Episode 361: Inside Dr. Akil’s T.I.G.E.R Protocol for Autoimmune Healing
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Autoimmunity rates are soaring, but is the conventional medical approach keeping up? Dr. Akil, a Harvard-trained MD and integrative medicine pioneer, joins Erin to break down why the autoimmune epidemic is accelerating (especially among children), and how most patients are being underserved by oversimplified advice or symptom-suppressing drugs.
Instead of masking symptoms, Dr. Akil shares his “T.I.G.E.R Protocol” - a comprehensive, actionable system to address the real root causes of autoimmunity, from toxins and infections to gut health, diet, and rest.
In This Episode:
Surprising lab clues (like ANA antibodies) that can appear before autoimmune symptoms surface
Dr. Akil's 5-step protocol that addresses the root causes of autoimmunity beyond just "healing the gut."
Why stool pH is a hidden player in gut health, and how to create an environment that makes your body inhospitable to pathogens
How sauna therapy and eating more broccoli sprouts can rapidly lower your toxic burden
The underestimated power of mind-body practices to break the cycle of fear, stress, and symptom hyper-vigilance in autoimmune healing
Resources Mentioned:
Learn more about Dr. Akil on his website. You can also follow him on Instagram and TikTok and check out his book, The T.I.G.E.R Protocol: An Integrative, 5-Step Program to Treat and Heal Your Autoimmunity
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Dr. Akil
One of my goals in my work is to really shine the spotlight on toxins and environmental toxins as a big driver of autoimmunity. I'm kind of looking at all those areas to intervene to remove the drivers of autoimmunity and help the person's immune system to modulate and not progress into a full blown autoimmune disease, if possible.
Erin Holt
I'm Erin Holt and this is the Functional Nutrition Podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions and our beliefs all affect our physical health. I've got over a decade of clinical experience and because of that I've got a major bone to pick with diet, culture and the conventional healthcare model. This show is for you. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing, I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share because you never know whose life you might change.
Erin Holt
Hey friends, Today we're going to get into all things autoimmunity with Dr. Akil. I really was super pumped to have him on the show. I super appreciate his work. He has a way of taking things that are really complex, like autoimmunity, but creating a system that is very effective, straightforward and non overwhelming. So if you are somebody with autoimmunity, if you suspect it, his book, the T.I.G.E.R. Protocol is really great. I know I have a lot of practitioners that listen to the show. This is an episode you guys are going to love.
As a practitioner, I was like asking a lot of questions for myself. I could just really listen to him talk for a while. I really, really enjoyed it and I, I think you guys will too. So let me read you his bio before we get into the show because it's pretty impressive. He's a Harvard trained physician, so first of all, he's an M.D. and he practices integrative medicine. He blends conventional medical expertise with holistic approaches, including functional medicine and Ayurveda. Dr. Akil attended Harvard University.
He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemical Sciences. He earned his MD from the University of California, San Francisco and completed family medicine residency training at Stanford University. He then graduated from a fellowship in integrative medicine with Dr. Andrew Wheel at the University of Arizona and received certification in Mind Body Medicine from the Georgetown University Center. So I just think his whole educational background is super, super interesting. I asked him a little bit about that and how he got into autoimmunity at the top of the show. But he has a tremendous amount of experience working with autoimmune patients. And that's what I was really interested to hear about too the strategies that he's using to get his patients better. So that's what we talk about. I really hope you guys enjoy the show.
Okay. Dr.Akil, I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Autoimmunity is really near and dear to my heart. Rates are exploding.
We know this. I've been really trying to ring the alarm bells as much and as often as I can. And I think that this is a place where patients are really underserved. From a conventional perspective, there are limited solutions. From a functional perspective, I think sometimes it's a little oversimplified, like, oh, you just gotta heal leaky gut. And then the autoimmunity goes away. And it's not always as simple, as straightforward as that. So I appreciate your work because it's so well thought out. It's simple in a way that it doesn't overwhelm people, but it's also very, very thorough and very effective. And so I'm excited to talk to you about that because you clearly understand the complexities of it, but you've been able to take the complexities and boil it down into a system for people that really works for them. So thank you for being here.
Dr. Akil
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you, Erin
Erin Holt
Before we get into autoimmunity, your. Bio, there's really a lot of name dropping.
We've got Harvard, we've got Stanford, we've got Georgetown. Clearly you are well educated. I know that you received your MD from UCSF and then went on to study integrative medicine and mind body medicine. I'm curious what made you go that route?
Dr. Akil
So it actually started from yoga, because. In college I was a yoga practitioner and found that it was really transformative. For my own body and mind and experience. And only then later, when I decided. To apply to medical school, did I become interested in Ayurveda as the sister science of yoga. And then through Ayurveda, I became interested. In herbal medicine and then, you know, integrative medicine.
I've always been a fan of Andy Weil, and after my residency training, decided.
To do the fellowship with him and then got interested in functional medicine. So a little bit like being a kid in a candy store, you know, there's so many amazing systems to learn from to get tools that we can use with our patients. So it just kind of unfolded that way over the years.
Erin Holt
Okay, so there wasn't like one experience that you had that made you kind of hard pivot in another direction. It was more so just following what was your interest in your calling.
Dr. Akil
Yes.
Erin Holt
Okay, talk to us a little bit about autoimmunity. Do you work with a lot of autoimmune patients? Is this your specialty? Like, why is this such a thing for you?
Dr. Akil
Yes. Now I almost exclusively see autoimmune patients in my practice. I see children as well. A lot of kids are experiencing high levels of autoimmune conditions.
Like you said, you know, it's skyrocketing. It's the fastest growing category of disease. And that's true in adults, but also in children and our teens and adolescents. I've actually started focusing a lot more on pediatrics because I think that there's a lot more that can be done, you know, early in life to shape their entire adult lives. What I started noticing this about like 20 years ago was just increasing numbers of autoimmune patients in my practice. And then as I started to look into the research about that, then I found out that even for example, lab markers of ANA antinuclear antibody had gone. Up by about 44% from 1990 until the early 2000s and this was really striking to me because, you know, we know that genes are not responsible for this kind of change.
So I started looking at other factors just curious and, and, and started to find so many things in the environment that are changing and the microbiome. And then just over the years I started to put together this protocol that seemed to really work with my patients. So it kind of evolved in that way.
Erin Holt
That's really fascinating to hear about the ANA. That is something that we put on pretty much when we're working with anybody on like pretty much everybody's blood work. We're like, screen for it. Can you explain what ANA is in case somebody's not familiar and what it's showing us why that's a big deal?
Dr. Akil
So ANA is an antinuclear antibody. And what it shows is that the immune system is making some antibodies to some contents of the nucleus, which is the center of each cell.
So it doesn't say what proteins in the nucleus the antibodies are being made to, but just that some autoimmune activity is occurring because in a normal healthy immune system, it's supposed to recognize self from non self and not produce antibodies to any cell self antigen like from within the nucleus.
So, the ANA itself is not diagnostic of a particular autoimmune disease. It can be found in many different autoimmune conditions, like, you know, lupus, Sjogren's disease. There's a long list, but it tells us for sure that there is some autoimmune activity.
And I think that's another thing that really lends itself well to functional medicine, is there's autoimmune disease, a slow process and if you catch it early enough there'S a lot you can do to change the course, possibly prevent the development of a disease.
You know, for example, like going back. To the blood markers. With autoimmune disease, rheumatoid factors can show up in the blood like up to 13 to 14 years before symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis develop.
And I think the longest lead time is with some of the autoimmune liver diseases like primary biliary cirrhosis, where the antibodies like antimitochondrial antibody have been detected more than 20 years before the disease manifests.
And so it tells us that one thing is that the body is always trying to achieve homeostasis so it's this accumulation of insults over those, you know, 10, 20 years that pushes things over the edge to then manifest as autoimmune disease. But then it also tells us there's a long lead time and there's a long window where if we intervene with functional medicine and integrative approaches, we can potentially shift the course of that person's life and illness.
Erin Holt
That's just such a hopeful and positive message because we know that there's no “cure” for autoimmunity. And once you have a diagnosable disease, it can be a little bit more difficult to unwind that process. Not impossible, but difficult. And I'm always trying to advocate so hard and so fiercely for supporting the immune system, but also potentially for getting some of these, you know, even just like looking at a white blood cell count. Some of like the potential clues that say, like, hey there, some of your symptoms might be autoimmunity, even if you don't have that diagnosable disease. When patients are coming to you, do they have like a diagnosed condition or do they just more suspect autoimmunity?
Dr. Akil
We see both. Sometimes patients come with like non specific symptoms and it could be things like, you know, fatigue, joint pain, insomnia, various skin issues. And then we might find one of these cases where it's early, there's auto antibodies, there's some kind of inflammation going on, but not a clear autoimmune disease.
And then we, of course, I see a lot of patients with diagnosed autoimmune diseases as well. So that's what I call the autoimmune spectrum where there's really a, a wide range, it's not very black or white.
So I think it's best to catch people earlier in the spectrum so that you can have more of an impact with the functional medicine interventions.
Erin Holt
And when you see a positive ANA, are you going right into the lifestyle diet interventions or are you doing follow up testing to try to drill into? Because as you said, ANA is not specific. It's not telling you exactly what autoimmune condition somebody has. Are you trying to figure that out?
Dr. Akil
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we're always trying to drill deeper and uncover as many upstream causes as we can. So in that case, if someone has a positive ANA for sure, we would do a detailed microbiome stool assessment, figure out what's going on with their, you know, keystone bacteria, is there any dysbiosis, are there any pathogens that are overgrown.
Is there increased intestinal permeability? All of those things make a difference in terms of the immune system and autoimmune activity.
And then I always like to look at toxins so, you know, one of the common tests I like to do is the mosaic diagnostics environmental toxin profile. So that gives a clue to about up to a hundred different environmental toxins, what the body burden is like.
I'm a big fan of sauna there as a therapy for detoxification as well, because I believe one of my goals in my work is to really shine the spotlight on toxins and environmental toxins as a big driver of autoimmunity.
I'm kind of looking at all those areas to intervene to remove the drivers of autoimmunity and help the person's immune system to modulate and not progress into a full blown autoimmune disease, if possible.
Erin Holt
Okay, so you're not like, we don't need to figure out the exact autoimmune condition this person has, we just know that they have autoimmunity. And so we're going to just get right into diet and lifestyle and other root causes.
Dr. Akil
Yes, exactly.
And you know, we do, in some cases it is possible to make the diagnosis, but we do see a lot of patients in that gray area where their lab markers do not qualify for like a specific diagnosis and the conventional medicine response they get, you know, from their rheumatologist or other
specialist is that, you know, there's nothing we can do, just come back later and we'll see if you have a disease for which I can prescribe you a drug but you know, we take a very proactive approach, even in those cases, to try to intervene early.
Erin Holt
I'm asking selfish questions right now as a practitioner. I just, I love this conversation, but let's get into some specifics for listeners.
Erin Holt
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Erin Holt
I know that you really focus on five main evidence based root causes and I think you just kind of gave us a head nod to a couple of them and it's outlined in your T.I.G.E.R. Protocol. So can you explain what T.I.G.E.R. stands for?
Dr. Akil
Yeah. So the acronym captures these five triggers that I focus on for autoimmunity, but also for other chronic diseases, which I will touch on.
But the acronym is toxins, infections, the gut, eating right and rest, which includes sleep and managing stress. So I think, yeah, those are the five triggers that I think are really important in driving chronic inflammation in autoimmune disease. And then I think these same triggers also increasingly are being linked to our other modern chronic disease epidemics, like, for example, diabetes. There are certain many toxins now that are being classified as diabetogens, which promote insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, abnormal blood sugar regulation. So that is, I think, another big factor in diabetes.
And then also with obesity, there are toxins called obesogens, which disrupt metabolism, promote weight gain. I think that's another kind of unrecognized factor in the obesity epidemic. In addition to diet and processed foods, etc. And then even with heart disease, some of these toxins are being shown to have cardiovascular disruptive effects.
Their general inflammatory effects contribute to oxidative stress and, you know, oxidized ldl, those kind of factors for heart disease. So I think these five factors are really important for our modern chronic disease epidemics, which includes autoimmunity and also, you know, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
Erin Holt
With toxins,I feel like that, out of all of them, has the potential to get the most overwhelming for folks, because it can just feel really scary that what we're getting exposed to and some of these things are within our control, and some of them are not. I'm curious, when you're running that tox panel, are there very common toxins that you see come back regularly on your patients?
Dr. Akil
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. There's a wide variety of them, I think. I try to tell patients to think about the main categories like water, food, air, cosmetics, those kinds of things, so that they don't get overwhelmed with the individual toxins, but really think about just cleaning up their environment, filtering their water, you know, cleaning up their food supply. What I tell them is that the research shows that actually making those changes to lower toxin exposure can lead to pretty rapid changes in the body And that tells us about the power of the body's detox systems, which are built in.
For example, like switching to a mostly organic diet was found in one study to lower urinary pesticide levels by about 80% in just seven days. And then in a different study, they had patients change their cosmetics to remove phthalates, BPA, parabens and so forth And the levels dropped by 45% in about five days in the urine.
And then same with looking at flame retardants. So the, the intervention for that was actually dust in the home, which tends to accumulate a lot of these flame retardants that are from our furniture and also hand washing before meals to just also again cleanse the remove dust and that led to 43% drop in flame retardants also in about one week.
I always like to share that with patients to give them hope that it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Just focus on the sources of exposure and then you see how the body's always trying to heal and, and has its own detox pathways that will work and you know, if you reduce the exposure, the effects are very positive.
Erin Holt
I like that you keep reinforcing that the body is always trying to heal because with autoimmunity we hear, you know, autoimmunity is self attack. And man, as somebody that was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, that was really scary. And like, why is my body turning on me and what did I do wrong? And I kind of saw my body as the bad thing, the wrong thing that needed to be fixed. And so I think this is such a positive and hopeful message that everybody needs to hear is that the body is always working to kind of right the wrongs of the environment and is really working in your favor all the time. You know what was interesting, I recently heard that beta glucan, so we can find that in oats and in some mushrooms, can help the body eliminate pfas. I just heard that recently. So I thought that that was another little like positive thing because that's another big scary one that we're hearing a lot about these fore chemicals. And so if we put the appropriate inputs in, then we can help the body clear out these things as well.
Dr. Akil
Oh wow, that's very interesting about the Beta glucans, I think. Yeah, I'm a big fan of mushrooms which are rich in those.
Then I also saw a recent study about one of the bacteria in kimchi, the lentibacillus, was found to break down BPA into harmless components. So I think our microbiome can also help with the detoxification. So it's very exciting how we can use food and the gut to help with detoxifying.
Erin Holt
Wow, that is really cool. I hadn't heard that. So we talk a lot about the gut and the microbiome here. And you did mention that a stool test is something that you're running on a lot of your autoimmune patients. What about eye, what about the infections? Are these infections coming from the gut or could they be coming from other places?
Dr. Akil
Yeah, it could be a variety of infections. So bacterial, viral, parasitic, fungal, Candida parasites, mycobacteria. So we do screen the gut for a lot of these infections. And then they could also be systemic, like a virus, like Epstein Barr virus or COVID 19, you know, long Covid cases, or a chronic bacterial infection like Lyme disease, which is more systemic as well.
So I think there's a broad array of different infections that we screen for. And then my focus is also just making the body inhospitable to infections, which helps the immune system take care of the, you know, whatever is there.
So, for example, the studies have shown that stool ph is a very important determinant of dysbiosis predisposition. That's a standard lab test, which I order on a lot of patients, like most labs around the country can do a stool PH test. And if it gets into the alkaline range, like above 7.58 and higher, then studies have shown that's where many of the opportunistic pathogens, Candida opportunistic bacteria like bacteroides E. Coli, only at those higher PH levels do they cause, they over proliferate and then cause inflammation.
So the body has a way to keep those in check by keeping the stool ph, intestinal ph, slightly acidic, ideally like 6.5 or below that. So that's one example of how we can focus on the body's own mechanisms for limiting infections and preventing overgrowth. Because my focus is not necessarily just on eradicating the infections, but in the long term, creating an environment in the patient's body where their immune system is strong and their body terrain is inhospitable to infections.
Erin Holt
And what's creating that acidic environment in the microbiome? Is it primarily short chain fatty acids?
Dr. Akil
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
The metabolites that the gut bacteria are supposed to be producing are the main drivers of that acidic stool ph in a healthy ecosystem.
Erin Holt
And is that a, if you do find a more alkaline environment? Of course, I would imagine you, you're trying to shift the bacteria, produce more of those butyrate and short chain fatty acid producers. But are you also ever supplementing with short chain fatty acids?
Dr. Akil
Yeah, in some cases, you know, we use butyrate in supplemental form. I think the preference is always to increase the bacterial production of short chain fatty acids so getting more diverse blends of plant fibers, prebiotic fibers to boost that. And then sometimes we add additional prebiotics like partially hydrolyzed guar gum or psyllium husk or other prebiotics, because typically, as long as we can boost the substrates for the bacteria that are producing the short chain fatty acids, then that will translate to lower ph over, you know, a period of a few months.
So I think that's the preferred goal. But if someone's gut is very disrupted very inflamed, then for short term we might use butyrate or other short chain fatty acids.
Erin Holt
Okay. And then I would love to you kind of already started shifting us more towards eating and food. I appreciate your approach because it doesn't feel restrictive. And sometimes autoimmune patients, if you do a little Google search, they can lead you to very, very restrictive diets. And that might be appropriate sometimes for some people, but it can feel really hard. It can feel very isolating. AIP was really big autoimmune paleo protocol when I was first diagnosed and I had a history of eating disorders. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you're telling me I have to cut out all these foods as a way to heal my body. It just became a stressor in and of itself. And so can you tell us about your approach to eating for autoimmunity?
Dr. Akil
I agree. I think the restrictive diet often is very challenging. So I break it up into the phase one and phase two diet with the tiger protocol.
So the phase one diet is more of an elimination diet, but it's not ss strict as the autoimmune paleo diet. So, for example, the usual triggers like you know, gluten, dairy, eggs, those are eliminated. But then I do allow the gluten free grains. So I think pretty low in allergenic potential and then many patients tolerate, you know rice or oats or quinoa, those kind of gluten free grains I think can be allowed as part of the Phase 1 elimination diet as long as a patient doesn't notice reactions to them at that point.
And then just really focusing on the gut healing during that phase one diet, the bone broth, the fermented foods, big fan of broccoli sprouts because of the sulforaphane. And then getting a lot of the prebiotic foods in there as well, like asparagus, leeks, artichokes, whatever the patient can tolerate.
And then doing the reintroductions because the goal in the long term is maximizing the diversity. So I have an eight week Kind of guided reintroduction protocol that patients can then bring in foods one by one and track symptoms.
And then the phase two diet is really the long term eating plan which is much more based on plant diversity plant forward diet, aiming to get ideally 40 different plant foods in a week and aiming for ideal target of 9 to 10 servings combined of fruits and vegetables in a day and working up to that gradually. So I do a lot of teaching about how to boost the number of different plant foods in a week and how to, you know, achieve that target ultimately.
Erin Holt
Okay, a couple of follow up questions. I didn't hear you mention corn. Do you pull that out as well?
Dr. Akil
In the phase one diet, yes, typically. Yeah.
Erin Holt
Yeah. I find that to be problematic.
Dr. Akil
Oh yeah, a lot of folks. Yes, totally.
Erin Holt
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Erin Holt
Sulforaphane from those broccoli sprouts. We often talk about sulforaphane in relation to supporting estrogen clearance out of the body. What is it doing from an immune perspective?
Dr. Akil
So it does a lot. It's actually a very good antimicrobial so it can help in terms of the infection component just through reducing load of opportunistic bacteria and overgrowth of yeast and fungi, as well as it's also excellent antioxidant.
So we know our autoimmune patients have high levels of oxidative stress and thus also low levels of serum antioxidants typically. So sulforaphane is, is very powerful as an antioxidant. It boosts natural killer cell activity, which is the, again, part of that beneficial immune system component that can help take care of infections. So I think it's important to remember that many autoimmune patients are dealing with some aspects of their immune system suppressed and weak, which makes them prone to infections. So it's not like their immune system across the board is upregulated. You know, there are parts that are overactive, of course, but then they might have parts that are underactive as well. And so using food like sulforaphane to support those parts is a safe way to help them kind of regulate their immune system.
Erin Holt
Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I've noticed beans and I think mung beans as part of your protocol as well.
Dr. Akil
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
So that's another thing that is more kind of liberal in my initial diet because I find, yeah, mung beans in Ayurveda are considered the most easily digestible bean.
And I've actually never had a patient develop a reaction to it. Even those that can't tolerate most other beans or legumes because it's, it's very small, it's very easily digestible. If you properly soak and prepare it, then it can be a great food source, protein and also fiber and polyphenols. And also many people are not familiar with it, they've never tried it. So that's a great, novel food to try to bring in early.
Erin Holt
Yeah, I think beans and legumes have been pretty villainized in different, you know, and I, I'm such a huge fan. And they're really wonderful microbiome food too. So if we can tolerate them, I think that they're a great food to include in our diets.
Dr. Akil
Yes.
Erin Holt
How about supplements? So I reckon that you are probably making very individualized recommendations for most of your patients, but are there any go to supplements for autoimmunity in general that you would recommend?
Dr. Akil
Yeah, probably a few to start out with.
I think vitamin D is very clearly shown to be an immunomodulator and has been shown to alleviate autoimmune symptoms in for example, lupus and other autoimmune diseases. So optimizing the patient's vitamin D level with supplementation is very important.
Erin Holt
Can I ask you what you consider an optimal level?
Dr. Akil
I would say like a 25 hydroxy level of between 40 to 60 is kind of my, my target. So I don't go super high, but at least into that like optimal range. Okay, it's, it's good.
And then I think fish oil, so omega 3s getting the essential fatty acids on board is really fundamental. And then yeah, a lot of the rest is relating to testing so magnesium is very important for hundreds of different enzymes in the body. So making sure you're optimizing the magnesium level. And then I also like to check serum glutathione level. So all of my supplementation is generally tailored to blood testing or other nutrient testing so we can really optimize the levels.
So the, if their glutathione is in the like lower half of the normal range or low, which is also very common, then for sure I'm going to be supplementing either an acetylcysteine as a way to raise the patient's glutathione or glutathione directly like a liposomal glutathione or other well absorbed form of glutathione. So those are kind of the main ones to start with.
And then of course I'm a really big fan of curcumin in terms of the anti inflammatory effect. There's a lot of research in multiple autoimmune diseases. Like there was one study in rheumatoid Arthritis that found that curcumin was comparable to diclofenac, the nsaid, in terms of like reducing inflammation and disease activity. So it's really almost a prescription strength anti inflammatory. Plus it has so many other benefits with the antioxidants and actually antimicrobial effects and so forth so curcumin is pretty high on, on the list as well.
Erin Holt
Is there a certain dose that you're using? Do you have to go pretty high with that to receive the anti-inflammatory effect?
Dr. Akil
Yeah, most of the studies have look at like 2 grams per day is kind of a good target if you're using a regular curcumin formulation.
But then if you're using some of the newer formulations that have higher bioavailability Like the Theracumin or the Novasol curcumin, those are patented forms that are available in multiple different brands, but those have pretty high bioavailability. Sometimes you know, 30 times what regular curcumin can achieve. So then you, you can get by with much lower dosages. But yeah, for, I think regular curcumin is probably more cost effective. And in those cases, getting up to the 2 grams per day is generally the therapeutic dose.
Erin Holt
And then back to the glutathione. So you're running serum glutathione, that's just a blood draw that they can get like out of LabCorp Quest just.
Dr. Akil
Yeah, our local lab does that.
Erin Holt
Yeah. And that's an accurate way to screen for glutathione status?
Dr. Akil
Yes. Serum glutathione seems to be working.
Erin Holt
Okay, awesome. All right, last question that I have for you because we've covered some lab testing, we've covered diet, we've covered some supplements. What about lifestyle, mind body practices? I know you're really big on this and I appreciate your stance here because it's so important. So what are some of the go tos that you recommend for your patients?
Dr. Akil
Yeah, I think with mind body practices, you know, usually when I bring up the topic, I see like my patient's eyes glaze over and they're like kind of tuning out because I think they've heard so much about it. So I try to elicit from them like what they enjoy in terms of their relaxation techniques. Maybe it's going out in nature, maybe it's prayer, you know, maybe it's dance. So it doesn't have to look like you know, just sitting on a meditation cushion for two hours a day.
There's a lot of different ways to balance that mind body connection. I think the most important thing is really finding something the patient enjoys and also that they can do every day because I think consistency is really the most most important thing.
And then if someone has never tried meditation before, if they're open to it, then I'LL talk about some of the research behind meditation and the neuroplasticity benefits, how it's been shown to increase the size of the brain, boosting gray matter, boosting white matter as well, also increasing the size of the hippocampus and also shrinking the amygdala, the fear center of the brain. So helping with like reducing the emotional reactivity and then boosting the beneficial gamma brain waves in the brain fairly rapidly, like within a few sessions of practice.
So I try to convince people if they're completely new to meditation that it's worth a try. Usually guided in the beginning with some apps or, you know, simple recordings and then if they find it enjoyable, then that's a great tool to stick with as well. So I'm a big fan of meditation, but it's definitely not the only way to achieve these benefits, so I like to really try to work with the patient on what makes sense to fit into their lives.
Erin Holt
I appreciate you bringing up the amygdala and fear and speaking from my own personal experience, functional medicine and really addressing the physical body was so huge and so instrumental for my own healing. But there was this lingering fear that what if I get sick again? Or anytime I had a sneeze or a sniffle, there was like this hypervigilance with my body, like scanning my body all of the time, looking for symptoms, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it was really, really the mind body medicine that helped to, you know, like, put the fear in remission. The autoimmunity was in remission, but the fear wasn't. And that is really what helped to put the fear in remission and really dial down the overactive stress response that was contributing to a lot of lingering ongoing stuff. So thank you for bringing that up. I really want to shout out your book, the T.I.G.E.R. Protocol. I strongly recommend it for anybody dealing with autoimmunity, but also just any chronic stuff going on.
It's a really informative, straightforward, non overwhelming approach which I think is exactly what people need right now. And we have a lot of practitioners that listen to the show. So I would recommend practitioners pick up this book as well so they can recommend it to their own clients and patients. Outside of that book, where else can people find you in your work?
Dr. Akil
My website, which is doctorakil.com d-o-c-t-o-r-a-k-i-l.com I think that's probably the, the best way. And then I I'm also on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok Dr. Akil on all, all the platforms.
Erin Holt
Okay, great. We will. You are omnipresent. We will link to all of these things in the show. Notes. Thank you so much for your time. I know you have to run right now, so I appreciate the time that you had with us and it was very informative. We appreciate you.
Dr. Akil
Thank you so much, Erin. I enjoyed our conversation today.
Erin Holt
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Functional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.