This episode breaks down eosinophilic esophagitis (EOE), an allergic inflammatory condition of the esophagus where eosinophils (immune cells tied to allergic response) cause swelling that can lead to difficulty swallowing, food getting stuck, reflux-like symptoms, and chest discomfort. The discussion blends medical explanation, personal experience with EOE, and a clinical case showing symptom improvement through identifying triggers and supporting gut and immune health. Conventional diagnosis typically involves endoscopy and biopsy, while treatment often includes acid suppression, steroids, and broad food elimination. The episode emphasizes the role of food triggers, gut dysfunction, and immune overactivity as key drivers.
What’s going on, everybody? Welcome to episode 110 of the Freedom to Flourish podcast. Today we are going to be talking about eosinophilic esophagitis. So I want everybody who’s listening to just sit there and repeat after me, eosinophilic esophagitis.
And now say it 10 times fast. Yep, Yep. Try to say that. What does that even mean, Doctor Joel?
Eosinophilic esophagitis, well it’s basically we’ll start with esophagitis. So esophagus is of course there in your throat, that’s what carries food from your mouth to your stomach. It always means inflammation. So inflammation of the esophagus in the eosinophilic part essentially means there’s a condition related to your eosinophils, which are basically the allergy related white blood cells.
Great. Yeah. So, yeah, that doesn’t sound as complex as the name would imply, some sort of allergy causing esophagus inflammation, Long story short. So, yeah.
Dr. Tim’s Lifelong Battle with Eosinophilic Esophagitis Well, All in all, I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen this a whole lot more in practice and that’s kind of what inspired the episode today and hopefully it’s going to be a good one.
Yeah, I think it will be. So let’s kind of do this. Doctor Tim, this is something that you’ve mentioned before, obviously in our conversations, but also on the podcast. This is something that you’ve been diagnosed with years ago. This was part of your story and how you got into all things holistic health and kind of led you to, to going to chiropractic school and, and all these good things.
And so doctor Tim, share with us your experience as far as like, hey, what, what were you experiencing at 1st? And then of course you’re like, Hey, this is not normal. Let’s go see a doctor and then just kind of share a little bit of that. But then also maybe take a step back and share with us a big picture, you know, that was your experience.
So different people can kind of relate with things. But then also the big picture, like what’s what’s actually going on? We’ll get into this together with what’s actually going on holistically and of course we’ll talk about, you know, the drivers and the triggers that caused this, but then also what you can do for it.
I have not, unfortunately, like yourself, I haven’t seen a ton of cases with EOE. And you know, as we talked about it, I might pick up on more and start looking for it more and start seeing it more. But I know I had one patient that came in that had been, she’d been diagnosed with a young girl and so we had great results.
So I can actually walk through some of those cases that might be encouraging for listeners. But Doctor Tim, let’s start with this. What, what was your experience like? What, what did you feel? What was going on that you’re like, hey, I need to go see a doctor. And then, and then what doctor did you see?
And we’re just kind of going step by step there.
Yeah, well, first thing I’m I’m just surprised that we haven’t done this as an episode. I think I’ve mentioned that I have this condition quite a few times, but I don’t know why we haven’t talked about it before in great detail. But with my experience, ever since I was a little kid, I mean 5-6 years old, my parents used to think that I just didn’t want to eat what they made for dinner.
So they used to force us to drink milk at dinner. They would give us those, you know, those like very dense powdery chalk, like Flintstone multivitamin things, OK, that, you know, were more popular back in the day, the chewables that, you know, supposedly tasted good.
Yeah, Yeah. Those were awful, by the way. And so I remember at dinner, it was Flintstone. It wasn’t actually Flintstones. They bought the off brand to save money. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe that’s why they were so gross. But they would give us our multivitamin and they would make us drink milk because, you know, milk does the body good, you know, build strong bones, got the whole milk thing, you know, and so I hated the taste of both.
And so what I would do is I would eat, you know, chew up my multivitamin, get it down and then I would slam my milk just to be done with it. Then I would eat my dinner. Well, the way that eosinophilic esophagitis works is you get a, you kind of get a, a flooding of these white blood cells to the, the skin or the epithelium that lines the esophagus.
And so you’ll get some localized swelling. Well, it’s, you know, say it, say it swells like, you know, 100%. Well over the next couple days it’ll produce gradually by like say 10% a day. And so if every day you’re having dairy and it swells 100% and then the next day it’s at 90% and then it swells 100% from there you’re at 190% and then it goes down to 180 and then it goes up to 280.
You know, it’s just this constant cycle of the esophagus continuously swelling and not having enough time to let go. And so that’s where the problem lies. It’s a gradual onset thing, but once the symptoms become really bad, that’s where things will almost completely close off.
And so that’s where some people, they have it really localized in the bottom third of the esophagus. Some people it gets up to the middle 3rd and in bad cases it gets all the way up to the top where people actually get like a really raspy look at their RFK voice going if they have dairy or whatever allergen is driving it.
And so what I would have is, you know, if I started my meal with the milk, I would get swelling. And so if we had, say, steak or chicken or something that was more of like a fibrous meal or meat, things would actually kind of get stuck a little bit.
And I was a little kid who couldn’t articulate what the heck was going on. And so I’d run to the bathroom and be freaking out like, I’m going to throw up or whatever’s going on. And I’d like, hold my throat and kind of stomp my feet and freak out. And my parents were just like, he just doesn’t want to eat his food. And oh man, I love giving my mom a hard time about that.
I’m like, you guys almost killed me when I was a kid. And she’s like, stop, I feel bad. And I’m like, I’m just messing with you. We’ve got a great relationship. So it’s not that serious. But no, it was a very, I mean, I have vivid, vivid memories of that.
I mean, you know how I mean, once you get older, people are like, you know, I don’t remember, you know, a lot, an insane amount of good stuff as a kid, like, you know, you do. But the biggest things that strike fear and adrenaline and are like near death, you know, in quotes, near death experiences, that’s what you know, is seared into your brain more.
It’s a, you know, psychologically proven thing. And I have very vivid memories of things like that happening in great detail because it’s scary. I mean, what if something gets stuck and you know, you choke on it or whatever? So anyway, that was the earliest circumstance that I can remember when I was very little.
I remember stomping my feet and just freaking out like Oh my God. But then from there, you know, Fast forward, it was always kind of a little bit of a thing. And I remember being in middle school after school, I’d go to about one of my buddies houses because we have baseball practice.
So I’d go home with him on the bus or, you know, go to his house and then we, you know, his dad would take us to baseball and then my parents pick me up from there.
And I remember him always commenting that I was just burping all the time. Like I could burp like you wouldn’t believe. And that was, I was 1213 years old, just burping, burping, burping. And that’s a huge sign you’ve got a hiatal hernia issue or just poor digestion in the stomach, low acid, all the things that go along with the EOE.
And so that’s, you know, another thing on top of things getting stuck. And then Fast forward to my junior into senior year of high school. So at that point I wanted to play football and I was lifting weights like crazy trying to get big and I was slamming protein shakes, you know, whey protein, all of it.
And every time I’d slam my protein, man, it would just lock up and I’d get this stabbing pain in my chest where the cardiac sphincter would just, it would just squeeze. But because I was doing it so much, so frequently at that point, I got a significant increase in the swelling that didn’t go back down.
And so there was actually a time where with a girlfriend at the time, I was out to eat. And if anybody’s listening from up in Southeast Michigan, I don’t know how far around this place goes, but it’s called Olga’s Kitchen. And it kind of had soup, salads, things like that, some Greek food.
And they had these things called snackers that were like pita chip things with some seasoning on them. But then there was this Swiss cheese kind of awesome, just stuff so good, this spread that you would put on them and they came as a part of your meal. And so I was eating this Swiss, Swiss cheese spread and then my salad had some cheese on it.
And all the sudden, you know, what I used, what I would do was, you know, if stuff kind of got stuck, I’d, you know, drink some water and it kind of sucked air in and forced it down to squeeze things through If it was getting stuck. And it was just a regular habit. Well, I tried to do that and it didn’t go down and I drank too much water and I inhaled it and coughed it up all over the table.
And then things were really stuck and I ran to the bathroom and almost threw up. And finally, you know, I’m just standing there, arms above my head because I’d always seem to help things just calm down and go through and you can just feel it just move right into your stomach. And I’m like, you know, tears in my eyes, like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I almost died.
Go back out to the table and there’s like this couple who’s probably our age now with their little kids that, you know, the guy was like, are you all right? I almost came in there after you. Whatever. My girlfriend was freaking out and my mom was like, you know, time to figure out what’s going on.
And so a lady who she worked with at the time, her son had, he had a lot of other issues in addition to it, but he also had EOE. And so she had recommended it because they had been down, down the rabbit hole trying to figure out what was wrong with him back at that time, it wasn’t a widely taught condition in schools.
And so there was a younger gastroenterologist that was about an hour away from our house north of Detroit that she was like, hey, you got to go see her because she actually knows what this is and knows what to do.
And so we went to go see her and, and thankfully she was more conservative with her treatment options, where basically the protocol was let’s, let’s do an endoscopy, we’ll do a tissue biopsy, we’ll do some blood work, see what things pop up there.
And so I had elevated eosinophils, which I continuously have all the time to this day. I mean, they’re like 6 or 7 when they should be under 3. And so they’re always a little high, but there’s that part of it, the blood work. And then with the endoscopy and the tissue biopsy, there’s a sliding scale of eosinophil density within the tissue that they’ll measure from your esophagus.
And also visually, you can tell, I mean, my esophagus, you know, for those who are watching the video, you know, it should be nice and wide open. Mine would look like, I mean, as bad as it sounds like if you puckered your lips and you get all the creases and like almost no opening, That’s what my esophagus looked like at the bottom where it should have been wide open.
And so they, she said, OK, usually what we do is oral steroids plus omeprazole or a proton pumping inhibitor to reduce acid and then avoid the 8 common allergens for eight weeks. You know, tree nuts, shellfish, dairy, gluten, eggs, you know, all of the above.
And I’m like, what am I going to eat? And so we had a very strong inkling that it was dairy and it was gluten. And so we avoided, we just totally 180. This was like honestly one of the biggest transitions that we had for my family as a whole.
Doctor Tim, did they do any food allergy testing or they just said, hey, just avoid this?
No, she, I mean, so like we talked about, she actually said there’s not a wonderful correlation between that testing and finding the actual root issues because things are hypersensitive and you’ll react to a lot of stuff. And so she was like, if you have if you’re confident that it’s one of those two things, just avoid those.
And so we let her know we were probably just going to leave those too. And she’s like, go for it. You know, if you think, see things are getting better, great. If not, get rid of those. So we did that for eight weeks, and went in for another endoscopy. The esophagus was wide open, wide open.
And so, yeah, that was kind of the goal was to obviously get things opened up. And then, you know, it begs the question, well, which one was it? And so I started reincorporating some gluten again. That seemed to be OK. Dairy was really the thing that threw it off. And at that point, I started having some other like, lower GI issues and things like that with dairy since my body kind of got used to not having it again.
Now, since then, things have gotten to the point where nightshades plus dairy cause problems with that. And so I just avoid those for the most part. I’ll have a little bit of nightshades because it’s not as bad and it’s more so just heartburn and it can be regulated with taking quercetin and avoiding it for a while. But I mean, if I have even just a little bit of dairy, it’s not a good time.
But anyway, that’s been my experience. And so through my understanding and my experience with how the testing tends to go, that gives me a little bit of insight towards when patients come in and they have conditions or even symptoms like that, what the medical treatment ends up looking like.
But also in addition to that, patients also just tell me the same stories all the time, you know, if they actually have been diagnosed with this condition, they they’re always like, yeah, you know, it started with just, hey, take some omeprazole and we’ll see if that helps by reducing acid. And then things get worse.
And so like, OK, well, it’s not just that, well, let’s do an endoscopy. Let’s see. Let’s see what we can come up with there. And then they’re like, oh, yeah, you got this massive swelling. And a lot of times what I hear, maybe it’s because it’s healthcare down here, which isn’t quite as good as other places.
Yeah, they just gave me steroids and they didn’t really talk about food with it. And so that tends to be kind of the norm that I hear now. It’s, hey, take these steroids, take this, this PPI and then you’ll be OK. But it doesn’t fix the problem.
So anyway, that’s typically how the process ends up going. There’s, there’s the blood work to figure out if there are eosinophils present, you know, in high amounts in your blood. And then from there your endoscopy to visually inspect, but then also biopsy the tissue to see what’s going on.
And then from there the solution is to reduce stomach acid, maybe some steroids to calm things down. You’ll be good to go. So anyway, that’s, that’s kind of how things tend to go with this condition.
Dr. Joel’s EOE Patient: A Remarkable Healing Journey But Doctor Joel, in your experience, at least with that one patient you referenced, I guess what was, did they talk about what their medical diagnosis looked like and the solution and all that stuff?
Yeah, so I just pulled that up. Our first visit was a year ago. Time flies man. And for a little bit of background, so this gal was about 10 years old when I saw her.
And basically I’ll just kind of read through some of the notes a little bit. So issues began like 2 years prior, the stomach was hurting all the time. Started going to AGI doc. They diagnosed her with the EOE.
Her main symptom was obviously the stomach pains, but she would spit up all the time. And so basically she would have to walk around and just keep her mouth closed, like actively kind of squeeze her mouth closed. Otherwise she felt like she was going to spit up.
And of course you mentioned things like getting stuck, food impaction. That’s a big one, difficulty swallowing. Dysphasia is also a big thing that people run into with this, but for her it was kind of mimicked more of the, the reflux symptoms of like, man, I just feel like something’s kind of coming up and so forth.
So I, I don’t think I, I know they did endoscopy. I’m sure they did a biopsy to get the diagnosis just since that’s the gold standard. I’m kind of trusting that, but I don’t remember if I confirm that for sure.
But what was interesting as we jumped into this, you know, and I, I talked and we, you know, we do free phone consults and all that fun stuff. But I talked and it’s like, you know, I told the mom, I said, we don’t, I don’t see a lot of EOE.
It’s not something that’s necessarily super common. I do agree with you, Doctor Tim, since a lot of people have symptoms like gastric reflux, I think there’s probably a decent amount of people that that’s actually some low level of EOE that’s kind of starting and people probably don’t catch that or see that.
And so I think that’s really helpful. I think that’s really good that you said that. But I share with her, you know, this is at its core, this is an allergic condition. This is because your immune system is reacting to something here. And so we talked about that.
We talked about how that is related to the immune system, but it’s also kind of rooted in gut health. But her, her general kind of experience was very similar as far as you know, they recommended avoiding all those different foods, gluten, dairy, soy, eggs, fish, all the nuts, all the things.
And, and at one point they’re talking about, you know, taking allergy shots like Dupixent shots and things like that. And, and recommended, I think actually she was on, she was on Prilosec when she came in.
And I always ask whenever people are on stuff like, Hey, does that help you? And it’s a crazy question. It’s not a crazy question, but it sounds like a crazy thing to ask. Like, hey, does that actually help you? But so many people have put on stuff and they just stay on stuff, whether it’s meds or supplements.
And I’ll ask myself, so how long have you been taking this? You’ve been taking it for six months. OK, You know, that’s, I would say more. I would say 3 to 4 weeks is more than enough time to be able to notice if something’s like generally helping you or maybe not helping you or even making something worse. So I’m like, hey, does that help?
And you know, she’s like, not really. And it’s like, OK, so obviously we, Doctor Tim, know some of the dangers of taking proton pump inhibitors and different antacids as that can negatively impact digestion because you don’t have enough stomach acid to digest food anymore.
We’ve talked about that in our gastric reflux video, how the cardiac sphincter between the esophagus and stomach is really the dysfunctional area that causes acid to shoot up into the esophagus and how the cardiac sphincter is usually a problem based on nervous system dysfunction and inflammation, infection, stuff like that.
Well, nonetheless, we kind of jumped in and Doctor Tim, is it OK if I kind of keep rolling through this like?
You know what we found? Like I said, OK, Yeah, I’ve talked enough. Keep going.
OK, OK. All right. So, and we can go wherever we want with this after here, but basically jumped in and, and what I was doing with the muscle testing, you know, that we do with each patient every visit. As I was testing through her nervous system, the first thing I was kind of testing was, a couple of things.
One I was checking for, I was checking using the immunoglobulin E, basically the allergic part of your immune system, the eosinophil homeopathic. And so as I was using that and testing that, it made her system like hyper, like her muscles were weak and it made her system respond in a hyper fashion and then just kind of worked backwards on that.
And interestingly enough, it went to her gut health. Now I thought it was going to go to her immune system, stuff like that normally does, but it went to her gut health. And what I found in the gut health, this is something that I talk about a decent amount and I find a decent amount, but I found parasites.
And so she tested for two herbs, black walnut and Wormwood, also called artemisia. And she also tested as having some issues with H pylori. A dairy sensitivity and then some detox support like with ammonia and stuff like that.
So I found all these different things related to gut health. And, and then I think, I think the next thing I found was like a toxicity with the Prilosec. And so she needed to, she needed to kind of reduce that. I mean, I think she had a zinc deficiency.
So anyways, Long story short, that was visit one. We followed up about 3 weeks later, three maybe 3 1/2 weeks, and this was how her system responded. Doctor Tim, I would say is definitely one of the more rewarding sides of what we do where people respond really, really well.
Obviously not every patient responds this way, but essentially she came in, she said the spitting up, which she’d had for years at this point, had essentially gone away after the first week of taking the supplements. And then she since then had maybe spit up like at that point, maybe spit up like one time a week.
And she maybe had stomach aches like one time a week. They, I don’t remember exactly how much they were before. I think they were, Yeah, she was, it was a little bit better, but it would pop up every once in a while. But then, the spitting went away. I mean 99% almost because she would have had to hold her mouth closed all the time.
And so nonetheless, she responded super, super well based on what we found with muscle testing and how we address things. I think by our third visit, I’ll check real quick here on some of these notes. By the third visit, I think she still had a little bit of spit up like occasionally, maybe maybe a few times a week.
And then by her 4th visit, she didn’t have any more spitting up or any tummy Yanks. And so all that to say, you know, I would love to say I’m a firm believer that people can heal from anything. I think the body is amazing. I think how God has created our body, it’s a healing system.
But she’s, you know, whether 100% gotten rid of it or not, you’d have to, you know, go into an endoscopy again and biopsy and all that good stuff. But she’s, her life has changed significantly just from these things. And so anyways, this story, Doctor Tim was as I kind of walked through this with them was super encouraging.
And, and I hope for our listeners and I hope even maybe for you, Doctor Tim, I hope it’s encouraging that like, yeah, you can make massive improvements with this thing. And it’s not something that you have to have the rest of your life. Doctor Tim. The last thing I’ll mention is that we can kind of step into the next topic, whatever that may be there as we are going through our first visit.
One of the things I always ask is I say, hey, what would it take to make you feel healthy and happy?
Like what are our goals? And she said she’s kind of thinking and, and I said to get rid of these symptoms and get rid of this, the EOE that you’re experiencing every single day.
And she was like this little teen girl. She’s like, she’s like, you can do that. Like said, I was always going to have this and that broke my heart. That broke my heart because I don’t know, there’s such a lack of, I think, I think multiple things.
I think belief that the body can heal from things, but I think #2 having actually a strategy and ability to kind of work to you at the bottom of things. So again, Doctor Tim, all of this, great story, great outcome. This doesn’t happen for every person with EOE, but I do think, I do think it’s possible.
And I want to use that story to encourage people because I hadn’t heard a lot of those testimonies before. And I’ve heard testimonies, you know, where people will see reduction in symptoms to where they, you know, they feel a little bit better. But like by our 4th visit, which I think was maybe two or three months later, the spitting was totally, totally gone.
And I’ve, I’ve checked in with him and seen him since and it’s, she’s still good. She’s been doing great. Or a year, a year later and super exciting and thankful for that. So, yeah, sorry, Doctor Tim, that was a little bit longer than I had hoped for.
Lifestyle, Immune Support, and Rising Incidence But any thoughts? Any questions, any questions?
Hey, I did the same thing at first. It’s OK, you know, that’s why we do this stuff, you know, it’s, it’s cases like that where you can just change somebody’s life that make this really, really great.
But yeah, that’s awesome, especially with kids, you know, but I mean, if you here’s the thing with this condition, if you deal with the underlying infections, if you deal with the byproducts of infections and and improve overall GI health, you know, things tend to go really well.
However, if there is food that’s provoking things, a lot of times if you continue to eat that food, I mean, obviously things are not going to get better. And so it does come with some pretty significant lifestyle changes where you have to identify the trigger and eliminate it. Take some natural antihistamines or some sort of immune system calming nutrients, maybe that support interleukin 10 or other things too, to relax that response.
And then just kind of keep those in mind. You know, for example, whenever I have patients with, you know, EOE or even people that don’t have a definitive diagnosis of EOE, but they have reflux, food gets stuck. You know, they just avoid certain things because of how bad it is and we find say like nightshades or dairy or something really provoking it and we find quercetin or camu or vitamin A fixes their problem.
As long as they understand, you know, if you do eat this food, you are going to get a histamine response. You’re going to have the eosinophils moving in and you’re going to need something to calm it back down. Resume taking that nutrient to calm things back down while staying away from that food moving forward.
So you can, you can have some things here and there. Of course, life happens. However, in my case, if I have nightshades, I have to take quercetin or else I’d be miserable if I do it too much. If I have dairy, I need to take Camus or else I’ll be miserable if I do too much.
And so those, I mean, every single time it’s a problem, those tests. And so if you know, say you’re at home, you know, and or say you’re just not seeing a doctor wherever you may be, say you’re in your car sitting in traffic right now, doesn’t matter. Think of all the foods that you eat where you feel that those could be a problem.
You know, what do you eat? A lot of people are like, man, I love tomatoes. I eat nothing but tomatoes because you’re doing too much. And, you know, you can argue about the cyclic nature of eating that we used to have back when we didn’t have access to grocery stores and produce from all over the world.
You know, we would eat, you know, fresh tomatoes and stuff like that when they were in season and then you’d stop and then you’d have, you know, your squash and your pumpkin and things like that, that stored well for the winter. And then once springtime time came, there’d be other stuff. And so you, you wouldn’t eat the same foods all year round.
And so some people argue that that is a big driver of food sensitivities and allergies these days because we’re just flooded with things like solanines and other, other, you know, lectins and oxalates that are found in, in foods and we just never get a break.
So regardless, you know, if you’re, if you’re constantly eating tomatoes, you’re constantly eating dairy and you notice that you always have a problem, make a very conscious effort to try to eliminate something and maybe try quercetin, maybe try camo, maybe try vitamin A, You know, those are probably the top three things that I’ll see that help calm down this histamine response.
And if you notice things are quite a bit better, well, keep doing it, you know, but there are a lot of patients that you know, I guess back to the whole, you know, I see a lot more people with this condition. I see a lot more people that explain to me symptoms of this condition.
I don’t see anything insane about people that have a definitive diagnosis of this. And so I don’t know if it is just, you know, you go to your medical doctor, you say, you know, stuff’s kind of getting stuck. I kind of, you know, burping, heartburn, kind of get stuff that comes up, feel like I’m gonna throw up a little bit.
They’re probably, honestly, most of the time when people come in with those symptoms and they don’t have a diagnosis of it, they’re on some sort of PPI, they’re on Prilosec, they’re on omeprazole, you know, whatever you want to call it, brand name or generic, they’re on some sort of acid reducer.
And so that ends up being the first solution. And you know, then from there, it seems like a lot of the medical doctors around here at least just don’t really go a whole lot further with it, but it ends up being the same solutions that fixed it.
You know, it’s eliminating those foods. It’s called that with natural antihistamines. And then from there restoring stomach acid and restoring the gut lining. And so taking things like betaine hydrochloride, taking secretory IGA support nutrients like slippery Elm, marshmallow, milk Thistle, you name it, quercetin, you know, those are all on the list.
And at least within my practice and what I observe, I, I mean, we don’t, we don’t definitively diagnose anybody with just about anything. You know, we are using muscle testing to optimize nervous system function and investigate the nutrients required to fix these neurologic indications that we find with the nervous system.
And so if you’re looking for a definitive medical diagnosis, we don’t, we don’t necessarily do that.
You know, we end up being more of a, you know, last resort stop as opposed to hey, diagnose me with with something where our philosophy is more, you know, I don’t, I don’t necessarily care as much what a medical doctor would diagnosis with, but what I more so care about is what are we going to do about this to make you feel better and to fix this problem?
You know, and if I see that somebody that has a diagnosis of EOE has the same symptoms as somebody who hasn’t been diagnosed with it and the same things fix it, I would argue that’s EOE. You know, it just, it makes sense.
And so I’ll classify those as EOE symptoms. But all that being said, a big part that I wanted to get to today was some demographic data and how much this has increased. So, you know, a lot of our listeners, you know, put on their tinfoil hats in preparation for this, where we get into conspiracy theories and block out all the 5G and all the stuff.
And it’s funny, I see that ironically, but I’m sure there are problems that are caused by that stuff. I’ve seen it. But there’s, you know, if there is some sort of trend with something, the question is why? Why is this different? You know?
And so anyway, through together some demographic data here and incident rates, you know, all that stuff. Since 1980, so the average of all the data that I can compile, the average prevalence in the United States and Europe for eosinophilic esophagitis has been about one per 50,000 people.
This is what you guessed today. Guess what the number is today, Doctor Joel?
What? What was the year on that?
1980.
1981 and 50,000.
Yep.
And today, what is it? Is it one in 5000?
It’s about one in 1000, yeah, I think.
So it’s 50 times in the.
Lastly, it has increased about 50 times. That’s a compilation of data and taking averages and all that stuff not gonna lie. I use ChatGPT to help me with this, you know, kind of organizing it into a chart nicely but the rest of the world. So this is kind of interesting and I’d be curious to know your thoughts on this and where this could be tied together.
I think some certain medical interventions might be involved here, but less than one per 50,000, maybe less than one per 100,000. Somewhere around there is the entire world in 1980. So and then from there about one in 2000 nowadays.
So it’s like .6 per 1000, so maybe a little less like maybe one in 1800 or something like that, whatever the math is on that. But anyway, that being said, developed first world countries are experiencing this more. Countries that are more predominantly white are experiencing this more.
And it’s actually skewed 3 to 1, roughly speaking, men to women. And so white men are getting this more than any other demographic group. And so no wonder I have it. But it’s it’s, it’s only, it’s, it’s only, it’s, it’s way more common in whiter countries, developed countries, all that stuff.
And so countries that are stricken with more poverty and then our more third world aren’t experiencing as much. And so I have read some stuff and, you know, heard some people argue that it is due to vaccinations and genetic modulation that happens in the wake of that.
So just a thought. Like I said, tinfoil hat kind of day. But what’s what’s different about that? You know, it’s not like all of a sudden since 1980, you know, white men have genetically changed drastically compared to the rest of the world.
You know, there has to be something that’s been exposed that’s caused some sort of genetic modulation or genetic expression change in certain groups or in certain areas or countries since then. So.
No, that’s good. And you also.
Have increased.
Pesticides and glyphosates and all that. Not that, yeah, sorry to cut you off, but all those other factors too, that they all, I’m sure they all play an impact on things, you know?
Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the whole epigenetics argument. You know, the more garbage we are exposed to, the more that our bodies are going to express undesirable genes, you know, So anyway, just a thought. So, but the thing is, I’ve had, I’ve had a ton of women that have this too.
I mean, one of the most profound cases that I’ve had recently, I mean, the lady came in and it’s if she’s listening to this, she’s going to know I’m talking about her. She drove about 3 hours to get here, maybe a little bit more. But some of her friends or somebody said, Hey, you got to go see this guy.
And she had been having joint pain like she just couldn’t run or do anything for I think 2 years, something like that where she just got a really bad and terrible heart. That was the reason she came in because of joint pain. And so I’m like, oh, this, you know, this could be, this could be tough.
But then from there, you know, we got into chatting and I looked at her blood work and I’m like, oh, eosinophils are like 6.8 or whatever it is. I don’t remember exactly the number, but it was over double what it should be. And I’m like, do you have heartburn reflux, like any sort of upper GI issues?
And she’s like, oh, terrible. Oh my God, it’s so bad. I avoid eating this because it gets stuck. You know, I do this, I do that and I’m like, OK, do you, do you eat a lot of tomatoes? Do you eat a lot of dairy this and that? She goes, oh, I love tomatoes. I ate some tomatoes, got my garden and all this and all that.
And I’m like, I know exactly what’s going on here. Ended up finding a primary night or histamine issue, nightshade issue, all that stuff. I think her stomach gave out. It was either tin or camo. And she came in two weeks later and was like, I’m like 95% better.
And so we worked through a couple more things to get things nice and stabilized over the next couple visits. Make sure all things are good and stay good, but completely transform basically overnight with avoiding those things. And but female, not male. So she was even unluckier, I guess.
But once you fix this, I mean, if you have a significant systemic allergic response where eosinophils are that high in the blood, it’s no wonder you can have systemic symptoms, you know, I mean, joint pains and, and all kinds of stuff. I mean, inflammation is just, it’s got to be through the roof, you know, an.
Interesting question, Doctor. Before we kind of head towards wrapping up, I think I think we should share with patients like, hey, if you, if you have these symptoms, if you maybe suspect this, you know what, what should you do? Just kind of a kind of simple practical take away.
But one question before that is do you think people can get to the point where they can have dairy again and wheat gluten again and things like that or you think they need to avoid those for the rest of their lives?
You know, here’s I, I’m all about optimism. I really am. But I think that there is reckless optimism sometimes where I don’t want to push somebody over the edge and give them advice that will push them back down a rabbit hole of problems.
And so even if that possibility is there, I always like to say you don’t look, you know, you say you can only tolerate, you know, this histamine pool. OK, so you can only calm your immune system so much or say your immune system can only handle so much before it starts to overreact and hyper react and just go crazy.
As long as you keep things below that threshold by not eating things terribly frequently. And when you do have it, reincorporating those natural antihistamines that we worked through and calming things down in the 1st place and getting you back to normal, then you should be good.
Now, given my own experience with this, I know there are cases where you can do everything you can to avoid stuff and you are still going to have problems if you do have it. But you know, maybe I need to be worked on by, you know, you consistently or somebody to figure out what sort of deeper things we got to do.
But I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got problems that have gotten worse over the years as I mean, I avoid things. So I’m doing fine. But if I don’t avoid those, my reactions are worse than they were before. And so I don’t know what else is going on there.
I know my sister who ‘s on the podcast before, she did genetic testing for methylation issues and she just failed just about everything. It was terrible. And we are both sensitive to caffeine, we’re sensitive to a lot of things. And my whole family, we’ve got some problems, hence why we both do this for work.
But that being said, I think a lot of that has to do with it where we just struggle to clear histamines, struggle with B vitamins and stuff like that, which are heavily involved with all that stuff. So, yeah, I don’t know what I think that answers your question.
So, you know, it’s all a factor of each individual. You know, you have to figure out what you can tolerate. We can get you back to baseline. But a huge part of what we do isn’t just fixing your problems. You know, our goal is to fix you, send you on your way, but also teach you how to identify your triggers and kind of take charge of your health.
And so with this issue specifically, you know, if I say, you know, stay away from nightshades, stay away from dairy and this is your trigger. It needs to be understood that that could potentially cause issues again. And so you need to be aware of what ingredients, certain things to make sure that if you are doing that and your symptoms come back, you know, that’s why.
And you also need to recall, OK, well, this is the nutrient that we did to fix that. So let’s just keep that on hand. Let’s have that be in our individual medicine cabinet, you know, on the back burner thing so we can have it ready to go.
Yeah, that’s good. That’s good, Doctor Tim. I think that’s good. I think in general, what I find is, you know, I think if anyone’s been listening to our podcast for a little bit, I love to simplify things. I love the details. I love getting nerdy with things, but also I think simplifying it is also a really beautiful thing.
And, and so, you know, a lot of times I’ll find that with allergic issues, yes, you have to calm the immune system. That helps a lot of the symptoms. But generally what I find is if you actually heal the gut, which I’m going to say that again, and I’m going to say it slowly, if you actually heal the gut.
I say it like that because it’s sometimes a difficult thing to do and can be very complex and everybody’s different. But if you actually kill the gut, if you can do it again, a very difficult thing, then I find that overtime your immune system resets, then you can have those foods again.
But like you said, you know, there’s a lot of different complexities with each patient and in each case and everything that’s going on. So it’s not always that simple when it comes to working with every patient.
Actionable Steps for EOE and Episode Conclusion But all right, Doctor Tim, any last kind of thoughts or comments? If someone’s kind of been dealing with some of these symptoms they’re worried about they might have this like what, what would you recommend? Would you recommend they go see a specific doctor? Would you recommend they pursue testing for this?
Would you recommend they just see a holistic Dr. to work to get to the bottom of things? What are some thoughts there that the patients can kind of take away from this year?
So let’s reflect real quick on how the process goes if you do go the medical route. Yeah. Blood work, endoscopy, tissue biopsy, PP is steroids elimination diet. OK? Those are going to be the solutions that are presented to you.
There may be others. I mean, we’re not medical doctors. So that’s what I have heard from patients. It’s what I’ve encountered myself. That is what, you know, I’ve found in my own research, digging into it more for the sake of this episode and with patients. OK. And so if that’s I’m sorry, go ahead.
Yeah. I was just going to say and all of that, that whole process is dedicated towards let’s try to reduce the flare ups, let’s try to reduce some of the symptoms, right. That’s kind of the mindset. OK. And then and then. Keep going here.
Correct, So if your goal is fix this problem and keep it good, you need to figure out how to actually calm the immune system down and keep it calm and, and support interleukin 10 and all these immune system cytokines that they calm things. OK. And so I would encourage you to go find, even if you know, I know we do systems healthcare and there’s all the docs and systems healthcare website.
We’re kind of black sheep in a way, or unicorns, some sort of rare, you know, animal mythical or not in that there’s just we’re not all over the place. I mean, I think I counted there’s less than 20 of us on the SHC website at this point.
And so those that are certified, the exact technique that we do, if there’s somebody near you, great, go see them. They will absolutely help you quickly. However, find somebody who does apply to kinesiology, but also doesn’t just adjust things. So find somebody who does AK that has some sort of functional medicine or nutrition knowledge so they can actually help you figure out if there are big problems going on.
Get that fixed. I would argue with this condition, biofeedback mechanisms are going to be the absolute best way to solve this. And by biofeedback, I mean muscle testing with nutrition testing. Find somebody who does that. There are, you know, just tradition, traditional functional medicine practitioners that I’m sure can help you with it.
But this condition does not need to be terribly complex or expensive to treat. If you go the traditional functional medicine route where there’s just a ton of labs, no muscle testing, a lot of times they’re going to sell you on a year long package where you get, you know, work with this health coach.
You know, you’re going to work with this person who’s, you know, a gut healing specialist with probiotics and you’re going to do this with the doctor once and you’re going to do this. And it’s just a whole lot of outsourcing, I think for the sake of making it look like a more cohesive process when really you need to spend time with the doctor.
They need to figure out what’s wrong with you. They need to educate you and then help you develop a plan moving forward with diet and then proper supplements to fix this. But say you don’t even go to a doctor’s food journal period. Start eliminating some things.
Honestly, the biggest things that we’ll see, dairy, nightshades, gluten, eggs, get rid of those four things, maybe even just one at a time and take quercetin, camo, and vitamin A. If you cover your bases with all that stuff and that’s what’s driving it, that will absolutely get better to some degree.
Now, if there is infection or byproducts of infections or histamine clearance issues, that can be a little more difficult.
But that’s where at that point you just you have to go see somebody, you know, that’s that’s hard enough for us to help people with in the office where we don’t have definitive answers unless we get hands on and check things to where it’s not quite as straightforward as just stop these foods, take these broad nutrients, you know, but track your own symptoms.
I say this all the time. Be your best health advocate by problem solving. Treat yourself like a detective you know. Put your detective hat on. Gather data. Create a plan.
Yeah, that’s your.
Best bet so.
That’s awesome, Doctor Tim. I don’t think there’s anything to add to that. That’s great. I love it. I love it.
Mic drop, all done.
Mic drop, mic drop, wireless mic drop. All right, let’s. All right, let’s wrap up here for our listeners. We hope that this has been helpful for you. If you guys have any questions or thoughts on this condition or if there’s another topic you want us to cover, reach out to us.
Let us know. For me, the practice here is called Freedom Health and Wellness here in Flower Mound, TX. You can find me online at drjoelmiller.com. You can find me on Instagram. And yeah, if you guys have any questions or need anything, feel free to reach out to our office and would be happy to help in whatever way that looks.
Yeah, great. I’m Doctor Tim Augustyniak here at Flourish Functional Wellness Center in Bentonville, AR If you have any questions, comments and concerns, feel free to reach out. All the contact info is on the homepage of our website, flourishfwc.com. Links to all the socials, contact info, office location, you name it, all those things around there.
Thank you so much everybody for listening. Hopefully this is a good one for you and we will see you in the next one.
