Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand discuss about the mitochondria and about energy in-depth in this podcast. Get the full explanation on how energy is generated in the body and how you can get more energy. For people who have chronic fatigue, discover how you can manage your symptoms and find out how you can improve your mitochondrial function.
Learn more about the various nutrients needed to boost energy when you listen to this interview. If you're in the mood to geek out, here's your chance to get a concise overview on how the citric acid/Kreb cycle works. Also find out what is the best test to take to look at how compounds are being produced and the nutrients needed to produce them.
In this episode, topics include:
00:41 about the mitochondria and energy
2:46 citric acid/Kreb cycle
09:52 electron transport chain
11:24 supplement for energy production
21:54 action steps
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Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, it’s Dr. J here. Evan, how’s your Friday going?
Evan Brand: My Friday is going great. It’s a beautiful day. There’s a festival coming in town that I’m gonna be–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent.
Evan Brand: Gonna be at this weekend meeting up with people. It’s gonna be fun, man. I’m gonna get out from behind the computer screen a little bit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. I’m actually flying up to Boston this weekend. Pretty excited about that. I have family up there and going to a wedding. So it’ll be a really great weekend in Boston.
Evan Brand: Nice. Yeah, it’s a–fall, it’s probably kicking in there by now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, the foliage, all that good stuff. Love it.
Evan Brand: Great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we talked kinda pre-show that we were gonna chat about the mitochondria. I’m getting ready to do an excellent YouTube video on it today and it’s kinda fresh in my brain so I wanted to kinda talk about the mitochondria and we’ll kinda talk about energy as well because the mitochondria is really the powerhouse of your cell. Your body creates about 36 ATPs and ATPs are like the currency of your cells, how your cells generate energy. And when people have energy issues, it typically comes from 1 out of 3 ends of the triangle of energy and that is adrenals, thyroid, and mitochondria. And yes, they’re all connected. Because typically if you have some level of adrenal dysfunction, there’s probably some level of thyroid dysfunction. There’s probably some level of mitochondrial dysfunction especially if we’re having some type of gut issue because we need certain nutrients to run our mitochondria. And again, we’re gonna attach my YouTube video that I’ll be doing later on today because I’m gonna through it and break it down in a more nerdy fashion. But you’re gonna see there are certain parts of what’s called the Kreb cycle or the citric acid cycle and carbohydrates, proteins, and fats all feed into this cycle, and this compound called acetyl-CoA is produced. And acetyl-CoA, again we need carnitine to help with the fats and brings the fats into the mitochondria, we need certain B vitamins and alpha-lipoic acid to help bring the proteins and the carbs and convert that into acetyl-CoA in the mitochondria.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll take a breath there so you can–
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Break it down more.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, take a breath. Well, so a lot of people that have chronic fatigue, they may get some type of prescription or who knows what for chronic fatigue but if target improving the mitochondrial function, you’ll often a–I wouldn’t say a complete removal but you’ll definitely see lot of regression with those chronic fatigue symptoms, so maybe we’ll get into why mitochondria gets so messed up anyway and then talk about–well, I at least wanna talk about, you know, the ways to boost them and support them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. So yeah, regarding the mitochondria, right? I mean, it’s gonna crank out–it‘s gonna run 2 times a round, and you’re gonna see this whole citric acid cycle–that’s what we kinda talk about regarding the mitochondria, right? This whole citric acid/Kreb cycle, this is really where you’re mitochondria is generating lots of ATP, lots of energy, and there are various nutrients that are needed. So just to kinda open a diagram on the video there, but citrate, cis-aconitate, isocitrate, alpha-ketoglutarate, succinyl-CoA, succinate, fumarate, malate, and even oxaloacetate. Big, big words but these are various compounds that get produced in this Kreb cycle and we can actually run tests. One of my favorite tests to look at energy production in the mitochondria is an organic acid test and I use the organics tests primarily by Genova and it gives us a window into how all of these compounds are being produced and the nutrients that are needed to produce them. So, because this is a really good window, and when we’re dealing with patients that have fatigue issues, one of the things we’ll see is sometimes we’ll see the thyroid in a pretty good place, not bad. We’ll see the adrenal levels low and we’ll see the mitochondrial levels pretty good. That’s gonna be a primary adrenal patient when it comes to fatigue. We may see it the other way around with the thyroid being low and the adrenal and the mitochondria being okay, and that’s a primary thyroid patient. And we may see it just the mitochondria on the lower end while the thyroid and the adrenals are doing okay. Most of the time it’s a combination of 2 or 3, and sometimes we really have to support all 2 or 3 systems at the same time to make a major, major difference in the amount of energy and fatigue that’s there.
Evan Brand: Let’s talk about mitochondrial toxicity. What are the things that are causing people to have impaired energy levels and messed mitochondria? I mean, I know a lot of different drugs, I mean, antibiotics and things like that affect mitochondria but would you say the environmental toxins, I mean, can you say any toxin that we would generally talk about is negatively gonna impact mitochondrial function also?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, toxicity across the board is definitely going to affect mitochondrial function. Pharmaceutical drugs are notorious for affecting mitochondrial function. Blood sugar because a lot of the nutrients, if you look at how the pathway, how the citric acid cycle runs and the ATP that’s produced, you’re gonna see at certain parts of the cycle, certain amino acids are needed, like leucine and isoleucine and glutamine and his–histidine and arginine and proline and all these amino acids, tyrosine, aspirate, and all these different amino acids are needed to run the Kreb cycle. B vitamins, iron, if you’re anemic; magnesium, alpha-lipoic acid, these are, you know, cysteine, sulfur amino acids. So I’m not trying to nerd up but I’m just trying to emphasize on the fact that nutrients are required for this Kreb cycle to run. So if we have a malabsorption occurring, that’s gonna affect our body’s ability to absorb the nutrients we’re taking in to actually run the Kreb cycle. If we have exposure to–to toxins, that will put stress on the Kreb cycle. Remember it takes nutrients to detoxify as well. So if you look at your cytochrome P4 oxidase pathways phase 1 and phase 2, you’re gonna see a lot of sulfur amino acids, a lot of minerals like selenium, like manganese, magnesium, zinc, a lot of minerals and nutrients and vitamins, and antioxidants are needed to detoxify. So if you put more toxins in your body and your body needs to put nutrients into running these pathways, well, that means there’s gonna be less nutrients to run your Kreb cycle and your mitochondrias are gonna have less ATP and less energy. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: That’s–yeah, it’s a great that you mentioned. I’m gonna restate it just to make sure it goes into the brain and sinks in. It takes more nutrients slash or in parenthesis energy to deal with toxins. So removing your toxic load is gonna be essential. I just pulled up a page here from Texas A&M University, Different Toxins That Affect Mitochondria, and this is another reason to stick to an organic diet whenever possible because these herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides are gonna prevent the passing of electrons to the proteins that carry electrons to it’s got the big list here of all these different toxins that are in conventionally raised foods, you know, the different fungicides and herbicides, insecticides, so obviously, cyanide. All these–it’s a huge list. If you just look up toxins that affect mitochondria, there’s so, so many but definitely I think that’s the good starting point for people. It always comes back to this good foundation of the organic chemical-free diet and then we build on top of that with all these other extra geeky nutrients that we like to add in and boost you–your mitochondria up even more.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So if anyone’s listening to this and getting geeked out or getting a little overwhelmed, it doesn’t matter. Just take all, everything I’ve just mentioned and throw it away, an organic diet is gonna be foundational, right? Good nutrients, low toxins, anti-inflammatory. That’s gonna bet he foundation. Now on top of that, we wanna make sure we’re not consuming too much sugar especially refined sugar because if you’re taking in a whole bunch of sugar which doesn’t contain nutrients, well, it actually takes nutrients to run these pathways. So if we’re getting a whole bunch of food that doesn’t actually have nutrients in it, you see how we’re actually creating a nutrient debt, meaning it’s costing more money or more energy to run these systems than what’s actually coming in. It’s like we are charging more on our credit cards than we’re making that month on income, and I call this nutrient debt. So we wanna make sure you’re not going into nutrient debt regarding poor food choices and we wanna make sure we’re not going into nutrient debt by exposing ourselves to toxins and increasing the amount of requirements for nutrition that our body needs.
Evan Brand: Yup, I wanted to go over some of the chronic conditions that have their origin and mitochondrial dysfunction. Obviously, this stuff is available online but since you’re listening you want to, let me save you some trouble here–Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer, and the big one for us, autoimmune disease. So all of these dysfunctions plays a role in premature aging as well. So I mean, this is the–this is pretty deep stuff, man. This is going to the root of the body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, 100%. So when we look at our mitochondrias, right? We look at our mitochondria, we have main–we have two main ways that we create a whole bunch of energy in the mitochondria. We have the–the citric acid cycle or the Kreb cycle, right? Same thing. The next thing is the electron transport chain. So if you look at that, you know, we make about 34 to 38 units of ATP in our mitochondria. So you’re gonna see ATPs gonna come from the citric acid cycle, the Kreb cycle. It’s gonna come from the electron transport chain primarily and then outside of the mitochondria we have energy in the form of glucose. So glucose can be helpful for short burst energy, so getting some good healthy carbs in there. But you can see a lot of the energy comes from inside the mitochondria that may not even be glucose-dependent because you know in the video we’ve already talked about in the video I’m doing, acetyl-CoA is that first raw material for the Kreb cycle and that comes from fats, proteins, and carbs. So we really wanna dial in our mitochondrial nutrients, so a Paleo template with the right macronutrients for your daily requirements is gonna be essential for providing that acetyl-CoA, that first building block, and then if you’re eating organic and nutrient-rich foods and you’re getting, let’s say, an organic acid test done so you can know what nutrients you’re missing, then we can customize and make sure you have all of the nutrients and foundational support to move that Kreb cycle around and pump out ATP which is gonna be the–the currency of our for energy.
Evan Brand: Great. Yeah, when I first hear mitochondria, just because I’ve–was into the bodybuilding world for a while, I always think of D-ribose. I don’t know what comes to mind for you but I always think of ribose as kind of the big supplement for energy production.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think of like alpha-lipoic acid and carnitine.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think of those quite frequently. Again, these nutrients like carnitine for instance. This is from my biochemical textbook in doctorate school that said, “Carnitine is a compound that’s created primarily with the amino acids methionine and lysine, which are deficient in a vegetarian diet,” and it talked about the fact that vegetarians could be deficient in L-carnitine which is important because we need L-carnitine to perform the carnitine shuttle, which the carnitine shuttle is nothing more than out body bringing fat into the mitochondria and burning it for fuel. So the analogy I give my patients, it’s like the old time steam trains with the coal. We’re just shoveling that coal into the furnace to be combusted and create steam and move the pistons. And that coal is like fat and the shovel is like the carnitine. So the carnitine shuttle is like the carnitine shovel. It’s shoveling that coal into the furnace to create the energy to move those pistons around and–and the real world body language is to move that Kreb cycle around where we can generate ATP and then we can also generate ATP in the form of the Kreb cycle–I’m sorry, in the form of the electron transport chain as well. So we have the electron transport chain and the Kr–and then the Kreb cycle where we’re really creating a lot of our ATP and the ATP is the currency in which our body has–uses this energy. It’s–it’s how our cells use. It’s kind of the transactions in which our cells create energy. We create it in our economy with dollar bills and things like that and credit cards. They do it with ATP. So we really wanna make sure our mitochondrias are maximizing its economic or ATP output.
Evan Brand: So you’re telling me a vegetarian diet is not a good idea.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Again for some people they can pull it off and they can do really good. But if you have higher protein requirements and higher fat requirements, again most vegetarians tend to be on the lower fat side. The smarter ones will do coconut oil and MCT and avocado and they’ll do vegetarian DHA via algae. The smart ones will do that. But it’s so much easier just eating healthy animal products and getting your nutrients that way.
Evan Brand: It sure is. I couldn’t do it the other way you just said. That sounds miserable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And again, most people that have a hard time or that feel better on a vegetarian diet, because you know a lot of cancer institutes and cancer places like the Gerson Institute for instance. They require–they do a lot of vegetarian, a lot of juicing and I personally feel they get great results doing that off the bat because many of these cancer patients, their guts are so screwed up whereas it’s just really juicing vegetables and getting a lot of your nutrients that way because it’s already broken down. It’s ready to go.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I think we gotta work on fixing the guts. If you look at evolution, there aren’t many places in the world that didn’t rely on some level of animal products. So if you’re having a hard time dealing with the animal products, it’s either one, a food allergen or number two, there’s some type of digestive issue combination of low enzymes, low stomach acid, and/or a gut bug or dysbiosis that’s really preventing you from maximizing the digestive nutrients from these animal products.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and I mean it is a mild chore if you will to cook and things like that but I feel like it’s even more of a struggle for people that are trying to maintain a vegan or even a vegetarian diet than if they would just get in some good animal protein because they’re always trying to fill in the gaps of these things that they’re missing out if they just had some good quality animal protein in their diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah and it’s something like 25% of the energy that you take in via a lot of these animal proteins, it takes that much minimum 25% just to even break it down and digest it. So eating animal proteins and fats and such can be very intensive, can deplete and can require a lot of energy. So if you’re sick and chronically ill, I mean, definitely utilizing broths, bone broths and soups, where you’re really breaking things down, maximizing chewing, maximizing enzymes so we can break it down better, and even using free form amino acids. Aminos that are already broken down can be really helpful because now the body doesn’t have to go under all the extra energy required to free up these amino acids because protein are nothing more than pearl necklaces and then the individual pearls are the aminos. So imagine every time you wanna break down that necklace, you gotta rip it apart and that can take energy. And if you’re already fatigued, that may just be enough to push you over the top. So in my chronically ill patients, we’ll see on an organic acid test, isocitrate, cis-aconitate, and citrate on the lower end and we’ll know and we’ll give them extra free form amino acids to help. We’ll even see things like hair issues or nail issues and skin issues, and we may give them some extra free form aminos just to make it easier so the body has some extra building blocks in the meantime.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I have a good success story about bone broth I wanna tell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Go ahead.
Evan Brand: It’s not in a human patient, but in a feline patient. So Hannah and I, my wife, were looking for a house this past weekend and we were kind of out in the country, we’re looking for a piece of land with a house, things like that. And we come across this little dry creek bed and I hear a “meow” and I’m, “Huh? That’s weird.” And I look over and sure enough, there’s a little kitten laying in the dried up creek bed, looks like it can’t move, looks like it has a broken leg, and so I’m like, “Oh, crap. I can’t just leave this guy here now that I’ve seen him. I’m involved.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So I go check him out and I’m, you know, making sure he’s not gonna bite me or hurt me or anything like that and I pick him up and he’s acting really weird. He’s super skinny, malnourished, things like that. So long story short, we check out the house and you know, we leave him until we come out and he’s still here. So we take him home and we’re calling all the animal shelters, trying to get him checked out. They’re all closed for the weekend. This was–I guess it was last Friday and so we’re like, “Crap, what do we do?” So we end up taking him to this vet, spent like 200 bucks on him, get him deflead. He was infested with fleas. They trimmed up his hair. He had a bunch of mattes in his hair and things like that. Just rough shave, rough shave. So we bring him home and he’s not eating anything and he’s not drinking anything and I’m like, “Man.” The only thing that I could think to do because he had a fever, too. So he had like a 104 fever which is high for cats, just like humans and he wouldn’t eat. So I’m like, “Man, if I couldn’t eat, what would I do?” And I was, “Huh.” You know, I would do like an organic chicken and wild rice soup or something. So I’m like, “Well, I’m not gonna give him that.” But I had some bone broth in the–in the pantry. The Pacific little cute little bone broth cardboard box, super convenient. So I poured a little bit of that into a bowl and the second I put that bowl down in front of him, he just starts licking and slurping up the entire bowl of bone broth. And then he just passes out and starts purring and goes asleep in my lap. I mean, it was just awesome to see. He knew right there, this is some good stuff. He got some energy now. I was kinda happy with him, just being a lazy cat in my lap, but now he’s been sipping on bone broth basically this entire week, and now he has so much energy that he’s just running around the house chasing my ankles, biting my ankles, chasing the dogs. So now he’s got too much energy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Evan Brand: But anyway, that’s my bone broth cat rescue story.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Crazy. Well, we feed our cats a little bit of cod liver oil. We’ll even put in probiotics. I tried to do all grain-free stuff as biologically appropriate as possible. I think that’s, you know, it’s–I see how animals are treated today and the quality of food they eat. It’s–it’s devastating. If people knew the quality of food they are feeding their pets, they would probably think twice.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I know. Do you ever give your cats like raw–like raw meat of any kind? I’ve heard about that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I really try, it just becomes–they just, you know, they really have a stand-off with me. And they’re like, “Nope. We’re not gonna eat.” And I’m just, “Oh!” So I try to go with some type of, you know, fish or tuna or beef that’s, you know, human-grade, even organic, something that I could potentially eat.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just really good quality biologically appropriate dry food as their kind of staple.
Evan Brand: Yeah, cool. A little bit off subject, but on the subject of energy nonetheless. So–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I’ve seen the results first hand with bone broth and myself and definitely a lot of people that I’ve given bone broth as a recommendation for their gut healing protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that’s great. And I just wanted to just walk everyone through one more time, right? We have glycolysis, that’s where we take glucose when we create energy out of glucose. That happens outside of your mitochondria. In the mitochondria, we have the Kreb cycle or the citric acid cycle. They’re the same thing. We crank out ATP, alright. In that process, our Kreb cycle produces these things called NADH and FADH2, and those gather up hydrogens. And those hydrogens then get tossed over to the electron transport chain and we generate more ATP, about 30 to 34 units and about 2 to 6 units on the Kreb cycle. So all of these ATP come out of the mitochondria. About 32 to 38, depending on who you read or listen to, Ned or Gross, and that’s the energy that comes out of mitochondria. So we have the outside part of the mitochondria, which is glycolysis. That’s glucose energy. Inside we have the Kreb cycle and the electron transport chain. So a lot of the nutrients and a lot of the things that I mentioned today had to do more with the Kreb cycle and this is important. So we–we gotta realize proteins, B vitamins, alpha-lipoic acid, carnitine, right? These are really important nutrients to help run the cycle and we can deplete nutrients with stress, with poor blood sugar, and with toxicity issues. So if we can maximize all those things by having good quality food, being careful with the refined sugar and avoiding toxicity and giving your body what it needs, that’s kind of like the–the first kind of foundational step to mind your mitochondria if you will.
Evan Brand: Good stuff. Shall we talk about action steps or what’s next in–in your brain over there?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, why don’t you kind of throw out a couple of action steps that they–the patients and the people listening can start with?
Evan Brand: Well, you know, I’m a–a supplement nerd. I’ve been working at a supplement company. I’m a little bit biased and I always like to go to the supportive nutrients once again assuming the diet’s figured and straightened out. Assuming that stress is managed. People are using sensory deprivation tanks or they’re going out in nature. They’re doing something to balance out the sympathetic and parasympathetic. If all that’s done, then I really like to use even creatine is really helpful. I’ve got energy benefits from creatine. You most of the time, you hear it as a supplement only for bodybuilder and guys wanting to get big and things like that, but I found creatine really helpful. You’ve already mentioned the alpha-lipoic acid. I’ve used that not standalone. I’ve used that in combination type products and then I’ve also used some of the PQQ. I’ve used some of that just for experimentation purposes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: So those are just some things that I’ve experimented with that I’ve noticed great benefit in terms of energy. I obviously like to use a good vitamin B12, a methylated cobalamin B12. You can even get that one now, I think, it’s–what is it–the L-MTHF–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: B12.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: That’s a good one, too. So I guess those are kind of my go-to choices, getting a good quality B vitamin in. Sometimes a B complex but it’s tough to find one that doesn’t make people’s pee turn gold and they’re just in that overdose of B vitamin range.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I would say next for me on top of that, magnesium is really important for the Kreb cycle. It has over 300 enzymatic reactions in the body or magnesium dependent. B12 is really important so a lot of vegetarians that may not get enough absorbable B12, right? You can get–
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Analogs of B12 via the plants but they don’t have the same effect.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if you’re getting an anemia from a B12 or an iron, that can affect the Kreb cycle and how your body creates energy. So any anemia that can either be a B12 anemia or a iron-based anemia, that’s really important. Next is B6. B6 is really important for the brain for converting neurotransmitters but it’s also important for the Kreb cycle and then CoQ10, right? One of the things that you’re Kreb cycle does is the mevalonic acid pathway in which, you know, CoQ10 is made. It’s made from cholesterol and it’s a by-product of the ATP in the Kreb cycle. So CoQ10 is very important. Even things like malic acid, succinic acid–these are important Kreb cycle intermediaries. I already mentioned creatine, D-ribose, a really important Kreb cycle nutrient, L-carnitine. So depending on what organic acids, we’ll use some broad-spectrum mitochondria support, that’s number one. And then number two is we’ll actually use specific high-doses of L-carnitine and CoQ10 on top of that and we may even add in alpha-lipoic acid especially if we see extra blood sugar issues on top of it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and talk about CoQ10 a little bit. There’s a big variance in quality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean with CoQ10, right? It’s like anything else. It’s like well, meat’s meat, well, know you can get meat from McDonald’s or you can get meat from your grass-fed farmer. Two totally different things and it’s amazing how most vegetarians and vegans just want a lot meat into one category but heck, we would never lump vegetables in one category. We wouldn’t say, “Hey, the–the roundup ready, you know, vegetable that’s sprayed with thousands of pounds of pesticides a year is the same as the organic one in your backyard, right? That’s just crazy but we do that with meat all the time. So, what was your question again? I just got up my own little tangent there.
Evan Brand: The question was talking about CoQ10, why you need a good–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yes.
Evan Brand: A good activated version or bio-available version if you will.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Obviously for magnesium, all that stuff, too. Because people may–people still, like when I get the supplement list from people like, “What are you currently taking?” during the initial paperwork, I’ll still see magnesium oxide on there and it’s like, “That’s a 4% absorption rate.” So that’s garbage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is.
Evan Brand: And that’s the same thing that you’ll get with some of these low quality CoQ10’s that people will go to Walgreen’s and just pick off the shelf because they heard in an article or in a podcast like this that it’s good. So they go out and they just get the standard thing and the standard thing is not gonna cut it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of the–I see a lot of the CoQ10 like in the cheaper stores like the Walgreen’s and the Costco and such. I’ll see the price of the CoQ10 and I know what the supplement companies but these things at cost from the major manufacturers like the–the manufacturing at cost price is more than what they’re selling at retail in some of these box stores.
Evan Brand: Geez.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it’s just impossible to get quality when you’re, you know, buying that cheap. So again, we try to use maximal absorption, you know, lowest amount of additives. There’s some benefit to reduce. There’s some benefit to non-reduce, meaning ubiquinone or ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is the reduced form. Ubiquinone is the non-reduced form. Just the differences in gain in electron. The reduced form has a gain of a electron in there. Again, the research is spotty. This–it doesn’t support as much in the reduced side. It’s a little more expensive. So I just tend to use the regular ubiquinone with some people. But as they get older, there’s some research saying that maybe the ubiquinol is better, but I typically go with the ubiquinone at about a hundred to 300 milligrams per day.
Evan Brand: DO you take CoQ10 yourself?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I take a broad-spectrum mitochondrial support that does have anywhere between 100 to 200 milligrams per day. So I do get at least a hundred to 150 in per day.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm. When I–I told you about all the–the stuff with my Grandma, it’ll be a long story to say on here but I brought up to the cardiologist, I said, “Hey, I–you know, I’m looking to get–do you guys have any CoQ10 on hand that you can get pumping into her ASAP?” And he said, “It hasn’t even been proven in studies to work.” So, you know, I think CoQ10 is kinda like the vitamin E where everybody got all, “Yeah, vitamin E, vitamin E.” And he just completely dismissed the value of CoQ10. I forgot to tell you about that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, really?
Evan Brand: Off air. But it was just like, “Dude, really?” It’s like I can pull up my mobile PubMed app right now and show you studies of CoQ10. But maybe there weren’t studies in 1970 or whenever he graduated. You know what I mean? So it’s just kinda like, get with the times.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s tough because in research you can almost find something that says anything you want.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if this guy is, you know, anti-functional medicine or anti-nutrition and wants to just lean more on the conventional side, he could find stuff that says what he wants. Again, we could probably rip apart the study and maybe see well, the CoQ10 didn’t have the highest quality. Maybe the–the amount wasn’t therapeutic enough. We can rip apart from that perspective. But he just looks at it and says, “Well, CoQ10–the abstract conclusion said it wasn’t effective for heart failure or heart issues.”
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And, you know, we know that there’s other confounding variables that may have been affecting that. The amount, the quality, and there are other studies that do say there’s an issue. And clinically, we know that patients that need CoQ10 when we added in, they do better and they feel better.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what more clinically do you need? I mean–I mean, how much money, how much time, how many years do we need to spend for something to be a part of the mainstream? It won’t be a part of the mainstream. The research says that when something actually enters the research, it’s in the research and it’s like, it’s there. It takes to about 20 years for that to become part of the mainstream.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I mean, my God, if you’re waiting for definitive things in research to–to become a part of a mainstream, I mean, you’re gonna be waiting for decades. And if you’re like 20 or 30 now, I mean, you may be 60 or 70 and retired before you could ever get the official benefit.
Evan Brand: Right, that’s insane, yeah and I–I’m glad you brought up the, you know, the clinical side of things. If I see that it’s gonna work, I’m gonna continue using it. And you and I both isolate things and we tweak all these different variables and it works. There’s no doubt about it so I–I’m glad we got to hash that out because it’s crazy to always have to have something in writing that’s signed in blood that says, “Yes, this is guaranteed to work.” I mean, if I see it working outside of, you know, some double blind placebo, I mean, I’m a big fan of those, but they’re not necessary if I see it working in the day-to-day life.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, my gosh, like I heard a doctor recently say that, well, talking about diet and cancer, that dietary changes have not been shown to help cancer, right? It’s like, “Oh, my God, are you kidding me?” It’s like is it that hard to understand that sugar in your diet feeds cancer cells? I mean, we only have a test called a PET scan that involves giving someone radioactive glucose so we can see where that glucose goes because we know the tumors take it up. It’s like is that hard–is that hard to bre–is it that hard to bridge the gap over that glucose feeds, excessive sugar feeds cancer, or that if we have man-made carcinogenic compounds in the form of pesticides and plastics that are known to be carcinogenic, that if we take those in our diet, that that could affect and grow cancer cells in our body? I mean, is it that–that far-fetched? So it’s really difficult because like you gotta look at yourself. You gotta clinically look and see what works for you, use functional testing, try it, see how it feels because essentially all research really comes from and is initiated first by clinical research. Like it’s a clinical observation, a doctor sees it, a patient benefits and goes, “Hey, let’s create a study, let’s do this,” and then we finally see the benefit years later in a clinic study and then it has to be repeated many, many times and then maybe 20 or 30 years later, we can actually say, “Hey, this actually does that.” But there’s so many years we have to wait and clinical research, the clinical observation is where it all starts from. So try to get a lot of your information from the clinical side and then you’ll yourself 30 years having to miss out on the benefit.
Evan Brand: Totally. Great way to sum that up, man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So action item right now, all the diet and lifestyle stuff we already mentioned. If you wanna take it to the next level, get an organic acid test. You can reach out from Evan or to Evan or to myself, JustInHealth or NotJustPaleo and we can get a test ordered for you. We can customize a program based on that test. I just ran two tests from two different companies side by side and I’m looking forward to doing a video reviewing that and how I did on my organic acid test. I think everyone’s, you know, like, “Hmm. I wonder if he’s really practicing what he preaches.” And I’m gonna show you how good or bad my test was. You’ll have to tune in and see.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m–I’m curious to see, too, because it sounds like I’m gonna be switching companies as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’ll give you a little sneak preview. My organics have been getting better over the last year or two, so I’m excited and I’ve added some additional mitochondrial support and I definitely feel the improvement and again, like the diet’s the foundation. This is kinda like the frosting on the cake to take it to the next level if you will.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and this is a whole new other podcast, but since I’ve just–I–I’ve really enjoyed this and this has been really fun. I really love stacking the mitochondrial support with adaptogens.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Evan Brand: I mean, it just takes it to a whole another level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Evan Brand: So–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Well, if anyone’s listening to this and wanna get to the next level then you know where to reach out and again, if you guys are liking the actual real clinical info, go over to iTunes. Click below either on the YouTube video or on the iTunes podcast app, and get–let us–have a review, give us a review, let us know how we’re doing, give us some feedback. If you have any show recommendations, let us know what you want to hear. We’re here to produce really great information that will really help empower our, you know, the culture, the–the country here. We really wanna put information out there and get people back, taking control of their health.
Evan Brand: Definitely. And yeah, go write a review. This show is gonna be on my show and on Dr. J’s as well. Write a review for his show on iTunes. Yes, it takes a few minutes, but you have a few minutes because you just spent X amount of minutes listening to this. So go on, click the Write A Review button tab. You have to actually add some stars, add in some words. Just do it. It’s–it’s so helpful for us. It keeps us up in the top of the charts to where all of the multilevel marketing schemes and other people that were “competing with” that they fall to the bottom and that we rise with the truth, and you know, the–the real way to get to the bottom of–of health and happiness.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. I love it, Evan. We’ll end on that. That’s the perfect ending point.
Evan Brand: Alright, man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Have a good day!
Evan Brand: You, too. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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