This video discusses strategies for boosting the immune system and clearing sinuses, particularly in the context of dealing with kids. The use of natural remedies and lifestyle changes are emphasized to address root causes and prevent infections.
Highlights:
• Sinus issues can lead to sinus infections and other respiratory problems in both kids and adults.
• Conventional treatments like steroids, antibiotics, and antihistamines only provide temporary relief and don’t address the root cause.
• N-acetylcysteine (NAC) can help break up mucus and increase glutathione levels, which are important for dealing with oxidative stress.
• Sinus irrigation and flushing can help remove mucus and prevent the spread of bacteria and viruses.
• Nutrition plays a crucial role in supporting the immune system, and avoiding processed and pasteurized dairy products is recommended.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justinhealth. com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really want to get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marchegiani here with Evan Brand. Today we're gonna be talking about how to boost your immune system and clear your sinuses, especially in the context of dealing with kids because most sinus issues become the gateway to sinus infections and ear infections and lots of other goodies in the throat and potentially the lungs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, excited to dive in on today's topic here with Evan. Evan, how are we doing, man? What's cooking? Hey, man, not too much. Good to see
Evan Brand: you here. And yeah, I mean, this conversation was inspired because you and I, if we go out in groups of people, whether this is a grocery or church or a social event, you're going to hear and see lots of people with tissues in their hand, people with runny noses, people with sinus problems, people with coughing, people clearing their throats, people sounding like they're hacking up a lung.
Evan Brand: And many of these people, if they get miserable enough to go to an ENT doctor, they're likely just going to get a prescription. Maybe it's a steroid inhaler. Maybe it's an antibiotic. But none of this is addressing root cause issues. And these people continue to suffer. And obviously this affects It could lead to headaches.
Evan Brand: It could lead to reduced productivity. Maybe you're even taking off work because your sinus headache is so bad. You're depending on something like Excedrin or maybe some other maybe an antihistamine. So, conventional stuff is steroids. It's antibiotics. Antihistamines, maybe there's mucinex, which is, if you look into it, it's actually relatively natural in its origin.
Evan Brand: But, but that's about it. That's about as far as it goes. Dr. Justin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani Yeah, I mean, you have mucinex, which comes from the, from guayac bark, from a guayac tree, which does help break up mucus. In the functional medicine world, we're going to be trying to get to the root cause. So, we have palliative modalities that support the oxidative stress, support the inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We can add anacetylcysteine in that, which is a mucolytic. It does help with oxidative stress, does help. increasing glutathione levels, which are really important because if you end up giving your kid Tylenol, I mean, you can look at Tylenol and glutathione connection. Tylenol totally depletes glutathione levels.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if you're doing acetaminophen slash Tylenol, that's in a lower glutathione and that's going to impact your ability to either you or your kids to deal with oxidative stress. And again, NAC has been used as an IV to deal with Tylenol based liver failure since the 60s and 70s. So this isn't new stuff, but people don't know it and they aren't applying it at home.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So NAC is going to be powerful for the mucolytic. breaking up the mucus, because if we don't get the junk and the mucus out of our sinuses, that, which, the mucus, especially as it goes from yellow to green, that's the dead immune soldiers. That's your immune system going after and killing viruses slash bacteria, and that's the remnants, that's the debris.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the more that debris sits on the battlefield, right, you can kind of go back to like a World War I type of meme or analogy in your head, if you leave, if all the soldiers stay on the battlefield after they pass, well, guess what, Infection start, right? Same thing in your nose. When those immune soldiers hang out and they're there and they've all kind of been, been they've already sacrificed themselves to go after the bacteria and virus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you don't move that, that's going to put more stress on the immune system and that's going to allow these, the, the junk and the remnants to spread more bacteria to the immune system. to the Eustachian tube that, that comes here. It's more parallel for kids. As you go into adulthood, it kinda moves a little bit more upstream, so there's a little more gravity helping against it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But with kiddos, it's a little bit more horizontal, more flat, and so this junkier can move its way into the ear. And this is how most ear infections start. And so we can work on cleaning out the sinuses with a good high quality saline to still water, or, you know, RO water and saline packets. I'll do one to two.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we'll start with that. We gotta make sure we're not using tap water, it's gotta be a high quality filtered water. Not even Berkey, but either Aro, Distil, they're just a really good brand of mineral water mixed with the packets. And then I'll always add in like a drop of iodine in there, so, just cause that will help with the biofilms and break up any of the junk so it flows out the nose better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I'll let you kind of comment on that.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's great. And truthfully, a lot of people don't have any data on themselves too. So they don't even know what they're up against. I mean, you can have strep, you can have staph, you can have candida. So if you're battling issues in the throat, maybe this is giving you like a scratchy voice or you feel like you're just congested where you have to kind of clear your throat a lot, there could be a true fungal infection that's happened.
Evan Brand: And maybe this was after a round of antibiotics, maybe you had a dental procedure and. You got antibiotics for it and now you have some sort of thrush that's happened. You can obviously look at your tongue. Hopefully your tongue is nice and pink, but most people that we see clinically, I'll ask them all the time on, on camera, like, Hey, let me check out your tongue.
Evan Brand: And most people, they either have scalloping on their tongue or they have some sort of a white coating on their tongue and it's not good. And so this is a clue, but obviously if you've suffered with this and it's been ongoing for weeks to months, then I would say you should probably look at doing it.
Evan Brand: Maybe either a urine organic acids or maybe a stool because I find that at least for my kids We have to kind of cycle on and off pretty much all winter and when they're around all the kids at school We're cycling on and off blends of antimicrobial antiviral antifungal herbs So it could be like one week on everything's great We kind of let off a little bit and then boom runny nose hits again We're like, oh and then we'll just hop back on the herbs And so the cool thing about the herbal medicines you and I implement is that They're broad spectrum, so we don't have to fully know what's going on.
Evan Brand: We can look on the test and try to pick a couple of bad guys, but we don't have to fully know what's happening because these blends can pick up other things. So like, for example, we could give a blend that is killing bacteria, but it happens to be a virus or it could be a fungal. Infection that we're hitting
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: and also to if you come out of the gates and your kid starts to get a little bit sick and they have some runny nose or stuffy nose and congestion and cough.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, the last thing you want to do is go run to your pediatrician because most of these things start out viral and then end bacterial. And so if you go throw an antibiotic at this, it's not going to touch any of these viral issues. And so then now that creates more superbugs, so then when your kids have that viral issue and then now it starts to become bacterial, now you have more superbugs because you're wiping out all the smaller, weaker strains, now the stronger strains hang out, and you're not really getting to the root underlying issue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, you have to do the sinus irrigation, sinus flushing, I mean, just, I'll go in the shower when I'm really congested, like let's say yesterday morning, and I'll, I'll, I'll know, use all the steam and let everything move out and I'll blow my nose and I'll get a good chunk of mucus out. And then five minutes later I'll go flush my nose out with the sinus bottle and I'll get exponentially more mucus that just came out a minute ago.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because you're getting mucus that is way up here and a lot of that mucus is sticky and sludgy and that's why I'll use some of the X Lear Rescue that has some herbs that knock out biofilms, which kind of takes the stickiness out of the mucus. And then we'll use saline with the iodine and we'll, you know, maybe even put some silver in and we'll rotate between iodine, silver or hydrogen peroxide.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that will start to move and break up that stickiness, break up the biofilms and allow it to flesh out. And if you don't get that sludge out, this is what's going to put the breeding ground in place for that viral issue to turn bacterial and for that bacterial infection to travel down or up the, you know, the ear canal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: into the ear through the eustachian tube or it post nasal and can go down the throat and create the scratchy throat and the chronic cough. So you have to look at this and get it Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. Let's hit the the nutrition piece, too. I mean, I think for especially for kids, I mean, for adults, too, but, I mean, process pasteurized dairy, to me, is gonna be something to avoid.
Evan Brand: So if you're battling this, and you're still doing dairy, maybe you're doing a gluten free pizza, but it's still just loaded with cheese, you know, that's probably not a good idea if you're battling the sinuses. How do you see the nutrition side? Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Justin Marchegiani Yeah, so I'll give you a case in point.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So my wife and I were heading to Mexico last week for like a little four day kind of getaway, first getaway since we've had really the kids. So it's kind of amazing to just have that time of peace and relaxation. Before we left, my son Aiden started having an ear infection. We're like, ah, shoot. And just like, you know, we're leaving him with his Nana and all this stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the first thing we did just as a plan B was we actually got him a prescription filled for amoxicillin. Now, in the back of my head, I'm like, We're not using this. I'm going to, I'm going to fix this thing, but I got to have a plan B because if I'm going to be gone, like, you know, what are we going to do?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. And so what we did was I'm like, all right, I looked at his diet. I'm like, I brought him to get Andy's ice cream, you know, vanilla custard the other day. I'm like, there's dairy there. That's a treat. That's like a once in a while treat. We're cutting out any milk chocolates that he was having. So we got him back on the unreal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dark chocolate with coconut for a treat, but we cut everything out. So it was just meat, vegetables, and fruit. That was it. There was no treats, and then when treats were added back in, we just were very vigilant about keeping any dairy in it, in it gone. So it's just like high quality dark chocolate, maybe a little bit of coconut, using some of the Unreal stuff, and I propped them up at night.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: to allow drainage down the throat. We flushed out his nose. We used some good antimicrobials, astragalus reishi, and we tried some stuff in the ear, but it was an inner ear issue. So, you know, it was all the pressure. So, we tried to get the mucus down with the mucolytics. So, I used some mucinex with the guaiac bark.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I used some NAC. I used, I flushed out his nose. I used some of the x layer. I did use just a little bit of afrin, Very small amount just to keep the sinuses open just to allow better drainage. And then that night, it was totally gone, right? And then the pediatrician was like, oh yeah, we're gonna have to, you know, do antibiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I'm like, okay, we'll see, right? Because we're looking at it from a root cause perspective. They're not, they're just looking at it as like damage control. They don't even care about how all this came to be. They're just like, all right, let's just fix what's there. And we were able to avoid any antibiotics and that next night he was fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also propping him up was super helpful because that created just gravity to allow things to drain because if you're horizontal, just everything can just sit right there. And so propping him up at a, you know, 30 degree angle was big, getting all the mucolytics in there. And then, yeah, we added in some reishi.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I added in some astragalus. I added in some elderberry. I added in some wild cherry bark. Right. We did things to really support, you know, the immune system because a lot of these herbs, they're going to work by increasing natural killer cells. They're going to work by helping with the T cells, better antibody response.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then we're trying to use a lot of mucolytics to thin out the mucus and then be able to flush it out of the system so it's not hanging out, creating fertilizer for secondary bacterial infections to grow.
Evan Brand: Nice. And you know, as a parent too, a lot of times you feel somewhat of this responsibility to really take action quickly.
Evan Brand: And so I think a lot of parents out of fear and somewhat out of guilt, they run and they go do conventional treatments, which then may have a lasting impact on the gut, for example. So if we role play and say, okay, you get afraid, you jump on the amoxicillin and now there's a gut issue. And now there's a thrush problem.
Evan Brand: There's a Candida overgrowth that's happened. Now you're battling that. Now there's sugar cravings. Maybe there's like emotional outbursts that you're battling. Maybe you get some strain of strep that grows back and then you get some like emotional issues with the kids. So I think it's wise to be prepared and listen to these conversations like we're having now so that you can have your stash ready.
Evan Brand: So you mentioned having some medicinal mushrooms on hand and. If you're an adult, obviously, you can take capsules, but it's really easy to blend these things into smoothies. So, Dr. J and I, we manufacture different types of protein, like we have a beef protein that you could use, it's chocolate. You could throw in medicinal mushroom capsules in there, and you could, you know, open it up, blend it.
Evan Brand: The kids are gonna love it. My kids think it's literally ice cream. Our Emma, who's 19 months now, she was saying it this morning. I made a chocolate one, just filtered water, ice, chocolate, beef protein. And she goes over to my wife, Mommy, ice cream, ice cream. So she's spoon feeding her this. I didn't put anything extra in there, but I could if I needed to, I could put in, you know, some of the extra mushroom powder.
Evan Brand: And then also, you know, we haven't even mentioned vitamin C, which every single person is deficient. You and I've run thousands of organic acids test. It's rare and less common supplementing. So. That's easy. And it's like so cheap and you could get a clean sodium ascorbate. I mix it in with like a little bit of kombucha or just like blueberry juice for the kids.
Evan Brand: I'll just go high dose. I'll go like a gram twice, two, three times a day. And that's also very, very amazing and broad spectrum. Dr.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Justin Marchegiani Yeah. What I'll typically do is like started off with a lot of liquid. supports. And so I'd have a liquid vitamin C, I'd have a liquid Reishi, I'd have a liquid astragalus or an immune support that has astragalus, maybe some echinacea, maybe some andrographis in there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I would start with something like that, very simple, bump up the immune system, you know, be on top of the sinus flushing and the irrigation, and that'd be a great start. And then I've gotten my kids at their age to swallow pills, no problem. And so that's been a game changer. Once you can get your kids to swallow pills, the key thing out of, out of the is when you put pills in your mouth.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They start off dry, obviously, and then if you just start to swallow them right away as they start to get wet, they get sticky. So if you pop a pill in your mouth and you swallow it right away, the chance of it sticking in your throat is super high. So I always tell patients, either permeate a little bit of saliva in your mouth, Put the pills in your mouth, let them all get wet, now they're slick, and now they slide down the back of the throat, or put like, you know, a little sip of water, so there's water in your mouth, put the pills in, just mix it for a second or two, and then swallow it, that decreases your kid, your kid's chance of choking or having anything stick in the throat, and then, you know, My wife and I just do it and we just make it cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like, look, we did this and then they, they want to be like mom and dad. And so they want to do it too. So it doesn't become a problem, but worst case, we start off with the liquid ones. And then if we need to like in the, I remember when I started at the NAC, we do like maybe a little bit in some applesauce or get a little bit of wild honey and just put.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: half a pill right on the honey and then just give it that way or we mix it in some coconut yogurt and maybe a little bit of collagen peptides in there and some blueberries and we do it that way too. So there's a couple different ways you can do it obviously out of the gate it's just easy to be especially if you're a busy parent you're getting up in the morning you got to go to work it's like open up here's a a milliliter of reishi times two here's a milliliter of astragalus keep it simple and then you can move on with your day versus going through all these hoops and hoping your kid finishes the drink or finishes the the yogurt because you don't want it to go to waste right Yeah.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I mean, and we're recording this right now when it's minus two degrees where you are and not much warmer here. And so a lot of these kids, they're not outside and they're vitamin D deficient as well. So, I mean, I see the good benefit for adults, probably five to 8, 000 IU a day of vitamin D for, You know, probably November to March for most places in the U.
Evan Brand: S. And for the kids, you know, I think somewhere around two to 4, 000 IU would be fine for kids. There's a lot of cool papers showing that vitamin D deficiency reduces the diversity in the gut. Meaning if you don't have enough vitamin D, you're more likely to have. And a lot of the immune system is coming from the healthy microbes anyway.
Evan Brand: So yes, you can do probiotics, you and I manufacture probiotics that kids can take and adults can take as well. Obviously, the more beneficial microbes we can put in there and crowding out the bad guys like with our Saccharomyces boulardii, that's also key, throwing in the D, throwing in the C. You mentioned.
Evan Brand: Like a stragglers, which I personally love and also, you know, petunia, so kind of like petunia, but with an age. So petunia is awesome and I've personally taken it for years just because I battled Bartonella, but petunia is an amazing antiviral. So I have that in tincture form and so I'll take some of that and I'll give it to the kids and surprisingly they'll take it, no problem.
Evan Brand: And also I had another one. So, oh, the Takuna, which it's, that's the brand name, but the product is like synchropia bark. And that is just a broad spectrum where. If someone is confused, they don't know what they're battling, you take that and you can take it every 15 minutes if you need to, but man, I tell you, within a couple of days, anytime I'm, I'm getting knocked down, I'm pretty much back on my feet two, three days, max.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani No, that's exactly the way to do it. I love that. But in general, you know, I look at it as out of the gate. Well, someone's also commenting about like dry sinuses. If you have good saline, right, you have good clean water. right? RO water or distilled water. Then you're adding a good saline packet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I'll do one to two saline packets or you can get the extra strength neomed. We'll add that and that makes it pH balance. That's going to be hydrating to your mucous membrane. And that's going to keep your nose nice and hydrated, keep that tissue nice and moist. It's going to be the equivalent of eye drops for dry eyes, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so obviously too, Make sure you don't overdo it with the NAC, because if it's really dry, NAC gets a mucolytic, so it can also dry out the mucous membranes. And then just be on top of the good fats, be on top of the fish oil, be on top of the cod liver oil with the vitamin A. That will definitely help keep the mucous membranes, you know, hydrated and on the moist side.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then you can always do a nebulizer if you need to, because nebulizer will provide good moisture up there, and you can always add like a low dose, you know, silver or something that's gonna be gentle, but still have a good antimicrobial effect mixed with saline.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. We forgot to mention the nebulizer thus far.
Evan Brand: Yeah, the nebulizer is a game changer too if you don't know exactly what you're battling and, you know, we're still seeing a lot of corona float around. I'm hearing cases of it every week in NAC. That's gonna be supportive. Glutathione can be supportive. So I would say look at those things. And then also this guy here in the comment, you know, they mentioned there was blood in the stool too.
Evan Brand: So, I would do a stool test too just to see what's going on. Maybe, maybe the blood and coming from the nose is not related to the blood in the stool. But man, if anytime that's happening, I'd like to know what the heck's going on internally. Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also too, 80 percent of your immune system is going to be In the gut, it's in the gut, in the SM stomach, in the gall and in the malt, the mucosal associated lymph foy tissue and the gastric associated lymph lymphoid cells tissue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you know, if you don't, if you have poor gut function, if you have gut inflammation, that's gonna be a big driver. So with my son, when he had the sinus issues. Last week, I mean, for me, it was really simple, coming off the holidays, we maybe had just a little bit of extra treats, we were out doing a little bit more fun stuff that you typically do around the holidays, and it just caught up to us a little bit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, now that we're, now we're on top of it, and we just made sure that we cleaned out the diet, got everything super tight. And the root cause was now removed, and then we use palliative things like the sinus flushing, like the sinus irrigation to help. And I get parents that come in and write to me, or patients that write to me, and they're just like, Well, how do you get your kids to do that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And honestly, the big thing is, as a parent, don't project. Your insecurity about something to your kid. Most parents are projecting. Ah, that looks painful. That looks difficult. Do it yourself Without your kid there get comfortable around it So then when you're ready to do it like look and you like you do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I feel so good. Ah And you just kind of like talk about how good it feels. And then, you know, your part, your husband maybe cheers you on and vice versa. And then you just do it, maybe do it a couple of times. And then you say, all right, we got to do it. It's really important. We want to make sure we don't have an ear infection.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Remember how bad that feels. And you just, you lean on those pain points and you just try to make it cool and acceptable. And, but I'll tell you the first time, I think we did it with my son Hudson. He was like maybe six to eight months old. And you know, someone held his arm behind his back and we just did like a quick one to two seconds and then pause in between blow your nose and then one to two seconds.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then you blow your nose. And they do kind of feel like they're drowning initially, but it's only a second or two, not a big deal. When I'll do it, I'll do about three seconds worth. I get all the mucus up, blow my nose, and then do it again, blow my nose, and then I'll do the ExFlear spray at the end to kind of coat that mucus membrane, break up the biofilms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Normally, I'll do the ExFlear rescue before. Wait a couple of minutes, that loosens all the crud up. Now when I flush, everything comes out. And then at the end, once it's flushed, then I'll do it, you know, one more spray in each nose to let it sit, which then helps with the inflammation and knocks the microbes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And my wife will say, well, my nose isn't congested. It's like, well, honey, the deal is that's where the viruses replicate and grow. And so even if you're not super congested, just getting the viral load down can help with the symptoms and the inflammation. So I always recommend even if you're not congested, still do that because most upper respiratory.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: tract issues, most common cold, rhinoviruses, RSV, flu, a lot of these things are gonna hibernate in the sinus cavity and grow and multiply there. So if you coat that with saline, there's studies showing that that will break down the the bacteria, and then also if you add in like a little bit of iodine in there, that's also gonna help with the viruses.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I also, my other, my other trick, my functional medicine trick on top of that is, look at Watch, watch out the nose, do the X layer, do a little squirt right in your mouth and gargle at 15 seconds, tilt your head back, let it hit all that mucus cavity, let it hit your adenoids and your tonsils, and then spit it out, and that will grab all that mucus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's shown in vivo, in vitro, to actually, and with patients, to help knock down staph, knock down strep, and help with the viruses, and help get the mucus out, so now you're not coughing, that cilia is not gonna be as irritated, and you're not gonna be hacking up a lung all day. Evan Brand
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said.
Evan Brand: Yeah, thank you. We had a comment. Love your guys work. I'm dealing with horrible mold and mycotoxins, especially in my gut. I'm using bio busters. That's probably biofilm busters, anti fungals, and binders. I think I developed IBS, though. Yeah, I mean, that's the biggest one we didn't talk about, which is that if you are battling Mold may be your office, your home, your workplace, your child's school.
Evan Brand: Maybe there is a mold issue. Obviously we know in the literature that's going to keep your immune system suppressed and you're going to battle all sorts of new issues sooner because your immune system is knocked down. So it would be important if you can, even if you just like burn some of the candles that we sell, or if you have a.
Evan Brand: The ability to put in a fresh air ventilation system and dilute the toxicity. We've done whole podcast on mold and how to treat that in terms of the house and also the gut. So look at those episodes. But yeah, it is true that mold is going to keep you suppressed. So if you're battling ongoing exposure, Hopefully you can do something to remedy that.
Evan Brand: And even if you can't, hopefully you're at least keeping up with the NAC and the binders to try and just stay afloat. Like if your rate of exposure is high and your rate of treatment is low, you're gonna get worse. But if you can kind of match or even beat the rate of exposure, hopefully you'll win the game and you'll pull out of this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And I just put down in the description here and I'll put it down below in the pinned comments is all the different Amazon links to the different sinus flush and irrigation and, and X layer products that I used for, you know, keeping the sinuses clean out providone iodine, the type of irrigation bottle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I'll put those in there. So you guys don't have to hunt down for it. Cause I've had to try it all to figure out what's the best. And then also just the big thing is yeah, as a parent, you know, it's, it's important. A lot of these things your kids may not want to do out of the gate. And so I always tell like parenting one on one is giving your kids what they need, not what they want.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so just kind of remember that and then just start to get them used to it by making sure you and your partner. Spouse are doing this around your kids to make it cool and make it acceptable. Then they're gonna want to be part of it too. So really key, especially if you have young kids, their immune systems are blank slates and they're gonna get a lot of bugs and they're gonna bring it back home to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan and I are in the thick of that right now. And so that's just part of them building up their immune system. And so the more you take care of them, you can prevent these things from going the distance and needing antibiotics.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And change your fricking filter in your house, your HVAC filter. I saw my neighbor across the road, finally changing his air filter for it looked like the first time ever, my God, that thing was covered in dust.
Evan Brand: I'm like, dude, don't hold your breath while you're putting that thing in the garbage can. So make sure you're obviously changing your HVAC filters. And there's some debate about how high of a rating you need to put in your HVAC filter. But I would say something at least like a Merv 7, a Merv 8, a Merv 9.
Evan Brand: I mean, you can go all the way up to like Merv 16. It does put more stress on your system, but if you can't afford or if you don't have any standalone air purifier units, at least if your HVAC filter is replaced often and it's a decent quality, you know, hopefully that's going to reduce what you're exposed to.
Evan Brand: And then in your car, you know, we got an oil change and luckily they were like, Hey, would you like a new cabin air filter? Yes, absolutely. So have new cabin air filters put in your car. You're looking at 20 bucks, but these are the simple things that can reduce your exposures as you're driving to work.
Evan Brand: For example, we had a woman every day by the time she got to work, she had a Mercedes. By the time she got to work every day, she had a headache and had sinus issues. Well, turns out Mercedes did a recall on 2. 5 million cars for mold growing in the HVAC unit. So little things like this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Same with the Prius, same thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also, too, if you have a good you know, good vacuum, like a Miele or something, you can always, or a Dyson, you can always take those filters and vacuum out both sides of them to extend life, or if you have a little air compressor, take it outside and just shoot some air through it on both sides, that will clean it out and give it some extra life, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also, too, you know, definitely invest in at least a HEPA filter for your kid's room and your room. I mean, you can, you can go the full nine yards and do the ones that we like, the Air Doctor or the Austin Air, or you can go a little bit more budget friendly and do the WinX from Costco. If you're on tight budget, something is better than nothing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you'll see once you get a good quality HEPA filter and you run that a month or two and you see the kind of junk that's left in it, it's, it's a no brainer why that's essential.
Evan Brand: Yeah, our house, I mean, the air in our house is so crisp with all these filters and all the rooms. It's like, it's not ozone, but for me, it's, it smells like you're at a waterfall.
Evan Brand: Like, it's very fresh and crisp. And obviously, you know, reducing those airborne toxins. So, obviously, if you're still burning toxic candles, get rid of that crap. If you're still using synthetic fragrance in your laundry and dryer sheets and fabric softeners, get rid of that crap. If you're using Glade plugins, we can't be friends.
Evan Brand: So unfriend me if you're using like those disgusting, maybe those little nasty gel things that people would sit on top of their toilet, it's like that gel air freshener. Oh,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: unless you get one, that's essential oil based with the sticks coming up. If it's not essential oil, it's nasty. Or also, man, what is up with these?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uber drivers or Lyft drivers with these air fresheners that are just so nasty. I'm just like, man, it's like at least get one that maybe has essential oils or get like you know, one of these activated charcoal bean bags that you can put on the, in the car that'll absorb some of the smell, but you go in some of these Ubers and that you just come out smelling disgusting with these little, you know, the little trees that hang in the, on the dash.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don't know. I don't
Evan Brand: know. I don't know if you remember this. It would have been seven, eight years ago now, but I made a petition on change. org to ban air fresheners in Uber. It got like 3000 signatures and everybody was sharing it. And I was like, Hey, this might take off to where, you know, on your app, you could request like fragrance free, you know, but it never went anywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, I don't know why that's not at least an option, man, because you get out of some of these cars and I'm just like, Oh, I take a 30 ride of the 30 minute ride to the airport and you just like stink. Or you can tell like someone smokes when they, when they don't drive and then they're trying to cover it up with stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then you got this like haphazard glade, mixed smoke smell. And you're like, it's gross.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, so car air fresheners, those got to go. You're literally poisoning you your family, et cetera. And I think these are, these are some of the little lifestyle habits that you and I for us, it's just normal, but you'll still see a guy driving down the street and he'll have 30 of those trees in his car.
Evan Brand: I mean, he's just poisoning himself. And. This stuff is creating inflammation in the lungs. This is likely reducing fertility as well. If you look at the chemicals in fragrance and how this affects your, your sperm, you know, this could go into a tangent, but definitely immune function will be suppressed due to airborne VOCs and these toxins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, a hundred percent. And so in general, when you're dealing with any of these issues, especially sinuses and throat, most throat issues come from. Post nasal drip. And so if you can deal with the sinuses, you deal with the nose, that's gonna help with the mucus dripping downstream.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you thin out the mucus, you can flush it better. That deals with the oxidated stress from all the free radicals. Creating that viral load. Plus, when you start to have all this inflammation, you activate, you know, things nuclear factor kappa beta, toll like receptors. These are all things that kind of increase cytokines, and you can, you're more likely to have this cytokine storm of inflammation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, the more you keep your immune system regulated with the glutathione building blocks from NAC and glutathione, when you do things like vitamin D, when you do medicinal mushrooms, that can keep your immune system a little bit more in check. And then you do a really good solid gargle that keeps a lot of that junk from growing and also, getting a really good cough drop.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I'm a big fan of the Ricola cough drops. I'll do the Stevia sugar free ones. So we'll do the Stevia sugar free ones. They have the Mountain Herb, it's a Stevia sweetened one, or they have the the Sorbitol, it's a sugar based alcohol for the, for the Lemon Mountain Herb, that's a nice one too. So there's a Lemon and there's a Mountain Herb one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we'll do those in my house, cause those are loaded with 10 different herbs, and they That formula has been around for over a hundred years. The reason why it's been around for over a hundred years, right? And so there's some good herbs in there, some licorice hyssop and lemon balm. There's some really good herbs that have a mucilaginous supporting anti inflammatory effect as well as an antiviral effect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it's good to have something that you're you're you're sucking on all day to keep that inflammation down. And then also add in the ginger tea, some juiced ginger and add some manuka honey to really help that throat and that help keep the bacteria down a little bit too.
Evan Brand: Evan Brand Yeah. Well said. So, you know, in summary, if you've been battling this stuff and you've tried to hit it acutely and you're still suffering, you know, obviously we're, we're trying to, to simplify and break things down for everyone, but there could be deeper masso activation, histamine intolerance, gut dysbiosis, immune dysfunction problems.
Evan Brand: Lyme and co infections, mold toxicity, mycotoxins, candida, just to name a few. And these are some of the functional medicine roadblocks, we call it, that we help you to investigate. And we can do some functional medicine labs on you at home, where we can investigate your situation, help you to identify your big roadblocks, and then we can chip away at those using these different natural formulas we're describing.
Evan Brand: So, if you've any done everything you can on your own. You've exhausted those things. You've tried diet tweaks and every vitamin you could find in the immune section at Whole Foods and you're still suffering, you know, reach out to one of us and we'd be happy to help. You could get a hold of Dr. J, that's just a mark of Johnny at justinhealth.
Evan Brand: com. And there's consults available worldwide with both of us. We'd be happy to help. Mine is evanbrand. com and we'd love to help you all. We love doing this stuff and, you know, really, if you look at our conversation, we've been From the outsider. Really what we're trying to do is just empower you and we're trying to give you the tools and the confidence that you can approach these issues on your own.
Evan Brand: We've given up so much of our power to the medical establishment in the sense that we're afraid and we're seeking someone to save us, but unfortunately, there's no one going to save you. And. Even if you end up at the best, most prestigious place, Mayo Clinic, wherever, I've heard a lot of disappointed clients that have visited those places and they're still getting conventional strategies which are not working as well due to the overuse of antibiotics.
Evan Brand: Candida is now becoming a super bug. You could type in CDC Candida. You could read even Candida is becoming more resistant to antifungal medication. And this is something we're not afraid of because we see it. Every single day in the trenches. So we'd be happy to help you and do some consults.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I gave you guys a story about my son and how I filled that prescription only because I was out of town And I wanted out of the country.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Really? I just wanted to make sure We had a backup plan I didn't want to throw that all on his Nana to deal with But we were able to knock it out within a day. It was totally stabilized We just had it as a backup plan. And so again if You have to have antibiotics, put that at the last thing on the list, do the other top 10 things first, and more than likely you won't have to do that, and if you have to do antibiotics, make sure you do probiotics with it, and afterwards, for at least a month, to really work on repopulating, and then someone wrote in the comments, I want to hit this, because this is a big deal, right, this is definitely a big thing, someone wrote that my attempts to inform essentially, to help with her grandkids or his grandkids the parents were not receptive of diet changes or any of the recommendations because they don't have a great diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it all starts with the diet. And so, the big thing when it comes to a lot of the sinus and ear stuff is you have to get the processed sugar out and you have to get the dairy out and, and, you know, meat, some vegetables, maybe a little bit of safe starch, maybe some fruit. That's gonna be fine for kids, especially if, you know, kids are more active.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But that's, it starts there. Most people, they don't eat good themselves. And so by having to change their kids diet, that means they have to confront their diet and their crummy diet and that's hard for them. And so most people just kind of project and just kind of pass on what they do to their kids and they aren't willing to look at that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so it causes them to have to look in the mirror a little bit closer and they want to avoid a lot of that.
Evan Brand: Agreed. Well, and some people think that loving their kids and rewarding their kids is like going for the pizza, the ice cream, the cookies, the cupcakes, the cake, you know, like you've done something so good.
Evan Brand: Here you go, sweetie. Here's your treat. The reality is there's so many good choices now that are not sugar filled things that are like grain free recipes for pancakes. And, you know, like you mentioned some of the more naturally sweetened cough drops, for example. So it's really easy to avoid this stuff, but you're right.
Evan Brand: I think for some people it's, it's too uncomfortable because. They're so stuck in their ways, but you know, my, my end all be all response to that is like, they have to suffer enough to listen until you're so miserable, you might not listen. And unfortunately, a lot of people have to hit rock bottom first before they have to really.
Evan Brand: Think, okay, something's wrong with my diet. Now it's my turn. And here we are in 2024. Maybe people have already set new year's resolutions and maybe they're already giving up on those and like, I'm too tired. Maybe next year, but I would just encourage you to just try to take away some of the things we're teaching here.
Evan Brand: Maybe you dedicate the next month. You're, you're going to focus on doing animal protein with every meal and you're going to get rid of dairy for one month. Maybe butter. I do butter every day. It should be fine. But if you're really sick, maybe skip the butter, just go ghee for a month. And maybe, maybe that's it.
Evan Brand: Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you know, you got to look at things holistically. So, you know, we'll do every now and then I'll take my kids to Andy Ice Cream and just get like a nice kid size vanilla custard without anything on it. Maybe like one cherry, just to kind of make my kids feel like they're, they're kids and give them that little bit of a feeling of a, you know, just doing something that's different than normal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you got to time it up and you got to say, Oh, are they, are they sick? Are there bugs going around? And you have to just time it up. Oh, there's a lot of immune stress. Maybe we skip that and we do something that's a little bit. More immune friendly, or we go with the high quality dark chocolates, or we go with the Zolipops, the anti cavity Zolipops, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We just try to have a bunch of tools in our back pocket. And you know, it's interesting because we went to that pediatrician just to get that preventative care. Prescription for antibiotics while we're out of the country and I was asked my wife, which she'll do a lot of these things, I'm seeing patients, I was like, did they ask him about his diet?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Are you about your diet? Did they inquire about any of these other things? Like, nope, they were just like, yep, this is a middle ear infection, more than likely bacterial, this is it, and it was on to the next, and there was no really inquisition or, you know, you know, interrogation about what's the food like?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What's this like? No, no really trying to get additional information to make a lifestyle change. It's just very, all right, on to the next. And so, a lot of people go to their, you know, conventional doctor thinking that they know a lot about nutrition or they can give them advice on that. They really can't.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They're, you know, very little education in medical school on that. And when it's given, it's usually the food pyramid type of dribble that you hear, you know, regarding your, your 10 servings of this, saturated fat's bad, cholesterol is bad, you know, all these different things. Dr. Justin Marchegiani And no emphasis on organic either or GMOs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan Brand Of course, of
Evan Brand: course. So if you need help, reach out. Like I said, we're happy to work with you. We help people around the world. And we have professional supplements that we manufacture to help people. So, there are some recommended products. Like we have some microbiome supports that have some herbal antivirals in them.
Evan Brand: So we have some oregano type products. So Justin and I will put a couple of links. So wherever you're listening or watching, whether it's on his, his side or on my side, if we repost this, you know, we'll have links to where you can check out some of these products and if you need a little bit of handholding, it's fine.
Evan Brand: We'll likely save you some medical bills. You'll pay for a couple of consults, but we'll teach you so much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and also people were talking about the the sinuses being dry. First thing is this time of year, it's going to be drier from a humidity standpoint. I could say if you have a humidifier for your house, you could always put that on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I always get a little bit worried about maybe potentially getting some mold in there with overdoing it. And so What I recommend too is get a nebulizer and put some saline, some straight saline in there and just breathe 5 10 minutes of straight up saline into your lungs, into your not sinuses that will help.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think even just a sinus spray, that saline base will also rehydrate kind of like eye drops would rehydrate dry eyes. So I think those would be your first steps. And then worst case, you could always get a, you know, a localized dehumidifier they have ones that will emanate from like a little bowl in front and then you just put your face over it and just breathe in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think you could also do it from a travel based nebulizer too. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. Yeah. Well said.
Evan Brand: Marchegiani No. I love it. I think nebulizers makes more sense. I mean, you're hitting it right at the source rather than Dr. Justin Marchegiani the room with whole
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: room. Yeah. Something like that's good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also, sometimes things like the Vicks VapoRub can be pretty good too, or some kind of an essential oil blend with peppermint and these type of things. Breathing that in can be very helpful and open up the sinuses and provide some, some hydration too. So, I like that. Cool. Anything else that you want to highlight?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then make sure you guys, evanbrand. com, you know, Evan's available worldwide. We try to provide functional medicine support for you guys worldwide. So if you want to take the next step or you want more advice, we work with people that have functional medicine needs. We're still able to kind of adapt to some of the acute needs like the cold and the sinus issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We're pretty adapted using functional medicine also acutely kind of like we're talking about here.
Evan Brand: For sure. Well, I would just tell people if they have any comments or questions for us or topics that they want us to cover, we're open to it. We've put out over 500, I lost track 600 pieces of content in the last decade.
Evan Brand: There's so much out there, but we're always happy to explore these things with you. And, you know, we teach what we learn along the way as parents and as practitioners and as practitioners. fellow humans. So we're all in this thing together. We look forward to helping to continue to empower you on your journey to be the best version of yourself you can possibly be.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. We'll put links down below guys, whether it's on Evans or mine for some of the things that we talked about in this podcast. Hope you enjoy and please thumbs up, hit the bell for notifications of more great content like this and make sure you share with friends or family. If you see the value, appreciate it guys.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take it easy. Take care. Bye now.
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