"High-Dose Sulfur Therapy with MSM" with Dr. Kathleen Janel

0:03 hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the overcoming chronic illness podcast my name is Dr Brian raid and I'm a naturopathic doctor and today I am joined by a fellow naturopathic doctor from the USFA Dr Kathleen Janelle uh Dr Janelle is someone I'm really excited to speak with um because I took a course that she put on uh several months ago it was all about something called High do sulfur therapy uh which basically involves using high doses of a supplement called MSM um MSM is an acronym for methyl sulfonyl methane um msm's been on the market for many years it's part of a lot of joint support formulas um but it turns out that MSM is useful for a lot of other conditions and to my understanding that's largely

0:49 because it's working to correct a sulfur deficiency that is a deficiency that I didn't realize that so many of my patients have um or had but uh after taking Dr Janelle's course it really open my eyes to the uh very widespread um uh uses for um sulfur supplementation using MSM and it's really all about the high doses that she talks about that really makes all the difference um I've used MSM with my patients for different muscular scal conditions primarily arthritis for a number of years but using those higher doses of MSM have made all the difference for a wide range of conditions ranging from digestive disorders to skin issues to uh well certainly still joint issues just the higher doses seem to work a lot better than the uh lower more standard doses

1:35 that one might use um I've seen improvements with um skin issues nail Integrity um seems to upregulate detoxification Pathways some patients have better energy better mental Clarity um so seeing quite a lot of benefit for my patient so I'm really thankful to Dr Janelle for um putting this information out there in the first place that I could learn from her um but then I'm also really thankful she's taking the time to speak with me today cuz I have a whole bunch of follow-up questions um based on what I've been seeing in practice and I'm just excited that those of you listening to the this episode are going to be able to learn more about the um potential benefits of sulfur MSM um that are available uh just before jumping into the podcast episode and bringing Dr Janelle into the conversation uh just want to invite

2:20 anyone who has not signed up for my newsletter to please uh consider doing so you're more than welcome to um signing up for my newsletter gives you complimentary access to the first two month modules of my overcoming chronic illness course um there are several modules within that course ranging from mitochondrial dysfunction to mold illness to Lyme and Co infections to Chronic digestive disorders detoxification de pardon me DET detoxification pathway issues uh including things like heavy metal detox and whatnot and a number of other topics as well um there's a course that I designed to help folks to navigate the um challenging Waters and complex Waters of complex ronic illness and um it's a course that um I hope is helping folks that are out there so if you're

3:06 interested in kind of checking that out then uh the first two modules are available at um for for no charge and um if you're signing if you do sign up for my newsletter then you'll also get updates from me periodically I don't send them out very often I promise I will not bombard your inbox with emails um but I send out periodic newsletters just talking about things I'm excited about in practice like MSM um and various other topics uh talk about upcoming podcast episodes I sometimes do live q&as different things like that so if you'd like to be in the loop U please cons please consider signing it for my newsletter the link for that is in the show notes if you're listening to this on a podcast platform or available in the description of the video if you are watching this on YouTube so with that out of the way I will pause the recording and be back in just a moment with Dr

3:54 Janelle all right folks well welcome back to the podcast I'm now joined by Dr Janelle Dr Janelle thanks so much for speaking with me today you're so welcome it's great to be here well thank you I'm very excited to chat with you I've got a whole bunch of questions for you but uh just before we jump into that would you mind just giving listeners a little background on who you are where you practice and maybe tell us a little bit about what this sulfur business is all about please oh sure um so I've been in practice for over 25 years and um I was initially in practice on the the east coast in uh in southern Vermont was where I started my residency and got into our family medicine and pediatrics at that point when I returned back to

4:40 Washington after the residency was over I really started to focus on digestive issues and trying to um elucidate some of the natural protocols that we could use to find out what's really going on here and um treat our patients successfully without having to go towards um a large contingent of pharmaceutical medications which I found in those days weren't really doing anything anyways you know there's there's a very short list and um a lot of them are really effective for any kind of long-term resolution for patients so I was really started digging around in that area and seeing a lot of uh digestive patients and So currently I'm in Seattle and I

5:27 practice out of Seattle um and how did um sulfur come across your radar it was a personal experience so all during the time when I was a resident and when I was in medical school I was having the issue that my patients come to me with now all the time all over the world and that's this gassy bloaty distension that doesn't seem to have any kind of identifiable ideology and so since I was in naturopathic medical school I was a resident I had all of this information I knew all the things that I was supposed to do with my diet and with digestive support and you know everything under the sun it really didn't matter it

6:14 didn't matter if I didn't eat anything it didn't matter if I just had water I would have this bloating up in the central abdomen every day um some people tell me that when they have that sensation it's um cramping and uh painful other people it's just that uncomfortable distension but it's basically fermentation right it's gas something is fermenting inside the intestines that should not be there in the quantities that it is so I went through the process of all the things I knew like I said digestive support HCL pancreatic enzymes oxfile diet changes diet testing microbiome testing what we had back then in the '90s it's not as sophisticated as what we have now but all of those things I Tred

7:00 and homeopathics I tried some antibiotics I tried antimicrobials I tried antifungals both herbal and prescription nothing touched it and um I can really relate to my patients when they tell me that because you know you kind of like if this goes on for 10 years like it did for me you're always thinking okay what's the next thing I'm going to try you try like okay tomorrow it's going to be the day tomorrow's going to be the day where I'm going to hit you know lunch and not going to blow up like a balloon and it just keeps on happening so it's really frustrating it was really frustrating for someone like me who I felt I should know how to do this I shouldn't know how to fix this but it's me and so um just by Providence uh a friend of mine who's

7:47 also a doctor in the area said you should talk to this compounding pharmacist because she told me about using um Hydro sulfur for this problem and I thought that sounded ridiculous I didn't know anything about the antifungal the antimicrobial properties the structural properties all I knew about um MSM was that it was an anti-inflammatory and we used it for you know joint diseases maybe mygas so um but I really didn't have anything to lose at this point and I'm curious so I talked to her and she told me what to do and I you know at that time actually uh you couldn't get MSM in

8:34 uh a powdered form there was usually in a mix with something else anti-inflammatory you know for joints and so I had to get it from her she supplied me with the crystallized MSM and that's really what I kept in stock in my practice for many years until it became available on the commercial market so I did what she said I did a titration I increased she warned me that I might have some die off her higher reactions at first or self upregulation reactions so she really prepped me for it I went through the protocol um and did the eight weeks of hydr sufur and I've never had that symptom again never it was gone and I don't you know we're going back like a few decades

9:20 now so I don't remember exactly when the magic part was for me but I do remember there was like a click over and it was like oh that day happened where I didn't blow up like a uncomfortable balloon so interesting right and just I'm just thinking about this right now how digestive issues can play into so many of the other aspects of Health for people and how um you know I was definitely in a chronic fatigue place at that point for myself too because of how much work was going into just what was happening in my gut more than likely and not absorbing nutrients well etc etc you know Medical School residency all those things piling up so not only did I feel like I was blown up like a balloon

10:07 afternoon I was also so tired that by the end of my day I never planned anything in the evenings you know because it was this double whammy of being absolutely exhausted and feeling uncomfortable at the same time it's so all pervasive when gets a big mess so yeah it's really great that you're a success story and so um from there you started using it with your patients in practice and the rest is history I'm assuming the story goes something like that from there yeah pretty much although what happened for me was that um I went to teach at bastier University um they had a GI thing happening and so I dropped in to do a teaching gig and as I was sitting there in the audience watching some of the

10:52 other um information I was shocked to find that people were being diagnosed with sibo small intestinal bacterial overgrowth which is a fermentation condition and being treated with antibiotics but then I'm listening to this protocol that's being laid out it's like well it goes It goes away for a little bit and then the symptoms come back well you give them more antibiotics and then it goes away for a little bit and the symptoms come will you give them more antibiotics and I felt my mind was kind of blown sitting in that audience like where am I this is not the place that I went to school the place I that I went to school at was where we learn how to use the least force uh you know use natural as much as

11:39 possible Do no harm um so it was really it started to bother me that this was really out there and being taught to the students as an acceptable protocol when I knew that there was a really good alternative so that's when I wrote my book and that's when I started speaking more publicly um to give doctors the option and give patients the option because when you take the antibiotics I faxin I've got a study here that I can you know uh a link or sent to anybody and it's probably in some of the videos I've done on YouTube but there's a 45% recurrence rate after zacin so over half of your patients like 55% of your patients might get complete

12:24 resolution from their symptoms by taking an antibiotic but almost almost half of them will basically go back to where they were so I think that's a great launching Point into like what's the magical thing about MSM or or the sulfur that's within the MSM in that you know at least in my practice so far like I've had um a growing number of patients who have been completely refractive to you know zxin also known as refax and for folks listening um you know every herbal treatment you can think of every diet Etc so um and of course those therapies do work well for some folks but what is it about MSM that's kind of makes it stand apart is it that it's the strongest you know antibacterial agent

13:11 out there and it just you know blows zhaoxin out of the water or like is it working on some deeper root cause as well what's what's so magical about it I think it's because it does so many different things right so you know if we kind of go in and spearhead what we think is the problem which is the small intestinal bacterial overgrowth um personally I don't think that's the problem I think that's the result right and I think that result is coming from in some ways a sulfur deficiency which we can get into you know as a separate topic um but no I don't think to answer one of the questions that you had there um it's not a superpowered antimicrobial or antifungal it's a very gentle

13:56 antimicrobial antifungal and it works with the immune system to get that Alpha diversity back in the system to decrease the growth in the small intestine um and even help with the large intestine because I'm treating people who have been diagnosed with sio you know over and over and over again and also people who have what I believe is a fungal overgrowth in the large intestine really hard to get a sample sometimes to really validate that but um a lot of times I think from the zyxin perspective these people who have had like four or five courses of it now they've got a fungal problem too you know so it's it's both an antimicrob both an antifungal and you have to get it up into high enough doses

14:42 to get that effect throughout the intestine right intestines 30 feet long and you're going to get really easy passive diffusion of MSM across the intestinal wall and a small intestine you want to have enough of it to be able to make its way down into the colon and also um do what it needs to do in there but you're absorbing it too right the Studies have shown that within 24 hours of taking um a dose of five grams of MSM you've got a diffusion throughout the body in all the tissues youve got it in the brain youve got it in the muscles You' got it in the kidneys it goes everywhere and it has no downside you know there's really no um there's really no known

15:29 toxicity there can be some you know ramp up initial um reactions that the body has to deal with or di off reactions but there really is no known toxicity um when you use it and you know like we talked about before the doses that I'm using they're um they're low compared there's a large room large uh you know margin of era um I'm talking about doing a 30 gram dose and the Studies have shown um through the FDA has shown that it's safe um up to 400 oh sorry 4,000 so four grams 4,000 milligrams per kilogram per day so if you translate that into 150 pound person

16:17 you're talking about 272 grams per day and we're doing 30 grams a day so wide margin of eror um it's not even really that high of a dose I just kind of call it that because it's um an unusually unusual dosing I guess calling it unusual dose sulfur therapy wouldn't have as much of a ring to it as Hyo sulfur so yeah better branding maybe with hyos probably not yeah yeah um as far as it being able to diffuse through the tissue so easily I just know some of my listeners are are quite quite Discerning and they're like H that sounds a little too good to be true but I'm just wondering uh you know I know there's the research literature to validate that but uh is ITC to your knowledge is it because the molecule is so small that

17:03 it's able to diffuse so easily correct it does not need a transporter you know like if you look at our food right our food breaks down into take proteins break down into amino acids um there's a transporter on the cell on the inner lining of the small intestine for each of those amino acids they get broken down building blocks transported over something as small as an MSM molecule does not need have a transporter so it's actually able to diffuse into the system without that and then travel through the body same thing with hydrogen sulfide which will probably come up a little bit later um when we talk a little bit more about hydrogen sulfide gas great well maybe we could uh Circle

17:48 back around to the uh sulfur deficiency that you mentioned because I know when I took your um the course that you put on through um my Alam moer ccnm naturopathic collagen in Ontario um that uh you know you you spun a very good yarn uh you know talking about how you know based I think largely on Dr Stephanie Sen's work um that you know a lot of us might be dealing with a sulfur deficiency and I know for me one of the things that was really exciting was like Hey like you know Dr Janelle she seems like a you know credible doc trustworthy doc she's been at it for you know quite a long time you know 25 plus years and she's seeing all this clinical you know has all this clinical experience all these successful cases treating challenging cases but just the fact that you were talking about using something to correct a potential deficiency as opposed to like Dr Janelle found like

18:35 you know this exotic plant from the middle of the Amazon rainforest you know one company has the patent on it but like oh it's been working in all these cases like you know I love the fact it's not this like you know Cinderella story about you know some exotic thing it's more like oh we're just correcting this innate deficiency this you know incredibly crucial you know component to our physiology so the the deficiency piece really excites me a lot so would you mind uh speaking to that a little bit please I sure and I think the most important thing to build this on is that we don't store sulfur in our bodies right so we have these molecules that are useful for us that are always active right we're never going to have a store of sulfur sulfur is a mineral it's the fourth most common mineral in our bodies and we have double the amount of sulfur

19:20 that we do of magnesium um and then let's another mineral calcium right calcium is stored in our bones so when we meet calcium we liberate it from the bones when we have too much calcium we pack it back in there um sulfur is not like that sulfur is active right it's being used for transport it's being used in glutathione it's being used in NAC it's being used in um cysteine and then that whole uh methylation pathway um it's been used as methionine meing is the universal sulfur donor that initiates um those Pathways so I don't want to detract too much um let's talk a little bit now

20:06 about so the those are the places we're using sulfur those are the places it's moving through our system and obviously we need a daily requirement of sulfur um because we're not storing it so let's talk about glyphosate and this is the work that Dr Stephanie senov and I MIT researcher brilliant woman has based a lot of her studies and literature on is glyphosate so just for your listeners to make sure they know what glyphosate is it's the active ingredient in Roundup and what it does is it impacts something called the shikimate pathway that's found in plants and bacterial species it's not found in humans which is how the um manufacturers are able to get away with saying well it's not going

20:51 to impact humans but it impacts our microbiome this glyphosate it's the pesticide that's used and when you see something that's GMO or round up ready that means that the plant has been engineered to tolerate gate so you can spray as much of it on you as you want onto the crop like let's say corn for example and everything else dies all of the um the P species die around it and there you will voila you have a beautiful corn crop so you have your end result unfortunately however it also goes into the soil and impacts some microbiomes in the soil and I do have some studies that show that the microbiome population in the soil that fix sulfur into the plant are impacted

21:38 by glyphosate the microbiome species inside of us that actually are helping us metabolize different plant forms of sulfur the thols um Etc are impacted by this pathway as well so we're knocking down the population of that sphere species which is another reason for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth right if you're knocking down certain species something else is going to take its place so that glyphosate makes sulfur insufficient in our system the circulating sulfur insufficient and that is hard to put your finger on because sulfur is so Mobile in our system right if you're

22:24 lacking in calcium you're going to have weak bones if you're lacking in Sulfur it's going to be a little more Insidious because sulfur does so many things that are functional in our bodies for example transport so the glyphosate makes the sulfur insufficient and one of the ways it does that is glyphosate is a glycine analog right so glycine is one of our amino acids that builds the polypeptide chain that makes a protein and you can substitute glyphosate right in there as a glycine analog so when you're doing that doing protein synthesis you're making nonfunctional proteins right and a lot of those non-functional proteins that have been studied with Dr senif are the ones that bind and utilize

23:12 sulfate so that's one part of the story um and the other part of the story is that glyphosate will disrupt the enzymes in the bacteria in our digestive system that convert sulfite to sulfate that convert sulfate into the form that helps to transport things into our body right so you get a decrease in the sulfate and sulfite that are able to be used by those good bacteria in our bodies to make methionine so that we can have that methine that's only one that they impact that they also impact tryptophan tyrosine and phenol alanine because those particular species that are using

23:59 this Pathway to make the aine for us are also making our tryptophan our phenyalanine and our tyrosine so all of that becomes um a deficit in our bodies and those are important neurochemicals that we need we need those all of them and so all of these things are suppressed then ultimately that leads to a sulfur deficiency because methionine is the universal sulfur donor that's where we get all of our sulfur from in the plant form I'm sorry in the animal form it's from the methionine amino acid so as far as uh like you know folks listening thinking like okay so you know

24:44 glyphosate Roundup you know GMO crops all that so um if someone's listening to this thinking like well I've been eating organic food for the last 10 years um so maybe this doesn't apply to me um what would your uh response be to that Dr J it's everywhere it's in the rain um at MIT they've taken rain samples from all over the world and it's more concentrated in um populations where there's uh there's more of a concentration of population like in cities um but it's everywhere it doesn't go away you know it's everywhere so um if you live on this planet you are exposed to glyphosate babies can be born um and be tested and be positive for

25:30 glyphosate even if you eat organic you're going to get drift even from crop to crop field there's nothing to protect that from happening and there's inous amounts of it being used you know they don't just use it in the growth process where it actually is incorporated into the into the tissue of the plant right you can't wash it off it's in there um but in addition to that it's used after harvest so you know you want to keep your corn fresh or whatever crop it is you're growing you spray it down with glyphosate in the trucks that are transporting it in the warehouses that are storing it um so that you continue to have a good crop um it's literally

26:15 everywhere yeah it's uh it's it's quite unfortunate uh some of the choices that our fellow humans have made um because it impacts all of us and we didn't get a say in it but um yeah yeah it's quite pervasive to say the least um there are bands actually sorry there are bands in Europe and Mexico yeah I think I remember I think you showed us a world map during your course I think of like there weren't many places where it was banned but there were there were a few anyways which was encouraging to see um just as a little side note and actually sorry this is a good segue for me to just mention um as per usual nothing discussed in these podcast episodes including this one should be construed as medical advice this is all for informational purposes only and if you need medical advice please talk to your healthcare provider to get that advice

27:02 um I'm just wondering um I know some docs out there or other clinicians talk about these kind of like glyphosate detox protocols um and I'm just wondering if there's anything that you uh recommend for your patients or that you uh think about for like kind of trying to get I don't know glyphosate residues out of out of folks yeah that's a tough question if it's incorporated into our amino acids then it's pretty difficult to get rid of it really I mean the answer is Banning it that's bigger than you or I um and glyphosate does move through like the the studies that were done by monsano for example to show that it's not a problem for us they show it you ingest it it passes through the urine so you do

27:49 pretty much you're getting rid of it all the time um through the urine but it's that part that gets stuck in the building of your body that's really hard to get rid of so I don't have any kind of amazing protocols besides avoiding you know the best you can avoiding and eating organic foods avoiding GMO Foods if you can um and you know then all of the healthy things that you and I always promote like getting outside and getting exercise and getting enough sleep and doing saunas for detox but if you think about um you know cysteine being an amino acid amino acid being builds proteins that means that you're getting these things stuck in not only the

28:34 enzymes but in the muscle protein how do you break down muscle protein and detox that um I've heard some folks talk about um just like taking in higher dose glycine supplements to try to like I don't know Fight Fire with Fire where it's like well if there's a glycine analog in the form of you know um glyphosate you know getting into the body then and that's getting picked up and incorporating into proteins if you Mainline gline into your system I know a lot of folks at least around here take magnesium glycinate you know magnesium bound to the amino acid glycine um do you think there's any um um potential role I'm not aware of any studies looking at that but um do you think there's any potential role for something like that or is that uh too wishful

29:19 thinking let me just say I would hope so I would hope that would have an impact I just I don't know and I haven't found anything in the literature yeah yeah me too um and then you were mentioning uh just about sulfur metabolism and you also earlier mentioned about hydrogen sulfide so it might be a good time to to talk about that please sure yeah yeah that's a that segue is right into it so um funny story I just want to go back in the Years okay let's go back into the late 90s when I had patients coming to me and I was you know GI practic at that time so they were coming to me and they had come from maybe they had inflammatory bowel disease they were coming from their GI do and they had a

30:05 message for me which was my gastroenterologist wants me to tell you that there's no bacteria in my digestive system and how I'm using that to um frame how far we've come right and I think the real shift in the entrance of the microbiome happened when we started using FAL microbia transplants for people with intractable clustr defil and nothing else was working and you know the majority of those people recovered and recovered um you know they were done with their their infections so that put a spotlight on what the heck is in this um that is so important to our health well now you know fast forward

30:52 decades later and we know so much about the microbiome and how it interacts with our bodies and how it's releasing these chemical Messengers you know these endstage Messengers into our body so our body is literally communicating all the time with those gut micro with the gut microbiome via those chemical Messengers so if the body knows that it's low in Sulfur it's going to tell the gut hey you guys in there upregulate for me whatever you can because we need more sulfur in the body so Q you know do Brio and fusobacterium those guys can overgrow now and instead of doing the pathway where they're actually helping us build methionine they shift over to a

31:40 compensation by um now making hydrogen sulfide hydrogen sulfide is a gas it's a teeny tiny little molecule it also diffuses directly into the tissues doesn't even have to go through the blood it's so small so it's going to go directly into the tissues it's lighter than oxygen it's going to head up to the brain and the brain has a mechanism to convert hydrogen sulfate to sulfate hydrogen sulfide sorry to sulfate so it's not a great solution but it is a solution to get more sulfur in our bodies so I believe because of my clinical experience that a lot of these um fermentation syndromes

32:27 up here people have are really based on this sulfur deficiency and once you give the body what it needs and it's able to downregulate those species that are compensating you can go back to a healthier homostasis in the microbiome um on that note because I've heard um do you know uh do you know or know of Dr Greg NY by chance of course I do okay yeah so one of the smartest people I've ever met like just such a amazing guy um and uh so he I know he's been lecturing and talking here and there about sulfur metabolism and well yeah of course if you know Dr senf they know they published a paper or two together I think and anyways um so he's

33:12 he's the first person I ever heard speak about the idea like oh maybe hydrogen sulfide gas producing sibo is a compensation for you know some of the things you you just very succinctly um spoke about there um and so I'm just wondering cuz like in my practice like I've run like literally like a few thousand lactose breath tests in my day um we really don't do the trios spart testing that's out there now that's able to test directly for hydrogen sulfide gas because just the price point um here in beautiful Canada is like you know works with the exchange rate to be around I don't know ,000 or something like that to do a test versus a little over $100 to do a regular LAX breath test so we don't really get to see those but um I know um to my understanding there are you know some ways to you know not maybe 100% accurately but some ways

33:58 get some um extrapolation from a standard lactulose breath test where you know if there's kind of um where kind of like Flatline hydrogen Flatline methane you know we can maybe extrapolate from that that maybe there's hydrogen sulfide then bring in Trio smart and it's like oh know we can see that even when there is the presence of methane and hydrogen gas producing sibo that there can be hydrogen sulfide as well they can all coexist together in some dysfunctional you know happy family kind of thing um and so I'm just wondering in your experience um where Maybe if you've seen more Trio smarts or you know um tests that are actually looking directly at hydrogen sulfide is is it quite a prevalent um subtype of sibo um and I'm just wondering where other types of sibo seem to be more more dominant or is um

34:43 is there evidence that there's quite a bit more hydrogen sulfide producing sibo out there my population might be skewed just because people are finding me because they know they have a hydrogen sulfide problem based on the testing um and I can tell you that they respond really well to the treatment to the hydros sulfur treatment so that definitely you know helps to validate this idea that there's a deficiency um so now in terms of proportions most of my patients come to me with a stack of SEO tests right they'll come to me and they've been through this over and over and over again because I practice in an area where that's the norm right the norm is test IA and test IA and so um people

35:30 will find me through either you know my writing or YouTube or whatever and they'll say well this is really different you know this is really different and I you know I want to I want to see what this is all about um so they'll be pre-tested right and a lot of those again are going to be positive for the hydrogen sulfide not all of them though so um and I still get good results so was that you know did it not come up on the test you know was that a Falls positive like I I don't know but it does seem like the overgrowth of the methanogens and the hydrogen producing bacteria are potentially Downstream from that sulfur deficiency as well and that comes back to creating that Alpha diversity um within the small and large

36:17 intestine U by replacing that deficiency makes sense okay yeah definitely see good responses and you know like I will leave with um the product that I formulated which is the G1 powder that's um the hydros MSM powder that I use and we'll do that first because for the majority of people it's going to take care of the problem they've already had tons of testing done they don't need any more testing done if they want to repeat it afterwards they usually don't you know because it's like I'm better goodbye yeah absolutely which is understandable you know they're they're not you know guinea pigs in a lab right it's like no and you know

37:04 they're if they feel like okay this problem is gone they're going to move on to their lives right they don't have to deal with this anymore so um I've really never um maybe one or two people but nothing that stands out to me that says okay you know we retest it the symptoms are gone I think that's your answer right there and you know we um I remember learning 30 years ago that you can only rely so much on testing right that part of our job as Medical detectives is to sit and listen to the patient and you're going to get 80% of what you need to know just by asking your questions and finding out and seems

37:50 like the longer you're in practice the more true that is um well if you don't mind Dr Janelle um I do have a list of questions here um maybe we I know we're time starting to wind down a little bit um and so could I maybe just ask you a few kind of Rapid Fire questions I've been thinking about MSM a lot as I mentioned before we started recording I've been using this quit a lot in practice since taking your course which I'm very thankful for and uh so I just have a bunch of random miscellaneous questions if you're if you're okay with that um absolutely so um I'm just wondering if memory serves I believe that during your course you um indicated that while folks could take MSM and you know divide a doses through the day seems to work comparably well

38:35 just taking it once a day um like the whole just in one big Bolis um so if if I did hear that correctly um have you had any patients that do seem to either tolerate MSM better or somehow get better results U taking it say two or three and two three divided doses through the day instead of all at once I'll tell you what the um compounding pharmacy phy pharmacist told me a long time ago and that was if you get it in within that 24-hour period that's all you need to do so if you take it in one uh dose or you divide it up into six doses it really doesn't matter it becomes more of a personal preference I have had people tell me that they feel that it's more effective when they take it between meals but then it's also

39:23 worked when people take it at meals so it really is that 24-hour window where you want to get your dosing in whatever level you happen to be at if you're doing a titration great um and then again if memory serves please correct me if I'm wrong with any of this but I I believe during your course you mentioned that you know folks will need to build up to whatever dose they need to build up to and then they're seeing their therapeutic um results and then they'll you know be able to tight trait the dose down over time but then some folks do need to um continue to seem to need to take the MSM you know longer term or longterm potentially to kind of keep those benefits going um potentially because they are still prone to sulfur deficiency because they're still living in a world with glyphosate Etc um and so if if I have my facts together there um

40:11 if that is the case I'm just wondering how often do you find that your patients need to stay on some maintenance dose of MSM like just percentage wise roughly I'm kind of at the point now where I want people to stay on a maintenance dose you know at least like a uh 2.5 to 5 milligram dose every day just because I know it has so many other benefits for their system in terms of you know being an antihistamine anti-inflammatory building tissue um even you know um the structure of your skin right the all of the connective tissue that requires that sulfur based protein um the collagen right the fact that collagen is held together by heper and sulfate so if you take hydrolized collagen you're getting part of the molecule you want to rebuild your body

40:57 but you need the sulfur to actually hold it all together so I like to keep I at this point I'm keeping people in a a low mainten in do if they're willing um just as part of their health protocol right their overall health protocol in terms of symptoms returning it's pretty rare that I need to keep someone on a moderately high dose like let's say 15 grams a day which would be half the therapeutic dose but I have had a handful of people over the years who say you know what I feel like if I don't take this much every day I start to notice symptoms that I don't like so in that case because of the safety of it um I'm fine with that happening and then there's a third contingent and that would be the people who don't

41:43 respond right because nothing is a panace it's not always one problem we're so complex so it say there's maybe 20% of the people that don't respond to this don't get complete elimination of their symptoms that's permanent and in that case the majority of these people who have have been through a lot of antibiotics over the course of their life and their problem is really fungal and they need a stronger antifungal the usually the fermentation that I see that um persists after doing the full 8we course of the gi1 powder it persists in the lower abdomen where you're more likely to get a fungal versus a bacterial overgrowth because that syst is literally a bacterial system right

42:29 your lower your your colon is a fermentation uh Warehouse that's what's happening down there and you've got a lot of bacteria so you know I kind of go back to the old term disbiosis in the large intestine because bacterial overgrowth in the large intestine I don't think there's room for more overgrowth that's that's what's there you know but fungal overgrowth for sure so at that point um if with that 20% population I'll go in with some kind of Pres description antifungal they need something stronger and that usually clears things up it's very rare that it doesn't Okay um and you mentioned the Heparin sulfate and I'm uh just wondering U I've had a couple of patients to date now who have noticed some significant um

43:15 improvements related to um blood flow um in their bodies and I'm just wonder like with taking the higher do the high dose MSM or hydo sulfur protocol I'm just wondering um this maybe just a little bit of a I don't know thought experiment here but um you know we of course had the covid-19 pandemic you know a lot of folks with um circulation related issues related to that and various things surrounding that I'm just wondering if um you could speak to any experience that you've had where hyos MSM seems to be helpful with um circulation related challenges or symptoms incredibly important so there's a uh research uh scientist Dr Pollock who's of the University of Washington and he's really close with Dr senf

44:02 because they're both working on sulfur and just I want to say one thing about um Greg NY who I agree is absolutely brilliant he does the opposite treatment right he limits sulfur in the diet and I've seen patients of his who haven't really responded to that I think that the some of the foods that he limits are actually inflammatory foods and that's one of the reasons people are getting benefit right like your Dairy and eggs and those are things I take out of the diet too um so he kind of starts with uh Dr Sen's research and Dr Pollock's research um and then limit sulfur I start with their research and I say that they sulfur deficient and that we work with the sulfur so two completely different Avenues with that where I was

44:49 headed though was Dr Pollock University of Washington has discovered that there's a fourth phase of water right so we know that things in our world exist in different phases right so water can be ice which is solid water can be um Vapor um which is steam water can be liquid which is what we drink and he's found that there's this fourth phase of water called exclusion Zone water um She's Got Papers about it and that is a gel form of water so liquid solid um vaporous gel and that gel form of water water lines all of our blood vessels It lines anything that is suspended in blood so it can move through those vessels more easily right it stops the

45:36 red blood cells from sticking to each other which we don't want so in terms of the vascular system well not only that but as a transport molecule sulfate transports any kind of ring structure right so tyrosine phenol alanine vitamin D cholesterol you have to have cholesterol sulfated in order to transfer it through transport it through the liquid medium of the blood and it does that by attaching sulfate so any ring structure is sulfated for transport and you can see that I'm trying to make a link there between cardiovascular disease and the impact of having you know uh blood clots irritation inflammation and then packing cholesterol in there as a possible link

46:22 to again a sulfur deficiency something that wouldn't show up you know from moment to moment but over time has that Insidious effect so in terms of yeah circulation very interesting I just just clinically um what uh like what are some of the have you had patients report um circulation related um symptom Improvement um from uh from MSM dosing off and on yeah okay yeah find it's not everyone but like there's just been a few like oh wow like things are I don't know been been going very well so um yeah um I I uh interviewed Dr Wai earlier this year actually for the podcast and he was talking about the

47:08 exclusion Zone water as well as I was I had sulfur on the brain as I'd done your course not long before then and so I was told telling them about your course actually it's like it is interesting how like it's kind of the polar opposite of include and discl anyways so um I hope I hope he took the course and be curious to see what he uh thinks about it absolutely I would love to talk to him actually about it cuz I'm sure that he's seeing things from one perspective I'm seeing things from a different perspective of course you're going to go towards whatever clinically manifests for you in success with your patients yep I remember talking to him at a conference um about like just getting more sulfur into the system because um anyways I think I feel like you guys are kind of talking about it differently just from like an bring more sulfur

47:53 exclude sulfur but I think it's for him more like excluding sulfur rich foods but I think he's ultimately I believe he was saying the same thing that like oh this hydrogen sulfide is a compensation for not having enough sulfate so he was talking to me like you know about um you know he was playing around with um epson salt baths and he was like maybe giving people like kro and sulfate and glucosamine sulfate it's like oh or MSM so anyways I think you're talking about the same thing maybe just coming at it from slightly different angles but anyways need to get the two of you together on a podcast to Hash this out and probably I'll you know come come up to the similar conclusions would be my guess but um so bringing going back to the rapid fire here that's not going rapidly at all because I keep uh going down rabbit holes here with you but um so circling back to the digestive tract

48:40 um and I I'm not saying this is my perspective but I'm just curious what your answer would be um if someone you know came in like Devil's Advocate saying like yeah you know that MSM like when I take it in a powder by golly it's mighty bitter tasting um and maybe all the digestive benefits are because you're just giving like the ultimate bitters formula you know you're just stimulating the heck out of the patient digestive processes um and that's what's leading to all these benefits so I'm just wondering if uh you think there's any type of therapeutic benefit from that incredibly bitter taste of that MSM powder if folks are taking it in a powder form that's a good thought that's definitely a good thought I mean um certainly bitters are something that we've used for centuries right I mean the

49:25 apparative kind of idea bitters has been around for a long long time um to stimulate that digestive process uh I don't think it could hurt um but I don't think that's entirely it either and what I base that on is just having tried so many things with patients over the years before I started doing this you know and and having them use uh bitter formulas or having them use HCL or pancreatic enzymes or combinations of those things and not really getting a a um the needle moving on the symptoms so I'm sure it does have some um of that bitter effect and I really like that idea you know as an naturopath I like that idea that we're working with the body's processes um but I don't think that's entirely uh

50:12 what's happening yeah I I agree for for similar reasons as well um although in the last maybe month or so I've actually switched my explanation to patients I would always kind of go into it a bit apologetically saying like you know stuff's great but like it is pretty bitter and you know and now I'm saying like and guess what and it's bitter and so you get this bitters effect as well so I've I've switched my mindset on it a little bit so anyways I'm gonna do that too good and then POS there we go yeah um and then another question I have for you and I I been meaning to get into the biochemistry of list I haven't had a chance but if anyone has I'm sure I'm sure you have um just where you know MSM of course as you know and for listeners you know it's methyl suono methane so so it's methylated and I'm just wondering

50:58 like is there um is there any chance that um taking MSM somehow contributes to our methylation cycle in a more direct way um no it can't and I've got a there's a YouTube video on my Channel about that where I actually have the methylation cycle behind me and I go through it but the methylation cycle starts with methionine methionine is an essential amino acid we can't make it right we have to get it in our diet or from the bacteria that are helping to convert that methine in the paps um cycle in our intestines so we can't make methionine so we can't push that cycle so methionine is essential amino acid we get it in it feeds into the methylation

51:45 cycle it circles around and it gets turned into homocysteine you know it's a circle so it keeps on going right um It Go turns to homosysteine the homosysteine then goes into the transulfuration cycle which is where we convert sulfite to sulfate so it can't really feed into either of those two Pathways now can it liberate having this is the only place I've been able to um really wrap my mind around even some of the side effects that people have and their response if we upregulate the sulfide oxidase using the limonin because it does seem to work um so are we liberating some of our other sulfur-based molecules like gione like NAC um in the body and making some extra

52:31 sulfite the very end of that cycle um and that's causing some you know ramp up irritations for people that's the only place where I can see that make sense because that entire uh pathway cannot be impacted directly because we can't make the start point so and I mean again I haven't looked into it so and appreciate feedback here um but just would there be any way that that methyl group from MSM could potentially methylate homocystine back into um back into methionine like somehow I don't know replacing or circumventing the need for because like there's the short pathway shunt like with um uh like the bhmt um enzyme getting homosysteine back into methionine through trimethyl glycine um

53:19 you know the longer around pathway with uh using you know methyl folate and methyl B12 like is there some way that MSM like you know methyl could somehow methylate homosysteine um that that's kind of the way I was thinking of it more so as opposed to directly intercalating itself in the in the cycle yeah I I think that's a stretch for me because you know we're carbon hydrogen based entities right like the backbone of a lot of our structure is carbon and hydrogen and methyl you know methyl group is simply a carbon attached to three hydrogens and we're getting that in our food all the time in various forms and we're having that circulate around in our body so just that you know little bit of extra I guess I would say

54:04 maybe but there's so many metal groups in our body all the time floating around it's hard to think that that could easily feed into that system where the body would need that um in order to you know uh upregulate that system well I appreciate the thought experiment engagement there though been curious about that one so thanks for the feedback there um if there was a patient who for some reason just could not tolerate taking MSM for some reason I don't know why they wouldn't be able to but if if they couldn't for some reason um are there any other forms of sulfur that a patient can work with therapeutically like break into a chemistry lab and just get a hunk of that yellow stinky

54:50 stuff there's a toxicity level right so in the form of MSM is the safest form MSM is directly derived in some cases from something called DMSO dimethyl sulfoxide which also has a really high toxicity a really you know low level that you can take before you're going to make yourself really sick so the thing about MSM is that it's so well tolerate um and that's the reason why I use it even things like NAC which you know the kids are calling Knack these days I've never heard of that before I'm like what's this Knack so NAC and glutathione right there's there's these sulfur based um nutrients that we can actually take to upregulate our bodies but they're kind

55:35 of well they're probably cost prohibitive too you know because MSM is really available to people um and in in the doses you need to take right I can imagine like thinking about a capsule of like liposomal glutathione containing maybe 300 milligrams so that would be a lot of pills to take in today I haven't experimented with that um I just have had so much good luck with using the methyl saon methane that I really haven't needed to I haven't run into anyone who can't tolerate it just I like to plan for a rainy day so I thought I'd ask but some oh yeah well there definitely are some like I said there's some ramp up issues for people that almost always go away at

56:21 the point where things are becoming um digestively things are becoming much better like some people say they're getting headaches that might be directly from the MSM that might be from um that might be from some kind of detoxification reaction that's happening in the brain I don't know I've been looking I've been reading and reading and reading and looking for something direct but I haven't come across that yet I have come across some really great antimicrobial antifungal studies done with MSM directly done with MSM um that are fantastic and I can you know nerd out out for days on those um some people say they get insomnia all of these things happen at the lower Doses and resolve at the higher doses I've never seen anyone persist there so I just

57:09 encourage my patients it's like okay that's a good sign that your body is using this stuff we'll just slow down the roll you know slow and steady don't increase your dose until that symptom has resolved go up a little bit if it happens hold it there hold your Jay dose there until that goes away and eventually it just stops and they can go up and do a therapeutic dose um I'm just gonna ask you one more question Dr Janelle because I know our time is winding down here um I've had uh you know many patients over the years where we've um you know had a lot of great success getting their um chronic digestive symptoms under control um you know they had a history of constipation we'll usually get them on magnesium to get their bowels moving we treat their

57:55 sibo their whatever they're feeling really good um but then they are stuck on magnesium and they you know they're taking maybe two four six eight capsules a day and they're just kind of stuck on that and they're they're generally don't complain about it they're happy they're not constipated they're feeling good it's like whatever um they're they're fine with it um I used to tell myself you know I'd like to try to figure out why the heck things are happening in practice you know naturopathic doctor root cause all that good stuff what what does the body need I used to just tell myself well um you know it's a a stressful world that we live in maybe they're just burning through more magnesium they need it for you know stress mitigation or something like that um but then hearing your lecture and I was seeing with my own uh patients you know their magnesium dosages you know

58:40 going down not needing as much magnesium some of them not needing it anymore that was one of the most exciting things I one of the many things I was excited about with learning from you about this um and so I'm wondering in your experience the folks that do have you know chronic constipation and let let's just say maybe like that subset of patients who are you know just kind of medicating their constipation one way or the other restorx or laxa or you know magnesium vitamin C whatever they're taking some osmotic laxitive um how often is it that you see MSM um you know able to fully resolve um you know chronic idiopathic constipation assuming there's no you know anatomical explanation or something like that for it um I see people being able to lower their magnesium doses

59:26 all the time and during the course of the treatment you mean magnesium is osmotic right so during the course of the treatment that MSM is now becoming asmic as well right and so it's helping draw water into the colon and helping to um make the tools less hard by drawing that water in right so there's that one aspect but the other aspect is that you're absorbing a whole bunch of MSM into your body and that MSM is giving you the sulfur that you need to create elasticity in connective tissue right uh sulfur creates connective tissue that is strong and flexible right so we need it in our skin we need it anywhere where we need

1:00:13 contraction expansion so the as you're going through the course of that um MSM ramp up you're actually supplying the sulfur that you need to create more motility within the nective tissue of the skin so you're repairing that um and the body's repairing it right you're not doing it your your body knows what to do it's repairing that for you so motility actually increases right from the cellular level and that's why you can end up with people who need in the end even when they're off the high dose of the MSM they need less magnesium to move their bowels um and you asked you know resolving intractable constipation the people who will always need some but not ridiculous amounts

1:01:01 anymore um and maybe just a follow-up question to that if you don't mind um with the those chronic constipation cases um what would be say like an average well sorry what would be the range sh yeah what would be the range of timeline that it might take to get them sort of the maximal results um for that constipation like let's say someone builds up to 30 grams of MSM um you know their bowels are you know everything everything's going well their magnesium dose is maybe gradually going down um how long might they need to be on that magnesium for what would the range be like um before they're going to kind of see their you know optimal results with uh with the protocol well they will by the end of the awe protocol whatever they end up with at the end of that high do titration and they land on the 30

1:01:47 grams and they hold that for eight weeks and they can work with their magnesium dose at the same time which is really wonderful that you um you discovered that in your patient population and that's one thing I tell people too is that you know you're going to be working with the Magnesium dose because you won't need as much and then when you get to the end of the eight weeks of the 30 grams then whatever they landed at there with their magnesium dosing um you can go ahead and just continue to work with that to see if you can bring it down anymore but you know if if it's the question between being chronically constipated and taking some extra magnesium I mean I think I think uh that's a pretty pretty safe bet that that's a good thing to use and I usually use the really cheap form of useum I use

1:02:34 magnesium oxide and hydroxide when I'm exclusively dealing with the osmotic effect because it's not absorbed as easily as some of the other forms of magnesium and so you're getting it to remain in the digestive system sense um well Dr Chanelle um I know that um You' mentioned that you might want to chat with me a little bit about um some of my experience with practice with in practice so far with MSM that being said I think we're officially cutting into your lunch break at this point so I don't want to keep you um longer than than uh you know you have so um I can riff a little bit for a couple of minutes or or we can just uh wrap things up I would love to hear your experience sure yeah um I can summarize it pretty well I think um yeah so I've had just a growing number of patients

1:03:20 that um I've started bringing MSM much earlier into the treatment protocol like when I first started using it it was mostly like just bringing out the cases that were you know really tough we were struggling with you know trying to you know chronic cases where maybe they hit a plateau um and I've been seeing those patients getting gradually better which has been the most you know exciting part of it for me I have two cases that were just you know didn't respond to anything like no response to any of the sibo treatments hyos digestive enzymes every diet you can think of Under the Sun etc etc etc um you know they're doing really really well now with their bloating and bowel regulation getting under control so still still a work in progress everyone's building up kind of gradually a lot of my patients are really sensitive so hitting some little speed bumps along the way needing to you know build up a little bit maybe slower than

1:04:05 average or some of them but couple of my really tough cases um it seems like the MSM is cracking those digestive cases which is really exciting I have a growing number of patients with um arthritis that have been noticing improvements with their joint pain and Joint issue so I'm recommending it all the time now for folks I do a lot of Orthopedic injections like Prolotherapy and ozone injections and stuff like that so um that seems to be a really nice um complement and Synergy with that so they don't seem to be needing as many treatments the treatments seem to be working better because I think there's a Synergy between the two have uh maybe three patients or maybe four patients now where try as we might nothing was helping with their thinning brittle hair and their hair is doing better now or like hair loss that's doing better which has been exciting a lot of folks reporting that their nails are more uh have better Integrity um feel like I've

1:04:52 got a couple of other good anecdotes too but um those those would be the main anyways those are some of the highlights so yeah it's been quite oh and then I'm taking it personally myself and I'm surviving my jiu-jitsu classes a lot better now with all the guys that are half my age so I'm like you know I'm sold on it uh for me personally too so yeah lots of lots of great benefits I'm really excited about it that's wonderful I'm really glad to hear that yeah so thank you again for teaching about this and uh thank you so much for speaking with me today Dr Janelle um just before we wrap up today um would you mind just sharing with folks where they can find you online tell us about your supplement line where they can find you on social media absolutely um so online I've got a YouTube channel at giel and I'm always

1:05:39 putting up videos because people are asking me questions during the day and then I'll think oh I should you know I should talk to that point so for me that's really fun to be able to you know say here's another answer for you think about this so um that's on YouTube but all those videos are also on Tik Tock gel they're on Instagram and Facebook at giel so all of those places I try and get everything across the platforms my website is gel.com and there's a link to my book there you can also get it on Amazon or download it from Amazon um and

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