The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
157. Dr. Jessica Peatross: Detoxing From Environmental Mold, Lyme Disease, and Parasites
Tue, 15 Apr 2025
Did you know that most chronic health issues that conventional doctors can’t figure out often trace back to environmental toxins, mold exposure, and hidden infections? In this episode, Dr. Jessica Peatross brilliantly explained why so many of us feel exhausted, foggy, and unwell despite “normal” lab tests. Here’s the mind-blower...your body’s mitochondria are stuck choosing between making energy OR fighting invaders. When you’re toxic, all energy goes to immunity, leaving you depleted! Join the Ultimate Human VIP community and gain exclusive access to Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols today!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Featured article on Lyme Testing: https://bit.ly/42mg44c Featured biohacking device (Flowpresso Lymphatic Device):https://bit.ly/3E9d7MD Connect with Dr. Jessica Peatross: Website: https://bit.ly/42bHjQk YouTube: https://bit.ly/4j29ebk Instagram: https://bit.ly/42bQ9gV Facebook: https://bit.ly/4icN2tJ Thank you to our partners: H2TABS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - USE CODE "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE - THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP - GET 1 FREE MONTH WHEN YOU JOIN!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD HAPBEE - FEEL BETTER & PERFORM AT YOUR BEST: https://bit.ly/4a6glfo CARAWAY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF - GET 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:23 Dr. Jessica Peatross’s Journey 05:59 The Human Body Biome is a Giant Ecosystem 10:22 Specialising in Functional Medicine Treatment (for Stealth Infections, including Lyme and Mold) 16:22 Mold Detox Program 21:51 Mold Exposure Symptoms and Identifying Which Tests/Protocols to Undergo 35:02 Detox Protocols and Parasite Cleansing 42:13 Nervous System Regulation 45:35 Having the Perspective of ‘My Body is Intelligent, Not Broken’ 49:20 Biohacking Devices 51:25 Habits and Discipline of a Healthy Person 53:05 When Doing a Protocol: ‘It’s About Harmonising and Balancing, Not Eradicating’ 58:46 Natural Remedies and Therapies for Mold Toxicity 1:03:36 Lyme and Viral Pathogens: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatments 1:18:29 Trademark Protocol: Kill, Bind, Sweat The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Jessica Peatross and what is her medical background?
I started out as a conventional medical doctor. Eventually, there started to be cracks in the system. Why am I discharging people on 40 different medications? And they said, listen, if you don't stop doing this, you can't work for us.
You can't take somebody who's in a toxic environment and then just overload them with every supplement and vitamin and mineral and amino acid. Now you're just overloading a body that doesn't process it anyway. They just get on the hamster wheel of medicine and never find a solution.
And that's part of what's wrong with medical doctors. They aren't open to learning things that they weren't taught in medical school.
In the functional medicine or lifestyle medicine arena, we forget to take that step back and really look at the person, their lifestyle, their spiritual well-being. Life's not this collection of goals and priorities. It's a collection of habits.
These are people who are really sick. They're gluten-free, they're dairy-free, they're soy-free, they're nut-free, they're egg-free. And I'm like, it's not your diet that's keeping you sick.
A lot of people listening to this are in that place where something's going on. They can't put a finger on it. They've been told by everybody that they're fine. And the end road for them is they get referred to psychiatry.
It goes back to the childhood and then what their continued stress is in life because what I've noticed is...
Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today, you are in for a real treat, especially you females. My audience has been asking for more female guests and I'm so excited to have this next guest on.
We're gonna go down the road of environmental toxins, breast implants, mold, mycotoxins, viral pathogens, parasites, all kinds of pathways that I've been talking about expressly in the media for the last few months and especially on my VIP channel. These are the things that just go undiagnosed and even unchecked for sometimes for decades.
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Chapter 2: What motivated Dr. Peatross to transition from conventional to functional medicine?
There's a common theme that I feel runs through the Ultimate Human podcast, and that is that the most impactful people, the people that are the most passionate, that have discovered God's purpose for them, that are out there really changing the world. Sometimes they're not even physicians. They are people that have solved a problem. And maybe it was drug and alcohol addiction.
Maybe it was tough relationship. Maybe it was financial difficulty. Maybe they had Lyme for a decade and nobody could help them. And they became their own citizen scientists and they fixed this problem. And now they're this booming, impactful, passionate voice for that, whatever it is. So I'd love for my audience to know your story, your background. How did you get here today?
It's been a wild ride, absolutely. And I would say my story exemplifies the saying from Rumi, the cracks are where the light enters. And so I started out training as a conventional medical doctor. I went to school at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. I went to residency there. I did internal medicine and I was board certified. And I worked as a hospitalist.
So the person that's kind of the quarterback of the team, the ER calls them to admit everything but general surgery pretty much. And so I had to know something about everything. And I did that for almost seven years in a hospital.
So internal medicine was your specialty, okay.
Yep, and I only worked in the hospital. And I learned a lot. I triaged and I kept care of a lot of sick patients. But eventually there started to be cracks in the system for me. I started asking questions that people didn't like. I started saying, you know, why am I discharging people on 40 different medications? That's not health to me.
Why do we have Coke and Pepsi contracts and feed factory farm meats and cheese to patients who have cancer?
Yes.
Why is Jell-O on a clear liquid diet?
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Chapter 3: How does the human body biome function as an ecosystem?
And the last straw, actually, I had been complaining about things, and the last straw was I wrote, this patient that's being admitted to our service, I wrote this in the electronic medical record, has been on a proton pump inhibitor called Prevacid for eight years when the package insert clearly says six months to one year. And I wrote that in the chart.
And the primary care doctor, who was an outpatient doctor, called the lead hospitalist to complain about me and said she's a liability rather than him being the liability for the medication he had this patient on for years. And they sat me down and they said, listen, if you don't stop doing this, you can't work for us.
And I'm kind of knee jerk reactive sometimes, especially when I don't feel the ethics align with me. And I said, OK, I quit. I didn't have a husband. I didn't have kids. I had the leeway to be able to be a little bit more free. I may have not done that had I known because I made a fourth of what I used to make when I left.
What people don't know is there's not a ready-made system for holistic doctors or doctors who don't go the conventional path. My malpractice, my insurance was paid for in the hospital. I didn't have to think about anything. I got out of there and I got trained in functional medicine and had to make my own system, had to be a businesswoman out of the gates for it to work.
Wow.
So that was a big lesson for me.
So when you say I got trained in functional medicine, what do you mean? I think people are familiar with allopathic medicine, right? Most MDs are allopathic MDs and they have a specialty and they do plenty of schooling and they're very skilled and they have a high area of expertise in that core competency. What's also kind of astounding to me is the way that we just bifurcate the human body.
It reminds me of like the hub of a wheel and then all of these spokes. And the patient's kind of in the middle of And we're trying to determine, should you see gastroenterology? Should you see neurology? Should you see the OBGYN? Should you see the internist? Should you see the psychiatrist? Because you have a psychiatric issue. You have a gut issue. You have an autoimmune disease.
You have a personality disorder. And so what ends up happening is we slot people into these categories. You know, human beings exist in communities. Cells exist in communities. The biome of the human body is a giant community.
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Chapter 4: What is functional medicine’s approach to stealth infections like Lyme disease and mold?
It's an ecosystem. And it fascinates me that psychiatric medicine, for example, will treat this. neck up and then there's neck down, right? And like these are somehow not connected. This is just observational, but we've had hundreds of thousands of people through our clinic system.
And I never once saw a client, I don't have patients, I'm not a physician, but our physicians had patients and I never once saw a client for example, that suffer from severe anxiety that didn't also have gut issues.
That's right.
Not once. I mean, literally not once. As soon as someone said, I have rampant anxiety or, you know, I'm taking medication for anxiety, instantly I would go to the gut and 100% of the cases they have the gut. So there's... And we know gut-brain connection and gut microbiome, and I think most people are relatively familiar with that.
Yeah, 80% of serotonin is made in the gut that then converts over to melatonin. So if your immune system sucks, you can't sleep, and you're unhappy, you should be looking at the gut. And to your point, the specialists, they do good work with their organ system, but the body doesn't work as separate organ systems. It works as a symphony as a whole, and it's a very delicate symphony.
And I've seen chart wars in the chart where the heart doctor was arguing with the kidney doctor about about which one was more important at the time. I've seen this over the years. So it's not always, there's no perfect system, but I think we can do better than what's out there right now. And so for me, I started to say this in the system to people. And when they didn't listen, I quit.
And I got trained in functional medicine. I got trained at the Institute of Functional Medicine. I got trained in ozone by Dr. Schellenberger.
Wow. Yes. I know Schellenberger. Absolutely. He's trained a lot of my clinicals team.
The first place I got trained actually was Gerson Therapy.
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Chapter 5: How does the Vibrant test help identify mold exposure and toxins?
And I see this all the time. And these people look well. They look like they're healthy, but they're not.
Yeah. And sometimes they don't have the catastrophic symptoms, right? They don't have the symptoms that take them to the ER, but they've got this myriad of symptoms going wrong that seems like the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket. They got brain fog and weight gain and water retention and poor sleep and poor focus and concentration.
And they've got anxiety sort of out of the blue that's not tied to anything in their outside environment. Right. And they're mood numb. And they know that something's wrong. They're like, man, here I am on the vacation of a lifetime with the people I love the most and a place I've always wanted to go. And I just can't get out of first gear. I can't feel it. I'm just not.
And they know that something's wrong. And because those symptoms don't link to a specific, that's not type 2 diabetes, hypothyroid, hypertension. Yeah. because it doesn't slot into a neat category, they just get on the hamster wheel of medicine and never find a solution.
That's exactly right. It's never talked about what the root cause is. And some of these labels and ICD-10 codes that we bill for in the hospital, I mean, like sarcoidosis is mold. It's water damage. That's an autoimmune condition from water damage buildings.
Wow.
The fungal balls in the lungs that extra pulmonary manifestations that is mold. It's fungus. And so that's one of my favorite things to do is take people who have labels given by the Western system and say, let's dig deeper and see what is causing your body to be out of homeostasis. What is causing it not to be in normalcy? And this one particular patient, early into my career, I miss that.
And I will never do that again. Now, I don't test everyone for Lyme disease, but I spend an hour, hour and a half with people. I dig into their antecedents, their triggers, their traumas. These are the things that put people on the wrong path throughout life. And eventually their toxin bucket fills up and you have to empty that toxin bucket.
And oftentimes it's full of frenemies that run together, BPA and industrial man-made toxins and heavy metals and the pathogens that are there for cleanup, upset metals and things.
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Chapter 6: What are common symptoms and signs of mold toxicity and how to identify them?
But then we started the mold detox program, which is definitely something that I want to talk to you about. Because I pretend to know what I'm talking about with mold, but I really would love to talk to an expert in that arena. Yeah. I think there's a real paucity of expertise on how to support the body's detox, how to detox without making yourself sick.
Because a lot of these remold, well, there's mold remediation for your house, but a lot of these mold detox protocols make people really, really sick, in my opinion, because they don't fix their own detoxification pathway. It's one thing to dump the mold, out of the tissue, let's say into the blood. But now you're really sick.
Now you're really sick.
And so if you're not using binders and glutathione and sweat and these mechanisms that activate our own natural detox pathways, then now all you've done is just increase the toxic load.
That's right. You're just recirculating toxins and can't get them out of the body.
Yeah. So let's talk about what kind of symptoms would drive somebody to have... one of these tests. I want to isolate mold for a second. And then I want to go down the lime rabbit hole. And if we have time, I'll go down the parasite rabbit hole. I think all three of these things are so important and they're so not talked about. I put myself on a parasite cleanse for 10 days every few months.
Man, you're my people.
Yeah.
I have to say.
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Chapter 7: What does a mold detox program entail and how can it be done safely?
I do this with mold and Lyme and parasites and any sort of detox that someone needs to go through. Because I used to with Lyme, sometimes you'd have to keep them on detoxes for a year. Yeah. This is a war.
Oh, yeah.
But you know, now that I go back to nervous system regulation, if I can put someone in homeostasis and balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic, all their endorphins, all their neurotransmitters, all their bodily functions are working on a different level that a pill won't fixed. There's no pill to fix that. You have to regulate that first.
And then the drainage and the detox is about half the time that it would normally take.
See, I knew I would learn something on this podcast. Already paid for the podcast. I'm telling you. See, there you go.
I'm glad I can oblige here. So yeah, but you know, whenever you're in nervous system dysregulation, and you're stuck in flight, fight, or even worse, functional freeze, your body contracts. It contracts, so it won't release some of these things. It doesn't feel safe to let go. And so I'll do like a Vibrant Total Tox on somebody, looking at mycotoxins, looking at heavy metals.
So Vibrant Total Tox, just for the people that are listening.
Glyphosate and pesticides.
This is a blood test that you do, and it's looking for all these. It's urine. Sorry, urine test, you're right, that you do, and it's looking for all of these different... I want to back up just for one second because we're getting into an awesome area and say, you know, what are the types of symptoms that someone would be having that would even lead you to say, let's run this panel on you?
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Chapter 8: How are parasite cleansing protocols integrated with mold and Lyme treatments?
Is that your comtee? Like warrior?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, the catecholamethyl transferase gene. I have a fast COMP-T. That's what I have. Oh, you have a fast COMP-T.
So I can break down adrenaline, noradrenaline, things like that very quickly. So I don't worry that much.
Yeah, you're a warrior. Yes. Yeah, not a worrier.
Right. There you go. Try to say those back to back.
Warrior, warrior. You know what's so funny is my wife and I are fast and slow. So she is a warrior.
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Chapter 9: Why is nervous system regulation important in the detox process?
They'll show up, show up with like some byproduct of gasoline. And I'll say to them, do you smell gasoline a mile away? Yes. And I hate it. It's the worst smell ever. And I know I smell it every, as soon as the car door opens the gas station, I'm like, that's your body warning you because it smells it so acutely. It's telling you we can't get processes and get rid of it very fast.
Get the heck out of here.
Wow. That's why. That's really interesting. It's funny how those warrior and warrior genes really, when you look at it on paper, I mean, they really do manifest. We did these personality tests, and my fear was less than 1%, and her fear was like 99%. Wow. That's probably why she's only had one parking ticket since 1996, and my license has been suspended three times in 10 years.
I just had one the other day.
Because I keep blowing tolls on I-95. But I'm like, I'm not worried about it. If I go fast enough, maybe it won't pick up my receiver, you know, but it does.
Cover my face out so they can't take a picture.
So you do this test, and let's say that you find a mold species. You know, I've been told that the cardinal rule that you can't violate and sort of nothing else matters in the detox protocol is that a person has got to remove themselves from the toxic environment first.
Avoidance, first rule of environmental medicine, 1,000%. And I will tell you, based on genetic predispositions, how full their toxin bucket is, how stressed out they are. There are a number of multifactorial reasons people may not do well in mold. But I can sometimes open people's drainage in mold if they're more of a warrior genotype.
If they have HLA-DR, which is a genetic haplotype that is like a little sticker that's on the immune cells, these people don't recognize pathogen proteins as well. So they don't recognize Lyme. They don't recognize mold spores as well. So they can't remove them from the body. And they cause sickness in these people. I mean, really deathly ill sickness.
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Chapter 10: What are the habits and disciplines of a healthy person undergoing detox?
Yes. B vitamins, methylated B vitamins, sometimes SAMe if they're sensitive, adenosylcobalamin, hydroxycobalamin. And then I make sure they have antioxidants and bioflavonoids. Then calm down everything. Then when they're sleeping a little bit better, they feel a little bit better. They feel less anxious, less itchy and puffy. That's ready to open drainage. And that can take a month or two.
Now, what is opening drainage? We have these natural among trees in the body. Things like your bowels, your liver, your bile, your sweat. For women, they're cycles even. And so I have to make sure that those are all running properly. Because when things enter the body, like mold spores, if you're open, you can just jump out of the body.
If you're closed up and you tell me you can't poop every day or you can't sweat in a sauna within 10 to 15 minutes, and people tell me they can't sweat, that's not normal. Your bowel and liver should be moving properly. You should be sleeping a decent amount.
And if that, I have to tune that up because if I can open those drainage pathways, then when I start killing and binding, they can drop when I'm binding. That's like a mop up toxins. They can drop it out of their body, out of their bowels, out of their liver, out of their sweat. And if that's not open and I start a killing protocol, we're not going to be friends.
They're not going to like me. That's exactly what we've experienced. I'm so glad you're talking about this because most people think I just take something and I start detoxing and then the... And the problem is the detoxification process can make you much sicker than the process of because at least your body has hidden it and it's in the tissues and it's contained it.
And, you know, it's having a low grade inflammatory response. Your immune system is probably in a low grade fight. It's manageable. And then all of a sudden it flares up. And I noticed, too, that people that have mold toxicity very often, especially younger kids, will have repeated sore throats.
That's right.
I feel like there's been this battle between mold and bacteria for so many years, right? I mean, penicillin is mold, right? And it kills bacteria, it's an antibiotic. And so they've had this war going on for centuries. And when they're in the same biome, and somebody has a streptococcal infection, and they have a mold.
And then when the mold sporulates or flares up, then bang, they've got a sore throat. And then they treat the sore throat with antibiotics and six weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks later, they've got another sore throat. And then they wanna take the adenoids out, right? They wanna take the tonsils out.
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