Improving your Fitness with the “Align Method” and Aaron Alexander | Podcast #263

Aaron Alexander, a movement specialist and launching out a new book called The Align Method, is with us today to talk about everything from movement, physical therapy, nutrition and a lot more. Check out this podcast to learn more about the book!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

00:35 The Align Method Book

17:33 Working Out

23:40 Align Band

33:17 Moving Your Senses

38:30 Holistic Health

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J in the house. I have Aaron Alexander with y’all in the flesh. Aaron’s a good friend. He is a movement specialist got a phenomenal new book out called the Align method. He has a podcast- AlignPodcast.com Aaron, welcome to the show, man How are we doing? 

Aaron Alexander: Thanks so much for making time for me, man. I appreciate it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, really excited for you to be here. So you got a book, man. So you were given seeing patients for a long time, you’ve kind of taken all this knowledge you’ve accumulated. And now you got a book. So let’s tell the listeners about this book.

Aaron Alexander: So the book is essentially a compilation of the meaningful parts that I found working with clients for the last 16 years and then particularly the podcasts for the last five years and being able to gather information from the world’s leading experts on everything from movement, physical therapy and things of that nature to consciousness and nutrition and The parts that form the human structure, you know, so our physical patterns represent much more than just the types of bicep curls or pull ups or such that we do. Your physical posture, you’re always, you know, you’re a walking book, you know, and every movement that you make tells a story. And those movements are an expression of the way that you are formed by your home, by your office, by your travel, your usage of your cellular devices, computers, the food that goes into your mouth, the thoughts streaming through your head, all that comes through the body. And we don’t really get a really strong cogent education on that throughout elementary school or any school for that matter. Unless you go to like school for like improvisation or something that interacting dance, you know, so what the book represents is like a field manual for people to understand deeply how to drive their body effectively to be creative and confident and strong and flexible and stable and all those adjectives that people would prefer.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very exciting. I got my copy coming this weekend. So over the Christmas break, I’m definitely going to gobble that up. I appreciate that. Very cool. Yeah. Anytime I go into the airport, because you know, my training is chiropractic initially, so I’m very training much movement and muscles and I get that and you sit in the airport and you just kind of sit there and you kind of people watch right? People walk by you’re like, Oh, that’s this muscles not working, or maybe this problems going on. You’re kind of like diagnosing like on the fly and in your head, like what could be the issue. So is there like two or three patterns that you see with most people just across the board and things that may not be correct or optimal in their movement?

Aaron Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so people, the tendency if you look at you know, Albert Einstein has a quote, he said that the field contains and regulates the particle. So we you and I just know a couple particles floating through space, nobody else listening and we Get regulated by the field that contains us the field is the shape of your chair, the shape of your car, see the shape of the plane, see the shape of the stroller and the child seat and the shape of your postural patterns as you’re looking into the phone or the computer, even the shape of your eyes as you are inside, looking at walls close up to you. And perhaps not getting ample sunlight, which literally changes the structure and the shape of your eye goes to this whole chemical reaction that allows you to be able to have depth of vision. You know, so we’re continually being molded by our environment, and, you know, common postural patterns like you wouldn’t even need to look at the human animal to see what the postural patterns would be. You could just look at the modern environment, and you could devise what the patterns would be without ever even seeing a person. So I would imagine patients that come see you, you could probably Close your eyes and would like 90% accuracy, be able to guess that they probably have some like upper cross syndrome happening in their forehead forehead. Yeah, or me a rotation of the shoulders, you know that the head of the humerus is kind of like sitting on that the precipice of disaster on the glenohumeral fossa there. Yeah. You know, and there’s tension up in pec minor major in the front. And maybe that, you know, the knees may possibly kind of collapse inwardly a little bit that valgus formation is going on. Yeah, the glutes are a little bit disengaged. Might be tired on the hebbs. Yeah, you know, it’s like, oh, wow, crazy. How did we just describe 90% of human beings without see as well just look at the world. Right? And of course, you know, and so if we bring a little bit more awareness into how we occupy our physical bodies in this modern structural mold, we can be better than the mold. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the mold. It’s only if you become if you allow yourself to be like dust in the wind. Yeah, then It’s a real problem, you do not want to get bossed around by the modern mold. Because if you do, you’ll become a modern statistic. And if you look at the statistics, they’re not pretty.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, no, totally, that makes sense. So you see some of these classic patterns, right? Like you mentioned, kind of like the forward head posture, the tight the tight chest. Now the deep cervical flexors are really maybe weak, we have weak rhomboids be posterior chain. What type of stretching or workout or soft tissue program? And what are the first steps in that in that next program to improve posture to improve health performance? What’s that look like?

Aaron Alexander: Yeah, well, so as long as a person is consuming supplements, and then eating a shit diet, it’s going to become expensive, and they won’t ever get the results they’re really looking for. So as long as a person is seeking out some form of of temporary self care panacea. bandage technique, and not addressing what’s happening before and after that I we’re not even really having a conversation yet. If we’re getting temporary relief through doing certain practices, that’s great. But something as simple as one of the chapters in the books breaks down the value of just spending more time on the ground, as opposed to in that archetypal punched over sitting position that we’re in so much, you know, so something as simple as that is, like get a comfy rug in your home, get, you know, a couple of foam rollers, maybe throw a yoga mat down some place. Now open up space in your home that there’s more spaciousness for you to move around. Maybe you’re inspired all of a sudden have like a little dance party with your kids you know, because like wow, either we’re not banging our legs up against that coffee table because we kind of move that aside and we made it kind of like through some some pillows and yeah, rug is down and we kind of like cool like, wow, we’re like wrestling and living room now like- 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Crazy! How did this happen? 

Aaron Alexander: So as opposed to driving to see Physical Therapist and massage therapist to ameliorate all these issues that manifest themselves from the environment. What if we start to look at the environment creates an adjustment so it actually know that the field that we’re contained and regulated by shifts a little bit and so that would be one example is just spend more time on the ground. The floor is a it is a noble therapist, you know, it’s like it’s your massage therapist is your is your physical therapist, it doesn’t charge anything. You know, if you lay down on your back on the floor, you know, find a comfy rug, you don’t have to like being cold tile as you do it. And you find bits that feel hard, figure out how to unhardened them. The way that you do that is spending time leaning into them breathing, rolling, twisting, emphasizing that exhalation especially because the exhalation activates more of that parasympathetic, calming rest digest side of the nervous system. You could maybe even make some moans or make some sound. Oh, at oming and yoga mean that’s Like sounds like some crazy New Age shit. Oh man. Oh my God, I hate it when they go in and have to do though. There’s deep science side, right? Yeah, there’s two sides behind the value of long exhalations breath holds that vibration like you’re referring to, you know. So that’s all wrapped up into one simple practice that you pay $25 to go to a class and have a teacher tell you to go oh and spend time on the ground. What if I just allowed some of some of that to enter into the way that I work on the computer or my cell phone or maybe how eat breakfast is that’d be the first thing. And then another thing that would be very simple way to augment your environment in a simple way to have huge changes is throw pull up bar in between a doorway through a pool bar and do a couple doorways, you know and find a tree branch outside even better. Every time you walk through that doorway. Give yourself a little hang and that’s going to be some decompression therapy for your shoulder girdles for your spine open up spaciousness around the lungs, even the heart and the Oregon, you know, the way that they function is through movement. You know, motility, if if there’s, if they are contracted or immobilize stuck, the functionality of your organs will be diminished. So if you’re just putting things into your face anticipating that to heal your liver and your gallbladder, that’s a huge value. Like it’s like you, your the raw materials you put in your body is what you become. But how do we get those materials into the body? We get them into the body is through movement. So that would be a couple starting places, get your arms up over your head, make me change your environment like that. Yeah, there’s a whole chapter about that as well. That’s cool. And then yeah, simply just when you have opportunities, get down to ground do a deep squat, you’re waiting for a bus or you know go Vietnamese style and pull out a cigarette and go into a deep squat and hang out for a moment. I’m joking about the cigarette smoke cigar if you want to. I’d rather I’d rather person spends time on the ground and squats goes through their full range of motion and smokes. Then a person that doesn’t do any of that stuff, but it’s an immaculate like immaculate super New Age, vegan diet or whatever. Like I would if you can go through those ranges of motion, your body, your body, there’s a lot more. You’re like insulating yourself with with, with movement enough that your body can kind of buffer a lot more stress.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, every time I see you, I always noticed you’re on the ground. You’re in some kind of like Indian style kind of thing. Like kind of feeling it out. Yeah, that’s cool. That’s it. So like, what is your workout routine look like? You know, you’re talking about we’re talking about the average person and some of these postural patterns. But what does yours look like? Is it regimented? Is it kind of you kind of feel yourself you know where you’re at and you adjust to day to day or is it something that you have written out already for you?

Aaron Alexander: No, so my background was very much that I kept journals and notes and I was very meticulous with reps and sets and you know, as I eating every two hours, and just stuffing my face with all the supplements and you know this is really focused on bodybuilding particularly. And it was effective in the sense that I, you know, hypertrophy happened and muscle cells grew and expanded and I looked bigger. But as an athlete, I became worse and I became more clunky as a mover, injuries manifest themselves stress, anxiety, chronic pain, stuff like that just build no milk, because I wasn’t really looking at any like, inside approach at movement or fitness, it was all superficial. So as long as we’re living on that superficial aspect of you know, the beach muscles and the glamour muscles, you’re missing out on any of the parts that actually make you feel whole and make you feel well inside and also open you up to relationships because if you live your life through superficial validators, then you’re going to have a bunch of people around you stroking your superficial validation as opposed to ever actually like loving you for something more than your biceps for calling money or watch or you know, whatever the thing that you put out to the world for people to love I realize I’m kind of going out of the deep end but i think it’s it’s that’s that’s like the origin story of my fitness was like get as big as I can so that people will love me that’s essentially was my my thought behind it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so so it sounds like you went through an evolution obviously you started off kind of more in that bodybuilding mindset and then move more into what a performance kind of functional yeah mindset and like so like can you say obviously kind of bodybuilding style movements is where you started and then how did that evolve to where you’re at now?

Aaron Alexander: injuries you know, like a full offseason their folly will eventually become wise. Yeah, so I’m like, you get injuries and also changing environments. You know, I moved to Hawaii when I was 18 and lived out there for a while and then moved to Boulder Colorado after that and lived in the mountains. And, you know, my goal was to be like the, the coolest dirtbag, right climber, and then and Hawaii want to surf and do jiu jitsu and you know, just be in the jungle and be able to skip run across rocks real fast and all that stuff. And so, just by naturally changing your environment again back to the Einstein quote, you will shift. Know so sometimes if we are a fish and we are an aquarium, and the aquarium is there’s some type of whatever toxic stew or something that we’re living. Yeah, yeah. And you’re like, Okay, what can I do to what kind of, you know, pack workout or booty workout or supplement? Can I take like, dude, have you observed your aquarium? Like, there’s no, there’s no way you’re going to change. You’re so deeply steeped and entrenched in that mode, like you’re just an expression of that space. Right? So that’s kind of an interesting thing. Like sometimes I think literally just physically changing your locations can be a really powerful workout plan. If that’s not if that’s not conceivable, doesn’t mean understand. That’s a little bit of like a far stretch. I think just spending more time outside in general is really valuable. So a lot of the fitness that I will do, you know, I trained at Gold’s Gym in Venice, here in California and I own I pretty much only trained in the outdoor area, you know, so it’s just, I’m taking my, my shirt off, I take my shoes off and I’m, I’m exercising my skin cells are receiving that sun and adapt to that, you know, in the sun in my eyes. And then you’re also with community in a community is a very powerful tool for self care, healing, strengthening, when we feel separate from our community. Now, there’s a thing called failure to thrive that I’m sure you’re familiar with. And babies if they don’t get adequate amounts of touch, then they their metabolism slows down and their development starts to screech to a halt, because they that sends a signal, that lack of contact and support sends a signal that it’s not a safe Time to regenerate and grow and, and get big and strong and use all these calories, we need to go into a hibernation mode, essentially just go into winter mode and wait until someone is there to support our growth. So if you can put yourself into community situations like the conferences that we met at, yeah, the reason that we go to conferences like that no one gives a shit about talking about ketosis or what, who cares, we’re there to be with each other. You know, like, like that. I understand ketosis is valuable for certain things, and maybe carnivores too, and maybe vegetarian is maybe veganism, whatever your dogma is, is great. But the underlying aspect of all of these dogmas in the form of food, motorcycle gang, religious gang, whatever it is, is like, Oh, we just these human creatures that really love to be in community and we like to feel supported and we like to feel connected. And if you disconnect that part and you separate the individually From the tribe, that’s when things get funny. You know, the longest I know I’m talking a long time. So I’ll stop after this. The longest longitudinal study was done in, I believe is Harvard is I think it started in 1936. Do fact check that. And they found they’ve followed students throughout their whole entire life still till, till still today. And also, they’re their kids. And what they found was the people that had the tightest knit community, they felt really supported and connected with their tribe. They were the healthiest. And so it didn’t matter that they were, you know, who ate the most magnesium or who did the most burpees It was like, who feels loved and who feels like they are they have purpose. And so I think that that love and that purpose is a foundation of fitness, but it’s a little bit sometimes sexier, perhaps you’d like the cover of Muscle and Fitness to talk about doing muscle ups. Yeah. So that’s, that’s a large part a roundabout way of describing some of the components of the book, the book essentially illuminates, like the the abstract aspects of fitness that I think for the most part have been missed, but I think are in fact, the foundation of our wellness.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you really put the community aspect in there, which I think is is really big. I like that. But I want to get a little bit more in the nitty gritty of what you actually do, though. So like, you’re out in Venice Beach, right, which is really cool. That’s where I think Arnold started his lifting days here. 

Aaron Alexander: So still still trains there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s very cool. So your shirts off, you’re getting vitamin D. Right? All that good stuff. And then how long are your workouts? Do you kind of have a plan in advance? Or is it totally intuition and what kind of movement patterns are you doing?

Aaron Alexander: Yeah, so one, so the primary basis of the book is that your whole day is a workout. So right now we’re having this conversation. I’m you know, I’m right now I’m on two knees, I’m kneeling ago only between two one knee and then the other knee. I might at some point do like a Malaspina, like a deep squat thing. I have the this is the computers up on my cold plunge, you know so literally I have fitness underneath the, the computer in the form of cold, cold thermogenesis. You see behind me there’s a sauna. So that’s another form of fitness, expanding, tracking myself at a cellular level. Behind that there’s a ladder that goes up onto the roof. So climbing that ladder, exposing myself to sun, all of that fitness. You know, if you look at hunter gatherer tribes are people from you know, developing countries and such, the idea of, you know, what’s your split and you know, three sets of four and you get out the neon colors and the puffy sneakers and go for a run to burn some calories. They’re like, What the fuck are you talking about? Like, are you crazy? Like our lives like I am fitness you know, like You know, so what I’m far more interested in is cultivating more of a relationship to becoming fitness and becoming, you know, yoga and becoming all that, you know. So that’s one part of that. And then I do go to a gym I do like to work out. I also go to Santa Monica Muscle Beach, which is like acro yoga and acrobatic stuff. And it’s a big a big adult playground, essentially. So climb ropes and I’ll do parallettes stuff, dips and handstands, and I’ll pick people up. So I do like acro yoga. And then I use a lot of kettlebells when I’m at the gym. So I find kettlebells to be very valuable. And that you can go through a wide variety of ranges of motion and they actually that the motion safer to take like a Turkish getup. If there was one exercise that people got out of this conversation. If you really want an exercise and you’re tired of this like nebulous, like go walk outside more for your fitness stuff. Look up Turkish getup I have lots of videos on YouTube about it or just look up the term in general. Yeah. It’s also my online program plug, you know, so that Turkish get up is you’re using a kettlebell, you’re laying on your back, you’re pushing that straight up, and then you’re pressing that up into the sky, you’re coming up into a knee, you’re putting your hand down, and then you’re coming up into a lunge position, they’re standing up and then you’re reversing that motion. That’s a really beautiful symphony of movement that you can take your whole stride through, that integrates all the parts.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You have like a hip thrust, you have shoulder girdle you have your stabilizer stabilize really nails it verse it.

Aaron Alexander: Yeah, really nails it means it’s a really good one, you know, and then you know, if all you do is yoga, I would recommend you do more dynamic movement. You know, maybe take a West African dance class or play soccer or football or something. Now because Yoga is something that I value greatly. The Asana aspect of it, the other limbs are cool, too. But the most people hear yoga they think like the stretchy part has it’s one of the eight limbs. That’s really great, but it lacks human interaction. So it lacks that like that kind of partner what you get with from like dance or martial arts, yes develops your brain a huge way. It lacks much pulling movements, you know, so adding in some like pull ups or some rows, get a pet stand up paddleboard, maybe go out. So what I’m, I realized that the things that I’m saying is not exactly structured. And it’s there is some intention behind that because I think structure is valuable. And we broke down specific structures in the book of things, actual practice that people can do right now. And I think it’s very valuable for us to, to a certain degree, allow that structure to fall apart just a bit. And for that, that movement practice to kind of spill more into other aspects of our lives that we weren’t expecting it to before such as, like, you know, boardroom and office, a school. If we can move as we learn, then we can learn. If you don’t move, and you just cram your brain with information, the cup is full man, like you need to consolidate some memories. And so doing like a Pomodoro Technique or something of that nature, we described that in the book as well. You know, do 25 minutes on of intentional work of some sort, and then take a five minute break, go for a walk, like literally, consolidate those memories, give yourself some spaciousness to allow your mind to wander and take a break so you can be fresh and bring new information in. But the western model of education is such that, you know, okay, we got to get these kids passing these tests and babies, they got to pass these scantrons man, you know? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, exactly.

Aaron Alexander: We’re gonna fill these facts up into your little brain. You know, it’s like, dude, kids don’t need facts filled in their in their pockets. That runneth over, you know, they need, they need spaciousness to allow their, their minds to adapt to a creative, dynamic environment, like, you know, life. Business. That’s what it is.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I appreciate the perspective, man. It’s it’s quite holistic. Now in the book I know you utilize as a tool as some of these bands. Can you talk more about that? How do you apply it? How do you how do you want and I’m kind of asking you two questions that wants to make maybe you’ll combine the two. How do you also work on pliability within that is that just part of the movement is do you do other things to improve the pliability aspects so the tissue quality is healthier when you’re doing the movement? How does that look?

Aaron Alexander:  Yeah, well, so our bodies are essentially like 640 Aqua pockets You know, there were like these fluids slippery slidey pockets. Now it’s 640 is the number of muscles depends on the person. Yeah, and depending upon your mood. patterns they can start to get gunked up and stuck and dehydrated in certain positions. Once you get gummed up and stuck like a dam, that dam builds up more and more and more and gets crummy or, and dingy or and darker. Similar thing in your physical body if there’s nooks and crannies inside of your body, which I guarantee you there are there are mine, you know, as well I’m working on it. They will become backed up and something that you can do, like I mentioned, just spending some time on the ground. That’s a helpful helpful starting point. But resistance bands are a very powerful tool as well. So the Align band that you’re referring to, is a it’s a heavy duty resistance band that has a door anchor. And you can attach that to any you know card or hotel door closet or what have you. And then you have a resistance band hanging down that you can use to literally like floss out different joints so that shoulder this rolled forward, a really powerful tool is called banded Banda distraction Physical Therapy terms, you can press that band, wrap it around the front of the shoulder and then step yourself away from the band. And then it will start to pull that shoulder back. Now you’re creating this opening, expanded expansion through the shoulder, and then you can reach the hand back behind you and turn the head off to the left. And you’re doing this little pin and stretch, myofascial release, banded distraction to just do like a, like a word sandwich of all the different things that are happening there with a really simple, cost effective, portable tool. And as you do that, once you start to create a little movement in and around those potentially bound together pockets, new hydration manifest in that space, and now you have a healthier joint. If you have a healthier joint anywhere in your body that trickles through the rest of the system. So now my shoulders moving better. Oh, cool. Now all of a sudden, I have a little bit more rotation through my spine has not bound up like a straitjacket. Now, so it’s a oh and Andrew Taylor says a quote said that harmony dwells where obstructions do not exist. So if we can go through and find those dammed up agglomerated dehydrated obstructions through our body, speak into them through in the form of myofascial release and this in this example, but there’s other ways to do it beyond that. Then eventually we start to find more frickin harmony in our body.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, very good. I was first introduced to the band’s by Kelly Starrett and his book The supple leopard he kind of introduced that kind of concept to me and then I saw he wrote the foreword on your book. So that’s quite interesting. Was he an inspiration at all for some of the band work or anything else and what you do?

Aaron Alexander: Oh, yeah, man, Kelly has been a huge inspiration. I mean, he was the first so I was the roof of my perspective of what I could create from like a like a lens of career was having a successful clinic and anywhere This is Bend Oregon, where I didn’t before that was Boulder, Colorado. You know, so And, you know, for me because I spend like some pretty meaningful time with people, it’s like an hour and a half of being with people seeing 20 people a week and having a couple people working with me in one space that was like a dream. And then I got into watching Kelly’s work about maybe five and a half, six years ago. And I started observing the power of replicating what I’m doing at an individual level with, you know, more people on YouTube, you know, and so I essentially just like worship everything he was saying, and just really studied it very intently. And then from there, start creating my own stuff and then you know, six years later it’s very fascinating to have him write a really flattering forward in the book and then have him even read it in the audible version. So it’s very fascinating experience to kind of come full circle and have like, mother flippin Kelly is like, you know, saying how errands of nice guy or whatever in the in the in the forward now, it’s It is very fascinating experience have that full circle moment. But yeah, I mean, the line method is a continuation of Kelly’s work. It’s a continuation of Katie Bowman’s work. It’s a continuation of Andrew still St. apathy. It’s continually dead philosophers. It’s, you know, it’s I not I ain’t crazy thing. You know, I’m, I’ve been an aggregator, you know, that’s what that’s what a podcast, podcast, podcast host is Yeah, being able to aggregate a bunch of really amazing into one spot. Look as a further aggregation of all that stuff mixed in with a little bit of my own actual practice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And you’re probably highlighting things and emphasizing things maybe taking and riffing on certain things that resonate more than others. Yeah, that’s, that’s powerful. And so interesting. So you incorporated some of the band work you gave a company gave an example of some of the shoulder stuff, which is really interesting. You’re kind of doing like almost a self myofascial release on that. Yeah, I like the term flossing that joint that’s really interesting term. How else can that be utilized? Bam. Oh, man. Yeah, outside of outside of the shoulder, let’s see, maybe the hip or some other major area that you see clinically?

Aaron Alexander: Yeah, for sure. Well, okay, so if we’re saying hip, why not just jumped down to ankle, and because the ankle is the hip, you know, if you have issues in the ankle, then that’s going to manifest themselves upstream into the hip, and vice versa. You know, so kind of done that to be clever, but also, you know, to prove a point, but there’s also a lot of great exercises that a lot of people have adhesions, and stiffness and around the ankles, because we don’t go through a regular full range of plantar and dorsiflexion and like the modern world, and we’re kind of stuck at around 90 degrees. And if you’re stuck in that position, things begin to freeze over. You know, everything stiffens up and it develops and because your body just adapts to its container, whatever position you put yourself into, your body will adapt to that position. Amazing, it’s beautiful, you know something that people can play with, if you do feel like, you know, I am trying to do this deep squat stuff I see on the internet, it’s important it’s like valuable to be able to do a molossia or like a third world squat or whatever you want to call it. You know, so but when I do that, I always kind of fall backwards. I don’t get it so you probably your ankles aren’t going through deep dorsiflexion. And this is something that you can do is that same Bandha distraction or flossing type technique they were referring to before you can wrap the band instead of your shoulder now put it around your ankle, and step yourself forward into like a runner’s lunge type position. Yeah. And then keep that back heel that the band is wrapped around. Keep that back heel down flat against the ground and push yourself forward into a lunge position. And then you’re going to have that you’re stacking your stacking variable so we’re doing the resistance thing from the stretch, but now we’re also doing the band of distraction floss and that joint out by wrapping around the right around the like kind of like The apex of the curve there the joint. So we’re we’re also doing myofascial release. So we’re starting to get those tissue layers to slide a little bit because of the pressure of the band on the ankle. Yeah. And then you can incorporate another principle in chapter three. And the book would break down all the fundamental principles and practices that people for like driving your body more effectively from a self care perspective. And one of the one of the principles that everybody can use right now is called contract relax or PNF proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation. So taking yourself while you’re in that lunch, use that as the example. Press then back foot down on the ground. So press those toes like you’re trying to dig those toes down to the ground. Yes, can be activating the, you know, the calves gastrocnemius all these and then hold that for about five seconds, press press, press, press brass. Yeah. And then relax. You’ll find yourself like magic go into a deeper stretch on that. Yes, as simple principles like that. Like, we have outlines two specific techniques. But you can take the fundamental principles from those two techniques. The reason that it’s relevant to mention those two is you can pick out those basic fundamental principles. And they are consistent with every other technique and in the book, and I think with most ones that are like really helpful. So it’s like, if you if you know, what’s the word, there’s a space in the quote, that’s there’s one for me a motor Musashi is something along the lines of like, if you know, I don’t remember how it goes, if you know if you know something deeply, you can kind of take that understanding into other things as well. Yes, if you understand one of these techniques, well and you really understand that the fundamental principles of it, then that will spill into the work with your knee and your hip and your spine and your neck, and sometimes we get too lost in the the complexity of things and they how would I ever know how to do all this stuff? So many 640 muscles? Is like no, no Know, you know, these fundamental basic principles really learn those and then that will spill into the rest of your body.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s awesome. That’s really cool. So is there anything else you wanted to kind of go over or kind of dive in deep and in the book with the listeners here now, anything else on your mind?

Aaron Alexander: Yeah. Well, I think it’s very fascinating to think of. So the last section of the book is about, it’s called moving your senses. And so looking at this movement conversation going beyond again, that the muscle ups and bicep curls in the gym, and looking into how our visual muscles that is a form of fitness. So if I am chronically staring into a phone or a computer screen, then that literally puts my nervous system into a little bit more of like a sympathetic fight flight executive function, get her done type state, right. So what I can do is I can embrace looking out into using my panoramic vision, look out into the distance, look out a window, open that window to get full spectrum of light on your Eyes it literally changes the structure of your eyeballs you’re being exposed to sun that’s correlated with the high instances of myopia of nearsightedness. You know, so spend time, bring your awareness into the yoga of moving your eyes in a variety of positions beyond just staring into a screen with such regularity. Now and so when you do want to focus, you’ll notice this with people. If someone’s kind of like spacey, and they’re kind of like New Age, you know, out there, whatever person sometimes they might kind of have that, like, you know, they look a little bit like they’re just blurring their vision kind of just like looking out into space. They’re like, spacey man. It’s like, yeah, their nervous system is kind of stuck in that that spacey aspect. Then someone else that’s more of like New York City get her done, you know, way too much. Totally. Their vision is like a shark. Yes, there are So they, you know, they’re very good at the executive function get her done, but what they do not know how to do is relax, they do know they do not know how to stop doing something, you know, when they stopped doing something that’s that’s when the deck card starts to feel like it’s gonna fall apart because I’m like, oh God, like I’ve always occupied myself with something, you know, my shark eyes are always going notes so you can play your own nervous system, if you’re feeling stressed. Maybe allow your vision to kind of go a little bit into that same space, the blurred type, just looking out into the distance type vision, look out a window and get a panorama. Look over the ocean, look over trees, look up at clouds. If you’re feeling stressed, don’t look at your cell phone. That’s going to focus that vision into more of that in that stress state. Put the cell phone down, maybe put it on airplane mode. Let’s do a podcast or something like that. If you really want to have the cell phone with you and walk outside and look up at the trees and what you’re naturally going to happen with that not only will your vision change which affects every other aspect of your physiology. But your postural patterns change because you’re looking up instead of looking down, you know, so, you know, bending our perspective of what the meaning of fitnesses is, is just it’s an invaluable perspective change. And, you know, that’s what we did and the ally method book which which was co written actually by my man Phil white who he was. He’s done stuff with he co wrote with Kelly Starrett and Laird Hamilton for XP T and tablets at suelen. And I mean he’s like a legend and all this stuff. So yeah, it’s just been such an honor and joy getting to put this thing together. So appreciate appreciate talking about with you, man. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, man. Well, I really appreciate it. You go over some pretty deep stuff. It really stretches my brain a little bit to take it all in. I like it. It’s an excellent. And Aaron you got a podcast as well. People that don’t know, AlignPodcast.com and she’s subscribed that I did on there. Aaron’s been on my podcast before. This in a second or third time back on the show. So that’s pretty exciting. Also the book, How can they get the book?

Aaron Alexander: Well, this will be out. I mean, just Amazon bookstores, whatever I mean it it comes out December 24. So it’s before then then, you know, you can go to the Align book calm and do the pre order stuff. There’s like prizes and bonuses, bonuses and such. But, you know, wherever you books, Amazon is probably the most likely place but go ahead up a bookstore if you want perfect.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll take the link and put it in the description of the YouTube and the show notes. People can access it easily. Very cool. And how about some of the core stuff that you have? I know there’s of course tied to the book. If people don’t have the book, how do they get to be part of the course? 

Aaron Alexander: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, this the course is like it’s called the align method. And it just goes deeper into the principles of the book and in video form as opposed to reading. You know, and so essentially, it’s breaks down everything the book is, you know, so it’s fundamentals of self care fundamentals of how to integrate better moving into your life, lifestyle stuff, you know, morning routines. bedtime routines all that. And they can get a seven day free trial as well. You know, so you can find that in the bio of my Instagram or go to AlignPodcast.com yeah, and then slash align method or just go to the programs tab from there. But yeah, I highly recommend that as well. It’s all like I said, it’s seven day free trial. So you can check it out, get some value out of it, and then yeah, that’s that’s it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Anything else you want to leave with the listeners, Aaron?

Aaron Alexander: I think perhaps something that I find valuable is looking at life from the present moment, as though I’m kind of like, on my deathbed or getting close, you know, so looking back, say I’m 90 or, you know, whatever, and giving myself advice from that position. And I think the common theme of advice that I get from, you know, 90 odd year old Aaron is to one Stress less, enjoy more, and open yourself up, to be loved and to love because in the end, you won’t give a shit about any of the money that you made, you won’t give a shit about any of the books or online programs or houses or whatever, what you’ll care about is the moments that you shared with with others and yourself. You know, so the sooner that a person can tap into that, I think the more fulfilled their life will be, and then everything else will come come along with it. As opposed to what we so often do. And we do all of these superficial things in order to get people to love us. But in fact, oftentimes we end up pushing away the people that loved us the whole time to go and seek out those things that so that finally somebody will love us. And it was a long explanation, but essentially, it’s like open your heart.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, you have a unique perspective. Now you word things. I think it’s great. Very cool, man. Well, make sure you head over to Aaron’s podcast and get the book and all that stuff here Aaron really appreciate it. We’re going to make sure this goes live here hopefully this coming Monday as people can get access to it before the the book launch. Aaron Thanks so much, man. You have an awesome day brother. Take care.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:  

http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/improving-your-fitness-with-the-align-method-and-aaron-alexander-podcast-263

Recommended product:

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Nature As A Remedy for Stress

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

You know the wave of peace and other positive feelings that wash over you when you spend time at the beach or taking a hike in the woods? There is science to explain why we feel so good when we are connected to nature! Today we’re going to take a look at how we can utilize the natural world around us to benefit our mood with techniques such as forest bathing and earthing.

Why Are We All So Stressed Out?

Our ancestors has a stress response that literally worked to keep them alive. The familiar fight-or-flight state was a crucial part of human evolution. But now in our modern day and age, there is a disconnect. We get a bad email or a bad text message, and our ancient wiring system puts us in a sympathetic state–the same state our primal ancestors would have been in upon coming across a hungry lion!

When we get stressed, our body thinks that there is imminent physical danger putting our survival at risk, and it acts in the same way as it would have in our hunter-gatherer ancestors. While technology and society have quickly advanced, biology evolves much slower.

Nature As A Stress Solution

Human beings evolved in contact with the earth, though in recent times we have lost this connection. We can give our body a “reset” by going out into nature and experiencing the healing effects of mother earth.

Forest Bathing

To forest bathe is simple: find a local forest or nature preserve and simply take a walk or a hike. Forest bathing is both an incredibly powerful and an incredibly simple way to calm and rejuvenate the body. Researchers in Japan have been studying “shinrin-yoku” as it is known overseas for quite some time. In fact, Japanese doctors will often prescribe forest bathing to their patients to heal from a wide variety of health problems!

Science-backed benefits of forest bathing include:

• Boosted immune system: Forest bathing has been shown to increase the number of natural killer cells, a type of white blood cell which plays a vital part in the  immune system. NK cells are also major players in preventing tumors and killing viruses.
• Calming the nervous system: Studies show forest bathing reduces cortisol–the stress hormone–and increases heart rate variability (HRV). The higher your HRV score is, the healthier your nervous system is. Forest bathing’s ability to take us out of the stressful sympathetic state and put us into the calming parasympathetic state which improves mood, elevates calmness, and reduces blood pressure and stress.
• Improved self-confidence: Forest bathing increases blood flow in the brain in such a way that it calms an overactive mind, and prevents overthinking and self-conscious thoughts.

There is no need to run or hike strenuously for the benefits of forest bathing: simply walking at a leisurely pace, even stopping to sit and rest, is just fine. It is enough to just be present and allow the forest to bathe you with its healing powers.

Earthing

Earthing, also called grounding, is a way of connecting to the earth, usually by being barefoot. Human beings are electric–we are made of atoms which either have a positive, neutral, or negative charge. Man-made electronics like wifi, microwaves, cell phones, and refrigerators can affect our electric field to the detriment of our health.

When we spend too much time indoors surrounded by artificial frequencies, it can cause inflammation, brain fog, sleep problems, and more. Chronic inflammation is often called the root of all modern disease. When our bodies have an injury, your body sends help to the site of the injury. When our body lacks electrons, the cells that are sent to clean up the injury release free radicals that have no choice but to steal electrons from healthy cells. This causes chronic inflammation that can eventually lead to autoimmune diseases and neurological degeneration.

By going outside barefoot, we can soak up free electrons from the earth which put an end to the cycle of inflammation. Earthing has been shown to expedite wound recovery, improve sleep, reduce PMS, lower cortisol, and regulate hormones.

You can get grounded by going outside barefoot, by using an earthing sheet to keep you grounded while you sleep, or by wearing earthing shoes that keep you in connection with the earth even when footwear is required.

Takeaway

Sometimes the missing component is much simpler than we would ever think. Technological advances have conditioned us to think each new gadget is going to help: that new app or fitness watch. But if we take a moment to turn inwards and acknowledge that our biology changes much slower than technology, we can benefit from ancestral health habits that have been keeping humans happy and healthy for thousands of years– and are completely free.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580555/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17903349

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27493670

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579495/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Li+2009+phytoncides

Functional Medicine Tips to Survive the Holidays | Podcast #262

Happy Monday! It’s the holiday season and everybody is feeling the holiday rush. As much as we are excited for the holidays, it is also important to keep our body sane and healthy. Today’s chat will be all about functional medicine tips and tricks to keep our health, sanity and stresses down in the holiday season. Check out this episode to learn more.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

00:40 Portable IQ Air

5:35 Stave off stress during Holiday Season

14:38 Nebulizing

25:04 Air and Water Filtration for travels

31:34 Tips on Traveling

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live it’s Dr. J here in the house, Evan, how we doing today my friend?

Evan Brand: Hey man, Happy Monday. I’m glad to be back. I took a week off and felt like a month off. And I was like, God, I can’t wait to get back to work. So I’m glad I’m here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally man, I hundred percent agree. So that’s good. We got the holiday season. We are here in the thick of it. I know you were off in Florida this last week trying to get some sun and some good rays. Let’s kind of chat a little bit today about you know, functional medicine tips and tricks that we can do to keep our health and our sanity and our stress down in the holiday season.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so why don’t we start talking about just the travel component and then we could go wherever you want in terms of like herbs to help the immune system and nervous system. I think there’s a lot of cool directions we can take this but I’ll just start out with the air travel because I just got off the plane yesterday. Right? And it wasn’t terrible, but I’m not a huge fan of air travel for many reasons. And one is just The air pollution the fact that you’ve got, there’s no fresh air on airplanes, they’re pumping the cabin full of the research related or recycled air from the exhaust of the engines. And so it’s just really not a good place for fresh air. So what I did and some may say, Oh, this is extreme or whatever, but that’s why you’re listening to us because you want to be the best and you want to be the healthiest you can be. So what I have is the portable IQ air. It’s pronounced autumn, but it’s spelled atom at em. It’s like a desk It looks like a little UFO. And it’s a portable air purifier. We have one in our car that hooks up to the 12 volt outlet. But then we also have another one that we can take for travel and they have a portable battery pack that they sell with it and it fit inside of my backpack, no problem on my carry on bag. And I put this little portable half the air purifier on my tray table on the plane ride with the battery pack and cranked it up on high and you couldn’t even hear it because of the engine noise of the plane. And my my two daughters and my wife and I all got fresh hepa pure air Right in our face, we just angled the vent of it. So it pumped our direction. And the air was noticeably cleaner and more pure. And we’re not talking just filtering jet fuel, you know, you’re filtering potential mold on the plane, you’re filtering out the neighboring people’s perfumes and colognes and all that. So it’s just one simple way to try to reduce your exposure to toxins. And if you’re weak from an immune perspective, hopefully that’s filtering out some bacteria and viruses and other things like that. I mean, I remember, I don’t know if it was this year, last year, whenever it was, I think it was when you went to Mexico and you came back and it was like you picked up a cold from the plane because the plane was Germany or something. So it’s like, I’m not going to say this is a cure all, but I think it’s a good preventative medicine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it. So the IQ air the ATEM. Okay, cool. We’ll put some links below. And that’s a good portable one, huh?

Evan Brand: It’s gorgeous to It’s very pretty. You can control it from your phone if you want to. You can you know Turn up the speed turn down the speed, there’s blue light on it that you can turn off. So overall, it’s a very, very good portable setup. And when we were in hotel rooms as well, we would just unplug the battery pack and plug up the wall outlet. And then we would just crank it on high in the hotel room and then boom, by the time you step back in your hotel room, you’ve got real fresh air in there as well,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: that says absolutely great. And then did you use the atem desk or the atem car or?

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, good question. So the car is better, because there is an extra layer of carbon or something involved in the car versus the desk. So I only recommend buying the car version and then you can just use it inside your home as well. That is great. That’s awesome. And then you can bring that with you on trips and then you have that extra bit of air filtration. That is awesome. And could you use it in like a kid’s bedroom or a bedroom? Oh, totally. Yeah, I mean, it was the perfect white noise to for the kids to take a nap. We just cranked it on high and it’s just a nice white noise but then you know the kids are breathing in pure air too. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And can you keep all the lights turned off to?

Evan Brand: yep on the app. You can just go boom, and then the blue light turns off. So it’s just a completely dark air filter.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Awesome. I like the ones that are small and portable. Some of the ones that I have by the Austin area great, but that, you know, they’re not quite as portable, you know?

Evan Brand: Yeah, you can’t put it in a suitcase, you know, and like, you know, other people, Dr. mercola, he had promoted these like neck things where it’s like a portable ionizer that you wear on your neck, I bought one those things are garbage. This thing is way better. I mean, it’s a hepa filtration versus, you know, people try to say, oh, here’s a negative ion generator that you wear on your neck. It’s like, No, those are so stupid. This is way, way better and more functional.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what does it cost to change out those filters?

Evan Brand: I got an extra filter when I bought it. I think the extra filter was maybe 100 bucks. Don’t quote me on that. Okay, good. And you can monitor the filter life from your app. So it’ll say, hey, you’ve got 89% left of your filter, and then it’ll give you a notification when the filter needs to be changed.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, God, that’s cool. So I like the air filtration aspect of I think it’s powerful because Air Quality is important, especially on the airplane. I mean, you know, I think you may only be able to do so much because you have so much recycled air coming through. So, in general may not move the needle too much, but I think it’s really cool to have it in your hotel room, especially people using whole bunch of cleaning products that you know, aren’t as nice. It’s nice to have that good quality air filtration at least in the room. That’s great.

Evan Brand: Yeah, filters out the voc right. So yeah, if you had you know, we did request fragrance free hotel rooms and made sure they only clean with vinegar and all that. So it helped a little bit but filter would help reduce or remove any other voc if you’re sensitive like I am.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And we’re really diving into the functional medicine and natural health kind of principles to stave off stress during the holiday season and when traveling and such that’s really the title and the topic of today’s chat. So off the bat we also can be utilizing natural antioxidants to help deal with stress when we’re flying to. I’m always a big fan of when flying or travel or vacation starts. I’m going to be adding in include a phone and or glue to find precursors. This is kind of our body’s natural, very most powerful antioxidant to try peptide antioxidant. And we’re going to use this at higher levels to deal with stress from travel, just the radiation you’re exposed to and traveling. We’re also going to do maybe natural medicinal mushrooms or herbs like a strapless and geographics. akinesia. We’re going to be doing things like this to help bump up our immune system in my supplement line at protocol them, you know, Supreme, and that’s powerful that has a couple of different herbs in there, some medicinal mushrooms and it has some of the stragglers and akinesia that kind of get your immune system right ready. So it’s just kind of getting those natural killer cells up and ready on attention. So if we get exposed any viruses or bugs, we’re more likely to stave off an attack. So herbal support medicinal mushrooms, Reishi, [inaudible], ekenasia, these are going to be very powerful and then of course things to new actually deal with oxidative stress which could be glued, if I own high dose vitamin C, which is going to help include if I own as well. I’d also say you could even add in some natural anti inflammatory support like curcumin, but I’d say if you’re going to keep it simple, high dose kluth iron and vitamin C is going to be very, very powerful.

Evan Brand: Good advice. You know a lot of people post articles and snippets and all that about top 10 ways to naturally fight the flu or top 10 ways to naturally fight a cold, it’s like, well, wouldn’t it be better if you could just keep your immune system on alert, like you mentioned and up regulate these immune system pathways as opposed to getting sick and then now you’re trying to read an article on how to get yourself sick like just if you are on these herbs and your immune systems up regulated, you may not even have to go to the top 10 Natural Ways to fight the flu because you never got the flu because your immune system was so strong

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% so on the vitamin C, you know we’re going to do a couple of grams, so anywhere between two to five or six grams and the vitamins See, again, typically just below bowel tolerance is ideal. So a lot of people will start getting loose stools around six to 10 grams or six to 10,000 milligrams. So somewhere in that two to five, two to six gram dosage range is probably good. You may have to feel it out to see where you sit. And then in regards to Reishi, you know, I’ll go anywhere between two to five grams a day, probably closer to two to three if I’m just trying to like, get my immune system upregulated and I’m not fighting something probably like two to three grams just to be like, Okay, I’m ready to go. And then acutely, I’ll go off to three to five if it’s really acute. And then I would say what the gluta Island probably you know, up to a gram or so a day on the glue to die on and get my immune system kind of hyper regulated and ready to go.

Evan Brand: Yep. And talk about the nebulizer. We spoke about this a few episodes ago, I said, hey, you’ve got to try it. And you’ve tried it. So what’s your what’s your feedback?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so this is a very powerful tool and a means to get Certain compounds into your lungs and into your bloodstream fast because we know when we get sick a lot of times, you know, we have the ability to control essentially our hands by washing our hands. And we have the ability to control not quite as much what we breathe, maybe if we have a mass, that’s probably the best that we can do. But in general, a nebulizer allows us to take compounds in my favorite two things to us are going to be silver, and we’ll choose a 15 ppm to a 10 ppm or less of silver. And we’ll nebulize that and we can breathe it into our lungs. So we have all of the silver in our lungs, in our sinuses, and that’s going to help kill any bugs or biofilms that we may be getting exposed to so I like nebulizing silver, acutely, especially after a flight or after any exposure to someone because you get the silver in your lungs, and it’s anti viral as well. So the problem is, number one, you don’t want to be using antibiotics prophylactically but number two will not touch a viral issues. So the best thing with the silver is you can knock down some of the virus stuff. And the second thing is cluded I own concluded I own really helps with inflammation. And it really is increased so much more especially in your lungs when you do it when you nebulize it and you break it down to really tiny particle. So with nebulize go to dial and you can do that as well. One you’re getting the Bluetooth ion to help with the oxidative stress. But number two, it’s also going to help with inflammation and it’s going to help modulate your immune response. I’m a big fan of nebulizing the silver and nebulizing the Bluetooth ion is a couple of good nebulize that are out there I have one that’s really small and recommended to me there are two really two or three really good small ones. I’ll do a separate video on this and you take the nebulizer and essentially you use some sodium chloride kind of a nice taylean solution that sterile and then you’re going to add anywhere between a teaspoon of silver of there or you’re going to do about 200 milligrams of glutathione and a sodium bicarb form so it’s an a breakdown. And then you can nebulize that 200 milligrams a load of biome, or that one teaspoon of silver, and you get it directly into your bloodstream and the nebulize go to die on significantly increases in your bloodstream and in the lungs even more than oral when it goes orally. It has to kind of go throughout your body. But when you do it in your nebulizer, it goes right into your lungs, it’s going to help with things in your sinuses, it’s gonna help with all the inflammation in your lungs. So you get it right there. It’s fast and it increases your blood sugar levels so much faster.

Evan Brand: Yeah, not to mention, you can cross the blood brain barrier when you’re breathing something in like that too. So I got to give credit where credit’s due. This whole idea of me getting interested in nebulizers and Bluetooth ion and then trying in and then you and I talking about it, Stephen Buner. He’s like one of my favorite herbalists. He’s written a lot of really great books on Lyme disease and co infections. I believe he’s personally suffering from COPD and, of course, many people out there suffering with COPD so he actually came up with this COPD protocol. And I just took a couple pieces from his protocol which was the nebulizer with the sailing and the glue to die on. Now he’s talking about, I think it’s frankincense and some other essential oils. And he’s doing a lot of these other like Japanese herbs and Chinese herbs and mixing all these in a combination as this big old 20 to 30 p COPD protocol. I don’t have COPD. So I just took the pieces that I thought would help me the most from that protocol and then implemented it and then I had had watched the I don’t know if it was a webinar, what it was about, it was a guy speaking about using silver hydrosol which same thing Colloidal Silver silver hydrosol is the is the right name, and he was using this for lung cancer. And he was putting the silver into a nebulizer for lung cancer and I thought okay, that sounds pretty cool. And then I just mixed them I just thought why don’t we mix silver mixed Bluetooth ion. And as you mentioned, it’s the one with the bicarbonate added so it doesn’t burn your lungs or anything, and it’s a very smooth process I get, and I don’t know if it’s placebo or what but I feel like I get a little bit of a head rush after I do it. Like I feel a little bit more mentally clear, you know, Bluetooth ion is, is said to increase energy levels to right because you’re increasing your detox ability and a lot of times that helps increase energy. So after I do it, it kind of hits me like a wave. It’s like whoosh, and then I feel good for you know, a couple hours after I haven’t had any bad side effects. I don’t know if you have I haven’t had any headaches. I haven’t had any like detox reactions from it. Overall, it’s been very, very good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Also, I find it very helpful with kids that don’t want to swallow supplements or take supplements. The nice thing about it is you can don’t even have to put it over the face, you can kind of keep it a couple inches away and just let them read it for a few seconds, and they’ll get it into their system. So I like it because if my son may have gotten exposed to something, I can just give them maybe a minute with a silver, just kind of reading it in or I can give them a minute of the Go to File and I can at least get some good antioxidant support which does help with the immune system, Bluetooth Iowans a really important immune system modulator. And I can also get the silver up there which will help with viruses and biofilms as well. So it’s pretty powerful to have that, especially with kids. And especially with just being around people that are sick, I can get stuff into my respiratory tract fast. And I’m not sure if any studies in this but you know, there’s a lot of times it’s like a one or two, one or a week or so latency period on getting an infection and it manifesting. So I’m curious to know, you may have an infection, it may be an latency period, and I wonder if just doing that preventatively would prevent that infection from manifesting?

Evan Brand: I think it would, right I mean, think about if it’s sitting in the nasal cavity, maybe it’s found a way to hide in some biofilm and the nasal cavity or the sinuses and then the silver comes in and kills it. You know, I think yeah, I think you’re right. I think it could kill it. While we’re on the topic of the nasal cavity area for the holidays. You know, this would apply for people going to a family member’s house where they’ve got air fresheners or plugins are, you know, if you’re a smell smell sensitive person like I am, even if you’re not and you just don’t want that crap in your sinus cavity, you and I really like the x layer, which is the stevia based nasal rinse, or is it Earth return those xylitol, I’m sorry, it’s xylitol. You know, if you squirt that up your nose, I wonder if you could just add some of that mixture to the nebulizer. I mean, it’s the same thing right? You’re squirting it up your nose versus nebulizing I don’t know, maybe overkill, but at least you could use the X ray or nasal spray, boom, boom, a couple sprays each nostril and spit it out. If you end up getting some drainage,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: what I think is even better, what I’ve been doing is I’ll do the Neti Elixir packet so it’s actual packets and and I mixed it with four ounces of water, clean, filtered reverse osmosis water, and then I squeeze it up one nostril and it goes all the way up my frontal sinus and then back down and I do have about two to three seconds of flow. Then I blow my nose, clean it out and then to the other side. Two to three seconds, and then blow. And then what I’ll also do is if there’s any kind of infection that I’m thinking about, I’ll do the Neti actually or packets because you only can spray, barely anything with the spray. But if I can do the packets, I get constant flow for two to three seconds. And then number two is I’ll add a teaspoon of silver. I’ll add a teaspoon of silver as well to it. So then I’ll have the Neti Elixir with the xylitol in there, and then I’ll see it has the minerals in there to make it more you know, sensitive against the mucosa. And then I’ll add the silver and then the silver goes up and can really kill any viruses or pathogens or biofilms as well. So that’s a double whammy. That better Yeah, and then afterwards, then you can do if you want to nebulize some silver because that way it goes in your bloodstream because it’s not going to really go into your bloodstream, right? But when you nebulize a silver now it’s in your bloodstream and in your lungs. So if there’s any incubating viruses That’s where it’s going to be really, really helpful because then I’m really work on knocking and killing that down. And then you could also nebulize the Bluetooth icon, which I don’t think is anti viral, but it will help with inflammation, and it will have an effect on modulating your immune response for the better.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m using the nebulize glue to find to get mycotoxins out of my brain. If you just go into PubMed and you just search okra toxin. Okra toxin is a really common mold toxin that we see. If you type in okra toxin cerebellum, you can read that okra toxin has an affinity meaning it likes it goes to that part of the brain, the cerebellum and so you can literally detox the brain. When people say detox the brain. It sounds like it’s like trendy or buzz worthy or something. But no, it’s real. You literally can detox the brain because that’s where okra toxin can can damage it can create damage in that part of the brain. So all right, well, let’s move on. I think we’ve talked about the sinuses all day,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll do a video I’ll do a video of myself kind of dealing with the issues. So I’ll break On the nebulizer and kind of the solutions and, and we could talk about it and go over what those look like. That’s perfect. All right, good. I think those are powerful tips. And then obviously, we have low hanging fruit, which could be getting sick from food. So of course, we’re going to use things like activated charcoal, which is going to be a really good binder. We typically say take activated charcoal away from food and supplements, when you’re using it for like a detox protocol for mold or for bug killing. But if we’re eating questionable food, or we’re getting exposed to things like alcohol, we may want to actually take it with the alcohol or the questionable food. So you kind of have to just draw a line and say, Hey, is this an acute exposure issue? Or is this more part of the long term protocol? If it’s acute, and it’s food or alcohol or just you know, partying, then we’re going to take it with that food. 

Evan Brand: That’s a good idea. I mean, think about it. You’re going over to Uncle Jerry’s house. You know, everybody’s going to be drinking wine and cocktails and whatever. There’s going to be bread There’s going to be all kinds of food allergens and dairy and, and who knows what else cornbread and pumpkin pie. I don’t know what all you’re eating that’s not good for you. But, you know our clients report this every year they say hey, I’ve got off my diet on the holidays and now here it is January and they feel like crap, you know, so we’re trying to help prevent some of those calls.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So I like that. Also bug killer so my line I have a product called gi clear 4 which I have found to be the best for me. And for most patients with food poisoning issues, it just works amazing. And it could be food poisoning from a bacteria like e.coli or Campylobacter or salmonella. It could be food poisoning from an infection. Right Giardia. Cryptosporidium H. pylori, maybe a parasite like blasto and this works really good at knocking it down. So I like my gi clear 4 which is very high in Golden seal, which is a really good bug killer, very high in berberine, which is great for SIBO. It’s also very high and all of which leaf which has antiviral properties, and burdock which is really Good for the lymph and the lymphatic system. So my gi clear 4 is good avid has some ones in his micro biome line that are similar to. So you know, we love a good bug killer in case we get exposed, and you can stay on a low dose of those preventatively to like I’ll do, I’ve got one that’s got all of leaf in there, which is just a good antifungal, and it’s been said to take antifungals while you’re detoxing mold, so for me, I’ve just been doing a little bit of a low dose of some antifungals just preventively. And the good thing is with something like olive leaf, that’s an antiviral as well. So you can have that’s the cool thing why we love herbs so much is because you can have as you mentioned, bugs is kind of a generality, bugs could be viruses, bacteria, parasites, you could have an herb that can be antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, all in one so we love these anytime of the year but especially if you’re around like you said potential bad food that who knows what if they didn’t cook the shrimp cocktail good enough, right? Or if it was all shrimp and and you got a exposed to something there. Yeah, so if you’re on vacation like let’s say Mexico or somewhere where the food may be a little bit different than what you’re normally used to people that go to Bali or Mexico or sometimes other countries, they’re exposed to things they’re not used to. So going on like a preventative dose, like one capsule with each meal, a lot of times can be super helpful. We may also do, I always recommend my patients flying with a full bottle of probiotics too, because that can really help with food poisoning as well. So we can do like one probiotic capsule every hour or two. And that can acutely address any food poisoning works phenomenally.

Evan Brand: So I like doing that to help with any food poisoning too. Beautiful and of course acid and enzymes deserve a mention up to just because you mentioned the travel. You know in theory if your stomach acid levels are good enough and you’ve got your gallbladder releasing store bile, you’re breaking down your fats good. Hopefully everything’s okay but it wouldn’t hurt to add in some extra enzymes and acids to hopefully neutralize any pathogens you could expose to

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: one Hundred percent. I think it’s vitally, vitally important. Probiotics clearing herbs we talked about gluta time we talked about silver, these are all really, really important modulating things, HCl enzymes, digestive support, kind of as needed, just so we can digest and break down our food. I think those are all very, very, very powerful things. Next, I think will be sleep support. So you could always do something like a sublingual, melatonin and just kind of do that. Once you get your schedule back on track, you can take it maybe at sunrise the next day. I’m sorry, you could do it at at nightfall. So as soon as the sun goes down, you can you know, as it gets dark, you can take it as it gets dark to kind of reset your cycle. And then when the sun comes up, you could do some kind of the caffeine with some light exposure and grounding can be very helpful to get your circadian rhythm back on track. You take a little bit of a caffeine or a mild stimulant. As the sun comes back up. You do a little bit of grounding your feet on grass or some kind of a stone while getting light exposure to the sunrise. That’s a great way to get your circadian rhythm restarted. And then at nighttime when the sun sets, do a little bit of melatonin, you know you can do anywhere between like a third of a milligram, very small those couple hundred micrograms to it sublingually and that can kind of get your circadian rhythm kind of back on cycle for your time zone again if you’re traveling to Mexico or something or the DR and then you’re only a time zone or two off, or even the same time zone not a big deal. You travel to Bali or maybe Hawaii or Europe then you’ll You know, you’re going off maybe 5678 hours that you may have to do a significant reset there.

Evan Brand: Yeah, good advice and of course light pollution at night always trying to address that a lot a lot of hotels luckily these days have pretty good blackout curtains and such but you know, we had several places where the outside light was still trying to sneak in so we would take extra blankets or towels or whatever else you got to do unplug alarm clocks, cover up lights, take out light bulbs, you know whatever you got to do to to cover it up. We had One room we had had a smoke detector that had a super bright green light and green light can suppress melatonin just like blue light can at night. So I just took a pair of swim trunks and threw them over the smoke detector, boom, we had darkness. So sometimes it’s tricky to get a nice dark room.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One thing I will travel with his electrical tape, black electrical tape and any lights like that, I will literally just take a piece tape, put over light,

Evan Brand: that’s easy, that’s great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So just a little bit of tape. And then you can just tape up all the lights and then you want to make it black so blocks out the lights a little bit thicker, you know a little more opaque blocks the light out better. And I always call ahead and say hey, you know do you have dark shades or blackout shades? I think it’s really important. I stayed at one place that didn’t and I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, man, your sun goes up at seven o’clock you’re up at seven it’s like this, you know, that’s just you know, forget sleeping in. So I always try to call ahead and make sure I do have blackout shade options if not, you know get A blanket, tape it up against the wall. That’s your best bet. It’s kind of Yes. But yeah, go ahead.

Evan Brand: And also on the on the traveling thing too. We talked about air filtration. I travel with the water filter as well. I mean, you can buy bottled water for drinking, I’m talking about for bathing. So you know, a lot of places, a lot of cities really heavily chlorinate the water. And so of course, chlorine is like a natural antibiotic. So first of all, if you’re drinking water with chlorine in it, you’re killing your good bacteria and your microbiome. But regarding the skin, chlorine, I just doesn’t agree with my skin. It makes your hair nasty. It makes your skin nasty. It smells bad. It’s it’s toxic. It’s a neurotoxin. So I personally use the Berkey there’s other brands out there. Yeah, Berkey makes a really good shower filter. And I forgot to travel with my wrench. But luckily the shower head on the hotel was loose enough I could unloosen it. Put on the Berkey shower filter and boom, you got super pure water and for the little kids for my little girls. I don’t want them bathing and chlorine. So Guess what we do we just turn on the shower to fill up the bathtub and now you got a perfect chlorine free bath.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, that’s definitely a good option. Also, if I’m staying at a hotel in the states you know, I’ll just instacart for Amazon Prime now good filtered water, you know, couple bottles, couple dozen, maybe a dozen bottles of Pellegrino or or Voss or Fiji water, try to buy it in bulk or if there’s a whole foods nearby, just buy a couple of gallons and just leave them in the hotel room. So I have clean filtered water, you’re not paying an arm and a leg for the hotel price. But that way you can get some good clean water. Ideally, if you can get like a bunch of Pellegrino dropped off and glass that’s an awesome class may not work especially if you’re traveling a lot and you have young kids, you may have to do classes just for the convenience of it not breaking. So those are good options for you in the states try to use instacart or prime now or they can drop off within an hour to attend to be super helpful. And then I’ll also stay at a lot of places in the states that have a like a little kitchenette. So then I’ll just have a couple of dozen eggs dropped off maybe a pound or two again. again so then I have breakfast covered every single morning at least eggs or bacon and that way you’re set you could at least start the first meal out of the day pretty good and you can control the quality of it and I just try to make sure if I can there’s an instant Carter prime now service available where I could have it dropped off.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s what we did. We did we didn’t do the delivery. We just stopped at Whole Foods, but we did have a kitchenette. So we did bake and we did eggs. We bought some frozen fish. We had a freezer and we had an oven so we were able to bake some fish for a couple nights that was great. And we did find a couple good restaurants luckily they had some grass fed steaks and such but we tried to mix it up 5050 because you know you go on vacation you don’t want to be doing dishes three times a day either my wife’s like I’m doing dishes again what’s going on so like Okay, let’s go to a nice place get you a grass fed burger. And that was a good break from from dishes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah, I actually was able to find so what I believe the country I like going to Mexico for vacation because number one you get, you know, nice little warm retreat, but it’s not far. It’s only just a couple hours from Austin. It’s easy nonstop flight virtually the same time zone. And when you get There, I found a resort The brand is charisma. And if you let them know I sent you over, but I found them because they were one of the only gourmet food brands meaning they grow all their food on site, super high quality. And they cater to food allergens. So really good quality food, lots of good restaurant options, all inclusive so you don’t pay anything extra. You get what you pay, and then you have unlimited access to the food. And then you can you know, you can get gluten free options. They really cater to the food allergen and you get better quality food. And it’s even you know, local locally raised right there on site.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I know you live like a king when you go down there. It is pretty cool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s nice because there’s a couple there’s a of like maybe 16 maybe 20 different hotels in the charisma brand, but it’s KARISMA just type in Karisma hotels, but they have a bunch of hotels couple doesn’t have a gore main line and that the formula This the food quality is five star so you have great quality food, organic, and you have lots of options and they cater to food allergens. That’s one of the best things about it.

Evan Brand: That’s beautiful. You know, I actually on my searches for hotels, I came across this website called pure rooms. PURE which was supposed to be this. It’s basically a company that works with different hotels, Marriott and whoever else and they basically put in water filters. They put air filters in the room, they use no fragrance, they take out any feathers for any allergens to like down comforters and such. The problem is every hotel I call they said oh no, we don’t do that anymore. Probably because nobody was ever booking the rooms and they didn’t want those rooms just sitting there wasted. So I called like three hotels and they’re like, Oh, yeah, we had the pure room, but we don’t have it anymore. So I don’t know if it’s somebody had to request in advance. But if somebody super sensitive, you know, you could look up your room and there’s basically a directory on the planet on the whole world where you can look at a hotel that would have a quote, pure room available for you to book.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the nice thing is a lot of hotel rooms You know, they’re they’re getting better because people are more hypoallergenic people smoking is kind of a more taboo so they have non smoking rooms, I think just the big thing you can do is just try to request in advance, you know, not all the harsh cleaners or harsh smells, or just get a really good air filter like you have kind of drop it off, plug it in for a couple of hours, get the room kind of cleaned out, and then you’ll probably be good to go.

Evan Brand: Yep, that’s what we did. We put it on full blast, took a walk to the beach came back the room was was much better, still not optimal. I mean, I’d rather be at my house with my big ol nice air purifiers, but you know, you got to make the best of it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then when I travel when I choose vacations, I want to come back on a vacation feeling good. So I don’t want to be eating crap the whole time. I want to be eating quality foods. When I come back. I’m not like bloated and inflamed and feeling like crap. So I want to food quality is a big deal for me. Number two is I don’t want to spend a day on the way there and a day on the way back traveling. So I try to choose places that I can go in a non stop and ideally be there within three to four hours on a non stop. I don’t like to get my sleeping all day. jacked up. So I don’t want to be up at like 3am leaving. So ideally, I try to find flights that I can leave at, you know, you know, get up at six or seven, get to the airport, leave at nine or 10 and get to where I want to be by, you know, three or four at the latest, you know, just because I don’t want to waste the day on each on each side and I want to feel relatively rested. So Mexico, Dr. Jamaica, you know, if if you’re like trying to go somewhere more tropical. Those are pretty good places because you get the tropical feel you can get an all inclusive access, and it’s not going to be too far or too expensive to get there.

Evan Brand: Yep, yep. Good advice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So anything else on the travel side, you want to highlight? I mean, the only thing I could say is, if you know you’re going to be eating more crap, we talked about glutathione. I’m sorry, we talked about activated charcoal. And you can always want if you know you’re going to be having gorging yourself, you can always intermittent fast the next day to compensate. You can always do a little bit more movement before after whether it’s interval or resistance training just to deplete glycogen and to get your metabolism up on that way. The extra alcohol or sugar won’t hit yes hard. Those are all other good options that you can kind of add in.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I would just last thing just in general is some type of good adaptogenic herbs to help cope with the stress. So ashwagandha would be great. I know you love ashwagandha I love it too, but you could use it at night. You could use it during the day for stress, you could use it at night for sleep you could do you already mentioned the the the reishi mushroom for immune support, but that’s also kind of an adaptogen. Basically, you’ve got rhodiola which can help boost your energy. I took a mitochondrial support that I have. So that’s like a B vitamin combo that can be helpful because the stress of traveling burns up your bs B as in Bravo. So mitochondrial support can be helpful. Vitamin D, hopefully you’re going somewhere sunny. You don’t need vitamin D, but that’s also important for immune function. We talked about the enzyme piece, I would say liver support I did take some liver herbs to just some milk this old and some other basic stuff methionine tarin. I think That’s it. I mean, I’m sure we could riff on more but that’s that. Oh, yes. Oh, this is important. So anybody that has like any travel anxiety, which I don’t know if I have traveling anxiety, I just get stressed travels is stressful for me, especially with two kids and is the kid hungry and Okay, and the diaper and you know what I mean? So, what I took is just a blend of some calming herbs. So I took like some other war. I took some skullcap I took some Valerian some thenI, and just had a combo in tincture form. So we’re at the airport, you got 1000 people in front of you, you’re waiting to get past I just boom, boom, boom. Shoot a few squirts of some calming herbs in my system, and I was cool as a cucumber the entire time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Love it, man. Yes, smart. You know, try to do it the right way. Like you said, That’s why I try to do nonstops in and short flights. But if you’re going to Europe or anywhere else, that becomes a little bit tough. So like you mentioned, the adaptogens are helpful. That’s where definitely bringing the melatonin to be helpful. Some of the extra Bs, the B vitamins to help with stress, I think they’re going to be really helpful as well. Anything else you want to highlight or add today, Evan?

Evan Brand: I don’t think so I’ll just make a comment. You know, it’s so interesting. You see all these people that get on the plane, you can tell some people, they’re nervous and they order alcohol from the flight attendant, and they’re trying to drink alcohol to calm themselves down. That’s the worst thing you could do. The elevation of being on the plane causes dehydration. It’s like being on top of a mountain, the stress of it is depleting. So, I mean, if you need to calm yourself down, a glass of wine on the plane is not what you want. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying Would you rather have something awesome? Like, you take a few squirts of some passionflower and ashwagandha then your your nervous system is going to be calm. You’re not gonna have any crazy blood sugar swings on the plane, you’re not going to be dehydrating yourself. So I just, I just, I think in five to 10 years, maybe we’ll see more people like shooting adaptogens down their throat on the plane versus taking alcohol.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I think number one, if you are going to consume alcohol, let’s say you got the upgraded seats and they cover a nice drink. Like when I go to Mexico, I think it was like I think I was I got the ability to upgrade to first class like 50 bucks. I’m like, heck yeah, you know, an extra foot a leg room. And so when I go to Mexico, I think I’m going to be going in February, I will be doing a glass of champagne on the flight because it’s complimentary. But what you do is number one, when you get to the airport and you have time, get a nice like, get a nice bottle of Pellegrino or something, hydrate before the flight where you know, so you have the good minerals in your system. And then if you’re going to drink then just have a nice, bringing a couple activated charcoal with you. So then you have that just kind of go back and forth. And if you are going to drink, just try to space out one drink one glass of mineral water, one drink one glass of mineral water. That way you don’t get too dehydrated, you get the extra minerals in the water, so you won’t be getting to deplete it. But I think that’s really a good important points.

Evan Brand: Perfect. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. If you do want to reach out clinically, we work with these gut issues that we’re talking about detox problems. You know what we do? We love helping people get to the root cause of their problems. You know, we were used to someone being through 510 15 practitioners before they get to Dr. J. Or me And we kind of like being I’ll speak for Justin as well, we kind of like being in that position because it allows us to show them what we do differently. And oh, here’s why you didn’t get better. It’s because you didn’t you didn’t do this or you didn’t look in that ballpark or you did it in the wrong order. So we love and some, sometimes it comes with the territory of our jobs to be in the in the cleanup crew category. We’re cleaning up somebody else’s mess. And that’s fun. I love that and we’re both very grateful to be able to serve you well. So if you want to reach out to Justin clinically, please do so his website is Justin health. JustinHealth.com. My website, EvanBrand.com. And thank you for listening. We appreciate it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I think next week is was next year, next week, next month in New Year’s Eve. Yep. So I think I’ll be here next Monday as well. So I’m excited to chat with you again. How about you Evan? Will you be here?

Evan Brand: I’ll be here. I ain’t going anywhere.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Excellent. I love it. You’re back from your vacation. You’re supposed to be refreshed. So yes. Excellent. All right now great chatting with you put it thanks for all the information on the product. We talked about or recommended. We’ll put them in the references links below. Evan, great chat with you have a phenomenal week. Will you take care bye bye. Thank you, everyone. Bye

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:  

http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/functional-medicine-tips-to-survive-the-holidays-podcast-262

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Medicinal Mushrooms and their Health Benefits with Jeff Chilton | Podcast #261

Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio Podcast! For today, an interesting topic is all about medicinal mushrooms. We have Jeff Chilton, who is a mushroom expert and CEO of realmushrooms.com. Know the in’s and out’s of mushrooms, how this can improve your health. Check out the podcast below.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

01:42 Growing mushrooms

09:25 Ergothioneine compound and its benefits

23:56 Lion’s Mane

34:00 Chinese Medicine

47:14 Psychedelic Mushrooms

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio. We got a fabulous guest guest here Jeff Chilton, who is a mushroom expert. Today’s talks all going to be about medicinal mushrooms, the ins the outs how they can improve your health. Jeff, welcome to the show how we doing?

Jeff Chilton: Hey, Justin, thank you so much for having me doing fine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s dive in and tell the listeners about kind of your background. How did you even get into the mushroom industry? You’ve been doing it for a while. And what brought you here today?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’m a born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, forests, rivers, lots of water, and in the fall, it rains a lot. And so it’s one of the best places in the world for wild mushrooms. And so, when I went to university, I had an interest in mushroom. So I studied mycology, but my major was anthropology and through anthropology I studied all about the use of mushrooms as food as medicine and in shamanism, but when universe It was over. It’s like, how do you get a job in anthropology? Right money now? So So I thought, well, you know, I’d love to learn how to grow mushrooms. And it turns out that there was only one mushroom farm in Washington State and it was 60 miles down the road from Seattle. I went down, I, I ended up getting a job. And I was there for the next 10 years, literally living with mushrooms. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, amazing. Yeah. So when you started out this process, did you kind of have to learn the ins and outs of like, how to farm them, how to raise them, how to grow them? Like how did that process kind of unfold? Did you have to study from some really, you know, key mentors in this industry? Or did they just kind of didn’t actually happen organically on your own?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, this was a very large farm and we were growing 2 million pounds of mushrooms every year. I mean, there was there was 200 employees. And so I just started out at the bottom of this and there were a couple of mushroom growers there who are the head grower. So this operation and managers and I essentially was kind of like an apprentice to them. So over the next 10 years, I made my way up to being the production manager. And again, I mean, just think about this every day, every single crop and we’ve got like these crops and rotations, I’m seeing Justin I’m seeing 200 crops of mushrooms. Every year, every year 200 crops, think about a normal farmer and how many crops that normal farmer is going to see.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. So you started out what were your favorite mushrooms to grow off the bat? So obviously, you may have some personal preference based off of what you take or what works the best on your physiology, what allows you to feel the best, what are your favorite ones off the bat for you?

Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, you know, again, we’re growing Agaricus motions and that’s all we really had to eat at the time other than wild mushrooms. But while I was there, we had a Japanese scientist who was growing oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms and man hat Have you ever eaten shiitake mushrooms? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have Yes. 

Jeff Chilton: They’re delicious. They’re absolutely my favorite moment. Not only are they excellent in terms of just eating and nutritionally but medicinally they’re really solid so like shiitake mushrooms are one of those food as medicine. I’m foods.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah really big immune booster. So what are your favorite one? So in practice I clinically use Reishi maitake, shiitake, cordyceps. You have Lion’s Mane, turkey tail. Those are some some of the more common medicinal mushrooms. Do you have any specific favorites that you’ve used clinically or that you’ve seen in general?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, my favorite is actually reishi mushroom because reishi mushroom, you know, with medicinal mushrooms, the key compound a medicinal mushroom is called a Beta Glucan. Yeah, and this beta glucan is what activates our immune system. So it’s a potential creator, something that strengthens our immunity all mushrooms have these beta glucans even just edible mushrooms that we think of as medicinal mushrooms day. Yeah, because the Beta Glucan makes up half of the cell wall of mushrooms. And so, so all mushrooms will have that. But medicinal mushrooms, the top medicinal mushrooms have a very specific architecture of that Beta Glucan that makes them active compared to the others. Reishi has probably the largest amount of beta glucans that went to Turkey tail in all of our analyses. And we analyze every single batch of product that we make ratios got one of the highest levels of beta glucans, but it also has these compounds called try terpenoids. And those are the bitter compounds. So so it’s kind of like Reishi is medicinal mushroom plus, and that’s the one if you’re in Asia or something. I mean, it’s a mushroom of immortality. They’ve got stories about I mean, it’s just just really well known.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and we will go into exact companies. But I’ve been told by a couple of different mushroom experts that you want to trigger pain kind of extract about 15% or so in the medicinal mushroom extracts to kind of have a level of clinical potency. Is there a percent? Regarding the terpenes that people should look for or an amount regarding the one three?

Jeff Chilton: Well, I mean, they don’t get as high as 15%, unless you’re really trying to build them up. But just in general, they would be somewhere around 4%. And, and the trouble with just even giving a percentage is that there’s no companies or very few labs that can actually analyze for tried terpenes, but we can analyze for beta glucan. So what you really want to do with any machine product doesn’t matter what it is, look for an analysis of the beta glucans. And here’s, here’s a little key and a trick is that it used to be that everybody would say, oh, our product has x amount of polysaccharides. Okay, well, the problem with that and Beta Glucan is a polysaccharide So, so that everybody would think, okay, yeah, we got lots of polysaccharides lots of beta glucans. The problem is that polysaccharides are actually this starches and so many extracts out there of whatever kind Come on starch carriers. So in some cases, when we analyzed machine products, the level of starch was as much as 60%

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, okay. Wow. Yeah. So if you want to actually look at the certificate for the beta glucans, not the polysaccharide

Jeff Chilton: Absolutely. If companies just talking about polysaccharides they’re hiding something and, you know, we consider polysaccharide analysis for mushrooms to be absolutely useless. And we we’ve demonstrated that through our testing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then obviously the quality making sure there’s no other you know, heavy metals or joke like that pesticides or mushroom is generally grown organically, or do these are typically pesticides that may be given on a conventional kind of farming. 

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, there’s a lot of mushrooms probably the majority of mushrooms grown out there have pesticide use going on. It’s gotten much better. Certainly when I was at the mushroom farm in the 1970s. Justin, we had an actual program where it was like it on this day you spray this chemical a month down the line, you spray this chemical. I mean, it was a program for growing mushrooms and using pesticides and fungicides today, in the industry in the United States, they use a lot less than they used to but still, if you have the ability year you want to be looking for an organic we certified mushroom, I mean, and all our products are certified organic, and to me that’s really important.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: God and we’ll go over your stuff at the end here, but I’ll drop your website, realmushrooms.com great products there. Also, let’s kind of just back up a little bit. So we talked about some of the Beta Glucan, the one three Beta Glucan. We talked about the tritter pians I may be mispronouncing it for the last decade. Okay, tomato tomato, right, it works. So those are those the big kind of medicinal compounds that are active in mushrooms or another, like hidden compound we don’t know about yet.

Jeff Chilton: Well, there are a couple of those. But and what I want to emphasize here is Look, what scientists do out there when they look at any natural product is they fractionated and fractionated. And fraction it because they’re looking for the latest new drug. Right? So so you a person could say, oh, there are hundreds of compounds in mushrooms, and they all help in the activity. You know what? That may be true, but some of those compounds are going to only be there in minute amounts. And that’s just part of drug discovery, because they they find all these different compounds. So So really, what I focus on is look there are certain compounds occur and measurable amounts, they define this category like the beta glucan. And those are the ones that we can actually measure and use as markers for quality. So so that’s really important. One compound that I want to reveal to you right now that is it are in mushrooms and not into many other things. It’s a compound called ergothioneine. If you ever heard of ergothioneine?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ergothioneine I have not Can you talk about some of that what that is and what the benefits are?

Jeff Chilton: Well, ergothioneine is is a compound it’s actually an amino acid that they have found in a number of areas in our body, and they’re going we don’t produce it. What’s it doing there? And why is it concentrated in areas where there’s high oxidative stress, and then they’ve done a lot of studies with it and they indicate that it’s a very powerful antioxidant. In fact, it’s it’s It’s something that they’re thinking might even be a new vitamin. And mushrooms are one of the foods that contain high amounts of ergothioneine to the point where we now analyze every single product that we got for air go signing to establish a baseline and just to see okay, how much of this do we have in our mushrooms? So ergothioneine is one of those kind of special compounds we also analyze for a compound called air gost are all their gospel is the fungal sterile like our cholesterol, yes, in all fungi, all mushrooms, and and it is something that also has medicinal benefits and we can measure it as well. It’s something that that is has got some, some direct, basically anti tumor activities. It’s it’s something that that you know, plant vital sterols or something that is very beneficial. For us, so that’s another compound that we can measure and and use it as a measure for quality. And that’s really the key for what we do. We don’t try to build up anything in our products, we just want to have the profile that you expect to find in a dried mushroom. That’s what we’re looking for. So anytime we do an extract, we want to match it up on that profile. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Okay, so we have the ergaster all there. Let’s talk about some of the beta glucans. What are they doing to the your immune cells? I mean, I’ve seen some studies, they’re helping increase natural killer cells there is some of the terpenes are deactivating viruses. What do you know, based on your experience and your research you’ve done? What’s it doing to your immune system? How is it helping your body? 

Jeff Chilton: Well, these, these beta glucans, we actually have receptors for beta glucans. And these receptors are down in our our lower intestines are, they’re down there and so what how Beta glucans come down, they will, they will lock into these receptor sites, and then they will actually then potentially create or or essentially strengthen any immune response and create more immune cells like NK cells like macrophages, like T cells. So, that’s really where they essentially are going to help boost our our immunity and and what they’re considered is there can they’re considered a immune modulator. So they’re basically sitting there, they’re a potential creator. So they will essentially strengthen our immune response to whether it would be viruses or bacteria or other fungi. They’re there to essentially assist us and and you know, the way I look at that activity is preventive. I really see that as something that is, you know, in fact, we can be Taking them all the time. And they’re just sitting in the background, helping us out as we’re coping with all of these different stresses that come in, whether it be from bacteria, or whatever it is. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s in functional medicine, kind of where I’m practicing with my patients. We’re testing their stress response, we’re looking at their adrenal and their cortisol rhythm. And one of the herbs I’ve used used clinically for a very long time are various adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha is one of my favorite right here. And it seems to me based on some of the data that some of these medicinal mushrooms are actually having adaptogenic like a fact whether it’s buffering stress, or buffering the immune response. What’s your take on that?

Jeff Chilton: Oh, I think they’re, they’re, in fact considered to be adaptogens. And I would call them premier adaptogens especially something like Reishi I mean, absolutely. I mean, adaptogen really is something that that tries to keep us in homeostasis. It’s like this whole thing of balance and that’s kind of how I look at health. Is is disease is Cut going out of balance. And so what we’re really trying to do is get back to that homeostasis back to that state of balance and, and they’re there to help us, although there may be other things involved. Of course, like, you know, health is not just that simple. But again, yeah, adaptogen is something that will help us to, to mitigate those stresses that we have, or whatever they are, and bring us back into a state of balance. And I didn’t know that that to me is kind of like traditional Chinese medicine is all kind of based on that same principle there of balance and so adaptogens are something that will help us maintain that balance, which essentially means being healthy. I mean, you know, think about it for a second. If you’re healthy. You ever think about your health.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re able to adapt you have a certain level of adaptability. 

Jeff Chilton: Yeah, well, and yeah, and and, and when you’re sick, all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, my God, you know, you start thinking about your health and what you have to do to come back into that balance. But when you’re healthy, you’re just cruising around thinking yeah, everything is great. It’s wonderful.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah 100% I know there are various mushrooms like cortis apps, for instance, there’s some data they help improve DHCP levels, which is a precursor hormone to a lot of sex hormones and it’s made by the adrenals and that helps with stress and inflammation. Can you talk more about sex hormone modulation via some of these medicinal mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I know cortisol has been utilized and is considered to be in that category. Exactly the mechanism I’m not that certain of the mechanism myself and how it does that other than I know that it does have an effect on on oxygen utilization, which I think would be a big part of that. And you know, I think also we have to be very careful with something you know, like I’m not here to tell you Oh, yeah, take quarter steps and your your sexual your libido will improve or anything like that. I don’t know that for a fact. And in some cases, quarter seven, Even could be considered sort of like a doctrine of signatures kind of, kind of herb you familiar with doctrine of signatures if as if something looks like something that it must be helpful that and quarter steps is kind of a little bit phallic shaped, I mean, mushrooms are too, right. But and so it’s kind of like, okay. But I think you know what I think too, and there’s a lot of research done with core deception and it’s beta glucans. And it’s those effects I think anything that can help maintain or boost our immunity is going to have an effect on your, your basic libido and, and libidinous health.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I work with a lot of hormone issues, and I strongly recommend not to ever go kind of whole hog go in on just one thing to be the panacea. You know, you obviously want to make sure you’re making diet, lifestyle changes and you’re getting to the root of the underlying issue and some of these things may be a really good palliative support, to kind of throw in there as an important tool. For sure. I agree with that. What about like your national killer cells. What about these helper cells? What about really stimulating these kind of first? You know, these are artists are natural killers, which are the guys that are on the grounds for longer. Exactly first responder to an infection. What what herbs or what mushrooms are best for that? What do you know about that?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what I mean, if you go out and read the literature, and there is so much data out there, on this activity and, and look, much of that data and much of that research is is in vivo? It’s in vitro. We don’t have a lot of clinical data on that on that. So So really, that kind of scientific research, I can read it and go Okay, yeah, this is what this is what happens but going much deeper than that. I mean, I’m not the scientist doing that kind of work.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know what happens you kind of have that the general you know, outset mechanism of what’s happening.

Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what? There is so much there’s such a big body of research on the effects of beta glucans on in these kind of tests, I mean, thousands of papers. I mean, they’ve been studying beta glucans now for 30 or 40 years. And so, so that type of activity is something where, you know, I mean, when I looked at that research, I mean, I can only take it so far because I’m not a scientist doing that kind of work. So that’s not the kind of thing that i i really study too much and, and don’t have a hard time keeping up with it all, actually, but the actual mechanisms to me are more important, okay, actually, what is it? Is that fact is it in fact, stimulating these immune cells? Well, what are those immune cells do? Well, I’m sure a lot of practitioners like yourself or immunologists are, are much more capable about going deeper about exactly what they’re doing and how they’re working.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But just in general, just That kind of hundred hundred yard stare. We’re like looking at it. All right big picture, we’re going back, we know that these compounds are having an effect modulating the immune system, mobilizing some of these natural killer cells, can you kind of connect the dots based on what you know, with medicinal mushrooms in cancer? What’s your experience with that your experience or in the literature, you know?

Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, what I would say is, look, medicinal mushrooms are not going to cure anybody’s cancer. What they’re primarily used for is an edge event. In other words, there’s something that if you’re going through a, a standard chemotherapy or radiation or something like that, they’re going to help you your immune system, your body to cope with those two types of protocols which are tearing down your immunity and making you you know, sick to some degree. So that’s really where they come in. And, you know, in terms of folk remedies, I mean, mushrooms have been used as folk remedy for those kind of things, but terms of actually being a cure per se, I don’t look at them in that way at all i just i just consider them something that is going to help you to actually cope with this tremendous stress of not only the disease but also with the therapies that you’re that you know, science right now or the medical profession is actually using with people. So so you know, some of the some of the most well known drugs actually that have been produced from mushrooms one is called KSK. And the other is called PSP and they’re produced from Turkey tail and they but they are not like a just standard mushroom hot water extract or alcohol extract. There there actually have been fractionated Downton and extracted to the point where in Japan pFk is actually considered a drug and it is prescribed with cancer therapy. So that’s that’s an end. You know, it’s not like it’s it’s, I mean, it’s helping people. Maybe they’re getting a longer life by using that compared to the control groups. But there’s a lot of clinical data on that. But it’s not something that’s given to try and cure anybody. They’ve got another drug over there called Lenten and that is produced from Shiitake mushroom. And it is a it is unlike PS K, which is not a pure compound because it’s a protein bound polysaccharide Linton and is actually a pure beta 1316 glucagon, and it is utilized in the same way again, not alone, but along with these other therapies. And there’s another, a tremendous body of clinical work behind it to demonstrate that it does alleviate some of the symptoms and it also gives people a longer life than they otherwise would have, but not like, you know, significantly going to grow no longer live for years and years a year. Yeah, what you normally have.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when we talk about cancer, there’s never just one, you can’t have a cure when there’s dozens of different causes. If you’re getting exposed to toxins, or stress, or sleep or low vitamin D, or nutrient deficiencies, you can’t have just one care of nothing. There’s no such thing as a cure if there’s dozens of different potential vectors, but there’s things that we can do to kind of throw in there to support all the other things that we’re doing to, to bump up our immune response. That’s kind of the context of that.

Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, and and, you know, I think the other thing that we have to remember is that cancer in some ways could be lifestyle related. It could be diet related people eating the wrong things, I mean, or, or smoking or drinking or or any of those types of drug abuses. I mean, so there’s a lot of factors involved. And, you know, in a way, the first thing you’d want somebody to do is go Okay, why don’t you back off all of that you probably would prescribe somebody a certain type of diet you say, you know, you shouldn’t be eating this. You shouldn’t be drinking that. You need to make some real changes if you want to help the protocols. So you’re going to give them and those kind of things that are so important and because it’s if you’re looking at something from a holistic way, which I’m sure you are, then then you know that there are so many different factors that you have to deal with.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and these are I consider them to be adaptogen functional medicine tools that are very powerful that we plug in to a comprehensive program. So like that. What other let’s just say less notorious things that are mushrooms are used for besides the common immune adaptogenic kind of immune kind of cancer boosting effects. What else do you see what else do you recommend for

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what’s really interesting is is there’s a mushroom right now that is just like, gotten so popular. It’s called Lion’s Mane you heard Lion’sMane at all, I use lion’s mane.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like big E’s Reishi and cortis apps and but maitake and shiitake but I haven’t really been using it too much, but I do have some.

Jeff Chilton: Well, it’s it’s pretty interesting because there’s They actually the thing about Lion’s Mane is that we have clinical trials out of Japan, where they’ve actually got, like 30 different people around age 70. And then they’ve got a control group of 30 people and they feed them three grams of lion’s mane, they give them a whole battery of tests. 90 days later, they test them again. And what they find is that the people taking the lion’s mane do much better. And then they stopped taking Lion’s Mane for a month, and now they’re back to baseline and the same as the control. So, so they’ve got a number of these different clinical tests with Lion’s Mane lion’s mane. Actually, they found from their research stimulates the production of what’s called nerve growth factor. And nerve growth factor is a protein that essentially helps to maintain and strengthen our our neuron production and our neural network. So So So if you can stimulate the production of this nerve growth factor because what they find is as you get older your production of nerve growth factor starts to go down a bit and so so now I mean and so there you know how it is they’re trying to tie all these things together to find out Okay, why is it that we have this cognitive sort of let down as we get older and and people’s memories start to you know, get a little bit wobbly and they can’t remember as well and then we have dimension Alzheimer’s and all those other things so so the fact that there is actually something like a lion’s mane that let’s just call it a nootropic, which is kind of a category these days you probably heard of it and yeah, and so it’s like, I’m mad. It is just like taken off because.. Well, the compound there’s a couple of compounds in Lion’s Mane that produces they’re called harisonones, arenasenes, arenaserens, and I mean, this is another one of those things where, when you look at the when you look at the literature, there’s probably a couple dozen different, let’s just say, analogs of these different compounds that create these effects and and will boost this nerve growth factor. And you know, we’re just get worse beginning of researching that even though it’s been used in traditional Chinese medicine for these types of issues for quite a while.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s very cool. Yeah, when you look at these things you can read you can have a 20 page study, but if you walk away, what’s the bullet point mechanism? And what’s it doing and as long as you get that action point, that’s the the most important thing in my opinion, right? PhD pile higher and deeper, but you can you can also just get that the key take home action items, so I think that’s powerful. So any research on that connecting improvements and all timers or any neurodegenerative conditions at all?

Jeff Chilton: Actually, there is Yeah, they’ve got a couple studies on dementia. Okay, actually showing that it improves and also they have a few studies on depression, showing that it improves and you know what? Listen, it is not easy to get clinical trials with any natural product, or dandle not only that to get a good one because look, I’ve seen clinical trials done, and you look at them and go, okay, who sponsored them? And and who’s doing them and, yeah, you know, unless it’s a totally unbiased group, you have to be really careful. I like any research. I mean, you have to read the fine print of how this is done and who’s actually doing it. So these particular studies are done it Japanese universities, I like Japanese science, art or culture. Well, that as well. Yeah. And and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think I was seeing things such as like liver or kidney cancer, like one of the first line therapies over in Japan is some of these medicinal mushrooms. I think is we see our quarter steps is like first line in Japan for for liver cancer.

Jeff Chilton: Wow. Well, well, you know what’s interesting about you saying that is that I was at a conference in China in the mid 90s. And it was a Ganoderma Reishi conference and there was a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner there older man, maybe it’s in his 50s or something like that. And I was talking to him and he said his number one herb for the liver was Reishi. Yeah, yeah. And he had times he said, he said he would, he would use as much as 30 dried grams of ratioed. In his treatments. And, you know, the one of the things that’s interesting about traditional Chinese medicine is that when they’re using their herbal formulas, it’s strong. It’s powerful. They put a lot in there, they want to see something happen. You know, it’s not like supplements. What a supplements tell you to take, I mean, tell you to take one or two capsules a day doesn’t matter whether you’re Hundred 50 pounds or 250 pounds, they’re telling you two capsules a day. It’s like, Come on, let’s get real here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That will 30 grams is significant in the capsule, the average ratio is 500 milligrams account.

Jeff Chilton: Well, and of course this is, yeah, this is 30 grams of dried mushrooms. So let’s just say if you if you were to do a 10 to one extract, you could you could get it down to three grams of extract or something like that, which still would be quite a lot. I mean, so So in other words, he was he’s just basically saying, look, we use a lot, we use a high dose. For us. It’s the main herb that we use for liver problems and I thought amazing, and and that’s where the tri terpenes come in. They’ve got a lot of data, long tried terpenoids with the liver.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know some of the mechanisms in regards to I’ll still call them trinitarians. I’m the static. Actually they deactivate viruses, any feedback on that. What do you know about the deactivation of viruses? How does that happen? Is it just like binding to And then making the virus less pathogenic.

Jeff Chilton: That’s, that’s really interesting. I couldn’t really answer that question that’s for a virologist, you know, you know, this is the thing, it’s like, you get into all of that research, and I can read a paper and maybe, especially these days, a week later, I’ve forgotten the whole thing. I mean, whereas the research that I do myself and the research that we do in my company, you know, I can go into that in great detail and what we’ve done there, but in terms of this other stuff, I can read it, but you know what it’s like, it’s just like, if you want to write a paper on something, you pull together all this research, you spend months, dealing with it, working with it, putting it into the shape that you want it in, and by the end of it, you’re an expert, right, and you know it backwards and forwards, it’s like but, man, I can’t do that anymore with a lot of that research because I’m busy doing other things

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: make sense? All the listeners have to know that there’s mechanisms out there, it can provide that benefit. That’s great. If you have anything to add, you know, any value you want to add to it above and beyond based on your experience, that’s great. But you kind of said a couple of things that I wanted to highlight you talked about a lot of the pharmaceutical research in some of these mushrooms are these kind of compounds or isomers. Within mushrooms, you see a lot of that with turmeric or curcumin as well, it seems like Big Pharma is trying to find this like, you know, active compound and isolated. Now we know just with natural compounds in general, you can’t really patent them unless you can find something and then twist it around a little bit and make it so it’s not found in nature. And then you could patent it. So if someone comes in and says, Hey, reishi mushroom as this amazing benefit, let’s put 100 million dollars into this, you know, to these studies, and you see this great benefit, guess what, you can’t get the ROI on your investment because everyone can now sell Reishi because there’s no patent so you have companies that are in there trying to make a drug out of it by tweaking it a little bit.

Jeff Chilton: That’s absolutely right. And that’s that’s where these particular products like Linton It’s a patented product, I mean, because it’s it’s actually a drug and it is like they pulled out this one very specific Beta Glucan for that mushroom. And so that’s what they’ve got a pure compound. And, you know, in what I do, and certainly in the general, let’s just say supplement industry or herbal medicine space, I mean, what we, I believe that any of these natural products, there’s multiple components, they’re all working together, and to try and build one up or split one off or anything like that. It kind of is not the way that a traditional herbalist or, or the way we would like to see these natural products use. We want to see the whole herb used and certainly we can concentrate them in an into an extract because it’s like going, Oh, how am I going to take 30 grams of Reishi. It’s like, you’re certainly not going to want to just eat it anyway. You might want to boil it down into tea and then you can Drinking, okay, but but again, supplement makers, their powders, nobody’s going to say okay, yeah, take 10 capsules of this particular product, they want to have a concentrate when we make concentrates, we want to make sure that the profile is similar to what the raw material has. Because we believe that all of those compounds that are in there need to be in there and should be in there for this to work the way it’s supposed to work.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It gets really, really important. That’s good. So when you talk about I mean, there’s so many get my head wrapped around this here. So when we talked about some of these compounds, like you mentioned, the whole mushroom has a lot of other antioxidant, other beneficial properties that kind of work in synergy. So when you just pull one mech one compound out, you’re missing that beautiful matrix that was encapsulating it. So that totally makes sense. I get that. And what’s your take on dosing in general, I know that may be different from Reishi, the lion’s mane to cordyceps. Is there a general dosing structure that you like to adhere to based on weight or certain conditions

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’ve got a physician friend who was originally from Hong Kong where he studied traditional Chinese medicine. But then he became an MD. He practices in New York in 1992. He wrote a paper on the proper dose for a reishi mushroom and he went back and he looked at all of the traditional literature, everything he can find, and he came up and he said, Look, a common dose for that would be a two to five dried grams of the mushroom or extract equivalent. So if you were like, Okay, I’ve got a five grams if I do a 10 to one extract, that means I could do 500 milligrams as a daily dose and so I use that kind of as my guideline for all of the mushrooms I say look, two to five dried grams or or equivalent In terms of an extract and the other thing that we can do to which is which is really great is when we have these clinical trials. For example, with lion’s mane, these clinical trials are based on three dried grams of just Lion’s Mane powder. My God, that is not hardly anything really when you think about it, and just to give you an idea, okay, three dried grams. A normal mushroom is 90% water. So what that means is 30 grams of fresh lion’s mane, that would be like one Lion’s Mane one small Lion’s Mane that you would you would eat. So, three dried grams is not a lot and yet they were getting these benefits from that. And my thing is, you know, I kind of like and I’ve got friends in the herbal industry that have been there a long time making extracts and all that. One of my friends is like, I want my extracts to be strong enough that when somebody takes it, they’re going to feel something And I think that’s kind of interesting because, you know, that’s what, in a sense, the traditional Chinese practitioners are sort of doing when they’re giving people higher doses of these things. They’re like, we want to see something happen. We want to see people feel this, we want to see some benefits right away. We don’t want a low dose people and yeah, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t so so you know, and and look, I don’t want to get too much into dosing because I’m not a practitioner. I’m not on the front lines at all. So that’s something where someone like yourself or others would, would, you know, if you’re in clinical practice, you would see that you would see the effects. I don’t get that kind of feedback so much, but I really think that it doesn’t matter what it is you have to take enough of it to get the benefits.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, I’ve been actually doing three to five grams in general for a very long time. So usually 500 milligram capsule doing six, and then if I’m acute when I’m sick, I’m up to 12 capsules, 556 grams a day. So I’ve seen that have to be very, very therapeutic. That’s excellent. And so when we’re looking at mushrooms, you know, we’ll go into specific brands, what are the things we should look for? To assess potency? What should we things we should look for in the back of the label? What should we taste for? You talked about Reishi kind of tasting bitter earlier. How can someone look on the back of a label and assess what’s going on?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, one of the things as a mushroom grower, I know the economics of growing mushrooms. You know, I mean, I’ve like I was on that big farm. I had a small farm myself for a while I know what the economics are. If you grow mushrooms, you can grow them fresh, take them to the market, you can make a living but the fact of the matter is, is that as supplements, we’re dealing with a dry powder. Mushrooms are 90% water. So the issue is that if you can get $5 as a grower for that pound of fresh mushrooms, if you dry it out, now you have to get $50 for that same pound of dried mushrooms and in terms of the supplement industry. The Economics don’t work. I realized that very early on. And so that’s why I spent a lot of time in China in the 90s. Working with growers and working with processors, and in 1997, I went to China with Octa, which is a large organic certification organization. And we held the first workshop for certification, organic certification of mushrooms in China 1997. So that’s where we grow and process all of our mushrooms. But in the United States, what companies do, there’s not a single there’s not a single company in the United States that grows a mushroom and sells that as a supplement unless they’re a small little farm selling their own supplements and growing their own mushrooms. But in terms of the industry, in general, it doesn’t happen because it’s not economically viable. So what happens is in the United States, we’ve got big companies producing mycelium, which is the vegetative stage of this organism that we call a mushroom They put this mycelium on sterilized grain. They grow it out on the grain. And in the end of the process, they harvested all dry it grind it to a powder, grain and all. So one of the things that I did is in 2015 is that it did a big study with 95 different samples 40, of which I bought off the internet. And they were all these mycelia grain products. We tested them for beta glucans. And the test also allowed us to test for alpha glucans, which are starches. Mushrooms don’t have starch. So so what we found was all of these us grown products were very low and beta glucans like around 5% very high in alpha glucan, which is the starch 30 to 60%. To me, that was obvious because they’re grown on grain and the grains not taken out of the product. A mushroom shouldn’t be 25 to 50%, beta glucagon, and there should be no starch and maybe one or 2% worth of glycogen. So so it was just all these products were just the exact opposite of what you want to get an emotional product. Well it turns out that those products right now dominate the market. And and a lot of companies don’t even tell you that you’re not actually getting a true Martian product. Some companies do. If you look at the supplements, fact some of them will say mycelium and then on the other, they will say, my ciliated grain of some sort oats or rice or something like this. But other companies who buy those raw materials, they’re being sold to those companies as mushroom.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And even the companies that he what’s the fruiting body verse Well,

Jeff Chilton: okay, a fruiting body is a mushroom. Okay, and so, whereas just quickly, a mushrooms don’t have seeds, they have spores, or out in nature germinates into a very fine filament, multiple filaments come together and form a network. That network is called mycelium. That is the The vegetative body of this organism, the mushroom that comes up from that mycelium, that vegetative body produces a fruiting body that we call a mushroom. So, this vegetative mycelium, you can take that and and you grow it out in a laboratory. And actually that’s what they use that seed to grow mushrooms. But instead of actually using it as seed, they will grow it out. These companies will grow it out on the grain it’s sterile, to grind it to a powder. You know, a Tempe is. Yep. Typically, it’s 10 pages. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s cooked soybean with fungal mycelium. So you’re actually you’re actually eating mycelium. It’s a great food. And that’s what these products are, is they’re actually Tempe, disguised as a nutritional supplement.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how can people find the real deal then if we’re going to look in some of these companies aren’t saying it’s mycelium. fruiting bodies. What other resources can people utilize to to know what’s really going on with their mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Well, a couple things. One of which is which is made in the USA. Forget it. It’s one of these mycelium and grain products. Yeah. Number two, look, pour it out. Taste it. We were talking earlier, about Reishi. Right? pour out your Reishi capsule and taste it. If it tastes bland, it’s not Reishi it’s one of these grain products, regimes bitter. We used to do what we call the Reishi challenge. We do that at a trade show. And people would taste one and then they taste the Reishi extract and they go, Ah, holy shit, give me some water. You know, it’s like, powerfully bitter. I mean, totally. I’m not kidding you. So it’s a it’s really crazy. So, so I mean, I mean just and there are ways that we can know the other way which is really fun, which I love and you can use on any of these different products is you you get yourself a little bottle of iodine. You put about two or four you put on four capsules and a quarter cup of water. You Stir it all up, you put 10 drops of iodine in there, if there’s starch in there, it will turn black. Do that with a genuine mushroom product, it’ll turn starch in there, do that with a genuine mushroom product, the water will turn the color of the iodine, but it won’t go black unless of course, you know, some some of for example, some of our mushroom extracts are black already. So it’s hard to do a test with them but but some of them are not. And so you can put the drops in and it won’t turn and then it’s just another simple test.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, and if people can call up the company and get their certificate analysis regarding what’s in there, what should they be looking for again regarding the 1311, Beta Glucan or the the terpenes what should they be looking at percentage wise

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what for for the beta glucans you should be looking for anywhere you know depends from machine to machine, but anywhere from, like ratio you should be looking for, for something over 30% So, you’d be looking for 30 to 50% on your Reishi product. Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s right. So, so look for beta glucans. If it says polysaccharides, you know, forgetting most hackers are are meaningless. The other thing too is you can call it the company and say, Look, are there any grains in your product? You know, I mean, can you imagine being at paleo FX, and having somebody come up to me and they see my, you know, big mushroom thing behind me. I love mushrooms. And they they say, and I say like, Oh yeah, that’s great. And I asked them what brand they’re taking and I go like, oh, man, I hate to tell you this, but you’re taking a lot of grain powder, and they’re just like, nobody there pull their hair out, right? Because it’s like, I thought I was taking a mushroom product.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the best sourcing that you find right now is Japan is that kind of where you grow a lot- 

Jeff Chilton: No, no we grow everything in China and-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m sorry you’re in China. All China. Okay. Oh, thank you. Kind of harvested there. 

Jeff Chilton: We have we have contract growers in China

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: farmers like big farms or

Jeff Chilton: Individual. I mean, individual farmers and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That must be difficult.

Jeff Chilton: Hey, dig this. China produces 85% of the world’s mushrooms.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I believe it. It’s part of their culture. It’s embedded.

Jeff Chilton: It is 85%. I mean, and there are 10s of thousands of mushroom growers in China. And I’ve been there again since the early 90s. I’ve developed relationships. I have Chinese partners, they organize the growers. For me, we have beautifully brand new factories where we bring the dried mushrooms we produce our extracts, then we send the bulk powders over and then they all get I mean, Nam x which is my company, we sell our raw materials to hundreds of other companies that put them out under their own label.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So with all the terrorists and China are you getting hit the Last year too,

Jeff Chilton: Man, don’t even talk to me.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, well, you produce a great product. So you don’t have much competition over here, you know?

Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, that’s true. But you know what the fact of the matter is, is those products that I’m telling you about, if you look at their front label, it says mushroom. And a lot of people are fooled by that, and you turn it over, and only a few of them will say mycelium, and in the other say, you know, my ciliated grains of some sort. So, unless you’re really paying attention, you don’t know. And so those I’m telling you, those companies have probably 70% of the market out there and because they’ve just been doing it for for quite a long time and they keep selling it as mushroom when it’s not mushroom and I’ve pushed back on that and they’re finally starting to, you know what, there’s an FDA compliance document, Justin, that’s been there since 1976. And it says, you cannot sell mycelium and call it or infer that it is mushroom. Hmm. Interesting FDA compliance done a lot of companies ignore that. They ignore that and why? Because look, FDA is got bigger fish to fry. Right? Oh, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of their bigger issues. Well, hopefully this information will help educate listeners, any feedback at all on psychedelic mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Yeah, they’re wondering about personal feedback. Yeah, well, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you have that, that’s fine. Do you grow them? micro dosing, or?

Jeff Chilton: you know, part of my studies at university back in the 60s was on the use of psychedelic mushrooms. Period. Yeah, I know. I know. We actually had them growing the Pacific Northwest and also I spent a year and a half in Mexico and 1971 72 tracking down people that use them using them myself, so I’m very familiar with them. And in fact, in 1973, I wrote a book called the mushroom cultivator, which is all about growing mushrooms. At home, it includes those in there if people are interested. So, so no, I’m very familiar with them. I think they’re tremendously beneficial. I think, you know, not only just like right now they’re using them for end of life issues. People have fear issues about end of life, they’re using them for mental illness, people now are using them as a trophic. Taking a microdose you know, like, micro dosing with them. You know, what, I think ultimately, they’re going to be revolutionary, as well as evolutionary. But it’s just a matter of how long those authorities out there allow it to proceed right now they’re allowing the researchers to do their thing and and you know, what, I never thought pot would be legal for God’s sakes. I mean, it’s like, I thought that would always be prohibited and then writes prohibition on it and look right now I’m like, I don’t believe it. And I don’t even smoke anymore, but I used to. Yes,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. Interesting so with the psychedelic mushrooms are there different types kind of like you know in medicinal mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Well you know what there’s there’s a genus called Cyclops A B, which is so psilocybin is named after. And in that genus, there are dozens and dozens of species but there’s probably about 12 different species that are pretty powerful, reasonably similar in their effects. Some indigenous people look at them of having different qualities and that’s, that’s probably unlikely, but you’re going to get somewhat the same type of experience from them. Again, it’s really gets down to if you’re going to use them you really need to use the proper set, which is

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: LSD, was that an LSD and psilocybin or

Jeff Chilton: the what’s in there, the actual compounds psilocybin, so very different compound from from LSD. I mean, LSD is you take it in terms of micro grams, right, I mean, micro grams, I mean, small 200 micrograms, whereas With with psilocybin you’d be taking 1000 milligrams 2000 milligrams LSD is tremendously powerful, far more concentrated. Well I guess you could say that but it’s just a different type of compound it actually different way but it gives you a very somewhat similar experience and you know what, I have a positive view of that I don’t see anything again like you like I say setting setting and doing these things properly is really important.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it proper setting any particular dose or species of the medicinal or the psychedelic mushroom you recommend or you like personally?

Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what the there’s there’s pretty standard information out there people can find that the the thing about it is is right now if you want if you want to get those mushrooms I mean there’s there’s like, millions of pounds of them grown every year. Wow. They’re everywhere. I mean, millions, I’m talking millions of pounds of them being grown. out there. It’s like,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: did it just kind of grow naturally in nature? Do you have to do some things? Hey,

Jeff Chilton: hey, you’re down in Texas, they actually grow on the Gulf Coast. They grow in a cow pastures. Yeah, you can go out there and find them yourself there in the cow pastures and they’re not really illegal until you pick them up and put them in your hand.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How do you differentiate if you’re the average person going in and hunting mushrooms? And how do you know a magic mushroom from a regular edible mushroom?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you really have to go with somebody who knows what they’re doing. You do not want to pick and eat any mushroom unless you’re absolutely certain you do not. I mean, it’s just like, you know, it’s not just mushrooms, but plants have poisons too. I mean, it’s just common knowledge or common sense that you’re not going to pick something and go Wow, that looks great. Let’s let’s go ahead and eat it right and it’s like yeah, no,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: no anytime soon. The benefits of micro dosing for these magic mushrooms at all versus just regular.

Unknown Speaker: Well you know what, I think it’s a really interesting subject and and what people are looking for is a little bit of mental acuity, I mean, think about it for a second if all of a sudden your eyesight sharpened up a little bit or or all of a sudden your hearing sharpened up a little bit man listening to music or something on on these as on believable. And so people are getting, you know, these sort of like cognitive effects on micro doses where they just feel like they, they are little more focused, they feel like things are kind of coming together a little better. And this is something where we’re going to learn a lot more about it as more and more people come out and talk about it. And and more people kind of study the experience and see what’s going on there. But I think it’s an amazingly evolutionary step. And and I’m very much very positive about it and very much behind it. I hope it happens. We don’t we don’t sell those. But somebody Well, I mean, there’s, there’s already like, like I said, there are millions of pounds being being grown and sold out there right now there’s so many growers that you could not even imagine it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then regarding the you said the micro dosing, is that going to affect like coordination or you’re kind of describing is it more? Is it up regulate some of these things that wouldn’t affect you driving a vehicle or things like that? Or would it still compromise you physically?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what, if it on a microdose, you’re probably okay, but you’re really going to have to know at what level you don’t want to get to because certainly nobody should be driving a vehicle. When there are two let’s just say hi. That’s not a good thing to do. It doesn’t really matter what substance you happen to be consuming. That’s not a good idea. I mean, you know what, dude, you know, take any substance and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: dry and then legal, but you’re you’re saying and somewhat you’re kind of describing it in some ways that it can up regulate some of these senses, which is interesting.

Jeff Chilton: Well, no, it is very interesting. I mean, I mean listen, I don’t know have you ever have you ever you know,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I never had that experience in medicinal mushroom? Yeah, I’d like to at some point but like you said the settings really important yeah

Jeff Chilton: well you know what when you do them and and not just even a micro dose but do it a little bit over the threshold dose so you’re actually getting the experience and you go out in in a natural setting that you are already familiar with and you really like you will see and feel things that you’ve never felt before and it will really open you up to I think one of the most beneficial parts of that which is the realization that we are all connected nature everything all

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio. We got a fabulous guest guest here Jeff Chilton, who is a mushroom expert. Today’s talks all going to be about medicinal mushrooms, the ins the outs how they can improve your health. Jeff, welcome to the show how we doing?

Jeff Chilton: Hey, Justin, thank you so much for having me doing fine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s dive in and tell the listeners about kind of your background. How did you even get into the mushroom industry? You’ve been doing it for a while. And what brought you here today?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’m a born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, forests, rivers, lots of water, and in the fall, it rains a lot. And so it’s one of the best places in the world for wild mushrooms. And so, when I went to university, I had an interest in mushroom. So I studied mycology, but my major was anthropology and through anthropology I studied all about the use of mushrooms as food as medicine and in shamanism, but when universe It was over. It’s like, how do you get a job in anthropology? Right money now? So So I thought, well, you know, I’d love to learn how to grow mushrooms. And it turns out that there was only one mushroom farm in Washington State and it was 60 miles down the road from Seattle. I went down, I, I ended up getting a job. And I was there for the next 10 years, literally living with mushrooms. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, amazing. Yeah. So when you started out this process, did you kind of have to learn the ins and outs of like, how to farm them, how to raise them, how to grow them? Like how did that process kind of unfold? Did you have to study from some really, you know, key mentors in this industry? Or did they just kind of didn’t actually happen organically on your own?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, this was a very large farm and we were growing 2 million pounds of mushrooms every year. I mean, there was there was 200 employees. And so I just started out at the bottom of this and there were a couple of mushroom growers there who are the head grower. So this operation and managers and I essentially was kind of like an apprentice to them. So over the next 10 years, I made my way up to being the production manager. And again, I mean, just think about this every day, every single crop and we’ve got like these crops and rotations, I’m seeing Justin I’m seeing 200 crops of mushrooms. Every year, every year 200 crops, think about a normal farmer and how many crops that normal farmer is going to see.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. So you started out what were your favorite mushrooms to grow off the bat? So obviously, you may have some personal preference based off of what you take or what works the best on your physiology, what allows you to feel the best, what are your favorite ones off the bat for you?

Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, you know, again, we’re growing Agaricus motions and that’s all we really had to eat at the time other than wild mushrooms. But while I was there, we had a Japanese scientist who was growing oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms and man hat Have you ever eaten shiitake mushrooms? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have Yes. 

Jeff Chilton: They’re delicious. They’re absolutely my favorite moment. Not only are they excellent in terms of just eating and nutritionally but medicinally they’re really solid so like shiitake mushrooms are one of those food as medicine. I’m foods.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah really big immune booster. So what are your favorite one? So in practice I clinically use Reishi maitake, shiitake, cordyceps. You have Lion’s Mane, turkey tail. Those are some some of the more common medicinal mushrooms. Do you have any specific favorites that you’ve used clinically or that you’ve seen in general?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, my favorite is actually reishi mushroom because reishi mushroom, you know, with medicinal mushrooms, the key compound a medicinal mushroom is called a Beta Glucan. Yeah, and this beta glucan is what activates our immune system. So it’s a potential creator, something that strengthens our immunity all mushrooms have these beta glucans even just edible mushrooms that we think of as medicinal mushrooms day. Yeah, because the Beta Glucan makes up half of the cell wall of mushrooms. And so, so all mushrooms will have that. But medicinal mushrooms, the top medicinal mushrooms have a very specific architecture of that Beta Glucan that makes them active compared to the others. Reishi has probably the largest amount of beta glucans that went to Turkey tail in all of our analyses. And we analyze every single batch of product that we make ratios got one of the highest levels of beta glucans, but it also has these compounds called try terpenoids. And those are the bitter compounds. So so it’s kind of like Reishi is medicinal mushroom plus, and that’s the one if you’re in Asia or something. I mean, it’s a mushroom of immortality. They’ve got stories about I mean, it’s just just really well known.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and we will go into exact companies. But I’ve been told by a couple of different mushroom experts that you want to trigger pain kind of extract about 15% or so in the medicinal mushroom extracts to kind of have a level of clinical potency. Is there a percent? Regarding the terpenes that people should look for or an amount regarding the one three?

Jeff Chilton: Well, I mean, they don’t get as high as 15%, unless you’re really trying to build them up. But just in general, they would be somewhere around 4%. And, and the trouble with just even giving a percentage is that there’s no companies or very few labs that can actually analyze for tried terpenes, but we can analyze for beta glucan. So what you really want to do with any machine product doesn’t matter what it is, look for an analysis of the beta glucans. And here’s, here’s a little key and a trick is that it used to be that everybody would say, oh, our product has x amount of polysaccharides. Okay, well, the problem with that and Beta Glucan is a polysaccharide So, so that everybody would think, okay, yeah, we got lots of polysaccharides lots of beta glucans. The problem is that polysaccharides are actually this starches and so many extracts out there of whatever kind Come on starch carriers. So in some cases, when we analyzed machine products, the level of starch was as much as 60%

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, okay. Wow. Yeah. So if you want to actually look at the certificate for the beta glucans, not the polysaccharide

Jeff Chilton: Absolutely. If companies just talking about polysaccharides they’re hiding something and, you know, we consider polysaccharide analysis for mushrooms to be absolutely useless. And we we’ve demonstrated that through our testing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then obviously the quality making sure there’s no other you know, heavy metals or joke like that pesticides or mushroom is generally grown organically, or do these are typically pesticides that may be given on a conventional kind of farming. 

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, there’s a lot of mushrooms probably the majority of mushrooms grown out there have pesticide use going on. It’s gotten much better. Certainly when I was at the mushroom farm in the 1970s. Justin, we had an actual program where it was like it on this day you spray this chemical a month down the line, you spray this chemical. I mean, it was a program for growing mushrooms and using pesticides and fungicides today, in the industry in the United States, they use a lot less than they used to but still, if you have the ability year you want to be looking for an organic we certified mushroom, I mean, and all our products are certified organic, and to me that’s really important.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: God and we’ll go over your stuff at the end here, but I’ll drop your website, realmushrooms.com great products there. Also, let’s kind of just back up a little bit. So we talked about some of the Beta Glucan, the one three Beta Glucan. We talked about the tritter pians I may be mispronouncing it for the last decade. Okay, tomato tomato, right, it works. So those are those the big kind of medicinal compounds that are active in mushrooms or another, like hidden compound we don’t know about yet.

Jeff Chilton: Well, there are a couple of those. But and what I want to emphasize here is Look, what scientists do out there when they look at any natural product is they fractionated and fractionated. And fraction it because they’re looking for the latest new drug. Right? So so you a person could say, oh, there are hundreds of compounds in mushrooms, and they all help in the activity. You know what? That may be true, but some of those compounds are going to only be there in minute amounts. And that’s just part of drug discovery, because they they find all these different compounds. So So really, what I focus on is look there are certain compounds occur and measurable amounts, they define this category like the beta glucan. And those are the ones that we can actually measure and use as markers for quality. So so that’s really important. One compound that I want to reveal to you right now that is it are in mushrooms and not into many other things. It’s a compound called ergothioneine. If you ever heard of ergothioneine?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ergothioneine I have not Can you talk about some of that what that is and what the benefits are?

Jeff Chilton: Well, ergothioneine is is a compound it’s actually an amino acid that they have found in a number of areas in our body, and they’re going we don’t produce it. What’s it doing there? And why is it concentrated in areas where there’s high oxidative stress, and then they’ve done a lot of studies with it and they indicate that it’s a very powerful antioxidant. In fact, it’s it’s It’s something that they’re thinking might even be a new vitamin. And mushrooms are one of the foods that contain high amounts of ergothioneine to the point where we now analyze every single product that we got for air go signing to establish a baseline and just to see okay, how much of this do we have in our mushrooms? So ergothioneine is one of those kind of special compounds we also analyze for a compound called air gost are all their gospel is the fungal sterile like our cholesterol, yes, in all fungi, all mushrooms, and and it is something that also has medicinal benefits and we can measure it as well. It’s something that that is has got some, some direct, basically anti tumor activities. It’s it’s something that that you know, plant vital sterols or something that is very beneficial. For us, so that’s another compound that we can measure and and use it as a measure for quality. And that’s really the key for what we do. We don’t try to build up anything in our products, we just want to have the profile that you expect to find in a dried mushroom. That’s what we’re looking for. So anytime we do an extract, we want to match it up on that profile. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Okay, so we have the ergaster all there. Let’s talk about some of the beta glucans. What are they doing to the your immune cells? I mean, I’ve seen some studies, they’re helping increase natural killer cells there is some of the terpenes are deactivating viruses. What do you know, based on your experience and your research you’ve done? What’s it doing to your immune system? How is it helping your body? 

Jeff Chilton: Well, these, these beta glucans, we actually have receptors for beta glucans. And these receptors are down in our our lower intestines are, they’re down there and so what how Beta glucans come down, they will, they will lock into these receptor sites, and then they will actually then potentially create or or essentially strengthen any immune response and create more immune cells like NK cells like macrophages, like T cells. So, that’s really where they essentially are going to help boost our our immunity and and what they’re considered is there can they’re considered a immune modulator. So they’re basically sitting there, they’re a potential creator. So they will essentially strengthen our immune response to whether it would be viruses or bacteria or other fungi. They’re there to essentially assist us and and you know, the way I look at that activity is preventive. I really see that as something that is, you know, in fact, we can be Taking them all the time. And they’re just sitting in the background, helping us out as we’re coping with all of these different stresses that come in, whether it be from bacteria, or whatever it is. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s in functional medicine, kind of where I’m practicing with my patients. We’re testing their stress response, we’re looking at their adrenal and their cortisol rhythm. And one of the herbs I’ve used used clinically for a very long time are various adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha is one of my favorite right here. And it seems to me based on some of the data that some of these medicinal mushrooms are actually having adaptogenic like a fact whether it’s buffering stress, or buffering the immune response. What’s your take on that?

Jeff Chilton: Oh, I think they’re, they’re, in fact considered to be adaptogens. And I would call them premier adaptogens especially something like Reishi I mean, absolutely. I mean, adaptogen really is something that that tries to keep us in homeostasis. It’s like this whole thing of balance and that’s kind of how I look at health. Is is disease is Cut going out of balance. And so what we’re really trying to do is get back to that homeostasis back to that state of balance and, and they’re there to help us, although there may be other things involved. Of course, like, you know, health is not just that simple. But again, yeah, adaptogen is something that will help us to, to mitigate those stresses that we have, or whatever they are, and bring us back into a state of balance. And I didn’t know that that to me is kind of like traditional Chinese medicine is all kind of based on that same principle there of balance and so adaptogens are something that will help us maintain that balance, which essentially means being healthy. I mean, you know, think about it for a second. If you’re healthy. You ever think about your health.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re able to adapt you have a certain level of adaptability. 

Jeff Chilton: Yeah, well, and yeah, and and, and when you’re sick, all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, my God, you know, you start thinking about your health and what you have to do to come back into that balance. But when you’re healthy, you’re just cruising around thinking yeah, everything is great. It’s wonderful.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah 100% I know there are various mushrooms like cortis apps, for instance, there’s some data they help improve DHCP levels, which is a precursor hormone to a lot of sex hormones and it’s made by the adrenals and that helps with stress and inflammation. Can you talk more about sex hormone modulation via some of these medicinal mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I know cortisol has been utilized and is considered to be in that category. Exactly the mechanism I’m not that certain of the mechanism myself and how it does that other than I know that it does have an effect on on oxygen utilization, which I think would be a big part of that. And you know, I think also we have to be very careful with something you know, like I’m not here to tell you Oh, yeah, take quarter steps and your your sexual your libido will improve or anything like that. I don’t know that for a fact. And in some cases, quarter seven, Even could be considered sort of like a doctrine of signatures kind of, kind of herb you familiar with doctrine of signatures if as if something looks like something that it must be helpful that and quarter steps is kind of a little bit phallic shaped, I mean, mushrooms are too, right. But and so it’s kind of like, okay. But I think you know what I think too, and there’s a lot of research done with core deception and it’s beta glucans. And it’s those effects I think anything that can help maintain or boost our immunity is going to have an effect on your, your basic libido and, and libidinous health.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I work with a lot of hormone issues, and I strongly recommend not to ever go kind of whole hog go in on just one thing to be the panacea. You know, you obviously want to make sure you’re making diet, lifestyle changes and you’re getting to the root of the underlying issue and some of these things may be a really good palliative support, to kind of throw in there as an important tool. For sure. I agree with that. What about like your national killer cells. What about these helper cells? What about really stimulating these kind of first? You know, these are artists are natural killers, which are the guys that are on the grounds for longer. Exactly first responder to an infection. What what herbs or what mushrooms are best for that? What do you know about that?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what I mean, if you go out and read the literature, and there is so much data out there, on this activity and, and look, much of that data and much of that research is is in vivo? It’s in vitro. We don’t have a lot of clinical data on that on that. So So really, that kind of scientific research, I can read it and go Okay, yeah, this is what this is what happens but going much deeper than that. I mean, I’m not the scientist doing that kind of work.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know what happens you kind of have that the general you know, outset mechanism of what’s happening.

Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what? There is so much there’s such a big body of research on the effects of beta glucans on in these kind of tests, I mean, thousands of papers. I mean, they’ve been studying beta glucans now for 30 or 40 years. And so, so that type of activity is something where, you know, I mean, when I looked at that research, I mean, I can only take it so far because I’m not a scientist doing that kind of work. So that’s not the kind of thing that i i really study too much and, and don’t have a hard time keeping up with it all, actually, but the actual mechanisms to me are more important, okay, actually, what is it? Is that fact is it in fact, stimulating these immune cells? Well, what are those immune cells do? Well, I’m sure a lot of practitioners like yourself or immunologists are, are much more capable about going deeper about exactly what they’re doing and how they’re working.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But just in general, just That kind of hundred hundred yard stare. We’re like looking at it. All right big picture, we’re going back, we know that these compounds are having an effect modulating the immune system, mobilizing some of these natural killer cells, can you kind of connect the dots based on what you know, with medicinal mushrooms in cancer? What’s your experience with that your experience or in the literature, you know?

Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, what I would say is, look, medicinal mushrooms are not going to cure anybody’s cancer. What they’re primarily used for is an edge event. In other words, there’s something that if you’re going through a, a standard chemotherapy or radiation or something like that, they’re going to help you your immune system, your body to cope with those two types of protocols which are tearing down your immunity and making you you know, sick to some degree. So that’s really where they come in. And, you know, in terms of folk remedies, I mean, mushrooms have been used as folk remedy for those kind of things, but terms of actually being a cure per se, I don’t look at them in that way at all i just i just consider them something that is going to help you to actually cope with this tremendous stress of not only the disease but also with the therapies that you’re that you know, science right now or the medical profession is actually using with people. So so you know, some of the some of the most well known drugs actually that have been produced from mushrooms one is called KSK. And the other is called PSP and they’re produced from Turkey tail and they but they are not like a just standard mushroom hot water extract or alcohol extract. There there actually have been fractionated Downton and extracted to the point where in Japan pFk is actually considered a drug and it is prescribed with cancer therapy. So that’s that’s an end. You know, it’s not like it’s it’s, I mean, it’s helping people. Maybe they’re getting a longer life by using that compared to the control groups. But there’s a lot of clinical data on that. But it’s not something that’s given to try and cure anybody. They’ve got another drug over there called Lenten and that is produced from Shiitake mushroom. And it is a it is unlike PS K, which is not a pure compound because it’s a protein bound polysaccharide Linton and is actually a pure beta 1316 glucagon, and it is utilized in the same way again, not alone, but along with these other therapies. And there’s another, a tremendous body of clinical work behind it to demonstrate that it does alleviate some of the symptoms and it also gives people a longer life than they otherwise would have, but not like, you know, significantly going to grow no longer live for years and years a year. Yeah, what you normally have.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when we talk about cancer, there’s never just one, you can’t have a cure when there’s dozens of different causes. If you’re getting exposed to toxins, or stress, or sleep or low vitamin D, or nutrient deficiencies, you can’t have just one care of nothing. There’s no such thing as a cure if there’s dozens of different potential vectors, but there’s things that we can do to kind of throw in there to support all the other things that we’re doing to, to bump up our immune response. That’s kind of the context of that.

Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, and and, you know, I think the other thing that we have to remember is that cancer in some ways could be lifestyle related. It could be diet related people eating the wrong things, I mean, or, or smoking or drinking or or any of those types of drug abuses. I mean, so there’s a lot of factors involved. And, you know, in a way, the first thing you’d want somebody to do is go Okay, why don’t you back off all of that you probably would prescribe somebody a certain type of diet you say, you know, you shouldn’t be eating this. You shouldn’t be drinking that. You need to make some real changes if you want to help the protocols. So you’re going to give them and those kind of things that are so important and because it’s if you’re looking at something from a holistic way, which I’m sure you are, then then you know that there are so many different factors that you have to deal with.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and these are I consider them to be adaptogen functional medicine tools that are very powerful that we plug in to a comprehensive program. So like that. What other let’s just say less notorious things that are mushrooms are used for besides the common immune adaptogenic kind of immune kind of cancer boosting effects. What else do you see what else do you recommend for

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what’s really interesting is is there’s a mushroom right now that is just like, gotten so popular. It’s called Lion’s Mane you heard Lion’sMane at all, I use lion’s mane.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like big E’s Reishi and cortis apps and but maitake and shiitake but I haven’t really been using it too much, but I do have some.

Jeff Chilton: Well, it’s it’s pretty interesting because there’s They actually the thing about Lion’s Mane is that we have clinical trials out of Japan, where they’ve actually got, like 30 different people around age 70. And then they’ve got a control group of 30 people and they feed them three grams of lion’s mane, they give them a whole battery of tests. 90 days later, they test them again. And what they find is that the people taking the lion’s mane do much better. And then they stopped taking Lion’s Mane for a month, and now they’re back to baseline and the same as the control. So, so they’ve got a number of these different clinical tests with Lion’s Mane lion’s mane. Actually, they found from their research stimulates the production of what’s called nerve growth factor. And nerve growth factor is a protein that essentially helps to maintain and strengthen our our neuron production and our neural network. So So So if you can stimulate the production of this nerve growth factor because what they find is as you get older your production of nerve growth factor starts to go down a bit and so so now I mean and so there you know how it is they’re trying to tie all these things together to find out Okay, why is it that we have this cognitive sort of let down as we get older and and people’s memories start to you know, get a little bit wobbly and they can’t remember as well and then we have dimension Alzheimer’s and all those other things so so the fact that there is actually something like a lion’s mane that let’s just call it a nootropic, which is kind of a category these days you probably heard of it and yeah, and so it’s like, I’m mad. It is just like taken off because.. Well, the compound there’s a couple of compounds in Lion’s Mane that produces they’re called harisonones, arenasenes, arenaserens, and I mean, this is another one of those things where, when you look at the when you look at the literature, there’s probably a couple dozen different, let’s just say, analogs of these different compounds that create these effects and and will boost this nerve growth factor. And you know, we’re just get worse beginning of researching that even though it’s been used in traditional Chinese medicine for these types of issues for quite a while.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s very cool. Yeah, when you look at these things you can read you can have a 20 page study, but if you walk away, what’s the bullet point mechanism? And what’s it doing and as long as you get that action point, that’s the the most important thing in my opinion, right? PhD pile higher and deeper, but you can you can also just get that the key take home action items, so I think that’s powerful. So any research on that connecting improvements and all timers or any neurodegenerative conditions at all?

Jeff Chilton: Actually, there is Yeah, they’ve got a couple studies on dementia. Okay, actually showing that it improves and also they have a few studies on depression, showing that it improves and you know what? Listen, it is not easy to get clinical trials with any natural product, or dandle not only that to get a good one because look, I’ve seen clinical trials done, and you look at them and go, okay, who sponsored them? And and who’s doing them and, yeah, you know, unless it’s a totally unbiased group, you have to be really careful. I like any research. I mean, you have to read the fine print of how this is done and who’s actually doing it. So these particular studies are done it Japanese universities, I like Japanese science, art or culture. Well, that as well. Yeah. And and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think I was seeing things such as like liver or kidney cancer, like one of the first line therapies over in Japan is some of these medicinal mushrooms. I think is we see our quarter steps is like first line in Japan for for liver cancer.

Jeff Chilton: Wow. Well, well, you know what’s interesting about you saying that is that I was at a conference in China in the mid 90s. And it was a Ganoderma Reishi conference and there was a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner there older man, maybe it’s in his 50s or something like that. And I was talking to him and he said his number one herb for the liver was Reishi. Yeah, yeah. And he had times he said, he said he would, he would use as much as 30 dried grams of ratioed. In his treatments. And, you know, the one of the things that’s interesting about traditional Chinese medicine is that when they’re using their herbal formulas, it’s strong. It’s powerful. They put a lot in there, they want to see something happen. You know, it’s not like supplements. What a supplements tell you to take, I mean, tell you to take one or two capsules a day doesn’t matter whether you’re Hundred 50 pounds or 250 pounds, they’re telling you two capsules a day. It’s like, Come on, let’s get real here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That will 30 grams is significant in the capsule, the average ratio is 500 milligrams account.

Jeff Chilton: Well, and of course this is, yeah, this is 30 grams of dried mushrooms. So let’s just say if you if you were to do a 10 to one extract, you could you could get it down to three grams of extract or something like that, which still would be quite a lot. I mean, so So in other words, he was he’s just basically saying, look, we use a lot, we use a high dose. For us. It’s the main herb that we use for liver problems and I thought amazing, and and that’s where the tri terpenes come in. They’ve got a lot of data, long tried terpenoids with the liver.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know some of the mechanisms in regards to I’ll still call them trinitarians. I’m the static. Actually they deactivate viruses, any feedback on that. What do you know about the deactivation of viruses? How does that happen? Is it just like binding to And then making the virus less pathogenic.

Jeff Chilton: That’s, that’s really interesting. I couldn’t really answer that question that’s for a virologist, you know, you know, this is the thing, it’s like, you get into all of that research, and I can read a paper and maybe, especially these days, a week later, I’ve forgotten the whole thing. I mean, whereas the research that I do myself and the research that we do in my company, you know, I can go into that in great detail and what we’ve done there, but in terms of this other stuff, I can read it, but you know what it’s like, it’s just like, if you want to write a paper on something, you pull together all this research, you spend months, dealing with it, working with it, putting it into the shape that you want it in, and by the end of it, you’re an expert, right, and you know it backwards and forwards, it’s like but, man, I can’t do that anymore with a lot of that research because I’m busy doing other things

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: make sense? All the listeners have to know that there’s mechanisms out there, it can provide that benefit. That’s great. If you have anything to add, you know, any value you want to add to it above and beyond based on your experience, that’s great. But you kind of said a couple of things that I wanted to highlight you talked about a lot of the pharmaceutical research in some of these mushrooms are these kind of compounds or isomers. Within mushrooms, you see a lot of that with turmeric or curcumin as well, it seems like Big Pharma is trying to find this like, you know, active compound and isolated. Now we know just with natural compounds in general, you can’t really patent them unless you can find something and then twist it around a little bit and make it so it’s not found in nature. And then you could patent it. So if someone comes in and says, Hey, reishi mushroom as this amazing benefit, let’s put 100 million dollars into this, you know, to these studies, and you see this great benefit, guess what, you can’t get the ROI on your investment because everyone can now sell Reishi because there’s no patent so you have companies that are in there trying to make a drug out of it by tweaking it a little bit.

Jeff Chilton: That’s absolutely right. And that’s that’s where these particular products like Linton It’s a patented product, I mean, because it’s it’s actually a drug and it is like they pulled out this one very specific Beta Glucan for that mushroom. And so that’s what they’ve got a pure compound. And, you know, in what I do, and certainly in the general, let’s just say supplement industry or herbal medicine space, I mean, what we, I believe that any of these natural products, there’s multiple components, they’re all working together, and to try and build one up or split one off or anything like that. It kind of is not the way that a traditional herbalist or, or the way we would like to see these natural products use. We want to see the whole herb used and certainly we can concentrate them in an into an extract because it’s like going, Oh, how am I going to take 30 grams of Reishi. It’s like, you’re certainly not going to want to just eat it anyway. You might want to boil it down into tea and then you can Drinking, okay, but but again, supplement makers, their powders, nobody’s going to say okay, yeah, take 10 capsules of this particular product, they want to have a concentrate when we make concentrates, we want to make sure that the profile is similar to what the raw material has. Because we believe that all of those compounds that are in there need to be in there and should be in there for this to work the way it’s supposed to work.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It gets really, really important. That’s good. So when you talk about I mean, there’s so many get my head wrapped around this here. So when we talked about some of these compounds, like you mentioned, the whole mushroom has a lot of other antioxidant, other beneficial properties that kind of work in synergy. So when you just pull one mech one compound out, you’re missing that beautiful matrix that was encapsulating it. So that totally makes sense. I get that. And what’s your take on dosing in general, I know that may be different from Reishi, the lion’s mane to cordyceps. Is there a general dosing structure that you like to adhere to based on weight or certain conditions

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’ve got a physician friend who was originally from Hong Kong where he studied traditional Chinese medicine. But then he became an MD. He practices in New York in 1992. He wrote a paper on the proper dose for a reishi mushroom and he went back and he looked at all of the traditional literature, everything he can find, and he came up and he said, Look, a common dose for that would be a two to five dried grams of the mushroom or extract equivalent. So if you were like, Okay, I’ve got a five grams if I do a 10 to one extract, that means I could do 500 milligrams as a daily dose and so I use that kind of as my guideline for all of the mushrooms I say look, two to five dried grams or or equivalent In terms of an extract and the other thing that we can do to which is which is really great is when we have these clinical trials. For example, with lion’s mane, these clinical trials are based on three dried grams of just Lion’s Mane powder. My God, that is not hardly anything really when you think about it, and just to give you an idea, okay, three dried grams. A normal mushroom is 90% water. So what that means is 30 grams of fresh lion’s mane, that would be like one Lion’s Mane one small Lion’s Mane that you would you would eat. So, three dried grams is not a lot and yet they were getting these benefits from that. And my thing is, you know, I kind of like and I’ve got friends in the herbal industry that have been there a long time making extracts and all that. One of my friends is like, I want my extracts to be strong enough that when somebody takes it, they’re going to feel something And I think that’s kind of interesting because, you know, that’s what, in a sense, the traditional Chinese practitioners are sort of doing when they’re giving people higher doses of these things. They’re like, we want to see something happen. We want to see people feel this, we want to see some benefits right away. We don’t want a low dose people and yeah, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t so so you know, and and look, I don’t want to get too much into dosing because I’m not a practitioner. I’m not on the front lines at all. So that’s something where someone like yourself or others would, would, you know, if you’re in clinical practice, you would see that you would see the effects. I don’t get that kind of feedback so much, but I really think that it doesn’t matter what it is you have to take enough of it to get the benefits.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, I’ve been actually doing three to five grams in general for a very long time. So usually 500 milligram capsule doing six, and then if I’m acute when I’m sick, I’m up to 12 capsules, 556 grams a day. So I’ve seen that have to be very, very therapeutic. That’s excellent. And so when we’re looking at mushrooms, you know, we’ll go into specific brands, what are the things we should look for? To assess potency? What should we things we should look for in the back of the label? What should we taste for? You talked about Reishi kind of tasting bitter earlier. How can someone look on the back of a label and assess what’s going on?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, one of the things as a mushroom grower, I know the economics of growing mushrooms. You know, I mean, I’ve like I was on that big farm. I had a small farm myself for a while I know what the economics are. If you grow mushrooms, you can grow them fresh, take them to the market, you can make a living but the fact of the matter is, is that as supplements, we’re dealing with a dry powder. Mushrooms are 90% water. So the issue is that if you can get $5 as a grower for that pound of fresh mushrooms, if you dry it out, now you have to get $50 for that same pound of dried mushrooms and in terms of the supplement industry. The Economics don’t work. I realized that very early on. And so that’s why I spent a lot of time in China in the 90s. Working with growers and working with processors, and in 1997, I went to China with Octa, which is a large organic certification organization. And we held the first workshop for certification, organic certification of mushrooms in China 1997. So that’s where we grow and process all of our mushrooms. But in the United States, what companies do, there’s not a single there’s not a single company in the United States that grows a mushroom and sells that as a supplement unless they’re a small little farm selling their own supplements and growing their own mushrooms. But in terms of the industry, in general, it doesn’t happen because it’s not economically viable. So what happens is in the United States, we’ve got big companies producing mycelium, which is the vegetative stage of this organism that we call a mushroom They put this mycelium on sterilized grain. They grow it out on the grain. And in the end of the process, they harvested all dry it grind it to a powder, grain and all. So one of the things that I did is in 2015 is that it did a big study with 95 different samples 40, of which I bought off the internet. And they were all these mycelia grain products. We tested them for beta glucans. And the test also allowed us to test for alpha glucans, which are starches. Mushrooms don’t have starch. So so what we found was all of these us grown products were very low and beta glucans like around 5% very high in alpha glucan, which is the starch 30 to 60%. To me, that was obvious because they’re grown on grain and the grains not taken out of the product. A mushroom shouldn’t be 25 to 50%, beta glucagon, and there should be no starch and maybe one or 2% worth of glycogen. So so it was just all these products were just the exact opposite of what you want to get an emotional product. Well it turns out that those products right now dominate the market. And and a lot of companies don’t even tell you that you’re not actually getting a true Martian product. Some companies do. If you look at the supplements, fact some of them will say mycelium and then on the other, they will say, my ciliated grain of some sort oats or rice or something like this. But other companies who buy those raw materials, they’re being sold to those companies as mushroom.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And even the companies that he what’s the fruiting body verse Well,

Jeff Chilton: okay, a fruiting body is a mushroom. Okay, and so, whereas just quickly, a mushrooms don’t have seeds, they have spores, or out in nature germinates into a very fine filament, multiple filaments come together and form a network. That network is called mycelium. That is the The vegetative body of this organism, the mushroom that comes up from that mycelium, that vegetative body produces a fruiting body that we call a mushroom. So, this vegetative mycelium, you can take that and and you grow it out in a laboratory. And actually that’s what they use that seed to grow mushrooms. But instead of actually using it as seed, they will grow it out. These companies will grow it out on the grain it’s sterile, to grind it to a powder. You know, a Tempe is. Yep. Typically, it’s 10 pages. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s cooked soybean with fungal mycelium. So you’re actually you’re actually eating mycelium. It’s a great food. And that’s what these products are, is they’re actually Tempe, disguised as a nutritional supplement.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how can people find the real deal then if we’re going to look in some of these companies aren’t saying it’s mycelium. fruiting bodies. What other resources can people utilize to to know what’s really going on with their mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Well, a couple things. One of which is which is made in the USA. Forget it. It’s one of these mycelium and grain products. Yeah. Number two, look, pour it out. Taste it. We were talking earlier, about Reishi. Right? pour out your Reishi capsule and taste it. If it tastes bland, it’s not Reishi it’s one of these grain products, regimes bitter. We used to do what we call the Reishi challenge. We do that at a trade show. And people would taste one and then they taste the Reishi extract and they go, Ah, holy shit, give me some water. You know, it’s like, powerfully bitter. I mean, totally. I’m not kidding you. So it’s a it’s really crazy. So, so I mean, I mean just and there are ways that we can know the other way which is really fun, which I love and you can use on any of these different products is you you get yourself a little bottle of iodine. You put about two or four you put on four capsules and a quarter cup of water. You Stir it all up, you put 10 drops of iodine in there, if there’s starch in there, it will turn black. Do that with a genuine mushroom product, it’ll turn starch in there, do that with a genuine mushroom product, the water will turn the color of the iodine, but it won’t go black unless of course, you know, some some of for example, some of our mushroom extracts are black already. So it’s hard to do a test with them but but some of them are not. And so you can put the drops in and it won’t turn and then it’s just another simple test.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, and if people can call up the company and get their certificate analysis regarding what’s in there, what should they be looking for again regarding the 1311, Beta Glucan or the the terpenes what should they be looking at percentage wise

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what for for the beta glucans you should be looking for anywhere you know depends from machine to machine, but anywhere from, like ratio you should be looking for, for something over 30% So, you’d be looking for 30 to 50% on your Reishi product. Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s right. So, so look for beta glucans. If it says polysaccharides, you know, forgetting most hackers are are meaningless. The other thing too is you can call it the company and say, Look, are there any grains in your product? You know, I mean, can you imagine being at paleo FX, and having somebody come up to me and they see my, you know, big mushroom thing behind me. I love mushrooms. And they they say, and I say like, Oh yeah, that’s great. And I asked them what brand they’re taking and I go like, oh, man, I hate to tell you this, but you’re taking a lot of grain powder, and they’re just like, nobody there pull their hair out, right? Because it’s like, I thought I was taking a mushroom product.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the best sourcing that you find right now is Japan is that kind of where you grow a lot- 

Jeff Chilton: No, no we grow everything in China and-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m sorry you’re in China. All China. Okay. Oh, thank you. Kind of harvested there. 

Jeff Chilton: We have we have contract growers in China

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: farmers like big farms or

Jeff Chilton: Individual. I mean, individual farmers and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That must be difficult.

Jeff Chilton: Hey, dig this. China produces 85% of the world’s mushrooms.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I believe it. It’s part of their culture. It’s embedded.

Jeff Chilton: It is 85%. I mean, and there are 10s of thousands of mushroom growers in China. And I’ve been there again since the early 90s. I’ve developed relationships. I have Chinese partners, they organize the growers. For me, we have beautifully brand new factories where we bring the dried mushrooms we produce our extracts, then we send the bulk powders over and then they all get I mean, Nam x which is my company, we sell our raw materials to hundreds of other companies that put them out under their own label.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So with all the terrorists and China are you getting hit the Last year too,

Jeff Chilton: Man, don’t even talk to me.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, well, you produce a great product. So you don’t have much competition over here, you know?

Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, that’s true. But you know what the fact of the matter is, is those products that I’m telling you about, if you look at their front label, it says mushroom. And a lot of people are fooled by that, and you turn it over, and only a few of them will say mycelium, and in the other say, you know, my ciliated grains of some sort. So, unless you’re really paying attention, you don’t know. And so those I’m telling you, those companies have probably 70% of the market out there and because they’ve just been doing it for for quite a long time and they keep selling it as mushroom when it’s not mushroom and I’ve pushed back on that and they’re finally starting to, you know what, there’s an FDA compliance document, Justin, that’s been there since 1976. And it says, you cannot sell mycelium and call it or infer that it is mushroom. Hmm. Interesting FDA compliance done a lot of companies ignore that. They ignore that and why? Because look, FDA is got bigger fish to fry. Right? Oh, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of their bigger issues. Well, hopefully this information will help educate listeners, any feedback at all on psychedelic mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Yeah, they’re wondering about personal feedback. Yeah, well, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you have that, that’s fine. Do you grow them? micro dosing, or?

Jeff Chilton: you know, part of my studies at university back in the 60s was on the use of psychedelic mushrooms. Period. Yeah, I know. I know. We actually had them growing the Pacific Northwest and also I spent a year and a half in Mexico and 1971 72 tracking down people that use them using them myself, so I’m very familiar with them. And in fact, in 1973, I wrote a book called the mushroom cultivator, which is all about growing mushrooms. At home, it includes those in there if people are interested. So, so no, I’m very familiar with them. I think they’re tremendously beneficial. I think, you know, not only just like right now they’re using them for end of life issues. People have fear issues about end of life, they’re using them for mental illness, people now are using them as a trophic. Taking a microdose you know, like, micro dosing with them. You know, what, I think ultimately, they’re going to be revolutionary, as well as evolutionary. But it’s just a matter of how long those authorities out there allow it to proceed right now they’re allowing the researchers to do their thing and and you know, what, I never thought pot would be legal for God’s sakes. I mean, it’s like, I thought that would always be prohibited and then writes prohibition on it and look right now I’m like, I don’t believe it. And I don’t even smoke anymore, but I used to. Yes,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. Interesting so with the psychedelic mushrooms are there different types kind of like you know in medicinal mushrooms?

Jeff Chilton: Well you know what there’s there’s a genus called Cyclops A B, which is so psilocybin is named after. And in that genus, there are dozens and dozens of species but there’s probably about 12 different species that are pretty powerful, reasonably similar in their effects. Some indigenous people look at them of having different qualities and that’s, that’s probably unlikely, but you’re going to get somewhat the same type of experience from them. Again, it’s really gets down to if you’re going to use them you really need to use the proper set, which is

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: LSD, was that an LSD and psilocybin or

Jeff Chilton: the what’s in there, the actual compounds psilocybin, so very different compound from from LSD. I mean, LSD is you take it in terms of micro grams, right, I mean, micro grams, I mean, small 200 micrograms, whereas With with psilocybin you’d be taking 1000 milligrams 2000 milligrams LSD is tremendously powerful, far more concentrated. Well I guess you could say that but it’s just a different type of compound it actually different way but it gives you a very somewhat similar experience and you know what, I have a positive view of that I don’t see anything again like you like I say setting setting and doing these things properly is really important.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it proper setting any particular dose or species of the medicinal or the psychedelic mushroom you recommend or you like personally?

Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what the there’s there’s pretty standard information out there people can find that the the thing about it is is right now if you want if you want to get those mushrooms I mean there’s there’s like, millions of pounds of them grown every year. Wow. They’re everywhere. I mean, millions, I’m talking millions of pounds of them being grown. out there. It’s like,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: did it just kind of grow naturally in nature? Do you have to do some things? Hey,

Jeff Chilton: hey, you’re down in Texas, they actually grow on the Gulf Coast. They grow in a cow pastures. Yeah, you can go out there and find them yourself there in the cow pastures and they’re not really illegal until you pick them up and put them in your hand.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How do you differentiate if you’re the average person going in and hunting mushrooms? And how do you know a magic mushroom from a regular edible mushroom?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you really have to go with somebody who knows what they’re doing. You do not want to pick and eat any mushroom unless you’re absolutely certain you do not. I mean, it’s just like, you know, it’s not just mushrooms, but plants have poisons too. I mean, it’s just common knowledge or common sense that you’re not going to pick something and go Wow, that looks great. Let’s let’s go ahead and eat it right and it’s like yeah, no,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: no anytime soon. The benefits of micro dosing for these magic mushrooms at all versus just regular.

Unknown Speaker: Well you know what, I think it’s a really interesting subject and and what people are looking for is a little bit of mental acuity, I mean, think about it for a second if all of a sudden your eyesight sharpened up a little bit or or all of a sudden your hearing sharpened up a little bit man listening to music or something on on these as on believable. And so people are getting, you know, these sort of like cognitive effects on micro doses where they just feel like they, they are little more focused, they feel like things are kind of coming together a little better. And this is something where we’re going to learn a lot more about it as more and more people come out and talk about it. And and more people kind of study the experience and see what’s going on there. But I think it’s an amazingly evolutionary step. And and I’m very much very positive about it and very much behind it. I hope it happens. We don’t we don’t sell those. But somebody Well, I mean, there’s, there’s already like, like I said, there are millions of pounds being being grown and sold out there right now there’s so many growers that you could not even imagine it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then regarding the you said the micro dosing, is that going to affect like coordination or you’re kind of describing is it more? Is it up regulate some of these things that wouldn’t affect you driving a vehicle or things like that? Or would it still compromise you physically?

Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what, if it on a microdose, you’re probably okay, but you’re really going to have to know at what level you don’t want to get to because certainly nobody should be driving a vehicle. When there are two let’s just say hi. That’s not a good thing to do. It doesn’t really matter what substance you happen to be consuming. That’s not a good idea. I mean, you know what, dude, you know, take any substance and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: dry and then legal, but you’re you’re saying and somewhat you’re kind of describing it in some ways that it can up regulate some of these senses, which is interesting.

Jeff Chilton: Well, no, it is very interesting. I mean, I mean listen, I don’t know have you ever have you ever you know,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I never had that experience in medicinal mushroom? Yeah, I’d like to at some point but like you said the settings really important yeah

Jeff Chilton: well you know what when you do them and and not just even a micro dose but do it a little bit over the threshold dose so you’re actually getting the experience and you go out in in a natural setting that you are already familiar with and you really like you will see and feel things that you’ve never felt before and it will really open you up to I think one of the most beneficial parts of that which is the realization that we are all connected nature everything all

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you like I know with like eyewash cut there’s certain herbs you combine it with to make the hangover kind of feeling less is do you combine it with anything to neutralize certain feeling?

Jeff Chilton: no, you don’t affect combined with anything? No, just take it just as it is. Yeah. And the beauty of it too is that you can actually get the real thing I mean, I mean look back in the 60s. So much of what was going around were like pills. You’re like, you know, someone says, Oh yeah, try this. I had a great experience and you’re like, really? Should I try that or not? I’m yeah, I better know that person very well. And I’m not going to be at who knows what a concert is something says here, try this. Take it. I’m like, Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll just take that pill. No, it’s like, No, no, no, no, be smart about it. Be be cognizant about the fact that you want to be in a in an environment that is supportive and comfortable and something that’s not threatening. You don’t want to be like, especially at a higher dose. You don’t want to be sitting there in the end somebody knocking at the door and you’re like, Who the hell is that? right? Exactly. Well, those are the phone rings.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This conversation is taking so many turns. So we talked about the medicinal benefits for your health, for stress for cancer, and then we talked about the whole magic mushroom section. I think we hit it pretty good. Jeff, is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with? I mean, your website is real mushrooms. com great information there anything else? We haven’t quite touched upon that you want to highlight here briefly.

Jeff Chilton: Well, well, a couple things. One of which is is the Nammex.com is the website for my company, the main company. And what I like to say is we got a lot of information there. So people should go there. We’ve got NAMMEX. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the links below in the show notes below. Realmushrooms.com as well.

Jeff Chilton: and and the other thing is, look, what I tell people all the time is mushrooms are the Forgotten food. They’re the ones that are sitting right in between plants and animals and they’re a food that I everybody should put those into their diet. They’re a great food, high in fiber, they’ve got these medicinal compounds as well as very nutritious. So, get out there, start eating mushrooms, start putting them into your diet. It’s really important and it’s a wonderful food as medicine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the mushroom it’s like the real tall skinny ones that they serve in the steak restaurants

Jeff Chilton: and like kind of very light colored. Yes, yes. And enoki, I love them. Oh, yeah, I mean, but I mean if you apply them and bring them home and you strip them apart and they’re like noodles you fry them up there currently. Yeah. Fabulous. That’s great. Yeah, one of my favorites.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I really appreciate you sharing this great Intel here there any other questions that you’d love to answer your passionate about that I didn’t ask you yet that you want to hit?

Jeff Chilton: No, I think we’ve really covered it really well, you know, I and you know, it was really fun talking to you and I really enjoyed being here a lot. So thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, Jeff, thank you so much. We’ll be back. Look forward to checking in with you down the road. You have a great awesome bye.: Do you like I know with like eyewash cut there’s certain herbs you combine it with to make the hangover kind of feeling less is do you combine it with anything to neutralize certain feeling?

Jeff Chilton: no, you don’t affect combined with anything? No, just take it just as it is. Yeah. And the beauty of it too is that you can actually get the real thing I mean, I mean look back in the 60s. So much of what was going around were like pills. You’re like, you know, someone says, Oh yeah, try this. I had a great experience and you’re like, really? Should I try that or not? I’m yeah, I better know that person very well. And I’m not going to be at who knows what a concert is something says here, try this. Take it. I’m like, Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll just take that pill. No, it’s like, No, no, no, no, be smart about it. Be be cognizant about the fact that you want to be in a in an environment that is supportive and comfortable and something that’s not threatening. You don’t want to be like, especially at a higher dose. You don’t want to be sitting there in the end somebody knocking at the door and you’re like, Who the hell is that? right? Exactly. Well, those are the phone rings.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This conversation is taking so many turns. So we talked about the medicinal benefits for your health, for stress for cancer, and then we talked about the whole magic mushroom section. I think we hit it pretty good. Jeff, is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with? I mean, your website is real mushrooms. com great information there anything else? We haven’t quite touched upon that you want to highlight here briefly.

Jeff Chilton: Well, well, a couple things. One of which is is the Nammex.com is the website for my company, the main company. And what I like to say is we got a lot of information there. So people should go there. We’ve got NAMMEX. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the links below in the show notes below. Realmushrooms.com as well.

Jeff Chilton: and and the other thing is, look, what I tell people all the time is mushrooms are the Forgotten food. They’re the ones that are sitting right in between plants and animals and they’re a food that I everybody should put those into their diet. They’re a great food, high in fiber, they’ve got these medicinal compounds as well as very nutritious. So, get out there, start eating mushrooms, start putting them into your diet. It’s really important and it’s a wonderful food as medicine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the mushroom it’s like the real tall skinny ones that they serve in the steak restaurants

Jeff Chilton: and like kind of very light-colored. Yes, yes. And enoki, I love them. Oh, yeah, I mean, but I mean if you apply them and bring them home and you strip them apart and they’re like noodles you fry them up there currently. Yeah. Fabulous. That’s great. Yeah, one of my favorites.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I really appreciate you sharing this great Intel here there any other questions that you’d love to answer your passionate about that I didn’t ask you yet that you want to hit?

Jeff Chilton: No, I think we’ve really covered it really well, you know, I and you know, it was really fun talking to you and I really enjoyed being here a lot. So thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, Jeff, thank you so much. We’ll be back. Look forward to checking in with you down the road. You have a great awesome bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

www.realmushrooms.com

www.nammex.com

Audio Podcast:  

http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/medicinal-mushrooms-and-their-health-benefits-with-jeff-chilton-podcast-261

Recommended product:

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The Top Causes of Gut Inflammation | Podcast #260

It’s Thanksgiving season! For today’s episode, Dr. J and Evan Brand talk about diet and lifestyle strategies during the holidays, how the food we take causes a few gut inflammation, how we address it and how we can treat it. Check out this podcast to learn more.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover: 

00:01 Thanksgiving, Instant Pot

06:38 Oils for the body

13:34 Food additives

20:55 Stress

28:52 Circadian rhythm

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live it’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Evan, how are you doing man? How was your Thanksgiving?

Evan Brand: I’m doing very good. I made my first Turkey. And it turned out wonderful I was in the in the Cooksey this year and I really enjoyed it. We did a pasture fed turkey that we got from like 20 minutes down the road. And we did the brine we went to Whole Foods and got this like organic seasoning Brian combo that we put in a big ol VAT basically let the turkey sit in there for 1314 hours and rubbed a bunch of grass fed butter on it the next day, put some herbs and stuff on top and bake the bad boy, I want to hear about your experience because because baking is kind of boring. You did something a lot more fun.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’ve been smoking my Thanksgiving Day Turkey for the last five years. You know, being in Austin and with Texas barbecue. I was like hey, let’s let’s let’s do it. The old Texas style so I got a trigger smoker. I think we did. I posted an Instagram and Facebook picture honest I didn’t want it wants to take a look, you can feel free to head over to my Facebook or Instagram page. And we smoked it. I think it was Apple, cherry and oak. And it came out great did about four hour time cooked it about 250 to 280 degrees or so. And it came out phenomenal. So really great.

Evan Brand: Well other people can do Turkeys like people that are in other countries, if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, it doesn’t mean you can’t smoke a turkey. That’s the interesting thing. Like we do these really, really good meals, but it’s only for like one day a year. It’s like why not smoke a turkey? Just randomly maybe we should do that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it. I mean, I paid a little bit more money to have the turkey be like pasture fed, organic, high quality. So great meal. Excellent. My animals are still benefiting from all the the kind of the, let’s say all the cartilaginous connective tissue that I could scrounge off the carcass afterwards, so they’re loving it.

Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. Speaking of I threw the carcass out in the woods and my shih tzu she went out there and found it and I guess she gorgeous herself on the carcass and so she spent the rest of the day you can guess what she was doing. She was throwing it all up. She ate her her body weight and carcass. Oh man. That’s crazy. Very cool. So that was a bad mistake and then the turkey vultures came in the next day and finish the carcass off which was pretty cool to see. That is cool. Excellent. The life cycle thank you for the turkeys. Yeah circle of life totally.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, that’s cool. I mean, we’ve talked about a lot of diet and lifestyle strategies during the holiday. So you know some of the sites that I did good quality mashed potatoes grass fed butter, we did a gluten free grain free pumpkin pie kept it really simple. And then we just did it like green beans with some bacon in there. Some asparagus. Some squash, kept it really simple, really clean, high quality food. So it was overall great, great holiday love Thanksgiving.

Evan Brand: Yeah, we did green beans and the pressure cooker the Instant Pot which turned out good aids, put some garlic salt in there. It took like six minutes. Throw your green beans in threw in some butter threw in. She might have threw in a little avocado oil too. I can’t remember. But then some garlic salt, and of course some bacon six minutes. It was perfect. We did bake sweet potatoes, slice them up. Just put some cinnamon and coconut sugar on them with butter, put them in the oven, bake them. What else did we do almond flour muffins. Those were good. Put some almond butter on top of those bad boys. That was kind of our dessert. And yeah, so people talk about their board, and then they go off their diet. So we’re kind of transitioning into the topic of gut inflammation and the causes of it. Yes, but a lot of people sabotage themselves because they say that they get bored of their diet and they don’t know what to eat. But you could eat sweet potatoes and Turkey and green beans all the time and be totally healthy and not bored.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s typically not a good excuse. Because people that say that say they’re bored. It sounds like their diet is that of a world traveler where they’re eating all this fine cuisine. Every now and then I see it but most of the time it’s not. It’s kind of like boring grains are boring, boring, kind of conventional. Food I think I’ve seen data on it that the average person only eats 12 foods in their lifetime on at-

Evan Brand: I’ll believe it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the fact that someone’s like well I’m bored it’s like yeah yeah but on average you’re not eating that many foods and you can really create a lot of variety eating some of the you know, paleo template foods there’s a lot of options especially with me obviously any kind of meat any kind of vegetable within reason and then healthy fats and then dialing in the carbs according to what you need and really emphasizing on food quality is important so I like that also in support man, mashed potatoes 10 minutes Easy peasy done where like you may be boiling potatoes for like, you know 45 minutes to an hour or baking them for an hour before you mash them. So really saves time. Now this may be a dumb question, but are you you’re not mashing those beforehand. You’re just throwing in like the chunks and then pressure cook the chunks. Not even a chunk, man, just the whole potato. Oh, wow. Okay, like I just throw the whole potato in done 10 minutes. Put it out, throw it on a Pyrex tray, maximum Mash mash mash mash butter salt done, beautiful like, Okay, I’m gonna try it the Instant pot really saves a lot of time you can do ribs on that thing and like 30 minutes or normally may take you five hours, I think is a really good invention. The only issue with the Instant pot is you just got to be really focused and you got to make sure that you vent it when you open the thing up. And also make sure that little kind of little thing that pops up. It’s like a little kind of meter device that pops up make sure it falls back down below so you know it’s not pressurized when you open it up and a couple of patients will burn themselves or you can read stuff online where people open it up and it is like a bomb if you open it up without depressurizing

Evan Brand: and thank you to today’s sponsor Instant Pot.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, Instant Pot! I’ll put will put our Amazon links below so if anyone wants to access the Instant Pot will put the link below we’d like it. It’s really good.

Evan Brand: That is a joke. They’re not technically sponsoring the podcast but I did see some good Black Friday deals on those. So even if you’re listening to this like a year from now, I mean the instant pots generally 100 bucks or less. So I think it should be It should be in your cooking strategy. And that way, you’re not going to be eating some of the garbage that we’re talking about, like industrial seed oils. Why don’t we talk about this, let’s dive into some of these big causes of things that people are doing to destroy their gut lining.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And just to highlight one more thing before we move on is anytime we talk about a product, we’ve actually used it ourselves and we like it. So we want to be 100% authentic about products, if we if we like it, and we’ve used it, we will talk about it just know if we are talking about it. It’s because we’ve used it and we like it. we approve it. Awesome. So let’s go dive into so you were just talking about the some of the top things that drive gut inflammation, take it away.

Evan Brand: Yeah. So the the big oils, that’s that’s the problem is a lot of these oils. And if you look at the standard American diet, just even 100 years ago, your grandparents or your great grandparents, they did not have access to these type of oils. They were going to be cooking with your traditional fast like they’re going to be doing a lot of lard and maybe some beef tallow Some of these traditional fats like if I asked my grandfather, what did your grandmother cook you? And what does she cook it with? She was not using soybean oil. She was not using corn oil. She was not using grapeseed oil, which is canola. She was not using peanut oil. And if they did something fried, it was going to be fried and possibly bacon fat, which came from the pig in the backyard of the farm, or it was going to be cooked in some type of like a beef tallow where the cows were on the back part of the farm. my grandpa’s grandparents had like 300 acres, and they had a bunch of cows back there. So it wasn’t, hey, we’re going to take this canola oil, we’re going to coat which really annoying as I’ve seen some gluten free fish out there like some breaded fish, but the problem is it’s loaded with canola oil. So it’s kind of like do you take the risk, like the pros and cons does the implement the implement inflammatory component of the canola oil does that counteract this this damaged Seed Oil, does that counteract the benefit of the cod or the salmon or whatever else you get? And the answer is, I don’t know. I think you kind of have to choose your battles. What’s your what’s your comment on it?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so when it comes down to fats, most plant fats are not going to be the best unless they’re cold extracted, or unless they’re minimally processed to extract the fats, partly because of the processes of extracting attends the damage to the fats, because the heat and the extraction process also makes the fats rancid and taste bad. There’s a lot of like deodorizing and filtration, and different processes to make it more palatable that you would never be able to have it a natural state. So the best plant fats are going to be obviously number one is coconut oil, because it’s a saturated fat, it’s any more temperature stable. And then number two would be like either a cold pressed olive oil or a good quality avocado which is primarily amodo one saturated fat and then premier something like a palm, which is more in a kind of saturated state. And then of course, you can do outside of that, and avocado oil would be pretty reasonable. And those would be my top ones on the plant side. Is there anything you wanted to add there, I mean, there are some nut based some sea based oils, but then you start ramping up the Omega six. And those may not be the best. There are some supplemental oils that are more GLA based that I’ll give supplementally like black currant seed oil, but will give it supplementally and that’s coming from great sources that are going to be in capsules that won’t be oxidized and such that will be really good and you know, wouldn’t be an oil, I hope it wasn’t my top animal or top plant based fats. And yeah, that’s going to be really helpful because bad fats are going to one create a lot of oxidative stress. And they’re going to deplete a lot of your antioxidant reserves. Because if those fats are oxidize, your bodies need a lot of vitamin C and vitamin E to help with the oxidative stress that those fats may cause your body.

Evan Brand: Very true. Let me ask you the question about the The breading so like you find a good fish, but it’s a gluten free breading. So it’s not covered in wheat. But it’s some type of non gluten containing flour, but then you’ve got canola oil. Do you think you’re still going to be net positive in terms of nutrition because you still got the good fish, but yet you’ve got the inflammatory oils? Or would you say, just get you some grilled fish? And then if you want to read it, you read it yourself?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, I’m, I’m on the fence with that there’s a product that we like, I think it’s Alexis, and they have two potato fries. And my wife will do that for my son just because it’s really easy, but they have a little bit of canola oil in there. So it’s like Ah, so you have this kind of convenience factor where ideally, if you could, you always would want to put your own fat on there if you could, and my eat my easy saturated fat or my easy fat for cooking. That’s plant based would be like avocado. I like all avocado because it tastes a little bit more neutral. I do not like olive oil as much olive oil is better for dressings, but I’ll do it Hello for cooking so I’m kind of on the fence with that but I would tend to if you have control over it You always choose the better fat over the junkie fat if you can.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, well said so, the interesting thing is like coconut oil and avocado, they’ve become kind of trendy and I would say avocado is not going to be a traditional fat meaning like traditional people, we’re probably not doing it because you’ve got to have some heavy duty equipment to extract oil but coconut oil would be super traditional. I mean, this would be something that help historical use

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, if you’re eating a whole avocado you’d be able to have access to that that wouldn’t be a problem but the the actual oil portions what you’re talking about, right yeah,

Evan Brand: I’m talking just you know, pouring it in your in your pan and cooking something with it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, your your big fats that are going to be plant based would probably be primarily coconut. But then your your biggest ones that I think are going to be used more, you know, long term from generation to generation will be your like your Talos, right? Your bacon fat, your duck fat, those kind of things because saturated fats don’t go bad, right. They stay good for Long time because the carbon is saturated with four hydrogen bonds between them, which makes the fat really really really temperature stable.

Evan Brand: It’s beautiful. Alright, so we hit the we hit the oils, those are bad, they’re bad for your gut. They cause inflammation, oxidative stress, food additives. Let’s talk about those next. Here’s the hard part is food additives are in literally everything you could even go and get like an organic. I was looking at some organic gravy, like a gravy mixture, but it had added stuff to it like maltodextrin and flavors and stuff like that. And so of course you always there’s a spectrum right there’s the straight garbage MSG, caragenin Splenda type things that will go into but then you’ve got the spectrum where maybe you find organic spices that had a little flavor added but it was an organic flavor, and you don’t worry about it as much.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Yep. I like that the spices and the flavoring are going to be big, MSG, aspartame, they’re going to be more excited toxins. They can increase brain fog. They can stimulate your brain neurons to death, so to speak. That’s where some of that data came from. So not the best thing long term. And of course, you know, inflammation in the gut can create inflammation in the brain. So if you’re listening to this, and you don’t have any gut issues, most people associate foods or additives or bad fats with gut issues, but a lot of times it could just be increased inflammation. And that inflammation could be manifesting from joint pain or headaches or mood issues or brain fog. So just remember when we talk about some of these things, it may not necessarily be connected to a digestive issue or a gut issue. And that’s the hardest thing people to wrap their heads around.

Evan Brand: Yeah, let’s talk about this study we’ve got here on food additives, specifically Splenda, it’s ridiculous. You’ll see things that are promoted as healthy but then they have added Splenda to them. You have to there was a paper it was 2018 inflammatory bowel disease was the paper I guess I don’t see any other any other journal it was from but long story short, Splenda. It says here in the in the conclusion of the study Is that Splenda promoted dysbiosis. And we did a whole show on that. We’ve done many, many, many on dysbiosis. But basically an imbalance of good and bad bacteria, which then creates inflammation, intestinal permeability, and on and on. But all you could do that just with Splenda. So it’s like, oh, I eat paleo, but yet I put Splenda. We’re like when those little fake drink packets, you know those little Have you seen those the little packets where it’s like a fruit punch and you put it in your water, but it’s got Splenda instead of stevia. It’s just

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: not good. Not good. Yeah. If you want something like that, you’re much better off getting their Sweet Leaf brand and put a couple of drops of stevia in there with something like that or using an essential oil like lemon or lime or just grabbing a lime or lemon and just squeezing in and that’s a much better way to do it.

Evan Brand: I like to do monk fruit, I’ve got a lot of some monk fruit liquid. And so we’ll just take half along half a lemon, about five drops among crew and you’ve got an amazing lemonade and you’re not going to need any of those little face. Splenda, flavor packs, they’re just terrible.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and with flavoring in general, you want to make it a minority of the time, because when you’re putting something a whole bunch of sweet stuff in there, and your tongue is hitting sweet your brains like program that sweet means calories. And calories also mean sugar as well. So there could be a minor insulin spike that could happen. And it’s just not good to program your brain. Sweet, sweet, sweet, no nutrition, no calorie. So it’s not good to have that long term. But if we’re kind of doing an 8020 thing, and that’s kind of in your 20%, and you’re trying to use a healthy cheat option as a replacement, I think it’s fine.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And you’re saying, basically, the body’s getting tricked, even if it is a natural sweetener. You don’t want to hit that sweet button over and over.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I just want to draw a line between everyday staples and things that are healthier cheat options that’s in the healthier cheat option. categories, not a healthier staple category.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you don’t want to live on like the stevia soda, for example. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Your Much better off staples would be Topachico Pellegrino filtered water, maybe add an essential oil to it or add a squeezed lemon or lime. Those are going to be more of your staples and these other things they’re going to be in your 20% category.

Evan Brand: Let’s talk about this to those another paper that we had here on karijini which is a seaweed based polysaccharide. A lot of times it’s put in toothpaste, but it’s often in a lot of food and like sauces and anything that needs to be thick. So a lot of times now you’ll see caragenin free in certain products, but that also can exacerbate inflammatory bowel disease. And there are some papers on both splenda and Caragenin, so caragenin is probably healthier than Splenda. But it can still negatively affect the gut. And at the end of the day, we’re just saying eat real food because if it’s not processed, if it’s a process, paleo style food, it could still have some negative qualities to it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it? Yep. 100% 100% agree. Yeah, you have a courageous And there’s another one I forget. That’s like an emulsifier. Like that was like guar gum. Yeah, that’s what it is. Some of those I think are also a little bit higher at fodmaps, too. So people that have significant tseebo can sometimes get a little bit more bloated from some of those things. So it’s good to keep those in mind. I know there’s I think its native forest. It makes the coconut milk coconut cream without the guar gum. So another thing that could be there, there’s some studies showing that can be beneficial and not bad. So kind of go back and forth on it. So if you have a negative implication with it, that could be it and you may want to just find a healthier, healthier option. Yeah. What’s next on the list you want to talk about? Well, let’s go over gut infections. We talked about gut infections all the time. We see patients that come in that think their issue is a Candida or they think it’s an H. pylori, and sometimes it can be all the all of the above, and we don’t even know that. So it’s really important that we get some good testing done. It’s really important that when we have a gut infection, we have to have a sequence and how we deal with it. So people that have got infections you got to make the day changes you have to work on the digestion first because those can be serious impediments for your body healing. And the gut infection a lot of times can be part of the reason why you don’t feel good. Sometimes it can be all of the reason, but I’d say most people, it’s part of a couple other things that are happening. But people you know, we’re in a culture that’s very antibiotic driven. Oh, you have staff you have strep, kill it now antibiotic, you know, laser beam focused, hit it. And that may not be the case. And number one, it can be a big letdown. People are like, Oh, man, you know, that didn’t that wasn’t it. But number two, a lot of times they can feel worse. So you really want to make sure if there is an infection, that you have a plan that’s comprehensive in nature, that’s addressing what’s going on and again, this may be a little different if it’s totally acute, like hey, I’m in Mexico, I’m feeling great. Boom, I eat something. I feel like crap, I have diarrhea I have. Okay, we may create a different plan based upon the clinical history leading up to this point, and then how acute the symptoms are

Evan Brand: Im glad you mentioned too there’s a sort of an order of operations to that too, because there may be higher priority infections driving inflammation, as opposed to if you’ve got some Candida. Yes, Candida can be a huge problem. I did a whole summit on Candida. But if you had h pylori, we’re going to prioritize H. pylori over Candida because it’s going to affect much, much more mechanisms in the body.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% 100% I’d also say next thing is just adrenal stress. In general, we know that high levels of cortisol are going to decrease gut barrier function, it’s going to break down IGA or immunoglobulin A, which can have a beneficial effect on helping the immune system it can gobble up or potentially attack some infections that may make their way into the gut. The idea that like you get exposed to an infection, and that you automatically get infected, isn’t necessarily true. So there’s a couple of ways that may happen. Number one is you get exposed to a large amount of an infectious material overwhelms overwhelms your immune response and you’re sick no matter how healthy you are. This could be like, you’re healthy, you go for a hike, you drink some lake water, boom, you got grd or you’re sick. There’s that. There’s also Hey, you get exposed to just, you know a lot of different microbes over time. your gut is stress from cortisol and IGA imbalances. Maybe you have some food allergens too. Maybe your stomach acid and enzymes have dropped. Now boom, a stressful event happens. Now you start getting sick, because your gut your digestion, your inflammation accumulates. All stress summit’s are accumulates in the body, and the gut barrier breaks down and cortisol and stress can go high, which can cause your gut barrier to break down. And then when it finally drops, that’s going to make it hard for us to deal with inflammation. It’s gonna make it hard to build back that immunoglobulin barrier. And it’s going to make it hard to have energy and deal with stress.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so when people hear stress, they kind of just tune out because they’re like, everybody talks about stress. What am I supposed to do just meditate and do yoga. So here’s kind of the, I guess the granular in the flesh example of what could happen. Let’s take someone who has a bad boss, and every Monday when they go to work, they get a knot in their stomach, they feel sick to their stomach, because they know they’re going to go in, they’ve got this micromanaging boss that they hate, or I’ve got somebody that wears perfume that makes them sick next to them. So they have this fight or flight reaction, every Monday morning, and then Tuesday and on and on and on. So it might not be that your relationships are stressed, it could be but your relationships could be great your family life, your kids, I mean, your home life, all that could be great. But then you have this stress everyday of a boss that is still enough to degrade the gut barrier and cause issues over time. And we’ve seen that happen where, let’s say the boss gets transferred out and then they have a new boss that comes in and it’s a better boss and all of a sudden this person’s got complaints magically goes away. It was just because of that fight or flight reaction getting turned off. They were able to relax it. They’re just And then that parasympathetic healing reaction came in and started to work on the gut.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, many people, they kind of like categorize their stress, they kind of just say stress is, and they put it all their stress in the emotional category, work relationships, family finances, but they forget that the gluten that a meeting, or the Gup is now putting stress on my body. So now my emotional reserves drop. So instead of being able to have three or four emotional stress problems at one time, now I can only deal with one. And then now I’m flipping out on my kids or I’m arguing with my wife and we’re fighting more or losing my cool at work part of that is is because that emotional stress bandwidth drops when other stressors come in. So it’s like, people just kind of look at emotional stress, like it’s this, this thing unto itself and I just have to change my strategy or or meditate more, but a lot of times, fixing the other stressors that we talked about, allow more bandwidth to be allocated to that part. The system.

Evan Brand: Oh, well said Amazing, amazing, important point. It’s like, Okay, I’m gonna eat my avocado toast, and then go do yoga. It’s like, Ah, you gotta realize that bread or whatever it is that processed stuff is damaging the gut. So you could just have a completely stress free life. You might even be retired. But yet you had a donut, and then you feel like crap. And you don’t know why it sounds so simple. Like when we pointed out, it’s like, duh, but I’m glad you brought it up because people skip out on that. They don’t realize, Hey, I ate this. Now I damaged the gut. Now I have this emotional response, or I have an overreaction, because then then you get into the whole conversation of blood sugar too, right? It’s like, Okay, I’m eating these foods that are causing the blood sugar to spike and then crash and spiking crash. That is a stress. Even if your life is not stressful, you’ve still got stress

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and again, a lot of these things, they aren’t intuitive. The reason why they’re there are Our radar is because we see it clinically play out over and over and over again. It’s like, Hey, you change the diet, you you see some new nutritional compounds or nutrients are low in the person’s diet, we stopped them that we fixed digestion, hey, there may be an infection we work on that we support the adrenal, and now the person’s productivity at work. And they’re like, yeah, work isn’t as stressful. It’s okay, because your bandwidth has been freed up. It’s like you got this program in the background, that is just sucking up all of your RAM. And then now we close down that program or we update the software and get a better version for your operating system. And it’s like, boom, now, things aren’t as big of a deal.

Evan Brand: Not to mention, if we throw in some adaptogenic herbs or some liver support, you really start to have a lot more RAM available. So it’s amazing because people they may not have much change in their day to day life, but the way they respond to that day to day stress is significantly better. And that’s priceless.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I see it can affect women a little bit more because of their cycle. And a lot of women they know like always week before their cycle, they are up in arms regarding headaches or breast tenderness or back pain or mood stuff, or they’re just losing a lot of blood, which causes them to be anemic. And then they have low iron and their energy drops. So a lot of times it can compound a lot of those female hormones and make them feel not good for a week. And so a lot of times, the first thing we see with women is that PMS starts to go from maybe seven days to like one or two. And that’s a huge thing, or their irritability or breast tenderness switches a lot. Because with women, progesterone is actually a precursor to their stress hormones. So when they start getting stressed, they lose their progesterone, and they start becoming estrogen dominant. And then all of those estrogen dominance symptoms, some I just mentioned, start to become activated.

Evan Brand: Yeah, the thing the the issues with the hormones are more apparent during the cycle,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: it’s more apparent. So if you’re a woman listening to this and your PMS starts getting worse. That’s the first thing we Look at is what stressors have been activated. You know, women’s cycles are more women’s hormonal rhythms are more intricate. They’re like a beautiful Symphony that has the the, the the wind instruments, the string instruments, the percussion instruments. And when one instrument starts to go off, that Symphony turns to noise pretty fast for men are just kind of, like a foghorn, are kind of like a one note instrument that’s just kind of in the background the whole time. So it’s a little bit it’s a little bit harder to knock that the foghorn off. But the symphony, it’s easier to make it sound not so good, fast.

Evan Brand: Yeah, the women are like, Oh, he just won me over. He called my hormones and beautiful Symphony.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s a lot of stuff happening underneath the hood. And it’s amazing when you can just get the estrogen dominance under control, and now you’re not as anemic. And then now you’re able to carry oxygen better and your mitochondria works better and your thyroid works better. And then also when your progesterone levels come up a little bit more. Now you’re able to open those Gabba chloride channels. You’re not as anxious you’re not as Moody, the estrogen dominance drops to the breast tenderness and the muscle contraction causing the back pains now gone. It’s amazing what happens. And some women, it’s sad they live some have half their cycle is is almost like a PMS kind of up and down wagon. The goal is maybe we have one or two days or maybe it’s a half a day and it sneaks up on you. That’s the ideal goal. And it’s because you know, the husband’s benefit too. And the women are far more productive, and they feel better.

Evan Brand: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also just kind of like comparing contrasting, you know, what are your options, right? Ladies listening, you know what your options are? It’s going to be birth control pill, and then those have their own side effects. It’s going to be an antidepressant. And that’s pretty much it. And then if you’re menopausal, maybe it’s the HRT hopefully they’ll recommend the Premarin provera which is horse hormones, right? So those are your pretty much your three options. And then of course, you know, ibuprofen, might all those kind of things to manage any pain or cramping, you don’t really have that much so and none of its true causal, right. None of its true causal.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so I just want to point out that just because something is common doesn’t make it normal so if you and all your female co workers or your female friends you all complain about your periods together and oh my god my periods so miserable my PMS and my husband better watch out today it’s like ah yes common but not normal My wife is a breeze through her cycle and even in the postpartum period, it was great and her cycle came back normal and there wasn’t anything crazy and I think it’s just because we’ve we’ve tried and put so much work into this years and years and years you do start to get this point where Hey, the periods sneaks up on you and you had the golden points

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: we wanted to sneak up on them or at least get it down to like one or two minor days versus you know major or even a week or plus of major stuff.

Evan Brand: And this is not a pipe dream. This is a reality that we see all the time clinically and thousand percent and also.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundreds for sure. Yep, hundred percent. Also, let’s go talk about circadian rhythm or sleep stuff right? We know sleeps a big deal because That’s where we recharge a lot of our hormones, our adrenal and our neurotransmitters. And these are really important for stress. So if we don’t recharge these glandular systems, if we don’t recharge our neurotransmitters, that our ability to deal with stress gets forwarded. And the more we’re not able to deal with perceived stress, the more our guts going to be broken down and affected, the more our sympathetic nervous system will be affected. So it’s a lot of stress is perception based where you could take someone who has a larger bandwidth to deal with stress, put them in the same situation and they may not have the same physiological sympathetic nervous system response because they have more bandwidth than you. And then if that response isn’t happening, then they’re not going to have all the side effects of you know, the sympathetic nervous system, decreasing stomach acid or enzymes are breaking down their gut lining or making it hard to break down food. So the more we can allocate good bandwidth through recharging our neurotransmitters adrenaline dopa mean Gabba recharging are glandular systems, right pituitary adrenal thyroid ovaries, the better chance testicles, a better chance that we are going to be able to deal with stress the next day.

Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said, Well, we’ve got a couple papers on this. So why don’t we talk about this here regarding the circadian rhythm disruption. You know, we’re talking to people specifically that are working night shift or swing shift, or people that are just using artificial light at night. They’re not protecting themselves from the nighttime EMF and light exposure, even just a couple of days, which is kind of hard to believe but even just a couple of days of circadian rhythm disruption. So what that means is I’m talking to the people who they go to bed at 9pm on the work day, but then they stay up till midnight or 1am or 2am on the weekends. Just those two to three days is enough to create changes in your gut, increasing the pro inflammatory bacterial species. So long story short, you need to go to bed at the same time, every day. You’re not typically going to benefit. I mean, maybe you have more social life and you go out and I don’t know drink some poison at the club and poison your gut and start to kill your liver even more. And then you stay up all and then you’re hungover the next day. I mean, God, I just don’t see the benefit of that lifestyle if that’s what you got to do. Okay, but just know hey, there’s paper showing you doing those weekend benches just on Netflix, if even if you’re like, I don’t drink alcohol evidence, poison, I know you’re right. Okay, you stay up till 1am watching something. But on the weekday, you went to bed at nine, that is still messing up your gut and if your gut is messed up, then you really can’t afford to, to lose that benefit. That could be another 10 or 20% of your issue right there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So do your best. People are going to stay up later on the weekend. It just is going to be what it is. So we can always use extra magnesium. We can use glutathione before bed. If we’re going to drink alcohol, we can always use activated We can make sure we do our best to get to sleep a little bit more to get sneak it up on the back end and just do our best to maybe take a tiny bit of melatonin or a little bit of natural sleep support to kind of get us back on track start the week. So we kind of have like our goal of perfect and then we have things that we can biohack to get us back on track and still cheat a little bit.

Evan Brand: Call me boring. And maybe it’s just because I have kids that are young, but I go to bed pretty much the same time every night. So maybe in five years, you’ll be listening to this podcast and be like, oh, Evan, remember when you used to go to bed at nine every day? Or 10? You know, I don’t? Maybe Maybe I’ll change but for now, every night is about same time for me and I feel good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, I agree. I think it’s great. A couple of the things on medication side of the fence we we got to talk about this is important. So there’s a couple of different medications that I consider to be destructive. Number one are going to be the antibiotics and sometimes it may be necessary if you’re in a difficult situation. But if we can have a couple of tools that we can utilize, we may be able to avoid it right we have different herbs that we can use. Oil of oregano golden sea We have different formulas like in my gi clear line, we have chapter one through six that will use in certain occasions and evidence the same as you will with you, you have some of the microbiome products that are used in similar situations, a lot of times this can be beneficial and prevent the need for antibiotics to be just given right off the bat number one. And then of course number two would be things that affect digestion, proton pump inhibitors on nippers, old pentapresol, any acid blockers or h2 blockers that are designed to disrupt or lower stomach acid can be a big deal because that’s going to make it hard for you to break down your food. Think of HCl as your natural kind of bleach or disinfectant for the dirty picnic table, right. So it keeps the gut microbes from growing out of control. It helps break down the proteins, it starts initiating all the domino reactions for digestion. And that good acidity helps close the esophageal sphincter and prevents things from also rising up as well.

Evan Brand: I’ve seen probably no joke within the last six months to a year 50 to 100 children ranging from six months old to 15. And above years old, have kids that are clients of mine that were put on proton pump inhibitors by their pediatrician or by the gastroenterologist. I’m talking like you got a one year old kid that has some skin rashes, or there’s something going on maybe it’s burping or maybe it’s gas or something’s just not right with a one year old. And they don’t even bring up diet changes at all. If they’re still being breastfed. They don’t bring what’s in the mom’s diet into the consideration. It’s just here’s a PPI for a one year old. I mean, it’s almost criminal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is, I mean, they’ll do the tagamet a lot of times, and most of the time, it’s just the, the mom typically is eating a food allergen that’s usually driving it or they’re just could be some needed some extra probiotics and that can be a big one. So we’ll do some of the infantis blend of probiotics to help with some of the newborns And we’ll really look at some of the food allergens in the mom that can help a ton.

Evan Brand: There’s dysbiosis and kids all the time though, man, we’ve talked about this before, but my daughter when we first ran her stool test, she was around two years old, and she had various parasites and bacterial overgrowth, got rid of that retested showed up with H. pylori, got rid of that retested showed up with some other bugs. And so these bugs are everywhere. We don’t expect you to avoid them tap water, soil food, I mean, your kids are playing in the dirt, you’re playing in the dirt. Hopefully, you’re going to get exposed to these things. A lot of people ask us the question of Hey, Dr. J. Evan. How do I avoid these you can’t it’s just a matter of you trying to be resilient enough and you have, like you said adequate levels of stomach acid to prevent if you do drink tap water or you eat the sushi and you get exposed to blasto. Hopefully your HCl kills it off and it doesn’t become an infection. But most of the time, people are too stressed and too overwhelmed and that system, the protective response is altered or reduced

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% 100% Last thing I wanted to highlight was just environmental toxins. This could be things ranging from heavy metals, like aluminum or mercury or lead that could be damaging to the gut lining and also the neurological tissue. Right. Remember your nervous system and your entire nervous system is located in the gut. So that can have a big impact and as well as things like mold and mycotoxins, as Evan knows, environmental mold, can cause lots of gut issues I’ve seen it caused lots of digestive distress, bloating, I seen it affect motility. And then of course, when that happens, then it can affect your vestibular system, mood, energy, everything else. So I’d say molds a big one. I’d say heavy metals are a big one and of course, environmental estrogens whether it’s pesticides or plastics, whether it’s Bisphenol A or dioxin or Falaise, any of these compounds that are kind of in plasticizer compounds.

Evan Brand: Yeah, your chemicals in your food, which we always talk about killing your good bacteria. That’s basically an animal biotic, you know, glyphosate is essentially an antibiotic in the sense that it kills good bacteria and promotes dysbiotic flora. So, yeah, I think that’s a huge point. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s important and we can talk about, you know, each one of these topics could be one podcast in and of itself, and they probably already have since we have hundreds in the bank, so anyone listening really enjoys the content, click below, make sure you access some of the great handouts and great links on our websites. We have transcriptions as well that you can get access to. And if you want to dive in deeper because you think one of these things may be an issue with you feel free. Click below to access Evan brand calm or just in health, calm me, Dr. Justin, and we can dive in deeper and work on getting to the root cause. any last comments, Evan?

Evan Brand: I would just say we’re really grateful to be in the opportunity to help people so most of you all we’re just helping you because you’re listening and you’re making changes but if you feel like you’re buying random supplements, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re building up a supplement graveyard. hire some help. I know a lot of people they they don’t want to That because they feel that they need to, like maintain their pride or like I’m a biohacker I’m going to do it myself. It’s like, I try that. I mean, you know how much Justin’s helped me, we help each other, you know, so so we’re in this to, we’re not in it to prove that you can do it by yourself. We’re in it to make sure that you can get better and get back to enjoying your life. So don’t try to like be a hero. It’s okay. You’re not a failure if you need help from somebody.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, if you need a functional medicine, Sherpa, you know where your guys in general you don’t go hike Mount Everest without a Sherpa without a guide to help you. And that’s what we are the equivalent of so hope everyone enjoys it. If you enjoy it, share it with a friend or family or member a loved one that is struggling or need some of this support. It’s totally free. 99.9% people we don’t even work with directly they’re just utilizing this free content. So we just ask that everyone to utilize some of this information so they can get healthier first. It helps everyone become a better parent, a better person, a better employee, a better entrepreneur helps everyone in every single way possible. So we love that and it’s our country. the contribution to the world. Anything else, Evan?

Evan Brand: Oh, that’s beautiful, beautiful way to end it. Nope. I’ve got nothing else you all take care.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, excellent, everyone, have a great day. Take care. Take care. Bye bye bye

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:  

http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-causes-of-gut-inflammation-podcast-260

Recommended product:

Recommended glandular support

Mold Problem?

Bio-Balance – 10% discount

Does LESS Exercise Make You MORE Fit?

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

High intensity interval training, called HIIT for short, has taken the health and fitness world by storm. The concept is simple: by working out harder, less often and for shorter lengths, you can actually maximize your fitness returns. Research shows HIIT can burn fat quicker and substantially increase performance. The best part? The time commitment is minimal. Say goodbye to your daily hour at the gym, and hello to HIIT!

How to Do High Intensity Interval Training

High-intensity interval training is a way of exercising through a repetition of short bursts of high-intensity exercises followed by a brief period of recovery. The HIIT sequence of “burst and recover” is generally repeated for a duration of 20-30 minutes.

HIIT can be applied to both cardio and weight training. In a treadmill setting, a HIIT session would involve alternating between high intensity sprints and a slower jog, or even a brisk walk, during the recovery period.

High-intensity interval training differs from traditional consistent state exercise in which you’d keep a similar pace, exerting constant energy for the duration of your session.

If you’re looking to burn fat, increase endurance, or otherwise boost your health and fitness with but less of a time commitment, HIIT is for you!

Is HIIT right for you? Click here to ask a functional medicine doctor!

Benefits of High Intensity Interval Training Over Traditional Methods

• Burn Fat More Efficiently: A recent study compared the impact of HIIT workouts versus steady state exercise on body fat and musculature. While a HIIT workout burns less calories during the course of the session, a HIIT routine still results in more fat loss overall. The study also found that high intensity training workouts more efficiently build muscle and improve metabolic function.
• Cardiovascular Health: Interval training is being studied for its effects on cardiovascular health. Interval training regimens, such as HIIT, have profound improvements on VO2max which is one of the best indicators of cardiovascular health. By exerting more energy and pushing your heart rate during the HIIT “bursts,” you condition your heart and over time make it much stronger and more resilient.
• Anti-Aging: The relationship between physical activity and life expectancy is well known. More recent research has shown that one way in which exercise increases life expectancy is by activating telomerase, an anti-aging enzyme. HIIT not only increases telomerase, it also reduces a protein responsible for premature aging and tumor suppression. 
• Capillary Function: Resistance-based interval training specifically benefits blood flow, blood vessel dilation, and capillary density. A study from 2004 found that HIIT increases capillary density by 20% which means the body is better able to feed sugar and oxygen to the muscles than in a person who is doing steady state exercise. 

Choosing the Best High Intensity Interval Training Workout For You

Here are a few HIIT workouts to choose from. Have a look and see which one matches your skill level and interests! As your skill grows, you can modify these plans to include more high intensity bursts.

IF YOU: are very fit, have little time, like to run

Tabata Running: Tabata training is a very popular form of HIIT consisting of 8 rounds of high intensity exercises. Intervals are 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. Including a warm up, this HIIT session is done in under 10 minutes! For an experienced runner, it would look like this:

• Start with a 3 minute warm up.
• Then, 8 rounds of:
•  20 second ultra-intensity sprints
• 10 second light jogging.

IF YOU: are moderately fit, flexible timing, like to cycle

If you have 30 minutes to spare and like to cycle, this method is for you! The intensity can be adjusted to match your skill level. The basics of this cycling HIIT workout for someone of a moderate fitness level:

• 3 minute warm up.
• 60 seconds of cycling FAST at maximum resistance.
• 75 seconds cycling slow at a low resistance.
• Repeat for 12 cycles

IF YOU: are new to fitness, have moderate time, want to incorporate strength training

For someone new to fitness and interested in the benefits of HIIT, a 45-minute beginner’s workout would look something like this:

• 5 minute jump rope warm-up.
• 8-reps of weight lifting
• 1 minute of mountain climbers
• 1 minute jumping jacks.
• Repeat this circuit until you have hit 45 minutes

Ready to take your health to the next level? Click here to work with a functional medicine doctor!

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8028502

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23539308

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/the-complete-guide-to-interval-training/

New Study Finds Hair Dye Connected to Cancer

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Last month a shocking study revealed that women who dye their hair have higher rates of cancer. If this is true, the implications affect an estimated 75% of women in the US who dye their hair. Let’s dive into the study results and take a closer look at the risks of dying your hair.

History of Hair Dye

Having dyed hair has become commonplace, but not too long ago it was a rarity! In 1950 only about 7% of women dyed their hair. Now, around 75% of women dye their hair.

Back in Ancient Rome, women dyed their hair blonde with pigeon dung and ashes! After rubbing it into the strands, they had to add urine to act as ammonia and strip the hair of color. This sounds gross, and we’ve come along way from using essentially sewage to color our hair. Unfortunately, the chemical cocktail used on our heads these days may be presented nicer, but a breakdown of the ingredients may still alarm you.

Study Results: Hair Dye Linked to Cancer

A new study in the International Journal of Cancer reports a link between use of hair products, including dye and straightening treatments, and cancer.

The researchers also uncovered the following data:

• Using permanent hair dye is associated with a 45% higher risk of breast cancer in black women and a 7% higher risk in white women.
• The more frequent you use hair dye and hair straighteners, the higher the risk of cancer.
• Women of color have an even more significant risk.
• Black women using permanent dye every five to eight weeks had a 60% increase of breast cancer risk, while white women show an 8% risk increase.
• Straightener products also correlate with a higher breast cancer risk, which increases the more frequently the straightener products are used.
• Using hair straighteners every 5-8 weeks leads to a 30% increase in risk of developing breast cancer.

If you want to learn how you can decrease your risk for cancer, click here to work with a functional medicine doctor!

Beyond Dye: Straightening Treatments and Styling Products

Dye isn’t the only hair product to be aware of: most styling products contain dangerous chemicals, toxic fragrances, and other endocrine-disruptors. The average woman uses 12 personal care products a day containing 168 different chemicals, many of which lack sufficient safety data. Chemicals in mainstream hair products are linked to hormone disruptions, allergies, birth defects, organ damage, and even cancer.

“Fragrance” is a secret ingredient that seems to be lurking in everything these days, including hair dye, conditioning treatments, detangler, hair spray, and shampoo. This deceptive marketing term is a catch-all term used on ingredient lists to indicate a ‘trade secret’ recipe that can contain hundreds of synthetic chemicals–none of which has to be disclosed or even safety tested. What about the chemicals that have been tested? Many cause reproductive harm, respiratory issues, and some are known neurotoxins and carcinogens.

For example, phthalates are a key components in plastics. Dimethyl phthalate is a common ingredient in hair spray, though its presence is often not noted on labels. According to the EPA, known effects of short-term exposure via inhalation are irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat. Meanwhile, “no information is available on the chronic (long-term), reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic effects of dimethyl phthalate in humans.  Animal studies have reported slight effects on growth and on the kidney from chronic oral exposure to the chemical.”

One would hope for more of a proven safety track record of dimethyl phthalate as an ingredient in products that are used on a habitual basis, multiple times per week over the course of many years. Unfortunately, that is not always the case when it comes to personal care products.

Beautiful Hair, Naturally

If you are ready to embrace your natural hair and are looking for ways to support its health, growth, and shine, there are supplements and topical treatments you can safely use for more luscious locks!

• A Vitamin B complex can strengthen hair, helping it grow longer without breaking.
• Collagen promotes the growth of not only hair. One of the best sources of collagen is in bone broth. I recommend Kettle & Fire bone broth. If you’d prefer a source of high-quality grass fed collagen that you can add to your coffee or tea, click here to see which ones I recommend.
• Omega-3s from wild-caught fish, antioxidant-rich green tea, and foods rich in vitamins A and C such as bell peppers, broccoli, and sweet potato all support health hair growth.
• Try a coconut oil hair mask 2x/week for added moisture and to prevent split ends. To stimulate hair growth and healthy follicles, rub coconut oil into your scalp and roots.
• Rosemary oil can stimulate hair growth, and is being used as a natural alternative to conventional hair loss medication!

It’s important to be aware of the risk associated with using products such as hair dye and relaxers. While dye alone may not be the sole cause of breast cancer for every individual, by knowing the potential risk, you can make informed decisions regarding the products you choose to buy and have exposure to.

Ready to take your health to the next level? Click here to work with a functional medicine doctor!

References:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijc.32738

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1740925/

https://www.national-toxic-encephalopathy-foundation.org/fragsmoke.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5093181/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28683407

https://www.ewg.org/research/teen-girls-body-burden-hormone-altering-cosmetics-chemicals/cosmetics-chemicals-concern

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253722/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9577937

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20183522

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16283906

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/dimethyl-phthalate.pdf

Why is USA Life Expectancy Shortening?

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

The United States has not kept pace with other developed, high income countries, despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare. While life expectancy in the US had been rising since 1959, in 2014 things started to swing the other way, according to new findings.

One study found that though the United States spent nearly twice as much on medical care as 10 high-income countries, the US still performed worse on population health outcomes. 

The US is spending more on healthcare, and yet the life expectancy is dropping compared to previous years, and general health is worse than in other countries. What’s going on?

There are many factors that may be at play, from the lifestyle of the average American to how the United States society and health care systems function. Let’s dive in!

How is Life Expectancy Determined?

Life expectancy is the statistical average number of years someone will live. One way researchers determine this number is by analyzing the data and lives of many people with the same birth year.

What is interesting about life expectancy is that depending on your age, your life expectancy can change. For example, a 20 year old may have a shorter life expectancy than a 60 year old, as the 60 year old has already lived through many risk factors associated with the 40 year lead they have.

Factors that influence life expectancy include an individual’s, and a society’s, access to healthcare, their diet and lifestyle choices, and economic status.

United States Dwindling Life Expectancy

The United States has lower life expectancy than its developed peers, including countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Japan and Canada.

US life expectancy: 78.8 years

Other countries: 80.7 to 83.9 years

On average, people in other countries can expect to live anywhere from one to five extra years when compared to the US! What is perhaps even more concerning is recent findings by the National Academy of Sciences who report that Americans have some of the lowest chances among its peers of living to 50.

Those Americans who do live past 50 have higher rates of disease and illness, and generally less health and vibrancy, than those in other countries.

Life expectancy doesn’t just apply to long lives: it also includes infant mortality. Unfortunately, the United States also sees the higher infant mortality rate at 5.8 deaths per 1,000 births.

If you want to learn how you can increase your life expectancy, click here to work with a functional medicine doctor!

Why is the American Life Expectancy So Low?

Fortunately, there are reasons why life expectancy is shorter or longer. If we look at the risk factors for shorter lifespan, we can gain insight into what other countries are doing right and implement this information to improve our own odds! Common risk factors include:

Obesity and Diabetes: It’s so secret America is morbidly obese. Roughly 70% of the American population is overweight or obese, as compared to our peers, which have rates ranging from 23-63%. Obesity is a trigger for many other common causes of mortality, such as heart disease.

In addition to high rates of obesity, American adults also have the highest rates of diabetes, and the number is continuing the climb. Over 12% of Americans have diabetes, and it is estimated that 1 in 3 adults over 20 have pre-diabetes. If it’s not properly addressed, prediabetes develops into full-blown type 2 diabetes in 15-30% of cases within 5 years.

And if the trend continues? 1 in 5 will have diabetes within the next 5 years.

Obesity and Diabetes Prevention: Two of the most critical things you need to focus on–not just for diabetes prevention, but for overall health–are diet and exercise. The importance of cooking at home with real organic whole foods versus eating chemical-laden fast food cannot be overstated.

I am an advocate for the paleo and ketogenic diets, or even better, combining the two. By eating organic vegetables, grass fed meat, and healthy fats and limiting sugar, grains, and processed foods, you are setting yourself up for success.

Exercise doesn’t have to be a chore. Find a sport or activity that entertains you: it may be joining your office’s softball league, taking an after-work Zumba class, or riding your bike around the block. Heck, take the stairs instead of the elevator! Any sort of movement that you incorporate into your lifestyle will do you a world of good.

American Healthcare & Medical Errors: The US healthcare system is medicine-oriented, and doesn’t put much emphasis on prevention. This may play a part in why the United States has double the medical spending, but worse outcomes. Prevention is not profitable.

Johns Hopkins estimates that over 250,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. Medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US, ranking just behind heart disease and cancer. If we can prevent illnesses from the get go, we can eliminate the need to be in the medical system, reducing our chances of being a victim of medical error.

Other causes of lower life expectancy include drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, and suicides.

Takeaway

Obviously the United States is missing something if the health care spending is double, but the life expectancy, and even the quality of life, is poorer than it is in other peer countries. American dietary guidelines are missing critical pieces of the puzzle and the standard American diet is high in sugar, refined carbs, and processed foods.

If we wish to increase not just the quantity of years, but also the quality of our years, we must take a more preventative approach when it comes to health. Rather than going to the dentist to have a cavity filled (treating a problem), we can use our knowledge to avoid getting the cavity in the first place (preventative care).

If you are ready to improve the quality and quantity of your years, click here for a personalized plan from a functional medicine doctor!

References:

https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2756187

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6092679/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671?redirect=true

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/13497/us-health-in-international-perspective-shorter-lives-poorer-health

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31769830

Overcoming Menopause Naturally

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Menopause is an inevitable part of being a woman. Unfortunately, we only hear about the bad parts, so it is often something dreaded. Women all over the world and all across time have been going through menopause, and if you combine ancient wisdom with modern advances, this natural part of the aging process doesn’t have to be so scary!

Stages of Menopause

The three stages of menopause are:

• Perimenopause (before menopause)
• Menopause
• Postmenopause (after menopause)

Perimenopause can start as early as a woman’s mid-30s, Though perimenopause is typically expected around a woman’s late 40s, it can start as early has her mid-30s, particularly if she has suffered health issues such as eating disorders, cancer treatment, and surgery. Symptoms of perimenopause include irregular periods and spotting due to hormone shifts.

Menopause is the permanent end of a woman’s menstrual cycle and fertility, and officially starts once a woman has not had a period for 12 months. Menopause is a stage–it doesn’t continue for the rest of a woman’s life–and your body adapts over time. Each individual will experience a different length of menopause depending on their body and health. Postmenopause is the stage reached after menopause is over.

If you are experiencing menopausal symptoms, click here to work with a functional medicine doctor.

Common Menopause Symptoms

Perimenopause and Menopause have a wide array of overlapping symptoms. Some of the most common symptoms and complaints are:

• Irregular periods: especially during perimenopause, period may occur every 2-4 months and gradually start further and further apart.
• Hot flashes and night sweats: hormonal changes during this time can affect the hypothalamus, which controls body temperature. This can increase the body’s temperature, causing sweating, redness, and the infamous hot flashes.
• Sleep troubles: many women deal with sleep quality issues due to changing hormones and overheating due to hot flashes.
• Weight gain: metabolism slows, hormones change, and muscle mass is reduced–all of which contribute to increased abdominal fat and weight gain.
• Mood swings: constant fatigue and tiredness, increased irritability, anxiety and depression are all linked to the changing hormones and enzymes at this time.
• Headaches: migraines and headaches can be caused by the reduced blood flow, sleep deprivation, and anxiety of menopause.
• Poor memory: trouble concentrating and forgetfulness are effects of hormone shifts, which can be worsened by anxiety and lack of sleep.

What Causes Menopause Symptoms?

Hormones are a primary driver of menopause symptoms, particularly estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone. Estrogen hormones are secreted by the ovaries and are a large part of what gives a female her feminine qualities, including reproductive abilities. Progesterone prepares the uterus for pregnancy. Testosterone is a mostly male hormone, but it also has a place in the female body.

Menopause starts when the ovaries stop making lots of estrogen. Since estrogen plays such an important part in body processes, this change can affect mood, sleep, sex drive, body composition, memory, blood flow, and more. Menopause tends to start between the ages of 45-55 years.

How to Get Through Menopause

• Exercise:
  • Besides helping with menopausal weight gain, exercise can increase serotonin, thereby boosting mood and improving sleep.
• Herbs:
  • Herbs for menopause include: Red raspberry leaves, St. John’s wort, Ginseng, Evening primrose oil, Black cohosh, Chaste tree, Sarsaparilla, Red clover, Wild yams, and Licorice root.
  • Research suggests American Ginseng can help relieve symptoms of menopause including hot flashes, fatigue, mood and memory problems, and vaginal dryness.
  • Maca is an adaptogen herb which has been used for thousands of years to help with the symptoms of aging and stress by decreasing cortisol levels. Maca is good for helping with hot flashes, fatigue, weight gain, and libido.
  • Vitex has been proven to help with hot flashes. It is also good for balancing hormones during menopause.
  • Licorice Root supports the adrenal glands when cortisol levels are low. A primary compound in licorice root is glycyrrhizin (a substance that has a molecular structure similar to corticosteroids). As such, licorice root aids in hypoadrenalism by partially blocking the enzyme that converts cortisol to cortisone, thus sparing cortisol. 
• Diet:
  • Reduce sugar, carbs, and soy: These foods can mess with your hormones, your emotions, and your weight.
  • Eat healthy fat: the Keto Diet is a great choice for menopausal women, especially to help with hormonal weight gain.

Takeaway

Good news: 80% of women report that menopause does not affect their quality of life! While menopause gets a bad rap, it is not a life sentence. By becoming aware of the changes in your body, you can make the best choices to get through menopause healthily & happily!

If you are experiencing menopausal symptoms, click here to work with a functional medicine doctor.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3659624/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4834516/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6419242/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4890704/

The Best Bone Broth for Gut Health

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Bone broth seems to be all the rage these days, but what exactly is it about this bone juice that has everyone obsessed? Bone broth is so much more than a trendy drink: it has the power to aid in healing many modern issues, from leaky gut to wrinkles!

The Power of Bone Broth

What is Bone Broth?

Bone broth is made from animal bones, tendons, ligaments, marrow, skin, and other flexible connective tissues. In modern times these parts are usually discarded as they aren’t easily eaten on their own. However, when simmered in water for long periods of time, animal bones and tissues make a healing nutrient-dense elixir. The best bone broths are made from the parts of organic, grass-fed animals. To pack even more nutrient density, you can also add organic vegetables to turn bone broth into a flavor-packed sipping broth or use it as the base for a soup.

Bone Broth’s Secret Weapons: Collagen and Gelatin

The protein providing strength to animals’ (including humans!) bones, cartilage, and tendons is called collagen. When cooked, collagen turns into gelatin, a jello-like substance. 

The best bone broths contain collagen and gelatin which provide your body with a host of immune-boosting properties, amino acids, and gut lining support to aid and heal many modern ailments.

Click here for help from a functional medicine doctor to determine if you have leaky gut and how to heal it!

Healing Benefits:

Bone broth is easily digested, unlike many other foods which can be hard to break down. But the real power of bone broth is that it is actually healing to the digestive system. It has been found to aid in cases of leaky gut, IBS, food allergies and sensitivities, and much more.

Collagen is a protein that forms the GI tract lining. Consuming the collagen and gelatin in bone broth helps heal the walls of the gut lining, preventing food and toxins from escaping and causing inflammation and other damage outside of the tract. This is major good news for those suffering from poor digestion and gut-related health issues (leaky gut, IBS, Crohn’s).

The collagen and gelatin from bone broth are also great for anti-aging effects. They keep the skin youthful by reducing wrinkles and improving elasticity, aid the growth of hair and nails, and strengthen your bones! Collagen also helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite over time.

Essential nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, and silica are all electrolytes in bone broth which keep you hydrated, help with bone health, and can reduce brain fog and fatigue.

The amino acids found in bone broth include glutamine, arginine, glycine, and cysteine, and proline. Together these amino acids offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Skin elasticity
• Build up the walls of the intestines
• Aid in proper bile and stomach acid production
• Enhance the immune system
• Anti-inflammatory, reducing oxidative stress and autoimmunity
• Promote human growth hormone
• Liver detoxification support
• Generate glutathione

Where to Find Bone Broth

You can make bone broth yourself, at home! Below is my favorite recipe for cooking up a big batch of anti-aging bone broth. If you are someone who would prefer to purchase bone broth, or are looking for something easy to take on-the-go, I recommend Kettle & Fire bone broth. Kettle & Fire is the best bone broth I have found, and they use premium ingredients like 100% grass-fed bones, organic produce, and apple cider vinegar to create a delicious and nutritious product that is easy to heat up and sip, or use as a base for soups and other recipes! Bonus: it’s also paleo and keto friendly! You can check out Kettle & Fire bone broth here.

Takeaway

Bone broth is incredibly simple to make, especially when looking at the benefits reaped from consuming this healthy elixir. The collagen, gelatin, amino acids and minerals in collagen make bone broth an incredibly simple and powerful solution to create healthier joints, skin, bones, and gut. If you’re looking to try my favorite bone broth for both flavor and health benefits, click here. 

Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor who can help you diagnose if you have gut issues that bone broth can help heal!

Sources:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/09/21/hilary-boynton-mary-brackett-gaps-cookbook-interview.aspx

https://blog.kettleandfire.com/4-amazing-ways-collagen-bone-broth-heal-your-gut/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949208

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358810/

Scaldaferri F1, Pizzoferrato M, Gerardi V, Lopetuso L, Gasbarrini A. The gut barrier: new acquisitions and therapeutic approaches. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2012 Oct;46 Suppl:S12-7.