Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand talk about ways on how to overcome the flu in today’s podcast. Learn about the different natural and healthier ways to support your immune system and combat the flu without turning to the flu vaccine and its unnecessary side effects.
Know about the importance of vitamin D in strengthening your immune response and find out about the negative contributions of sugar to your immune system. Also, gain additional knowledge about stress, autoimmunity, and IV therapy in relation to the flu.
In this episode, we cover:
07:06 Natural ways to up regulate your immune system
11:07 Vitamin D effects on your immune system
14:03 Cons of Flu Vaccine
23:47 What sugar does to your immune system
28:08 IV therapy treatment
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live! Dr. J. in the house with Evan Brand. Evan how are we doing today, man?
Evan Brand: I'm feeling much better. You help me get through my weekends so I’m grateful for your help. Uh—we’re doing a podcast on this soon. I got my stool test results back. Will do a whole show on it likely. And I showed up with Cyclospora, SPP, which is a parasite infection and I also showed up with a bunch of other bacterial bugs. So it happens to the best of us and uh—luckily, Dr. J was there to help me through the weekend. I felt terrible. My head was killing me. My freakin’ blood pressure was going high. I was like, “Dude, help me out here.” And uh— luckily, you and I were able to implement some protocols and I'm feeling more sustainable today than I was.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Were you able to work in and be able to do a podcast and have some logical back-and-forth conversation, must be doing pretty good, for sure. Yeah, that’s good. So let’s kinda chat about it. I know number one; the first thing that happens is when you’re having a lot of diarrhea, right? That was the first thing that happened.
Evan Brand: Yep. So loose stool came up. That was first symptom.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: Thought it was completely unrelated, then went to sleep, woke up in the middle of the night with just a throbbing headache.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: And got up the next day and I thought, “You know what, something just doesn't feel right.” I'm feeling a bit dizzy, just feeling out of it. Got the blood pressure cuff out, tested my blood pressure and it was above 140/100 at the time. I continued to track it a bit obsessively, but ended up maxing out in the 150’s with my blood pressure for my top number about 110 was the highest for the low number. I’m like, “Dude, at what point do you start worrying about major issues with blood pressure being that high.” And you’re just like, “Don’t worry too much about it.” So did a bunch of electrolytes, bunch of magnesium, bunch of vitamin C vitamin D, bunch of adaptogens, mushrooms, the whole 9 yards. Got it down I was able to finally go to sleep over the weekend. You know, getting the levels down to about 130 something, then during the day, blood pressure went right back up. So I started doing some more deep diving, which is the stuff I sent you in a text message about Cyclospora and turns out, basically, every symptom I had from headaches to nausea to just general G.I. upset/dizziness, it could all be tied into this—this parasite. So, now we have our answer and then I've got some herbs on order and uh—hopefully, gonna knock this thing out in a few weeks.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. So, off the bat, it sounds like you—you had the flu, some kind of a viral infection going on there. Now, leading up to it, right? Let’s kinda chat about some of the big stressors. Number one, you got a new puppy.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And now puppy is like can be harder than babies, right? So that was a major stressor that I think was you know, screwing up your sleeve. You had to wake up two- three times to take the—you take the puppy out to pee at 0° weather, right?
Evan Brand: I wish. I wish it was two or three times a night. It was like five or six. And it was like 0°F. I was up every hour and a half for a week out there in the freezing cold with the dog. And then the dog wants to play and it's not playtime at 4 AM. So then you’re trying to get the dog back to sleep. That was a recipe for disaster like you— like you and I talked off air. No matter how many adaptogens I take, if you are—if you're not sleeping, you can't— you can't replace that. There's no pill for that— for sleep deprivation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. So, of course, you know we try to keep it simple. We go down to the diet and lifestyle simple things. So your diet, I imagine was pretty good. You weren’t cheating with a whole bunch alcohol during the stressful period. You weren’t consuming a whole bunch of junk food, right? You don't—
Evan Brand: Yeah. I don’t drink alcohol so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. So you have the major stressful event, which is just the sleep, like the six times a night. The freezing cold kinda temperature thing that kinda compromises your immune system. And we know that there is a massive flu going around you know, I think 36 different states have this flu infection and it’s you know, it’s everywhere and potentially you could interact with it. What it sounds like to me.
Evan Brand: I wonder if I did you know I guess it doesn't matter at this point, but I tell you, based on the way I was feeling how they say a flu makes you feel like you got hit by a train.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: That's how I felt. I wouldn’t be surprised if I picked it up. But I felt like my turnaround time was pretty quick. I mean, it was what? Maybe 48 hours or so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If you, I mean the thing is the benefit is you’re doing some of the Reishi mushroom supports. So I’m gonna take some Reishi right now. You were doing that during the whole treatment and before. And again, you were doing some adaptogens. I’m gonna take some adaptogens and some Reishi mushroom right now. And then we chatted— we just really up your dosage significantly. We get you a lot of sleep. One of the big things that I think is just incredibly underrated but really strong potent fresh juice ginger tea where you actually get the little ginger pieces. I call them cloves but ginger pieces. It’s like a clove size, like a garlic clove size. Two or three of those. You juice them, right? In like a Vitamix or actual juicer or ninja and blend them, right? You blend them. So if it’s a juicer, you juice it. If it’s a blender, you blend it. And then you can run it through like a coffee strainer or a coffee filter or French press. I like the French press, right? Add 12 ounces of hot water to it. Uhm—add a little bit limejuice, little bit of uhm—honey. The honey really makes it palatable. If you don't do a little bit of honey, it's really spicy and really abrasive.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Honey makes it a little bit more soothing and makes it a little bit more softer on the mucosa of the throat and the tissue. And it has some great viral adhesion qualities of ginger really helps with antiviral. Ginger also helps the blood pressure. So I wouldn't be surprised if you— we’re going back in time if we really hit the ginger out hard, that that would help with some your higher blood pressure issues. And we were really concerned about your blood pressure partly because you don’t have a cardiovascular history, you don’ have heart disease; you don’t have chronically high blood pressure. So we were just kinda postulating. The blood pressure probably because your sympathetic fight or flight nerves has activated inflammation coz of the virus. And you probably losing some electrolytes and minerals because of the diarrhea. So—
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course like more sea salt, more mineral, more electrolyte formulas, more bone broth. Get the extra minerals in your system that you're losing and try to make the food easier to process and absorb if there's some kind of a stomach virus that’s causing the loose stools.
Evan Brand: I’ve got something else cool to share too. Uh—you and I had chatted over the weekend about some literature on PharmaGABA.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: And hypertension and I ended up finding out 200 mg of PharmaGABA—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: ..was able to reduce blood pressure by about 15 points. So, I went from I guess it in the 150’s down to like a 130. Of course all the other stuff was a factor, too. Electrolytes etc. etc. but the PharmaGABA really, really turned off the fight or flight nervous system and all the sudden I felt much better. I feel like my head was being squeezed in a vice. I could feel the pressure of the relieving after 10 minutes chewing one of those up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. I mean that’s great. You can use things like that. That’s kinda like an artifact of the infection, right?
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This blood pressure stuff and the head—that’s kinda like artifacts of it. So, of course, you know, there’s couple of ways to look at it. Like there is immune support. We can talk about the various immune support. So in my Immuno Supreme, there’s a couple of things I put in there. Medicinal mushrooms, right? Reishi, Maitake, Shiitake Cordyceps. These are immune booster. It makes sure immune system is stronger, right? It help kill different things. There’s herbs like Astragalus and Echinacea and Golden seal, which up regulates certain natural killer cells and immune antibodies to help go after the infection. And then there's things like ginger, which can actually hit on or you know, kind of start attacking the virus. We can increase things like Monolaurin, which digests the viral envelope, which then exposed—exposes the virus coz it’s glitz cloaked in this viral envelope that prevents the immune system from seeing it. So Monolaurin extract can help undo that cloaks. Now the immune system can see it. And we can also do things like silver. So like in my line, we use Monolaurin Supreme or Monolaurin Synergy. And that’s gonna help with the viral envelope. I put a little bit of Monolaurin in the Immuno supreme. We do the ginger, which really helps with the virus from sticking and then we do the silver as well which really helps attack on the virus as well as. So there’s things that we can do to attack the infection and there’s things we can do to up regulate the immune response.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I’m a fan of doing both. If we can hit it from both ends, that gives us the best chance of success.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I agree. Plus fixing my sleep. You know, it was tough sleeping when your head feels like—once I’m able to sleep, I felt so much better the next day. And day time, you know symptoms would come back only really had the loose stool that one day, though, just the first day. It didn't happen again, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So it was just like a one—a one time deal. And we chatted about it, too. You know, I said, “Hey, this may be a good time for you to use the Ibuprofen because you're doing all the natural stuff and again, I don't think you did ginger at the time.
Evan Brand: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The ginger may have helped with the headache. Maybe that would’ve helped. But if you're doing all this stuff and the headache is preventing you from sleeping, in my opinion, you're better off getting the headache suppressed so you could sleep.
Evan Brand: You know what I did? I forgot to tell you the help was the Bragg’s Apple cider vinegar drink.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: The Apple Cinnamon one, it's got like 8 g of sugar, but at that point—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: I didn’t care. I was like, “You know what, I need some cinnamon.” My blood sugar is off. My appetite wasn't as good. I could use the— the blood sugar help with the chromium and the cinnamon there plus the Apple Cider vinegar. I felt probably 10% better just based on those.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So, you know, there’s a couple different things you can do there. So, of course, that's gonna be helpful in general keeping the sugar down. I mean if you do a little bit of uhm— carbohydrate maybe that's in the honey that you put in the ginger tea, I’m okay with that. If you’re using a really good quality honey, there’s gonna be some immune benefits from the Propolis and the bee pollen in the honey. So I’m okay with that. So, in general, right? Like we crossed off all these things that we were doing and maybe if we added the ginger earlier, maybe the headache would’ve gotten better. But, in general, like if you're in that crossroads if we— sleep is so important that if we have to use a pharmaceutical or over-the-counter thing to get you to sleep, I'm okay with it in the shortest term possible.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I ended up—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It really maximize all the natural stuff first. Cross everything off your list first, though.
Evan Brand: I may have considered it. I didn't even have any luckily. I mean I just—I don't stock Ibuprofen at the house so I couldn't go to it. But luckily, once I just quadrupled the magnesium, it let up enough where I could sleep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And again, like for me, same thing. Like I may use ibuprofen once a year because I maybe consume too much alcohol one night, which I very rarely drink. But I find that if I'm going to consume alcohol, guess what I do now? I do more detoxifying herbs and amino acids for glutathione and then charcoal. If I do that and maybe some vitamin C, I can probably have a couple extra drinks and be fine in the morning coz I’m detoxifying and binding up a lot of the toxins. Plus, I just choose cleaner alcohol versions. You know, a dryer champagne, a dryer Prosecco, uh—clean alcohol version. Not any gluten-free, crappy, sugary drinks.
Evan Brand: Let’s chat about Vitamin D, too. Can we hit on this? Because vitamin D— there's some literature now that showing that vitamin D is more effective than—than the flu vaccine and many people, I mean what? 90 percent of people are too low with vitamin D and then the cold and the flu when does it happen? January— in the middle of that the dead of winter when everybody's vitamin D production is minimal because they're covered up and the sun's not over here on the northern hemisphere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So there’s a combination. Number one that is a lot of holidays around wintertime. Thanksgiving, New Year's, Christmas. So people are consuming a lot of sugary crap, right? Which also includes more alcohol, too. Uhm—there may be more stress because you're traveling right? You’re in this like going to the airport, there are lots people, you're in a plane, which is basically a recycle tube of oxygen for 3 to 5 hours, right? So all of those things compound and make your immune system more stressed. And then you have the bigger stress, which I think is the lack of vitamin D. And vitamin D is so important because when you have adequate vitamin D levels, you increase this antimicrobial enzyme or peptide called that k__ And that’s like a natural antibiotic. And that can really help digest uhm— bacteria in your body that may be you know like a staph or strap or a pneumococcal infection in the –in the making.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I took 10,000. I'm sure I could've done more but I didn't want to take all of uh— my wife’s supply. She has her little cute pillbox organizer with all the vitamin D laid out. And I was like uh, “I’m gonna just steal your vitamin D for a few days.” And so I was doing 10,000 a day uh— for what was it? Two or three days and I think that probably move the needle little bit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Smart. Typically, what I'll do is I'll do uhm—vitamin D, a 100,000 IUs and will do that for three days straight. And then will drop down to 10 to 20,000.
Evan Brand: Wow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You really want to do it like super high for full days to really get the immune system up regulated.
Evan Brand: That’s crazy. So I could have__ then just fine then.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yeah. I mean you’re gonna make just in sunlight, you know, getting a full minimal erythemal dose, you’re gonna get about 20,000 in the sun anyway.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, I’m okay with that for a short period of time, for sure.
Evan Brand: Are you a bigger fan of going with uh— capsule or you like in the— the drops? like some of the emulsion drops that we can use?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I have an Emulsi D Synergy that I use. It's great. Uhm—that’s helpful or you do some capsules, too. But I’ll typically do the drops coz I can just knock it down, throw it in a drink and can be done with it.
Evan Brand: Yup. Cool. Well said. Do we hit on Zinc at all?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Zinc is great. I mean 30 mg a day is excellent. You can do it in a l__ form. Can be very helpful for the throat. And again, we did like uh—an immune boosting podcast recently. We’re just trying to really take this one, this podcast and focus it more on the flu. And again, there’s flu vaccines that are out there. Not a big fan of the flu vaccine because number one, they're basing it off of the flu that was in Asia the previous season. And 70 to 80% of time, it can be wrong. And number two uh— flu vaccines and tools they have mercury in it, which is not good for your immune system. And it’s a live virus a lot of times. You have to go look at some of the most are live viruses that you can actually give someone the flu if you just got the vaccine. And if you look at some of the side effects of the flu vaccine, again, you have to go to your local pharmacy asked the flu vaccine insert. I’ve done this. Go read the side effects of the flu vaccine. Side effects of the flu vaccine are actually the flu. They will not call it that, but they will say headaches, fever, chills, fatigue, you know, lethargy, right? They’ll say all of the symptoms that—
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What we classify as the flu, right? So the vaccine can actually give you the flu. And then number two is uhm—Coker database is pretty clear that a majority of flu-like symptoms aren’t from the flu. They are from other types of viruses—adenovirus, rhinovirus, paramyxovirus. These types of things that are out there. So the question is the flu vaccine is only going to help you 10 to 20% time for that flu virus but the things that we’re talking about are gonna up regulate your immune support for all viruses. And that's why the natural way, in my opinion, is so much better.
Evan Brand: It is better. It’s not even an opinion. It's a fact. I mean, look, here's a piece of literature right here from the CDC this year. This article was the December 29 and it states that this year and I think it's probably all years, but they're saying their flu vaccine is anywhere from 10% to a maximum of 30% effective.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: 10-20%? That’s terrible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's awful. I mean the placebo effect is 20% effective. So, basically, you know, the flu vaccine is in the same realm of effectiveness as a placebo.
Evan Brand: Wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re gonna get a little bit of mercury in there.
Evan Brand: Why, though, when you go to like Whole Foods or maybe not Whole Foods but some of these other local groceries, it's like, “Oh, we’re gonna donate of a meal to a child in need if you get a flu vaccine or we give you like a gift card.” It's like are they just making that much money on flu vaccines? I don’t understand.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I mean, they’re highly government-subsidized, right? So they’ve already, you know, people already bought these things so there's an incentive to unload it, right?
Evan Brand: Uhh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s really the big thing. Yeah. I mean they’re subsidizing. That’s part of the reason they’ve got to unload them. So they’re doing everything they can in the power to unload them. And again, the issue really is, let's say the flu vaccine is 100% effective. Let’s pretend it’s not 20% effective. Let’s pretend it’s a hundred percent. I already mentioned that other symptoms that are out there aren’t even flu- based, right? 80+ percent aren’t flu based like I mentioned. So even if that vaccine’s a 100% effective, there’s still 80 to 90% chance that your issue isn’t even flu-based. And that's really the key point coz we want to really work on up regulating the immune system making it stronger.
Evan Brand: Yeah. The immune system’s—It’s this time of the year plus the sugar like you mentioned, the travel, the time zone stressors. It could be flu, but it could be flu plus Streptococcus and Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas and Cyclospora like me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: And everything else.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. And also, the other component is uhm—timing. So if you have all the stress going on, let's say you wait like a day or two to start hitting on your immune support that can make all the difference in the world. So like, imagine, like something happens, like you don't wait for like the infantry to come in like two days later, right? You get the Navy SEALs, you get the Delta force, you get the Army Rangers in there now to surveil and start coming up with a plan. You don’t wait and hold back for a couple of days. Same thing with your immune response is you really want to get the—you know, the A-Team out there right away and that's why getting the immune supported within a few hours is important. So I recommend everyone have, you know, at least one or two, maybe three things on hand that you can really hit. So like for me, Immuno Supreme. That's kinda like medicinal mushrooms, little bit of Monolaurin, some Echinacea, some Goldenseal, a little bit of Astragalus, little bit of Elderberry. That’s kinda like my multi-tasker right there. And again, you can find a link down the show notes, justinhealth.com/shopimmune support Number two, you can do something simple like either a vitamin D or a vitamin C. Vitamin D, hundred thousand IUs for three days and then bring it back down to 10 to 20. Uh—number three, vitamin C. Allison asks, “How much vitamin C during the flu?” I would go up to about 8 to 10,000 g, I’m—8 to 10— 8 to 10 g a day, 8 to 10,000 mg a day. And probably be right around bowel tolerance. And if you hit bowel tolerance, where you have at least two stools, back off a bit. So we have the Immuno Supreme, we have vitamin C, we have vitamin D, and then, of course, something at home we can do the ginger tea. So we’re gonna actually juice pieces of the ginger 2 to 3 ounces of ginger juice. Add some hot water 10 to 12 ounces. Add a little bit of honey teaspoon to a tablespoon and a little bit of limejuice. And that will be a great first step. Sip that throughout the entire day. And I think that’s a great first step. And if you want to be like an extra good student, you know, you can do some additional Reishi mushroom by itself. Uhm—you can do silver by itself. And that’s I think it's a really good starting point. I—I even go little bit more. I'll even do Astragalus by itself, too. That makes a really good starting point in like, you know, I was maybe down for the count for day and a half to two days but I was still able to work 10 hour a day, see patients, do my thing at home, cook, do all my stuff and I was still able to function even though I was starting to feel it because I hit it hard. Day and a half- two days later, a hundred percent gone.
Evan Brand: Yup. That’s the goal. And obviously, the functional medicine testing is important, too, because if you feel like crap, you've got to figure out, “Okay, what are the biomarkers that are going on that allowed me to get to this level?” Yeah. It could just been a fluke. Something you pick up and then it's gone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: You don’t have to worry about it. But, you know, the G.I. map that we both use has been upgraded. So now we’re able to test for other things. So, we’re able to actually test for things like Epstein-Barr now on the stool panel, which is cool and worms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: We’re seeing hookworms and thread worms and these parasitic pathogens, the H. pylori piece, bacterial overgrowth, fungus, Candida. We’ll look at the immune system, gluten antibodies to see if you've been cheating. I mean, there is so much available on the testing that if you get sick, consider that your— your time. Okay, now I need to go run an OAT test as well and go look at my nutritional markers. How’s my mitochondria? How does my B vitamins look? How is my liver detox function? That's the excuse that you may need to get yourself tested. So if you're trying to do self-treat, you've got that medicine cabinets. It’s full or you've got that supplement graveyard, you can whittle that down to just the foundations like Justin and I've done. We've got just the key component. But that’s because it's based on labs. It’s not just guessing and checking. So you always wanna make sure that you guys know you have to get to that next step. I know what's going on. I knew that I had the Cyclospora plus the stress. It filled up my bucket. And my bucket overflowed and now I'm draining that bucket with your help. And now I'm sleeping better and uh— my stress load has gone down significantly. So now I'm able to—to come out of it, but as you see, if the stress doesn't go and I'm still not sleeping and I'm still stressed and other things are my bucket, I won’t get well. But I saw it coming, the train hit me, I called you, you help me through it. I made it out. Now the train’s gone. The train is leaving the station and I'm—I'm coming back to normal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Hey, we’re able to have a high-level conversation. You are able to see patients today. You are able to do uh—you know, all the work you got to do. So that's phenomenal if you can function that level. And I get people on the Facebook live. Again, we only can do this conversation two way on YouTube, right? We have to choose your media, Facebook or YouTube. We like YouTube better. So feel free, uhm—if you’re on Facebook, you know, go to the YouTube channel— justinhealth.com/YouTube Y-O-U-T-U-B-E subscribe. Hit the bell and you can watch the whole back and forth conversation with it. I’ll put a link in the show notes description on Facebook afterwards. So you can subscribe at Justinhealth.com/YouTube subscribe. Hit the bell. Pound that bell so you get the notifications and then you can watch this conversation and you can ask questions as well.
Evan Brand: I think were done. I think we can wrap this one up. If you want to reach out for help, get a consult with Justin or myself. You can look us up. Justinhealth.com that's for Justin. You can check out the store, too. We’ve got some cool herbs on there. Myself, Evanbrand.com and look us up. Stalk us. Study our content. We've got hundreds of hours of other free stuff so go study and become the smartest person in your family so that you can help them when they're down and out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m gonna drop a couple more knowledge bombs but as a little collateral here, I’m asking everyone listening now smash the bell because the bell is what’s gonna tell you when we come up again. And were gonna try to consistently be on Mondays and then Fridays I'll do live FAQ’s. I'll try to give like a 24-hour note on this. But if you smash that bell, that’s gonna help you to know when we’re going live so you can get your questions answered. Number two, give us a thumbs up and the share right now so more people can get access to this information. By you sharing, your helping other people get healthier, which is going to be better for everyone.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: My philosophy is anytime your healthier, you're a better employee you’re a better CEO, you’re a better mom, you're a better dad, you’re a better parent, you’re a better neighbor, you’re a better everything to everyone when you're healthy. So this is kinda how we ask that you help us get you healthy. And outside of that, uhm—phenomenal. So outside of that, also, sugar is a big one. We already talked about it before. Sugar is going to decrease your phagocytic activity. So phagocytes are these little Pac-Man that go around in the bloodstream and try to gobble up bacteria. When I was coming back from Kansas City, it was January 3rd, I overcome my infection. I was like sick for a day or two, I knocked it out. I was like feeling it. I was like getting better and getting better, getting better. Uhm— sleep was good. Number one key is for three days after you start feeling good, continue with immune support like you're sick. That's number one. Number two, be very careful of alcohol. I was on the plane Southwest gave me these like free drink cards and they have really nice sparkling wine in the menus like a Cava, you know, it was like a dry one, like, “This is great.” I love sparkling wine like the holidays are coming over, let me have a glass of champagne on the airplane.” Have a nice little glass and the throat issue just started coming back.
Evan Brand: Oh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And at 9 o'clock, I juiced some ginger, I hit hard. I hit the immune support. I hit ginger the next two days. Gone. So it—it kinda like creep up a little bit, but I went and pounded it down by doing all those things that I practice. So just to keep that in the back of your mind if you feel that.
Evan Brand: It’s like, “Hey, don’t be doing that yet. We’re not ready for that yet, Justin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Exactly. So I think some of the alcohol or maybe some of the carbohydrate just started weakening my immune system. And whatever like little virus or a bacterial critter that was in there, it was to peek his head back up.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We showed him who's boss, so—
Evan Brand: Nice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, anything else you want to mention here, Evan?
Evan Brand: I don't think so. Just make sure that you're asking these questions. You know, your— your symptoms are not a deficiency of antibiotics or steroids or whatever other ace—ace inhibitors and all these other drugs that I mean think about it, if I would've ended up going to a conventional Doc for my blood pressure, I mean, just based on one high reading, they're likely to throw you on some type of a blood pressure medication. And we know the side effects of those are just huge. So, I mean, really just trying to take a deep dive into the natural perspective first. It’s much easier to pull somebody from sickness if they're not already on 10 or 15 drugs. If you're already that deep into conventional medicine, you've already been on acid blockers and steroids and antibiotics. I mean it’s like, “Oh, good Lord!” It’s just—it’s extra work. We can do it, but man, natural medicine is superior for these type of issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% I got a couple more questions. Let’s hit them real quick. “So after the flu, I really have sugar cravings. What's causing this?” Well, number one, it depends, right? If you took in antibiotics that could be a yeast overgrowth that’s happening. So, did you take antibiotics? yes or no? Number two, typically, when you get sick, you to tend to lose a lot of weight coz you have no appetite. So if you’re throwing up, you’re easily nauseous, you may have the under eating, so your body is craving a lot of nutrition. So you gotta get back in the swing of good proteins, good fats, extra bone broth, minerals, tea to kinda get things going. And then get the blood sugar stability back on track.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Next, just stress in general make anyone more susceptible to infections or some people just more vulnerable to others. Uh, Robert, in general, yes. Stress will make you more susceptible because high levels of cortisol, right, will suppress your immune system. And “Is ginger tea safe to drink every day?” Yes I've no problem drinking ginger every day. It’s a tonic, really good. If you look at uhm—a lot of Chinese restaurants or Asian restaurants that serve like sushi, they typically always have a little bit the ginger on the side. Why? Because it helps with digestion. And it’s also anti-parasitic as well. And “What would you do if you're already dealing with an autoimmune disease?” Well, you know, get rid of the infection, right? Support the infection but then you gotta get to work and reach out to someone, Evan and myself to get to work on the underlying autoimmune disease, body systems that are not working and the underlying stressors above that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. There's probably other stuff going on outside of that. It could be co-infections, could be bacteria, yeast, fungus, parasite, H. pylori. All that stuff in your bucket. The leaky gut situation has to happen for autoimmune disease to be present. So if there's still gluten or some other food trigger, you gotta address all those. I mean obviously, yeah you knockdown the flu, but you still got other work to do. So, yeah, functional medicine guy’s important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And also, Xander writes about the IV therapy and the cocktails. Yeah, IV therapy, I think can be great like if you're sick, like there’s an acute like one-day thing, especially if you have loose stools, or Myer’s cocktail or a nice vitamin C drip, I think can be helpful acutely. Problem is, it’s not sustainable longer-term. You know, if you're paying 50 or 80 or a hundred dollars an IV and your sick, you need it every day. May not be the most cost-effective way, but I think if you know, it’s a one-day kind of acute thing, is it totally okay? Yeah. I much rather see you run to your natural path and get an IV then run to your ER and have them put in antibiotics. Especially most of the time, if it’s a virus, you’re just destroying your gut for no reason. If it's a virus infection and they’re giving you antibiotic, and most times, they don't culture it. So they’re not gonna run a culture. They’re not gonna even see if it is. They may just diagnose off of symptoms. And there's some overlap between virus and bacteria where it may be hard to know the difference.
Evan Brand: Sure are. And it’s not gonna do nothing but give you potentially fungus and yeast to come right back with a vengeance. And you got more stuff to work on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup.
Evan Brand: You’re creating more work for yourself if you do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then Matt talks about DXM. I think the one deficit is the herbal extract, but it helps with mucus. It helps kind of decrease mucus. Matt was mentioning that it's a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Uhm— so regarding “Would 5- HTP be dangerous?” I mean, in the short run, uhm— I wouldn't worry about it. Again, I typically only recommend things like Mucinex or the Guaifenesin extract if the cough is keeping you up at night. Like if you're coughing all night and you can’t go to sleep, you're kinda in between a rock and a hard place. Coz we know how important the sleep is for the immune system. So I would use an herbal extract or I would use a Mucinex product uhm—or is the one that I used by another company called Mucopect, which is phenomenal. It just has the herb without all the dyes and colors and crap in it. Coz that can decrease the mucus. But again, the body is trying to use the mucus to kind of like flush out, you know, the viral adhesions. So I will just use more ginger tea and natural toxins, you’re anti-toxins that kinda can help with the cough reduction. Uhm— but again, if you're sleep is being impaired, you got to get the sleep on track. And I would err on the side of using those if the sleep is being impaired.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything else you wanna add, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s it. I’m sure I could keep blabbing, but I think we killed it at this point and uh—I think we should wrap it up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. I’ll see you this coming Friday for my live FAQ. So be there, be square. And give us a share and a like and smash that bell right now. Appreciate everyone’s time. Have a great week.
Evan Brand: Take Care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks. Bye, Evan.
Evan Brand: Bye.
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