Are you treating the trigger, or is your body trapped in a cycle?
Most people view chronic illness as a simple equation: find the root trigger—like an infection or a toxin—and eliminate it. But what if the real problem isn’t the original trigger, but the persistent inflammatory state your body got stuck in?
In this episode, we welcome back Dr. Eric Gordon, a specialist renowned for unraveling the most complex cases of Lyme disease, ME/CFS, and autoimmune conditions. Building on his landmark research with Dr. Robert Naviaux on the Cell Danger Response, Dr. Gordon explains why treating the human body like a simple machine—a fundamental flaw known as biological reductionism—keeps so many patients chronically ill.
We also dive into plasmapheresis, a fascinating blood-filtering therapy gaining massive attention in both chronic illness recovery and longevity spaces, designed to clear out circulating inflammatory factors and hit the biological “reset” button.
Table of Contents
In this podcast, Dr. Eric Gordon and I discuss:
- The Healing Trap: Why chronic illness is often the result of an interrupted repair cycle, where short-term compensations become permanent.
- The Body’s Response vs. The Trigger: Why how your body reacts to a stressor keeps you sicker than the original infection or toxin itself.
- The Flaw of Biological Reductionism: Why treating the body like a machine and chasing single, highly specific causes rarely works for patients with overlapping conditions.
- The Role of “Old Information”: How outdated cellular signals drive ongoing dysfunction.
- Plasmapheresis Explained: How filtering and replacing blood plasma works to lower your inflammatory load and change your broader biological environment.
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Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey, this is Ari. Welcome back to the Energy Blueprint podcast. With me today for the third or fourth time is my friend, Dr. Eric Gordon, who has spent the last 45 or 46 years of his life working with some of the most complex, difficult-to-treat patients in all of medicine. These are the people with complex chronic illness who have seen every specialist, tried everything, and still can’t get answers, can’t figure out how to get well. This is his unique specialty, and his gift is working with these kinds of very, very difficult-to-treat patients. I love his way of thinking. I love his framework, and I love the way his mind works in general.
He has a way of connecting the dots that’s very, very interesting. I think that you’ll hear that in the way that he discusses things. A little bit more about him. He’s the medical director of Gordon Medical Associates, president of the Gordon Medical Research Center, where he’s built a reputation for doing what most doctors won’t, which is looking beyond the diagnosis to find what’s actually driving a patient’s illness and figuring out the right order to address it. His clinical work spans Lyme disease, ME/CFS, autoimmune conditions, and mitochondrial dysfunction, and lots of other kinds of dysfunction, often all at once in the same patient.
In 2016, he co-authored a landmark study with Dr. Robert Naviaux, also a former guest on this podcast and a bit of a personal hero of mine, someone who I think has done some of the most important work in medicine of the last century, with his work on the cell danger response. Dr. Gordon has worked with him and published a paper in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with Dr. Robert Naviaux. That paper has fundamentally changed how researchers understand the metabolic underpinnings of chronic fatigue syndrome.
This was a critical paper in helping to shift what had historically been seen as a more psychogenic disorder because, on traditional blood tests, ME/CFS, people complaining of severe chronic fatigue, often no abnormalities show up on regular blood tests. That led for a long time to people to see it, oftentimes doctors, to see it as a psychogenic illness. It’s all in your head, basically. What this paper did was it was critical in helping to establish that there are very real metabolic, biochemical changes in the body. This is not purely a psychogenic phenomenon.
Dr. Gordon is also an internationally recognized voice in this space. He’s regularly invited to speak at prestigious medical conferences. He’s dedicated much of his career to bridging cutting-edge research with what actually works in the clinic. With all that said, today, we are talking about plasmapheresis, which is a fascinating new technology. Lots of new research is being done on this. People are using it to treat different illnesses, complex chronic illnesses. It’s also being used by people who are already well in the pursuit of longevity.
There is an ongoing stream of new research, some of it very exciting research, being published on this topic. You are going to hear from one of the experts on it, Dr. Gordon, who’s going to tell you what it is, who it’s for, who it’s not for, how you should do it, what you should do before and after, the nuances of all the stuff of what it’s doing, what it’s not doing, and maybe some stuff on the right way to approach this and whether it’s not for you, or whether it is or is not for you, I should say. With all that said, enjoy the podcast. Eric, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure to connect with you. It has been far too long since our last conversation.
Dr. Eric Gordon: Same. Same, Ari. I always learn and appreciate your perspective on health and health wellness, and I think sometimes the missteps of those of us who are the disease hunters.
Ari: [laughs] As we were just chatting about before we started recording, you and I come at this topic of health from such different directions, and yet whenever we talk, we always manage to find so much commonality. There’s so much interesting conversation that takes place at that intersection of where our two worlds collide. I’m excited to explore that once again with you for the– I don’t know, you’ve been on the podcast at least three times, I think, in the past. Maybe this is number four.
Dr. Gordon: Or third, I think, but who’s counting? It’s really a pleasure to be here because talking to you, I get to think about things and create ideas, because that’s what’s amazing. It’s like you’re an explorer, and that’s what, I think, we need in this world of people who are looking for the next quickie, so to speak.
Ari: Of course, I feel the same about you. Let’s get into it. What have you been exploring since our last conversation? What’s new in your world? You were telling me before we started recording a little bit about attending medical conferences, some new medical interventions that you’ve been working with, with some of your complex chronic illness cases. What’s the latest, big picture? Just tell me about what’s going on in your world.
Band-Aid Medicine & Cellular Healing
Dr. Gordon: Well, I think the big picture is I’m bringing together a very high-tech intervention and a very low-tech intervention. They both need each other sometimes. One of the big things that’s happened in my world is that I’ve been doing a little bit more work with people in the longevity world than I used to. I think one of the things that we talked about before is one of the reasons I got into medicine, now 46 years ago, a long time ago, trying to figure out what people needed to stay healthy. What was a healthy diet? What was a healthy lifestyle? I was in medical school three months, and I goes, “Well, I’m not going to learn about this here.” It was really crystal clear. They had no clue.
Ari: That was my realization in medical school, too, and that’s why I left after two years.
Dr. Gordon: Well, I was a better Jewish son.
Ari: You were. [laughs]
Dr. Gordon: I went through it. Actually, I had fun because you get to talk to people. I love people, and I love listening and figuring out how to help. It was amazing, but it was always disappointing. Because it was always about plug the hole, fix the problem du jour, what I call band-aid medicine, which I think I’ve gotten pretty good at over the years, because that’s what medicine has to offer is good band-aids. The whole idea of modern medicine is let’s keep you alive until your body figures out how to heal, or we just keep you alive. The compensations that the body makes for the stressor, for the illness, for the bug, for the injury, is something that’s designed to be short-term.
Everything the body does for immediate survival, to fight something, or I always compare it to the psychological world. Anger is a healthy emotion, but it should be a transient emotion. It should be a transient activity. The same thing is true of my other favorite subject, which is inflammation, which is basically how your body protects you, and how it starts the healing process, is through inflammation. This should be a transient event, lasting days, weeks, maybe months if it’s a big injury, but it has an on and an off, and it’s a cycle.
Now, chronic illness is when that cycle is really interrupted, and you’re stuck in a big inflammatory state. Aging, I think, is a slower version of that, where the injuries of life just build up. When you’re lucky, when you have an injury, you repair the cells that you can repair, and the cells that you can’t repair well will die. Apoptosis, as they say. Programmed cell death, very clean, very nice. It doesn’t make a lot of debris, and you go on. Unfortunately, that rarely happens 100%.
As we live, as we get injured, as we get stressed, as we overexercise or do anything, there are some cells that don’t complete the healing cycles and don’t die. In the modern parlance, people are calling them zombie cells or senescent cells, we look at it. As Dr. Naviaux, in Bob’s world, it’s cells stuck in some point in the cell danger response.
The Cell Danger Response Explained
Ari: For listeners who are unfamiliar with what he’s describing, I’d recommend, first of all, looking up Dr. Robert Naviaux, who Eric has done research with and worked with very closely for many years. This is all material on the cell danger response that we’ve discussed in recent podcasts. Eric, maybe you want to tell them briefly a bit about the cell danger response, just to catch anybody up who is unfamiliar with that.
Dr. Gordon: Yes. I’ve learned how to do this in very brief terms, which is good. I also want to say is that I’ve supplied Bob with patients for research. He does the work, and he does the brain work. I sit there and go, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” More of that. The cell danger response is a model to understand how the body heals and, really, how the body stays healthy. It’s a model that includes every part of it. People often say, is that the cell danger response? When they have chronic inflammation, or they have Lyme, is that the cell? It’s all. It’s a story to explain how your body works.
Briefly, it just says that when there is an injury in the body, and it doesn’t have to be a big injury, think of just exercise. When you exercise hard, some of your cells are stressed, and they need to be repaired. Now, if you’ve really torn some things a bit, you’ll create local inflammation. That’s the CDR1, that local inflammation, that transient inflammation. This is all controlled by the mitochondria. We’re not going to go too far into that story, but just believe me, Bob has put the mitochondria in the middle of this. To be fair, any time you talk about physiology, it’s all a circle. There are other people who have their other favorite organelles.
Ari: Some people’s favorites are the thyroid or the adrenals or the–
Dr. Gordon: Those are the glands. Every cell in your body, except red blood cells, have mitochondria. The mitochondria’s job is to sense the environment. I think this is a key piece here, the environment. The environment, at the very basic level, is electrons, but at the higher level, is your raw materials, the things your cells use to make proteins and to make membranes and to make all the organelles. Remember, the DNA is like the blueprint. The enzymes are like the machines, but the raw materials, the lipids and the simple amino acids and sugars, those are the raw materials.
How they flow through the cell is very closely monitored by the mitochondria. The mitochondria will turn off, turn on, make more ATP, less ATP, make more proteins and make more components that you use to make more DNA or more RNA or more proteins depending on what that mitochondria is sensing. When the mitochondria senses that there’s a problem, it stops making a lot of ATP and it lets your cell burn glucose for energy. That’s the CDR1, that burning, that using glucose for energy and signaling to other cells that there’s a problem.
CDR2 is when you’re rebuilding. The cell’s been injured, with a little luck it can rebuild itself. At that point, the mitochondria still is not making ATP for a lot of energy. You’re still dependent on glucose. This is where cancer cells are stuck. That’s what things in the CDR2 use glucose for most of the energy, we call it. CDR3 is when the cell is maturing. It’s now becoming a member of the organ that’s part of it. Remember, cells are very different organ to organ, and they have different mitochondria in them too, but that’s another story.
In CDR3 is when the membrane is maturing. It’s now accepting information easily because in that first cycle, CDR1, the cell membrane thickens and stops letting a lot of information into the cell. In CDR3, your hormones are now giving that cell information and all the little chemicals at the neighboring cells, the communication is working. It’s learning how to be a liver cell or a retina cell or a heart cell or whatever it happens to be. This is a very nice process. This is life. This is healing. It happens in every organism we’ve ever looked at. When you have an inflammation, that inflammation is part of your life. It’s how you heal every day.
At night, this happens in a very subtle form through the night when you’re rebuilding tissue. The cells usually aren’t as completely isolated as they are in the injury state, but the chemical, the different metabolites are happening the same way at night when you’re healing. Now, as we age, we accumulate cells that have been left behind. Some of them are still in that inflammatory stage. They haven’t finished that cycle. They’re releasing signals that are inflammatory. They’re saying, “We’ve got a problem here.”
Now, if it’s 1% or 0.5% of the cells in your liver, it’s not a big deal. As we age, it probably grows in number. These information molecules can be everything from exosomes to cytokines and to bigger proteins, that they’re all signaling that we’re trying to heal here. We’re not finished. This creates those low levels of inflammation that we’re all worried about. If it’s in the liver, that’s happening a lot, you might be somebody who has an elevated CRP, the C-reactive protein, which everybody’s looking at.
The problem with CRP is you can be pretty sick and have absolutely normal CRP. It doesn’t mean that you’re healthy. It’s a signal, but it doesn’t mean for sure. Anyway, this chronic inflammation that we all develop at some level over life, we accumulate senescent cells which are releasing these senescent-associated proteins that are wearing us down a bit because they’re not letting metabolism work optimally. Okay. If this happens in your gut, and it does, it happens in all of our guts, but if there’s a lot of inflammation in the gut, it can interfere with the absorption of trace minerals because what the body does in the CDR1, when there’s a lot of inflammation, the liver releases a chemical called hepsidin.
Hepsidin is a protein that tells your iron receptors and your iron transporters in your small intestine and the same transporters that also take in most of your trace minerals, zinc, copper, molybdenum, manganese, and a few others, to stop absorbing stuff because that CDR1, remember that CDR1 is a protective mode. It’s trying to starve the bugs that might be invading your body. Okay. It’s a fine transient strategy. It’s a fine thing. There’s no problem if you do that for a day, a week, a month, a few months, because you have pretty big supplies of trace minerals in your body.
However, if it goes on for years, they begin to diminish. When that happens, your vitamins don’t work well because almost all your vitamins require a trace mineral co-factor in order to work optimally. What vitamins do, they’re enzymes. They help enzymes work better. Enzymes get reactions to work faster. You don’t die. You just work slower, less efficiently. That means you build up more crud and you tax more systems. This is basically how we age and how we become chronically ill.
The question is one a degree? I’m going to digress to one other point that I think is real important for people who, everybody’s on the internet now and everybody’s listening to podcasts and talking to AI. If you do that, you get these stories of how the body works, similar to the ones that I just gave you, but about particular chemicals. NAD is a big one these days, NAD, NAD, this and that. It’s all real and it’s all true.
What we don’t understand because it’s hard for us to conceptualize is how much redundancy in the body there is and how broken you can, not broken, but how deficient you can be and still be functioning. Remember, people survived Auschwitz. People came out looking like 98-pound skeletons, but they were living still. They were deficient in probably almost everything. There is an amazing redundancy. You have to keep that in the back of your mind and not freak out every time you read that I might be low in this or that.
Now, the thing that catches people is occasionally you’re going to find an individual who is low in one thing, copper, zinc, calcium, magnesium, B12, folinic acid. Pick your vitamin, your mineral. They take it, and they’re better. That happens, but that’s not generally the case. Usually, it’s a much more complex, interwoven milieu. We can be deficient in lots of things and do quite well for a long time. My own mind goes there. That’s why I said I never met a supplement I didn’t like because when you read about them, they all sound like, “My God, I should be taking that. It’s going to make me wonderful.” [chuckles]
Yes, it may, but the chances are that it’s only one piece in this incredibly complex piece of creation. I think that’s our other problem. We keep thinking of the body as though it’s a machine, and it’s not. That’s why AI, it helps us tremendously, but because we still don’t know the rules of the road, we still don’t know how this thing really works, everything has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Ari: Can I add one more thing to that?
Dr. Gordon: Please.
The Flaws of Biological Reductionism
Ari: I agree with everything that you said there. I would also say that it makes me think of these, sometimes in textbooks, in medical textbooks, you’ll see someone put together an infographic of multiple different biochemical mechanisms, not just one simple little piece of the story. Here’s how NAD+ works. Here’s how the electron transport chain and mitochondria work. Here’s the Krebs cycle. Here’s the this. Here’s the that. Here’s how glycolysis works. You see, sometimes these images where they’re overlaying 50 or 100 different processes and trying to capture it all in one image.
Immediately, what happens when you look at one of these images is the eyes glaze over because you look at them and you go, “No human could possibly understand all of this complexity that’s happening here. With hundreds, or maybe even over 1,000 different arrows pointing to this enzyme and that enzyme and this process, and then this whole thing feeds back into this.”
Even that doesn’t even really capture anywhere close to the real complexity of whatever is even pictured on that page because you also have all these feedback loops, an unpredictability of different feedback loops, an unpredictability of– Since the body is, to your point, not a machine, which is, by the way, the fundamental error of biological reductionism, it is unpredictable how the body will respond to certain inputs.
It doesn’t work just like a normal machine where X causes Y causes Z. X may cause Y, which feeds back onto B, which may impact E. You have orders of magnitude, even more complexity than whatever is pictured on this page. I laugh at so much of the biochemical, biological reductionism that we have today, where people say, “Oh, there’s this one biochemical, and if you just take this supplement to boost this biochemical, everything’s fixed because this is the one key biochemical.” I’m like, “Oh, this is such bullshit.”
Dr. Gordon: Remember, at the end of the day, because I’m talking about the mitochondria, but then at the end of the day, you have this central processing unit up here, which whatever magic happens in our brain, can turn off and turn on all these systems in ways that we don’t understand. That is why people call them miracles. That is why people can heal from diseases that we don’t think anybody should heal from occasionally. That’s why they’re miracles. You can’t count on it. The mind, the soul, the spirit can shift things in ways that we still have no clue about.
What I always want to point out to people is that a good attitude helps healing. I have also met really nasty, ugly, not-happy people who heal. I always like to throw that out there because it’s usually important to have a good– Because I see you have a much better chance of healing with a better attitude. You will actually enjoy whatever life you’re having, even if you are sick, with a better attitude. [chuckles] There’s a lot to be said for that.
I hate to see people who get locked into this idea that, well, if it’s not the nutrients, it’s not the nutrient I need, it’s the right mindset. Again, all these things are important. It’s not that I’m saying that you should pay– I pay a lot of attention to what nutrients, and I try to pay a lot of attention to what your spirit and your psyche and your moods are doing because they all are affecting. None of this is absolute. None of them are bullets. I always hate to use that, but that’s the truth of it.
Bullets, 99.9% of people react the same way to a bullet wound. There’s always this huge person who probably needs a bunch of bullets to get to them. Life isn’t mostly bullets. Life is mostly subtle things that are slowly toxifying us and slowly interfering with our function. This hooks into one of the things that I really– My other big thing these days is plasmapheresis, so I want to get to that. Again, it’s not a miracle, but it’s a help because underlying what I’m seeing, what I think I’m seeing in the world today is that– and what I think is leading to why people are, if you will, less well than they used to be.
Sometimes a lot sicker, but lots of times just less well in the sense they have all these sensitivities, all these allergies, all these things that really make them feel bad that seem to be very mild in the huge biochemical sense. It’s because our world is– literally, in the last 120 years, it’s become more and more full of toxic load. It’s gone astronomical in the last 40 years, but really what’s so interesting– I always forget. Who’s the fellow, the German Jewish scientist who Hitler kept alive, who wrote about the fact that cancer cells depend on glucose? What?
Ari: Oh, geez, I can’t think of the name.
Dr. Gordon: We’re both having that moment. Okay. It actually is the name of– They actually used his name, the psych, for that. Okay.
Ari: Right on the tip of my tongue.
Dr. Gordon: Yes, I know. It’ll come out. He was working on cancer because the Germans were amazing chemists in the–
Ari: Warburg.
Dr. Gordon: Warburg. Yes, the Warburg effect. Okay. Because petrochemicals were a new thing. Organic chemistry really started in the late 1800s. We just started filling the world with these petroleum-derived chemicals starting in the early 1900s. That’s when cancer rates started to go way up. Huh? Could be. Now, besides cancers, because we have this huge rate, and when I started training, as a young doctor in my first 20 years, I saw one colorectal cancer in somebody under 40. Just didn’t see it.
Now, people are dying. Things are changing. I mean, we have the autism world, but it’s just all these things. We know that the toxins are a big thing. When we talk about health, and we’re really stuck because they’re part of our environment. People talk about microplastics and nanoplastics. I said I was just at this meeting this past weekend at UCSD, actually, hometown, on plasmapheresis. It was a regular medical meeting. I don’t go to a lot of them, but this was real doctors from all hospitals, all hospitalists, because this is a very sub-specialty part of medicine.
One fellow, because there’s so much talk about microplastics these days, and a lot of people are saying, oh, plasmapheresis will remove your microplastics or your nanoplastics. He made the point that they do come out in plasmapheresis, but you probably have to do, I don’t know, I estimate probably about 30 to 50 to make a significant dent. That’s not the answer. [laughs] Even though I think plasmapheresis is the answer for some things, it is not the answer for getting rid of your microplastics. It’s a good selling point, but it’s part of the thing that I think you and I share is the disappointment with the people– how do you say, the salesmanship in this field.
We are here sharing information. It is, on some level, it is salesmanship, but we want it to be on the reality plane. I think the idea that you’re going to remove your microplastics with plasmapheresis is a little on the salesmanship kind of things. You will. It’s not that it’s a lie. We’re stuck with them because most of it, we just breathe it in, and we get it in our water supply and our food. We can do things. Don’t eat out of plastic stuff. Don’t buy stuff wrapped in, we can lower our plastic load. Anyways, plasmapheresis isn’t going to fix you.
What is Plasmapheresis?
Ari: Eric, let’s step back for a moment. There are some listeners, probably many, that are unfamiliar with plasmapheresis and what it is, what it does, and who would it be for and to what purpose. Let’s go back to first principles here. What is this technology of plasmapheresis, and what are you using it for?
Dr. Gordon: It’s an old technology. It was, I think, the animals that were doing it in the mid-1800s. In early 1900s, they figured out that they could really do this safely in animals. In about the 1950s, it’s filtering process. Aphoresis is separation. It’s a filtering process where people stick two large needles, one in each arm, usually, if you’re lucky, and your blood goes out one arm into a machine. In America, most of the machines are what we call centrifugal. They spin around, and they separate the blood into different components based on its weight, on its density. You can take off any component.
It was used in the beginning to get cells that they wanted in the ’60s because when they started doing chemotherapy, they started needing a lot of either red blood cells, white blood cells, or platelets. It was very hard to separate these. Using this machine, you can do it quite well. Then it began to be used later in the ’70s and ’80s a lot for autoimmune diseases where it could separate the plasma. It could take out the plasma. Plasma is the liquid component of the blood. Your red blood cells, your white blood cells, your platelets are more the solid material, and the plasma is the watery stuff.
With plasmapheresis, you can remove the plasma and re-infuse back the red cells. Now, if you take a lot of the plasma off, which is what’s usually done, you need to re-infuse albumin, which is a protein that basically goes through your body and sucks up toxins. It also is very important because albumin is the main component that gives what we call osmotic force. You need particles. We’re going to go into chemistry here, but if you don’t have enough particles in your blood, the blood will leak out into your tissues.
You need enough particles in the blood to hold the fluid into the bloodstream. Albumin is probably the main component that does that. When we take out a lot of it, almost all of it that’s in circulation in this plasmapheresis, we have to put that back. Now, this process is mostly in the hospitals, in the acute care setting, it’s mostly used to remove antibodies. There are illnesses like Guillain-Barre, myasthenia gravis, lots of renal diseases, lots of neurologic diseases where you have auto-antibodies that are attacking your tissues.
This is an amazing Band-Aid, talking about Band-Aid medicine. This is the Band-Aid par excellence because we remove those antibodies and the symptoms will improve. It doesn’t really change the system usually. You still have to let the body heal or do other things to stop making those auto-antibodies, or you have to do the plasmapheresis again.
Ari: Right. What’s the timeline for making those auto-antibodies? If it’s manufactured every day, then the relief that you get from plasmapheresis would be minimal to–
Dr. Gordon: Surprisingly, this is the interesting thing. Surprisingly, the auto-antibodies, they’re made every day, but the amounts, because it’s a body. When you take out all this stuff, all this information, it gives the system a chance to reboot a little bit. Sometimes it stops doing it quicker. Basically, things like Guillain-Barré, many times people would recover from if you could keep them alive long enough. The inciting event was gone, and the B-cells that were making these auto-antibodies would not get the signals to keep reproducing. They would go away if things are working. Again, because remember, these auto-antibodies, are not all bad. We won’t go there. I’m going to go a little–
Ari: Go there. Go there. Go there.
Dr. Gordon: Okay. I don’t know who’s going to listen to this because we’re going all over the place. Long COVID is a very good example. Long COVID, there’s a subset of people with long COVID, not everyone, but a subset of people who develop a lot of auto-antibodies to their adrenergic and muscarinic, these receptors that help control blood pressure and pulse, and your autonomic nervous system. In some people, when you remove those, they do quite well. Other people, not so well, because other things are keeping them going.
Usually, if you’re trying to remove auto-antibodies as a therapy, you have to do five to seven of these over two weeks. Yes, two weeks to three weeks. If it’s an emergency in the hospital, they’ll do people every day. That’s a little iffy because we also remove something called fibrinogen and some other clotting proteins that take time to rebuild. Most of the time, as an outpatient, it’s nice to do it every– I like to do it every three or four days because that leaves plenty of time for rebuilding these clotting factors.
If something’s acute, you can do it much more often. Generally, you need five to seven to get rid of all these auto-antibodies. Yes, you’re making more of them. Sometimes, in some people, when you remove them, the signal goes away, and those B cells that are busy making all those auto-antibodies because they come from your own B cells will stop doing that because the Treg cells, the T cells that- well, they don’t really control. See, that’s the other thing you talk with if you remember in the body.
There’s very rarely a linear control thing. T cells, you have Treg cells that, in our minds, we say they control the B cells, but they don’t because there are diseases that are caused by the wrong number or the wrong type of T cells. When you remove all the B cells, sometimes that gets better. [chuckles] As you said before, everything causes everything in the body.
Ari: Real quick, I think one interesting principle that you’re alluding to there, I think that there’s a broader principle at play, which is– I think it’s an overlooked but important principle, is the idea of changing something. Meaning when the body is stuck in a certain state, simply just creating a shift, shifting the body in a particular direction, creates an opportunity for a space. Creates an opportunity for new signaling to go on that I think you even use the words to reset. It’s a way to detect. It’s almost like my way of conceptualizing it is like the body gets used to a certain state, and then it stops sensing the signals of the fact that it’s in that state. It just normalizes to it.
By perturbing the system in a particular direction, it gives the body an opportunity to sense what’s going on and where it wants to regulate that set point at.
Dr. Gordon: That’s why herbs are so cool because they send lots of signals, and your body gets a chance to see which ones because they’re perturbing. Most herbs push the system, and then it’s a counter-regulatory thing that creates the change. Removing all this plasma, that’s what, to my mind, is exactly what you described is what’s happening. When you remove this plasma, we’re allowing the space for new things to happen. We’re allowing the space for the body to self-regulate again in a more helpful manner because we’ve removed some of the alarm signals.
Again, they’re transient. The cool part is when you’re alive, life is a transient experience. I mean, biology is a moment-to-moment communication and explosion of information, [laughs] if that makes any sense. When you change the information, you change the biology, and you allow new things to happen. That’s the beauty of this kind of approach. As I said, usually in medicine, we go in there, and modern medicine is getting better and better at this. Our tools, a whole bunch of these immune treatments that we have, all the mAbs and imAbs and all these things, these chemicals that are very specific now.
They can go in, they can target one particular cytokine, one inflammatory chemical that might be causing a problem. By targeting that, you can stop the inflammation. Now, unfortunately, they don’t usually realize that if they target a few things at lower levels, they might be able to change the milieu and let the body then find something new. We’re still stuck in like, we’re going to go in there, we’re going to change this one system, we’re going to block this one chemical. Then we have to keep blocking it most of the time because it’s really hard to find the beginning of a circle.
When you cut the circle, sometimes it will reform in a different manner. When you just cut it in one spot and you have a lot of things driving, you just reform it over and over and over again. That’s the beauty of this plasmapheresis, which is because it’s dirty, because it’s not so specific, but medicine is hooked on specificity. They think the more we can do exactly what we want to do, the better. That is based on the idea that we know exactly how this system works.
Ari: Exactly, yes, which is a far bigger flaw than I think anyone wants to admit, and is a massive flaw that people rarely actually discuss in the way that you just did. Yes, I agree completely. I think there is this implicit assumption that the more we zoom in, the more we go to the micro level, the more we are going to figure out exactly what specific mechanism drives this specific disease. I think what systems biology is telling us is that, that whole premise, that whole foundational assumption of biological reductionism, is a mistake, is an error in most cases. Because the system doesn’t actually work like that, where it is just that one thing that if you target that thing, it cures the disease.
Dr. Gordon: Exactly. We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I love the details, but we have to remember that we don’t really understand enough about the system to count that we have the right detail. We have to, in my mind, go back and forth between these two models because they both have usefulness, and you need one more or less, depending on how, for lack of a better medical term, how screwed up your body is. That’s the thing. The plasmapheresis, where the longevity play is coming in, which I think is really exciting because this is–
Using Plasmapheresis for Longevity vs. Chronic Illness
Ari: Let me back up and just segue into that. There’s a use for this technology, plasmapheresis, as you’ve been describing, in the cases of many different kinds of complex chronic illness. There is also this other category of use that’s becoming more popular now, of the already well, people who are already healthy, who are looking to optimize for longevity, who are now using this technology on a regular basis. Talk to us about that.
Dr. Gordon: Actually, before I go there, I want to just be real clear that I think in chronic illness, this can be useful. In both chronic and in longevity, what you do before and after is important. The difference being is that for longevity, I think people will get a benefit just going into the– They’re opening them all over the place. Let’s go in, do plasmapheresis a few times. You will get a benefit. I don’t deny that. If you’re chronically ill, I think you’re wasting your money to do that. I found in my own population, there were some people who, when I started doing this about three and a half, four years ago now, and I got the machine basically for myself because I’m old.
I’ll get to the longevity part. I really think it’s a big, important part there. I knew some neurologists who were using this in the complex chronic illness, my world, not the hospital world of we’re preventing people from dying world. They were telling me they were getting some great results. I was excited, but I wasn’t getting them initially. I really backed off on it because, as I said, it’s a very expensive procedure. I don’t want to waste people’s resources for something that just sounds good.
What we found in the people who are ill is that what’s really important to do it well is to figure out what level of toxins are involved, as best we can, because measuring toxins, that’d be another conversation we won’t do today. A wasteland because there are very few companies that do it, and the ones that do it don’t do enough of them. It’s really a very difficult world. Still, the point is that the toxins, the inflammation, it’s the more we can dial things in before and know what we’re trying to fix after, the better it is. We got excited about it initially because in the world of pans and pandas, this is an acute encephalopathy that happens to young people after strep infections.
We think it’s really more Bartonella than the strep. Anyway, in adults, it also happens where it’s an encephalopathy. They get really severe neurologic symptoms, and a lot of it’s driven by autoantibodies. You do it, and incredibly psychotic symptoms will disappear. Now, the thing is they’re going to come back unless you do other things. We won’t go into that. We found that in the chronically ill people, it can be a way to lower the load that allows other things to work. Again, if we prepare them, it can be a big step in just helping that body reset.
The thing about chronic illness, it’s not about, I shouldn’t say it’s not, it’s often not about the infection that you think you have or that you may have, the infection, the autoantibody, the toxin. It’s about how your body has responded, has compensated for those things that are keeping you really ill. Sometimes when we remove the factors that are the information, it allows us a little time to then go in and do things that, one of the problems with treating people with chronic complex illness is they often get worse when you do the thing that you think is going to help them.
That’s why a lot of people go, “Oh, you shouldn’t treat chronic Lyme with antibiotics because it makes people, besides mucking up their guts, they get sicker.” If they’re really toxic, they often do get sicker and stay sicker. If we can clear them out, it can be effective if needed. Hopefully, it’s not needed. Anyway, in the chronic world, it really matters what you do before and after plasmapheresis. Now, in the longevity world, you can be a little looser. It’s still going to be better if you really start dealing with the rest of your toxic load that you have and obviously your lifestyle and obviously your nutrients and making sure.
This is what I was talking about very early on. I don’t know if it would have been maybe before we turned that recording on, is our ability now, which is just starting, to look at metabolites and the balance of metabolites, that means the balance of, I said, the chemicals that you use to make energy and the lipids and the proteins, these things that are floating around in your blood.
When we look at a bunch of them, we can see which pathways are not working relative to others. Then we can begin to impute which nutrients you might be missing because when we measure your blood, it doesn’t tell us what’s in your tissues. That’s the problem. You can have wonderful-looking vitamin levels in your bloodstream, but they might not be in the tissue. The same thing with minerals. That’s why optimizing that’s going to get you much better results.
As far as longevity goes, just removing these senescent proteins is going to give your body a little space. If you’re leaning and if you’re really cleaning up your life, if you’re not still eating lots of processed food and toxic things, not overdoing drugs and alcohol, which is– it’s really funny when people think they can keep doing that. As I said, some people can because there are many people who are 90 who abuse everything. [laughs] That’s my other thing I have to remind people is that I’ve met very, very healthy people who die young and very, very unhealthy people who live a long time. All we can do is increase our odds. There’s no guarantees in medicine at all– in health.
When we use plasmapheresis for longevity, we’re getting rid of old information. This comes out of– there were some original studies with the animal studies, I think by the Conroy’s, I think the Conroy’s or Conboy’s, I forget, I don’t want to ruin their name, at Stanford, where they were hooking old and young rats and mice up to– I think it was rats, probably because they’re bigger, to parabiosis.
They were combining their bloodstreams and finding that the old animals got younger and the young animals got older, so they thought, “Aha.” Then it turned out, and some people still believe that it’s the information from the young animals that are making the old animals younger. That’s where some people are doing plasmics. They’re actually giving people young plasma. I don’t think it’s worth the risk, but that’s–
Ari: Why? What do you think the risk is of this young blood transfusion? When they do young blood transfusions, is it just the plasma or all of the blood?
Dr. Gordon: No, just the plasma, because it’s plasma because God knows what else is in there. [laughs] I have people who come to me who, God forbid, they’re afraid of getting albumin. We use albumin as the replacement fluid, and albumin is a pooled product at this point. We draw blood from 1,000 people, and they take the albumin out. They purify it, and that’s the point. They purify it. The purification process for albumin, and the same thing is for intravenous immune globulin, these are purified. They are clean. There’s no spike protein left.
I’ve gone through this process. A, I’ve tested them for spike protein, but more importantly, you go through the process of how it’s made. Albumin is able to tolerate levels of cold alcohol, ethanol, that denatures and breaks apart spike protein. It just isn’t there. Welcome to the internet, everybody’s sure it’s everywhere. It can be, but it’s not in the albumin or the iDig.
What Toxins Does the Filter Actually Remove?
Ari: Let me ask you this. There has been some research, if I remember correctly, showing something to the effect of diluting old plasma could provide some of the same effects as infusing young plasma. Are you familiar with any of that?
Dr. Gordon: Exactly. That’s what we’re talking about, because basically what we’re doing is we’re taking off the old plasma, we’re giving you new albumin, and your body’s going to make the rest of those materials that were in the plasma, so you’re getting new stuff. Yes, some people have tried to do it just with dilution, feeling that if they take off some of it and they just put back saline, you can only do that up to about 750 milliliters, so not quite– like three-quarters of a liter of stuff. I don’t think that’s very effective because you’re already spending the money. The machine is what’s expensive in the nursing time, so you might as well get the whole thing out.
What we’re doing is we’re diluting your plasma, yes, and we’re allowing your body to make new stuff. One of the big things is albumin is a toxic sponge. That’s what it does. It goes into your tissues. It goes in the interstitial spaces, and it carries out toxins and lots of chemical debris. It usually goes to the liver, where it drops it off if it can, and you make new albumin. The albumin lives, a molecule of albumin, about three weeks, give or take. You’re always recycling your albumin.
The point is that, as the liver functions less well, which happens when your gut has been inflamed for years because your liver has been working really hard dealing with crap that it shouldn’t have to deal with because that’s just what happens. All the blood from your intestines, except for the last third, goes directly to your liver, and that’s where it’s filtered. You shouldn’t be allowing a lot of toxins out of the gut, but when the gut is so-called leaky and it’s just inflamed, a lot more goes across. The liver has to work a lot harder to get rid of it and put it back into the gut, and hopefully, you’ll get rid of it that time around.
The liver also has to then deal with this albumin and then remove the toxins from it and metabolize them and get them out into your urine or through your stool. Giving a fresh supply, I think, is a really good thing. I’ve seen this in healthy people. It’s really exciting when you do one or two, and as I said, we’re still working out how much, how often people should be doing this. Nobody knows yet. This is the Wild West.
Ari: Probably differs between somebody with a complex illness who’s very sick compared to a healthy person.
Dr. Gordon: Yes, but even with healthy people. Forget about sick people. Sick people is another– but healthy people, how often you should do it, how frequently should you do it? People have looked at doing it once a month or doing it twice a week, monthly. The studies are just being done, and it’ll be a while until we really have good answers because it’s expensive, and to do the studies are expensive. Luckily, some wealthy people in Silicon Valley have put up money to do a bunch of work with Dr. Kiprov and the Buck Institute, which has really been very exciting. We’re having data.
We really learned. I never expected heavy metals to be a big deal because most of the heavy metals are in your tissues. They’re in your bloodstream for a very short time, but it turned out that this did remove a reasonable amount of– I don’t remember the numbers, but much more than I thought and other people who are in the toxicology world thought we would find. This is a very good procedure, and the question is how young people should start. Again, nobody knows. We’re making it up.
Ari: Let me ask you this. Has much work been done on actually measuring what is in the removed, the filtered compounds?
Dr. Gordon: Oh, yes.
Ari: What is actually ending up there? First of all, as far as stuff that shouldn’t be there, I’m also curious what stuff is being maybe removed that should be there. What stuff from the body that should maybe be kept in, or maybe you have to be cautious with removing too much of? Are there particles with nutrients bound to them that are also being removed? Do we have to replenish certain nutrients after that? What types of toxins, what types of compounds, end up in that filtered component?
Dr. Gordon: As I said, some heavy metals, teeny, teeny bit of microplastics. More things like the pesticides, herbicides, things that we really don’t want to have in our system. I sent a bunch away to Switzerland, and we found significant amounts of DDT and DDE, which is a breakdown product of DDT. That should have been out of America in the late ’70s, but yet I’ve had 18-year-olds that we’ve done this because they’re chronically ill. They’ve had significant levels of DDE and DDT. We know this is there because they did this on umbilical cord blood, and they [unintelligible 00:59:43] levels. Basically, almost all the fat-soluble toxins are there, which is most of them. They’re floating around the blood.
The herbicides, pesticides, and the forever chemicals, PFASs, those come out. The question that I still don’t know for sure is, are the volumes significant? The people that have done the read, because we don’t have all the numbers yet, the researchers who I know who are working with Dr. Kiprov and also with Paul Savage, who’s starting to walk in places for plasma freezes, to be fair, they’ve done some pretty nice research, too, and I’ve spoken to some of them. Though they haven’t published the exact amounts, they’ve been impressed that it seems to be significant that it will affect health over time, that we are–
Ari: Yes, I’m curious about that, too, because I think when you talk about, for example, pesticide residues or herbicides or some of the other things you mentioned there, microplastics, that it is removing them, that it’s ending up in, I think it’s called, the filtrate is the proper word.
Dr. Gordon: Yes, or the eluate, whatever you like. Yes, filtrate.
Ari: What’s the other word?
Dr. Gordon: Eluate, but filtrate makes more sense, yes.
Ari: Okay. I think the natural interpretation of that by most people would be, “Oh, yes, it’s pulling all of that stuff.” It’s a perfect filter that it’s like a sieve that just captures any one of those particles or every one of those particles of pesticide residues or heavy metals or microplastics and pulls it out into the filtrate.
The question is, okay, the fact that you’re measuring it in the filtrate that you can detect DDT or you can detect glyphosate or mercury or microplastics, well, did it just pull out maybe the same proportion of what was already there in the bloodstream? Let’s just use easy numbers here. Let’s say you had 1% of your blood was something bad, microplastics. It’s probably more like 0.00001, whatever the number is.
Dr. Gordon: Quite small, thank God.
Ari: Let’s just say 1% for easy math. In the filtrate, is it also 1% of that material is microplastics or is that substance, meaning, did it leave still a huge amount floating in the bloodstream?
Dr. Gordon: Basically, if it’s in the blood and it’s in the plasma component, if it’s not attached to the red blood cell or the white blood cell, if it’s in the plasma component, it’s going to take it out. The thing is that most of this stuff is stored in fat tissue. There’s not high levels in the blood. The idea is by getting it out and reducing the load because the thing that makes these chemicals so dangerous to us is that we don’t get rid of them well. We don’t metabolize, and the liver isn’t able to do much with them. It just puts them back into circulation.
It doesn’t dump them into the blood in a form that can then be urinated out or back into the stool through the bile. Lots of times it stays attached to the albumin and gets recirculated. That’s why it’s good to do it. We are removing. What I can see from healthy people is that the inflammation in their body, in a lot, goes down. They do significantly better after they’ve– depends on how they are. On some people, who I didn’t really think needed plasmapheresis– I just had one friend who is 55 and has lived a healthy life, really careful about everything, but she really wanted to do it. We did two of them.
Again, we prepare. We do some of these before and after. I do some things I think that helped lower the amount of senescent cells as well. Anyways, just acutely, we did two over two weeks. She surprised me because she really had a dump of– she lost like eight pounds within a week. She wasn’t fat. This means that you lose– the fluid is often there because it’s trying to dilute the toxins that are in the interstitial space. You really seem to be getting the stuff out of the space that’s in– the interstitial tissues are those spaces between the organs and between the ligaments and stuff. That should be– when you see–
There was a French guy who did micrographs. He had a laparoscope, but one that was microscopic. He could see into the carpal tunnel. You could see this in young people, this really crystalline, white, shiny structure. As people aged, it looked yellow and gunky because that’s what your body stores the garbage. That’s why people have those areas that are constantly tender and a little puffy because they’re storing garbage in their tissues because their liver couldn’t deal with it. That’s the thing.
By removing this, I think we are helping clear that space out. That seems to be helpful. Again, I agree, I’m somewhat skeptical over removing huge amounts, but it seems to be enough that it gives the body some room, and it does good things. [laughs]
The Risks and Safety of Blood Filtering
Ari: Are there any risks of it? Is there any potential for harm?
Dr. Gordon: That’s the cool part. You can always hurt somebody doing anything, but you really almost know what the side effect is.
Ari: Skydiving is considerably more dangerous than drinking water, though.
Dr. Gordon: You got an IV in one arm and an IV in the other arm. At any one time, there’s only about 120 cc’s of blood in the circuit. If the machine stopped working, you’d lose 120 cc’s of blood, which is, basically, when you go give blood, they take about 400 cc’s. You’re not losing too much blood. Again, unless you’re a very tiny person, then it could be not so good. The symptoms that people have is we use something called citrated dextrose, which is citrate in the circuit, not in your body, but in the machine, so the blood won’t clot when it’s going through the machine. We introduce citrate, which binds calcium, which prevents blood from clotting. When there’s not enough calcium, the whole clotting cascade can’t happen.
It binds a little magnesium as well. Sensitive people can feel a little dizzy, lightheaded, a little of that feeling of numbness around their lips and stuff. We usually deal with that by having people take some calcium citrate orally beforehand. We also, in the IV, sometimes we add it to the albumin directly, or we just put a bottle in between the albumin bottles to put back calcium and magnesium and some other trace minerals that we think is a good idea. No, people don’t die from this. There’s no fatalities. You’re not going to die. It’s funny because it’s a closed system. Basically, it’s just taking stuff out of your blood, and we’re putting back albumin and your blood.
Ari: On that point, I’ll tell you, in general, among our friends and colleagues, what a lot of people do is there’s this popularity of IV-related treatments, IV infusions of nutrients, and things like that. There are bars that you can go to, little stands. Often, at these health summits, you’ll see these little pop-up stands of, “Here, come get your IV vitamins and your IV glutathione and your IVB vitamins,” and whatever else, Myers’ cocktail, and that sort of stuff.
What has always been at the forefront of my mind and why I have a big aversion to that, apart from the fact that we’re not necessarily designed to get direct infusion of vitamins into our bloodstream, circumventing the oral route and the digestive tract, but apart from that, is it’s plastic bags with plastic tubing. Obviously, there’s much more awareness around plastics now, not only of the microplastics concern, but of BPA, other endo-BPS, other chemicals that are used in plastic and PVC. DEHP is another one. That’s a hormone disruptor.
Even if, let’s say, there was a legitimate benefit to whatever is in that bag of fluid being infused into my body, well, now I have to balance that with the potential risk of chemicals from that plastic also being directly infused into my bloodstream. What are your thoughts on that, and what risks also apply to plasmapheresis?
Dr. Gordon: Yes and no, because they do– Most of the time, we get bags now that don’t have the DHEP and all those other chemicals. The tubing– it’s been a while. I should have had this off the top of my head, but I had forgotten. I did look into this because that was a big question, is how much exposure are we having? The membranes? They have made sure that these are not leachable as far as we know. At this point, the next generation of the plastic, the thing that’s used to hold the stuff in the centrifuge, it’s like a silicon-derived thing that doesn’t leach at all. That’s definitely an issue because that was a big deal.
That’s why for many years, we used to try to use only glass bottles for the stuff we did for IVs, because that was a big issue. Now, most of the companies have switched to the things that don’t leach. That is definitely an issue. The thing is that we see much more– there are many more reactions. If you’re going to get IV– I personally like high-dose IV vitamin C. For me, it’s like a miracle thing. If I get a cold the first day, if I do that, it’s gone, and I don’t get post-viral fatigue. I’m one of those people who get post-viral fatigue. I can have a minimal cold, and I’ll be pushing for 10 days afterwards. If I do the vitamin C, I’m fine. Other people, I do other IVs, I don’t feel anything. We’re all very different.
I have some patients who every IV is like a miracle for them. I’ve done most of them, and I don’t feel anything. We’re different. We need different things. For this one, this is one that I think the changes are significant enough in the people that I’ve seen. In their long-term health, I think the risk is so tiny, because other than the possible materials in the tubing, which is a very small, short exposure, it’s so safe because it’s not a complex IV that we’re adding lots and lots of stuff to. We’re just getting magnesium, calcium, and sometimes a little potassium in there. It’s very safe.
Ari: Does the risk-benefit calculus change, do you think, depending on who the person is, a healthy person versus a person with serious illness? Maybe they’ve tried lots of other treatments without much benefit, and they’re looking to try something that might potentially benefit?
Dr. Gordon: No, I think if somebody’s been ill for a long time, I’m less likely to jump up and down about doing plasmapheresis without doing a lot of other work first. I just don’t think that– at least in my hands. I’ve heard miracle stories, but that’s not what I’ve seen. I’ve seen that people improve if we do the right things around them. In the healthier people is where I feel is a more unrestrained yes, which is weird, considering this is a big intervention. The long-term benefits of giving your body a chance to reset and lower this inflammatory load– again, on the theoretical plane, I wasn’t– Well, I was, sure. It’s me. There was just something about it. It’s your gut.
I read about this stuff, and I thought this makes sense to me mostly because of the information molecules you’re removing, because, again, you’re allowing a reset of the system. It’s what I’ve seen. I’ve seen people who are, I said they’re walking. They’re maybe not the healthiest people on the planet but they don’t have any illness that they would come see me for. Those are the people who, after two or many times, I like to do two, I say in a week or one week, for two weeks, something like that, and then repeat it again in a month or two. After doing that for two or three times, their general overall health and well-being seems to improve. I’m hoping that that is going to continue.
Now, again, this is way too early to know. Dr. Kiprov was involved with a study, I think it was called the– not Amber. Oh God, not the Amber study, but it’s something that sounds just like that, where they did– this was back in, I think, 2010, 2012 to ’16. They did plasmapheresis in people with early to mild dementia. They saw some benefits. It wasn’t rocket science benefits. I do feel, again, that it is useful. I recommend, again, in the people who are going elsewhere for stem cells, people who are leaving the country to get not just the stem cells we have in America, but some things that are, I think, a little next level.
I really do feel that plasmapheresis before is going to make that work better. It’s going to remove a lot of the noise that’s in the system. The trick is that we’re just removing a lot of stuff that is interfering with clear communication in the body for a short time. That’s to your point, is that cytokines diminish, but they’re back within days. The autoantibodies are back within usually weeks to months, if you haven’t dealt with why they’re there. Just the big cleaning out of the system and putting in the new albumin, it seems to allow a lot of the healing that was interrupted.
This goes back to the whole point that I made in the beginning about these– I don’t think it’s just the senescent-associated proteins, but it’s any– well, I guess they’re all technically all senescent-associated proteins. It’s the fact that we are a mosaic of partially healed cells just by living. By removing the proteins that keep those cells alive and keep feeding back to them and to the other cells in the body that there’s something amiss, I think we’re giving the body a chance to get back to a better homeostasis or allostasis, I guess, however you want to put it.
I’ve been impressed with that. I think for people with chronic illness, I’m still working on it, how to do that the best. I think it’s going to take another year or two of experimenting, of seeing what’s removed, because we’re trying to get better labs for figuring out what’s coming out in these different illnesses, if it’s more of one toxin or the other, and how to support them in the before and after, because that’s really the thing. If you’ve been chronically ill, I don’t think just changing the water once or twice is going to make everything better, but it’s going to allow other things we do, I hope, to work better.
That goes back to what I was talking about in the very beginning, is that now, through the wonders of modern technology, I’m beginning to have a better idea of what that person is really– that their system is deficient in. It’s not just the absolute number, but actually seeing the pathway that’s not working well, and how we can support that, or how we can look at their genes and see if really they just have a weakness in absorption of the nutrient that’s needed. Maybe they need more of something. When we were speaking in the beginning about wellness, like why I didn’t go into the wellness medicine when I got out of medical school, is because I didn’t know what people needed to be well.
When they were really sick, I knew where to look. Now, I think in the next year, two years, the amount of exciting tests that are coming out there that are measuring millions of things that we don’t know what they mean, but with AI, we’re going to be able to see quicker what they mean. Then we’re going to be able to adjust and be able to help the system find out how to be healthier.
Now, again, this goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning. You still need a commitment in this day and age to have a healthy lifestyle because if you don’t have a commitment, the push is to have a lifestyle that, no matter what we do, is probably not going to be enough. [laughs] It’s getting back to balance and getting back to nature.
Last thing, I’m going to wind up here. I have been so impressed when I meet people who have really lived in nature, or just the times that I get to spend just in nature and the brain quiets a little bit, and you’re realizing that you’re part of a system, that there’s an intelligence, a life force around you. I know in this modern world everybody [scoffs], but no, that’s the reality. If you settle into that, and if you begin to feel what’s really happening, your body will resonate at levels that healing can happen because it’s that resonation, that energetic.
That’s why the sunlight is so important, and just the people you’re around are so important to, I think, have a better chance at being healthy. You still can be the nastiest son of a bitch and do fine, but I do think that health and happiness is in your heart if you can open up to the world of nature around you and listen less to me, [laughs] and to what new chemical I can find that’s going to make you better.
Practical Advice Before Trying Plasmapheresis
Ari: Yes, absolutely. Eric, I almost want to end on that note because it was beautifully said. I have a couple of more questions for you, though. One is just practical advice for people if someone is looking into plasmapheresis, if your salesmanship here was successful in convincing people that they might want to explore this and they’re considering going to a clinic to do this, what are some questions or things they should look for, questions they should ask to make sure that maybe related to the technology or related to how they do the procedure, the before and after, different aspects of doing this that people should be aware of?
Dr. Gordon: For the technology, it’s pretty straightforward. There’s two main machines being used in America. They’re both great. They both do well. The people who use them, basically, it’s the nurses who do it. They’re well-trained. The people who sell the machines won’t let anybody use them who doesn’t complete their certification. You’re not going to walk in, and at least you shouldn’t walk in and find somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing. [laughs] On that level, I think it’s pretty much the same.
I have an issue. For anybody who has any health issues, I think you’re better– I think for anybody, running it slower is better than faster. A lot of the places, because it’s about money, if people have good veins, good blood flow, you can run it in two hours. I think three hours-plus is a better speed. I just think– it’s not that I think, it is more efficient. You get more out. I think it’s easier on the body. Again, for a healthy person, I don’t think it’s a big factor. For people who are ill, it is a big factor because when you’re ill, your system is offing. Just the fluid shifts alone can make you not feel well. Again, it’s transient. You’re not going to die from it, but you’ll feel lousier.
Some people, once they start, if you’re ill– when healthy people feel bad, they usually feel better the next day because many people will feel a little worn out after the procedure, but they’ll get a good night’s sleep, often sleep really deep, and feel fine the next day. Sick people, not so much. I’ve had patients who’ve had chronic fatigue who, in the beginning, that I didn’t prepare well enough, that they were exhausted for a week. It’s because we didn’t prepare. When you’re really toxic and you remove a lot, more will come out of the tissues. It’s not a one-way street. You will get more out of the tissue, and if your body can’t handle it, that new stuff can make you not feel well.
The speed, I think, is nice. Again, I think to talk to them about how they support you before and after. I feel most of the people who are doing this do have programs where they are making sure that people are well hydrated, their minerals are up, their nutrients are up before, and supporting them after because you really need– this is where I don’t always love a ton of supplements, but a reasonable amount can be needed because your body is now able to work a little harder, and so having the right nutrients can be helpful.
Again, a lot of places have a standard nutrient package. Again, it gets more expensive, but I like to do testing before to make sure that I’m giving you just what you need. I don’t like taking a lot of stuff. I’m a terrible supplement taker. I’ll take nothing for a month, and then I’ll take a few things for a while. There’s times when my body might need it, and this is one of those times when you’re cleaning stuff out. It’s a time to really have the right nutrients to let your immune system and everything work optimally because this is what you’re looking for. This is what you’re spending the money on is to reboot the system and bring you to a new level.
Those are the main things is just to make sure that people are paying attention to who you are before you start this and what it is that you might need to get the most out of it, because as I said, this is not like getting a vitamin C IV. You’re looking at probably 10 to 15 times that cost. You want to be thoughtful and make sure that this is the best way to spend your money because if money is an issue and you’re chronically ill, I wouldn’t be doing this unless you really had a long discussion and were sure this was what you needed.
If you’re healthy and have money to burn, I think it’s a fine thing to do. If you’re healthy and you have limited resources, I would consider making sure that you make more time to walk in the park and exercise and breathe and do other things rather than just get plasmapheresis. This isn’t going to overcome an absolute sedentary lifestyle. Don’t waste your money if that’s your thought.
The True Role of a Healer
Ari: Eric, one more question for you. Big picture, not on plasmapheresis, specifically. More philosophical than anything. You said at the beginning of this discussion when you were talking about Band-Aid medicine and doing that work. First of all, the way that you spoke about that is very interesting. Most of the time somebody talks about Band-Aid medicine, you would hear it framed in this very negative way where it’s like, “Oh, that’s just Band-Aid medicine. Really, we need to work on natural health and nutrition and lifestyle.” That’s the typical framing that you would hear that conversation pop up.
Your framing was different. You embraced Band-Aid medicine and said something to the effect of, “Yes, I want to get really good at it. I want to get really good at helping people with specific problems fix those specific problems.” Then passing, I wrote this down, you said, “To keep you alive long enough for the body to figure out how to heal.” I think that there’s a lot there.
I don’t want to put too many words in your mouth here, but the contrast with some doctors strikes me because some people really conceptualize themselves, and I feel there’s a lot of ego in this for many people, we conceptualize them as the healers, the ones who are doing the healing for the patient. Sometimes people can be extremely egocentric about that, and identified with this healer who is the one performing this miracle on the person. Your framing was to keep you alive long enough with this Band-Aid medicine for your body to figure out how to heal. I’m curious if you could just– you said it in passing, but I’d love for you to just speak a bit more about your philosophy on that.
Dr. Gordon: I have always listened to people. When you listen to people, and you believe them, you wind up over years getting other people’s failures. At this point in my life, I only see people who have tried lots and lots of very good doctors and people who I have learned from, who I think are really smart. I know that I don’t have the absolute answer for them. I just know that if I keep listening, I’m going to hear the hints of the support their body needs.
I love magic. I love magicians. I love healers. I work with many healers. One of my favorites is this Chilean fellow. As he puts it, “I’m just your cheerleader. I’m not the shaman. I’m not healing you.” Now, there are people who can go places I believe and I’ve seen, who can open the doors to really allow your healing. I guess that’s the most I would say is that I hope by modulating your symptoms, because that’s what the Band-Aid medicine does, it addresses symptoms. Sometimes by modulating those symptoms, by getting you in a place where you can find your own force and you can align with your own healing ability or just get out of your own way because it goes both ways.
Lots of just getting out of your own way because this prefrontal cortex, which I don’t have a good one, that’s maybe why the part that thinks it can control everything, isn’t really there to help you heal. It’s there to help you survive in humanity, to survive in culture. You need to go deeper, more primitive to find the places to heal. You’ve got to get out of your own way. Everything I’m doing is trying to cut some of the noise because what most people who are chronically ill, fear is what’s in their bodies. Even if they’re calm and cool and collected, the body is in a state of alarm. That in your limbic system often triggers fear.
That’s the way I want to remove the senescent associated proteins that are signaling keeping your body sick. I want to, by giving you some space from some of your symptoms, allow that fear to diminish, that survival fear. Again, I don’t mean being a fearful person. It’s just what happens when everything feels bad, to allow you to connect and to allow that deeper part that’s our inner self to begin to get back in control, because our modern world is so much about control and protection. That’s not where the healing is because that’s not where the energy is. I think I’ve told you this before, this didn’t take me any energy. Your muscles contract. You don’t use ATP for that.
That is where I use my ATP, when I have to relax them. If you don’t relax them, they can’t contract again. [chuckles] It’s the same thing in all levels. The Band-Aids are there to allow a little bit of ease to come into life. The more ease we have, the more likely we’re going to be able to find what we need and what you need for your healing. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that I don’t know. [laughs] I just keep looking for lots of answers until I can find the ones that fit the person in front of me. That’s the name of the game. That’s why we keep learning because humanity has got a lot of people out there. There’s a lot of different ways to be sick. Anyway, that’s my story.
Ari: Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show again for time number three or four. It’s yet to be determined. I’ll have to look up how many times you’ve been on the show. Always a pleasure having conversations with you. I always learn so much. This was fascinating. I didn’t know much about plasmapheresis coming into this. As I said, I just generally avoid stuff where my blood is being taken out or stuff is being infused into my blood as a general rule. [chuckles] You’ve sufficiently piqued my interest, I’ll say that. Yes, I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Where can people get in touch with you, work with you, follow you? Where do you want to send them?
Dr. Gordon: Oh, just gordonmedical.com. It’s named after me. I’m sure we have an Instagram site, and at this site and at that site. I must admit, I do my best to avoid– I like watching videos on YouTube that I learn from. Other than that, I don’t do much on the phone. [laughs] On anything that’s in social media, if you put in Gordon Medical, you can find us. We do have a Gordon Medical Forum, which I am very interested in because that’s when I talk.
Sometimes have people, have Ari on, and people who I’m interested in learning from. That’s a time when you don’t listen to me, thank God, or I’m there listening to other people and trying to share what’s new out there because as we keep creating new diseases, we keep creating new ways to heal and find new ways in.
One last plug, not for me, but for people. I want to put together, I’ve interviewed probably at least 15 or 20 people who work in the psychospiritual domain over the last five years since I’ve been doing interviews. One of these days, I want to put them all together, because you have to shop and find what resonates with you. We are different beings, and we all can learn from others, but they have to be speaking the language that resonates in our being.
Don’t give up because you’ve seen some therapist or listened to some guru, and it sounds like garbage. Keep looking. I love the biochemistry, but at the end of the day, the magic is in your soul. Good luck. Ari, thank you, as always. It’s so much fun talking to you. You let me ramble, and I just hope your audience doesn’t object. [laughs]
Ari: You’re one of few people that I actually enjoy your long rambles. I’ve always found your mind very interesting, so I like to let you just go uninterrupted and see where your mind takes us.
Dr. Gordon: Thank you. I’m working on trying to keep it more linear, but we’ll get there someday. Thank you so much. A pleasure as always.
Ari: Thank you, my friend. I look forward to our next conversation.
Dr. Gordon: Yes, me too. Bye-bye.
Show Notes
00:00 – Intro & Dr. Gordon’s Background
06:10 – Band-Aid Medicine & Cellular Healing
09:59 – The Cell Danger Response Explained
20:39 – The Flaws of Biological Reductionism
29:56 – What is Plasmapheresis?
42:18 – Using Plasmapheresis for Longevity vs. Chronic Illness
51:056 – What Toxins Does the Filter Actually Remove?
1:02:46 – The Risks and Safety of Blood Filtering
1:17:15 – Practical Advice Before Trying Plasmapheresis
1:22:40 – The True Role of a Healer
Links
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