Join my upcoming Facebook Live session “How to Start A Cleanse” on January 7, 2025!

https://www.facebook.com/events/s/how-to-start-a-cleanse/857306036340354/

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Daniel Kantor, a neurologist with a passion for helping people live better while managing conditions like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and migraines.

Dr. Kantor shares how the nervous and immune systems work together in ways that can impact our health. He also offers tips like simple lifestyle changes and stress-relief strategies that anyone can use to feel more in control of their well-being.

Discover more about the nervous system’s role in chronic illness, the latest advancements in research, and gain helpful strategies to boost your health!

Tune in to the Fast Metabolism Matters Podcast – Caring for Your Nervous System with Dr. Daniel Kantor

Enjoy this episode? Subscribe to Fast Metabolism Matters and leave a 5-star review.

Join my upcoming Facebook Live session, “Nutritionist’s Tips for Detox” on January 21, 2025.

https://www.facebook.com/events/s/nutritionists-tips-for-detox/899697792346662/

Get my nutrition and supplement programs for the best results.

PLUS Get 20% off when you buy from my shop!

https://hayliepomroy.com/podcast

Join us in our future Cleanse Challenges here.

https://hayliepomroy.com/cleanse

Get a FREE hard copy of the Fast Metabolism Diet book!

https://hayliepomroy.com/freebook

Become a member, FREE for 30 days.

https://hayliepomroy.com/member

Daniel Kantor, MD, FAAN, is the president emeritus of the Florida Society of Neurology and the founding president of Medical Partnership 4 MS (MP4MS). He actively serves on advisory committees for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation (MSF), the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America (MSAA), and MS Views and News (MSVN). Dr. Kantor is the chief medical correspondent for MS World and co-scientific director of the Corrona MS patient registry. He has held leadership roles including chair of the Florida Medicaid Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee, director of the Comprehensive MS Center at the University of Florida - Jacksonville, and neurology residency program director at Florida Atlantic University. He is board-certified in neurology and headache medicine.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KantorNeurology

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kantorneurology/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrDanielKantor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kantorneurology/

Transcript Below:

Haylie Pomroy: I'm Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times bestselling author and the former Assistant Director of the Integrative Medicine Program at the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine. I say “former” because I've decided to go back to school. I am now in the PhD program in neuroimmunology. I'm doing this because I, like you, am a lifelong learner and there is no better place in the world that does research, clinical medicine, translational medicine, biostatistics, analytics, that is studying how the nervous system and the immune system, and inflammatory processes interact together, that's where I'm going to school. Join me today as we talk about how the nervous system is involved in chronic illness. We have a very special guest. I have Dr. Daniel Kantor. He is with us in Florida. He is the President Emeritus of the Florida Society of Neurology and we have some pretty interesting topics to talk about today. Dr. Kantor, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Thank you so much for having me.

Haylie Pomroy: I really appreciate it. And before we started, you and I started just going down all of these rabbit holes about the millions of questions that our community wanted to ask you. But first, I want to talk about the immune system and how the nervous system interacts. I think so many times we believe that we can separate the two. Shed some light on this one for me.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: First, I think we have to define some of the things we're talking about. The first aspect is, in medicine, we use a lot of jargon. Even the word jargon means fancy words. It's a fancy word that means fancy words. Let's break down what we're talking about.

Haylie Pomroy: You're not going to talk over my head today. Thank you, doctor.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: The immune system you guys talk about here all the time. But I think it's important not just for me to answer it, but I think when people back home go and see their doctor, I always think it's a good idea if you have a lifetime diagnosis and I prefer to call chronic illness a lifetime diagnosis because it's like the cable station. You turn off the TV, it's still going on in the background. Even when you're not watching it, you still have to pay your cable bills. And so it's the same idea. The idea is that stuff is happening in our bodies, and we have to monitor it, and we have to take care of it. Even when we're not having an attack or a flare. It depends on which diagnosis you have, what people call it. The immune system is the body's defense forces. Normally the body fights off outside invaders bacteria, viruses, fungi. It also fights off your own self when it gets too active, such as cancer. But sometimes the immune system goes haywire and instead of attacking other things, it attacks you, and we call that autoimmunity. Neurology is the field studying the nervous system, and our nerves. We think about the nervous system in terms of three major areas: The central nervous system, that's the brain, the optic nerves which are actually just an outpouching of the brain itself. Really it’s true what they say, the eyes are the window to the soul, the eyes that’s why your doctor looks inside your eyes. We actually see the front of your brain. And then there is the cervical spine and the thoracic spinal cord. That's the central nervous system. Peripheral nervous system is from the spinal cord on, in your arms and your legs. And people probably commonly hear about it when they watch commercials and they see for diabetic neuropathy. That's not the central nervous system, that's the peripheral. Then there's also the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is this idea of flight or fright. For people listening and watching, I think I don't have to explain too much about how doctors don't often understand the autonomic nervous system as well as they could.

Haylie Pomroy: Or even acknowledge that there's anything impacting it or anything that can better modulate it. It's this evasive, elusive thing that “It's all in your mind, it feels like.”

Dr. Daniel Kantor: You actually just said something important and you said “It’s all in your mind.” I take care of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and MS is the most common autoimmune disorder of the central nervous system. We have other ones, it's also considered...

Haylie Pomroy: I have to stop you just for a second because you just said something and I asked you before we started, and I said, are you aware because we're so heavily indoctrinated, first, in believing the patients, second, in believing in sound science, and third, in finding results. But there are doctors out there, there are people in our community that are having the experience where their doctors still do not believe that MS is an autoimmune disorder or has an autoimmune component. I just wanted you to know that.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I got to tell you, it actually surprises me. That surprises me because I feel like it's almost the other way within neurology, everyone assumes it's autoimmune and maybe part of it isn't. And I usually raise awareness to the fact that part of it is not autoimmune. There are two aspects: There's an autoimmune aspect, and there's the big inflammation and the neuroinflammation and those we call “flares” or relapses or attacks. And then there's this smoldering idea. There's this low-lying inflammation. But then there's also just breakdown of the cells. Unfortunately in my field in neurology, we call that neurodegenerative. And I say “unfortunately” because historically, the word neurodegenerative is a very bad slur. It was used in France to refer to the idea that there is degeneration through the generations. People had a neurodegenerative disorder because there was something wrong with their genes. They didn’t know about DNA but they knew their families. They came from a family where the father had some problems and their grandfather had a little bit of a problem, and now the child has many, many more problems. I'm preparing a manuscript actually to send in. I'm considering whether it should go to the field of neurology or something like general medicine, like New England Journal of Medicine or Journal of American Medical Association or Lancet because I think we should raise awareness to the fact that we're doing that. It's like in medicine, we use words that matter. A lot of times we use words like “provider.” I'm going to tell you, physicians hate the word provider. Provider has its roots in Nazi Germany. That's one of the first things they did is they took Jewish doctors and they said, you're not for people. First, they can only take care of other Jewish people. And also you're no longer this doctor patient relationship, you're a provider.

Haylie Pomroy: You're providing a service.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: You're providing a service. As opposed to the doctors who were the non-Jewish people or the other people that they killed throughout the Holocaust.

Haylie Pomroy: There's always such a history.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: There is a history.

Haylie Pomroy: In nomenclature and in medicine specifically.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I think language is really important. I am a little biased. I was an English major, I had a concentration in literary theory.

Haylie Pomroy: Us dyslexics love you.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: It's important, though, how we talk about things. Nowadays we live in a world of gaslighting.

Haylie Pomroy: Medical gaslighting.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: And we live in a world of not just political gaslighting, not just societal gaslighting, medical gaslighting.

Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. We get patients that come to us all the time that tell us that they weren't believed. Dr. Klimas was saying the other day, we were talking and she said we wasted 10 years on research just proving that ME/CFS had a neuroimmunological component or is neuro immunologically based, maybe infectious based, maybe environmental medicine based? We wasted 10 years in the United States, where in other countries they were just, “Yes, it exists. These are the biomarkers.” And moving on to treatment and to diagnostics.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Again, a lot of this has to do with the history. In the 1800s they talked about this crazy idea that one day there will be a doctor that deals with feet, and a doctor that deals with the nervous system and a doctor that deals with the stomach. We have all, we have podiatrists, we have neurologists, we have gastroenterologists.

Haylie Pomroy: And we don't have soloed human beings, siloed human beings.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Exactly! And even within our own fields, we become siloed. Even within neurology, the neurologists who take care of multiple sclerosis don't nearly talk as much as they should with the neurologist to take care of Parkinson's disease, or the neurologist who takes care of migraine, or the neurologist who takes care of concussion. Even within our same field, we don't communicate well enough.

Haylie Pomroy: Because in neurology, MS, and Parkinson's, those have a common component? Or is it because the environment for which they manifest is common?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: The reason I think it's important is I think the only way we move forward is by learning from other people. I think we should learn from other fields. In fact, I actually think that human medicine should learn from veterinary medicine and vice versa.

Haylie Pomroy: You know that's my background.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I didn't actually know that.

Haylie Pomroy: My first degree is in agriculture, soil sciences. I worked with the zoo in Nebraska, Denver Zoo, and then I had gotten into vet school. And then I had to take a medical leave of absence because I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. After being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and being very frustrated with Imuran, CellCept, Mepron, 70 to 80 mg of prednisone a day, I jumped into the world of what was, at the time, called “alternative medicine”, which is now called integrative or functional medicine. 30 years later, still practicing in that space, mostly in the nutrition space. But, I really feel like we're so further, that doesn't relate, human medicine versus veterinary medicine. I said every single one of your human medicines are used on animal models first. Why in the world? Where's the disconnect, people?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: We have a lot of rescue dogs, when I want to listen to the heart, I use the same stethoscope. Not the same one I use on patients. I have one that I keep, but the same idea. I take care of people with concussions. In Florida, I chaired the subcommittee on concussion for the Florida High School Athletic Association. I was very much involved when we started, what I think are the best laws in the country, in the state of Florida. Now, we luckily have laws in every single state that the idea is to take kids out with a low threshold. If you think or suspect they have a concussion, you take them out, and only put them back into play after going and seeing a physician and going through the graded return to play. Why do Rams hit each other in the head and they don't get concussions? Why do woodpeckers peck at wood over and over and over and not get concussions? Why don't they fall off? I don't know. Rams have an area of bone and skull, then they have fat, and then they have another bone. Their skull is made up that way. They have a helmet. Which is interesting because we haven't yet discovered a helmet that's great at preventing concussions. People sometimes think that's what helmets are for. Helmets are to stop you from having a fracture of your skull. And actually what woodpeckers do very, very quickly. You have to watch on these slow-motion cameras, they wrap their tongue around their head, they give themselves a helmet while they're pecking at the wood. I think there's a lot we can learn from each other.

Haylie Pomroy: We can, from nature. One of my favorite journals is nature, not just because of the title, but because I think a lot of their dedication to looking outside and looking at what's happening and showing that a lot is going on in nature that we can still learn from.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: It’s strange that we even have to talk about those, we're human beings, we're of this earth like we come from the same soil that those people came from. We come from the same sorts of molecules that make up DNA as the animals, and mostly very similar to the plants as well. And we're all part of one thing, and yet we somehow think, it’s like an artifice. Now I feel like we're talking about Shakespeare, this idea of, are we talking about artifice? Are we talking about what's going on in the real world or not? But the idea is we're part of that world. For us to think because we're in buildings and we have microphones and we have amazing technology that doesn't take us away, that doesn't stop us from taking off our shoes and going to the beach.

Haylie Pomroy: I'm a diehard nutritionist and I believe in supplementation. And I always say, we're the only species that even questions it. You cannot sell dog food legally without supplementing. You cannot have an animal in captivity without supplementing. We don't raise crops, we cannot separate ourselves. I think one of the things that's critical that we understand is that we have to look to the history of what's happening in medicine and collect and bring all of that forward, even the history and the nomenclature. And that I want to talk a little bit about how we're using that, both in neurology and in immunology, with what we saw with the pandemic and Long COVID. In our world, in our space, and in our community, I can't believe how many people that I've interviewed that have said, we absolutely saw it coming. We have seen MS have a viral component. We have seen ME/CFS at times have either environmental viral component. Some stressor that change the trajectory in the autonomic nervous system and in the immune system and immune response. How are we seeing some of the history of Parkinson's or MS or ME/CFS play out in neurology in Long COVID?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: It's an interesting question. Towards the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, I reached out to JAMA Neurology, the Journal of American Medical Association, they have a neurology journal. And I was considering writing a viewpoint that neurologists should be front and center in terms of caring for people with COVID, and this was before people were talking about the idea of Long haul COVID. This was a fringe movement of patients, God forbid, that had this idea, and one of them lives right here in South Florida, who's been very active. When somebody has unexplained symptoms, for me personally, and again, I am biased because I'm a neurologist, I actually think neurology is the place to go. Because our job as a neurologist is interesting. We have to look at somebody and we just say what they're complaining of, is it neurologic? And if it's neurologic, is it central nervous system, peripheral autonomic, or is it not neurological?

Haylie Pomroy: But you go to a neurologist, they make you do your fingers and they make you point to your nose and they make you follow a pin and say, you look pretty good.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: But you see a neurologist because we can find out most things without a test, without an MRI, without a lab test. 70-80% of what we do is your history in your examination. You go to a neurologist, they'll ask you the same question 5 different times because you'll tell them tingling and they'll say, what do you mean by tingling? And we're asking that for a very specific reason because tingling for some people means what we call “pins and needles.” For other people, it means no feeling. For other people it means less feeling. I've had patients who were talking about weakness and they called it tingling. As you can imagine, we have to just be very careful. Language is very important in terms of us figuring out what's going on. The neurological examination is long. It's like the Simon Says lift up your hand, touch your, oh don't do that. But on the other hand, before their MRI, we could, what we call, localize, and we could figure out where something was coming from and when there was a place that you could localize, it's much easier for people to visualize. And that's why MRI, for better or worse, or here for better, I think. But the new generation of doctors focus way too much on MRIs. And they say, this person I didn't see anything on the MRI, so there's nothing wrong with them.

Haylie Pomroy: It's like no pathophysiology, it's just anatomically is what we're looking at, no function.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: And what you're looking at an MRI, an MRI is like a still picture, in a world of four dimensions, and we’re taking a two-dimensional picture. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But with a careful neurological examination, that's because of the history, especially in the 1800s, especially with Jean-Marie Charcot in France. And one of his students was, some of you may have heard of a neurologist, his name is Sigmund Freud. The most famous psychiatrist was actually a neurologist.

Haylie Pomroy: But it’s right, it's how it should be. That makes sense.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: My psychiatric colleagues may not agree with me, but I think one way of dividing it is what happens is we're interested in the nerves, the covering of the nerves called myelin, we're interested in the bulk of the brain and the nervous system, they're interested in the nothingness. The space in between the 2 terms, maybe the synapse is a very small space in between. We're interested in what goes on in actual wires of the central nervous system.

Haylie Pomroy: How come viruses have such an impact on the nervous system? Are they housed there? Is it the body's response to it?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Coming back to COVID, what we actually learned from COVID is that in real-time, we were watching the creation of new illnesses. One day, thousands of years ago, if you had watched Epstein-Barr the first time the Epstein-Barr virus came, you may have then watched people have multiple sclerosis and put the two things together. But that was so long ago that we can't possibly know about that, but here we have a novel virus. We're actually in real-time. We're seeing people have new neurologic symptoms, and other symptoms, because of that virus themselves.

Haylie Pomroy: That just blew my mind, because I never really thought about the fact that there was such a time lapse in between when Epstein-Barr virus or mono, the virus that causes mono, was discovered and researched to when multiple sclerosis was identified. There was such a difference, and that's because that virus can cause many different diseases. It's not just a straight line to MS.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: About 80% of people have ever been exposed to the kissing disease to mono, and almost 100% or some people say 100% of people with multiple sclerosis, 80% though of the regular population also has been exposed. The question is, why do some people have one exposure and not get a diagnosis and other people do have that same exposure and do have a diagnosis?

Haylie Pomroy: Tons of people trying to figure that one out.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Michael J. Fox, who I would argue is America's sweetheart. Michael J. Fox has and has a disease called Parkinson's disease. Different in many ways from multiple sclerosis, but he said that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. I think that is true for many of our diagnoses that we take care of. If you look at the world of Parkinson's, there's a lot of exposures we're learning about. We're learning about pesticides, herbicides, we’re learning about Agent Orange, people who work in heavy metals, detergents, solvents. There's lots of exposures, multiple head traumas. All these things can help contribute to somebody being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. And then there's also a genetic component. And actually in things like Parkinson's, the genetic component is 10% and in multiple sclerosis, you take somebody who has a mess, guess what, their identical twin, exact same DNA, guess what their chances of having an MS are?

Haylie Pomroy: What? I have no idea.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: It's 30%. If it was completely genetic, it'd be 100%. If it was completely not genetic, it would be 0.1% like the rest of the population, because that's about the prevalence of multiple sclerosis, but it's not. It's 30%. There's a lot that has to do with genes, but that's not the only picture. And the problem is we don't think about our exposures well enough. We can't change our genes. I know people are trying to do these things, but we can't really, in a meaningful way, ever escape our genome, I don't think so.

Haylie Pomroy: We don't have a lot of control over our environment. I was just reading the statistics about air pollution, about how it ranks now as far as disease-causing impacts in our bodies, we can't control laws and legislation, we can make an impact. But if you eat, breathe, drink, sleep, or you're planning on doing that for the rest of your life, you're going to have tons of exposure.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: You’re right, there are some things you can't do for many reasons, one of them is socioeconomic. There was a study done in Southern California, and what they did is they studied people of Hispanic origin, and they studied people who lived next to the highway and people who lived a little further, no difference otherwise in their genetics, no difference overall in how much money they had. The neighborhoods were about the same prices. The people who live closer to the highway had more multiple sclerosis (MS) than the people who live further away. And we have very many reasons to believe that would be true and many diagnoses as well. The things we could do, one of the things we could do is what we put into our mouth. Our food system, the industry here in the United States is problem, but there are things we could do. I think most people, I don't think they really need gluten. I don't really see why you need to have wheat, barley. I don't know why you need that. I know there's a food pyramid, but that food pyramid is politically based. I like the idea of milk. I don't know why you have to drink cow's milk? Is seafood good? Well, salmon more than tuna, because tuna, you have a lot of magnesium exposure. Salmon if it's going to be wild salmon, a lot of times, if you're going to have sustainable farming. All that stuff. Not salmon with two heads and all that stuff. There are things that you can do. I know everyone might not love to hear this at home, but alcohol. I don't think alcohol is necessary for human survival. People enjoy it. If you enjoy it, in very small moderation.

Haylie Pomroy: I want to go back for a second. You said gluten? I've been in the industry for 30 years and gluten became trendy ten years ago. For everybody, “I went gluten-free pizza, went gluten-free this…” I was just in Venice, Italy, and they had gluten-free pasta all over the place. I love this from a neurologist's perspective, there is a glycoprotein. There is a problem, one, again here comes my agriculture and soil science piece, we glutenize our product, which means after production we actually spray it with gluten so that it's more spongy, stretchy, lasts Longer, all of that stuff. We hybridize our seeds so that they have a higher gluten content and gluten as a glycoprotein is in high levels, it's a neurotoxin. It impacts…

Dr. Daniel Kantor: And our gut toxin. We're learning more and more how important that gut interaction is with the rest of the body. Almost every specialty now talks about the microbiome and probiotics. Finally.

Haylie Pomroy: I have a video, a class that I was teaching,I was pregnant with my son who's 26, and I was talking about the gut microbiome, and I just laughed because I was banging down the doors, 26 years, 27 years ago now. But I'm so happy to see that shift and change.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: But we still haven't changed our food sources.You mentioned Europe, when I traveled to Europe, I can eat croissants, I don't need gluten-free foods. It's very interesting because when I'm here, I will be sleeping the rest of the day if I have gluten, but there I don't. There's something very different about how…

Haylie Pomroy: We utilize glycophosphate. We spray very different products.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: We live in Florida. We have homeowners associations, they're spraying tons and tons of these things. When I first moved in my neighborhood, everyone's dog was getting sick, vomiting, because dogs eat grass, things on the ground, and they were getting poisoned. If it affects them, don't we think it affects us?

Haylie Pomroy: Or the kids in the school. One of the sickest buildings.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: My daughter's now 9 years old. Several years ago, she was actually play fighting with her older cousin and in the grass right in front of our house, she got Perry orbital cellulitis. She's lucky she didn't lose her vision, but it was a hospitalization, IV, antibiotics, all these kinds of things that thankfully, we have modern medicine easily accessible in the United States for most people.

Haylie Pomroy: But why?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: You wonder, she got micro-abrasions, probably by wrestling, is the fact that the grass was soaked in roundup, did that have any effect? Is that how the bacteria got into the area around her eyes? It's possible. We don't know exactly what happened. She didn't have a gash. She didn't have anything visibly wrong with her, but her eye started swelling. At first, we thought it was an allergic reaction, but then we realized what was going on.

Haylie Pomroy: But it's the ecosystem, it's the environment. Like you said, even with the twins, where one has MS, one doesn't. If 30% of it is potential for a genetic component, what's going on in the environment? I'm going to pull you back for a second to two things. One, when we saw COVID coming, when COVID became, in our reality, a novel virus. Did you guys think that there was going to be this short line between, we're seeing people with autoimmune triggers, we're seeing people with all kinds of neurological impacts, individuals with inflammatory impacts. When I was over in Europe, they were talking about Asia syndrome with the adjuvants. Did we think that this in general was going to trigger disease so fast? Or were we thinking like with Gulf War injury, we would see people coming back and 6, 5, 7, or 10years later they were manifesting symptoms.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: It's very easy now to say we knew about it. We had no idea. First thing in medicine, we don't know most things. We have an idea of very few things. We have agreement on some things and we do the best we can. I wish, actually, that that's the way medicine had approached this idea of COVID, instead of making it a political pandemic. We should have gone up there. The House of Medicine saying, we don't know, but let's do the best we can. I got to tell you, a lot more people would have masked if you had been honest with them. If people come and say, we don't know what to do, but a mask costs $0.50 to buy, let's just do that. We might be wrong, but let's just do it and let's all agree to do it together. Instead, we had government officials telling us one day to wear no masks, the other day to wear 2 masks, 1 mask, 3 masks. It was very confusing.

Haylie Pomroy: I think the hard part was, where we lost the field of science was, we were so adamant that one person was right and one person was wrong, no matter which aspect or which side. There shouldn't be a side in science, period. There should be pondering. And then research again and then more research.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I wrote a letter to JAMA talking about how doctors should not follow dogma because medicine is not about dogma. That's why it's always amazing to me when we talk about complementary alternative medicine. Medicine, allopathic and osteopathic medicine, or what most people call doctors, in the United States. We are the most holistic. I don't care what the mechanism of how acupuncture works. All I know is you have done pretty good studies and it works for some people with migraines. That's what's important to me. Actually, is it Qi or is it not Qi?

Haylie Pomroy: What are the side effects?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Hippocrates taught us first, do no harm. That's our thing. First, do no harm. While it is invasive because you're sticking a needle, using a very small needle and very shallow.

Haylie Pomroy: I had a doctor the other day, a client walked out and they said, my doctor said to avoid, it was some food like I understand grapefruit with cholesterol medication, but it was like, avoid this food in this food, all-natural foods. And I said, did they say anything about Popeye's chicken? Anything about KFC, anything about McDonald's? About Coca-Cola? No. They just read somewhere that some food is bad for you and they jumped on that like keto. Don't even get me started. All of those types of things where we start to… A lot of our community, and even in my PhD work right now in neuroimmunology, a lot of people in our community have never felt like or feel like or misunderstand that the immune system is not involved with the brain. How can you help me communicate effectively how those work together, or if they're one in the same?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: There are lots of different systems, and even that idea that we put the body into systems is artificial. It's just an easier way for us to understand it. There's a lot of crosstalk, and that's what we call it. And I think that's actually a useful term. And you've interviewed here and you've talked on this podcast about mast cells. Mast cells actually communicate very well with certain types of other cells. One of those cells they communicate with is neurons. Sometimes you have a chemical messenger that happens locally and those we call cytokines and chemokines. And you hear about the cytokine storm, you may have heard of having to do with COVID and all that. Then you have sometimes a chemical that happens in one place and travels through the body has an effect somewhere else, that we call hormones. And the immune system, what we have is we have a traveling, but that traveling is going through a system of T cells, B cells, natural killer cells and other regulatory types of types of cells. And then the nervous system connects with actual wires. There's actually a substance that actually connects them. It's not that it's traveling through. It's a wire and then there's a space and then there's another wire.

Haylie Pomroy: It's different than traveling through the bloodstream?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Exactly. It's different than traveling through the bloodstream because you already have to, if it's in the central nervous systems of the brain or spinal cord, then it has to get through that blood-brain barrier. There's a barrier that's made, and we have it to stop outside things from getting into our brains. And it used to be years ago, we thought the immune system did not happen inside the brain. We thought that it was like a sanctuary. Now we know that's completely wrong. 7 years ago, we didn't know there was a lymphatic system in the brain, which is amazing to me. We’re still making discoveries in the 2000s of things that we didn't know. Now we call it the glymphatic system. We have a whole system. We have people who specialize in it. It's amazing the advances that are still happening, but at the same time the advances happen and at the same time the research happens. We have to remember the job of clinicians is really to have a doctor-patient relationship. I think doctors need to hear that more now than ever before. Artificial intelligence already passes all the medical tests. Computers are going to be able to know more individual genes and questions that are on the board examination than doctors. The only advantage doctors have right now should be that relationship, except there was just a paper that came out that people with multiple sclerosis preferred the bedside manner of artificial intelligence over their doctors. When I saw that, it's all come tumbling down,

Haylie Pomroy: But do you think that's because there's no judgment?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: There's no judgment.

Haylie Pomroy: There's no gaslighting.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: There's no gaslighting, no rushing. There's no triple booking. There's a lot of things.

Haylie Pomroy: When I was in Slovenia these last couple of weeks at that International Autoimmunity Conference, we did a whole section on AI, and they were putting in clinical notes and these people were spitting out diagnoses that people said took 5, 6, 10, 12 visits. To your point, it can pass all the medical exams, all of that data can be processed. To me, the only thing left is the relationship and to me, in medicine in the United States, the thing that's missing most is relationship. Many people don't have a connection with their doctor. It's hard. It's like speed dating, but worse.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Here as opposed to food. I actually don't think America is behind Europe, for example, if you have MS in Italy, you have to stand while you're there with the doctor. They do that so that you leave the office visit pretty quick. You can't have more than a 7-minute visit and be standing. It's a problem of medicine in general. Medicine has forgotten what our roots are. Our roots are the word “ducere” which is Latin for instruct or teach. The job of a doctor is to be a health coach. We have a whole other field of health coaching. Our job is to use our expertise and to give you advice based on it. It used to be paternalistic, what we said had to go. The world's not like that anymore.

Haylie Pomroy: I want to say that though because so many people in our community still feel like, we had someone that said, I just got fired from my doctor because he wanted me to take a particular medication. I wanted to talk more about it or ask him if I could have 45 days to see if I could reduce that on my own and he genuinely told them, if you don't take this medication, you can't be my patient. We had that happen.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: The doctor did him a favor because that's not the relationship. I always talk about this when I talk to groups of people with a diagnosis is, sometimes it probably would be good if that doctor-patient relationship if there was an outside person like a counselor. But people don't even do that for marriage. If you're at a point where you're talking about doing that with your doctor, then you need to find another doctor.

Haylie Pomroy: We certify health coaches, nutrition-based health coaches. And one of the biggest things that we, we're coaching them on nutrition, over the years, the evolution of what clients that come through the door need is preparing them to how to engage with their practitioner, how to beg for labs, how to get adequate diagnostics, and how to prepare them for that so that they can have success with their practitioner, their physician, their practitioner relationship. Because otherwise, if we can't create the bridge, to get across that chasm for that relationship, it's really hard for us to intervene with a nutritional approach when we don't have a partnership and running diagnostics. If a person goes in and their cholesterol is high and they say, this is my wake-up call, I want to change my lifestyle. I want to look at my potential risk factors, maybe smoking, maybe drinking, maybe what they're eating, the environment where they're getting their food. I want to look at my, because we do risk assessment, I want to look at all these. I want to make an intervention and see if I can't metabolize, because metabolizing cholesterol is a normal function that we do all day, every day.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: The brain is made up of fat, we really need cholesterol.

Haylie Pomroy: A lot of my neurologist friends don't love it when a cardiologist drives the cholesterol down without any modification in lifestyle. But sometimes we have to just bridge the gap or help them create. We have a form that is called a request for care. How to communicate with your doctor when you come in and have a good, positive relationship and all of that. We work really hard on that. But we have to create an industry of health coaches so that people can have advocacy to get diagnostics at their doctors. That's crazy.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: And you know what? AI can replace it like that.

Haylie Pomroy: In a blink. We use AI all the time. Absolutely. Interesting.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: But I want to come back to your question, it was about COVID-19. Could we look at it and know that this was going to happen? No. Do we have any idea? No. Were we all spraying our Amazon packages? Yes. Was I stuck in my house and we didn't even see our sister-in-law and our nephews for like 6 months? Yes. Do we realize at a certain point that that was silly? Yes.

Haylie Pomroy: But if you drive across America, because I was from LA, the Dakotas. I'm just telling you I went to Utah in the thick of it. Took my parents to the ranch in Colorado. Where I was in Utah, there was not a single human being that was experiencing COVID. I'm not saying they weren't having the disease. I'm saying psychologically, socially, it was as if it didn't occur. I thought I was, remember the Twilight Zone?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: But now you understand why so many people moved to the wonderful state of Florida during COVID. We saw a huge influx of people from New York and California, and there's a good reason for that.
We kept our industries open.

Haylie Pomroy: You made monoclonal antibodies accessible.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: And frankly, we made vaccines available, too, for people who wanted to start a new vaccine at the same time that doctors got them, seniors were eligible for them as well. And then we just went down the line to other people. We start getting to children, that's where I definitely say stop because I'm not sure why you would vaccinate a child against a disease that doesn't affect children as much. It just doesn't make sense to me. Actually, talking about vaccines, I know maybe this is a topic that I should be careful talking about.

Haylie Pomroy: When I was in Europe, they talked about it so freely I got like sweaty. I was like looking left, looking right, going, is it okay? All these genius scientists were all in a room talking about it just like we should talk about this. They're talking about the adjuvant and certain countries had mercury salts in them, certain had aluminum in them, and they were just talking about it. And I was like, I didn't want somebody to think I have any opinion. That's what we're supposed to have as scientists.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Not only that, that's what we’re supposed to have in the United States of America. We are a constitutional republic. Our First Amendment is freedom of speech, and yet people are not allowed to talk and that's crazy because that's not how science in medicine is. I tell you, before COVID I would go to conferences. Somebody would be presenting data on a new medication. I raised my hand. I said, why are you being so laissez-faire about the risk of cancer with this drug? This guy's a colleague of mine. He's a friend. But I am going to call him out, and that's okay. We could continue our relationship beyond that.

Haylie Pomroy: That’s why were sitting at a table with a doctor from Saint Petersburg, a doctor from Germany, a doctor from Italy, and they were just having this banter back and forth that I was dripping sweat as an American scientist, female scientist going, is it okay that we talk about this? Which is so strange. It was like for me, the ivermectin conversation I had, for years, worked with many doctors in CIPD, and they were using stromectol in their patients for 25 years, I also have cattle and horses. It broke my heart because these were brilliant doctors. I'm not, so everybody doesn't get up in arms over me, I'm just having a conversation. I just was heartbroken that people...

Dr. Daniel Kantor: They call that a horse drug.

Haylie Pomroy: That everybody says, they're over there buying horse wormers. I have a client that has used stromectol in CIPD with gamma globulin infusions successfully as part of her neurologist prescription that she picked up at Walmart for 25 years. I was just like, oh, no. It just bummed me out. All of it bummed me out. I guess all of it bummed a lot of people out, but I appreciate being able to have this conversation and talk freely.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I mentioned that I wrote a letter to JAMA. The reason for it was a paper that was about inoculation against misinformation. The authors used as an example, their terminology was about the very thing that people are upset about. They're talking about inoculation like they're proving the point. And what they're doing is they're taking mainstream people. Before COVID happened, mainstream America was about getting polio vaccine, measles, mumps, rubella. Most people did that. Then COVID comes around, and I gotta tell you, even people who've given vaccines, we're like, wait a second, why are all my friends having tinnitus? Why are they having ringing in your ears? Why are their symptoms getting worse from a vaccine? Yes, it can be helpful for some people, but not for other people. And if we can't talk about that.

Haylie Pomroy: And why can't we talk about it? I'm with you. The belief system personally that everybody should have a choice. Everybody should have data and everybody should have information. We had a family member that had a documented vaccine injury and lost his life at a very amazing hospital, and they were lovely to us and the doctors and the neurologists because he had a cerebral bleed, 4 days post technically, but 2 days post. They were able to look at titers and all of the diagnostics they did and they were data collecting, too, they asked us to release a lot of information. And they were so awesome about the conversations that we were able to have with them and so free behind closed doors, but they were like, but just so you know, we can't go out and it's documented, it's written up, it's fine. And then it was so strange, I was flying home and I was sitting next to a gentleman that had a massive neurological response post, and I just went, I see it and we can't talk about it. And it's not to vilify anything, but it's just because when we sequester knowledge, we sequester results.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: We don't live in a world where you can sequester knowledge. Knowledge is freely available on the internet. It's out. It's too late. There's no secret knowledge that's out there. It's just a question of some people are accountants, some people are schoolteachers, some people are doctors. It doesn't mean that the doctor can't figure out how to fix their car or that the mechanic can figure out how to help their illness. It's just not what they specialize in. The doctor is seeing a lot of people, and so they should be able to look at you and say, you remind me of five other people I’ve seen. I'm not sure you wanna respond the same way, but from my experience, this is what I believe.

Haylie Pomroy: I have 2 questions. One, I want to talk a little bit about gateway. But I also want to talk about patients. I love case studies. But sometimes you've talked about scary aspects of their diagnosis or some cases that you've seen. Can you just share a little bit of that with us?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: For example, in the fields I take care of. I mostly take care of people with multiple sclerosis, with Parkinson's disease, with concussion and with migraine, other headaches here in Florida. Looking across all of them, the most disabling issue is not weakness. The most disabling issue is not a wheelchair. The most disabling issue is uncertainty. People want to live their life, people have a vision of their life. Some people so much so when they're like little girls, they start dressing up in wedding dresses, they have a vision of what's going to happen, people have a vision of what's going on in their life. When you get diagnosed in your 20s-40s, with a diagnosis, you don't know what that means. You hear the worst, or you look on the internet, the most famous doctor is Dr. Google, now it might be Dr. ChatGPT. You think about things like Parkinson's, most people with Parkinson's are over the age of 60. You have people under 50, you have people even as early as 20s or 30s. And so it changes people's lives to not know what's going on.

Haylie Pomroy: The unpredictability.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: The unpredictability, the idea of having a chronic illness or chronic diagnosis that's actually not that uncommon. 1 in 5 Americans has a chronic illness. This idea that we think that everyone else, everything is going on so much better with the Joneses. The grass is always greener. Everybody has something going on. Whether it's health, whether it's relationship issues, whether it's financial, people have things going on.

Haylie Pomroy: We're to spread hope that there is a shift and a change and progression in science and ideas. But I will tell you, having an autoimmune disorder myself and talking to a lot of people in our community. There is that fear of the flare or when is the next shoe going to drop? Because my autoimmune is ITP. I have had a hematologist for years, we're now buddies. I've been able to get off of all anti-rejection drugs, no steroids, none of that stuff. I'm able to treat with lifestyle medicine, all different aspects of natural therapies for myself personally feel amazing, labs are amazing. Something will happen. I flew in, this woman had tons of perfume on, and I started to get my blush. I get blush and eyeshadow and I sweat, Oh my gosh, what's going to happen? That uncertainty that are my gums going to bleed? I'm going to start bruising? All of these things that even after having a lot of successful health episodes, there's still that uncertainty, that fear of the flare, so much so that my hematologist that I've known for years had asked me, and I speak on behalf of a lot of different organizations, and it asked me to come talk to a group with individuals at ITP, and it was the first time I said no. Isn't that terrible? Because I thought to myself, not that it's contagious, but I thought to myself in my mind, I can't associate it with anymore, that's my next work, that it's my own personal journey that I started because I thought after all these years and all these health victory that still wasn't there, but obviously is I said no, and I had to look at why and I'm my goal is to always get to a yes.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Support groups are for some people, and they’re not for other people.

Haylie Pomroy: But to talk to them about what I did and how I made changes and what kind of changes you can do from food and lifestyle modification. I've been all over internationally for different types of therapies for myself, some biologic, some others. I just went, whoa, I still have that fear.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Here’s a strange thing, fear made sense when there was a lion that was about to eat you. It makes sense that you go into this flight or fright idea. Most things that people are scared of nowadays aren't going to kill you. When you go and give a speech in front of other people, you're not going to die. But yet our body tricks, our mind tricks our body into having those exact same fears. It makes no sense.

Haylie Pomroy: Same emotionality, too. Two things, please promise me you'll come back. I feel like there are 10 topics, every time we run, especially an amazing podcast like this, our community asks us more questions. Our goal was to give people access to individuals like you because they don't have access. First, promise me you'll come back.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I promise.

Haylie Pomroy: Thank you. The second thing, I just want you to tell me, I know that you are part of Gateway. Can you give me some information about Gateway?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Gateway Institute for Brain Research is a mission-based brain research institute located right here, we actually leased space from Nova Southeastern University. We're in the same building as INIM and we have a simple mission, in some ways, it's to cure, not to treat, not to help a little bit, but to cure Parkinson's disease. It's a very straightforward mission and mission that I think we can actually accomplish. I'm the vice president of Clinical Research and Development for Gateway. Gateway is structured in some ways because of Dr. Klimas, in some similar ways to INIM, where we have, and I know that you've interviewed Travis, for example, we have a lot of what we call in-silico, meaning we first start with computers in some things. We do computer modeling, mathematical. We have mathematicians and physicists and we're doing those kinds of models. Then we have the people in the actual lab. Think about Petri dishes. Then you have people who are actually doing research unfortunately on rodents, on actual animals. Then when something's finally ready to reach human beings, that's when we step in. One of the ways people can stay up to date in terms of what's happening, in terms of new breakthroughs, in terms of potentially research opportunities that we have both here in Florida as well as other places. For example, we have a trial that completed in California is they can go to bit.ly/gifbr_register and what that does is that just gets you to a page where you enter in your information. You freely enter what you feel like entering, what you don't. And then we have you in a database where we can keep you updated.

Haylie Pomroy: They can get your newsletters? But what's your website?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: The website is just gifbr.com

Haylie Pomroy: GIFBR?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Gateway Institute for Brain Research.

Haylie Pomroy: Because I love your website. Even if they don't get that Bitly they can go and they can just go down and connect with you and they can get your newsletter, they can get information. I love the clarity of your mission, which is to cure Parkinson's disease. If anybody out there, family, loved ones recent diagnosis, this is a great resource for information. I love the studies and the trials that you guys are doing. But I also love how free you are with all the resource and information.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: There's also something that makes it very special. I've got to tell you, I've been a clinician for 20 years, but the reason I decided to focus a lot of my time, not just on doing research trials, but on really being involved with the institute like Gateway is because of the opportunity to actually make a difference. It’s our founder, instead of us wasting time, applying for federal grants and other grants and to keep salaries going, you do a grant cycle every five years and you keep going. He doesn’t want us wasting any of that time. Instead, he wants us just doing the research and he'll cut a check for it. Which is amazing because that's the only way we're going to have a model where we can cure diseases. And once we cure Parkinson's, we're coming for the next disease, we're not going to stop there. We're going to keep on going. And it's amazing what we can do when we come together. You have people who are mathematicians and computational biologists talking to people who are clinicians, talking to people who are laboratory people, either with mice or with Petri dishes, and together we can all do that. We have an annual meeting, an internal annual meeting. The company's about 34 people, 35 people. This year, I taught a little mini-course on some of the clinical aspects of Parkinson's. Because I realize people in the lab, they might have a family member But they may not know about. Next year, what I hope to do is actually bring in a person with Parkinson's disease and have maybe a fireside chat, because, it's strange for me that we're actually having this conversation this way. I'm used to actually being the interviewer, not interviewee. If we just had that conversation freely and openly in front of people, then people who aren't seeing these patients on a daily basis can understand what they're going through and why they should stay up late at night and finish the job that they're trying to do.

Haylie Pomroy: That's what I was just going to say, I think sometimes, and which I love, that we really stress is sometimes there's such a separation between what you're doing in research and the human being that you're impacting. We wouldn’t push a lot of drugs through that have so many side effects, if that were the case, in my opinion.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: When I went to college at University of Pennsylvania, I obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English Literary theory, but I also obtained a Bachelor of Science Engineering in Computer Science Engineering. And I remember in medical school I turned to somebody else and I said, when's the last time you stayed awake all night, not because you were cramming for a test, but because you wanted to figure out a problem? He looked at me like I was strange, why would you stay up to figure out a problem? And I got to tell you, we would do that in engineering. We drank our Mountain Dew, we stayed awake, and it wasn't due tomorrow, but we wanted to solve the problem. It was a lot that the field of medicine can learn from the field of engineering, as well. And here we were passionate just about building computers. Imagine how interesting and imagine how dedicated people can be when they actually have the ability to change people's lives. Parkinson's disease is the second most common, what's unfortunately called neurodegenerative disorder. First Alzheimer's and then Parkinson's. It's very common. Everybody either has it, or a family member and there's no cure. There's not even a disease-modifying treatment.

Haylie Pomroy: I was just going to say, there's not even disease-modifying treatment.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: In MS, we have 20 plus disease-modifying agents, depends on how you count them. In Parkinson's, we have 0. We have medicines to basically replace dopamine. They're basically symptomatic medications that people have to take. They have some surgery, deep brain stimulation, which also doesn't cure it. It can control a lot of the symptoms, not all the symptoms, but you're not modifying. You're not doing something to change the course of disease like we have in rheumatology, with rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis or with multiple sclerosis. I actually went to the Parkinson's conference down here in Miami 2 years ago. And when I walked in, some of the people recognized me that I'd been a long time in the world of MS and they said, why are you here, Dr. Kantor? Because you guys already solved your disease. It's palpable. I got to tell you, in the conferences nowadays, you can feel in the air like we're ready. The field of Parkinson's disease is ready for something that could modify.

Haylie Pomroy: Yes, and we have to. It's exciting to see and I definitely believe that the founders’ unwavering commitment to finding a cure has moved your guys's research forward so quickly.

Haylie Pomroy: Dr. Kantor, I'm going to have you back. Please say you're going to come back.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: I'm going to come back.

Haylie Pomroy: In the meantime, you have created this AI interactive program where individuals can ask Dr. Kantor and it takes all of the lectures and the videos that you've done, and it tells you exactly where in the lecture and it gives an answer. Where do they go to for that?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Over the past 2 decades, what I've done is filmed more than a few thousand videos, mostly about multiple sclerosis. The team at We Health, they powered an artificial intelligence bot that basically you can either read it a question or you can speak it, or you can type it out and it will give you an answer based on the videos that have interviewed other doctors on. And it will actually then give you the portion of those videos so you can actually go back and watch them. It's better than a keyword search, it’s better than any search that would have been imaginable a couple of years ago. Now you can actually freely ask it. We have it now for MS, we're going to build it for Parkinson's disease as we build more and more videos, and then we're coming for the next one.

Haylie Pomroy: And then they go to gifbr. com?

Dr. Daniel Kantor: gifbr. com is Gateway's website. To go and ask Dr. Kantor, it's actually an easy thing for people to remember bit.ly/askdrkantor

Haylie Pomroy: Our community is going to love that resource. Thank you so much for coming. I have ten more questions but we're going to be out of time. But you're coming back, you've already promised. And you guys, if you have questions for Dr. Kantor, please make sure you post your questions below here. I will go through them, I will sort them and I will ask them on your behalf. I cannot thank you enough. It has been such an enlightening conversation. I can't wait to rewatch the podcast myself, you'll see I've taken tons of notes. But it was a very significant learning experience for me, and I know it is going to be a huge resource to give people more hope and give them tidbits of help.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: No hope is false hope, a patient taught me that there's no such thing as false hope. Every hope is good. It's not having hope, that's the problem.

Haylie Pomroy: That's why we're here, that's why we're doing this, and that's why we have amazing people like you here with us. Thank you so much.

Dr. Daniel Kantor: Thank you.