We live in a world that is filled with so many viruses, bacteria, toxins and other microbes that enter our bodies which can cause harm or even disease. The immune system is our body’s best defense to protect against these disease-causing critters. But when the immune system is weak these critters can invade and break through the defenses, thereby making you sick.
In this podcast, we will take a look at how the immune system works, what are the ways to balance immune system responses, the steps to boost it by way of diet and lifestyle changes as well as the major role of supplementation in strengthening one’s immunity against sickness.
In this episode we cover:
02:48 What Dr. Justin ate for breakfast?
04:41 TH1 and TH2 immune response
06:3 CD8 and CD4 Ratio
07:06 Why do we get sick?
22:20 Supplements and Herb
Podcast: Play in New Window|Download
Baris Harvey: Welcome to another awesome episode of Beyond Wellness Radio. Before we go to today’s show I want to tell you guys about the newsletter. Go to beyond wellness radio.com and hit the big button that says signup. There is a newsletter signup that you guys can stay in contact with us and then allows you to get each episode every week straight into your inbox. We have been growing and we really appreciate you guys showing on the list and it really helps us with our show and get the message out. One thing more, make sure that you hit that top button where it says justinhealth.com this will take you directly to Dr. Justin’s page where you can see a bunch of info and contact him directly. He is still taking 15-minute free consultations. So make sure if you got any more questions that you go straight there. We also have a place where you can add your questions. That way we can answer that on the show just for you. So, again beyondwellnessradio.com and then there is a big button that says newsletter go ahead and signup. So how is it going today, Dr. Justin?
Justin Marchegiani: Baris, it is going great, man. Very, very good day here. How about yourself?
Baris Harvey: Oh, it is going good. It is really sunny outside this morning, it seems like it is going to be a very good Friday. So, first off…
Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. I am actually heading down to a functional medicine conference this week too down in Houston. So looking forward to always improving, and growing in trying to bring more for the patients.
Baris Harvey: Definitely. That sounds good. I am always the same like you always want to get super, super real good in your craft. So that is when you want to hear your trainer, practitioner, doctor is doing. Constantly learning because there is so much good information everyday, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, absolutely.
Baris Harvey: Definitely. Yes. So first of all, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
Justin Marchegiani: Today, man? Because it is Friday and it is when we do this podcast, I just do my butter, MCT and the coffee and little bit of collagen; although I did pull out a grass-fed rib eye that I will be having for dinner. So dinner will be some grass-fed rib eye and we will do some nice organic vegetable mix, maybe like a spring Meadow Lea or something like that, of course with some butter and a lot of sea salts.
Baris Harvey: Definitely. Yes. I had for myself some smoked sausage with eggs, and I had fresh avocado from my grandpa’s tree. I do not know how more local you can get than that. So, I know I did not travel long distance, it is probably organic. I know he was not spraying some stuff on it. He just let it be. And I think I ate like half of avocado as long as there some lime and salt on top it’s like a guacamole straight in your plate.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: So, yes. That tasted amazing. And then, what I cooked for dinner, now this is great. You just throw a big old pot roast and you sear it for about 5 minutes on each side, you got to get it browned. It tastes good too. Then you throw it in a crock pot over a bed of some onions and you cook up some red curry sauce and then let that marinate and cook in the crock pot for eight hours. Yes, you will have a nice looking stew.
Justin Marchegiani: That is nice, man. Love it.
Baris Harvey: Definitely. So, in today’s podcast, we want to talk about our immune system. We mentioned previously that we will dive in because it is so in depth. You want to jump in, Justin?
Justin Marchegiani: Yes, that sounds good. So, we talked about our immune system. We kind of talked about the last time in regards to vitamin D. So, if anyone missed that podcast check it out. But if you missed it, here is kind of a Reader’s Digest summary. Vitamin D helps with our T regulatory cells. And our T-regulatory cells help balance out TH1 and out TH2 immune system branches. So imagine TH1 is like our cytotoxic immune system. This is like the special forces of our immune system. This is the Navy Seals, this is the Delta Force, this is the Green Berets, this is the Army Rangers, these are the people you send it there first when our defense system have been broken. When a virus or bacteria or some type of critter crosses enemy lines, these are the people we send in first. So this is our TH1 immune response. We have our TH2 immune response which is more of our humoral or our antibody-based immune system. These are like the infantry that are way behind to get word back from the Special Forces whether it is safe to go in, whether it is ready to go in. Now in real life, it takes about seven days for our humoral or our antibody immune system to kind of get geared up and start attacking. So a lot of people noticed like that one-week window have kind of appeared when they are sick a lot of times and they start feeling better after a week. And that is because that TH2 or our infantry-type of immune responses are now gearing up and really coming to the battle field. Now, we deal with TH2, these are kind of the part of the immune system that we are trying to boost up with the vaccination, right? So, you get a vaccination. You are going to try of boost up this branch of the immune system. Now, I am not a big fan of vaccinations, in general, because of the other adjuvants and additives and other compounds in the vaccination that actually can suppress your immune system. And not to mention there has been some research that vaccinations by boosting up the TH2 response really high or artificially, it can actually lower your TH1 immune response. And this is really important because you want to have a strong Special Forces so when you first get exposed to a critter, you do not even want to get sick, you do not want to be even down for 24 or 48 hours. You want to just feel that sniffle, feel a little scratch on your throat and you want to be able to boost that TH1 and get over that and squash those bacteria, viruses or critters really fast. So I am going to give you a second to kind of ask some questions and break it down a little, Baris.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. So, it’s almost like you have TH1 and TH2 and I am assuming that TH1 is like that first bomb that first attack. And so if you get sick, let us say you get really sick, it is basically when you get a bunch of those critters, you got the TH1 goes explode some up but there are still a lot of critters coming in. So you like, “Hey, we need some back up.” And then that is when you get on going. But if you really have a strong TH1 where you do not have a lot of critters coming in, your bomb will explode on the first day and you do not even noticed that you got sick or you might, like you mentioned, just have a little sniffle, correct?
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Exactly. So you have like your CD8, these are like your natural killer cells. These are like the sniper of like the Navy Seals, right? This is like the guy coming in there first really clearing out the battle field. We have our CD8 and CD4. Our CD4 are like our helper cells. So they are kind of like radioing back to everyone and just letting everyone know what is going on while the CD8s are the ones that are really out there first and foremost really trying to do what they got to do to help out and communicate what is going on. Does that make sense?
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. I am just writing the notes as you speak.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So, a lot of times here, for instance, with low vitamin D or we even see it with estrogen dominance for instance, we start to have this decrease in the CD8 and the CD4 ratio. So ideally, we should have twice of the amount of CD8 to CD4. It is kind of like a good rule of thumb. And a lot of people the CD8 is dropping while the CD4 is increasing. So we are kind of decreasing that ratio. So we want like more Special Forces, we want more snipers, we want more guys out in front of the situation than the CD4s and overall the infantry. That is how we get over colds and infections super fast.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Basically we want more frontline guys, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: We want to make sure we prevent having to fight them on our own terrain and let us try to get them in this middle ground as fast as possible.
Justin Marchegiani: And vitamin D kind of play in there because vitamin D helps balance out all that TH1 and TH2 which is great. And it also helps with the TH17 system which helps balance and modulate the immune system as well. And vitamin D also increases this antimicrobial peptide called cathelicidin which is great because it has its antibacterial activity. So if we get bacteria coming on board there it can definitely help eradicate it.
Baris Harvey: Yes, definitely. So we mentioned just some of the physiology that is going on. Before we kind of jump into the next step, what would make someone get sick? Generally, I know it can be a million things. But generally what is happening with someone with a weaker immune system and when can we say it’s a strong immune system that prevents one from getting sick?
Justin Marchegiani: Well, let us just look at stress and I do not like to word stress by itself because it is very abstract, right? So stress in general creates a response. So this could be emotional stress just you know, work, family, friends, finances whatever else is going on in your life. It could be emotional stress, physical stress like working out too hard. It could be underlying chemical stressors like an infection or you are eating too much sugar. All of these things are going to create stress and one of the stress hormones we create is a glucocorticoid called cortisol. And cortisol is known, you can just go Google in the literature and type in glucocorticoid or cortisol and type in inhibition of TH1 immune response. And you will find lots of studies that excessive cortisol or stress hormones will actually decrease our TH1 immune system. Now this is important because that means we are decreasing the Special Forces. So simple things like getting enough sleep, simple things like avoiding excessive sugar, simple things like doing your meditation. Those are all going to help with stress and they are going to modulate cortisol for the better and help with our immune system. Any questions there, Baris? Do you want to break it down at all?
Baris Harvey: Yes. So you mentioned cortisol and that means our stress hormone. This is basically what we have to remember and you wrote down like how stress, it is not just emotional stress, but anything that is causing this cortisol increases fight or flight response. Whether that be acute or chronic is decreasing or inhibiting our production of TH1. So what is going on here is you probably have two choices and you can go on saying, “Hey, we got to attack this thing. We got to run from this line. We have to do this because we need to survive.” Now, we are not too worried about fighting those long term infections at least right now because my cortisol is so high. And what is happening is if we have that constant thrust, we are constantly doing that and just focus on the next kind of two minutes. Almost like if someone is poor, they might not be thinking about their future and why it is important to save up or do all these things that we are saying we should do but they focus on their right now which can in a chronic stage be very dangerous.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Exactly. So, what we see today with a lot of the over vaccination is we see this hyper TH2 dominance. And what characterized this hyper TH2 dominance is we see lot of allergies; asthma, right? We see lots of eczema, a lot more autoimmune conditions and this is characteristic of an increasing TH2 response. And also with toxicity, we are depleting our body of a lot of our master antioxidants one being glutathione. So when we decrease glutathione, that can help basically shift us more to a TH2 response. So important, right? Glutathione is made from proteins, sulphur-based amino acid cysteine, glutamine and glycine. This is what is making glutathione. And if for one, you are stressed out by getting exposed to toxins or we are just stressed out in our life or we are just not getting enough of these nutrients in there, low glutathione will shift our immune system more to the TH2 side of the fence. Toxins as well. You can go out there and Google mercury and TH2 dominance. You will find higher levels of mercury correlating with TH2 dominance. You will also see it with certain minerals like zinc. Zinc is really important. There is a compound called zinc finger. This is like epigenetic trigger that zinc has on our body and our immune system and zinc can beneficially affect our immune system so does selenium. So these are important micronutrients that if we are low in because of, let us say, leaky gut or malabsorption issues, that can definitely skew our immune system away from the beneficial TH1 to TH2 ratio.
Baris Harvey: And you mentioned that we can possibly be low in these nutrients. You suggest testings, that way you can kind of get an idea what are you low in and try to get what is causing this. It is like common causes, like if you have low zinc there is a possibility of XY and Z happening. Where would somebody go from here?
Justin Marchegiani: Well, like for simple nutrients like zinc we can easily do a zinc tally test which is like a liquid zinc sulfate that you just take a shot of it. And the better the zinc taste in your mouth, the faster and the better it taste the more deficient you are. The faster and worst it taste the less deficient you are. So, essentially your body creates this sense of palatability, if you will. The better it taste, meaning the more you need it. The less or the worst it taste and the faster it taste bad the less you need it. So the zinc tally test is a really good test. It has been around for a while and even in the scientific literatures being accurate. That is really a good way to look at zinc. You can even look at zinc levels on our blood test, looking at alkaline phosphatase. You see alkaline phosphatase on your basic CBC. Below 50, that is a good marker that you are low in zinc. Also, if you have poor digestion or poor stomach acid issues, you need zinc to make stomach acid and you need stomach acid to breakdown zinc. So this is one of these awesome nutrients. Where if we have gut issues we are almost guaranteed to have a zinc deficiency. So just go out and get a zinc tally test, get some zinc chloride. I think zinc sulfate, a couple of companies carry it. Designs for Health is one. Metagenics carries one. If you need one, you can always call my office. It is a really easy test and it is very affordable to make sure you are getting enough zinc.
Baris Harvey: Yes, that seems like a really, really good idea and like you said it does not sound like it is a super-duper expensive thing to do.
Justin Marchegiani: No.
Baris Harvey: That is good.
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely not.
Baris Harvey: Yes, definitely. Okay, so now we talk a little bit about some nutrients but before I go into the next thing, which would be kind of like feeling symptom and how to deflect it. We talked a little bit about selenium, vitamin D. What are some other key players in terms of our body not necessarily what we can do supplementally but just what are the key players and regulators when it comes to our immune system?
Justin Marchegiani: So, key players regarding supplements or herbs?
Baris Harvey: Not necessarily herbs but it is like nutrients or kind of what is going on in our body; like what hormones are possibly affecting it? What nutrients? We talked about zinc, we talked about vitamin D. But also what are the things going on that we know in our body that kind of are regulating things. And then after we will kind of get into like what we can do supplementally wise.
Justin Marchegiani: Well again, progesterone is one of those things that is going to help with the healthy TH1 response as well as healthy or balance levels of cortisol, right? Not too low because typically low levels of cortisol indicate chronic stress and HPA axis dysfunction. So low levels of cortisol are not going to be good because it is typically a sign of depletion and/or HPA axis and brain dysfunction and high levels of cortisol are also going to throw that off. So when we start becoming more estrogen-dominant as a female or we start becoming more cortisol depleted or cortisol stimulated that is going to really decrease our TH1 response. Also vitamin D deficiency like I already mentioned and some of these key nutrients glutathione, vitamin D, selenium, zinc. These are going to be some of the key nutrients off the bat. Now the next step is, let us say you are starting to get sick like what are some of the really good things that you can do. Well, we know off the bad our immune system creates these macrophages. These macrophages start to engulf a lot of the bacteria and the viruses. And what they do is when they engulf them, they have what is called an antigen presenting cell where they go back and they are presenting the antigen to the immune system and this is where the TH2 part really comes in and starts stimulating antibodies. But the goal is, if we can have really strong macrophages we can really gobble up and kind of sequester and isolate a lot of these critters in gaining a foothold. So certain things can be very helpful. Like vitamin C for instance, I did a video on this where the vitamin C will actually go into the cell and the concentrations of vitamin C get very, very high in that macrophage and the body uses that as a means to attack and engulf the virus or bacteria. So here is the interesting thing, if we are sucking vitamin C into that macrophage to engulf that bacteria, it is called phagocytosis for engulfing it for sucking vitamin C in. Well, vitamin C molecule looks very, very similar to glucose. So for eating too much sugar our body will suck in glucose along with vitamin C and the glucose will crowd out vitamin C, it will crowd out the receptors for vitamin C in that macrophage and it will prevent the vitamin C from being able to do its job in having antioxidant effect and kill the bacteria. So we can cut out the glucose and we can get vitamin C of maybe up to 7 or 8 grams a day. That is going to significantly help our macrophages and this whole process known as phagocytosis to really work. So if we up our vitamin D and if we up our vitamin C that is going to allow all these critters to really be gobbled up by these macrophages.
Baris Harvey: Basically, that means drink down a bunch of orange juice when you are getting sick, saying, “Oh, vitamin C,” because you might not have that right balance of glucose to vitamin C.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. There has been a lot of research. I posted one in the article I did last year by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in the 70’s talking about 100 grams of glucose inhibited the immune system by 50% for 5 hours. And it took much longer for it to actually come back to normal. And they compared like a glucose solution versus starch. The starch even decreased a little bit but it was far more with the actually glucose strength. So let us correlate this to like high fructose corn syrup because fructose is even more damaging because glucose can be taken up by the muscle primarily, where fructose goes to the liver. So I hypothesized, I have not done a clear view research on this. I could do it now as we talk but I guarantee you that if you are going to look at fructose and immune function, you are going to see significantly more damage or inhibition of the immune system with fructose. That is what is going to be in all of our soft drinks which are being consumed at regular levels today.
Baris Harvey: Yes, so basically it is better to eat the orange and probably better eat the orange in a smoothie than just to drink orange juice.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: Because at least you are getting a better balance, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Exactly.
Baris Harvey: Yes, so definitely vitamin C plays a major role and a lot of people even the mainstream knows about this sometimes it is just that their route of consumption need to be a little bit better.
Justin Marchegiani: And what you just said regarding sugar not being the way to go and consuming sugar, we want to consume actual real foods because you get the fiber in there, you get the pectin and you get a whole bunch of nutrients. And typically like for instance in orange, you are going to get a whole bunch of vitamin C as well where you are not going to get any of that nutrition when you are eating refined sugar.
Baris Harvey: Yes, definitely. So what are some other things, what are some herbs that you might take if you got sick?
Justin Marchegiani: So some of the things that I am going to do off the bat if I get sick is: one, I am going to hit vitamin C up very high up to 8 to 9 grams a day. And do not be afraid if you hit or max up your vitamin D you will get loose stools, you will get diarrhea. So if you go too high on the vitamin C not that big of a deal. And a lot of times people say, “Well, you should get your vitamin C up to maximum potency so you do get diarrhea so you know. I typically use a vitamin C; it is an Ester-C so it has got a lot of extra nutrients and bioflavonoids along with the ascorbic acid, tends to work a little better.
Baris Harvey: Yes. And just a word, you ever tasted an Ester-C versus just by itself? Usually taste a little bit better to you. Some of the ones will put flavoring but if you want the really good ones where you can put a lot of vitamin C in your system like when you are really sick, you just got to make sure of the source sometimes. Sometimes they get it pretty close.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. And like vitamin C is going to be helpful like I said with the macrophages and just a good Ester-C is going to be helpful. Now we can also do herbs, right? I am a really big fan of astragalus. Astragalus helps with the TH1 immune response. It also helps with your body pumping out antibodies. So we kind of talked about antibodies as being like part of the TH2 system, right? It’s the antibodies; it is the late stage antibodies, typically, the IgG. But the astragalus will also help with the IgM and these are the antibodies that come on to the scene really, really fast. So the IgM really get stimulated. The IgA will get stimulated. This is like our protective mucosal barrier that lines our gut and our nose and stuff so it is very helpful to have protection in the nose and all those mucous membranes. And if we do that with some Reishi mushroom, Reishi is awesome because it has a lot of these compounds called triterpenes. And these triterpenes are really powerful at actually deactivating viruses. So very good. So if you are getting viruses in there, you can take Reishi, you know, up to 3 to 4 grams per day spread out over the course of the day. And you can take astragalus along with it and it is very potent at stimulating the TH1 branch also deactivating viruses. It is also very supportive to the immune system. A lot of these things have been around for thousands of years. You would not know it based on conventional medicine’s inadequacy of sharing it or putting it out there. I mean you go to the ER. The only thing maybe you get to talk about is maybe Tamiflu which decreases the symptoms of the flu; I think what, maybe a day a day and a half? Again, the question is, are you really making your immune system stronger? Just because you decrease the symptoms you may get sick again, you may relapse right after that because you are not actually strengthening the immune system.
Baris Harvey: And I know that probably sounds real heavy, well like these plants have been around for a very long time. They seemed to be pretty resistant. I mean a lot of them were here even when the dinosaurs were here and they are still surviving. So if they can survive maybe they have some good lessons to teach our bodies, right? Like the discussion we have here, mushrooms, the only thing that we have publicized that people think, you know, some side effects of mushrooms but then also those are like so demonized like, “Oh, you hallucinate and go crazy,” which you probably do not go crazy and which is probably just a potent medicine. But there are all these other medicines too that just have different functions that might not make you hallucinate but might give you more or boost your immune system the same way. We have other herbs that I guess for example, I mean over here, it is medically illegal but we know that cannabis is good for the immune system and it helps these different components mostly the CBD which is illegal industrial hemp everywhere. And so we see like those beneficial nutrients and herbs but it is not just those super powerful illegal ones. There are also ones that are legal that we just do not necessarily see them right in front of our face just because we are not getting that higher hallucinating off this Reishi. There are so many other powerful that you can find in these mushrooms. Like you mentioned they have been here for a while but a lot of people do not even know about it.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then we have the other sides of the spectrum where essentially cancer, right? We have our autoimmune condition which is our TH2 immune system being over reactive and attacking self. And then we have the other side where our immune system goes to sleep and it cannot control apoptosis which is basically our cells are born and they are killed or recycled. So think of apoptosis as your body’s ability to recycle cells. So if cells start going out of control. Imagine you do not bring the recycle bin out for a couple of weeks to the front curve. Well, your recycle bin is going to be overflowing. Well, it is the same thing with our immune system. If it goes to sleep it is not going to be able to recycle a lot of these cells and when cells have not been recycled for a while we call that a tumor. For instance, here’s one study and a lot of these studies really kind of pisses me off because a lot of these studies are in Asian cultures or they are in cultures outside of the US. But this study was called astragalus saponins affects proliferation and invasion of apoptosis of gastric cancer. So they are looking at astragalus as a means to support the immune system for cancer prevention. And what they found was, astragalus inhibited human gastric cancer cell growth, decreased the invasion ability and induced apoptosis. They said at the end in their conclusion, astragalus as an alternative treatment option or perhaps using it as an adjuvant chemotherapeutic agent in gastric cancer therapy. They suggested possibility in further developing this for that reason. So this is great but you are just not going to hear any of these things in the US. And you just got to know that it is out there. It is in the literature. And just because your doctor does not know about it, it does not mean that it is not there and it does not mean that you cannot utilize it to help you.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Remember that, it is not his fault. Why would someone go to him and say, “Hey, look, you should really recommend this supplement.” Because what he is taught and what is pushed on him is going to be from different companies saying, “Hey, look this is what is the new thing. This is what you need to be showing your patients and if you do not, then you know we will probably going to have a problem, right?”
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And we got to just know that the major journals like JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, these journals, well just go get one. Go into a hospital and look at the lounge. I used to work in the hospital for years in surgery and I just pick up one of these journals because the doctors do not have the time to really read the small journals. They are going to be reading the big major journals. And if you look at every four or five pages you are going to see a drug ad in the journal. And the drug companies have a major effect at choosing at what gets in to these studies. So you are going to see it more at obscure journals. A lot of these information you are not going to see it really in the big mainstream journals. It is just not going to get there and your mainstream doctors are just only going to be skimming through the abstracts of these mainstream journals, you know when they have just a few minutes of time. So they are not going to get access to this great information.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Okay, so we are talking about some things we could do. The Reishi mushroom, the astragalus, these powerful herbs. Also mentioned vitamin C. What are some of the symptoms or what are some of the things we do, of course, I am sneezing or doing some that is kind of obvious. Are there any things that you might notice like quickly that can kind of tell us, “Hmm, something is off. Maybe I should boost this before I really get sick.” Like we wake up in the morning we might have scratchy throat and then ignore it. What should we do right then?
Justin Marchegiani: So the first thing, as soon as you start getting a little bit headache, a little bit achy, slight bit of a scratchy throat, slight bit of a runny nose, you want to pound these herbs. I mean, my stack that I might go to will be to up vitamin C. I would even up vitamin D up to 1000 IU/pound of body weight. I say that again, 1000 IU/pound of body weight. So if I am 200 pounds, yes that is 200,000 units for 3 days. Do not do it for kids. Do not do it for anyone breastfeeding. But this is kind of where you want to be at to get your vitamin D maximized. Because that is going to have an up regulating effect on getting your immune system regulated. They have done it in Europe with these protocols for a while. They have even done studies where they give in vitamin D intravenously for tuberculosis patients and it has had an amazing effect at up regulating the immune system. So I would do vitamin D at that super high level for 3 days, I would up the vitamin C. I would come back down afterwards to a reasonable amount maybe 10,000 a day. But I would do vitamin C up to about tolerance. I would hit the Reishi for anywhere between 3 to 5 grams per day. I would increase the astragalus. And then I also take silver. Now not all silver are created equal. I recommend reading Gordon Pedersen, PhD. He is an immunologist, who wrote a book on silver. You just Google him on Amazon, he has got a great book out there. But he has created a product called Silvercillin or Silver Sol. It is a 10 part/million silver, very pure so you are not going to develop blue skin or gray skin by drinking it. A lot of people out there always ask me that on the internet like, “Hey, about silver, your skin can turn blue?” Again, it is all dependent upon quality, right? The grass-fed rib eye I am having tonight is not the same quality as the meat at McDonald’s. So you got to kind of look at things in that same perspective. So silver, a teaspoon anywhere between 5 to 6 times a day spread out is going to be very helpful. Because the silver is going to bind to these viruses and binds to these proteins and essentially destroy them. And it is very, very safe on the body and the body excretes it; 99% of it within 24 hours, gone. So that will be my stack right there. Silver, vitamin C, astragalus, and Reishi mushroom. And if you wanted to go a little bit more crazy on there you can add some Echinacea. Echinacea and Goldenseal work phenomenal. That will be a really good stack to add. And you can also add some vitamin A. Higher dose of vitamin A. Jonathan Wright will add up to, I want to say, 100,000 units. Again do not do it if you are pregnant. But 100,000 units of micellized or sublingual liposomal vitamin A is very good. Combine it with vitamin D, works phenomenal as a way of boosting up your immune system.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Are there any practices that you might do? Meditate, sauna, sleep extra? What are some of the activities that you might do on how you might change your environment?
Justin Marchegiani: Okay. We talked about cortisol and how it affects the TH1 so meditation will be helpful, definitely because that is going to help modulate cortisol for the better. Right cortisol is better balance, we are going to have a better immune response. That is one right there. A sauna can be very helpful. Remember our immune system is very heat sensitive. So our body will heat up just a little bit because a lot of the bacteria that tend to cause sickness they are mesophilic, meaning they survive at medium temperatures, right around body temperature, 98-99 degrees. So the response the body does is it wants to increase temperature just a bit so it can actually kill the bacteria. Kind of like if you have water at a stream and you want to clean it out, you may boil it for a period of time to clean it out. That is the kind of the same mindset here with what we are doing with the immune system. I have done research on this too. You do not have to really worry too much about febrile seizure or seizure from having a body temperature too high. The immune system would not go over 105 degrees for the most part. So 104 or 105 I would even say is safe for your immune system. I mean, again a lot of parents get really concerned and they want to give their kid a Tylenol or an ibuprofen which is like a pyrogenic. It helps decrease fever. But in my opinion, the body is doing something that is really important. So if the fever is 105 or less, I think let the body burn out the bacteria. It is doing that to kill it. It is mobilizing calcium. It is creating this immune response. It is essentially boiling the water up so we can kill a lot of these bacteria. I know it is hard for most parents and most parents get a little scared because of brain damage and these febrile seizures but there is a good body of research out there that if you are not going to go over 105 and it is very rare to go over 105, 99% of fevers do not go over that so you are going to be pretty okay.
Baris Harvey: Yes. So basically, just be mindful and check the temperature if it is getting to 106-107 then maybe you can go ahead and maybe use. Basically, that is a really good way to test it. It is when you said, it is almost like kind of boiling off the water, right? You just try to kill that extra bacteria. I have noticed that with myself. If I get a fever, I will let the fever do its job. Because I know it is, hey, it is killing this certain bacteria. Same way when you cook, like you are cooking to kill bacteria for the most part. Also, food generally tastes better that way but it is usually to kill off a certain amount of bacteria. And then so saunas, you know, they are going to get you not only we have like you mentioned immune responses to heat. And we have these heat shock proteins. But also we have to remember that if we can get our body when we go to a sauna in a temperature that is pretty high and people go into a sauna after a gym, having a fever is probably not going to be that bad.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Exactly. So, kind of in recap here. We have a lot of nutrients and a lot of them can affect both sides of the immune system which is great. And the goal is we want to have a stronger immune system. We want to do things in the lifestyle side that support it. I mean, do not get me wrong. Supplements are great but if you are eating a whole bunch of sugar and getting stressed out and not getting sleep, I mean, you are wasting your money. Your best bet is to really, really hammer home the lifestyle stuff which is sleep especially before 10 pm, minimize glucose and sugar. Bone broths can be excellent. Even a little bit of fasting while sick can also be helpful. Maximizing nutrient density. Zinc is really going to be helpful. And then once you get everything dialed in then adding in some of these herbs. Picking two or three of these herbs or even four or five depending on, let us say, you got to get up the next day and you got to be at work or you got an event and you cannot afford to be sick. Well, I recommend having your medicine cabinet of three to five things there on tap and as soon as you feel the slight bit of sickness that can make a difference of you being sick or not feeling well for a few hours or a few days. So, you jump on it fast that is going to be huge. So my stack again is I have silver, I have astragalus, I have vitamin C, I have vitamin D and I have Reishi. That is my stack. My five things that are in my medicine cabinet at all times and I will hit those things hard and then make a huge difference. And that is why I am almost never sick. And it is great because when you are flying and you are doing all these things, people are so paranoid about getting sick and I know my immune system would be able to handle it. And also if you know you are going into stressful situations, right? You know you are going to be around a whole bunch of sickies. You know it’s the holidays you may be eating a little bit more sugar or maybe you are around some family that will be stressing you out. Take a low dose of some of these herbs. Have a 1 to 2 gram dose of vitamin C going on in the background. Have a little bit of the Reishi or astragalus going on in the background so it is there. So your immune system is kind of like already primed and all you have to do is up the dose or dial in the lifestyle support more when you start feeling just a little bit under the weather.
Baris Harvey: Yes. So if you have the ability or you know maybe, nobody wants to be sick on weekends but if you are, take that time to sleep in and let your body do its thing, right? Because when you are resting that is when all that repair is happening. And you mentioned too if you are going to be eating a certain way, if you are fasting or at least when you do get your meals, you know. Maybe you are taking shakes or just like slamming down some broths and clean drinks something like that. Making sure that you are maximizing nutrient density so when your body is doing its job it makes sure that it maximizes how much nutrients bringing in to help support and at the same time not having to work so hard burning up as much calories that it does not necessarily need to be there, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: So, I think we are going to start recapping. How do you let your body do its job? Because I know the conventional way is we feel these symptoms and they are uncomfortable, right? I mean working out is uncomfortable but it is good for us. But we feel this, oh this is uncomfortable I do not want to feel this and we take these medicines that suppress those symptoms but now we kind of stretched that out. It is like you are kind of weakening your own body’s army. So you are like saying, “Hey, I am going to get in because I do not like the fighting that is going on, I don’t like feeling the heat from the guns. We got to split it 50%, alright and you got to reduce. So war takes longer and you are stretching it out so now you are sick for like 7 days or 10 days like you say where your TH2 has to come in and help out. Whereas if you are doing the right things, you can kick that bad boy out as fast as possible when you let your body do its job and maybe it is uncomfortable but hey, if I get a fever I am having a fever for one night or two and it is gone. I do not have to have a mild fever for a week or week and a half.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And most people do not have access to any of these information and they feel sick. They just feel like an innocent victim. Like there is a germ just floating around out there and it got them, and rats and they are down for the count and there is nothing they can do. Just know that there is so much you can do. And this is really empowering to have these little tools and tips at your disposal. Because it can really make the difference of adding more vacation days because you are not tapping into those sick days.
Baris Harvey: Yes, definitely. Yes its sounds good. Is there anything else you wanted to touch or add in?
Justin Marchegiani: I would say check out my blog on “Why do you get sick?” I have a two-part series on what supplements I recommend, exact doses, take a look at that. I kind of break it down: Part 1 is more on the lifestyle side of things. Lifestyle and diet. Part 2 is in the supplements. We will put that in the show notes and people can go and refer to that as well. Just try it, pick two or three things on the list that sounds good to you and just give it a try and see how you will do.
Baris Harvey: Yes, definitely. That is a great resource and you put a lot of work into creating that information because there are a whole lot of references there. We kind of went over the whole gamut here where we went over the importance of lifestyle, managing stress, of course making sure we are eating the right foods and even fasting, and then of course basic things like make sure people are washing their hands.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes of course, like washing the hands. Those are your simple ones. And do not use the Purell hand sanitizer; the main ingredient is propylene glycol, aka anti-freeze that is not going to help your immune system. Like you would not like to wash your hands with anti-freezer, right? But because it says Purell in there you think it is okay. Use an essential oil; use something more natural that is not going to be a stress on your body. Do not use the Purell. Take a look at the back the next one you have, you are going to see propylene glycol. Type that in to the Google machine that is anti-freeze, do not do it.
Baris Harvey: Yes, do not do it. I think what is the company? I think EO.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes EO. They have a great lavender and a lemon one. I use both of those. They have a spray. That is a better way to do it. I keep that in my bag if I am on a flight. I will spray that on my hands and just wash that. And also, a lot of the soaps they have Triclosan in it and they have other antibiotics which is not going to be good for your immune system in general if you are always being exposed to it. So good soaps, ideally coconut-based soaps tend to be good because of the lauric acid in coconut that is antimicrobial it is natural. And essential oils like the EO ones are really good ones to wash your hands or just sanitize your hands with.
Baris Harvey: Yes, definitely. So that sounds good. I think we covered a lot of the basics. Make sure that people are eating right. What to do right after and what kind of physiology is happening behind that. If anybody has more questions though, I do urge you to go to beyondwellnessradio.com/question and you can go ahead and add your question right there. So if it is about this specific episode or about anything else, we can go ahead and answer that either directly for you or if you feel that is a great question for the entire audience to know we will go ahead and answer that to the show. So, again that is beyondwellnessradio.com/question. Anything else, Dr. Justin?
Justin Marchegiani: That’s it, Baris. Sounds good to me, man.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Alright have a good one. See you guys next week.
Justin Marchegiani: Take care.
speak pipe
Rumble
Youtube
Apple
LIBSYN
Bitchute