Integrative Approaches to Addressing the “Survival Paradox” – Dr. Isaac Eliaz, Founder of Amitabha Medical Clinic and Healing Center

Dr. Rishi Desai: Hi, I'm Rishi Desai. Today on Raise the Line, I'm happy to be joined by Dr. Isaac Eliaz. Dr. Eliaz has been a pioneer in the field of integrative medicine since the early 1980s, with a focus on cancer, immune health detoxification, and mind-body medicine. He's a respected clinician, researcher, author, and educator, and a lifelong student and practitioner of Buddhist meditation.

His nonprofit organization, Amitabha Wellness Foundation, sponsors low cost and no-cost health education events and also provides assistance for homeless children by supporting health and nutrition, education, and self-empowerment services. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Rishi Desai: Maybe you can get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what got you interested in medicine.

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: I'm in my early sixties, and I'm a native of Israel, and I have had the interest in medicine from an early age. I got involved with healing art at age fifteen, actually, when my father was a civil engineer in Korea, where I actually learned taekwondo and yoga. And when I went to medical school in Israel, which is a seven-year process, I knew that I was going to do holistic integrated medicine. I became a yoga teacher. I taught in yoga teacher’s courses. Learned shiatsu. I created a three-year course for acupuncture -- to really learn myself -- and herbal medicine. And then I decided that I was quite successful at too early of an age. I decided it's a good time to take time off and came with my wife and my daughter to the United States to get a Master of Science in Chinese Medicine.

This is 1989. And throughout all these years, my specialty has been integrative oncology -- how to cure illnesses -- and mind-body medicine. So, I've spent decades learning and meditating, ten years doing a half-day retreat, and for twenty years going to the mountains two months a year. And somehow it all gets synthesized into the connection between meditation and healing. I'm a clinician, I'm an innovator, I'm a researcher.

But at the same time, I'm also a healer. It's a certain holistic integration, and I've accumulated a lot through my life and I feel now it's time for me to share on a broader scale. That's why I wrote my book, The Survival Paradox, which really encompasses in a relatively simple way, some of these holistic principles.

Dr. Rishi Desai: Maybe you can explain to me what is the survival paradox, exactly?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: We recognize in medicine now -- Covid made it very clear -- the role of inflammation in degenerative diseases, in organ dysfunction with the cytokine storm. Integrative medicine has known it for decades, but it's inflammation that is really the issue. Inflammation is really a result. When we look at what drives inflammation, what drives inflammation is our survival response. 

The same thing that is innate within us, is automated within us such that it allows us to survive, it usually doesn't turn off. And then it creates a cascade of damaging inflammatory consequences -- hyper immunity, abnormal immune response -- that is practically responsible for every chronic disease, and also responsible for driving death in sepsis, in acute kidney injury, in Covid, in really multiple acute and chronic conditions. 

That's really the paradox. We need to be able to sustain and preserve our survival response, but not make it turn on us.It's like an alarm clock that doesn't turn off. So, I've come to this understanding through my meditation, through my contemplation. But in the same time, I've researched a protein called Galectin 3, which I coined “the survivor protein.” And as the research started in oncology in the early nineties, when I got involved, it expanded. I made lots of important discoveries about blocking it, and how it affects inflammation and fibrosis. I've really come to this place from an internal, introverted exploration in contemplation and through research.

Both these worlds -- the scientific world and the more holistic world -- have come together and this is presented through this concept. It's really a new paradigm in medicine because it gives you a different way of looking at our health, and it also gives you tools to improve our health.

Dr. Rishi Desai: That image you draw -- of an alarm clock that doesn't go off -- that sums it up very nicely. I can just think about the stress I feel in that first minute of waking up and if I felt that all day, what that would be like. I would probably get very old very quick.

As you've gone through your career, what are some of the insights around aging and chronic disease that you know now that maybe you didn't know when you began the journey?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Yeah. It's interesting. Some principles are evident in holistic approaches, but what I realized is this concept, which is becoming popular, of “inflamm-aging,” …this chronic underlying stress, this chronic underlying challenge. Like you said, an alarm, but you can hear the alarm very loud and then you move to the other room and you hardly hear the alarm, but you still hear it. And your body still responds. Whatever immediate response -- the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system -- and we have the biochemical issue.

I’ve really come to the recognition that addressing it creates a basis for better healing. The other part that I’ve come to recognize, by treating now thousands of people and seeing really remarkable benefits for people and in having the privilege to encounter amazing patients that I really learned from, is that we really have a choice.

We really have a choice, and I think that it's something I've been talking and teaching about for decades. The time goes backward and forward and we are multidimensional, multigenerational, and we can change things. But now genetics and epigenetics really support this. We have our genetics, which is really predetermined, but we have a choice.

In Hebrew, there is a very famous Talmudic saying that says everything is predetermined, but we have a choice. The epigenetic is our choice. Part of our healing is letting go of what needs to be let go of, healing our scars of survival in this life and from past lives. In my book, The Survival Paradox, when I come to the last three chapters -- which are detoxification, healing the scars of survival, and then freeing the survival paradox -- I tell my own story as coming from Holocaust survivors, how it affected my grandmother and my grandfather that I'm named after and how by doing my own healing, it affected my mother, who didn’t know that I was doing this.

This is a multi-generational power. If I had to summon it in one sentence, I would say that not everybody is going to be a miracle, but anyone can be a miracle. And the reason is because scientifically, if we look at our reality, our reality is ever-changing. Nothing is solid, nothing stays the same. The survival response, the abnormal survival response, is our lack of ability to accept, to recognize that everything is changing.

When we recognize it and we work on it, then things start to shift, and then really what's important, no matter what treatments you're doing -- if a cancer patient does radiation therapy or chemotherapy or immunotherapy, or they do integrative approaches -- when you bring this understanding into the picture, the results will be better and life becomes more meaningful. It's a journey. It's an incredible journey.

Dr. Rishi Desai: My experience with patients is that oftentimes when severe health conditions are in front of them -- like you mentioned cancer, heart disease, or other chronic illnesses -- they'll often turn to what is often called Western medicine, as well as Eastern medicine or philosophies to try to essentially do whatever they can to try to make their life as comfortable and as fulfilling as possible.

But on the other side, physicians, I think are often much more entrenched in a belief system around let's say, Western medicine, or if you practice Eastern philosophies, then maybe that, and it feels much more antagonistic where the two sides say, "Oh, you shouldn't be doing that," or “that doesn't make sense and it's not grounded.”

When you talk to physicians, what is your sense on how open they are to do things like Buddhist philosophy? Or you talked about healing scars that are multi-generational. How does that land on people when they hear you speak about those things?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: You brought up a very important point, because antagonism is everywhere. We see it right now in our country, right? On so many levels. A conventional doctor can be antagonistic of alternative medicine and an alternative doctor will be antagonistic of conventional medicine. It's the same antagonism. It's the same “stuckness.” Just the labels are different.

Being open-minded is key, and being open-minded is the basis of patient-driven medicine. When I see an oncological patient, saying, "I'm afraid to ask my oncologist because they will kick me out," I mean, I can't even comprehend this concept. It's really patient-driven medicine. Our responsibility as healers, doctors, healthcare providers, is to hold the patient and allow them to make the best decision for them by creating space. Some doctors have more openness and it's our conceptual logical mind that gets us, because we are very confined to linear two-dimensional reality.

And I'm talking as -- I can say -- an accomplished researcher. I mean, hopefully, I'm going to get a very large multimillion dollar grant on a very important sepsis AKI. It's phase two from the NIH. I have dozens of published papers, close to a hundred different patents. I can say I'm a researcher. 

Yet, what drives me is not the research. What drives me is the insights, the multi-dimensional insights. That's where I get my ideas. The research allows me to validate it. As long as we are open-minded and we are humble enough to recognize that we don't know everything -- that what we believe in may be true, it may not be true -- then the door is opened. The inability to let go is a survival response.

I think about in my career, how many concepts in medicine I let go of? I looked at them. I evaluated them without pre-judgment and if some made sense, I worked with them. If they didn't, I dropped them. It's very hard for a doctor that is invested in a certain way of thinking. And that's part of the stuckness. It's part of the hyperviscosity. That's part of the inflammation and fibrosis, you see? We talk about fibrosis as a physiological process, right? Pathological. But fibroid is also a mental process. Getting stuck, not allowing things to flow.

Healing comes multi-dimensionally. And as part of this, some people will say, "Oh, Isaac, you really think out of the book.” I tell them, “There was never a book to begin with. There is no book. There is no Western medicine. There's no East and West!” It depends on how you define it on the circle, right? 

We get stuck with concepts. And as long as we recognize it, life is always exciting and life is always a journey, because I am now different than I was 20 minutes ago. You ask me new questions. It got me thinking. I probably shared some information with you that got you thinking. Things change. That's the secret of medicine. That's why anything and everything is possible because everything is changeable.

Dr. Rishi Desai: Your example of severe illness is one that I can definitely relate to. I can see how that would make sense and how inflammation and that hyperviscosity can cause problems. Do you mind sharing some more commonplace examples? Things that, maybe, people don't even notice because they're so common in their daily lives where it could be caused by that survival paradox, and how it could potentially not serve them well?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Yeah. Simple things like feeling stress in the body, like having tension headaches, like having a slow digestion, like having sluggish energy, like being over-reactive, like not sleeping well. They’re all a part of congestion, and often we're not aware of it. So, the first step -- and actually I get to it only in the last chapter of my book because my second book, which is called Open Health Medicine, that's where I go deeper into the transformative meditation -- but it gives the door, when you go through this journey of the book. In the end, when we slow down, when we slow our breath, when we slow our mind we create space between the breath, space between the thoughts, stuff comes up. And this stuff that comes up are things we're not aware of. So, somebody is getting aware of, "Wow, I'm actually exhausted. I actually haven't eaten well for a long time. Actually, I'm upset at this person." And then the meditative process, the transformative process is now what comes up. Some people have amazing experiences. Some have bad experiences. All of us are different. It's our response to what we experience. If something difficult comes, something that can upset us, and we respond with anger, that's a survival response.

If something comes and we understand the root of this difficulty and our heart opens with love and compassion and understanding towards ourselves and toward others, we are starting to transform the survival paradox. And that’s why there are so many studies on the healing power of love and compassion. The reason why it's relatively easy to start the process is we are built to do it. Our physiology is built to correct this misunderstanding. It's part of our journey here. And why would I say it? If I can take another minute, it’s because if we look at our body, we have -- I don't know why they say 37.5 trillion cells -- let's say 50 trillion, okay, to round the numbers. So, 50 trillion: thousand times thousand is a million times thousand is a trillion times 50. What I didn't know until some time ago is that each cell has up to one million reactions a second.

Imagine, all these 50 trillion cells, 1 million reactions a second, all working together in harmony. There is a mutual support of our body where each cell notes that it has its own survival. It has its own boundaries, right? The membrane…it decides what it takes in, what it lets go. It takes in nourishment and lets go of toxins. But it also has some kind of relationship with the environment. 

When one cell goes into survival mode and decides I'm not going to die, I want to live forever, I'm going to shield myself and create a microenvironment -- which it does with this protein I researched, Galectin-3 -- it's shielded. It creates a microenvironment. It starts growing on its own. And what do we call it? We call it cancer.

If you look at the body -- the cells, the tissues the organs -- they all function in this way. The only organ that functions differently is the heart. The survival of the heart depends on getting all the dirty blood from everybody, right? All the stuff that the body doesn't want. Without it, the heart won't function. We connect with the universe through our breath. We do this exchange of oxygen with carbon dioxide. That's the transformative quality. And then the heart gives. The heart gives with no with judgment, with no discrimination. The aorta, as you know well, is a stiff artery. It doesn't decide if the blood goes up or goes down, but who does it help nourish first?

The heart nourishes itself first through the coronary artery. So, the heart nourishes itself in order to nourish others and is part of nourishing others. That's the healing power of the heart. That's why open-heart medicine allows for infinite healing potential. What's amazing is if you look at the physiology, the heart is the only organ that nourishes itself after it finished its work! Think about it. It could have hit the coronary arteries right inside the left atrium. The blood is cleaned, right? The left ventricle... no, no, no. It finishes its work. It's done its selfless job, and then it takes care of itself so it can serve others better. That's just a small example. In my book, I have dozens of stories of patients and the idea is not just about certain treatments or protocols, it's about giving all of us a deeper understanding of who we are, of what health means, and how we can heal.

So The Survival Paradox is really a journey and I look at the most important organs -- heart, kidney, liver, lungs, immune system, metabolic, marrow inflammation -- from this angle for more holistic eye-opening, then at the end I give about 70-80 pages of specific protocols.

Now, I bring it into my practice and the way I treat people. One innovative thing that I do is I use a process called therapeutic apheresis where we filter the plasma and remove inflammatory compounds from the body. That's a very important way to rejuvenate and allows the body to readjust and recalibrate. That's the innovative part in me, but the way I work, the way I teach is really very much connected to very basic universal principle that are in all of us, regardless of our belief system. We all have a heart that has to get venous blood and has to give arterial blood, otherwise, we wouldn't be talking right now.

Dr. Rishi Desai: I know the anatomy of the heart pretty well. I've never thought about it that way. It's a very interesting perspective on the fact that the left ventricle does its full job, and in fact that is defined as work, as you said, and that it nourishes itself. That's exactly right.

You mentioned in your book this idea -- and I'd like you to expand on it a bit for me -- of readers trying to soften their grasp on survival, and the importance of that. Do you mind talking a little bit about that? Like, what does that mean to soften your grasp on survival?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Because the survival response is so innate within us -- you know, like the sympathetic system is automated -- we have an innate tendency to react. We react to outside. Or everything that comes to the senses. We grasp what we see, what we hear, and we believe that is solid. When things change on us, we get upset if we don’t like them. We're happy if we like them. And we also grasped our own thoughts, feelings, body sensation, right? One thought that carries another thought it carries another thought, and we become very tight, and we have no opportunity to create a space. The very basic beginning of meditation…I have a diagram in my last chapter where the thoughts are one mixed with the other and you create space and suddenly inside memories start coming up, and then dealing with it is part of the transformation. That's how I really help people with PTSD, for example.

But this is a profound physiological effect because when we are so congested, we move from aerobic metabolism to anaerobic metabolism…to glycolysis because glycolysis produces energy 100 times faster, but at a heavy cost: only two molecules of ATP for glucose, and a lot of lactic acid and abnormal metabolism. The metabolism shifts into survival metabolism and basically, this drives every chronic disease from diabetes to, of course, cancers with the Warburg Effect, which even with the presence of oxygen, there is still what you call aerobic glycolysis.

Just taking a deep breath, just creating space and reducing the reactivity is profound. You know, it's not a simple thing with electronics, with EMF, with being bombarded with email. Now people expect your response time to be in seconds, in minutes. I mean, if somebody sent you a text and you didn't respond for a day, oh my God! You know what I found? I actually go through this habit where I wait two or three days for my e-mail, and you know what I found out? Nothing happened actually!

People accepted, “He’s going to get back to me in a thorough way, have more time to think about it.” And the times that I fall into the trap, I respond too fast, I fall into this survival mode. These are the small things. If we want to change our health, if we want to change our well-being, start with small things. Don't try to change the huge things. Make small commitments, makes small steps, and then slowly build up on them, because you will be less disappointed and it's self-perpetuating release and unwinding.

Dr. Rishi Desai: I appreciate you saying that. I actually noticed I was feeling stressed during the day, like what you're describing and so I deleted notifications off my phone, so I don't receive any notifications. Of course, I'm therefore a little slower to respond, but it has been a world of difference for me because obviously now I'm much more present. I have a five-year-old son. My son and I spend time together, and I'm actually focused on him now, and it's been a very healthy move. I appreciate you sharing that anecdote because it makes me feel what I did has scientific background to it.

You do a lot of work with Amitabha Medical Clinic and Healing Center. Do you mind talking a little bit about that and how you help your patients overcome the survival paradox there?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Yes. Really overcoming the survival paradox is part of healing. It really starts in the first encounter, where the patient writes a summary of what they think is important. I still have to fill the questionnaires. There’s now a lot of Zoom, but in normal times, the waiting room is the biggest place in the clinic. It is in the center, and it's the biggest, most beautiful space because we are all holding the patient. It's not like there's a room in the outskirt, and you come in. It's the other way around. The patient has a bigger chair. I don't sit the behind the desk. There are no diplomas. I'm with regular clothes. So is the patient. There is an even ground, and then I really allow the patient's story to come out. Once I figure it out, then I have all these tools from decades -- very sophisticated Chinese medicine, some Tibetan medicine, herbal medicine, homeopathy, scar injection therapy, different intravenous therapies, therapeutic apheresis -- which I'm really a disruptor on a global level.

But all of this is with an open mind. All of this is really with looking at what depths the patient can be touched. I try to really treat with my hands when I do acupuncture. I do healing, and it's really about allowing the patient to connect with who they are. It allows them to support their journey of healing, and the journey of feeling. Sometimes they will completely recover from cancer. Sometimes the cancer will win, but the person still heals. They heal their trauma, they heal their emotional issues, and they felt like life came to completion.

If we identify healing with getting rid of a disease, it's also a survival response. We are holding to a concept. And as we do this, naturally and logically, the results are just better because there's less holding. There's better circulation, there's less oxidative stress, there's less notification in our physiological system just like the story that you said. It all works in concert.

Often people come and they tell me, “Can you tell us some of your best-case scenarios?” I tell them, "Of course, I can. But that's not really what's important. You should take a look at what happens to all the patients." What's common to all the patients is they all will do pretty much better than expected because of this integration, and that's the power of having a more holistic approach. Now because of technology and because of the tendency to use methodology, we lose the deeper principles. The deeper the understanding, the less tools we need to make a difference.

Dr. Rishi Desai: If that's your sense and your approach, do you feel like this is an approach that's starting to gain traction across other health educators? Are you seeing this in medical schools, residency programs, and other ways of teaching?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: I think more and more. I think in some medical programs as well. I think there are more doctors who recognize it. It's interesting, either very young doctors from the beginning recognize, or people at the top of the top, the end of their career recognize, "Wow, there is something else here." But I think it is slowly coming into the system because the current medical system really is a burnout system. It's next to impossible, and doctors are looking for the place where they can more connect with themselves. It's not an easy journey, being a doctor in the insurance-based medical system. Very difficult.

Dr. Rishi Desai: Yeah. I think that's exactly right. Maybe just to close things out for our audience then, what's your parting advice for folks that may be starting their healthcare profession now in the midst of Covid in terms of meeting the challenges of this moment?

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Connect to who you are. Take the time to find who you really are. Create space. Look at what really motivates you to go into the healing arts. It's interesting: when I went to medical school in Israel in 1981, financial reward was never even in our mind. There’s nothing wrong about making a good living, but look at what really drives you to do medicine and stay open, stay humble. I mean, take in the learning that you learn, and remember the other ways of looking at our bodies. There are other ways of looking at our mind that may be valid, that have been there for thousands of years, and if we stay open, then one becomes a better and better doctor over life. If not, then we become worse and worse doctors over life because we get burnt out.

I try to offer it in the way that I teach. I do a lot of meditation and healing. My students are a lot of cancer patients, sick people, a lot of psychotherapists, and quite a few doctors of different kinds, and I teach everybody together. I am a great believer of inseparability. I think that the professional boundaries are useful, but they're also dangerous. They create a distance between us and the patient because at 9:00 a.m., we are doctors and then at 5:00 p.m., we may be patients. We all went through this. We have to remember this. So, really connect with who you are, with what drives you. And look, remember, doctors have a lot of power. Think about what you are saying to a patient. Think how you are saying it and listen to the patient. The patient knows the answer. We just need to let them tell us the story.

Dr. Rishi Desai: I think that's fantastic advice and I hope that folks and the audience can take a piece of that and really internalize it. I appreciate you joining us today.

Dr. Isaac Eliaz: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Dr. Rishi Desai: I'm Rishi Desai. Thanks for checking out today's show. Remember to do your part to flatten the curve and raise the line. We're all in this together.