
We don’t know how many of those are super toxic.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:36
Yeah, and we don’t know what they do together.
Anju 24:38
A lot of them were, like, before, like, grandfathered in and all of that.
Yeah, it’s really crazy about the chemicals. So, chemicals… I kind of… feel like…
you know, this burden of all this, it’s not just on our children, it’s on our mothers.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:56
Yes.
Anju 24:56
oh my gosh, the moms of these children that… And they don’t even realize it, you know, we’re just so happy to be pregnant and have a kid.
So I think it really, really starts with that piece. Care, good prenatal care, yeah. Yeah, and not just what we think is prenatal care, taking your prenatal vitamins.
Dr. Deb Muth 25:18
Yes.
Anju 25:19
And going to your gynecologist, but what you and I think is prenatal care, you know, before you get pregnant, let’s detox, let’s clean up our diet, let’s get rid of those chemicals, let’s make sure we’re not in a moldy environment.
You know, let’s do our due diligence, clean air, clean water, clean food, sunshine. When I did my residency at county, I don’t think I saw the sun for 3 years.
Dr. Deb Muth 25:44
How?
Yeah.
Anju 25:46
it’s just that intense, and I was pregnant twice, and my eldest has
the allergies and asthma. Number 2 is type 1 diabetes and mold sensitivities and allergies and asthma. Number 3 has severe chemical sensitivities, mast cell activation,
Hormonal issues.
Dr. Deb Muth 26:09
Yeah.
Anju 26:09
And… number 4 is my… Golden, baby.
Dr. Deb Muth 26:15
And those three, you know, those years that you’re there, and you’re not seeing the sunlight, there’s vitamin D deficiency, and we don’t talk about vitamin D that much during pregnancy.
I still am appalled that we’re giving folic acid these days during pregnancy instead of folate, but…
Anju 26:36
Folenic, or methylfolate?
Dr. Deb Muth 26:38
Yeah, nothing. So, when, when you,
discovered vitamin D in pregnancy, and it’s linked to neurodevelopment outcomes. How did you stumble across that?
Anju 26:50
Well, in… when I started working on Copper Zinc, Dr. Walsh and I would go to the, like, DAN conferences.
Yeah. At the time, and it was interesting, because DAM conferences were a collaboration between parents.
And practitioners, and researchers.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:10
Very unique for.
Anju 27:11
That’s how that new IACC committee is. It’s a collaboration of parents.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:17
Hmm.
Anju 27:18
Practitioners, researchers, And individuals with autism.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:25
Yeah, so for those of you who are listening to us, it’s… we’re talking about the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee that Bobby Kennedy just put together. It’s called IACC, and they are on a mission to try to do the research to figure out what’s causing autism.
Anju 27:43
Yeah, and not just causing it, like, these people have been living it, most of the people on that committee have been living it, and their whole lives, for some of them.
And being able to bring forward
like the question about vitamin D, we started seeing a lot of patients in Minnesota.
Dr. Deb Muth 28:04
Mmm.
Anju 28:05
who were from Somalia.
Dr. Deb Muth 28:08
Okay.
Anju 28:09
Who were… it was, like, 1 in 4 families with kids with autism.
And the theory was that the vitamin D levels that they get in Somalia versus the vitamin D levels that the moms get in Minnesota.
Dr. Deb Muth 28:27
Hmm?
Anju 28:28
Affected the immune system.
Dr. Deb Muth 28:31
Yeah.
Anju 28:32
predispose them. So there’s a few papers on that.
Dr. Deb Muth 28:36
Yeah, that’s a… I mean, it would be a very significant difference, and when you’re thinking about genetically, like, what their culture, who they are as a species.
was used to and adapted to with the sunlight and different things from a different region, geographical region, and then they moved to a new geographical region, that can take decades before the body adapts and readjusts.
to that new environment. We don’t think about those things in…
traditional medicine, and conventional medicine, as most people know it, but we do in functional medicine.
Anju 29:14
Yeah, so again, the clinicians were bringing this up, like, why am I seeing so many families?
Dr. Deb Muth 29:18
Yeah.
Anju 29:18
Then let me go to the… and then in the think tank, the vitamin D researcher said it’s vitamin D.
Dr. Deb Muth 29:24
Yeah.
Anju 29:25
And then they started researching it, and it was almost like a backwards… backwards.
Dr. Deb Muth 29:31
Thank you. You know, they didn’t first…
Anju 29:33
Think it.
Dr. Deb Muth 29:34
Think about it, yeah.
Anju 29:35
Until you start seeing… and that’s why I think that, like.
clinicians like you and me, who are… I consider us on the front lines. We’re the front lines. We are seeing… we’re seeing this epidemic unfold.
Dr. Deb Muth 29:46
Yes.
Anju 29:47
front of our eyes, we’re seeing, like, the gut issues and the severe inflammation. We’re seeing the autoimmunity, and now they have to study it.
Dr. Deb Muth 29:57
Yeah.
Anju 29:57
They have to study this. They really, really, we really need, we really need protocols, we need tools, we need things that you and I have been figuring out anecdotally with our colleagues over the years, and, oh, how do we treat yeast? How do we treat Lyme? How do we treat metal burden?
For this podcast today, I wanted to talk about low-level lead exposure, because for me.
1 in 3 children have a lead level, above 5. 1 and 3.
Dr. Deb Muth 30:31
Yeah, that’s very high.
Anju 30:33
800 million children.
Dr. Deb Muth 30:36
And let’s clarify this, because the first thing people are going to think of is, what are they eating? They’re not eating lead paint to get this. That is not what’s happening here. They are getting lead from someplace else, and their bodies are not able to detox this.
Anju 30:53
And the reason I’m bringing this up is because when I was in residency at County in the 90s, I ran a… I worked at a lead clinic.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:01
And back then.
Anju 31:03
When we looked… we just diagnosed lead toxicity, the level was 60.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:10
Their level had to be 60 to diagnose them.
Anju 31:13
Correct.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:13
Oh my gosh.
Anju 31:14
And that’s when we would treat.
And back then, there was a study, it’s called the TLC study, where they used DMSA, which is a drug to lower lead.
And our goal was to get it from 60 to 20.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:33
And was the normal range the same back then as it is today?
Anju 31:37
The normal range has gone from 60 to 40 to 20 to 10 to 5 to 3.5.
But you and I know I’m the normal range.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:47
Yes.
Anju 31:47
Zero.
Dr. Deb Muth 31:48
Zero.
Anju 31:50
So… so again, in my… in the lead clinic, we were given DMSA, and we got the lead from 60 to 20, and the number one thing was to get rid of the lead in the environment.
Dr. Deb Muth 32:02
Yeah.
Anju 32:03
But we haven’t evolved since then.
Because in that study, It did not improve cognitive abilities. So if you think about what lead does, it causes attention issues, slow processing, it affects hearing, it can cause hyperactivity, it can cause impulsivity, it can cause aggression, it can cause constipation, it can cause hypotonia.
So if you think about all these kids with ADD and autism, how many of them have low-level lead exposure from the lead pipes? In Chicago, it’s a big, a big problem.
Dr. Deb Muth 32:37
Yeah, Milwaukee.
Anju 32:38
Everybody thinks Flint, Michigan, but Flint, Michigan is not the only place.
Dr. Deb Muth 32:42
Right. Our infrastructure is so terrible, it has not been updated, and even though you might look in your house and you might see a white PVC or plastic pipe, what’s coming under the ground to the house in the cities is usually still lead.
Anju 32:58
Right. Right.
Dr. Deb Muth 33:00
Yeah.
Anju 33:01
So, I guess the point is, is that…
the… the idea of, like, studying this. So, again, they study this, and they say, well, we’re not going to treat low-level lead exposure because it doesn’t improve their cognition.
But did they really treat it?
Dr. Deb Muth 33:18
Right. We got it from 60… we got it from 60 to 20. Right. But when I know, where is the lead hiding?
Anju 33:24
So high. Look at the bones, it’s gonna be coming out. It’s gonna be coming out, especially during puberty. What happens to some of our kids during puberty? They just go a little wonky. Comes out again during menopause.
Dr. Deb Muth 33:38
Yes.
Anju 33:39
I don’t know, male menopause, too. Like, we’re all losing bone mass then, and our lead is coming out, our blood pressure goes up. So, again, these are some of the areas that I think, like, really need some… hard… looks.
Dr. Deb Muth 33:53
Right, yeah. So, what are you hopeful about this committee? Like, are you hopeful that this committee is going to be able to research some of these big things, and we’re really going to be able to find answers around some of the functional things and the biochemical things that we see, you and I know happen in the body, that might give some standardization and education to practitioners in the future.
Anju 34:23
Well, I think this committee understands the scope of the issues.
And they’re coming from different perspectives, like I mentioned, research.
Dr. Deb Muth 34:33
Yeah.
Anju 34:35
really highly qualified MDs. MDs like you and me, who have been on the front lines. moms.
Dr. Deb Muth 34:43
Yeah.
Anju 34:44
dads, patience, And so, the strategy would be to get, again, their input, and then…
get the places… people in places to do their research. And even make some guidelines and some, like, you know, thoughts about what we want to put out there.
Dr. Deb Muth 35:05
Yeah.
Anju 35:05
You know, how do we want to strategize for…
Dr. Deb Muth 35:08
Prevention.
Anju 35:10
Like, the pre-pregnancy thing.
Dr. Deb Muth 35:12
Yeah, I’m really hopeful that this doesn’t become a… political football,
And it doesn’t get taken away if the administration changes or whatever, because people need to understand that this kind of research
this is going to take decades for people to do. Granted, we have AI, and AI can help a little bit and get some things quicker.
But trying to figure out all of these nuances to why the body does what it does is not gonna be, like, next week we’re gonna find out that this was the single cause, and I know a lot of people, they’re afraid of the vaccines, and that’s gonna be the sole answer.
And that has a piece of it, but it is just a small piece of it for some people larger, but at the end of the day, that’s not what this is about. This isn’t about just labeling one thing that is the cause of autism, because it is not one thing. It is so multifactorial.
Anju 36:09
And I think that whole cause, I know,
A lot of money has gone into.
Dr. Deb Muth 36:16
Yeah.
Anju 36:16
looking at that. They’re looking for the gene, right? The gene that causes it, and…
Dr. Deb Muth 36:23
answer.
Anju 36:24
They have not… they’ve spent millions of dollars looking for this.
And it’s not gonna pan out. It’s not.
Dr. Deb Muth 36:33
I’m not.
Anju 36:34
pan out. It’s more complex, like we’re talking about.
Dr. Deb Muth 36:38
Yeah.
Anju 36:38
And, I do think that sometimes, you know.
Even though, like, politically, it seems like it’s a political topic, but it has zero to do with politics.
Dr. Deb Muth 36:52
Yeah, exactly. This is our children. This is the future of our country, the world. I mean, America’s not the only place that has kids with autism. I mean, this is the future of humanity. If we don’t figure out what’s injuring our children, there will not be a humanity that you and I have seen. It will be different. And, and this is important, we owe it to the future of our generations, we owe it to our children to figure this out and clean up our environment, and make it safe for everybody.
Anju 37:24
Yeah. Clean up our air, clean up our water, clean up our food…
Dr. Deb Muth 37:29
Yeah.
Anju 37:30
You know, our lifestyle a little bit, but…
Dr. Deb Muth 37:32
hoodie?
Anju 37:33
It’s… it’s… it’s everywhere. I travel all over.
Dr. Deb Muth 37:36
Bye.
Anju 37:37
Consult with doctors in different countries, in Italy, in India, Bulgaria, Romania…
Dr. Deb Muth 37:46
Yeah. And.
Anju 37:48
we’re going to Australia for med maps to treat doctors in, in April. And it’s a problem everywhere.
Dr. Deb Muth 38:00
Yeah.
Anju 38:01
really big problem, and it affects everybody. Even if you don’t have a child with autism or a grandchild with autism, it’s still affecting families, because
I kind of think of ADD as being on the spectrum, in the sense that
I think the same kind of positive issues that lead to the autism are causing the ADD, just to… you know, your genetics are playing a little bit of a different role, whatever… whatever protection you have is a bit more there, but we’re seeing kind of, like, similar metabolic… issues in our ADD population.
Dr. Deb Muth 38:43
Yeah. Yeah, there’s so many different levels of this, and it does affect everyone. Like, I think everybody knows… a family or someone in their classroom or their school or their community that’s affected by, definitely, ADHD, Asperger’s, autism, all of those things, whether you’re high functioning or not functioning or whatever.
everything is affected. The school system is affected, your social circles are affected, your families are affected.
the healthcare is affected. I mean, everything is affected. We owe it to our families and our communities to help people try to figure this out.
Anju 39:22
Yeah, and I think even if it’s not ADD, or ADHD, or autism we’re talking about, or even OCD, anxiety, depression, I mean, you know…
Dr. Deb Muth 39:33
Candace?
Anju 39:34
Any kind of chronic illness that people are dealing with has underpinnings of these kinds of, you know, issues.
Dr. Deb Muth 39:43
Yeah.
Anju 39:44
Any autoimmune issue? That’s great.
Dr. Deb Muth 39:48
inflammatory syndrome that we’re seeing these days, I mean, the pants-pandas piece, the biofilms, the strep, I mean, our environment is just so laden with infections and biofilms, and And, you know, when you and I first were learning about this, we never thought anything could cross the blood-brain barrier, right? It was pristine, there’s nothing getting in there unless you could drive it in there, and now we know that’s different, and now we’re seeing bugs in the brains of people who have had Alzheimer’s disease and dementia because they’ve donated their brains for research, and we can see what’s crossing the blood-brain barrier, and it’s really scary.
Anju 40:24
Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of things we don’t know. Remember when we just found out that they… the brain had a lymphatic system?
Dr. Deb Muth 40:33
And that wasn’t About, what, 5, 6 years ago? 7 years ago, maybe? Yeah, not that long ago.
Anju 40:38
You’d be like, why wouldn’t the brain have a lymphatic system?
Dr. Deb Muth 40:41
Yeah! Yep.
Anju 40:44
Yeah, so things get in and out.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:46
They, they definitely.
Anju 40:47
You know, they get in easier than they get out, I think.
Dr. Deb Muth 40:50
I agree, I think they do, for sure, for sure. You know, when you’re talking to a family who’s undergoing issues like this, what’s the role, do you feel, in personalized nutrition to help them make things better?
Anju 41:10
I kind of go through, like, a little bit of a start here, start there, and then do this. I always start, number one, I say, okay, you gotta clean up your environment, because… We gotta do that.
Dr. Deb Muth 41:24
But that’s a…
Anju 41:24
process. And then number 2 for me is cleaning up the diet. And then, when you say personalized nutrition. To me, figuring out what is a good diet for the individual.
Dr. Deb Muth 41:38
Makes it a little bit difficult. Yeah.
Anju 41:41
I mean, there is, like, healthy eating concepts, where, you know, eat upside-down food pyramid kind of concept, I guess, is the new one, but whole foods, whole grains, organic as much as possible, especially for animal products, good fats, avoiding, you know, hydrogenated oils, and those seed oils, and… Just some basics, and then individualizing for my patients, a lot of people with any kind of autoimmune condition, and we kind of put autism in that neuroimmune, autoimmune, inflammatory That, gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free kind of go there, like, as a given. If there’s a lot of gut issues, a lot of our folks have oxalate issues. And then we have to sometimes do low or limited oxalate diets. Many of my patients can’t convert glutamate to GABA efficiently.
Dr. Deb Muth 42:44
Yeah. So, high glutamates associated with OCD, and kind of looping or repetitive behaviors.
Anju 42:51
So, low-glutamate diets. And then some of my patients have SIBO, and then we do the low FODMAPs diet, and then some of my patients have messel, and we’ll do the fail-safe kind of concept with the fail-safe diet, so nutrition can get a little bit complex for certain people, but there are some basics, and then there are some, like, more of… Individual, kind of, diet approaches. And then there’s supplementation. There’s some things that I call foundational. For me, certain things most people need that have a chronic illness.
Dr. Deb Muth 43:26
Yeah.
Anju 43:26
Vitamin D3 is one of those. Omega-3s are another one for most. And then, because I did a lot of research on copper, zinc, I think 3 mineral… 4 minerals. I feel like people underdo minerals. They’re so important. Every single enzyme has a mineral cofactor, so… zinc is really important for my population with autism and ADD. 99% of them had high copper or low zinc in.
Dr. Deb Muth 43:58
Wow.
Anju 43:59
Over 400 patients that we tested.
Dr. Deb Muth 44:01
Wow.
Anju 44:03
And, magnesium.
So, zinc, magnesium, and then the other two minerals I really like are selenium for glutathione. and molybdenum for sulfation, and glycolysis. So… So those are kind of my foundational pieces, and then I like to work on the gut next. So, from a nutritional perspective, prebiotics are my new favorite.
Dr. Deb Muth 44:29
Yeah, we go in and out with prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics.
Anju 44:34
Yeah, exactly, symbiotics.
Dr. Deb Muth 44:36
Yes, exactly, exactly.
Anju 44:38
demos, and…
Dr. Deb Muth 44:40
Yeah.
Anju 44:40
So yeah, biofilm busting, and all of that, so… And then I go into my other nitty-gritty stuff, like you probably do.
Dr. Deb Muth 44:47
individualized, right? So, you created, True Healing Nature, a supplement line, a supplement company, correct?
Anju 44:56
Yeah, True Hing Naturals.
Dr. Deb Muth 44:58
Truly Naturals, okay.
Anju 44:59
True, he is hard.
Dr. Deb Muth 45:01
Oats!
Anju 45:01
True!
Dr. Deb Muth 45:01
Healing natural. Got it, sorry about that. Tell us a little bit about what made you decide to create a supplement company. Was it because you couldn’t find formulations that you wanted? Couldn’t find clean products? That’s a big problem for people, for sure.
Anju 45:19
Yeah, a little bit of both. I told you that my kids were really sensitive, they had a lot.
Dr. Deb Muth 45:23
I know.
Anju 45:24
And when I would even try to give them things like ibuprofen.
Dr. Deb Muth 45:28
or Benadryl.
Anju 45:30
For allergies, they couldn’t tolerate the products that were over-the-counter.
Dr. Deb Muth 45:35
Yeah.
Anju 45:35
So, in 2007, I opened a compounding pharmacy so I could make things clean for them.
Dr. Deb Muth 45:42
Yeah.
Anju 45:43
And I thought it was so valuable. And so then I started seeing, like, certain issues with my patient population, for instance, say, mitochondrial issues. So, I would compound a mito cocktail. in my pharmacy. And then I had True Healing Naturals manufacture it, so I didn’t have to have patients get it compounded.
Dr. Deb Muth 46:08
Got it.
Anju 46:09
So that particular product’s called Mito Rescue. Okay. But then, I started… I do a lot of oats testing. Organic acid urine tests.
Dr. Deb Muth 46:19
Yeah.
Anju 46:20
But there’s, like, a marker on there for, oxalates, and I saw a lot of patients with oxalates, and oxalates inhibit some… an enzyme called, pyruvate decarboxylase. And that basically means you can’t take your carbs and turn them into energy.
Dr. Deb Muth 46:38
Okay.
Anju 46:39
So, if I saw this pattern with high oxalates and high pyruvic acid, I knew that that enzyme wasn’t working very well, and that enzyme is B1, molybdenum, and biotin dependent. So, I started compounding doses of that. And then I turned that into a product called Motor Connect, because high doses of biotin help with connectivity in the cerebellum.
Dr. Deb Muth 47:08
Got it. So, I did come… kind of start with the compounding pharmacy, try it, use it, and then turn it into.
Anju 47:17
products, and I have one for copper-zinc imbalances called True Minerals.
Dr. Deb Muth 47:21
Yeah, to fix the problems that were not commercially available. Could you talk a little bit for people who don’t understand what a compounding pharmacy is?
Anju 47:32
So, when you guys go to a pharmacy, you, you know, you send a prescription, and it’s already, it’s manufactured, and you get it. Well, a compounding pharmacy actually makes that for you. So they get the raw ingredients, and then they make that prescription. So it’s still prescription-based. But, for instance, say, I want Nystatin. And I go to Walgreens or CVS, and the nystatin there is a liquid, and it has yellow dyes and sugar.
Dr. Deb Muth 48:02
Yep. Or it’s a title, and it’s red.
Anju 48:04
or it’s bread, and a tablet, and I, like, oh, I want to treat the yeast, but I don’t want to use this. So I sent my nystatin prescription to a compounding pharmacy, and it’s Nystatin. That’s what you got. Yep.
Dr. Deb Muth 48:17
disappear.
Anju 48:18
So, pure compounding pharmacy, it’s pure, it’s pure stuff. Especially for our mast cell people. They’re so sensitive, and, you know, my kids are all mast cell, and so I just find that excipients, some people will say, oh, this doesn’t work, and I said, it’s probably the excipient that’s stimulating your mast cell activation. So, yeah. So, compounding pharmacies, You know, with all the big, kind of. conglomerates and big companies, they’ve become… they used to be, like, mom-and-pop kind of places. And my pharmacy is like that. It’s just… it’s… it’s a few of us, and we… we do it, and it’s nothing big or fancy, but we get the job done. So, we compound things like methylcobalamin injections, hydroxycobalamin, low-dose naltrexone. Different things for chelation. So, it’s nice. I love having it.
Dr. Deb Muth 49:11
Yeah, the compounding pharmacies really have made a huge difference for people who are sensitive. You know, so many ingredients are contaminated with corn and gluten and soy and dairy and all the big things that we want to stay away from, especially if we’re trying to treat the immune system. And even if the manufacturer says that’s not in our product. it’s contaminated, usually, because they’re usually preparing it in a facility that has those things floating around. Right. And for people who are really sensitive, that’s going to create some issues.
Anju 49:45
Yeah, people who are sensitive are sensitive to parts per trillion.
Dr. Deb Muth 49:48
Yeah.
Anju 49:49
I found that with my daughter with chemical sensitivity. You don’t have to see it, or you don’t have to smell it, but they could react to it.
Dr. Deb Muth 49:55
Yeah. And, a lot of these, like.
Anju 49:58
These different, substances, for instance, like enzymes, even the natural enzymes.
Dr. Deb Muth 50:03
They’re cultured in Aspergillus.
Anju 50:07
And so they’re extracted from mold.
Dr. Deb Muth 50:10
Yeah.
Anju 50:11
And so the really mold-sensitive people will maybe take a digestive enzyme, and they’ll have a reaction, and they’ll not understand why. Yeah. But it’s not because of the enzyme, it’s because of where it’s coming from.
Dr. Deb Muth 50:22
Yeah, where it’s cultured from. And if you have mold toxicity and mold sensitivity, and we’re looking at your mold test, wondering why are you getting a hit while we’re trying to clear it out, sometimes we forget that those products, and a variety of products that we used are cultured from molds. Yeah.
Anju 50:40
Yeah, yeah. It’s hard for the laypeople to understand all.
Dr. Deb Muth 50:45
You know.
Anju 50:45
of these pieces, but I think that… It used to be, like, the insurance companies would cover prescriptions from compounding pharmacies, but over the years, the lobbying and all of that has gotten so intense where, you know, a lot of that ends up out of pocket, but it’s really… it doesn’t really get that much more expensive than a copay would be.
Dr. Deb Muth 51:05
Right, right.
Anju 51:06
People just don’t know about it, yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 51:08
Yeah, absolutely. So, you’ve been doing this now for more than 17 years, and you’ve made some remarkable progress with your patients. Can you share some success stories that still inspire you to do what you do every day?
Anju 51:27
I don’t know about you, but, like, when you first start, I think, God puts you… God puts all those really gray cases in front of you, because you’re like, whoa!
Dr. Deb Muth 51:37
Yes, and maybe…
Anju 51:38
I gave this patient methylcobalamin, and they started talking. Yeah. So methyl B12 back in the day was huge. you know, Dr. Nebrander’s protocol, and we would use that, and we would get speech, and… I mean, I’ve… it’s just… there’s hundreds of cases. There’s hundreds of cases, and same with Leukovorin now. Not for everybody, but when it really works, it’s really, really decent.
Dr. Deb Muth 52:07
Yeah, and worth a try, you know, if… if we suspect that’s what’s going on, these things are worth a try, because sometimes you just never know what’s going to be the key that unlocks the answer for them.
Anju 52:19
Yeah, but I think, you know, like, I can say… chelation, or… you know, I can, like, throw out a bunch of stuff.
Dr. Deb Muth 52:26
Okay.
Anju 52:27
In terms of, like, I’ve… I… I have those families, and I have those kids who are just… they’re just amazing, and they’re in college, and having jobs, and having kids, and…
Dr. Deb Muth 52:38
Yeah.
Anju 52:38
you know, all of that, but I think, you know, the ones that really strike me are the ones that I have to work really hard to get.
Dr. Deb Muth 52:44
And then we’.
Anju 52:45
they go, it’s not like, oh, I just did the diet, I’m cured, or I did this, and I’m better, or… Right. And I have those cases where the parents come to me and they say, I never thought my kid would Be going to college. And I never thought we would be here. So, those are the ones that really, like, when I get the little notes, or the, like, the college or the high school graduation pictures, and they… and some of them, you know, you lose touch with because they don’t need me anymore.
Dr. Deb Muth 53:19
Yeah.
Anju 53:20
And then you hear about it later. And then, I think the ones that don’t get better are the ones that, like, sit with me the most They just sit with me, and we’ve had this population of children with severe apraxia. So, apraxia is a motor planning issue, but if you saw these patients, you would think that they were… mentally deficient.
Dr. Deb Muth 53:44
Hmm.
Anju 53:45
Because they can’t talk.
Dr. Deb Muth 53:46
Yeah.
Anju 53:47
They’re the classic person that you would see that looks autistic. You know, running around, excited, verbal stimming, no speech.
Dr. Deb Muth 53:57
Hmm.
Anju 53:58
And that group of patients are incredibly Brilliant. And we are just finding out about how smart they are. There’s a book called Underestimated by J.B. Hanley and his son Jamie. JV has all the resources in the world. He used to put those ads in the New York Times about autism and vaccines. He could take his kid anywhere and do any treatment, and still, we… Blocked. Locked. Couldn’t get through. Couldn’t get through. And they started, spelling. To communicate, and this speller’s method, and it just opened a door. And it opened a door for so many of my patients who are metabolically challenged, so we do help them metabolically. Getting that ability to communicate. Some of them never got high school diplomas, and they went back to get their high school diplomas so they could go to college.
Dr. Deb Muth 54:56
Oh, wow, that’s amazing stories.
Anju 54:59
Yeah, and Elizabeth Bonker is one of those spellers, and she… she was a valedictorian in her high school, college. And she did a valedictorian speech that went. Viral, and she’s one of the people on that committee.
Dr. Deb Muth 55:13
That’s awesome.
Anju 55:14
He’s non-speaking. She… she can’t not speak.
Dr. Deb Muth 55:20
Wow.
Anju 55:21
But they asked her to be on this committee.
Dr. Deb Muth 55:24
That’s fantastic.
Anju 55:26
Huge.
Dr. Deb Muth 55:27
That’s huge. It is huge. There’s a way she can communicate, she just can’t verbalize the way you and I verbalize.
Anju 55:34
She’s brilliant. I mean, people on that committee, the, the individuals with autism on that committee, I know they’re brilliant people. Wow. But if you… if… If people saw them, they wouldn’t see that.
Dr. Deb Muth 55:47
Right.
Anju 55:47
So, I guess, for me, it’s like seeing the brilliance, seeing the competence in individuals, and as a practitioner, just trying to optimize it. But I know, like, the neurodiversity people say, okay, you know. We’re fine, and it’s like, yes, you are fine, you’re fine, and it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay. But if you’re struggling metabolically, and we can help you feel better. What’s… what’s the harm in that?
Dr. Deb Muth 56:13
Right, let’s do that. Yeah. So you’re also part of something called MAPS, and you’re educating doctors worldwide. Tell us a little bit about MAPS, and how do you see the integrative pediatrics evolving in the next decade as a result of what we’re learning today?
Anju 56:36
I think we’re at a crossroads, and Maps is kind of in the middle of that crossroads. It used to be called Dan.
Dr. Deb Muth 56:47
Okay.
Anju 56:47
Autism Now.
Dr. Deb Muth 56:48
Yeah.
Anju 56:49
And then they kind of dissolved Dan and turned it into MedMaps. And MedMaps is Medical Academy for Pediatrics and Special Needs. So it’s not just special needs, it’s pediatrics. as well.So it’s kind of like the functional medicine for peds. And our goal is to train an army of clinicians to be the frontline. And how medicine should be, and how people should be trained. We should train them to do these types of things from the beginning. Because now it’s backwards.
Dr. Deb Muth 57:28
Right.
Anju 57:30
they come see us when nobody else can help them. But, so, we have some good leadership, and then… We are just trying to get people trained so that they understand that this is the future.
Dr. Deb Muth 57:50
If there’s a practitioner that’s listening to this, how do they get involved in MAPS?
Anju 57:55
They could come to a conference.
Dr. Deb Muth 57:57
Okay.
Anju 57:58
And the website is medmaps.org. And there’s 2 conferences a year. And we have scholarships, and we want people to come, so contact You know, the executive director, and… We just want people to come, share… their experiences, learn about functional medicine, it’s evidence-based, we try to… it’s really scientific, you know, we talk a lot of science.
Dr. Deb Muth 58:25
Oh yeah, a lot of science.
Anju 58:26
We talk a lot of science, and and so hopefully we can move all of this forward. Baster.
Dr. Deb Muth 58:35
I think the greatest thing, when you get into the functional medicine integrative space like this, and MAPS, and some of the other environmental academies and things like that. A lot of people might think it’s not science-based, and I’m always amazed at how much science we have, and it’s right, it’s all the things that you and I learned in biochem class, and chem class, and organic chem, and we were like, oh, let’s just learn this to be done with it. And then you get back, and you start doing integrated medicine, and you realize, like, all of that biochemistry stuff is what we needed to truly understand to fix people these These days, and you go back and you have to learn that in an intense version of it.
Anju 59:18
I felt like I finally understood the Krebs cycle, when I learned how it made metabolic stents, instead of just memorizing these cycles for… For the…
Dr. Deb Muth 59:30
Right? Like, they, like.
Anju 59:32
They just make sense to me.
Dr. Deb Muth 59:34
Yeah.
Anju 59:35
And I think that’s so important to understand, that all of this has science behind it, and it’s there, and the research is there.
Dr. Deb Muth 59:46
It’s just us having to learn how to utilize it, and recognize that not every person is going to be straightforward, and what we do for one might not work for another. There’s… It’s not as easy as prescribing a prescription and letting the person walk out the door in 10 minutes. That’s not what this is about at all.
Anju 01:00:05
No, and at MedMaps as well, they have a call for abstracts, and so we’re always looking for research, experience, so if any of the clinicians out there have, you know, things they want to share. then send an abstract to Maps. What a great blonde. I think, one of my doctor friends is doing an abstract on research that was done on sensory qigong massage.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:00:34
Oh.
Anju 01:00:34
And it helped with speech, and the theory was that, we were all thinking of the sensory system in the brain, the sensory system. In the periphery being affected neurologically, and how to turn that back on. So, it was… it’s…
Dr. Deb Muth 01:00:51
That’s neat.
Anju 01:00:51
Again, with the research, and with the science behind it, and with, like, clinical trials, and all of that.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:00:58
That’s awesome, I love that.
For parents that are just starting in this journey, what would you recommend be their first one or two steps?
Anju 01:01:10
Educate, educate, educate? How do you get educated? I do think that, TakaNow.org is a good place for, like, a biomedical approach, or this functional approach for autism. It’s the Autism Community in Action. MedMaps is doing a parent conference in March.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:01:31
Oh, awesome. They usually do that around, Memorial Day, right?
Anju 01:01:36
They’ll do it around Labor Day in September.
Dr. Deb Muth01:01:40
Labor Day in September, okay.
Anju 01:01:42
Yeah, and then mid-March.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:01:44
Okay.
Anju 01:01:45
Yeah. And they hadn’t done a parent conference before, but we had parents that wanted to come to the conferences, and it was just for clinicians before.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:01:54
Got it. Is it Autism One that does theirs around Memorial Day?
Anju 01:01:59
Oh yeah, they don’t exist anymore.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:02:01
Don’t, really.
Anju 01:02:03
conferences. There was.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:02:06
NAA, the National Autism Association.
Anju 01:02:09
They don’t do a lot of parent conferences in functional medicine either, so there’s a few left. Documenting Hope. That’s another really nice one. Oh, that’s great.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:02:21
So, what last words do you want to leave with our listeners?
Anju 01:02:29
You know, that’s… people always ask that at the end of these… I, I do feel that, Listen to your heart, you know, follow your intuition.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:02:40
I’ll let that guide you.
Anju 01:02:42
There’s a lot of information, sometimes it gets to be too much information. It’s hard to process everything, try not to make impulsive decisions about things. And… If you have a child with special needs, or if you have a grandchild with, issues. Presume competence. There’s a lot there.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:03:04
Yeah.
Anju 01:03:05
Especially some of these kids with behavior issues. I don’t know how many patients of mine are… Put on psychotropic meds. Metabolic issues, and, you know… It’s like, a lot of them have pain, like headache, abdominal pain, and inflammation, and they’re treating them with psych meds.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:03:25
Yeah. That’s sad, isn’t it?
Anju 01:03:28
I think, you know, try to look for the underlying cause. Not just band-aid things.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:03:34
Where can listeners, learn more about your work and what you do?
Anju 01:03:40
Oh, that’s tough. I don’t have a book. One of these days.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:03:48
Yes!
Anju 01:03:49
Yes, one of these days. I think, you know, med maps, we have a… if they’re clinicians.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:03:55
Hmm?
Anju 01:03:56
I have lectured a lot. For, for, communities like Taka, so there’s just a lot of… lectures that I’ve given online.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:04:09
Awesome. Well, thank you for taking your time with us today. It’s been a great conversation with you.
Anju 01:04:15
Thank you so much for inviting me, Debra. I’m honored to be here, and thank you for doing the work that you do to put Put this out there for people, because it’s really important information.
Dr. Deb Muth 01:04:27
Thank you. Thank you for joining me today on Let’s Talk Wellness Now. Today’s discussion with Dr. Usman reminds us that there’s always more we can do. We can look deeper into biology, environment, and lifestyle. to heal the next generation. If this episode inspired you, please share it with a parent or a practitioner who believes every child deserves a chance to thrive. And to learn more about Dr. Usman, you can visit TrueHealthMedical.com or TrueHealingnaturals.com. And if you’re ready to explore your own root cause healing, visit us at Serenityhealthcarecenter.com. You can also follow me on Instagram, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of Let’s Talk Wellness now. Until next time. I’m Dr. Deb, reminding you to nurture your body, mind, and spirit. Be well, and I’ll see you soon.