Leaky Gut and Autoimmunity – Dr. J. Podcast #161
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand dive into a discussion about the link between gut infections and autoimmunity. Gain knowledge about leaky gut, how it occurs in the body and it’s connection to Hashimoto’s.
Explore the different stressors which affect gut health and contribute to a weakened immune system. Learn about Dr. Justin’s 6-hour template, which includes his expert recommendation regarding healing, nutrient and supplements.
In this episode, we cover:
00:34 Leaky Gut and Autoimmunity Connection
04:05 GABA and the Blood Brain Barrier
06:48 Hashimoto’s and Gut Health
12:23 6-hour Template
22:40 Thyroid Health: T3, T4
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hello, ladies and germs! Dr. J in the house. Evan, how we doing, man? How was your Holidays? How’s your Thanksgiving?
Evan Brand: Holidays were great. Let’s dive in. I know we’ve got a short limited of time. But we’re doing this on the fly because this conversation of gut health and gut infections and autoimmunity is huge and hardly anyone is talking about this. Conventional doctors don’t have a clue about the link between gut infections and autoimmunity, so dude, let’s dive right in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That sounds phenomenal. So we talked about in the show, kinda chatting about leaky gut and autoimmunity, which is really important because leaky gut is kind of like one of the primary mechanisms of autoimmunity kinda starting, which is kind of gastrointestinal permeability cells in the gut called the tight junctions. They start to unzip, kinda like you unzip your coat on a hot day and undigested food particles can get in there in this kind of creates this uhm— cascade of reactions call molecular mimicry, where certain food proteins— the surface proteins on these foods are similar to surface proteins of the thyroid or the brain or the pancreas, the beta—the beta cells of the pancreas, whatever. So you have this kind of immune system getting primed to similar proteins in foods which then prime the immune reaction for the immune system. It starts attacking these tissues in the body. So that’s kinda one of the first defenses is this autoimmunity leaky gut, molecular mimicry and that while they gut’s leaky, you have undigested bacterial compounds also getting in there, too. And then kinda just perpetuate and windup that immune system. And then also make it prime to—for other infections that kind of slip in there because the immune system now has weaken. Other infections can slip in. And typically, we’re gonna have a lower stomach acid environment so you’re gonna have less sterility in the stomach coz that low pH really prevents a lot of bacterial and critters from growing. But now that pH is like, you know, it’s like walking over to the dirty picnic tables and normally you spray it down with maybe some bleach. Or let’s say in a healthy version, maybe a really good antimicrobial essential oil. But now, we don’t have that because of the stress from the gut.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Now, Hashimoto’s for example, is probably most common autoimmune condition that we’re going to see and deal with and that probably you guys listening are aware of. Leaky gut has to take place for Hashimoto’s to happen. That’s one of the dominoes that happens. So you’ve got the leaky gut situation. You possibly got the gluten in the diet. You got the immune stress, which could be internal or external. So bad boss, bad spouse, bad relationships, bad job— those are kind of the big dominoes we see. And when you all those up together, that’s how you get autoimmune disease. It’s really just that simple.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And then we have people on the live chat here. And again, this is a great reason why you should subscribe to our YouTube channel—justinhealth. Uhm because we have these podcast going live as well and we’ve also incorporated other technology in the background to get a higher quality audio versions. So if you want better audio, you can subscribe to Youtube, but also check out our podcast uhm—Evan Brand, notjustpaleo and then beyond wellness radio myself. So just keep that in the back of your head. And then your question was—I just missed it. We talked about—Oh, yeah! Leaky brain. Leaky brain is connected as well coz we have these live questions coming in. And so we are multitasking like it’s no tomorrow. So leaky brain’s important because we have these called astrocytes or the brain blood or the blood brain barrier which is kind of the interplay between systemic blood and then the passing over to the brain. And we have the cells called astrocytes. And again, same thing, when we have gut lining integrity, it tends to affect integrity of the lungs, integrity of the sinuses, integrity of you know, vaginal wall area, urinary tract. So you have people that have gut issues—gut integrity issues. It almost always can cause sinus issues, brain fog, brain issues, UTI issues, bladder issues, right? So you have all of that mucous membrane barrier, it’s gonna be compromised throughout the body not just the gut. But the guts kind of that first major domino that falls and then everything else tends to follow along with it.
Evan Brand: What you think about the GABA test for the blood brain barrier, where you take like a 500 mg GABA and if it works and you get relaxed, that says you have a leaky brain. Do you agree with that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m not sure I buy that because I’ve seen people that do—that are really healthy and that do well with GABA.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they, you know, symptomatically, they’re doing pretty good. They’re eating well. Again, certain supplement companies have kinda put that out where they have a GABA challenge. They say, “Hey, GABA is this really big amino acid compound and it shouldn’t go through that blood brain barrier; therefore if it does, that means your major blood brain barrier is permeable.” I’m not sure I buy that. I think it’s something to keep in mind, something to try. I have a lot of patient that have gut issues and they’re sick and that use GABA or will only give them GABA and they don’t notice much benefit either.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, you know, how do you sparse that? That’s hard.
Evan Brand: I know. Who knows, man. That’s a good question.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Everyone tries to be a little bit trendy and nuance in this functional medicine field.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because they wanna make a name for themselves.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I get that from a marketing perspective, but just looking at the clinical application, I’m not sure there’s ton. But, heck, if you have GABA and you want to try it and you get uh—benefits, that’s great. I notice a little bit of improvement with GABA. Like when I take it, I feel little but relax. I also do that with Ashwagandha as well. I feel it with magnesium. Someone chimed in and asked if magnesium can be taken with Ashwagandha. Yeah, sure. I’ve no problem with that.
Evan Brand: Works great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hope everyone’s listening had a great Thanksgiving, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Tesa wants to know, “Have you reversed your Hashimoto’s, Dr. J, by healing the gut?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, so we have to be careful when we say reversed, right? So have we decrease the inflammation? Have we address underlying issues that made people susceptible to having autoimmune attack? And we—can we lessen those and decrease them to the point where we are no longer symptomatic because we have the inflammation down or quench enough? Yes. I’m just very careful because you know, eyes in the skies and people listening in they’re— they’re looking for that the cure the cure-all word, right? We just got to be careful. We don’t cure anything. We support the body’s ability to—we support the underlying stressors that cause the issue to begin with. And we support the underlying systems that weren’t functioning well. And then the body can start to get these symptoms under control because the symptoms are just a manifestation of the symptoms— the systems not working. Symptoms occur because systems aren’t working. Systems breakdown because of underlying stressors. As functional medicine doctors, we come in, we fixed the underlying stressors, we support the systems that aren’t working and then the body starts to heal itself, right? The body’s on autopilot. We just got to get the stressors in the systems work. If the system’s working, then get the stressors out of the way.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. So you had some— you had some gut bugs and things going on, do you care to talk about your story for a minute with the – Hashimoto’s?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I have—I have a low level of Hashimoto’s kinda in the background, I had elevation antibodies TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies and you know, I had some adrenal stress going on. And I just really worked on fixing the gut issues, which I had a handful parasites—Blasto, uhm— yeast, significant yeast overgrowth and H. pylori. Addressing those, fixing nutrient issues to help with the antibodies, fixing the digestion, fixing gut bacteria balance is of course working on stress reduction, sleep, all those important diet and lifestyle things. And again, the antibodies for me are just still slightly elevated, but there they’re in a range where you know, functionally my thyroid is not beaten up to the point where I need any thyroid hormone. My TSH is in a pretty good place and my T3 levels are pretty good. I actually have to go on for test real soon. So, yeah, I mean it’s possible to—to address the stressors and the system dysfunction to the point where you may not— you can call yourself cure. We just won’t call you cure for me, a functional medicine perspective.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Agreed. I need to get my thyroid panel run to. You’ve been pushing me to do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You should.
Evan Brand: I need to do it. I mean you and I both have had these infections. I had H. pylori as well. I had a Crypto, Giardia and yeast and Pseudomonas Aeruginosa. So, you know, that’s a fun thing about Justin and I. We both had all the things that we deal with in the clinic. So when you guys are looking to work with somebody, it’s— to me it’s a lot more honorable if you’ve had somebody that’s been in the trenches themselves, where we had to fix us to keep going to help other people. I think that’s always pretty cool. Uhm— what else I know we would have limited time, but what else should we mention here about kinda this autoimmunity piece, the gut piece. We mentioned the leaky gut, we mentioned some of the triggers just in a roundabout way. So Candida, bacterial infections, parasites, H. pylori, low stomach acid, gluten in the diet, dairy, possibly eggs, other food sensitivities. These could all contribute to that permeation of the gut barrier; therefore, causing the situation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred Percent. So, let me just kind of answer some of the things that you’re talking about while injecting some of the live questions we get. That’s the reason why the show is so unique compared to other shows coz we are off-the-cuff. This is the real deal here. So some patients are talking about having a lot of mucusy stools, right? And uhm— wanting to know where they should go for help, right? Of course, I recommend coming to see either myself or Evan, but typically one, we want to make sure food allergens aren’t driving this, right? Number two, we want to make sure we have enough digestive support on board to help those foods be broken down enough. So if there’s fat maldigestion issues, of course, adding in more bile salts or more lipolytic enzyme, right? Lipase— things like that. Uh— protease—proteolytic enzymes, right? These are all really important. And then, of course, once we can have the deck kinda dialed in, if foods are still a problem even with that, we may make them more palatable. We may go with more crockpot kinda GAP specific carbohydrate kind of eating template, where the foods are just easy—more processed via cooking, they aren’t raw, they are peeled or mashed. We’re decreasing salicylates and phenols and potential gut irritants so those foods can be consumed better. And then, of course, we’re gonna look deeper at the hormones because hormones have a major effect on inflammation and energy. And a lot of people that have gut issues, their guts are inflamed, we have to support the inflammation of the gut lining. And then, the big one is getting rid of the infections.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s where you know, we’re probably go next.
Evan Brand: (laughs) Yes. You’re right. So uh—Cent50 here, who asked the question. Yeah, the loose, mushy stools, I mean that was me. I had Cryptosporidium, I had Giardia, I had H. Pylori, I had bacterial overgrowth. Until my gut issues were addressed, just FYI, I had IBS for 10 or 15 years of my life and conventional doctors had no solutions for my—my stools. And it wasn’t until actually cleared out the infections that my bowels and my stools became normal again. And so, yeah, you got to get yourself tested. Justin and I run several different companies. Uh—stool testing just depending on you know what—what we’re looking at. But, yeah, get a comprehensive stool test. Your conventional doctor may be able to order through your insurance, if you tell them you want diagnostic solutions Lab, it’s unlikely. You probably have a functional medicine guy like us to run it for you. But either way, once you get the diagnostic tool, you can fix this pretty quick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s a lot of healing nutrients. So like, when we work with the patient, we kinda follow that 6-hour template— template that I’ve created over the last decade or so. There’s a lot of ones that are out there— three hours, four hours. In my opinion, a lot of them stink and they’re the wrong order. So the six that I’ve created and began to follow as well, in my opinion, is the exact clinical order which I follow things. So the first hour is removing the bad foods. And again, it’s not cookie-cutter because that maybe just getting someone from a standard American diet to a Paleo template. That may be taking someone from a Paleo template to an autoimmune template. Maybe someone on an autoimmune template and the Paleo template taking them to a GAPs or specific carbohydrate diet or low FODMAP template. I had patient last week who’s been Paleo for three or four years—chronic pain, chronic issues, chronic mood issues, chronic sleep issues. We took him from a Paleo template to an autoimmune-Paleo template and all of the symptoms went away in one week.
Evan Brand: That’s it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This is someone that’s like already been on point for a long time and we just pulled out a few foods. So we have those— that kind of progression because you’d be surprised, the smallest things that we do have a huge effect. And it’s like, whoa! you would’ve thought I would have created the awesomeness protocol ever and found a you know, this hidden infection that everyone missed and got rid of it for that kind of improvement to happen. But sometimes it happens, we’re just removing some food. So, first, I remove the foods, second, I replace enzymes, acids, digestive support, bile salts, too. Third hour is gonna be repairing the gut lining. It could be also repairing the thyroid and adrenals and sex hormones, too. Fourth hour is removing infections. That’s where we go after— bacteria, parasites, uhm—fungal overgrowth. Those kinda things. We may even go after co-infections future podcast on that soon enough. Fifth hour, repopulating or reinoculating probotics. Some of these nice and beneficial bacteria. They’re transient. They only hang out for a month or so and pass on. So, getting some of that it in there periodically is helpful. Sixth hour is retest. We want to make sure infections are gone. And maybe even address family members too to make sure they are not being passed back and forth you know, playing hot potato.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Riley asked a question about—he said, “Evan is your IBS completely healed now after addressing anything?” Uhmm—kind of a confusing question about addressing anything. Yeah, I don’t have IBS anymore. I’m infection free, no more H. pylori, no more parasites, no more bacterial overgrowth, no more yeast overgrowth and I feel good and feel completely normal, which was an amazing thing because after so long, you know, it took me to be so long to get here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And with your situation, right? Like if you start eating bad foods again and your immune system got compromised, you may have another critter or two that pops back. You may have some inflammation from the food and such. And then those symptoms, they start coming back, right? So it’s not like a cure, like, “Hey, you have scurvy. Here’s vitamin C.” And then as long as the vitamin C is there, you’re good forever, right? It’s like, “Hey, there may be other stressors that may cause the systems to weaken again and those IBS symptoms start to occur, right?”
Evan Brand: Oh, Totally! Yeah. I mean I could go— I could go out to a restaurant and get some type of contaminated food and all the sudden creates a leaky gut situation. Maybe I pick up a gut bug, maybe I was eating while stressed during a week and I didn’t chew my food good. And then I picked up a parasite and have to start all over again. So, yeah, definitely, you know, you could always backtrack. You’re—you’re never permanently in a good place.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And again, one thing I see out there on Facebook, and I see it marketed, and it’s– I have to call—I’m not gonna call anyone out directly—
Evan Brand: No, come on. Do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll call out the concept. But lots of people, they’re like, “You gotta heal leaky gut. Here’s a gut healing program.”
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if you look at it, a lot of times, you know, it’s bone broth or just a lot of healing nutrients and a lot of probiotics, right? And maybe a little diet change. But if we go look at the six hours, what are they really doing? They’re doing the third hour, maybe a little bit of the first, maybe a little bit of the second, maybe a little bit of the fifth, right? They’re kinda skipping around. They don’t have a system and how it’s being integrated a lot of times. And I would say 99% of the time, it ignores going after and getting the infections fixed. Totally ignores it. Because you know, these people are recommending a general program to like thousand people at once in a huge kind of a webinar kind of style, right? Well, how do you get all the types of testing and customize everything in that format? You can’t. So it’s a very general kinda overview approach. And in my opinion, it’s going help some people, which I think is great. It’s admirable. But it’s also gonna a miss a lot of people and those people that don’t get help may lose faith in functional medicine or say, “This is not for me.” So I’m just kinda calling that out because think about it, right? If the root cause of what’s going on is an infection component and you’re doing let’s say the first, second, third, fifth alright but you’re not getting rid of the infection. Well that’s like me giving you this healing aloe, right? You get a sunburn, you come back from the beach, I give you this aloe, right? The underlying cause of the sunburn is the— is the sun. And then you go back out the next day and you get sunburned again and I just give you more aloe. That’s the equivalent of what a lot of these people are doing. Well, just have some more bone broth, have some more of glutamine, have some more of this healing compound for your gut lining. So we got to get to the root cause. A lot of people are just being very general out there. And you know, the listeners of our show will get it and say, “Hey, I see that the missing piece there.” And that’s why we have those six hours that way coz then you can look at it and you can say, “Hey, this is a really specific way we go about addressing things here.”
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said, man. And that’s the food is medicine, people. And we love the food as medicine people, but that’s why you know, we pursued functional medicine because the food is just the first step, right? It’s just one pillar of the house. It’s not gonna hold the house by itself as a single column. And also, I want to mention the order—the order of operations. If somebody just go straight to bone broth and probiotics and L-glutamine, that’s the wrong order. And sometimes people get worse. They’ll come to us and say, “Oh, Justin and Evan—“
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: “I took XYZ probiotics coz I heard it on a podcast or a blog and I felt terrible and I had a flare up of my condition. Can you explain what happened?” Yes, if things are just terrible in the gut,. sometimes you have to hit the reset button. You can’t immediately just add in all these probiotics and expect it to work. Sometimes we have to fix the balance first and eradicate the bad guys before the good guys can come back in. So that’s why the order of operation is just a second when Justin said it’s so important. And this may explain why you’re spinning your wheels even though you’re all—you’re doing everything about the Paleo gurus are saying to do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We just want to make sure everyone’s educated. I mean, we have some people out here, they’re chiming about, “Hey, I really want a functional medicine doctor but I don’t have the—the money for it.” Well, guess what? The best thing that you can do right now is be listening to our podcast coz all this information is free.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’re providing tens and thousands of dollars for free information off of people and I get messages all the time. “Hey, made a couple of these changes or recommendations and my autoimmune condition for 10 years is gone.” Right? I didn’t cure him. I promise. I didn’t cure him, right? The body just heals itself, right? We got to say that as our disclaimer. But that’s you know, what’s that worth. When someone is you know, seeing a rheumatologist for 20 years on lots of expensive medication that’s tearing up their gut and their body and creating more symptoms than they’re actually helping. What’s that worth? So just utilize the pickup as much of the free intel as much as possible. And then you know, allocate some savings or HSA or flex spending. So if you want to dig in deeper, that’s an option. But utilize as much of the free stuff as possible because the diet is the foundation.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 50% is gonna be the diet so work on that first. Once you max that out, and you’re seeing some decent results, then you’d want to go in deeper. You can reach out, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And you can contact likely so. You can contact your conventional doc and try to get some stuff run through insurance. But it’s likely that they don’t have accounts with these functional labs and they likely just aren’t going to do it. Fut if you’re really lucky, you’ve got a really good M.D., you may be able to push push push push at least get the lab so you have the data. Now what you do with the data? Well then maybe that’s where you come to a functional medicine guy that can help in terms of creating a protocol. But getting the data should not be impossible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And a lot of functional medicine docs that do a podcast or websites, I find that they take information, they wrap it up and they try to make people feel so confused where they walk away from the podcast or the video, being like, “What the hell just happened? What I do now ?” And they walk away feeling less certain. I want to make sure no one walks away from any podcast or video I do, gaining more certainty. And at least walking away with one action item that they can add into the repertoire of whether it’s a lifestyle or a supplement or just a different perspective on the6 hoir healing so they get better and they feel more confident.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I watch a couple of functional medicine videos like over the weekend and they were like hour-long videos I made it through 10 minutes. And I thought, “This is not gonna help me at all.” So I decided to turn it off. So let’s do it, let’s do our action steps and summary here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So of course, we have our six hours, right? So everyone listening kind of our general feedback is gonna be a Paleo autoimmune template to start. And again, depending on where you’re at, that maybe really a lot of— really overwhelming for you, cutting out grains, legumes, dairy and primarily having healthy fats, proteins, uhm more veggies and fruit instead of starch. And having healthy fats like you know, if we’re doing a Paleo, maybe a little butter or ghee. If we’re going fully AIP, no nuts, no seeds, no dairy. Just coconut, Olive oil, may be avocado oil, some healthy animal fats. And that will be a good starting point for people. And then again, an AIP or an SCD or autoimmune diet, again, I’m just kinda laying out the Paleo template to start coz that’s probably the easiest buy in without pre qualifying anyone. I would say that after that, at least getting some digestive support going there. And again, you know, the ones that we formulated, we recommend the most coz we’ve put our stamp of approval. High-quality HCl or enzymes. In my line, it’s HCl supreme or enzyme synergy or I’ll add in the liver supreme for extra bile support for digest energy. And Evans line—Evan has a similar products as well. Uhm— so that’s a good starting point there. And then seeing where you’re at, I think is the next step coz there may be infections, there may be other testing that has to go in deeper. So I think if you can get that, that’s number one. And then I think if you can just make sure the hydration component and the sleep component is dialed in next, that’s a good second step. And that gives most people of really good you know, path to go down and if people are listening, they’ve already done that and they’re like, “what’s next?” well, that’s where I think you’d want to reach out and do a little bit more testing because that’s what I think the infection component and/or the hormone component and/or the nutriend malabsorption component from the infection could be the next vector we’d really have to put up in our sites, so to speak.
Evan Brand: I’m gonna address one comment here and then I’ll bring up a question then we could uh—we could wrap it up. Leslie mentioned the diet’s the foundation which kinda sucks no more pigging out in the middle of the night. The good thing is that could be related to infections. I mean for me, for example, when I had parasites, I would get these food cravings that just didn’t make sense and it wasn’t me. It’s these bugs. They are stealing your nutrients, they want food so they’re cannibalizing your muscle tissue and when you’re eating, they’re messing up your ability to digest especially coz I had H. pylori. My stomach acid levels were lower. I was basically hungry all the time and I was losing weight. Getting to like a scary point of weight loss. So really, the diet is not too hard once you just address your gut bugs, that— the whole like binging type thing on food, it really doesn’t happen once your gut is healed, once your adrenals and your thyroid are helped out and your blood sugar’s more stable. It’s not an issue. I mean you could fasted for a long time and feel stable. You shouldn’t have to get hungry or go on a crisis stage. Justin, a question for you. Uh—some doctors say T3 doesn’t matter; they don’t test it on Thyroid labs. The person’s taking T3 now slowly increasing. Would you be lowering T4 when adding this?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I would typically be adding more than likely a T4, T3 put together so there’s gonna be a combination of both. Most doctors don’t care about uhm—T3 because the major pharmaceutical companies, Abbott’s the big one, that has a patent on Synthroid is a synthetic T4. It’s easier to monitor uhm— giving a T4 the half-life’s five days, so it’s really easy. It’s not like a T3, which could potentially have more side effects. Uhm—and it’s patentable, right? It’s the basically tetraiodothyronine with the sodium salt on it. So that’s how they get the patent to it. Uhm—again, they don’t m__ it because that’s just not what they do. They give you the T4, they get the TSH back in range. All your thyroid symptoms could still be present. Cold hands, cold feet, anxiety, mood issues, hair thinning, you know, gut here fitting things you know, gut stuff, constipation all could still be there, but if the TSH is in range, they’re happy. They checked off the list, you’re gone. So that’s where you got a dig in deeper. You got a look at the T4, T3 conversion. You got to look at the autoimmunity. You got a look at the nutrients. You gotta look at the adrenal conversion, the gut conversion connection and the liver detox conversion connection, too.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Should you ignore TSH? No. It’s definitely worth factoring TSH in. You just don’t want to use that as the end-all be-all only marker. But you— but when you have the free T3 and the reverse T3, the TPO, the TG antibodies kinda all the stuff we run, the TSH makes a lot more sense when you got a full picture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We like to keep TSH in the equation and look at sometimes people come in with the TSH that’s perfect, but their T4 T3 conversion sucks. And then what do you do? You know when you’re treating the TSH or are you treating the actual patient? So we’ll try to increase thyroid hormones, see if symptoms change and we’ll try to support HPT access communication with specific herbs. And of course, stress modulation and getting infections— getting rid of infections coz that can really mess up the HPT access, the Hypothalamus Pituitary Thyroid connection.
Evan Brand: Yup. For sure. Uh—Leslie and a couple other comments about you know, where to go next? Well, I mean, you know, if people may say, “Oh, we’re biased.” But the answer is get tested. Our philosophy is “Test, don’t guess.” So if you’re confused, you’ve got symptoms that don’t make sense, get tested. That’s the first step. You can look at adrenals, thyroid, gut, get all the puzzle pieces laid on the table. That way you’re not just buying random supplements that you might not actually need. We’ve seen so many people with 20 and 30 supplements that they’re taking and they still feel terrible. And we cut that down to five supplements because it’s based on labs and all of a sudden people get better. So you know, save up your money for that. Maybe you don’t go buy the next newest supplement you hear about. Maybe you— you focus on investing into some testing first.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: And you can check it out on Justin’s site. It’s Justinhealth.com You can look at the supplements, the labs on there. Same thing on my site, Evanbrand.com and we’re happy to help. So, feel free to reach out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And also, couple of people asked about Dr. Gundry’s The Low Lectin Protocol. I think it’s the plant paradox. Again, my thing is if you’re just going to a Paleo template, you’re gonna cut a lot of those lectins out. If you actually cook some of the plants, some of the starches, some of the vegetables and lower the lectins even more, if you still have a lot of gut issues, upgrading it to an autoimmune protocol, you decrease lectins more. If we still have issues and we can move to a specific carbohydrate or GAPS protocol and we decrease lectins even more. So it just depends on where you’re at cooking knocks a great chunk of that out and just going to a Paleo template, where we’re cutting out grains, legumes, dairy and focusing more on non-starchy veg, uhm— lower glycemic, low sugar fruits and safe starches that aren’t grain-based, you’re gonna have a huge effect and grains, where most of the lectins and irritants come from. So again, that— my opinion matches people making things a little bit more complicated than they have to be.
Evan Brand: Marketing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: I mean, he’s done a good job that book is spread.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It has gone viral. Everyone asked me about it all the time. I can’t get a go of a— one day without a patient asking me about it. So I have to follow it. I think I found it on fast reads on Amazon. So I got a—like uhm—abridged version of it that I’m siphoning through.
Evan Brand: Nice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve got a couple of services where they do these summaries. And it’a great. I mean I get 90% of the information.
Evan Brand: Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Suck it up in a half hour and I’m like, “Oop, got it!” That’s it. On to the next one. Well, any other questions you wanted to answer here, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s everything. I think that’s all we can—we can chat on today and we’re gonna do a podcast soon on co-infections. We’re gonna talk about Lyme, Bartonella and Babesia Uh—Justin and I, I mean, we’ve literally got the books like right here that we’re—we’re diving into. We wanna make sure we’re the most educated and current up-to-date with our information before we broadcast to you guys. So make sure you hit subscribe on Justin’s YouTube channel while you’re at, hit subscribe. And uh—we’ll be back again soon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And one last thing. Patient asked here—person asked here on the chat list, uhm—“How do you—how do you choose your functional medicine doctor? How do you trust them?” He said, “I can’t trust them. How do I choose them?” Well, number one, I think they should have some kind of content out there whether its video, audio and/or blog post where you resonate with their information. Like their philosophy, their information, you should resonate. I find most patients are the biggest reason why they don’t get better is because, number one, compliance, and number two, they’ve been burnt and the past or they failed in the past and therefore they’re kind of priming their subconscious to fail again. So they don’t follow through and they’re off to the next one other, you know, they’re making a 180 move in can’t see someone else because some little thing happened. They’re not following through enough. So I think keeping—one, making sure you choose someone based on their philosophy and the information and making sure you resonate at an emotional level and just a logical level. Here’s the plan, generally speaking, right? And then number two, making sure you’ve given enough time and then follow through uh—for it to work.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. I’ll address— address this last question, then we’ll roll here. Uh—Is it common to have to go through a few rounds of infection killing protocols? Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It can.
Evan Brand: You can. It took me a couple of rounds to go through, some herbs to knockout things coz I have multiple infections. When you’re trying to kill five or six or seven things at once, yeah. I can’t take multiple rounds. Why is that? Depends on the person’s immune system health or stress levels, how long they’ve had infections, the amount of damage that’s there, how much inflammation is there, are they sleeping well, do they have a good diet. You know, there’s million factors to answer why that— why that could be. Hope that helps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great.
Evan Brand: Andrea is asking a question about his father’s prostate cancer. PSA levels are rising rapidly. Can we cast opinions or advice?
Evan Brand: I can’t. Justin?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s about thyroid, it’s about uhm— prostate issues?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Prostate. Prostate cancer this drug—Enzalutamide had been recommended for father’s prostate cancer PSA levels are rising rapidly. Can you cast opinions or advice?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, let me describe– I have one formula here that’s been helpful. Yeah. I have one compound here that I’ve been using here, just I had a couple of supplement companies reach out and I’m using it. It’s the pomegranate extract, and the flower pollen extract and its cranberry extract. So cranberry, pomegranate and flower pollen. This is an excellent support. Lot of research behind those extracts as well. Lycopene is phenomenal, getting adequate levels of selenium 200 mics a day is phenomenal, enough zinc as well is phenomenal saw palmetto’s great. These are excellent compounds that help. Lycopene is phenomenal as well. Again, the diet has to be in place. You want to get the lifestyle things going and again, these things don’t grow overnight. They probably taken decades to kind of move. So coffee and Coffee enemas may also be helpful to kind of early push detox in a faster more acute kind of way. But some couple of compounds that I mentioned are phenomenal and wouldn’t hurt getting them on board in the meantime.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And look at my podcast I did with the lady named Dr. Nasha Winters.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: She did a book that’s called, “The Metabolic Approach to Cancer” She— she had cancer herself and she’s been holistically supporting people with cancer for about 20 years. So uh— look up Nasha Winters and uh look up her book and you could implement some strategies there hopefully.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also, get the insulin levels under control. Make sure fasting insulin is five or below at least. That’s important because insulin is gonna cause a lot of cells to grow and then also making sure xenoestrogen exposure is mitigated, right? Don’t drink out of plastic bottles, avoid pesticides and GMO’s and glyphosate and Roundup. These are chemicals that you’re gonna get from conventional foods. Obviously, eat organic, right? Pasteur-fed meats. Again, these things— I shouldn’t have to repeat them, but I just can’t assume that everyone knows these stuff.
Evan Brand: They don’t. Not everyone does. So, yeah, keep repeating it and keep preaching. And I think that’s all the questions. So we did— we did really good. That was fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I heard a quote back. It’s a quote from the 1940s, where Joe DiMaggio was interviewed and they said that Joe said, “We noticed that you sprint on and off the field every single time at full speed no matter what.” And he said, “Well, there may be someone coming out to see me for the first time ever that seeing me play the way I’m playing and I wanna play at 100% every time.” And then maybe some people that are coming out for the first time seeing us play here, and we want to make sure that they get that information that we may assume that other people uh— may have, right? The equivalent will be like us jogging on the field, so to speak, if we just assume that.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Well, reach out if you need help. Justinhealth.com You can schedule with Justin. Evanbrand.com if you’d like to schedule consults with us. We should have some availability in the next 3 to 6 weeks or so. So just take a look and we’re happy to help you soon as we can.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, by the way, I’m adding in the Mimosa Pudica as well. So I’ll be reporting back on that in the next couple weeks. I think you as well Evan. So we’ll chat about that. Again, I just got that in stock. That’s the Para-1 in my store. I think you have it in your store as well. So, we’ll put that in the show links, too. So that’s a cool new herb that we’re working on. We have a couple other herbal compounds in the mix that we’re using for different types of co-infections that we’re researching uhm—in the background, too.
Evan Brand: Awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, Evan, great chatting with you, man. You have an awesome day. We’ll chat soon.
Evan Brand: You too. Take care
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/para-1/
https://justinhealth.com/products/betaine-hcl-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/liver-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/enzyme-synergy/
https://www.mykidcurescancer.com/nasha-winters/
Fibromyalgia Natural Solutions – Dr. J Podcast #159
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand discuss about Fibromyalgia including its cause and symptoms. Learn how some of the symptoms connected to it such as anxiety, depression, IBS, memory problems are also seen in other health conditions.
Listen as they talk about some of the viruses, infections, gut health, heavy metals, thyroid and adrenal imbalances as possible contributing factors or underlying issues leading to unfavorable health symptoms. Gain some valuable information regarding natural solutions and lifestyle changes that you can do to combat these symptoms.
In this episode, we cover:
02:15 Fibromyalgia Symptoms
03:48 Viruses and Infections
07:20 Gut Health
10:31 Adrenal Issues
13:19 Heavy Metals
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s Dr. J here in the house. Evan, how we doing today? Happy Monday!
Evan Brand: Hey, man! Happy Monday to you. Life is good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We had a little technical difficulty here. But we are rolling. The show must go on. So, any any updates for me here that you want to bring to my attention before we dig in and get dirty?
Evan Brand: Well, I’m just excited. I’m excited to talk with you about fibromyalgia. This is one of those things in that category like IBS where the conventional doctors—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand:.. give people diagnosis and then they just end up with drugs in their pockets and they don’t have any real success. And people struggle for years and years and years, they end up with these other symptoms that come along with fibromyalgia like anxiety or depression or IBS. And once again, conventional Docs, they just don’t really have a high success rate with this issue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A hundred percent agree. And fibromyalgia is one of these interesting types of diagnoses. Basically you have to have uh—central allodynia pain, which is kind of like this uh— pain that may be true like 11 different random spots of the body. So they look for these different pain, tender spots, shoulders, chest, hips, back. And they are looking for like at least 11 out of the 17 or so spots. And if you have it, great, you have fibromyalgia, right? Coz basically what is a central allodynia? That means your nervous system is so hypersensitive that it’s dectecting, you know, you rubbing like this, just things that shouldn’t cause pain. It’s sensing that it’s pain. And that’s the biggest issue coz the nervous system is so upregulated, it’s like having an antenna that’s so hypersensitive that it’s picking up stations uhm— that shouldn’t be picking up. And it’s the same kinda thing. Your nervous system is an antenna that’s picking up all these nociception or pain sensation where it shouldn’t be. So we want to get to the root cause of why that is. Go ahead.
Evan Brand: Yeah. There is uh—conventional drug that a lot of people end up on. The Lyrica, which I’m sure you’ve heard of.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: Huge pricing commercials for it. And I’ve had people taking that and they just don’t notice much and then sometimes the side effects, maybe not without drug, buy any of the drugs, can be worse than the actual thing that you’re trying to fix into the first place. So that’s just— it’s scary because when you want to get a root cause answered, you’re not gonna get it unless you start running some of these functional medicine testing that we’re talking about. So I just have a list of symptoms I wanted to read that could come along with the fibromyalgia. So that could be anxiety, that could be concentration and memory problems, depression, fatigue, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome. Now, that sounds like a lot of other things that we need to talk about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And here’s the thing, right? A lot of people may have gluten sensitivity or hypothyroidism or heavy metal issues or gut microbial imbalances, the issue is that some people may manifest with Hashimoto’s. Some may manifest with fibromyalgia symptoms who have a lot of the central allodynia pain. So it is interesting because some people, they can have the exact same core underlying issue, but have a totally different diagnosis. And all of diagnoses is a constellation of symptoms that are typically put into one category, right? The chronic pain symptoms—that’s gonna be in the fibromyalgia category. Memory symptoms—that’s gonna be in the category. Fatigue symptoms— that could be in the thyroid or adrenal category. Gut issues— depending on where that inflammation is located, that could be in the Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis or there’s no inflammation in the tissues that can be in the IBS category like you. So this is where it’s tough because all conventional medicine is tyring to categorize known symptoms in the categories call the “disease”. We are trying to trace it upstream. And the hard part about functional medicine is certain people can have the exact same imbalances and manifest with totally separate diseases. That’s the hardest part people to wrap their heads around.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Let’s go into the viruses. My wife when she had joint pain several years ago, you said, “Evan, the first thing you need to look into is going to be some of the viruses.” And so we got a blood test run on her. She did not show up with Lyme, fortunately, but she did show up with the cytomegalovirus and then also the mycoplasma. Can— so can you speak about those a bit? And how that could be causing joint pain that could get misdiagnosed?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A hundred percent. So there are certain infections like mycoplasma is one of them they can manifest in the joint tissue, for sure. So that’s one of those conditions that an infection can really be driving a lot of that joint pain. And we know certain infections and certain imbalances can manifest with certain symptoms. Like we know that hypothyroid issues, low thyroid function can manifest having low thyroid hormone in joint pain. We also know like infections like mycoplasma can also cause or call the lower thyroid function and then potentially manifest in joint pain. We also know it could potentially manifest in the joints and you know certain antibiotics like Minocycline to help knock it out. We prefer to use some of the herbs coz it tends to be safer on the gut microbiome in the long run, number one. And then with your wife symptoms, we notice that she already had a pretty good diet. And there was a tick bite involved in your wife’s last issues. Is that correct?
Evan Brand: That’s right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so because of that, you know, we were leaning towards, “Hey, let’s just to after the infection and see what happens.” And when we knocked out the infection, everything got a lot better. So that was good to see that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. It was so— it was so it was so easy, too. So simple. Just modify the immune system, all of a sudden things are better. So, if you have fibromyalgia or you have joint pain and general pain stiffness, you gotta make sure you roll those in. So go to your doctor if you’ve got a natural path or functional medicine practitioner, that’s even better. Try to get them to test you for the Lyme, plus the co-infection. So coz like I said she had a negative result for Lyme, but she was positive for these other things, Cytomegalo and the Mycoplasma. So you gotta go look for them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. So, again, any issue any like disease issue, like if you’re someone and we’re focusing on fibromyalgia today because that’s got a certain bit of symptoms that manifest in pain. So if you resonate with that, great. This is going to help you. If you don’t resonate with fibromyalgia symptoms, but you have something else, this podcast is still gonna be helpful because we always trace it back to the underlying imbalances, which can manifest itself in different symptoms. But one thing that’s gonna be uniform across the board is looking at the gut. The gut is really important coz that’s where a lot of your immune system is. 70 to 80% that’s where your body digests and breaks down nutrients, that’s where uhm—your— essentially you digest and break down all the food you’re eating. So if we’ve a bottleneck in the breakdown of our nutrition, we’ve a bottleneck in how our immune system functions, if we have a leaky gut and your immune system’s being overreactive, or if we have an infection there, that can create a lot of underlying stress that may manifest itself in different symptoms. And again, kinda linking it back to fibromyalgia, if you have these chronic pain issues, those 11 kind of places a central allodynia pain to touch, right? Your diagnosed 11 places of pain on your body, at least. And you have the fibromyalgia, the diagnosis, then we definitely have to rule out the gut. And again, here’s a thing that really throws people for a loop is that you can have gut issues and not have gut symptoms – that’s the really hard thing. You may not have the bloating, the gas, the diarrhea, the constipation, the acid reflux, and you may still have a gut issue.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm. H. pylori we see it every week in the clinic. So if you’ve got H.Pylori, you’ve got that bacterial infection, that’s suppressing HCl production, therefore you’re not digesting your food. So if you’re seen floating stools or you’re seeing undigested food particles in your stool, that could all be adding up to this whole picture of the depression, the anxiety, the fatigue. Maybe even skin issues, too. So maybe you don’t have the fibromyalgia diagnoses, but you’ve got fatigue, depression, anxiety maybe some sleep problems maybe some skin issues. That could all be tied into leaky gut— that intestinal permeability. It could be something as simple as H. pylori or like Dr. Justin Marchegianientioned, it could be H. pylori plus Mycoplasma plus maybe some bacterial overgrowth like the SIBO case or plus parasites, which is something we often talk about, plus fungus. You know, typically it’s not just one thing. Most of the time, by the time people get to us, they’ve been suffering for quite a long time and therefore, there’s usually a handful of things that we’ve got to address. Now on the thyroid, is the pain going away just a side effect of you fixing your thyroid? Like all the sudden thyroid function improves and the pain just goes away. Could it be that simple if that were your biggest root cause?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well 100%. So you can see it quite frequently that just getting someone on some T3, some thyroid hormone can really help because they may be on thyroid hormone, T4, but they’re not able to convert and activate it. So there’s TSH, right? The pituitary hormone that most conventional docs measure to look at thyroid function may look nice and pretty but they’re not making that conversion from T4 to T3. So their T3 levels may be low, and if you come in there with some activated T3, you may start to put some of their thyroid symptoms on remission. Now, we have to understand, from a functional medicine perspective, what’s palliative and what’s root cause. So we have to make sure we actually fix the underlying conversion issues, if it’s nutrient or if it’s inflammationm if it’s gut, if it’s immune. And we also had to fix the underlying nutrient absorption issues, the infections, the autoimmunity, right? So whatever those issues are. So, we kinda understand that there are certain natural medicine things we can do. There are palliative, which are great. And there are certain things like, I think you mentioned earlier about the uhm—your child has a little bit of eczema and you know, putting a little bit of coconut oil in there helps. But you recognize, that’s palliative not root cause. So we try to get to the underlying foods that may be causing it. Same thing in this analogy with thyroid. And thyroid, low thyroid hormone can express itself in about 70 different symptoms—hair loss, fatigue, uhm— brain fog, anxiety, right? All these different symptoms. Also, the pain symptom is one of the.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. And if it’s Hashimoto’s, if it’s an autoimmune thyroid condition, that T3 could help symptoms improve. In this case, you could get more energy, could help reduce pain. But if you haven’t stop that autoimmune attack by addressing infection, supporting the adrenal glands, making sure the diet is dialled in, and you don’t have any foods that are creating antibodies against the thyroid. You know, those are some of the big three needlemovers you got to have on board to fix this thing at the root and not just be stuck on T4 or T3 or combination for the rest your life.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. So we also know that adrenal issues— adrenal imbalance is not necessarily adrenal fatigue, of course, you know, most people in the conventional medical world will hear adrenal fatigue and think adrenal failure like Addison’s disease, okay? Which is valid but we also know that there can be imbalances in cortisol that may not be a full disease failure kind of situation. It may be just lower adrenal cortisol issues, lower DHEA because of HPA axis dysfunction. And if that’s the case, we want to make sure we support that because adrenal, zero adrenal glands produce cortisol, which is your natural anti-inflammatory hormone. And again, people that have chronic pain issues, a lot of times, we put on like COX 2 inhibitors, things like that. Severe pain, of course, Opioids is an Oxycontin, which is a another big issue in itself. But also, Prednisone and Corticosteroid drugs that basically have the ability to knock down inflammation, the problem is, why aren’t your own glands working enough to cover up that inflammation, too? So, if we get the adrenals working better, we can kinda make some of our own homemade Prednisone on our own—our own homemade Corticosteroids to help cut that inflammation down.
Evan Brand: So talk about what happens. Let’s say somebody is on the steroids long-term, that’s also going to affect the adrenals as we’ve seen on some lab results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It will throw off some of the feedback loop, so will disrupt the HPA axis, that’s the brain talking to the adrenals. That’s that nice feedback loop or that kind of internal thermostat that our body has. So we do have that there that we have to work on because that can affect that thermostat. Uhm—number two, it can really throw off your blood sugar. So taking a lot of synthetic steroids that when we create protocols for a patient, we may use small amounts of precursor hormones like Pregnenolone or DHEA. And these are gonna throw things off in the same way that a drug would. Because these drugs are very, very powerful. They can mess up the feedback loops. But if you’re using a corticosteroid, it can really mess up your blood sugar and in the long run, it can even create osteoporotic situations. It can really thin out the bones. It can really weaken the gut lining because these steroids break things down,right? They’re anti-inflammatory but they are also very catabolic. So it’s great in the short run, right? When we get back on track, but not good in the long run coz it can really mess up our glandular physiology. How that—how our hormonal systems work. And the feedback loops that kinda keep them connected.
Evan Brand: I think it’s worth mentioning heavy metals, too. I don’t think it’s good to be
necessarily the number one cause for most people, but we notice that if there is a gut issue, let’s say somebody does have these gut bugs, they could have a detox problems, too. Just coz their body, their liver is just so overburden. Let’s talk about metals a bit. So could be just amalgam fillings or could be occupational exposure or could be too much of a lower quality or too big of a fish like a tuna that’s causing issues. Let’s talk about that for a minute.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So we can definitely have toxicity issues like Mercury which can be very inflammatory. Mercury also is similar to the halide group so it could fit into the receptor site where Iodine would typically bind in. Fluoride and bromine can also pinch-hit there as well. So that can create a lot of issues regarding that. Mercury can also jam up the mitochondria. I mean feel free and go to PubMed and just type in “Mercury and mitochondrial function” and you’ll see increase in heavy metals can decrease mitochondrial function. And again, as—as glycolysis and our Krebs cycle turns and we have betaoxidation on the flipside, we generate about 36 ATP’s per pump and those ATP’s work is kind of the cellular currency for energy, right? It’s how our body kind of you know, creates energy and you know, has aerobic metabolism to create ATP, which is our body functions and that’s kinda the byproduct of having a healthy metabolism.
But if we go in there and all these gears are moving spitting out all these ATP, which is basically cellular energy, and we messed that up, we throw kind of a monkey wrench into the gearbox, that’s gonna prevent optimal ATP function, which is gonna throw off our energy and our body ability—our body’s ability to function, right? Lower energy is gonna create symptoms. Anytime you have lower energy, you tend to start having brain fog issues, mood issues, fatigue issues, pain issues, sleep issues because energy is the byproduct of a healthy metabolism. So when energy goes, metabolism is going down. And when that’s starts to go, other symptoms tend to manifest as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ve gotta say two things. One is glyphosate. If you’re not 100% organic, make your goal to be a 100% organic as close as you possibly can. I love that people are honest. I had a guy who on his intake form, I asked the question, “What percentage or diet is organic?” He said 0%. I’m like, “Man, you’re getting glyphosate.” We can measure it. We can prove it on a piece paper, but just know if something is not labeled organic, especially your fruits and veggies, assume it’s contaminated with glyphosate. Just like Justin mentioned about Mercury, antibiotics, glyphosate. Those are all mitochondrial killers and so there’s nothing worse that you could possibly do than have glyphosate in your system. Now, fortunately, you can detox it by using the sauna. There’s other methods that we talked about but just make it a goal. Throw out the—you know, go donate or throw out the non-organic stuff. Swap it out. Pay the extra buck. Pay the extra 2 bucks. It’s gonna be much, much more valuable in the long-term and much cheaper in the long term because you’re gonna prevent yourself from having health issues associated with glyphosate toxicity.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I had a conversation with someone recently that say, “Hey, you you realize organic food doesn’t have any more nutrients than conventional food.” And I said back to them,”Well, it depends.” There are some studies that do say organic food does have more nutrients. I mean there are some people that say that’s there are some studies by Temple University that shows a much higher level in nutrition with organic food than conventional food. I just think it depends on what kind of organic we’re talking about factory farm, you know, big corporations have started labeling things organic. And again, are they gonna have the same high level as a local farm regarding fertilization, you know, rotating the crops. I mean, if you just have an organic farm without pesticides, but you just continue to heat that crop season after season, don’t let it rest, don’t switch spots, and don’t you know, add synergy to the land, right? Some synergy is like, for instance, when the cows pass on their— basically have their manure, their bowel movements, you’re bringing the chickens afterwards to kind of help uh knock out all the grubs, right? Which prevents other animals from coming in. So you can add synergy to the land that helps, number one, increase uhm— fertility to the soil, right? Increases that top soil. But number two, it helps other past and creatures from growing, which can create havoc down the line. And so, in other words, uhmm—some people can really hit that soil hard and decrease the nutrient densities of the organic food. It has less nutrients, anyway. But anyway, so let’s just pretend this person is right. They told me organic food has the same nutrition as conventional food. Alright. Fine. We do know the research is quite conclusive that organic food has less pesticide residue. Of course, coz to be organic, you can’t have pesticides on it. So just the fact that— let’s the nutrient’s density is the same from organic food. While I’m definitely not getting the pesticide exposure, which Evan mentioned earlier with Glyphosate or Roundup. It’s so important. coz there are so many studies on that coming out that it’s very toxic on the body, on the liver, on the gut. And essentially many other places.
Evan Brand: You know, the European Union, they’re successfully banning it. I’ve been trying to keep up with this is much as I can. It looks like glyphosate is seeing the end of the rope in the European Union. I hope something is to follow in the US, but I just don’t think it’s gonna be anytime soon here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree.
Evan Brand: One of the thing I wanted to mention is on the CDC’s website about fibromyalgia, they say that much much much higher rates of ankylosing spondylitis occur with fibromyalgia and Justin and I mentioned this on a mini podcast. That’s an autoimmune condition. And so it sounds like what they’re saying without saying it because maybe they’re not noticing the link, is that this whole thing is likely just a autoimmune issue. The IBS, like you mentioned, the Crohn’s or the Colitis, the Hashimoto’s, like this could all just be autoimmunity at the root. And we’ve just got to go through all of our causes and fix the autoimmune issue and then all of a sudden you can reverse the symptoms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. And again, there’s like over a 180 autoimmune conditions. So my analogy is anytime you have a physical chemical or emotional stress, or you know, imagine having this fancy pearl necklace, every time you put tight, that’s a physical chemical or emotional stressor in your life. And let’s just say every little spot where that pearl connects to the necklace, they’re not all the same strength. There maybe some part to that chain that are little bit weaker. Think of that as genetic predisposition at work. You’re gonna have certain genetic links in the chain that are going to be a little bit weaker. Now what does that mean to you, as that stress comes on, that part of the chain may be more likely to break than another part. Let’s say Pearl 33 is more likely to break them Pearl three or Pearl four, right? Now, Pearl 33 may be ankylosing spondylitis. And that stressor may be Roundup or could be Hashimoto’s or let’s say Pearl 4 is Hashimoto’s for someone else, right? So think of every little link in that chain as a different disease that could manifest if that link is broken. And where that link you for you, is gonna be based on your genetic predisposition. What we have control over is not pulling that damn chain type. Let it go. Let it relax, right? How do we do that? All of the diet and lifestyle things. Just cutting the Round up out. Eating organic. That pulls the stress off. And getting that good sleep, having good thoughts, fixing your gut, fixing infections, making sure you can digest and break down all that really good food that you’re eating. Get your hormones under control if there’s imbalances there. Does that make sense, Evan?
Evan Brand: Oh, it sure does. I mean, just like you picture a big wall think of like a submarine. You’ve got a 1000 switches in all these red switches are flipped on. We’re just gonna go down the list and just flip all those red switches off, and all of a sudden you turn off, you’ve not pulled the trigger. You’ve got the loaded gun, but we’re just gonna decide not to pull the trigger. People think that like genetic testing is the end-all be-all and “Oh, my gosh! I’m genetically predisposed to X.” It’s like that doesn’t change the protocol at all. That just means you need to be even more diligent. If your family had a history of this condition or other conditions, you just have to be more diligent. That doesn’t mean you’re toast. That doesn’t mean you’re definitely going to get XYZ disease or condition. That just mean you got pay attention. You’ve gotta make sure you’ve got all the pieces going in your favor.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And I pretty much work with the genetic stuff. I don’t get so hyper fixated on it. I just assume the worst for everyone. And that way, we’re making the changes in hydration, with sleep, with water, with toxicity, with gut. We’re not gonna give synthetic folic acid. We’re gonna give super high quality methylated B vitamins. We’re just making that assumption for everyone because I can’t be hurt by making that assumption in that direction. If I make it the opposite direction and say, “Hey, it’s okay. You probably don’t have a folate issue. I’m gonna save some money and put some crappy synthetic folic acid in my multivitamin instead of high-quality activated folate. Then I can go wrong, right? I may save a little bit of money but because we’re interfacing with our patients daily and weekly, we know that we’re better off rolling the dice in favor of there being an issue with that. So we always have the higher quality nutrients in there to cover our butts.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I had a a woman who emailed me this morning she said, “Evan, I had a reaction to gluten. Do you think it’s time that I go get tested for celiac?” And I told her, “It’s better cheaper and likely safer just to assume that you’ve got a massive allergy to gluten,” Then you just need to stay way because really, going to the gastroenterology process where they make you eat— what is it two slices of bread for like a week or two and then they cut out a piece of your intestine to try to see if all those cilia where destroyed or flattened. And then a lot of times, there’s even false negatives there. So you could do all that work. Destroy your body, create inflammation and then say, “Oh, it says negative.” It’s like just stay away and be more diligent. Don’t tell people that it’s a preference. Just tell it— tell people at a restaurant it’s a gluten allergy. Make they change their gloves. And you’re gonna be much safer as opposed to waiting for that diagnosis. So that’s kinda what my message is. If you have these symptoms, maybe you’re not been officially diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but you’ve got these symptoms, you’ve got pain and the sleep and fatigue. Just go ahead and think, “Okay, maybe I’ve got XYZ but now I’ve just gotta start working on all these big pieces we talked about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And someone’s chiming in here on the YouTube live here, chat saying that uhm—their local farmer told him it’s certified organic, allows them to spray toxic pesticides two times a year. Not sure what kind of certification that is. Typically, the USDA certification’s pretty good. The fied has to be—the land has to be for three years without pesticides to even get that certification. So I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same USDA certification, number one. And a lot of farmers they’ll use other compounds that tend to be a little less toxic to help with spring. So like for instance we have our property done which had to use probiotic spray and we tend to use essential oils. And again, there may be chemicals in there, of course, but they may be harmonious and have less toxic burden. I’m more worried about the toxicity of the pesticides. And let’s say you bought an organic food that was, you know, in one of these farms that was spray twice a year, well, isn’t that gonna be better than a farm that’s sprayed weekly?
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I’m kinda like good-better-best. Hey, if I’m gonna cheat or if I have a choice option between something that was spray weekly versus twice a year, I’m still gonna go with twice a year because that toxicity burns is gonna be good. Also, we can just utilize the Clean 15 and the dirty dozen. Great, if we’re gonna buy a food that’s conventional or somewhat conventional with pesticides. Let’s look at the Clean 15 and see the foods that have less pesticide residue and avoid the dirty dozen and/or just get a really good uhm— vegetable or fruit wash that you can wash off some of the external pesticides at least.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And some of the regulations under the USDA, there’s a difference between 100% organic and just certified organic. So, obviously, the best thing to do which is contact a local farmer, which is what I do. I buy some bison meat and other products locally. And I know that they don’t ever use chemicals ever and if they do have to use chemicals, they’ll tell you. And they’ll say, why, what happened how much, what did they actually use. So if you just look up local harvest and go look up type in your ZIP Code, your location, go find some local people and just talk with them. That way, you don’t have to guess anymore whether something’s actually legit from the grocery store. I still go to the grocery, but I try to source other things outside where I can check the person’s hand. It’s just a lot more viable experience that way.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And again, we just have to do your best, right? Sometimes we don’t have the best options you know, when we’re traveling or we’re going out to eat. But if we can control the 80 to 90% when we’re home and we’re in our house and the foods that we choose in our area, that’s gonna be the most important thing. Also, when you’re healthy, you get a little bit more wiggle room; when you’re chronically sick, you don’t. So if you’re chronically sick, then you really got to be careful and make the best decision possible and uhm— if you’re not, then 10 to 20%, I’m totally okay with. And if you’re going to get exposed to things, activated charcoal is a great option uhm— taking some extra detox support may be helpful, too. So all that’s really good if you know you’re gonna be getting exposed to not so good things.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Take in your enzymes, too. Take in your acids, your enzymes. You and I both use enzymes that are gonna contain special ones that helps. So if you do get to it. exposed to gluten, that can help reduce the flareup. If you are sensitive, you are react to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then James here, talks about uhm— his fatigue still lingers daily, can’t shake it. Thyroid tested good with me, uhm—Modafinil works great and gets me to the day. And Modafinil or Provigil aspirin is a big fan of it. Not a huge fan long term. I mean I think it’s not fixing any of the underlying issues. So the diet helps I mean I would look more at the adrenals, I’d look more at the mitochondria. I forget your specific case, James, I know you’re doing good for a while. So if you just had a backward slide recently, we’d wanna chat and figure out what underlying stressors have creeped up or make sure the infections are gone, or make sure the mitochondria are functioning as optimal as possible. So I wanna look a little bit deeper. I’m fine, though, using Modafinil Provigil punctuated time frames, you know, a work deadline comes up, major stressors you know, you have to induce some extra stuff on the weekend with your family or work stuff, then fine. Take that to really upregulate your body but just keep in mind there’s something deeper we got a look at. And just you know, things like sleep and things like hydration and people forget those all the time.
Evan Brand: Yup. Very simple but sometimes the most simple stuff moves the needle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean Daniel talks about here, uh— talks about what can cause jellylike lumps in the semen sometimes painful to pass. Well first off, I would do like a urine analysis first, just to make sure there’s nothing, no UTI your uhm—you know, nothing that’s kidney or bladder base. Make sure there’s no infections in the piping, so to speak. Uh—again, I would also rule out epididymitis. Make sure there’s no infections in the epididymis. There could be a bacterial issue that’s just causing these uh— the semen to kinda agglutinate or stick together. And also, even just run a sperm analysis. Just to make sure this— the semen are actually alive and it’s not a whole bunch of dead semen uh— in there as well. So, I would look there first. If the diet’s good, if everything else is good, I would just make sure any type of infections and that urinary area are also clear too. E. coli, those kinda things.
Evan Brand: Awesome. Well, we gotta wrap up. Both of us gotta get back to our calls, but we hope you guys enjoy the show and leave us questions. You can leave us questions in the future. So if you didn’t catch this live, go to Justin’s YouTube channel. Go on his video, write in your questions, we’ll try to answer as many as we can or will save those for future show. And then same thing for topics. If you have topics that you want us to address, please put them on there. And if we need to reach out for a consult, check out Justin’s site. It’s Justinhealth.com You can schedule a consult. If you wanna schedule a consult with me, check out my site EvanBrand.com and we are happy and willing to help you. So please reach out if you’re suffering around the world, just phone in and Skype consults make it easy for us to help you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And check us out on our podcast channels, too. We’re trying to do our videos here on YouTube, but we’re also trying to record everything in higher-quality audio. So, if you want to hear us in some higher quality audio, check out our podcast channels. Again, if you go to Evan’s site, EvanBrand.com or my site, Justinhealth.com click on the podcast and you can subscribe to get updated, audio as well. Anything else you wanted to add, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s it. Awesome and Ross, yeah, Mastic Gum is great for H. Pylori. Awesome show today, Evan. Great as always. Appreciate your energy and your insights and let’s chat real soon.
Evan Brand: Likewise, man. Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take Care. Bye now.
Evan Brand: See you.
References:
Hacking the Holiday – Dr. J Podcast #160
Dr. Justin Marchegiani discusses different options, substitutions and modifications that can be made during the holiday season. Learn about what ingredients to use in some of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes including the turkey, stuffing and gravy that can help to still improve your health.
Gain insight on the different modifications and options that you can use for some of your desserts so you can still indulge without having to feel guilty afterwards. Also, learn about some other cool options including meal timing, fasting, exercise and alcohol intake for a healthier you during this holiday season.
In this episode, we cover:
01:49 Grain-free holiday meal
03:01 Enzyme Support
05:55 Desserts Options
10:36 Timing Recommendations and Alcohol
15:00 Exercise
Evan Brand: I am and I’ve got blue skies here which is very unusual for this time of year. We’ve got sunny every single day this week. So I’m super grateful for that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Yeah, it’s a great time of the year. It’s uh— important year, time of the year to be really grateful and to be extra uh— particular in all the things that we have to be thankful for. Coz there’s a lot of things but it’s easy to be so focused on everything it’s not there. So we got to really focus on all the things that are there. So couple that is just how about, just some really good Intel that we can use to hack our holidays. Meaning we can still indulge in feel good and connect with our family members but not go into a food coma and feel like absolute crap. What do you think about that?
Evan Brand: Agreed. Yeah. A lot of our clients recommend we do this subject because they feel deprived if they’re doing AIP or some type of dietary approach. They feel like that we’re the bad guys and we’re making their holidays not as fun. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So, couple of things if you look at Thanksgiving, it can totally be Paleo, right? We have like basically the centerpiece in the Thanksgiving Day meal is the turkey, right? Awesome. Especially if we can go after the darker meat. That’s gonna be excellent. Good fats, right? Try to buy an organic or at least a Pasteur-fed turkey. It costs a little bit more but the nutrients are to be much higher, right? So you get good fats and proteins there. That’s the kind of a starting point. And then after that, you control your sides. So most people want mashed potatoes and maybe squash which you know, I’m okay doing a little bit more starch in the holidays. I’m okay with that. It’s better than doing, let’s say a grain-based stuffing, that’s number one. Number two, we try to substitute for the things that we typically have grains. What’s gonna have grains? Well, typically, your gravy is gonna be thickened with flour so we do a gravy that’s gonna be a carrot and celery based and we thicken it with coconut flour if we do it. And we use the actual uhm— turkey stock from the actual turkeys. That’s a huge way to get to the stuffing, I mean the gravy going. And then the stuffing there’s typically some good stuffing recipes out there where we do a celery and carrot-based stuffing and it’s totally grain-free and it taste phenomenal. So, off the bat, you can have your starches. I’m okay with that. Number two, you have the gravy. Because the gravy kinda goes on everything. So if your gravy isn’t too good, you can really mess everything up coz you just basically coating everything with thickened uh—turkey giblets and flour. And then uhm—then after that, you have I mentioned your starches and then after that you can do cranberry sauce, really, you know, super Paleo. You can do like, I’ll do green beans and I’ll cut up some bacon, I’ll layer that on there, too. Uhm—those are kinda my big things off the bat and of course, a really good turkey. We’re gonna smoke our turkey this year. We typically use our smoker this time of the year. Any other thoughts, Evan, off the bat for your? Just with the Thanksgiving Day meal?
Evan Brand: Well, my thoughts are you got me hungry but besides that—<laughs>
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: <laughs>
Evan Brand: But besides that, the enzyme piece.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: You and want to talk about enzyme.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: So let’s go into that. So one’s that you and I were talking about off-air was one from designs for health. It’s called allerGzyme. And this is more specific to people that if they’re just going to go off the rails, they are going to do or get it possibly get exposed maybe a cross-reactive issue with dairy or egg or soy or gluten or casein peanuts, things like that. You can take the specific enzymes. They’ve got like a patented version they call it what, Glutalytic in there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: It is supposed to be pretty helpful. And they’ve got bromelain. Way but it’s a very, very super high dose bromelain which is a pineapple enzyme. It’s a really good enzyme. So there’s that. And then you and I both have our own custom digestive enzyme formulas that I say those are the best nutritional insurance policies that you can bring with you like a little glass jar or something.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Especially the fact that people forget that I uhm— having a meal like that is gonna be stressful not necessarily because it’s bad because obviously we’re gonna try to make the substitutes. We’re not gonna focus on eliminating. We’re gonna focus on substituting. So we have the most healthiest options possible but because we’re probably gonna eat such a ton of food, it’s going to be a lot for our digestive system to handle. So we’re gonna really utilize more enzymes and more HCl and maybe even some bile salts to really optimize our ability to actually break it down.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I love it. I’ve got a small little old honey jar that my wife just keeps in her personnel and so if we go out to restaurant or if we got to family member, I’m just gonna pull out those enzymes and popp them down. So that’s can be my strategy and I think everybody who is dealing with bloating, gas, indigestion, a lot of these common symptoms heartburn, you’ve got that excessive heaviness feeling.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you already got those symptoms and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, then you’re a person who needs extra care when it comes to using enzymes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So we talked about the meal. We talked about maybe the potatoes and/or the sweet potatoes or the squash. I’ll typically put some extra cinnamon on my squash, too, which is great for blood sugar. And the blood sugar and the insulin kina receptor sites that which is good. I talked about the green beans. I talked about how to maximize the gravy because the gravy is one of those things that’s gonna be layered on everything. So if you can fix the gravy component— and we’ll have in the show notes some Paleo uhm— gravy recipes so we’ll make sure we get some Paleo recipes in the notes. Uh—we’ll make sure we get some stuffing recipes. Coz those are gonna be the the big— the big things—the gravy and the stuffing. Almost everything else, you can dial it in. The turkey’s pretty good. You can do really good cranberry sauce, you can do uhm— squash, you can do sweet potatoes, you can do regular potatoes or any other sides that we’re missing.
Evan Brand: Yeah. You hit the green beans.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Sometimes peas, sometimes carrots you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: I think honestly, if you’re eating real food and you just always think, “Am I eating real food?” you’re gonna be just fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Then a couple of things—let’s go to desserts pretty fast. So we’re just kinda laying out the meal options or the meal substitutes, I should say, and then we’ll talk about little hacks that you can incorporate, too. So, off the, my Paleo Apple Crisp is something that I utilize a lot. I actually have it made once a week and it’s basically just a combination of the crust, which is gonna be coconut shreds, pecans and walnuts, kinda crushed up. And it’s gonna be kinda layered over some Granny Smith apples that are cut up. And the Granny Smith apples are basically mixed with butter. And they’re also gonna have a little bit of cinnamon on them and then we also have a little bit—
Evan Brand: I need this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: .. a little bit of organic palm cane sugar. And we like the organic palm cane coconut sugar because it’s got a glycemic index of 15. So it goes into your bloodstream a little bit slower and we try to use the least amount possible. So what I recommend is put the smallest amount whether it’s like uhm an eight of a cup or something in there. And just kinda glaze it and then mix it up. And then try a couple before you know, layer all the nuts and cook it. And then just see if it’s at the sweetness you want. So I don’t need a lot. I just put a very, very small amount. Once I have it, you know, typically, an eighth of the cup or sixteenth of a cup, a very—typically, I just glaze it. I don’t even h measure it. I just gently glaze it over so very small amount. And then once I have it to taste, then I pretty much put uhm—then it’s mixed with butter, of course, right? And then I put that topping right on top and there and then 350 for 30 to 45 minutes till the apples are nice and soft. And then you’re pretty much good to go.
Evan Brand: That sounds delicious. Did you invent that recipe or is that something you found?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I invented that one. That’s a good one. And then if you want mix it up, too, you want to make it more like a cake, you can do uhm—a tapioca and arrowroot flower and then typically you just add the arrowroot flour in with the apples, typically, half a cup to cup each. And then that kind of gives that more of a thickened flavor. And then you can just bake it not use the nuts. And then it comes more like a cake. And that’s a really good option. We have that Apple cake option on there, too. So, apple cake and/or uhm— the Paleo Apple Crisp. Apple crisp I think is a little bit more healthy coz you don’t’ have any flours in there. They’re all just a good healthy nuts and fats.
Evan Brand: Right. Yeah. I have a female client last week. She said she’s going to make a like a pumpkin pie but she’s going to do coconut flour and I think she said coconut flour and Coke and cashews maybe. So I know that there’s options out there. I just don’t eat too much dessert anyway, you know, besides a good piece of chocolate. But if you’re somebody who you’re going to go to one of these events and you think, “You know what I don’t want to miss out” Well then you just make it. You know, let everybody else bring the meat and veggies. You just bring a healthy dessert. That way, you know that you’re gonna be safe and you’re not gonna cause yourself a flare-up or new problems.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. For the most part, your turkey’s gonna be good, right? If you’re gonna do your mashed potatoes, fine. If you do cranberry sauce, if you’re gonna do squash, if you’re gonna do green beans or will do like uhm— Brussels sprouts with bacon, that’s typically gonna be good. You’re gonna mess it up with the excess uhm—gravy. So do the gravy right way and you do a healthy stuffing options. So I recommend is if you’re going somewhere, maybe you bring some gravy, or if you don’t bring the gravy, maybe you just uhm— bring the stuffing. And people won’t even know. We bring some of these healthy Paleo options we go places to get invited. People wouldn’t even know the difference a lot of times.
Evan Brand: Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The big thing is for me it’s about, it’s not about, “Oh, Dr. J, you’re being, you know, such uh—so tight about this. You know, why can’t you roll?” Well, the reason why is I wanna feel freaking good afterwards.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I wanna eat a lot and I want to feel good. And there are great options and I don’t notice a difference in flavor. I can make my option and it will taste just as good. So those are some good options. Anything else you want—Oh, also dessert. Just, you know, if you’re doing a pumpkin pie, you can just leave out the crust are there some really good gluten-free, crust options or you can do coconut uhm— crust option. That’s fine. And you can just do your pumpkin pie without you know, just the lower amount of sugar. That’s totally good right there. Uhm— is or anything else you want to mention for desserts outside of the Apple Crisp?
Evan Brand: I think you covered it. I mean you could bring along a piece of dark chocolate if you’re just super scared and you don’t want to go for any of the more processed things. Bring a cup— bring a bar of dark chocolate with there on the fridge when you get to your family’s house.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And again, you could do Pecan Pie a little bit higher in sugar. You just have to make sure the crust is gluten-free. That’s totally fine, too. And obviously, just some really good maybe some coconut ice cream, coconut vanilla ice cream’s totally cool. And then what about supplement options? So we talked about, number one, the enzymes, HCL and digestive support. Number two, you could always add in some activated charcoal.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Activated charcoal. Number three, you could always throw in some probiotics later just to kinda help soothe and relax the tummy. Number four, well how about the approach like when do we eat the meals? So, number one, I recommend intermittent fasting and adding in some exercise in the morning. Even if it’s just a quick Tabata, or just a quick little weightlifting circuit where you kinda do upper-lower, upper-lower and just kind of a simple circuit for 15-20 minutes. Just something in the morning to really get the metabolism revved up. You may fast a little bit more. You may hold that fast a little bit longer than normal because you know that your gonna feast at the end of the day and all those calories will be coming in there to make up for that deficiency. Most aren’t gonna be working out on Thanksgiving. They’re gonna be relaxing and so it’s not as big of a deal.
Evan Brand: How about alcohol? You mentioned that off-air. You said we need to make sure we talk about that. So you’re recommending after meals instead of before meals saving?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, yeah, I recommend just have a little bit. Well, number one, there’s a couple of strategy. So I may do one glass just to kinda get that buzz in my system fast. It’s like, “Ooh, I could feel it.” And then I’ll throw maybe a couple of things, a charcoal in, and then maybe there will be like a shrimp cocktail out and have a couple of little shrimps just to kinda get the protein, fat in there which kinda stabilizes my blood sugar level a little bit more so I’m not gonna go wonky. And then I typically just go with like a dry champagne or a dry Prosseco. So it’s very dry kind of a demi-sack, not a lot of sugar white and I like the sparkling. The sparkling has been shown to increase alcohol absorption. There was a—one study out of a bunch of college students. Can you imagine that? I would love to have been in the study in college where they gave them shots of vodka and then the other group got shots of vodka with carbonated water or like soda water. And they measured their blood-alcohol content and they found that the group that had the bubbles with their vodka had a much higher blood alcohol content for the same amount of alcohol. So, go figure. So what’s the moral of the story? You get— your alcohol goes for little bit longer of array when there’s little bit of carbonation or, bubbles in there. And James is saying, “What about Cheetos?” Yeah. So I would do Cheetos with my ginger Kombucha and a little bit of lime. The lime provides extra vitamin C, which is great for glutathione. The Kombucha has extra B vitamins and antioxidants and EGCG in there and uhm—probiotics. So it actually helps detoxify and help your gut microbes while you get a little tipsy.
Evan Brand: See that almost makes me wanna drink alcohol but every time I drink alcohol, I feel like I can’t comprehend simple things, like I like to I like to always have my brain going going going.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: And for me to shut off with the alcohol, it’s almost stressful. It’s almost like, “Nope, my brain is slowing down.” I don’t like this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, we should make sure the demand on our brain is less.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When the time—we’re not gonna be like opening up the champagne bottles when we’re seeing patients, right?
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We wanna make sure our patients get a 100% of our brain capacity. But when it’s the holidays and we’re just watching some football, and our brain is like 80% off, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.
Evan Brand: <laughs> For sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. But, yeah, we have the activated charcoal. We just have really good quality alcohol. Uhm— again, why does it matter? Coz I don’t want a headache. I don’t wanna feel crappy. I don’t want a ton of breakouts the next day. So we’ll choose uh—and typically, I’ll just get $15 bottle of really good dry Prosseco from Whole Foods. And I try to, you know, if I can go organic or you know, typically, the dryer ones are not gonna have as much sugar. It’s the sugar that’s gonna really throw you off. Uhm—you can also do the dry Creek wines. They have some decent stuff. Again, they don’t have a lot of bubbles like a lot of spike, Prosecco, I do that because number one, it helps with alcohol absorption. Number two, I just like the bubbles. They don’t have a lot of options with that. So I will check out some of the whole foods or local stores, they have a very low sugar like as for a brewed or a Demi-Sec uhm—Prosecco option.
Evan Brand: The holidays are fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They are. Absolutely!
Evan Brand: I think our next month of episodes is probably be silly. It’s coz that’s the that the holiday vibe. It’s relaxing. It’s like, you know what, the summer time things have cooled off. It’s time to relax, time to rekindle, time to cuddle up, snuggle under your wool blanket next to a fireplace. This is a good time of the year.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I got a fireplace in my office so it’s actually nice coz I actually get to use it this time of the year, so—
Evan Brand: That’s awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So my dog just like—it’s basically a magnet for my dog. She just kinda—next to it all day. But, yeah, totally. And then uhm—you mentioned a couple things there. We talked about the alco—so yeah, really getting the exercise component going. Coz that really is gonna wring out a lot of the glycogen in your muscles. So think of glycogen as stored carbohydrate in your muscles and imagine you wringing that muscle out. You’re wringing that sponge out so all of that water in the sponge, all that glucose stored in the muscle now gets used up doing the exercise. Now what does that do? It’s like, well, it’s the equivalent of going and having a nice dry sponge to sop up a whole bunch of liquid drink that your kid knocked over, right? So you can just— that sponge is gonna work a lot better and be more absorbent. Think of your muscles as being more absorbent. So when you get extra carbohydrates into your uhm— body from your meal in your celebration that you’ll have a bigger sponge to soak it up.
Evan Brand: That’s a good idea. I don’t know if many people act on it but if they do, they’re gonna see a really good result. Here’s a question for Mike. He says, “It’s crazy. My Oura ring consistently shows my sleeping heart rate 5 to 15 bpm higher even after having just two drinks like red wine. I feel it the next morning. Any suggestions?” Justin, I know what you’re gonna say. Go ahead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, alcohol can drop blood pressure. So it could be your blood pressure is lower than your heart has to be a little bit faster the compensate for that drop in blood pressure. That’s probably what it is.
Evan Brand: So you’re thinking maybe you don’t need suggestions. So I thought you might say, “Oh, just are you doing charcoal? Make sure you do charcoal.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course, right? Like of course, extra charcoal. We can always throw some vitamin C in there, add in L cysteine. And we could even throw in, yeah like in our lines, we can throw in some detox aminos which is kind like your sulfur base, kinda NAC with a whole bunch of other sulfur amino acid in there. That— that’d be fine. I mean, I would do that. You can also throw a little bit of magnesium in there to uhm— to help with the with that component. But uhm—yeah, I would just look at potentially that just being the alcohol and just do all the things that help detoxify.
Evan Brand: Okay. Cool. Awesome. I think that’s everything we’ve hit. I don’t know if there’s any other piece to the holidays you wanted to go over.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I would try to time off like for me, I notice if I have felt any alcohol in my system when I go to sleep, I do not sleep nearly as good so I tried to give myself like a good three-hour washout period before bed. So I don’t have you know a lot of alcohol in my system. I just don’t sleep as good. I literally have more nightmares, I’m more active, I move around the bed a lot more. I had a glass of champagne before bed like a week or two ago and I like literally woke up at a right angle. So I was like laying across the whole head. I’m just way more active. Normally, I don’t move much at all. So again, if I I had that like at seven and I went to bed at like 10, it wouldn’t be a problem. But if I’m having it right up against bedtime, sometimes it could be the__ plus you know, I’m— I don’t know what the alcohol is when I go out if I order it. I try to order, you know, a nice low sugar kind but you have the bottle in front you look at it, so you just try to go off the waiter’s suggestions.
Evan Brand: Exactly. Yeah. I think it’s all good advice the liver-gallbladder support. I mean, that’s always helpful, too. So if it’s milk thistle or if it’s your Cordyceps mushroom. I mean there’s a lot of different products we use for for liver gallbladder support. One of the thing I was gonna mention, too, make sure that you check in with your practitioner if it’s Justin or myself. If you’re taking anti-parasitic herbs, some of these herbs can get intensified with alcohol. So one glass of wine may feel like four. You may not be able to make it home. See—take a look and see what you’re actually using. I know some of these can create that sensitivity up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Any other suggestions just like meal wise or anything that you guys are doing with your family for the holidays?
Evan Brand: I’m gonna bring some snacks just in case. I mean we don’t know the full spread coz we’re gonna go to like three or four different events.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s tough.
Evan Brand: ..this week and we don’t know exactly what people are cooking, what people are bringing. So just in case, I’m just gonna go ahead and bring uh—I’ve got a couple of some jerky like some jerky strips like some grass-fed steak strips that I’ve got and then I’ve also got a handful of macadamia’s of customer cons would also have coconut chips so I’m just gonna bring some snacks just have that in my wife’s purse just in case just in case we get somewhere and it’s just— I have been to a couple events where it was literally like a casserole, it was covered in cheese and that was the only—that was like the main entrée. There’s no way I could do this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: Like you know, with enzymes, I’d be destroyed so uh—that’s— that’s about it. Just be prepared boy scout. Act like I was going to place that had no food.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And again, there are some people out there where they may be really happy with her health right now. They’re just like, “Hey, this is a once a year thing and I’m just gonna cheat and really enjoy it. And that’s fine, too. But you know, still you can utilize some of the supplements and strategies we recommended so you at least doesn’t hit you as hard. And if you want to wreck if you want to apply some of the substitutes that Evan and I apply, and I’ve done it for years that in my opinion allow me to continue to feel good. I just— for me, it’s not just feeling good that day. I got four days off work. I don’t take a lot of time off. I wanna feel good for those four days and I also don’t want to get sick either.
Evan Brand: Yup. Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, any other thoughts, Evan?
Evan Brand: I think that’s it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So any other plans for you this week? Are you taking some time off from patients or—?
Evan Brand: Yeah. So Thursday, Thursday- Friday I’ll be taking some time off. My wife she’s can go out and participate in the consumer holiday on Friday. And I think that’s about it. I’m gonna try to spend some time out in the woods. I may— I may go out and and go for a deer hunt again. I want to get my own dear this year. 99% of it is just sitting out in nature listening to the birds but may be .01% of the time an animal walks by.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: Really, it’s just my excuse to go do some forest bathing. I may try to do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the Japanese term for that?
Evan Brand: Shinrin Yoku.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Shinrin Yoku. I love that, man. That is crazy. Cool. And we also add another herb to our parasite killing line, too. The mimosa Pudica. So I know will be adding that to our stores in the next week or two. It’s one of those things that we are kind of experimenting with. We’re helping to kill bugs and some of the wormies. So it’s something out there that if your patient and you want to inquire about that, we can chat about that very soon.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Stay tuned. I’ve gotten many, many pictures in my inbox of worms that people are pooping out from using this Mimosa Pudica. I was just a guest on the parasite summit, which is how I learned about this formula. And tons of people are taking it now and everybody’s saying, “Oh my God! My stool test showed up negative but I took this stuff anyway. And here’s what I pooped out. Surprise!” And it’s pretty nasty stuff. So Justin and I are talking off like, “Are you going to try some of the stuff?” I’m guessing we’re gonna have to because we’ve been guinea pigs for everything else. So, who knows if we’ve got some hidden—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Well, what a great call today here, Evan. Happy holidays and Happy Thanksgiving for you and your family. And we’ll talk next week.
Evan Brand: Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You, too.
Evan Brand: Likewise. Bye.
REFERENCES:
Justin Health Paleo Apple Crisp
https://justinhealth.com/products/detox-aminos/
http://catalog.designsforhealth.com/AllerGzyme-60_3
http://www.drycreekvineyard.com/
Depression Solution – Dr. J Podcast #158
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand talk about depression and anxiety. Listen as they discuss some of the possible root cause of such condition. Understand the mechanism of depression and anxiety medications and learn why they may not be the best possible solution to the problem.
Gain an understanding on how diet, especially a vegan diet, becomes an important factor when dealing with depression. Explore how gut infections relate to depression and anxiety symptoms and know some of the natural solutions and recommendations in addressing depression and anxiety.
In this episode, we cover:
00:56 Medications mechanism
03:40 Vegetarian Diet and Depression
05:41 Gut Infections and Depression
14:00 Natural Solutions
18:18 Low Thyroid and Mood Issues
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Hey Evan, how are we doing today, man?
Evan Brand: Hey man, I am great. We had a fun off-air chat. So I’m excited to chat with you about this important topic today— depression, anxiety, you know, mental health in general. But we’re gonna—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: ..specifically focus on depression, anxiety. As I was telling you, the center for disease control, they change the ranking over the past couple years. Now depression is the number one leading cause of disability. It’s actually grown over heart disease. It used to be heart disease was number one. Now depression is number one leading cause of disability. So that’s pretty alarming. I predicted this about four- five years ago I could just see the trend of society and now, it’s happened and it’s official.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Depression is really important because a lot of the medications that are out there. I’m just gonna pull out my little Bluetooth headset here—all the medications that are out there, typically, only treat the symptoms. So you kinda have medication from like the 80’s called tricyclics, right? And these tended to—to work with a little a side effects that a lot of the current days SSRI’s or SSNRI’s, right? These are medications that work on blocking the reuptake of serotonin and norepinephrine or dopamine. And essentially it’s allowing more neurotransmitters to sit in between the pre- and the postsynaptic neuron. So neuron—neuron, pre-post- right? Before, after and then you have all this in between area called the synaptic cleft or the uhm—essentially that’s where a lot of the neurotransmitters would hangout. The longer those guys hang out in that area, typically, what happens is you’re gonna have uhm—a recycling of those neurotransmitters at a higher level. So the longer those neurotransmitters sit in that neuro- synaptic cleft there, the faster they get broken down. So that’s why over time, a lot of antidepressant medications have to go up because of the fact that those met—those chemicals are being broken down at a much faster rate. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: Yup. Well, the problem is, too, these medications they’re not addressing the root cause now. I know in some cases, they could be life saving therapies because they pull people out of a super deep depression or maybe they were suicidal. But as time and time goes on, the percentage used to be 80% of serotonin was coming from the gut and then it jumped up to 85 or 90% and then now, I keep seeing new literature coming out that the percentage is almost close to hundred percent now of serotonin from the gut. So we really have to address any gut infections we have to test for those, we have to find them, we have to fix them. If we really want to get to the root cause, the brain, of course, is a factor, but man, the gut seems like the biggest factor to me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, it’s a major factor. And again, uh— one of the listeners here in the live chat brought up a lot of the shootings that have been happening recently. Yeah, these medications have a black label-warning, black box warning on them for suicidal tendencies, violent acts, these kinds of things. So it can really alter someone’s physiology and biochemistry were it may predispose them to—to these kind of violent act. So, again, I look at these type medications really only being used in a life or death kind of, “Hey, we’re gonna get this person stabilize so that they don’t do something that they’re gonna regret.” But then we have to work on getting them off these medications and get to the root cause.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that really has to be the end goal. We need to have a transitional goal in mind so we can get to the root cause whether we start adding in specific amino acids, amino acid therapy. A lot of these neurotransmitters they come from amino acids. So there’s kind of just like the replacement model of, “Hey, let’s add more amino acids into buildup serotonin and dopamine in the brain so you feel better.” There’s that component, right? And that may be really important especially if you have a lot of malabsorption, like you’re not breaking down proteins and fats, you have low stomach acid or enzymes. It may also be important like you’re a vegetarian or vegan and you’re not getting enough of these high-quality proteins and animal source which tend to be the most nutrient dense. So there’s a lot of different things that may drive that from an amino acid perspective. And you talk about 90+ percent in the gut. The question is, “Can that serotonin cross the blood brain barrier?” I’m not sure we know if it can. From what I understand, it can’t. But uhm—a lot of the precursor amino acids like tryptophan, and/ or 5-ACP can cross the blood brain barrier.
Evan Brand: Uh—got it. Okay. I guess, so you brought the vegetarian/vegan point. This is huge. You and I both work with so many vegetarians and vegans and sometimes, they’re just not willing to add-in things to the diet. So whether it’s like egg or even fish, they just don’t want to add it in. And I’ve seen the most depression anxiety problems from vegetarian and vegan. So I wouldn’t even say it’s like just a coincidence anymore. I mean I’ve seen it so often that it’s just—it’s it’s— gotta be causation in this— in this aspect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, you’re gonna always get higher quality amino acids, proteins from animal products. It’s just how it is. Uhm—you’re not to get a whole bunch of anti-nutrients with them, right? The way animals defend themselves with teeth and with claws. The plants defend themselves are with anti-nutrients, compounds that make it harder to break down uhm—their constituents. The lectins, phytates, mineral blockers, anti-nutrients. They make it hard to break down some of these plant. That’s how plants kind of survive, right? Animals survive through uh—claws, and being able to run, fight and flee. But once you have an animal, right? Once you already killed it and you get that meat in the table, it’s not gonna possess the same amount of anti-nutrients. And it tends to also have just pure protein and fat where a lot of the plant-based proteins are gonna have a whole bunch of carbohydrate along with it. Unless you’re doing like a pea protein powder or rice protein powder where the starch component has already been removed from the proteins.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Well said. Uhm—let’s talk about some of the gut infections. How this could relate into depression, anxiety symptoms. We could talk about H. pylori. We had a question about that, too. So, we’ll go ahead and address it. How can H. pylori cause depression? We know that it’s gonna reduce stomach acid. If it’s reducing stomach acid, even if you are eating those good quality organic pastured animal proteins, you’re not gonna digest those. So you’re gonna have undigested food particles creating the leaky gut situation that can stress out the liver. We know there’s a link between mood issues and the liver. Sometimes it’s fatigue, sometimes depression, sometimes anger, irritability uh—things like that. And then you’ve got the aspect of the aminos. So I just already hit on. If you’re not digesting these proteins, that first domino could be affected all because of your low HCl production due to the H. pylori then all the sudden, you have no amino acids. Now, you’ve got no raw materials to manufacture neurotransmitters. So this is huge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. So—so there’s a couple different components, right? Dan writes, “Can H. pylori cause depression?” Yeah. Well, number one, it’s gonna do it by a couple different ways. Number one, it’s gonna lower stomach acid and enzyme levels which make it harder to break down proteins and healthy fats which you know, fats tend to be a really important building block for the brain. And the proteins tend to be the building blocks for the neurotransmitters. So if we have decrease in the raw material of the brain, right? And we have decrease in the neurotransmitter raw material, then we’re gonna have issues with optimal mood health, for sure. Number two, is a lot of the uhm—bacterial components of H. pylori have what I call lipopolysaccharide or endotoxins, which can cause depression by itself. It does it through going to the brain and creating inflammation to the brain. It passes through the gut junctions, creates leaky gut, goes to the brain creates inflammation and create mood issues in the brain. It also can uhm—it also can just create leaky gut and which can increase the immune system. And when the immune system is kinda over reactive, it can suck up a lot of energy. And when your energy is lower, it tend to have more likelihood of being depressed and being anxious. Typically, lower energy and depression tend to come hand-in-hand.
Evan Brand: Yup. I had H. pylori have multiple parasites. So we had a question from Dawn. He was asking what parasites are the most destructive and what parasites would cause the most amount of depression. I don’t know if we can rank it like that 1-2-3. Number one is gonna cause the most depression but I know when I had Giardia and I had cryptosporidium, I had weight loss, I had H. pylori, I had fungus, I had Candida, I had SIBO, you know, pseudomonas and bacterial infections. I was just very, very, you know, not right in the head. My sleep was off which then affect my energy, which then affected my mood. So it’s hard to say like was it chicken or egg. These parasites cause depression or was it the fact that my sleep was disrupted, therefore I wasn’t actually waking up rested. And that made me tired and depressed. Uhm— Justin, do you have any comments to add about that, like parasites, could you rank them at all, saying crypto or Giardia’s worst than dientomoeba or blasto in terms of the amount of depression it creates?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I would definitely say you—your parasites that are tending to cause more problems because they tend to be a little bit more endemic. They tend to cause more information. But regarding in which ones, it’s hard to say. I’ve seen people have other parasitic infections that cause more problems uhm— than what they typically say on paper. Like some people have uhm— Dientamoeba fragilis but that’s typically one that may not cause a lot of symptoms. So the question is, well, why did it cause a lot of symptoms for you and not the other person. So, again, things like histo and crypto, it tend to cause more problems, but sometimes you may have a less virulent type of parasite infection and it may cause just as many issues for you. So the question is if you have an infection and you have symptoms, especially if you have an infection and you have digestive symptoms, we got out work on getting the digestion better and then fixing the infections next.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. So we have a question about “Is it possible to for your partner to give you a parasite or if it enters your body while your system fight it off?” The literature is not clear on parasitic infections. Now Justin can tell you about like some of the correlations we’ve seen where partners have infections. We know 100% H. pylori is passed all the time. 90% of the time, I have someone that shows up with H. pylori, the spouse eventually has to get involved. We have to get them tested and we end up having to create a protocol for them, too, because I’ve had people where we create a protocol, the H. pylori’s gone on the retest of the stool and then the symptoms come back a few months later. We do another stool test, then all of a sudden H. pylori’s back again like what the hell happened. Typically it’s the partners. So then we have to get the spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend tested. They usually are the source and also we create a protocol for both of them and all of a sudden they get better. Now parasites, though, I don’t know. Justin, what’s your thoughts on passing all the parasites you know, kinda back and forth between each other? What have you seen?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think that’s a 100% probable. We see it a lot with our chronically ill patients that tend to get reinfected over and over. That’s a factor that we always look at to make sure we get the partner, the spouse addressed coz you can definitely pass it back and forth. And I’m more worried about the inflammation, I’m more worried about leaky gut, I’m more worried about the LPS and the endotoxins making the way to the brain and creating inflammation and symptoms there. I’m also worried about just of the maldigestion, not breaking things down well not having enough stomach acid, enzymes, bile salts. So just affecting the digestion, number one. Affecting the leaky gut, number two. And then eventually making its way to the brain. Leaky gut will also cause leaky brain and that could also create more symptoms as well.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. I mean the leaky brain thing, most people don’t talk about it. I think we’ve— we’ve hit or— we’ve hit on that topic on many episodes but I don’t think we’ve done a full one. So maybe we should add that to the list. The whole leaky brain episode. But, people, you do want to realize, if you have leaky gut and this could just be caused from non-celiac gluten sensitivity. If you’re eating gluten, we know that’s creating the leaky gut situation. That’s creating leaky brain. If you take a GABA supplement and you get relaxed from it, you have a leaky brain. And that’s not good. Because then you’re sitting in traffic, you’re breathing in diesel fumes and other pollutants. That stuff is having direct access through the blood brain barrier, which normally would protect you so that the integrity of that barrier is super important. Uhm—there’s another question here about depression. Could it be caused because of a lack of dopamine? Is supplementing with tyrosine sufficient enough to help depressive moods? Yes and no. The thing with the amino acids is it’s like a spider web. So if you do start modifying serotonin, things can get messed up with dopamine. If you just start pounding L-tyrosine, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s gonna fix your problem either. So, really, you wanna get organic acids test first and figure out what’s going on coz we can measure dopamine. A lot of people think they have low dopamine but it’s actually too low serotonin or some people have low serotonin and they think that it’s that. But it’s actually not. It’s actually low dopamine instead. So, vice versa. I hope that made sense. But across the board, you could be low in GABA, you could be low in your catecholamines, you could be low with your norepinephrine, epinephrine, you could be lower cortisol. So even cortisol can be a component of depression because if you’ve got adrenal problems, that cortisol rhythm is too low, your batteries aren’t charged or you’ve got too high cortisol, or your cortisol is all over the place fluctuating high and low, which could all be due to these infections. That’s the perfect recipe for depression. So tyrosine may or may not be the solution for you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And I have one article here. It talks about dietary proteins having a substantial effect on the composition of gut bacteria. And they talked about for instance, suggestion of intake of dairy and meat protein at recommended level may be beneficial to maintain balance composition of gut bacteria compare with soy protein. Now, again, some of the studies are rat-based so it’s not gonna be a direct correlation, but having a healthy gut bacterial level may decrease some of that gram-negative bacteria which is some of the not so nice uhm—bacteria that tend to cause more of the LPS, right? The lipopolysaccharide and endotoxin. So if we can get the gut bacteria more in the balance, that may decrease the LPS, help with healthier gut integrity, help with less LPS getting into the brain, which creates a mood issues that way, too.
Evan Brand: Yup. So did you want to go into some of the natural solutions now? I mean, we’ve hit on neurotransmitters a bit. We hit on infection, so finding and fixing those. What about some of the free stuff, like just exercise alone just increasing BDNF, getting the movement, getting the blood going. I mean that’s huge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: I mean exercise has change my life.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I would say that the BDNF, the Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor really helps with mood, helps with healthy, uhm— myelination, improvement of brain building uh—keep staying away from grains is really important because that can decrease blood flow up the garden hose. It’s called the carotid artery to the brain. If we decrease blood flow, we’re gonna, one, not be able clear out inflammation as well. We’re also not gonna be able to bring oxygen and nutrition to help the brain, too. So gluten is a big one. I would say, of course, your amino acid, serotonin 5 HCPL tyrosine, of course, B6 is really important. And if we’ve got bacterial imbalances that will affect B6. Also, healthy probiotics can help with gut inflammation. Remember inflammation in the gut will create inflammation in the brain. So healthy levels of Lactobacillus, bifida bacter, probotics will help cool down inflammation in the gut, which may help decrease some of that that glial site activation in the brain, which again is—is an inflammatory cell in the brain. It’s a white blood cell that it’s in the brain called the glial cells and when those get activated, it can create uhm—brain fog and it can also create mood issues, too.
Evan Brand: Oh, I wanna go back to the diet piece. So there is a piece of literature out there, a study of 9,700 vegetarians including some vegans, they were twice as likely to suffer from depression as meat eaters even after adjusting for variables such as job status, family history, and number of children. And then it goes on to talk about the lower intake of omega-3 fats, B12 and folate, which all can affect depression risk. Uhm—so on that note of the Omega 3’s, yeah, DHA, fish oil supplement could be helpful, but also, you’ve got pastured meats. You know, grass-fed beef alone contains so much more Omega threes than your standard typical low-quality meat. So, that is a really, really good piece of the puzzle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Uhm— definitely getting 3 to 4 servings, 4 ounces of healthy fish per week is gonna be great, wild Alaskan, sockeye, skipjack tuna, you know, kinda high selenium to low mercury type of fish. You can just google that, high selenium to low mercury fish. It’s typically the higher ones are gonna be like the uhm— the shark pilot whale, those things, swordfish are gonna be much higher in mercury to selenium. Skipjack’s gonna be great. Wild Alaskan sockeye is gonna be great. Cod, Haddock, Sole. These are all gonna be higher selenium, lower Mercury. That’s great. And if you want to be on top of it more, you can do your 2 to 4 g of fish oil per day is excellent. That will have EPA and DHA in it. You know the ones like my Omega supreme has lipase in it. It’s also a triglyceride form, so it’s better absorbed, number one. LS oxidation, number two. And then the actual lipase will help you break it down in case there’s some fatty acid, you know, the digestion uh— digestive compromise things going on in there, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. If you’re buying fish oil supplements, people, if it smells fishy, throw that stuff out. It’s garbage. It’s ethyl ester form. If you go to Target, Walgreens, uh— any of these big box stores and you’re buying fish oil, it’s crap. Do not waste your money. Buy professional grade supplement. Check out Justin’s site, justinhealth I’ve also got one, evanbrand Just look us up. Find our stores. And we’ve got good fish oils because if you’re not doing professional grade, you’re wasting your money and there’s actually literature now that if it is an oxidized rancid fish oil, you’re actually creating more inflammation when the whole goal is to suppress inflammation and help depression. You’re making it worse if you’re doing the low-quality like a Kirkland’s or a Costco or Sam’s Club or these big box uhm—fish oils, vitamin Shoppe, GNC. All those guys. That’s all consumer grade. It’s all ethyl ester. That’s not good. You want triglyceride.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And Teresa mentions a low T3. So if you have low thyroid levels, poor T4 to T3 conversion, right? Or lower thyroid or active fiber hormone T3 or tri iodo thyronine, that’s important. Low thyroid can create mood issues. It can create depression. So we’d want to get to the root cause of why the thyroid is low. It could be just a combination of an autoimmune issue driven by gluten and other infections it could be a nutrient conversion issue like selenium and vitamin A, copper, zinc, magnesium. It also could be uhm—you know, gut bacteria issue. It could also be a stress issue like cortisol, right? So adrenal function has major effects on mood, too. If the adrenals are hyper or hypo functioning, there could be some mood issues there. It could be fatigue, it could be anxiety, it could be depression, it could be a combination of all three. Typically, anxiety and depression tend to come together. Some people can have them just individually where they are either anxious or depressed. But some people they tend to ebb and flow between the two.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. So if you have thyroid problems, you’ve got to investigate the gut, you’ve got to investigate the adrenals. We talk about that, but we can never stop talking about it because your conventional doc is not bringing this up. When you go there and you show up slightly off with your TSH, they’re not gonna say, “Hey, maybe you have gut infections. It’s causing conversion problems. Maybe you have adrenal problems that’s messing up your conversion of active thyroid hormone.” They’re not gonna say that. So we have to keep talking about it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. And so outside of that, yeah, Tessa makes a note,
“Hey, I don’t have a thyroid.” Then you really have to make sure you’re on a full-spectrum thyroid glandular and your T3 levels are at a therapeutic level, at least above 3.0 for T3 free. Ideally, I’ll make sure T4 is above 1.0 That’s a really good starting point. And then James mentions, “What about Olympian labs omega-3 fish oil?” I’m not quite sure. It could be good, it may not. Typically, you get what you pay for. Number one, you want to make sure it’s a triglyceride form. Number two and ideally you want to make sure it’s in, you know, this is like a plus, like I , add in the lipase coz I have worked with a lot of patient that have compromised guts and I want to make sure they can break the fish oils down well. So that is another important component.
Evan Brand: Yeah I’m looking at it right now. I can’t find any information about whether that brand is a triglyceride form or not. So I’ll keep digging and see if I could find it. But, Justin and I were biased because we want people to get better. We have to actually follow up with our clients and speak with them. And if they’re not getting better that comes back on us. And so we really want to use and we always use the highest quality professional grade formulas, which tend to have tighter quality control and better certain—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also just better potency, too. I remember I had some issues in the supply chain because some of the nutrients that we were getting, were testing positive with some—some metals and some other not—not so nice compounds. So they sent it back to the manufacturer. So the nice thing is we’re always trying to look and make sure there’s no other contaminations where let’s say a lesser quality company may just say, “look the other way and just let it go.” So we’re trying to put that quality control on it to ensure that there is not to be any extra crap in it that could throw you off, so to speak.
Evan Brand: Yes. So I ended up on the Olympia labs website here for this fish oil. It looks like and this is just to cheap, right? So if you see something for 30 bucks for a 120, that— it just sounds too cheap already. So to me, that tells me not gonna be triglyceride form. I read the entire description. I don’t see one word that includes a triglyceride form. So to me, it’s ethyl ester. You could always contact them and say, “Hey, is it up ethyl ester triglyceride?” But I’m gonna bet a hundred bucks that it’s gonna be ethyl ester which is inferior. You don’t want to put that in your body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. But again, if you’re doing three or four servings of 4 ounces of fish a week, you may not even need fish oil. Uh—again, if you have extra inflammation, or extra brain stuff going on, cognitive stuff, mood stuff, then I would recommend supplementing it. Just so you get extra bit on top of it. Just to ensure that you know, what you’re getting is getting to where it needs to go. Is there anything else you want to add, Evan, about depression or mood stuff regarding functional medicine here?
Evan Brand: I think that’s it. We hit the gut, we hit the adrenals, we hit the thyroid aminos, liver function, digestive, anti-inflammation. I think we’ve hit all, man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Well, hey, great talk today. We’re doing some quicker podcast so we can get more content out there to everyone. Hope you appreciate it. If you enjoy it, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe. Click on the bell now. With YouTube, they make it so you don’t get a lot of the notifications of new videos and new content unless you are subscribed and you hit the bell. So click on that bell. Do it for Evan’s channel as well and myself. That way, you can get all this really good spoon-fed information for you guys to continue to improve your health and your friends and family health, too.
Evan Brand: Yup. If you need to reach out for a consult with Dr. J or myself, go to Justinhealth.com Evanbrand.com You can schedule consult with this. We’ll help you via phone and Skype. We work with people worldwide. We’ll help you get tested, get to the root cause. So look us up. Book a call if you need help. Don’t try to piece it together for suffering. We’re here for you. So have a great day. Take Care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks, Evan. Take Care.
References:
Using Spore-based Probiotics (Sporebiotics) to Improve Your Health – Podcast #157
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand talk about spore probiotics and their importance in modulating the immune system. Learn about Th1 and Th2 immune system, understand the negative effect of vaccines on them and know the role of probiotics in the imbalances created by vaccines.
Gain information on some of the probiotics strains and know how their acidity and timing of intake impacts absorption. Discover the answers and explanations to questions about lectins and digestive enzymes in relation to probiotics.
In this episode, we cover:
03:00 EMF’s and Infections
06:29 L. Gasseri and Histamine
09:16 Th1, Th2 immune system
18:55 Paleo template and IBS
24:48 Lectins
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yo, yo, yo! It’s Dr. J here in the house. It’s a great, magnificent Monday. I got my little Topo Chico, a little sparkling bubbles here. Evan, how was your weekend, man?
Evan Brand: Oh, life is good. I don’t remember the weekend. The weekends are so weird once you have a baby. I’m sure you figured out the same thing. The weekend is just like, it go by and then all of a sudden, it’s Monday again. And I just love working so much that it’s like, “Oh, it’s Monday, my favorite day of the week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I feel the same way, too. I love Mondays coz I love getting back in the swing and creating content and seeing patients and getting all these uh—great feedbacks of people getting better or you know, you get challenging cases that really cause you to roll up your sleeves. So I definitely like that, for sure.
Evan Brand: Me too. And how was it for you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was great. Uhm—this weekend, my wife—coz we’ve been—we had a baby like a month and a half ago, it’s the August 21st and for the first, she went out Friday and Saturday night. And I had babysitting duty. It was great.
Evan Brand: Oh man, I’ve never done that myself_ the 15th month old.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not yet? Yes. She went out and she gave me a bottle, you know breast milk in a bottle. And just gave me uh—you know, a little bottle but, you know, it created a little balance there because she’s been basically breast-feeding often on every hour or two for the last six weeks. It’s hard because she was—
Evan Brand: Did she text you the whole time missing the baby?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I was kinda giving her updates. But she was feeding, doing the SNS and then pumping and then the time that all finished, the next feeding started in 45 minutes. You can imagine that for five or six weeks. It’s really hard. Now it’s getting like two hours after or an hour and a half to two hours. So now it’s like, “Oh, it’s getting a little bit better.” You know, two hours, you can at least close your eyes and get a little bit of be restorative sleep in there. So that’s good.
Evan Brand: That’s great. Cool. So you were uh—you were the babysitter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it, man.
Evan Brand: That’s awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Life is— it’s crazy how life is, man. Just things continue to evolve and you get satisfaction out of different things. You wouldn’t think it. Holding your baby and having them smile at you or just hold your finger whatever could be that satisfying but—ain’t it funny how that all changes?
Evan Brand: I know, man. It’s great. It’s like DNA trick. So we’ll take care of them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, we wanted to talk today about the probiotic, speaking of DNA. We want to talk about probiotics. And probiotics—again, we’re gonna hone the topics. We talked about probiotics before but we’re gonna really address the area of spore probiotics which are like the cell walls of the specific spores called bacillus spores. There’s a couple that we use in our clinic called Bacillus Clausii Subtilis and Coagulans. Bacillus Coagulans, Subtilis and Clausii. Those are the big ones that we use and these are the basically the cell wall of these kind of bacteria which is the spore. And they have an awesome, awesome benefit of modulating the immune system. Couple other things we find – a lot of these microbes in our body— fungus and bacteria and parasites— EMF’s or electromagnetic frequencies have a real negative effect on making these infections worse. And what refining is some of these bacillus strains, some of the spore strength can really help combat against the negative effects that EMF has with some of these critters. That’s another good benefit. I’ll open up the floor to you here, Evan.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So EMF— I mean I’ve done episodes on this since the inception of the podcast in 2012. So it was five years of talking about it in some shape or form. The more I learn about it, the more that I learned it affects everybody’s systems. So like you just say, uh—I’m gonna say it in a different way. The EMF can actually strengthen the virulence of these infections. So someone’s got parasites, yeast, fungus— we may need to look at bringing probiotics in and really upping and upping and upping the beneficial bacteria to try to counteract the effects of EMF. Now just because you’re not sensitive to EMF, doesn’t mean that it’s not a factor, right? You might not have the headaches or the— the ringing of the ears that a lot of people talk about where the heart palpitations. Like you may not have true EHS like Electronic Hypersensitivity Syndrome or EHS or they have different names for. If you’re not that sensitive, it doesn’t matter. You’re still going to benefit by protecting yourself and protecting your microbes by using either these bacillus spores that we’re going to talk about or just by using other types of probiotics. And at the right time, uh— one thing I wanted you to hit on Justin is talk about the timing of bed and how we can work this in because many people go to whole foods and they buy a probiotic and they take it and then come back to us and they say, “Dr. J and Evan, I took probiotics and I feel worse. What’s going on?” It’s all about timing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So there’s a couple different things. So a lot of probiotics like your bacillus uh—sorry—your lactobacillus, acidophilus, right? Your bifidobacter kinds of probiotics, right? These probiotics tend to be more acid-sensitive. Now there are some that Evan has in his line that are acid-resistant because during this—this like a sphere that it kind of is acid-resistant. And taking that and kinda get through some of stomach acid. We may also just hide it on an empty stomach to bypass the stomach acid so we can have that bacteria intact when it gets to the small intestines, the colon. And then we can have a lot of benefits with immune modulation. We can have uhm— a lot of benefits of boosting up the healthy bacteria so we get better B vitamin pers—uhm— increase coz we get the good bacteria produce a B vitamins. Also, healthy bacteria, I know with the bacillus strains that we see, one of the great things as it helps convert sugar to vitamin C. And vitamin C is super important for collagen, for immune function, for oxidative stress, right? Oxidation is the apple that you cut open then it sits on the countertop and turned brown or the nail left outside that gets rusty. That’s oxidation. That’s a loss of an electron. Antioxidants like vitamin C can help donate electrons to prevent the oxidative stress. So healthy bacteria and particularly the bacillus strains can really help with the vitamin C uhm— conversion from sugar, which is great. And then your other strains like the bac—like the lactobacillus acidophilus, right? These produce acids, which are great coz acid– acidic environment actually keeps a lot of the bad bacteria and fungus in check from growing. That’s why a lot of people do great with apple cider vinegar. It is like this cure-all because the acetic acid has got a very low pH that makes it really hard for microbes and not so nice microbes to work and also can stimulate your own HCl production as well.
Evan Brand: Yup. We have a question from Haley. She said she read that the strain L Gasseri reduces histamine. Have you ever heard of this? Yes. I have heard of certain strains of probiotics helping to reduce histamine. I don’t know if this is correct, but I remember seeing that the Rhamnosus species—I could try find this journal I had bookmarked— I believe the lactobacillus Rhamnosus was something that actually increase histamine, which is why some people may feel worse. I just found it here. Histamine production by lactobacillus Rhamnosus. And Haley just said she read other strains can increase. Yeah. I’ve read the same thing as well, which is why typically, we’re gonna use a combination. And we’ll likely going to have a blend. So if you’ve got some things that are stabilizing histamine, you’re typically going to counteract the other one that could increase histamine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Again, people that typically are histamine-sensitive, a lot of times probiotics in general can create histamine intolerance. Uhm— so I see a lot of people that will just do a really good, you know, lactobacillus or bifido bacter or lactobacillus plantarum, whatever, like that may cause them to get bloated or gassy. If they are probiotic intolerant, one of the things we go to is we go to a spore-like probiotic because people that are histamine-sensitive tend to be able to tolerate that well. And one thing we like about the bacillus spores is it’s acid resistant. So you can actually take it with food, which can make it a little bit easier to process than taking it may be on empty stomach. So we like that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Now, like you mentioned, you and I use some specific types of probiotics out there. They can have an encapsulating technology, where you can reserve them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: So this doesn’t mean that you have to ditch all other probiotics. It just means unless you’re using the formulas that Justin and I have, if you’re not using ours, then you want to use a spore-based because all the other ones, unless it says, “Hey we’ve got some special— if you’re looking at the label— unless it says, “Hey we got a special tableting technology that protects from stomach acid” you’re kinda wasting your money on most of the probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, absolutely. I know the ones that we typically use they will put like colony forming units on there, which you know, that’s like how many probiotics that are in there. There’s a couple of things to look at. Number one is— is that the colony forming units of the probiotic that were put in there when it was bottled? Or how many they expect to be in their expiration one or two years later? So number one, when we put the CFU on that bottle, that’s gonna be how many we expect to be there in 1 to 2 years later when it expires. So, you’re ideally adding so many extra in there. So you’re compensating for potential things that may knock it out like heat or shipping or storage stuff. Just things that are normal with getting that product to the patient. So when you know what’s in the bottle there, you’re typically getting more than what’s in the bottle because we have to make sure we overshoot and compensate for all the little mishaps that may lower it.
Evan Brand: Right. Well said. So, talk about the immune system a bit. You wrote some notes before the show about the TH1 and the TH2 immune system. Can you talk us through that and kinda break down what TH1 is, and 2, which some of us are TH2 dominant in the modern world now mainly from vaccines. And that the TH1 system, this kind of seesaw can be balanced out with the use of these spore probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Great question, Evan. So a lot of people their TH2 immune system is over stimulated and your TH2 immune system— think about it— it’s the antibody-based immune system. It’s the humoral-based immune system. So the whole goal of like your immune system is you have like the front-line defense. This is like the Army Rangers, the Delta team; Seal team six, the Navy SEAL’s, right? These are the people, they get in there first and they make—they make stuff happen, right? These are the guys that go in there first. They radio back and then the infantry comes in second, right? So they give the infantry, they come in a few days later once they got Intel and you know everything’s been surveilled, right? All the special forces, they radio in the special forces are the cytotoxic or the natural killer kind of that cytotoxic first branch of the immune system, the TH1. And the TH2 is kinda more that delayed antibody-based immune system that comes in after the fact. And when we look at what vaccinations do is they boost up to give a little bit of that compound that you’re trying to develop an immune response to i.e. the infantry and you’re trying to boost that up. So you’re trying to keep basically this infantry that’s hanging out, that’s waiting—that’s waiting for that critter to come in. The problem is when you boost up that infantry more, more, more, more, more, more, well, there’s collateral damage that can happen like allergies and other issues on the immune side if you continue to boost it up too high. And that’s why one of the big trade-offs that has happened with a lot of vaccinations over the years is a lot allergies, there’s a lot of ADD, there’s a lot of other parts, a lot of symptoms that can happen just because that a part of the immune system is so over stimulated. And when we dig to some of these bacillus spores, right? That can help knock down the TH2 by boosting up the TH1. Think of it as a seesaw as one side goes up, one goes down. So when you boost that TH2 up so high, you’re basically decreasing that cycotoxic, those Navy SEALs, those Army Rangers, right, that Delta force, right, that were lowering that. So by knocking that seesaw down on the TH2, we do it by boosting up the TH1 and those bacillus force can be super helpful at doing that.
Evan Brand: Yup. And medicinal mushrooms, too. We can stack mushrooms on this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: …with these and we can help modulate TH1. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We can totally do that.
Evan Brand: We got a couple questions. We have one about food combinations, we have one about infrared sauna. Here’s one from Tessa that’s on-topic about probiotics. “Is it good—is it good to take with digestive enzymes?” I guess you’re saying, “Is it good to take digestive enzymes and probiotics together?” My answer would be no. Generally, just because the stomach acid is likely going to kill those. Now even if you are taking a super high professional grade formula like Justin and I are using with you, still, we don’t want to try out a breakdown that technology. If we can preserve those bacteria and get that to the colon, where it’s really gonna do the good thing, I would take your probiotics before you go to bed. Because there’s no competition for stomach acid at that time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup. So I think taking up probiotics in the morning when you get up first thing or before you go to bed at the very end. Take your enzymes with food typically you can do enzymes before meal, too.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm—again, but typically, with the meals also fine as well. And regarding uhm—did you ask about food combining, yet?
Evan Brand: Well, I didn’t read the question yet. I just said best food combinations. Once you can’t go wrong with like meat and salad.
Justin M: Yeah. It’s typically meat and non-starchy. Meat and non-starchy vegetables, chicken and broccoli. Those kind of things. Typically, fruit by themselves. Again, that may cause blood sugar stuff. So, again, I typically only deal with food combining stuff where maybe starch and fruit are eaten a little bit away from things if there’s a lot of digestive issues. And if there’s a lot of like fructose malabsorption, when you really can’t digest much fruit either, fruits gone.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they may not be able to tolerate much starch. And again, some of these changes when you go lower FODMAP, too. When you go lower FODMAP fruit or lower FODMAP starch that may get better. And if you also up the HCl and the enzymes, some of those symptoms that you may see a relief from when you food combined correctly, right? You may not need that.
Evan Brand: Yup, well said. There were two other things we wanted to mention about the TH1, TH2 system. One, you mentioned like ADD or you know, some type of developmental problems like autistic children, they could have an issue with—with their TH1, TH2 balance. So this is where the spore biotics can come in to the equation and fix it and then also food sensitivities. Now a lot of the stuff gets better, too. You know Justin and I talk so much about parasites things like H. pylori infections, bacterial infections that are suppressing stomach acid. So food intolerances are typically related to the gut, but also, we found that this whole immune system thing can also be a factor and just by getting more beneficial bacteria and the right strains as well, all the sudden food sensitivities go away and you can start adding stuff back in that you used to not be able to tolerate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Some of that just because there is a little bit of peanut oil sometimes in some of the vaccinations as a preservative and uhm—there’s also uhm—some proteins in there. So a lot of peanuts, you know, peanuts the last 20 years has been a huge one. I mean you can’t even take a lot of times peanuts into a regular elementary school.
Evan Brand: I know. It’s crazy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I think that’s part of it. I there’s a lot of theories that are out there saying that. So, I mean, may not be super hard evidence on it, but we know that the amount of vaccines have, you know, triple, quadruple over the last 20 years since 91 really—1991. That—that could be a driving factor. That would make sense, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I was glad uh—Eric Berg. He put out a video about vaccines. Did you happen to see that one?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I didn’t.
Evan Brand: He has a good video. Look it up when you got time. But it was a good video. He was just like, “What’s my take? People asked me.” He’s like, I don’t like him.” And he’s got full list of all the different things that are inside of those and then plus he talks about all the different things that were deemed safe by the FDA like DES that all those women were taking and then you have all these different birth issues—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thalidomide—with the—with the kids with uh very short arms.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And again, on the vaccine, though, too, if you look at—there’s a big study that was done. I think in 2014. But they looked at kinda vaccine dosages across, you know, how many dosage, or how many individual vaccines across all the countries. And I think it was a lot of the Scandinavian countries that had 75% less vaccinations and better health— better overall health.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I mean, I think just kinda keeping in mind that there may be some benefits from vaccines, but it’s not health never comes from a needle. Not just because you get a vaccine, it does not replace sleep and nutrition and hydration and obviously, a cleaner environment, too, which is huge, right? Plumbing and those kinda things make a massive difference when it comes to infectious disease. But these countries show that you know, much less vaccines dosage-wise, huge difference. I mean they were much— you know, far beyond us health-wise.
Evan Brand: Yup. So if you can’t go back in time and change how you were vaccinated as a kid, this could also give you inspiration about how you approach adult vaccines. Coz now I’ve got a lot of clients I know you do, too that are approaching us and asking us about shingles vaccines that the doctors are really pushing hard for people over age 60. And then also the flu vaccines, which I’ve had people who get the flu after they got the flu vaccine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It’s a live attenuated virus. You look on the vaccine inserts, it’s 20% chance of having flu-like symptoms because of the vaccine. It’s on the insert. I mean this isn’t even controversial stuff, unless you actually go in there and ask for the vaccine insert like I have. And then you just_ the side effects and you say, “Hey, look here’s a side effect right there. And it’s I mean, chills, malaise, headaches, you know, achy, tired—that sounds like the flu to me. What do you think?
Evan Brand: It is. I mean, well, it is the flu. And the issue, too, with the CDC is that when they’re making those flu vaccines, they’re only coming up with certain strains, right? So if there’s another strain outside of the one you got vaccinated for, you’ll still get the flu that year and still feel terrible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Plus, you’ve got the aluminum and what other preservatives or things in there that are activating that virus for your or—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Totally. So kinda the idea is when the vaccination side is your manipulating your infantry, right? You’re boosting up, you’re getting a special reserve of that infantry that’s gonna be specially trained for that one little critter that comes into your body, which you know, definitely has uhm—some use for. Now, my philosophy is let’s just get your immune system so freaking strong.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s get all these infantry guys lifting weights and— and you know, rock-solid with the nutrition and diet, so then they’re so ready to go. They’re gonna just plow through any critters and that’s kinda what we’re talking about with all the diet, lifestyle, the nutritional support, uhm—the nutrients to up regulate the immune system, the probiotics like mega spore biotics is one that we use. We’ll put a link below for the link here, my store for that. If you wanna see that. It’s the one that I use. It’s a bacillus clausii, subtilis and coagulans strain that can help balance that TH2, drop it out, pop the TH1—that’s great. Uh—also, medicinal mushrooms like __and other herbs, too. Astragalus,__—
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Andrographis, uhm—silver, vitamin D, of course, glutathione. These are all great immune modulators so we can really get that infantry boosted up and stronger, right?
Evan Brand: Yup. Perfect. Rachel, nice to see you. She’s got a question, “My husband was regular before we went Paleo / Primal, but since about two years, he’s slower, no longer pooping daily, we eat lots of veggies, he’s not a stress personality type. Any advice to improve? Justin, what do you think?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, off the bat, very simple. I would look at just increasing a little bit more starch, little bitt of sweet potato that may shift things, number one. Uh—n number two, make sure the veggies are cooked if you’re doing this more raw stuff, and that’s causing him to backup, do a little bit more cooked, steamed, sautéed— that’s number two. Number three, adding some enzymes and HCl. Uhm— and then number three, get your gut looked at. If there’s still issues with maybe dysbiosis. What happens is sometimes that starch can help feed some of that beneficial bacteria and that gets drop-down when the starch goes down. So pop it up a little bit of sweet potato, plantains, squash, may give that good bacteria a little pop. Uh— but in the meantime, it’s just as a palliative. Uhm— not pooping daily, not passing 12 inches of stool daily is not good. You get something called autointoxication where you start to reabsorb a lot of the toxins in your stool. So a little bit of magnesium citrate daily to keep those bowels moving and then taper off uhm— down the road. You know, give yourself a few weeks to kinda make those changes and see if you can be regular on your own.
Evan Brand: Rachel, I believe you’ve got your stool test back from— from me. Uh so look on there, too. Uh—you know, one thing that I would suggest, too, get your husband a stool test and look at the beta glucuronidase enzyme like Justin is talking about with autointoxication piece. We can measure that with the enzyme and we can fix it. Milk thistle and supporting the liver and getting rid of gut bugs but you know, if there’s H. pylori or parasites or other bacterial infections that he could have, you guys could be passing things back and forth. The infections could be slowing down the motility. I just put out a podcast with this guy, Ken Brown, who’s a gastroenterologist and he was teaching me more about methane and how certain species of these uh— bacteria during SIBO cases are actually slowing the bowel transit time. So, literally, bacterial overgrowth could just be the culprit due to the methane production. And of course, he’s selling his supplement to reduce methane but if you just fix the SIBO, that will also get your bowels more regular. So I hope that helps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Very cool. Well, anything else you want to add about uhm— spore based probiotics?
Evan Brand: I think it’s something that should be in everybody’s toolbox. I don’t know if it’s the silver bullet. I don’t know if it’s the—you know, a lot of people find something that helps them, so then it’s like this is the only thing you can use out there. I still think there’s other benefits to other probiotics that we use, but I do think it should be in everyone’s toolbox and they should at least consider looking at it and potentially using it. Could you just randomly go and take it if you’ve got a bunch of symptoms? What’s your take? I’ve had so many people take probiotics so willy-nilly and they feel worse. So I really think it’s important to get tested first before you spend your money on this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I find that’s— it’s one of those things where it is other deeper issues there. It’s not gonna be a root causal thing, right? There’s too many other things going on in motion. The more other things are happening in motion, and they aren’t stopped or they aren’t addressed, that it may help a little bit, but it may make no difference at all. So I always say get the low hanging fruit under control and then if you want to add it, then great. If you want to work with a functional medicine provider like us that kind of get things lined up for you, make sure everything’s in order, and then add it in. Some patients I see, it really doesn’t change anything; Some patients, it makes it a little difference; some patients, it makes a huge difference. But we’re not ever hanging your hat on one thing, but sometimes one thing can make a big difference but we never expect to. So then we’re always pleasantly surprised if we get one of those great cases.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Well, I’d say, before we just become a rambling man, we can wrap it up. I think this was a helpful episode for people. Add it to your toolbox, do a little bit of research. I think we may have done other shows. I’m sure we hit on probiotics all the time, but—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think so.
Evan Brand: But if you’ve got, if you’ve got people in your family that have issues maybe they just won’t change the diet, they could potentially get benefit. Maybe if you’re looking for that one thing to try to get someone started into this field of functional medicine, maybe that spore probiotic is the first step. And then maybe that excites them and that encourages them to pursue the diet, the lifestyle, the sleep, the stress, the infections, the testing and all that. If that’s the catalyst, then that’s awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. How we talk about any supplement is in kind of context of a whole program. Like we’re doing all these different things, we’re addressing all these things and then this is another maybe piece that we plug into. We’re not saying, “Oh, we plug this piece into someone who doesn’t—who’s not doing a darn thing.” We’re plugging it into a program.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Where everything is being looked at. So that’s just kind of our context. S if you’re one of these people that aren’t on a program or aren’t doing anything diet or lifestyle wise that’s really healthy and then you think it’s gonna be that magic bullet, just want to make sure we set your expectations accordingly. And just, you know, don’t forget that majority of antibiotics aren’t just true antibiotic prescriptions if they are in the food supply. So being more organic and eating healthy animal products healthy fats, that’s gonna be helpful so you won’t get that antibiotic exposure which will throw off your gut. And healthy gut bacteria, it produces nutrition, right? Uhm— good bacteria eats, poop and poop nutrition. Bad bacteria eats nutrition and poop. In other words, back it up. Good bacteria provides nutrients in your body just like I mentioned with the spores and the vitamin C which then helps with vitamin K which then helps with vitamin D, of course, and healthy bones, too. But it also—the bad stuff produces a whole bunch of crappy toxins. LPS, lithocholic acid, etc. These things help open the gut lining, make your gut a little bit more leaky which then gets that TH2 immune system overreacting because you got all these undigested food particles that you start developing an immune response to. Not so good. That really gets your TH2 now even more jacked up.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. We have one question from Neil. He said, “Do you think lectins are an issue?” Some are saying lectins are real problem, other say beans and legumes are one of the common factors of the blue zone areas. The blue zone, for people listening, that’s like the people that are living to 9000+ years old. They are eating a lot of beans and such. “Love the podcasting.” Thanks for the feedback, Neil. Justin and I when we talk about grains, for example, like with rice pressure cookers, the way to do it. If I do any organic white rice, it’s typically like a treat for me. I put it in the pressure cooker I tend to feel much, much, much better. But beans, I don’t really do beans. Justin, what’s your take?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll do beans every now. Uhm—but like maybe once a month, but it’s all about context. Let me give you, for instance. “Evan, our massage is good for you.
Evan Brand: (laughs) I would say yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, great. Our massage is good for you. Do they feel good when you have a really bad sunburn?
Evan Brand: Oh, not really.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. Well, think of your gut as like a sunburn. Like your gut, it’s all irritated and inflamed with critters. So the more sunburn and the more intense that sunburn is, the more you may not be able to handle things that have lectins or these gut-irritating compounds in them. So the sunburn gets better, you can handle that nice massage. Your gut gets better and healthier and more infection-free and more good bacteria build backup. Could you tolerate a little bit of uh—legumes here and there? Yeah, more than likely. Some may not, right? There’s not a be-all end-all thing but some may. So it’s all about the context. Typically, the less inflamed you are, the better ability you have to adapt to a stressor like lectins, for instance.
Evan Brand: Yes. So now I’m gonna say the guys name because I don’t want to give them anymore—uh—anymore press he deserves. But there’s a lot of anti-lectin people out there—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And it’s just like, to me, it’s a sales pitch. It’s probably gonna sell a lot of books coz it’s like, “Oh, my God! Plants are bad for you.” And then I had people emailing like, “I might as well just starve to death. I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that. I might as well starve to death.” And I just—I’m not a fan of any—I’m not a fan of promoting things that instill fear in people. I agree with your analogy. I miss your analogies, by the way. That was a good one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was a good one, right?
Evan Brand: Did you come up with that right on the spot?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Off-the-cuff, man. It’s how my brain thinks. If I can’t create that analogy, if I can’t wrap my head around it, I can’t expect, too, either.
Evan Brand: Well, that was a good one. And so back to my point. I don’t want to instill fear upon people. I agree with your—your strategy and your analogy. Lectins— sure, if you did beans and rice every day, maybe you could have some issues. But if you’re infection-free, your adrenals are healthy, you’re going to sleep on time, you’ve got good relationships, you like your job, you like your boss, you’ve got a great spouse, like you could probably do more lectins, more rice, more beans whatever. And maybe you could get away with it and feel okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If it was in your 80-10 or 80-20 or 90-10, yeah, you know, it’s part of your 10 or 20, you probably would be okay, borrowing all the things you said.
Evan Brand: Yup. I’m sure we can ramble on about that point. That was a great question, though. Uh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then, also, too, certain foods and have more lectins. Of course, grains are going to be the bigger offender, right? And then you know, you have your legumes, right? Your beans or lentils, but you know, just soaking them has a huge reduction in getting those lectins down. And even vegetables that do, just cooking them can have a huge effect on reducing some of them. So a lot of times, it’s not just the sheer amount. It’s well, how can you prepare to reduce those lectins as well.
Evan Brand: Yup. The pressure cooker for me has been a game changer for the rice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And just the Paleo template or autoimmune template is a start. I think has probably the best effect at reducing most of those right there, off the bat.
Evan Brand: Yup. Tessa had a question. “My brother has celiac disease. Are probiotics a good idea in his case?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, you—you’d wanna really do a bunch of things, but would probiotics be a part of that plan? Yeah, absolutely. You do a six-hour protocol with this. You’d remove the bad foods. You replace enzymes, acids. You would repair the gut lining and the adrenals and the hormone systems. You remove the infections. You retest or you repopulate healthy probiotics, then you retest.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I agree. Celiac is quite a bit—celiac is the manifestation, but there’s probably 5-6-7 puzzle pieces that have to be laid out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: Probiotics maybe 5% of the equation, it may be 15%, who knows until we—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And if you add in some good probiotics, like in my line Probio Flora or something like that. Would that be helpful? Yes. But if he did it in conjunction with drinking his wheat beer and continuing to eat grains all day, it may be like using—it may be like using a beautiful golden nail on some rotten wood. It’s just like, “Argh, it’s not enough.”
Evan Brand: Right. You got to go deeper. Even the diet— we’ve had celiac clients and patients that come to us where even the diet is not enough because it got infections that are tearing apart that gut lining, creating that leaky gut situation and they’re reacting to everything. So even the Paleo or a gluten-free diet may not be enough. And usually it’s not. That’s why we do what we do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo. Love it, man. Hey, let’s chat again real soon. We got information coming up for our listeners. Have a great rest of the week, Evan.
Evan Brand: Take care. You guys, if you need to reach out, justinhealth.com evanbrand.com We are available.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if you like the audio quality, guys, give us the thumbs up. We’re making some tweaks, we’re making some changes. Give us a share. Sharing is caring. We appreciate it. Leave a comment below. We wanna know what you think about. Give us feedback. You drive kinda what we want to talk about next and we’ll answer those questions to you, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Don’t be a lurker. Give us some comments. Your comments are our oxygen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I don’t want you creeping in those YouTube post. We want you out there kinda getting some good info. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Alright. Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, take care, man. Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/megasporbiotic/
https://justinhealth.com/products/probio-flora/
https://www.drberg.com/blog/the-truth-on-vaccines
Low Body Temperature! – Dr. J Podcast # 156
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand engage in a very informative discussion about low body temperature. Learn how different potential stressors like thyroid issues, adrenal issues, gut health, autoimmune conditions, nutrition and low calories cause low body temperature. Find out about the role of micronutrients in thyroid hormone conversion and be aware of the medications that have a negative impact on mitochondrial function.
Gain information about the different foods, including modifications in macronutrients, and various supplements, which will improve your health and prevent different stressors that are possibly causing low body temperature.
In this episode, we cover: 
03:27 Thyroid issues
07:05 Beneficial Nutrients
14:14 Toxins and Medications
22:51 Food and Supplements
33:46 Calorie Intake
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live here on YouTube. It’s Dr. J in the house. Evan, my man, how are you doing brother?
Evan Brand: Hey man, happy Monday! We’re talking all fair about that shooting this morning so my mom, she worked right next door last night at the Hotel Luxor which was uh— right next door to that shooting event in Vegas. So I called her this morning and she’s safe and sound and she got released, so she’s home, hopefully sleeping. I’m sure she’s extremely adrenally stressed at this point, but hopefully she’s resting and settling down from all that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Lots of empathy for all the people out there going through that. It must be just incredibly stressful.
Evan Brand: It’s insane.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s just so difficult. So wishing everyone, you know, speedy recovery from that. That is just so difficult and man, everyone’s adrenals are revved up from that, right?
Evan Brand: I know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So let’s go into some stuff here where people, we would get— put some information out there about improving everyone’s health.
Evan Brand: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh—and just continue to empower more people. So let’s dig in, brother.
Evan Brand: Yes. Yes, so you and I want to chat about low body temperature, which is something that so many people have. I’ve had it in the winter for a long time. I’m hoping that since I work so much, my gut and my adrenals that I don’t have it this winter but cold hands, cold feet you know that had been something that I mentioned going on with me for—for several years. I know there’s a lot of different causes that you and I wanted to go through. So how should we open this thing? Should we talk about hormones, thyroid, how do you want to lay the groundwork?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, we look at body temperature. Temperature is probably one of the best indicators of your metabolism, right? Because the more energy you have, typically the— the better your temperature is. And so typically, you’re gonna have symptoms of cold temperature which are gonna be cold hands, cold feet those kind of things. Also, fatigue, but now there’s also objective ways that we can test your temperature. You know, with the thermometer, obviously. We can do axillary temperature, which is armpit. 97.8 to 98.2 is—is Fahrenheit is a pretty good range to be in. Or 98.2 to 98.6 orally. And so you can kind of assess your temperature. You can do it in the morning and then you can also do it in the afternoon as well. Kinda do it just for before eating. That gives you a pretty good indication but if your metabolism is low and your temperature is low, it could be caused by an interplay of different things. We’ll go into it. It could be thyroid issues. It could be adrenal issues. It could be gut issues. It could be nutrient issues. It could be mitochondrial issues. So all of these things are potential stressors that could be driving that problem.
Evan Brand: I’d say number one is probably thyroid issues. Wouldn’t you suspect because so many people we talk with they have adrenal issues with them on top of that there is a thyroid problem. Like maybe elevated reverse T3, whether you’ve got that blank bullet going on or they just got a low free T3 or like you and I’ve chatted about with adrenals, you’ve got the conversion process that happens where you take the inactive T4 hormone, you convert that to active T3.That conversion process gets messed up if you’ve got chronic stress. And chronic stress as you mentioned, could be gut infections, it could be emotional stress, could be chemical, heavy metals. It could be circadian rhythm stress if you’re working third shift, for example. That could be enough to change this whole cascade. Wouldn’t you say?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. Hundred percent. I mean, again, all of those things can be intimately connected. The first we look at is thyroid because thyroid hormone has a major effect on our metabolism. And our metabolism is the sum of all chemical reactions in the body. And our metabolism is pH driven, right? So if our pH becomes too alkaline or too acidic, like you know blood pH, which exists in a very fine-tune range, right around 7.35+ or -1/10 of point there. And if that pH shifts up or down, that can affect how all of our enzymes in our bodywork. So that can affect temperature and there’s things like—uh like a diabetic coma, right? Where blood sugar can go to he— or too low typically. If someone’s type I dependent and they don’t have insulin, they don’t get sugar into their cell, which can create ketoacidosis. And that can really, really drop that pH and that put you into a coma. So our pH is very driven and has a major effect on our metabolism, so, totally.
Evan Brand: So let’s hit on—let’s hit on the thyroid peace. Now autoimmunity is something we talk about so much. Would you say a common symptom of someone with Hashimoto’s, for example, could be low body temperature or possibly even a fluctuating. Maybe their low body temperature if they’re a bit underperforming but then couldn’t they just bounce right back and get actually hot if they bump into hyperthyroid. If they’re in the Hashimoto’s state, and things are still fluctuating.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, if you’re having Hashimoto’s and your immune systems constantly attacking your thyroid, your thyroid hormone can spill.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz every time it’s attacked, hormone spills out. Eventually those follicles run dry and you’re not gonna quite have that hyper kind of symptoms. So in an acute attack, hyper symptoms may be increased temperature are common, right? You can have like PVC’s periventricular contractions. Uh—you can have, you know, kinda this—kinda heart palpitations. Your heart’s kinda beating erratic and hard, uh—anxiety, night sweats, irritability. These are all hyper thyroid symptoms. You feel warming, right? You feel excessive warmth or temperature. But then, in a chronic state, that will eventually lead to a hypothyroid kind of environment, where your body temperature just gets very low.
Evan Brand: So someone has had Hashimoto’s for quite some time, let’s say there’s been a pretty significant tissue destruction, you would say someone will not end up being hyper long-term with Hashimoto’s. It’d probably be hypo long-term.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean you can—hyper feels very similar. Hyperthyroid Grave’s feels very similar to a hypothyroid autoimmune attack. The difference is with hyper, typically, there’s a specific antibodies or immunoglobulin compounds that come back. So with Grave’s, you’re seeing TSI immunoglobulins or you’re seeing thyroid TSH receptor site antibodies. So that’s what’s typically common in Grave’s. And when those things are high, it’s accelerating the thyroid hormone to produce excessive amounts of thyroid hormone. So there’s like a production stimulation where with the autoimmune attack, from like thyroglobulin antibodies or TPO antibodies is it’s more the spilling of a thyroid hormone out of the thyroid. It’s spilling out where the antibody attack from Grave’s, it’s stimulating the thyroid to produce more.
Evan Brand: Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With Hashimoto’s, you’re not getting the stimulation. You’re more or less getting that spilling effect, which eventually, you know, will run dry.
Evan Brand: Got it. Got it. Okay. So we hit the autoimmune piece. What else would go on thyroid-wise that will be an issue with temperature regulation?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, again, there’s also certain nutrients that have a major effect on thyroid uh—conversions. So we know things like selenium are super important for thyroid conversion. So someone may have decent thyroid levels from a T4 perspective, uh— but they may not have that activation, right? They may not have that conversion uhm— that’s so important.
Evan Brand: So could it just be the lack of trace nutrients, trace mineral selenium, zinc— things like that activators.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So here, we are live on Facebook now, too with the low body temperature podcast. So getting back onto our common thread. Yeah, micronutrients like selenium are gonna be important for thyroid conversion. It’s a five—the enzyme that converts T4 to T3 inactive thyroid hormone to active thyroid hormone is a 5 deiodinase enzyme. It’s also important with glutathione and detoxification. So, yeah, that’s totally uh— important micronutrient that will affect thyroid activations. So when we look at thyroid function, we’re looking at are there blood sugar fluctuations? Are you eating grains or foods that are gonna cause that thyroid antibody attack that could cause the hormones to spill out and eventually deplete the hormones? Your thyroid follicles carry about four months of thyroid hormone. So again, if you have a chronic Hashimoto attack, where the thyroid hormone’s spilling out faster than you can synthesize and make more, then you’re going to definitely get to that depletion state where you’re gonna go hypo from a temperature standpoint. You’re gonna go almost hypothermic. That temperature will drop below that 97.8 – 98.2 armpit temperature wise or 98.2 to 98.6 and I’ll put a handout down below to my uh— metabolic temperature handout. So people can actually track their temperatures and it’s basically a graph of three different lines. And then the top brackets where you want your temperature to be through which ranges 97.8 – 98.6 We want to be checking off daily that your temps are in this bracket not the bottom or the very bottom.
Evan Brand: Got it. Okay. So what else? Should we talk about the nutrients next?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Should we talk about the nutrients, right? Vitamin A, we talked about uh— zinc, copper, selenium, magnesium very important nutrients for thyroid conversion. Now if you’re eating a whole food diet, you’re gonna be typically pretty good. If you’re having enough HCl and enzymes, you’re gonna be good as well because we need those type of compounds to be able to ionize the minerals. So it’s the diet component. It’s making sure we have the ability to break down the foods in our diet that are nutrient dense. Uhm— number three is making sure our stress response is okay because stress hormones will affect thyroid conversion. Cortisol being hyper— very high— will affect thyroid T4 to T3 conversion that inactive to active thyroid hormone. Also, if cortisol is too lo from chronic stress. So there’s this, kinda Goldilocks effect that we see here with thyroid hormone kinda need it to be not too high, but not too low to have optimal conversion. Does that makes sense?
Evan Brand: Yeah. It does. Well said. Let me mention about the gut, too, coz you just hit on the fact that you’ve got to have absorption. So even if the diet’s good, which many people listening to us, they probably already dialed in like a Paleo template but they could still have this symptom. You may want to check for infections. Coz like Justin and I talk about almost every week at some level, there could be an H. pylori, bacteria, yeast, fungus, something going on in the gut that’s stealing your nutrients or preventing you from optimally digesting. And then that issue is compounded, if you’ve been taking any type of anti-acid where acid blocking medication something simple as Tom’s or something more strong like a prior was it Prilosec or Zantac.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, yeah. Totally.
Evan Brand: Keep that in mind. If you’re looking at your medication list and that includes acid blockers and you have cold body temperatures, it’s probably cause you’re not digesting your foods therefore the thyroid is not getting fed the nutrients it needs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And also a lot of medications could affect your mitochondria. Just Google antibiotics and mitochondrial function, you’ll find that antibiotics can negatively impact mitochondrial function. And you’ll also find that other medications can impact the mitochondria. And the mitochondria is like the little powerhouse of your cell where it generates a lot of ATP, which is that currency of energy in which your body runs. So that’s really important and also an important nutrient call carnitine really helps that mitochondria utilize fat for energy, generate ATP out of that good fat, you know, it’s called uh—beta oxidation where you’re generating energy from fat. And carnitine is an important nutrient primarily made from methionine and lysine. Now, I did a video call why vegan and vegetarian diets can make you fat? Now—no—don’t make you fat. But you know, why they the can—meaning it’s not a hundred percent. But if you’re insulin resistant and you’re doing it the wrong way, where you’re emphasizing maybe too much carbohydrates, not enough protein and more gut irritating foods, yeah, it can definitely predispose people that have an inflamed guts and work more on the insulin resistance side to gain weight. And one of the big things is that when you eat certain animal rich amino acids, there are some plant ones as well, you activate the cells in the brain that are called—hold on, one __my notes—uh—tenocytes. And these tenocytes are receptor sites in the brain in the third ventricle area of the brain. And there’s a direct blood flow between them and the hypothalamus. These tenocytes, one, they sense satiety but the big thing that senses satiety for them is arginine and lysine which are really high in animal-based foods. So these amino acids really get that sense of satiation so that means you’re one, gonna have appetite regulation. Coz when you actually start feeling full, you tend to not eat all the crap, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the more you can keep your cravings in check, the more you eat healthier foods because you got control over your biochemistry. You’re not reacting. You’re acting based on what you know you need to be healthy. But those amino acids are primarily gonna be higher in animal-based foods especially lysine as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. So in a roundabout way, if you are a vegetarian or a vegan and you’ve got low body temperature, it could just be something as simple as a carnitine deficiency. I mean you could probably get a little bit in beans maybe—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A little bit in beans, a little bit in almonds, a little bit in plums and avocados, for sure.
Evan Brand: But even then, once we talked like—we talked all the time, digestion of those foods is probably not very good and the concentration of those is gonna be much less as opposed to a grass-fed beef.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. In my video, I talked about, you know, if you are a smart vegan where you’re not emphasizing a lot of the grains, you’re doing safer starches, you’re getting lots of fats from avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, you’re supplementing DHEA in the form of algae, right? And if you’re getting B12 uh—supplementation and you’re getting a good multi- in there and you’re getting lots of— you’re getting some protein supplementation in there, maybe from pea or hemp, right? You may be okay on a vegan-vegetarian diet, but it’s just— it’s still less than optimal just because of the fact that you gotta go through such extreme lengths to get high-quality protein sources without all the carbohydrate. Coz vegetarian-vegan diet’s typically are packed with 60 to 80% carbohydrates for that 20 to 25% of protein you get.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. You hit on the mitochondria, too. We should take that a bit further and talk about more toxins. You hit on antibiotics, some mitochondrial issues there. Makes perfect sense. We work with people all the time where they say, “Oh Justin or Evan, as soon as I took a round of antibiotics, all of a sudden things went bad.” And it could be temperature –temperature issues, it could be sleep problems, it could be gut issues, digestive problems. And so also with mitochondrial issues, we’ve got toxins. So if you’re not using 100% organic, that’s an issue because glyphosate and these other pesticides and herbicides, fungicides and insecticides— they all compound with each other. So it’s not that one chemical by itself will kill you, but if you get a little bit of glyphosate from your non-organic berries, you combine that with a little bit of conventional vegetables coz you did a salad at a restaurant, you combine that with in antibiotics that you’re getting from meat. If it’s not labeled “no antibiotics” you stock all those upon each other, you’ve got some bad mitochondrial problems here that you need to fix. And we can measure the—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The enzymes that are needed to help move those gears that kinda crank around that mitochondrial Krebs cycle and then flow in so the beta oxidation process. Uhm— you need certain nutrients. You need B vitamins, you need magnesium, you need zinc, the healthy levels of amino acids. You also don’t need all the toxins— the aluminum, the pesticides, the glyphosate. So those things can kinda gunk up the gears of that metabolic machinery. So it’s not only what those gears need to keep it lubricated, but what it is we don’t need to put in that will prevent those gears moving. So it’s a combination of avoiding certain things, right? And again, the medications are a double-edged sword. I’m not saying don’t use them. I’m saying just really make sure they’re— they are prescribed specifically for what you need. And it’s the last case kind of thing with antibiotics. We really want to go to herbs and botanical nutrients over antibiotics. They may have a time or place, but we want to use it only when we’ve exhausted other options.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. And you and I were talking off air, we can quantify a lot of this stuff, too. So you’re talking about measuring your temperature. We can quantify what’s going on in the gut, right? We can test the gut, we can test the thyroid with—with blood using functional reference ranges and using functional numbers that conventional doctors don’t use. They’re only going to detect disease. We’re going to detect the issues before disease occurs. We’re gonna look into the gut so we could test you for infections. We could test the adrenals, look at your free cortisol rhythm so the uh— HPA axis, the hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal axis, you hear us talk about, you know, that is a factor in all of this. If your brain is not connecting the signal to the adrenals and adrenal to the thyroid, that whole system gets often chronic stress. And it’s up to us to figure out when we talk about stress what’s in that bucket. Is it just your job, your bad boss, your relationship, the divorce you’re going through? Is it that stuff only or is that stuff plus chemicals in the diet, plus nutrient deficiencies, plus infections, plus not having enough quality meat in the diet. You see how these things can all add up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And just to kinda look at the thyroid component again, there’s dysregulation up top where the TSH is either high extreme, higher extreme, low. Now it can be extremely low because you’re on thyroid hormone and the body needs more thyroid hormone. The body is sense— sensing more thyroid hormone in the brain, but there’s less than the actual tissues. So that you’re keeping the thyroid hormone higher, but that’s keeping the TSH low. That’s step one. The TSH may be low because of HPAT access dysregulation. That hypothalamus pituitary and that adrenal thyroid axis. There’s some kinda short-circuits happening in there because of the stress— the emotional stress, because of the physical stress, because of the chemical stressors. And we have to address those while we support the nutrients to get this hardwire back on track. We can also have low T4 levels. Coz if T4 is low, we’re gonna have low T3 over here. So we got to make sure the nutrients for T4 in there like I mentioned before the vitamin A, the zinc , the copper, magnesium, selenium, uhm— amino acids, tyrosine and potentially iodine. As long as we know that there’s not uh— autoimmune attack that’s the lease active going on. And then number three, after that, we let see how the T4 to T3 conversion is. If T4 is good, how does T3 conversion look? Is it this big drop off? Or also is there a very high amount of reverse T3 because of that stress? All those can make a big difference. And then one person ask here—James asks, “Well, is hypothyroid and hyperthyroid hypo and hyper kind of the same for treatment?” Yes and no. With hyperthyroid from a TSI thyroid stimulating immunoglobulin or TSH receptor antibody attack, we’re more concerned about coz it tends to be more chronically high which can increase the chance of a thyroid storm and then potentially a stroke. So we take that very seriously. We refer that patient out to their medical doctor uh—for monitoring. We don’t want—we wanna make sure there’s not a stroke going on. But typically, the treatment will be, you know, PTU. Uhm—basically uh—propylthiouracil or methimazole. Things to basically block iodine uptake to make thyroid hormone. Or though— you know, typically, go to a thyroid radioactive thyroid kind of ablation or even a thyroidectomy. I’ve had patients where we’ve been able to avoid those because we give nutrients to help modulate the thyroid response and modulate the autoimmune response like carnitine, like blue flag, like lemon balm, melissa uhm—into certain adaptogens. They could also help kinda dampen that response. There are some protocols that even show higher amounts of iodine can block that sodium uhm— iodine’s import that transfers iodine into the thyroid. So there’s a couple of different protocols you can use to help. And of course, all of the diet and lifestyle things are the same. But we take the Grave’s autoimmune attack a little bit more seriously just because of the repercussions of it not being treated appropriately, what will happen, we really want to sidestep those.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. So get the TPO antibodies checked. Get your eTG antibodies checked, you talk about the TSI. Now, have you seen where TPO TG would be high at the same time as TSI? Where it’s gonna look like Hashimoto’s and Grave’s at the same time?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It could. I’ve seen it before. Yeah. It definitely can. So get—we’re gonna really get patients on an autoimmune protocol to help lower any autoimmune attack from the food, from the gluten, from the leaky gut. And we’ll also work on blood sugar stability coz high and low blood sugar fluctuations have a major effect on the immune system.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now another person asked here, the reason why you know I’m such a huge fan of how we do our podcast is coz it’s literally on the go and we’re infusing questions from people on YouTube here right into the conversations. So it’s like—remember those books you read when you’re like a kid and you read it and it’s like, “Oh, if you want the character to do this, turn to this page. If you want the character to do this, turn to this page.” You can totally change how the book goes.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, it’s kind how our podcast are. So interjecting here uhm—, Gerald asked, “What about T3? How does T3 work?” Well number one, T3 can just help support low T3 levels. And if there’s some kind of conversion issue, that can kinda biased time to fix the conversion aspect, number one. Number two, giving that T3 in the Wilson protocol uhm— that can have some effect on clearing out the receptor sites. So that now the T3 works better and binds better uhm— in the future. You can do that by starting low and then tapering up, holding it and then tapering it back down. In the Wilson protocol, Dr. Dennis Wilson does that with time-released T3. But we do a glandular’s in it. That can still be helpful as well. We’re using that as a way of clearing out the receptor site but were also not, you know, thinking that that’s gonna be the only issue. We’re also banking that there’s other things that we’re gonna be fixing that will allow it to be a long-term solution, right?
Evan Brand: Got it. So you’re saying the thyroid glandular’s can be used for low—a low T3 situation. That’s the fix that’s going to get you better enough to keep moving the needle in other departments.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Like in my line, we have Thyro Balance which is a—a really glandular uhm—nutrient thyroid support from a glandular perspective. And then we have that we have Thyro Replete which is nutrients for the conversion. So there’s some herbs that help with conversion like coleus forskohlii and ginseng and then we have the nutrients for conversion that I mentioned—the vitamin A, magnesium, copper, zincs, selenium—all of those—and tyrosine’s. We wanna make sure all those are in there. Uhm so we hit it from all angles. I mean if we knew exactly what that missing like nutrient component was, we could hit it more practically. But it’s too difficult to do that.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re better off using multiple methods to hit it. That way the patient can get better faster.
Evan Brand: Agreed. And you mention the adaptogens. I’m so glad you did. We use those all the time. I take them every day in some shape or form, whether it’s ashwaganda, holy basil, shoshandra. There are so many options and people ask, “Well, can I just take a bunch of adaptogens and fix myself?” Uhm— it doesn’t work like that. You just want to use them as one piece of your toolbox. You still want to be getting to the root cause. So adaptogens are life-changing but if there’s root causes, you can take all the adaptogens in the world and it won’t fix you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m gonna take my ashwaganda right now—
Evan Brand: Perfect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A little bit of immune support. But I mean, like yeah, if you’re doing okay and you’re like, “Hey, Dr. J and Evan talked about some ashwaganda and some of these nutrients. I want to try it out.” Fine, go ahead. But if you’re actively having issues that are you know, the symptoms that we mention here whether it’s on the hyper or hypo side, you really want to get someone on board to help guide you because it’s never just one magic bullet. It is—it’s a whole bunch of things that we’re doing together. And the more chronic it is, the more you have a you know, that momentum working against you. You got overcome that inertia to stop that— that snowball effect and start pushing it back uphill. So, yeah, if you’re in pretty good shape, fine you know just try some of these things. But if you’re in not so good shape, you want to reach out, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yep. Cool. Oh, we got time for one more question. Uh James said, “It’s not a thyroid question.” He’s taking an antibiotic for root canal this week. “Will this affect the result of organic acids test and stool test if he collects the samples while antibiotics are still in the system?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean if we’re doing some of the genetic base testing, it shouldn’t have an effect on it. If we’re doing a stool base to antigen-based testing, then it would.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you should be okay but we’re doing the G.I. map which is you know, what my go-to is. It should be okay according to the lab. I try to avoid it— doing it. So I would say in a perfect world, if it’s not gonna delay your treatment, I would say get to the antibiotics give it like a day or two to let it wash out and then do it. But if uhm— timing doesn’t work out, just do it, get done.
Evan Brand: I would also look at Mercola root canals and read about those. I mean maybe you’re too far down the rabbit hole and you can’t avoid the root canal. But you know there are some other options you may have available if you’ve got a good biological Dennis maybe will sit down with you and say, “Okay, root canal’s option A but maybe there’s a option B C you could look at too because we’ve had a lot of people to come to us with infected root canals and maybe Jessica can speak on this a bit. But I’ve seen it as a big needle mover for people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. There’s a book by Ramiel Nagel that talks all about root canals. It is highly recommended. You take a look at it. Uh— fat-soluble nutrients, vitamin A, vitamin K are very helpful. Uh—oil pulling that kinda help extract any toxins that may be in there and you don’t want a root canal you want to get the tooth pulled out. Uhm— you want to get an implant put in using biologically appropriate material. You don’t want the gangrenous tissue still in the system without the blood flow. And the immune response to be able to get it is just a harboring place for a whole bunch of bacteria and viruses to hang out.
Evan Brand: Right. Yeah. Well said. So James, look into that. Maybe it’s not too late. Uh—hopefully, you’ve got some other options you can pursue it’d be much— much safer and much healthier in the long term. That way, you don’t have a hidden dental infection. There’s a guy named, Simon Yu that you and I should reach out and interview. He’s over in St. Louis he talks a lot about hidden dental infections. I think that’d be a good show.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Absolutely. Hundred percent. So couple of things we wanna talk about. Oh, also carbohydrate, I think is important. Again, my bias is towards a lower carbohydrate template—Paleo template. And again, I hate the word “diet” because it assumes something is temporary and it assumes that it is fixed; where a template gives us flexibility and modification and may change day to day. It may change uh—meal to meal. I tend to be very lower carbohydrate my first two meals of the day and then after that, I may increase in carbohydrate at nights uhm—you know a bit of the starchy based. So I’m very strict during the day. It’s high-quality. It’s— set—it’s 60 to 70% fats, the only carbohydrates are vegetables and then good proteins and then I go higher at night. On the carbohydrates side, maybe a little bit of sweet potatoes and some butter and cinnamon or maybe I have a—some dark chocolate or have couple more berries than I normally would. So there’s that component. So I always go lower carbohydrate to start because so many people are insulin resistant just because of the fact that we eat too much carbohydrate and were inflamed. So I always go lower carbohydrate to start and then typically, patient will do be better and will feel better because insulin resistance can affect T4 to T3 thyroid conversion, which can cause lower temperature. Now, in the double edge side of the fence, if people go too low insulin, they may also get poor thyroid conversion as well. So just like I mentioned cortisol has a major effect on thyroid conversion. Well, guess what? Insulin has a major effect on thyroid conversion. Type I diabetics— guess what? With low insulin levels coz of the autoimmune attack to the beta cells of the pancreas, they have low body temperature. So if you go too low carbohydrate, and this is for certain individuals not everyone, I know people are gonna be like, “But I’m low carbohydrate and I felt great and it reverse my low temperature.” I get it. Again, there are exceptions to every rule. There are tall Chinese people that play basketball even though they are more shorter in the population. There are exceptions to everything, okay? We got to get that in. So yes, there are some people that a low carbohydrate diet, the majority I would say would help partly because our consumption of refined carbohydrate and sugar is higher, but there are some people when they’re chronically load, they may increase that carbohydrate just a bit. And that ups the insulin a little bit which then helps that thyroid conversion. They’re like, “ Dude, my hair started to grow back better, my temperature’s better, my energy is better.” Boom! You at least now figure it out for you. So exceptions to every rule, figure it out. And uhm—if you feel great going low-carb, great, keep it there, hang out. But if you start getting some of those hypo temperature symptoms, then we’ll just ratcheted up a little bit. And I primarily ratcheted up starting at night.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They’ll still get the benefit of keeping it lower carb during the day.
Evan Brand: Well said. I mean that’s me in a nutshell. I went very, very, very low-carb ketogenic, I guarantee. I was probably ketogenic most of the time and then I started to get cold and so I added in some starch with dinner and all of a sudden my body temperature’s perfect now. I feel good. So uh—if I go too low-carb again, it may come back or if there’s a huge piece of stress on my plate, the low body temperature may come back. But for now, I’ve been able to reverse this and been able to clear out all the infections with your help in terms of protocol a couple of years ago getting rid of all my gut bugs, plus supporting adrenals, getting the diet dialed in, getting my sleep improved, blacking out my room. All of those things are still important. So I hope this has been helpful. I gotta run. You’ve gotta run, too. Uhm—or are there any last questions that we could answer? I closed out the chat window. Uh there’s just one thing I want to say is it’s not about being higher carb or lower carb, have a –have a foundational template which you— which you go back to and then you can customize it. And then if you increase carbs, you can still get some of the benefits by having that first 20 hours of your meals relatively lower carb, higher fat, moderate protein and those last four hours you pop up a little bit and so you can still get some of those benefits. If you’re like, “Oh, I feel better with higher carbs.” You can still get the benefits of the first 20 hours of your day kinda in that ketogenic state and then pop up the carbohydrates later. So it’s not an either or thing. We can kinda straddle the fence but we want to customize it. I don’t give a crap if—if low-carb is your missing link and being low-carb all the time helps you, that’s what we’re gonna do. If being low-carb and a little more high carbohydrate helps you out, I don’t care. I’m all about the results and not about what tool I have to use to get the job done.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. For me that looks like the breakfast like a pastured sausage, maybe a handful of macadamias, maybe a handful of organic blueberries. Lunch—I probably do some leftover steak and veggies like a big thing of broccoli with some butter. Dinner— that’s when I may do some type of pastured meat, a little bit of some veggies and then starch, so it could be a medium-size baked sweet potato, butter, cinnamon. That’s all it takes and I feel good. So just to kind of give people an idea what is that look like. That’s what it looks like.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. That’s great. And a couple of questions here. Uh— Stephanie talks about menopausal women with lower estrogen and a low estradiol vaginal tablets. Well, this is interesting because typically low estrogen can cause hot flashes. And why does that cause hot flashes? Because typically the FSH and the LH starts to rise in the pituitary which is that signaling hormone trying to yell to the ovaries to make more progesterone and estrogen. So when LH and FSH primarily FSH goes high, that can create some vasodilation effects and create the hot flashes. So by giving a little bit of thyroid—giving a little bit of uhm— female hormone support, we can drop down that FSH then we can also modulate the receptor sites with some herbs as well to help with how flashes. Whether we use maca, or we use dong quia, or black cohosh or raspberry root, or shepherds purse. There’s different nutrients or herbs we can do to help modulate that. So again, you could still have hypo, low thyroid issues, but have menopausal issues because of the low estrogens, which could drive the hot flashes up. So it’s kind of a conundrum. The hot flashes may—may overshadow this low thyroid thing over here. So as we get the female hormones fixed, you may notice the low thyroid comes back later on because it’s just not a secondary issue and the primary issue is the menopause. Once that’s ruled out, now this one comes to the surface.
Evan Brand: Got it. Well said. We should probably do a whole show just on low estrogen if we haven’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think that’d be great. I mean, I see estrogen dominance is a big problem.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Where estrogen –the ratio of estrogen is higher than progesterone, right? So progesterone should be like this 25 to 125 times more than estrogen. But if that ratio starts to creep up where estrogen gets higher, that’s estrogen dominance. The problem is a lot of people, though, where that ratio—they’re estrogen dominant, progesterone’s slow but estrogen is also low. So they get this estrogen dominant, but also low estrogen sums at the same time. So it’s kinda like this conundrum. It’s like this little tug of war that’s happening there.
Evan Brand: Wow. Put it on this to do list. It sounds like it’s gonna be a fun one for us to dive into more. And I’ve probably got some stuff to learn from you on that topic as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s great. Well any last questions, comments, or concerns, Evan?
Evan Brand: No. I think this has been good. People, you got to get the testing run because if you don’t test, you’ve guessed. So if you’re trying to figure this out on your own, even if you’re not working with Justin or myself, then get the test run. Find a functional medicine practitioner they can take care of you. We are accepting new clients, so if you do need help, feel free to reach out justin health.com evanbrand.com We run these labs on all of our clients because it’s the foundation. We’ve got to have the data. We’ve gotta have the puzzle pieces on the table; otherwise, you can’t move the needle. We could throw a bunch of random stuff at you might help, can’t hurt, but we want to get you better. There’s a systemic process that we do step by step by step to take you through this. So happy to help. Reach out if you got questions and thanks for tuning.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh! One last thing, man. I forgot to add. This is so important. Low calories.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just not eating enough calories will cause low body temperature. It’s shown to cause a low level T3. Now this is important because if your diet is 25% crap Ola and let’s say you’re eating 2000 calories a day and then we switch you over— we switch you over to a uh— autoimmune kinda Paleo template, but you’re only able to—to—to switch over 75% of your diet because you don’t—you don’t have enough you—you can’t replace all the crap that you’re eating with the good stuff, right?
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because if you’re eating a whole bunch of crappy carbohydrates and stuff and then you replace it with a whole bunch of really good vegetables or lower sugar foods, well guess what? You’re probably didn’t replace the calorie amount either. So now you got this 25% calorie deficiency. So now instead of having 2000 calories, right? Now you’re having 1500 calories and maybe metabolically you need 2000 calories. Now you’re 500 calories in the hole which means your 500 calories deficient of various nutrients. So now your metabolism goes low coz there’s less fuel. That’s important. I see a lot. So you gotta work with someone that really can make sure you’re exchanging the foods and you’re getting enough calories as well. Coz calories equal nutrition. if you’re eating real foods.
Evan Brand: I’m glad you mentioned that. That’s such a simple but common issue. If you’re going AIP, you are going Paleo, you’re eating real foods, you could have an entire plate full of broccoli and it may only be 50 calories.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Dude, great job. Way to kill it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And of course, the infections like you mentioned can really suck down the energy. Of course, acute infection, you know, you’re causing a fever, right? Because the immune system’s trying to up regulate itself because a lot of the bacteria and crap there uhm—they’re like—they’re mesophilic. They—they thrive in a medium temperature. So when you go a little bit higher, you can actually kill them off with a higher temperature. But these chronic bugs can really deplete the energy the body and create this kinda lower temperatures as well. For sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I went—I went to low-calorie for a period of time, not intentionally, not on purpose. It just happened. I was eating meats, I was eating veggies and I track my calories for a few days and I was eating m—and my activity level and all that. I was probably 4 to 600 calories deficient. So just added in an extra tablespoon of butter here and there, half of an avocado here and there, handful of nuts and seeds. And I was right back up to where I needed to be.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like here’s a seesaw right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if like carbohydrate is here, if carbs go lower— this is fat over here. The fats have to go up.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you keep the fats here, you keep the fats on—on this side low, and drop the carbohydrates, that’s where the problem happens. The fats also have to go up. That’s the biggest issue. Proteins typically stay in the middle. Typically, proteins only go up if you’re doing a whole bunch of protein powders because proteins and fats are intimately connected. Uh so if you’re eating real whole foods, you know, it’s hard to get just proteins in whole foods, unless you’re doing maybe like venison or rabbit or like boneless chicken breast. But if you’re eating full fat foods, you’re gonna get fat. And then if you’re adding fats to your vegetables, you’re gonna get extra fat without the protein there as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So keep that at the back of your head.
Evan Brand: Perfect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anyone listening here, give us comments below. Give us some shares. Give us some likes. We want to hear thoughts in the comment section. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, that’s great. Click below and subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can see Evan and I’s mugs going back and forth in our little combos here. And then you can give us some comments below here on YouTube. We love the see the feedback. And Evan, hey man, you have a great day. We’ll talk soon.
Evan Brand: Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care. Bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/thyro-balance
https://justinhealth.com/products/thyro-replete/
http://www.curetoothdecay.com/
Foundational Nutrients for Optimal Health – Dr. Justin Podcast # 155
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand dive into the topic of nutrients and their importance to our bodies. Listen to this podcast and learn how B vitamins, Magnesium, Vitamin C & D, Selenium, Zinc and Omegas contribute to achieving a healthy body. Understand how these vitamins and minerals support different bodily functions and gain an understanding on how their deficiencies affect our health and cause unfavorable symptoms.
Explore other topics related to nutrients as they answer questions about leaky gut, H.pylori and some blood pressure medications which contribute to nutritional deficiency. Know some of the best sources of supplements and product recommendations which have been proven effective based on their practice and professional experience.
In this episode, we cover:
09:00 B vitamins
11:25 Minerals + Magnesium
28:15 Vitamin C, Selenium
31:18 Zinc
33:10 Omegas
36:26 Vitamin D
Evan Brand: A happy Monday. If you’re watching in the future I guess the day doesn’t matter but for us it does.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I had a great weekend, man. I was doing a little waterskiing action today. It was phenomenal—actually yesterday, I’m sorry. Great, great day and back in the saddle for an awesome Monday. Got some patients coming up right after our live podcast. How about yourself man? Anything good happening for you?
Evan Brand: Uh—Actually, Yeah. I’m going to create a pretty cool piece of content as soon as you and I get off the call together, I’m gonna go eat some lunch and a I’m gonna drive about an hour away to a local hemp farm where there’s a guy who has a Kentucky hemp oil company that I’ve been seeing his products everywhere. His son was having a major seizure disorder. His son was having hundreds of seizures within a week. And he started to use cannabis extracts to help his son and now his son has not had seizures for years— several years. And so this guy he moved from Northern California where he was growing medical cannabis and now he’s just growing hemp in Kentucky and so I’m driving to the farm. I’ll probably end up doing a podcast with him coz I don’t think it’s gonna be easy to do it in the field, but I’m gonna try to take my camera and puts— maybe a 45 minute little video together, try to interview him, get a little bit his story and share his products coz I’ve been using the CBD with my clients. And as you and I talk about with inflammation and the anti-anxiety benefits, you can pretty much use it with anyone. And it’s going to help regardless of the case whether it’s like Lyme or Hashimoto’s or H. pylori. Whatever we’re dealing with our clients, I mean we can pretty much use CBD across the board and we might notice some beneficial changes and it’s definitely not gonna hurt somebody. So looking forward to going to meet that guy. And stay tuned because I have a video probably the next week that’s gonna be published on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Yeah. I think CBD has some really good benefits. I use on handful of patients for pain issues, for sleep issues, uh—for anxiety, just from immune balance. And I do fine. It’s— it’s very good. CBD or Cannabis Diol is the non-psychoactive component of marijuana or hamper cannabis, if you will. THC Tetrahydro Cannabis that’s gonna be the part of the marijuana that gets you high and kinda gives you the munchies. So you get some of those benefits with the CBD without the, you know, the higher the munchies afterwards. And I’ve seen it work very well with seizures like you mentioned, very well with autoimmune and pain stuff. I mean it can be very therapeutic. I don’t think it fixes the root cause but I do think it’s very, very therapeutic. It can help.
Evan Brand: Right. Well said. Yeah. Definitely not gonna fix the root cause but I’ve had some people too that are in California, other states where they can even get recreational cannabis and I tell people go for it if they asked me because if they’re doing a tincture or they’re doing a spray or sublingual, they’re not having to smoke, they’re not having to use a vaporizer if they just don’t want to get the high, there’s— there’s tons of different options where you can do a high CBD. And a very tiny amount of THC where people can help fix their sleep. I had a __ in California she’s had chronic pain. She’s had Lyme forever. She said if she does CBD by itself, does pretty much nothing; but when she adds just like a milligram, so do say, 10 to 50 mg CBD, 1 mg THC, all the sudden the synergistic effect happens and the pain goes away.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. They can be very helpful. It’s a good tool in your functional medicine uh— pockets, so to speak.
Evan Brand: Yup. Hey, Robert, thanks for joining us. James, thanks for rejoining us. Our topic, well, we figure we’ll do a Q&A but our topic initially is about foundational nutrients kind of what the things that are actually worth your time and money because Justin and I were so many people come to us after they’ve been to other functional medicine practitioners. And we’ve got a kind of clean up the mess and there’s like 20 or 30 or 40 supplements that people are taking. And we like to try to whittle that down to just some of the foundations. And some things people are taking might help and can’t hurt, but if you’re spending a thousand bucks or something crazy amount on supplements, we really want to give you the stuff that just gonna move the needle coz why take something if it’s not gonna do stuff for you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And again, kinda foundation before we go in is a Paleo template to start. And again, that’s macronutrient agnostic. It could be high-carb, low-carb, high-fat, moderate fat, high-protein, moderate protein, right? So we’re just focusing on the anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense, low toxin foods. That’s number one. And then from there, the next step above that is making sure we have the lifestyle stressors in order: sleep, hydration, uh—not eating when we’re really stressed, that’s number two. And number three is actually making sure we can digest the foods that we eat. We eat a really good diet but we can’t break it down. That’s the equivalent of going to the grocery store and leaving that food out on the counter, not putting it in the fridge for a week or two. It’s gonna rot. So the next step above that is HCL and enzymes and digestive nutrients so we can break those really good foods down. That’s our foundation. And once we have that, that’s where I think some of the nutrients come in. So with my patients, all of them, they’re on all either the Multi Nutrients Supreme or Multi support pack which has the extra, kinda stress handling nutrients that are gonna be in there which are gonna consist of high-quality B vitamins that are methylated or activated like P5P uhm—of course, like your B1, B2, right? Thiamine, riboflavin right? These are all—niacin—These are all important nutrients. Of course, activated LMTHF folate, of course, methylated B12 or some kind other adenosine hydroxy B12.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh—chelated minerals like calcium and magnesium and zinc and selenium, right? All chelated meaning they’re bound to specific amino acids, so that we can have better absorption. When we have an amino acid, kind of uhm—they’re next to it, it’s like an escort or a bodyguard for that nutrient to get where it needs to go in the body, if you will.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. A lot of these nutrients people are—I’m hearing feedback. What’s going on your end? Maybe your speakers are a bit loud.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m good on my end. I don’t hear anything here.
Evan Brand: You don’t? Okay. Leave us a comment in the YouTube if people hear the feedback at all, if you hear my voice echoing. A lot of people are so deficient in nutrients, even with an organic diet. And that is something that you and I see and measure on the stool test and then we see and measure that on the organic acids test, too. You know we’ve got a lot of people that come to us because they’ve heard us talking about like a ketogenic diet or some other high-fat diet. But then we can measure something called the steatocrit on the stool test. And so, if people wanna quantify, “Well how am I actually digesting”, “What can you guys teach me about my nutrients?” and “My diet’s perfect, I’m one of those guys, I want to try to fix everything with diet”, well, we can take a look and see if that’s actually working for you. So if we see steatocrit that’s high, that’s a fecal fat marker. You can look at your stool, of course, but it’s better to have a number. And if we see that your fecal fat marker’s high, well, we know we’ve got to give you some good fat digesting enzymes, help out the pancreas help out the gallbladder. And then also on the organic acids panel, we’re going to look at the amino acid markers, so we can see do you have the raw breakdown materials? Coz your proteins—like your animal proteins and pastured animal products—those are all made of amino acids. That’s like the breakdown products. Stuff like those and that’s what fuels your brain chemicals, your neurotransmitters and so, if we see you’re super low on amino acids, that’s a problem. So we have to fix it.
And like you mentioned, why is it happening? Well could be infections like Robert is uh— he’s a left us a comment here. He is talking about that he’s had Blasto, he’s had Klebsiella, he’s had Citrobacter—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: He’s resolved a lot of his infections through Dr. J’s uh—antimicrobials, which is awesome. I guarantee you are getting robbed for a long time of your—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. 100% So the first thing is, right, we have that kind of diet. So think of like your health is like running a business. So every year that you’re unhealthy is like a business, right, having more expenses than its profit, right? Where then its revenue— gross revenue, right? So you’re going a little bit more into debt, a little bit more into debt. The difference is you don’t go into bankruptcy court, right, and go bankrupt. You have symptoms. And those symptoms eventually may lead into a cluster of diseases or pathology whether it’s diabetes or it’s just obesity or maybe it’s cancer or heart disease or you’re just in this in between where you kinda have chronic fatigue, you don’t feel good, you’re kind of depressed. And then you’re in this in between where you go to the doctor and they’re just like, “Oh yeah, you’re just aging.” or “Here’s an antidepressant.” or “It’s all in your head.” And then you’re stuck with these kinda in between kind of diagnoses where you’re not— you don’t have a disease, but you sure don’t feel good and you’re not getting any answers, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s kinda the big thing that we see. So we’re like, alright, so imagine that that’s the equivalent of business $1 million in debt. Well just because you start having good business practice and start pulling a profit, you gotta now make above and beyond that million before you start coming back in the black. So that’s where it’s really good for some of these supplements to come in because they kinda, you know, act like a mini bailout or a mini—a mini business loan to kind of bring you back in the balance. So things like B vitamins are great because you burn these up when you’re stressed. And if you have a lot of dysbiotic bacteria, these cre— the good bacteria produce healthy amounts of B vitamins. If you have a lot of bad bacteria, you’re not getting the B vitamins and you’re also getting a lot of toxins, too, which create leaky gut and create more stress and cause you to burn B vitamins and also creates a lot of lactic acid which eats a lot of your B vitamins. So B vitamins are really important first step. And we have B vitamins like B1, which is Thiamine or B2, which is Riboflavin or B3, which is Niacin and B6, which is Pyridoxine 5 Phosphate or Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, B9, which is Folate, uhm—B 12, which is amino, B12, right? Uhm—Methylcobalamin Hydroxyl Adenosyl Cobalamin, right? These are important B vitamins especially if you’re a vegetarian. B12 is gonna be one of those that you’re missing. So any comments, Evan, on the B vitamins and how important they are.
Evan Brand: Yes, sir. Absolutely. And I’m gonna address Robert’s question at the same time answering uh—or adding a comment. He said “Can these infections result in high homocysteine levels?” The answer is absolutely yes and there’s a journal that I’ll send over to Justin so we can put it in the show notes. It was American family physician was the literature but it was an article all about vitamin B12 deficiency and basically what happens is whether it’s H. pylori or like they even talk about in this article which is surprising coz most conventional medical people they kinda disregard parasites, but it’s talking about the link between parasites and B12 deficiency and then the link between B12 deficiency in elevated homocysteine levels. So, yes, we may give you some type of supplement, It’s gonna have the B12 like we always talked about. We’ve gotta get to the root cause, too. So we’ve got to fix those infections like I’ve had. We gotta fix those, too, at the same time while supplementing. So let me send it to you, Justin, so we can—we can share with the listeners.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That sounds great. I think B vitamins are really important just number one because of the stress component; number two because of the gut bacteria component; and then number three just to kind of—most people are still stressed so they need those B vitamins just to help kind of breakeven every day. So that’s the first component. Uh next let’s talk about minerals. So one of the first important minerals is gonna be magnesium because it’s a mineral that has over 100 or 1000 roles 1000 and enzymatic roles in the body, right? It has a major effect on dealing with enzymes. So with Krebs cycle, with energy, with blood pressure, with mood, with, sleep, with relaxation, with stress. Lots of different roles in the body and it’s one of those that are just incredibly deficient in our food supply. There’s lots of studies on magnesium deficiency and that’s it literally prevalent over 50% of the population. So this is important and if we’re not eating organic, then the magnesium in our food will be lower. So magnesium is one of these things that we wanna make sure is in a high quality supplement. I put it in my supplement via magnesium malate. So it’s bound to malic acid which is a Krebs cycle kinda intermediary nutrient. So it’s really important for the Krebs cycle and that way we can at least guarantee a couple hundred milligrams but because it’s chelated, we you know, it—more of it gets into where it needs to go which is really important. So magnesium is another one of those very important nutrients.
Evan Brand: Good. Well said. Yeah. And if you bought magnesium at Walgreens or CVS or Walmart or Target probably magnesium oxide, we talked about this before, but it’s about a 4% absorption rate. So if you’re taking 100 mg, you’re getting 4% of that; if you’re taking a 1000 mg, 4% of that. So take a look at your supplement bottle, flipped it around and look at the form of magnesium. If it’s oxide, you could use it for constipation that’s about the only benefit. But like Justin’s talking about the to help fuel the enzymatic processes and help Krebs cycle and promote energy and all that, it’s not going to do anything. You’ve got a look at the malate’s; you’ve got a look at the taurates; you’ve got the citrate’s; the—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Glycinate.
Evan Brand: Glycinate, the threonate. So there’s many, many good ones out there. And Mercola, I don’t know if he’s just saying this like anecdotally or if he’s got some literature on it, but Dr. Mercola’s recent talk about EMF and how he believes that the magnesium can help mitigate the EMF and he’s recommending like 2 g a day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Evan Brand: — of different forms of magnesium. It makes sense, but I don’t know the mechanism of how that would help.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Well if we look at the big magnesium foods, right? Magnesium is gonna be lower in foods, but it’s gonna be highest in our green vegetables— spinach, swiss chard, uh— pumpkin seeds uhm—you know, kefirs, things like that, almonds, some legumes, avocado, figs, dark chocolate—dark chocolate’s a really good one, uh— banana. Again, you just have to be careful because if you’re kind of having autoimmune issue, more on autoimmune template to start, well, seeds are out, any dairies out, legumes out, uhm— some of these—half your foods are gone.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you have to be careful like the big things are gonna be high quality dark chocolate, uh—lots of good greens. And if you can do one of these nuts or seeds like the pumpkin seeds I mentioned, that’s a really good place. But if not, that’s were leaning on a good supplement is gonna be helpful, but the green veggie, I think will be the key uhm—to that. So we just gotta keep in in mind, you know, there may be some foods that are really good for us made nutrient profile but they may have an inflammatory profile that’s— let’s just say, kinda contradicts or kinda—the risk outweighs the benefit of getting that nutrient coz of the inflammation.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I agree. So if you’re autoimmune protocol, if your digestion’s compromised, which it probably is if you’re on an autoimmune protocol coz you probably had an autoimmune illness and that’s what we’re recommending an AIP diet. Sounds like a magnesium supplement will be much— much, much more necessary and helpful. Uh— we had a question from Linda. She said, should she be concerned if every time she goes to the stool, so every time she poops uhm— there’s an oil slick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t know if I would say– I don’t know if I would say scared but concerned, oh, right, yeah. I mean I would be scared if there was blood in the stool.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like you know decent bit of blood and it wasn’t just from a tiny bit of a hemorrhoid issue. But if I saw blood in the stool, I would be scared, for sure. I would definitely get that—some kind of a hem—some kind of an ulcer or cancer, make sure that’s ruled out. But with just the slick in the stool, I would be concerned because you’re not digesting your fat which means vitamin A, D, E, K your fat-soluble nutrients like your long chain fatty acids like EPA or DHEA or you know, coconut, good fats like that, you’re not absorbing those which means you’re gonna have blood sugar issues and you’re gonna have malabsorption, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Absolutely. So in that case, Linda, if you listen to us before, we’ll sound like a broken record, but if not, uh— you know, if you’re working with Justin or I, what we’re gonna end up doing with you would be looking at the stool test, we’ve gotta measure that fecal fat, the steatocrit marker, we’re gonna look for infections. So we’re gonna look for parasites; we’re gonna look for yeast; we’re gonna look for fungus; we’re gonna look for anything that’s gonna be stealing your nutrients or messing up that absorption. H. pylori if that’s suppressing the parietal cells that make hydrochloric acid in the gut. Now your whole digestive cascades is falling apart, we’re gonna look at medications. So if you’ve got a history or your currently taking some type of acid blocking drug we’ve got a factor that in coz that’s such a huge factor for fat digestion, too, if you’re just suppressing that. So we gotta look for those underlying causes but eventually, yes, we could fix the situation and probably add enzymes back in. Let’s address uh—Haley’s question, too, Justin, coz uh—it kinda ties into this. She said that she’s— her digestive enzymes can make your pancreas and gallbladder quote unquote lazy. What are your thoughts? We know that’s not true. With melatonin, yes, you can turn down the production of melatonin if you supplement. But with enzymes, my understanding is we’re only feeding the fire. Justin, can you comment.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well even with melatonin I talked to Dr. Ron Rothenberg about that and he says long as the dose is relatively low that that won’t happen coz it’s a positive feedback loop with these things. But when it comes to hydrochloric acid and enzymes, one of the major feedback loops for HCl and enzymes is gastrin, right? And gastrin when you take supplemental HCl, enzyme levels are –or gastrin levels don’t drop. So it’s not like you get testosterone testicle shrink in size.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s not like that. So my bigger concern is that someone’s not making enough enzymes because they don’t have enough hydrochloric acid in the stomach and my concern is that’s— there’s not enough HCl on the stomach because of the sympathetic stress response, right? That fight or flight from food or from emotional stress or physical stress, so we, of course, we’re fixing that stuff upstream, right? Eating in a good, stress-free environment, not hydrating with food hydrating before, you know, we’re after biting after an hour or two but after, you know, 15 minutes before. And then we’re taking enough hydrochloric acid to lower the acidity so we can activate our own enzymes. But taking something is gonna be great coz I’m more concerned about that food sitting in your gut and not being digested and basically rotting and rancidifying and putrefying, creating stress by sitting in your gut.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s my bigger concern.
Evan Brand: I agree. So we hit the minerals. You talked about those you did great. We hit our magnesium which is gonna be probably number one. There’s a whole organization dedicated to magnesium deficiencies. If you type in gotmag, it think it’s gotmag.org. There’s like stage 2, 3 and 4 symptoms. You could even have insane symptoms, big issues, heart arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation, all sorts of other like heart-related issues due to magnesium, if you’re deficient. So if you’ve got some heart flutters or some weird symptoms, the cardiologist, they’re not gonna know you’ve got a magnesium deficiency, they’re just gonna end up putting you on like a beta blocker or some type of heart rhythm drug like they’ve done to my grandmother. And they’re not addressing magnesium and these drugs they’re using are likely gonna deplete magnesium even more. So we could get into some really, really big serious health implications if we don’t address something that simple as magnesium.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, hundred percent. So again, big source of magnesium, in my line, I have one called Magnesium Supreme. That’s a magnesium malate. That malate’s are– the malic acid so that helps in the Krebs cycle, it helps with energy but also has a relaxation effect. So that’s one of the ones I formulated. I still even like a little bit of magnesium citrate at night. I think it’s great. It may not be the best absorbed, it’s cheaper but it’s still good. So I like my Magnesium Supreme and then we use the Malate— Magnesium Malate in all the multis. And the multi-nutrients Supreme, in the twice or in the Multisuper pack. So that’s kind of what we have. I like those. I use those daily. I think they’re great. And then for kids that may be uh—you know have serious gut issues, we may do like a magnesium threonate kinda gel to help or magnesium chloride kind of uhm—Epsom salt bath, too.
Evan Brand: Nice. And with the anxiety like PTSD, traumas, phobias, the supplement in my line is called Calm Clarity. And I’ve used that one with great success with people especially veterans who come back from war and they’ve just got a lot of emotional trauma or women who’ve been through some type of abuse threonate crosses the blood brain barrier. So that’s another form of magnesium and not any one form is perfect but you can use a combination of these. So like Justin mention, you wanna cycle. Maybe you’ve got some malate here, you’ve got some citrate here—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: You can add different forms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then we’ll put show notes and links to some of these things. So if you guys want to support the show, we always appreciate that. We’re just trying to get you the best information possible. Now, I talked about the magnesium foods. Some of the B vitamin foods, okay? Again, you’re gonna have like if you go online and look you’re gonna see the fortified ones which are gonna be cereals and orange juices which is basically crappy, crappy B vitamins.
Evan Brand: Garbage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The worst quality. So do not count on any of the B vitamins from those foods. And number one, you shouldn’t be eating those foods, anyway coz they’re very high in sugar. With the orange juices and the grains are obviously gonna be the gluten thing which are gonna be inflammatory as well. So cut those out, nix those out. But you’re gonna do really with fish, with vegetables, with fruits, with meats, with leafy greens, egg yolks. So a lot of the Paleo versions of those are gonna have super, super high amount of B vitamins which is great.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Like Pop Tarts, like fortified with 12 vitamins and minerals. It’s like, “Oh yeah, let’s just eat pop tarts, high fructose corn syrup and genetically modified glyphosate sprayed wheat flour. We’re gonna be just fine.” Not true, not true, not true.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Remember, when you take in a lot of sugar and refined carbohydrate, all that refine carbohydrate converts to sugar and when you look at the Krebs cycle, how that Krebs cycle pumps around and it goes through all these kind of uhm—you know, reduction reactions where all these hydrogens kind of accumulate. It takes magnesium to run those cycles and if you’re basically—if it’s costing you more magnesium to run the cycle than you’re getting in, this is what we call nutrient debt, right? You’re not getting as much from it than you are— for the cost to run it, okay? So keep that in the back of your mind.
Evan Brand: Luckily the human body is resilient. I mean if that— if we we’re like a car, you and I use car analogies, if we we’re at such a nutrient debt like most people are, the car would be dead. But luckily our body will still survive. You just won’t thrive in these situations. You could have hair issues, skin issues, nail issues, like you said, autoimmune diseases, cancer, you’ve got bad skin, you’ve got acne, you’ve got poor sleep problems, you’ve got anxiety, depression, you’ve got chronic fatigue, you’ve got obesity. I mean, a lot of these diseases that have skyrocketed 10,000% over the last 20 years, there’s many, many factors that we can address in one podcast but like you mentioned, just a nutrient— the nutrient density of the soil has been reduced which is why—and I didn’t tell you this yet, but I uh—expanded my property. I bought the acre next door as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, cool.
Evan Brand: I’m gonna have a 1 acre farm and I’m gonna have as much of my food come from that as possible. Not the meats coz there’s a couple restrictions on having animals but my goal is to provide 50% is my goal. Uh— 50% of my own food. I’ve already grown stuff this year. I’ve had watermelons. Last year, I had bunch of sweet potatoes, I had strawberries, I had broccoli, carrots, all organic homegrown. There’s no more local—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great.
Evan Brand: ..that you can get than your backyard.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And you can even team up with some farmers and make a deal and say, “Hey, you can use my land and I’ll give you half of what’s on there.”
Evan Brand: I know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz then you don’t have to worry about it at all. And you kinda make this deal, they get free land but they get half the food. Hey, there’s enough food for you and your family. The rest may go bad anyway, so you may end up giving it away, anyway. So that could be a good deal for you.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m gonna try to do some pecan trees and I’ve got all sorts of ideas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. Yeah. Very cool, man. I think it’s important that uhm— people have to understand that your body is like a business. When a business starts having low profits and starts— the revenue starts dropping, the business has to either get incredibly efficient or typically, more than likely, lays people off, right? It fires people, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it goes off, it fires people that are least essential to driving the profit. Well, the body does the same thing. It just starts allocating resources to other areas. Some dead skin, it’s okay, we’ll have some irritation, it will get wrinkly and creepy, it’s okay, no problem. Fingernails—weaker, more brittle; hormones will be a little bit lower that means you’ll have a lot of cycles, you know, symptoms with your cycle; you’ll have lower libido; you won’t be able to recover from strenuous work out; you won’t be able to put on muscle, that’s okay, no big deal. And uh—yeah, we won’t—we won’t put it– inflammation as much so you’ll be a little bit more achy, you know, you’ll be little bit more prone to osteopenia or osteoporosis. That’s how the body thinks. Uhm– that’s how it allocates. It’s all about survival. We are really about surviving. So those nutrients help run those systems. We really want to make sure that we have enough nutrients to run systems. There a lot of people they’re focused on calories and if you’re eating a real whole foods those calories will have nutrition, but today, it’s possible with the whole pop tart analogy or the junk food analogy, you can get a whole bunch of calories and not a lot of nutrition on the flipside. So you gotta keep that in mind.
Evan Brand: Agreed. You wanna hit a couple more questions or should we try to move the conversation into some more nutrients. I’ve had vitamin C just echoing in my brain that I have to just talk about vitamin C.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s hit that. I wanna hit one last thing on magnesium and we can tie it to vitamin C. There’s a lot of the medications that are out there will actually create nutrient deficiencies. And one of the biggest ones are the blood pressure medications, the water pills, the Hydrochlorothi—Hydrochlorothiazide, the Lisinopril, the ACE inhibitors, right, the beta blockers. These will actually create magnesium deficiency which magnesium is really important for regulating blood pressure, so that actually create more blood pressure, which creates more dependency on these medications. So you can see that vicious cycle. So keep in mind the nutrient deficiency aspect with these drugs. Same thing with birth control pills and B vitamins as well and magnesium. So those are couple of common medications. And then the granddaddy of them all is gonna be the acid blockers that will affect nutrients in many directions, B vitamins, minerals etc.
Evan Brand: Yup. The Omni— is it Omni with an “n” or is it “m”? Omne—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Omneprozol. O-M-N-E and then prozol.
Evan Brand: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: That’s great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Prilosec that’s the trade name of it. That’s the—Omneprozol is the generic. So yeah, these are the medications. These are the family of meds we got to be careful of. So, kinda tagging into your vitamin C. I’ll let you the ball with that Evan.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I just wanna—one more comment on the Prilosec.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And the thing that’s scary is these acid blockers used to be prescription and now they’re over-the-counter. So people just go to Target and they just go buy a 48 pack of these, six month supply and they throw that giant value pack 20% more pills into their shopping cart and they just go home, “Oh, yeah, Prilosec.” It’s like, “good God”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s really interesting because you know you get all the people that say, “Oh, you have to be such a super, super smart medical doctor to prescribe these drugs. They’re so dangerous. You need to have, you know, a medical Dr. kinda looking over you. And of course, that it—that is true with in a lot of cases, yeah, they contradict themselves coz then these drugs seven years later when the patent goes out, once they go generic and there’s no money behind them, they go over-the-counter.
Evan Brand: Oh my God.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Look at Ibuprofen, right? It kills 20,000 people a year and now it’s over-the-counter. It’s okay.
Evan Brand: Ugh. Insane isn’t it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So I mean, you kinda talk on both sides of the mouth and you know, we pointed out. Uhm so, yeah, in general, the medications that you’re gonna see that are gonna be out there, primarily are gonna be the patented ones. Once that seven-year patents off or if they can create a mini-me version of it, then it’s over-the-counter and anyone can buy it. It’s up for grabs now.
Evan Brand: Fortunately, beta-blockers and antidepressants are still prescription only. So, that’s good. We’re saving a lot of issues with that. But yeah, let me get back on subject. Vitamin C is huge. It’s gonna be stored in the adrenal glands, typically.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So Justin and I are gonna measure your nutritional markers when we run organic acids testing on you. We’re gonna look at a lot of nutrients. Nine times out of 10 vitamin C shows up low because people burn through it like jet fuel, just like B vitamins that Justin mention about stress, same thing with vitamin C. There is a reference range most people aren’t even on the map. I’m seeing people at like a point level, like a decimal point level when they should be hundreds of times higher. So I’m typically gonna be using about 2000 mg and I’ve had people say, “Oh Evan, I’ve taken vitamin C for years they still show up low because they were using some garbage they got at like a health food store. Even thought it’s a health food store could still have inferior quality or it’s a consumer break— consumer grade product they bought at Whole Foods or Amazon or somewhere else. And they’re not using professional grade or they’re just using ascorbic acid only, which is decent. But to really boost up the levels, you’ve got to have the antioxidants with it. The quercetin, the rutin, the bioflavonoids.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mixed ascorbate.
Evan Brand: Yeah. You gotta have the mixed ascorbates, too. You’ve got the magnesium ascorbate, the calcium ascorbate, the sodium ascorbates. If you just do—like what is it? emergency that garbage that they sell at the check out line at Walgreens or other places where it’s not only is it just rate ascorbic acid it’s got fructose in there, too, which is gonna destroy blood sugar. That’s not gonna do anything. You could buy a year supply of that and not move the needle. Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent, man. So may—uh—Vitamin C is really important. I also say selenium is one of these things that are very important as well because it’s important for thyroid conversion. Uhm— it’s important for liver detoxification, it’s important precursor for glutathione, right? And we like to give that neither like a Selenium Glycinate or Selenium Methionine kinda bound to one of these sulfur amino acids.
Evan Brand: Let me ask you this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: What do you say to all these people, “Oh, Justin, I don’t need Selenium. I eat three Brazil nuts per day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I mean I think that’s a really good source of selenium; the problem is the amount of selenium in those brazil nuts can vary tenfold. So you could either be getting 50 µg or 500 µg. So the problem is you just don’t know how much you’re getting in each of them. So I think it’s good if you wanna do a Brazil nut or two a day. Just make sure that the uhm—the multi you’re taking guarantees you at least 200 µg of selenium per day. And I think you’re in a really really, good place.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And we talked about the absorption issue. So if somebody has got some gut bugs, doesn’t matter if you eat the Brazil nuts. You could probably eat a whole bag and not boost up selenium, if you’re deficient and you’ve got things stealing your nutrients or compromising your digestive quality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And it’s just good to have that insurance policy with selenium. Uh—it’s gonna be hard to overdose with it if you’re in that 2 to 400 µg range and you’re using a good quality like Selenium Methionine. You’re gonna be in really good shape. And again, just kinda tag teaming, we got a lot of people talking about hormone stuff. Selenium is really important for hormones especially testosterone and then we even have Zinc, right? Whether it’s zinc aspartate or zinc methionine or uhm— zinc’s really important. The zinc fingers have a lot to do with the genetics like the DNA the epigenetics. So having enough zinc is really important to activating— having good affects our epigenome. Zinc is extremely important for making HCl. It’s a really good building block for our sex hormones as well. So gotta love zinc and when you’re stressed and you have low hydrochloric acid level, zinc can go low. And you can do is a tally test. We do some Zinc Chloride or—is it Chloride or Sulfate? I was getting confused.
Evan Brand: I think Sulfate for that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So Zinc Sulfate. We could do a Zinc Sulfate test. The more metallic you’re tasting it is, the better— the better your Zinc is. The better or the more neutral taste, the lower your zinc is. That’s a good little kind of rule of thumb test.
Evan Brand: So people heard that, they’re like, “What the hell is he talking about?” So basically, uh—Justin and I can send a high-quality liquid Zinc Sulfate and based on the status of your zinc, that will change the flavor of the zinc. When I took this test a few years ago, I think they say, “hold it in your mouth for up to 30 seconds” So you put a little bit zinc in your mouth, you kinda gently swish it around. I swallowed it,. I tasted nothing. That was when I had all those infections. I literally tasted nothing. It tasted like water. My zinc was trashed and then as you improve infections, you get your digestion better, your supplementing with the right type of zinc, all the sudden you could put the zinc in your mouth and then it almost tastes like your licking a piece of metal like right away. That’s the goal but would you say, Justin? 95% of people they’re not going to taste the metal right away which means they’re super deficient.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean a lot of them are gonna be deficient if they have gut issues or stress issues or malabsorption those kind of thing for sure. So I think that’s a really important one look at. So we hit the Vitamin C, we hit Magnesium we hit Selenium and we hit Zinc.
Evan Brand: I’d say Omegas and vitamin D would be two others we have to mention.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think Omega-3 is really important which is—the typical Omega-3 fatty acids there is ALA Alpha Linolenic Acid. That’s the omega-3 in flaxseed oil. We have EPA which is 20-chain carbon which is Eicosapentaenoic Acid, that’s EPA. And then we have the_ DHEA. These are the 20 and 22. The EPA or the DHEA are the fats found in fish oil. These are the really important ones. These have all of the anti-inflammatory action. They help block this prostaglandin E2 pathway which gets inflammation jacked up. They also are really good building blocks for the brain and the neurological system. And the ALA are the Alpha Linolenic Acid from the flax seeds and the vegetables, that actually has to get converted via this enzyme, I think it’s Delta 5 Desaturase. And that enzyme converts the 18 carbon to the 20 carbon and things like insulin resistance and inflammation and stress can affect that conversion and knock it decreased function by 80 to 90%. So you’re not getting those really biologically active omega-3 fatty acids when you’re doing a lot of the plant-based Omega-3’s because of those mechanisms I mention. So getting the really good Omega-3’s from the fish is going to the best way. Plus the fish actually bio accumulate how the plants get it which will typically is the algae, right? A lot of the good vegetable, Omega-3 supplements vegetarian ones are gonna be algae based. Well the fish concentrate the algae. It’s kinda like the grass that cows concentrate the grass. So you’re kinda getting that bioaccumulation in a more concentrated form when you’re doing some of these really good fish oils.
Evan Brand: Well said. Yeah. Pastured meats, too, you will get some— you will get some fatty acid. So your bisons, your elk, which are my two favorites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Your grass-fed beef, pastured pork. I would assume you’d get some from pork.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. More than likely you’re gonna get some from any of the animal products. The healthier they are, the more pastured they—the more pastured, the more biologically appropriate their diet is, uhm— the better chance that you’re gonna get more of these Omega-3 fatty acids than the more inflammatory Omega 6. But again, Arachidonic Acids are really important building block which is an Omega-6 fatty acid, but that’s gonna be a really good fat, too. So you don’t want to say, “Oh, all Omega-6 is bad. It’s just gonna really be a lot more of the Omega-6 that are gonna be driven from vegetable oils like refined vegetable oils, right? The good vegetable oils are gonna be olive oil which is a—a Oleic Acid which is really an Omega-9, your—your uhm—short chain fatty acids are gonna come from your butters and ghee which that’s gonna be more animal-based. MCT oil or your Caproic, Caprylic uhm—Lauric acids. These C6, C8, C10, C12 fatty acids, these are gonna be in the coconut. That’s great. Uh—so those are gonna be some of the really good ones to start with. All avocado oils, another really good neutral one as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I just wanna point out the fact that we’re hitting a lot of really good foundational nutrients but we could do entire episodes just on magnesium, just on vitamin C.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We have that on magnesium. I know that.
Evan Brand: I think we did. Yeah. So if—if we feel like we’re glossing over some deep aspects, then that’s okay. The vitamin D that’s huge. It’s really a hormone called vitamin but vitamin D is important we like to your levels at preferably 60 or above. I say nine out of every 10 people are gonna. be deficient in magnesium As you get older, you can’t convert sunlight into usable vitamin D as much. So even if you’re getting plenty of sun exposure which I’ve talked to people who garden for six hours a day, they are still deficient in vitamin D. And so in less— you’re like Dr. Mercola, where he said he hadn’t supplemented in seven years, something like that, 5-6-7 years, he lives at a very south latitude in Florida. He’s out on the beach hours— three hours a day with so much skin exposed and he keeps his levels at about 60. So I unless you got that amount of time and lifestyle to dedicate—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: ..to sun, it’s gonna be really tough to keep it at adequate level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I hundred percent agree. So Vitamin D is really important. We try to do it with actual sun exposure, uhm— don’t burn, kinda get your Minimal Erythemal Dose, MED, if you will. And uhm— supplement the rest. If you can— if you just do a really good 25 hydroxy vitamin or a regular vitamin D3, mine’s uh—Emulsi D Supreme and it’s got the uh—MCT oil and the vitamin D3—D3 in there which is a really good form. Again, you can also add some K2 in it. My biggest issue is you don’t get enough vitamin D with the K2 ones but just make sure getting some really good K2 in your foods which fermented foods are gonna have a lot of K2 uhm—a healthy gut bacteria makes some K2 and then also a healthy grass-fed butter or ghee are gonna be other excellent sources of vitamin K2 as well.
Evan Brand: So Designs has one that’s got 5000 IU of D+ K warning K2. I can’t remember the name. But it’s a pretty good one and I’ve used it before think. I think—I think it’s gonna be called the Su—I think it’s Supreme.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: That’s what is it. D Supreme.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The problem is the vitamin D levels in it are very, very low. That’s the only issue.
Evan Brand: I think it’s a 5000. What are you—what are you talking about using? You talking about using 8 or 10 thousand or is 5,000 good in your eyes?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It just depends. I like doing the liquid Vitamin D just because if I need to use it therapeutically like someone’s sick, right? I may do 100,000 IUs—
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that ends up being like 20 or 30 pills. It becomes doing too hard, so it’s easier to take like 30 or 40 drops put in your smoothie and you don’t even know you had it.
Evan Brand: Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I go more with the liquid, but again, your great vitamin K sources are gonna your green leafy’s, fermented foods like—like Natto, of course, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, fermented dairy, prunes, uh—high quality uh— grass-fed butter or ghee. So you really, you know, you can get a lot of those uhm—make sure you’re getting a lot of good nutrients from those foods. Make sure their organic and that will help significantly. So if you’re doing a vitamin D, you really want to make sure that K2’s there and make sure those foods are really good in your diet and a lot of good multis and have a little bit of K2 in there, too.
Evan Brand: Good, good. Well said. Shall we look at a couple questions here?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Let’s hit them.
Evan Brand: Okay. So uh—we had a question about Mercola’s complete probiotic. It’s probably decent, Justin and I use professional grade. So if there’s a consumer grade product out there, we’re always gonna say ours is better because we’ve got healthcare manufacturers that make our products. There is very, very, very stringent restrictions in testing and manufacturing processes that we use and so were always going to push you towards our probiotics instead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: His is probably good, though.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m sure their good. I mean Mercola’s, you know, he’s very detail oriented. So I’m sure his are good but we’re biased. So we’re gonna want you to buy ours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So you could check out uh—justinhealth.com Check out his line. He’s got several in the gut support section and I’ve got a few formulas, too, that I’ve got on my site evanbrand.com You can check out those.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Perfect.
Evan Brand: Alright. Let’s keep going. What else as we’ve got here? Uh— Robert he asked, “What foods and supplements can you take to speed up restoring low secretory IGA?” What do you think? I think a lot of the gut supports like the leaky gut formulas, your slippery elm, your marshmallow roots, chamomile flowers, anything that’s kinda fix a leaky gut situation maybe some mushrooms to support the IGA for the immune system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think making sure the infections are gone, number one. Making sure the diet’s good. Making sure you’re breaking down the foods that you’re eating. Uhm— number three, once the infections gone, adding in a lot of the healing nutrients. So in my line, we use one called, GI Restore, which is a lot of those same nutrients. Uhm—it’s got the glutamine, it’s got the slippery Elm, the aloe, the DGL, a lot of the healing, soothing nutrients. Getting the probiotics up is gonna be really helpful, you know, the Lactobacillus, the Bifidobacter strands, various strands there. Also very high amounts Saccharomyces Boulardiis is proven to help improve IgA levels. So those are really good things that you can add in there. And just making sure the adrenals are supported.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because a healthy cortisol levels have a impact on your immune system which has an impact on your IgA. Coz your IgA is that mucosal that first-line defense for your immune system.
Evan Brand: Yes. So chronic stress, too, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: If you’re taking all the supplements in the world but you have a terrible boss and you hate your life, you’ve got to address that chronic stress component coz that’s gonna be the number one cause that’s going to drive down the secretory IgA.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent.
Evan Brand: Uh—there’s another question here. There was a supplement a person had to had a tiny bit of soy lecithin in it should they be concerned? What’s your take?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wouldn’t worry about soy lecithin. It’s tough. Uhm—soy lecithin is more of an emulsifier. It’s more to help with the digestion and the mixing of that product is typically not gonna be soy protein in that.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The soy protein is really what causes the problems. Lecithin’s more of an emulsifier. So as long as it’s a good quality product uhm— I’m okay with there being a little bit of soy lecithin in there.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I’ve got a couple formulas that have it in there. I’ve had people say, “Oh my God, I’m allergic to soy.” They’re fine. They have no issue. that’s not actually— it’s such a— it’s such an extracted form that it’s not like you’re eating soy. You’re not eating soybean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. And then in my line, I think I may just have a few that have soy lecithin in there. But we were able to make sure that it’s guaranteed that it’s non-GMO soy. So you really want to make sure it’s at least non-GMO soy lecithin. And as long as that’s there, I’m okay with it.
Evan Brand: And it’s gonna be a tiny amount. When you look at the formula we’re talking and the other ingredients, it’s not an active ingredient. So could be 1% of the formula.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And less, you know, single digits fraction of percents for sure.
Evan Brand: Yup. Good. What else we’ve got here? If you feel like hitting this and we can, we can save it for another day—symptoms of chronic intestinal infections. I think we hit on that already with the hair, the skin, the nails, the acne, depression, anxiety, fatigue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. All your— all your common symptoms, right? Your uhm— your intestinal symptoms: bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, acid reflux. And then your extra intestinal which are all the mood-based and energy-based: fatigue, mood, joint pain, depression, anxiety. Those kind of things, sleep,—
Evan Brand: Autoimmunity—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hormone stuff, autoimmunity. And we got a whole podcast on that. So just google digestion or parasites or leaky gut and you’ll get a whole bunch of podcast and videos on that topic.
Evan Brand: Cool. Robert said he loved our podcast on histamine and it hit home prior to having infections no foods were problem, uh—post infection, fermented foods read havoc on him. So thanks for the podcast. Thanks for the feedback Robert. We love to hear that the histamine podcast was a killer one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m looking forward to chatting with you soon, Robert. I know uhm—you’ve been doing good work on your— on yourself there with uh— some of those good informational put in the podcast. But if you need more support, let us know. I’d get retested. Make sure we get to the root cause coz if those issues are still there with the post histamine stuff, there may be some additional critters hanging around.
Evan Brand: Yep. I agree. Another question about chronic dry eyes. “How often have you seen this with your patients? I’m working on healing the gut do you think there could be other root causes to dry eyes?” Justin, what’s your take?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Chronically low cortisol. You’ll see load—you’ll see dry eyes. Typically, get your diet stable. Once your diet’s stable, you can add a lower carbohydrate kinda diet. If those dry eyes are still there, gently taper out that carbohydrate every couple of days. You know, 10- 15 g of carbs primarily at nights. Do the safe starchy versions: squash, sweet potatoes, plantains, those kind of things. And you may see those dry eyes start to go away. You can even try a tablespoon of coconut oil and a teaspoon of honey, right, before bed as well that may help.
Evan Brand: Cool. So what else we’ve got? “Can I re-infect myself with H. pylori with makeup like lipsticks that I’ve used when I had H. pylori? I’ve no idea what the lifespan of that is on the product.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is possible. I mean I would just look at uhm—the lipstick stuff. Maybe just get a razor blade and cut that end off there. I think you’d probably be okay with that. Uhm— typically, you know, as you knock out the infection, you know, you’d still be using it. So eventually, you’d wear off that but I think if you wanna be on the safe side, I think that’s a good thing to keep in mind. Even more important uhm—things that you can quite excise as easy like partners, right? Spouses. Ideally getting them at least treated semi- “semi” meaning maybe we only use one supplement just coz the compliance is so important. I would really be more—more imperative on the spouses and the partners.
Evan Brand: I agree. Partners are probably much bigger issue, much bigger carrier and reinfection source than your makeup and lipstick. I don’t know of any high-quality lipstick. Maybe they’re out there, but I would just throw that stuff away and maybe does discontinue using lipstick, too. I doubt you’re missing out on much in you know it’s— there’s parabens and all sorts of other stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And they have some really good things on the market now that do a lot like food-based ones where they are like extracting cherries and all these different food-based ones that kinda produces the fruit-based stain and kinda gives you a similar look but it’s using nutrition and foods versus, you know, some of the synthetic things.
Evan Brand: Uhh..okay, okay. So maybe you— maybe you stick with the lipstick then. Alright. James said he had a over sympathetic—let’s see having over sympathetic with sexual activity does blood pressure med Norvasc affect ED issues? That’s kinda like—I don’t even fully understand what you’re saying coz it’s kinda like a piece together thing. Are you understanding what he’s asking?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think what he’s saying is those medications have a potential side effect of erectile dysfunction? I would just go to RXlist.com and put that medication in there and look at that long list of side effects. I can—I can do it from right here while we continue with the conversation. What was the medication called again?
Evan Brand: It’s N-O-R-V-A-S-C. Norvasc.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, cool. I’ll pull it up here in a second. N-O-R-V-A-S-C?
Evan Brand: N-O-R-V-A-S-C. as in Charlie.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Norvasc. Got it. Okay, cool.
Evan Brand: Then he’s saying, even with Viagra, it doesn’t correct lack of sensitivity. So, yeah, I mean here’s my easy quick answer. If you didn’t have those symptoms before and now you’re on this drug and those symptoms are happening, how could that not be a factor?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. This is a an—an—Am—Amlodipine, which is a basically a calcium channel blocker, okay? Which is a calcium channel blocker, which again, magnesium kind of does the same thing, FYI. And if we look at the side effects, uh—feelings like you may pass out, swelling in your hands feet and ankles, pounding heart beat or fluttering on your chest, chest pain, heavy pain spreading arms and shoulders, nausea, general ill and there’s more uhm— side effects as well. So—
Evan Brand: It’s like a commercial all of a sudden.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, right? Let me see here: dizziness, drowsiness, tired, stomach pain—
Evan Brand: What is this—what is that? That’s for blood pressure? Is that right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. This is for blood pressure medication, but I think what you said is the best advice if that wasn’t there before and then you started taking the medication and it started happening, as long as your blood pressure is not too bad and you could taper down or you could come off with your doctor’s approval, uhm— I would have no problem doing that and seeing if those symptoms improve, then you know. Coz in the end, if it’s not a side effect on RX list.com but you take the meds out and it gets better, does it really matter that they say it is? We know clinically, right?
Evan Brand: Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Evan Brand: There’s so many ways. Didn’t we do a whole podcast—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Don’t—don’t come off. If your blood pressure is 160-170 and you’re on blood pressure medications, coz it will go that high afterwards, don’t come off it. You really want to make sure that if you’re on a medication and you wanted to try and see if there’s an issue, one, fix the root causes; but two, talk to the medical doctor that prescribed it and make sure they’re in concurrence—you know, in agreement with you on the taper that you’re going to do. Make sure they are on the same page.
Evan Brand: Yes. Some people they go to the other end of the spectrum where there are so anti-pharmaceutical that “I’m getting off of this.” That’s bad. You— that’s like stroke territory. So don’t do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You just gotta be careful. Some people if you’re like 130 or 140 over like 80 or 90, not too bad. You could probably come off as long as you’re fixing other root issues, but just have a blood pressure cuff by your bed, test it in the morning, see where you’re at. Just you— you want to do it responsibly. If you do it and you want to get to the prescribing doctor on the same page as you. You don’t want to go rogue.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Any other questions you wanna hit up?
Evan Brand: Uh let’s see. What else we’ve got.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have one here. We got one on Facebook here from Michelle or from
Mitchell. “Can L- tyrosine for dopamine support be too stimulating? How much should be taken to minimize side effects?” Yeah. It can be for some people. Uhm— tyrosine can kinda provide precursor supports to dopamine which then above that can go to adrenaline, so it can be. I think starting at 500 mg and working up to maybe, potentially 3 to even 6 g a day is okay. But start low and slow and if you know that it is stimulating, use it more in that first half of the day not the last half of the day.
Evan Brand: Yup. That’s a simple fix. Good answer. Uh—Nora had a follow-up here. “Thanks for answering the question. So can I successfully eradicate H. pylori and other pathogens as if I live with people who have it. Do they have to do treatment in parallel with me?” Well, if you’re sexually active with people, you’re kissing or simple enough, even just sharing straws, sharing cups, drinking after each other, that’s enough to infect them. So even if it’s not a partner, but it’s someone, “Oh, hey, let me have a drink of that.” That’s enough to still pass H. pylori. Justin and I have seen it hundreds of times.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The stronger your immune system is, it becomes less of an issue so like with Evan and myself, we have stronger immune systems coz we work on that. We maybe less prone because our IgA levels are up high enough where the tiny bit of that in your system, our IgA would squash it. But if your IgA is lower and you got more the stress going on and you have poor hydrochloric acid levels, then for sure. That could happen.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I had low IgA, too. So that’s something that you’d want it measured Nora and check with the stool testing and look for your IGA figure out which your first line of defense is looking like. If it’s low and weak, you’ve just got a lot of chronic stress, then, yeah, you’re gonna be more susceptible to—to pick it up. But to answer the question, “Could you eradicate it?” If you live with other people, yeah, you could but there’s gotta be a lot of things in your favor and you’re not sharing or sharing cups or drinking for most people or kissing them etc. Uhm— Anthony—well there’s one question about—from Anthony. He said, “It’s been over five years with gut issues, irregular stools, many doctor visits.” He found out that he had a whey and casein allergy. “Where should you start to get help?” Oh, wow! That’s a hard one to answer. Uh—right here. Justin and myself. justinhealth.com evanbrand.com I mean we’ve dealt with people who’ve already been to many doctors. I mean it’s such a common story. We always asked the question, “Hey, kinda give us your history. What—what’s been your experience with other practitioners? What have you tried to help? What have you tried that hasn’t helped?” I’d say 90% of people we talked with they’ve already been to a either a Gastro doctor or some other type of doc for their gut issues and they’ve had no success and only prescription drugs like I got recommended to myself anti-spasmodic, anti-acid drugs. If you’ve got a regular Bell’s, man, you’ve got infections. I can put money on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I’m a huge believer— I want every patient to at least go in the conventional medical workup before they come see functional docs or functional practitioners like ourselves just to rule out big picture pathology stuff. You know, it just makes it so we at least know that the big glaring stuff is at least been looked at and addressed and assessed. And now we’re looking more functional imbalances which is really what functional medicine is treating. It’s not medicine from a conventional disease based medicine; it’s medicine from a uh— nutritional kind of support perspective working on supporting systems, not treating symptoms and disease.
Evan Brand: Yup. We’ll take one more question here. Uh from Charlotte O: “How do you feel about NOW foods brand supplements my health coach is using them on me. I think NOW foods is okay it’s once again, a consumer grade product, so it is going to be likely less high-quality. I have seen some fillers and some of their products. I have seen them do some inferior forms of certain nutrients; however, they’ve also got a lot of really good products, too, where they’re stepping up their game in they’re using the methylated bees and the higher qualities with the Omega’s, so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And plus, people doesn’t know. NOW has another line. It’s a higher up line. It’s called “Protocols For Life” That’s their higher-grade line. So if you like NOW, look at Protocols For Life.
Evan Brand: Is protocol uh—will that have to be through practitioner or is that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Couldn’t say it’s a practitioner one but it’s a little bit higher grade but it’s—it’s made by the same company. It’s their one step up.
Evan Brand: But overall what’s your take on NOW?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean I think they’re okay for certain things. You know, uhm— so as a kind of initial kinda get in your foot in the door kinda thing, I think it’s okay. But of course, you know, we—we have are our bias because were trying to get the highest quality in everything. And part of that is because we actually work with patients face to face. It’s not like they go online and buy something, we never see them again. We’re working with them face-to-face so we have to know that what we’re recommending is the best because we need to seek clinical outcome. So we have to know that. So it’s a little bit different for us because we gotta go all out and make sure that nothing is held back.
Evan Brand: Right. So when you’ve got these other companies and people out there promoting stuff, they’re not working with people one-on-one. So it comes directly back on Justin or directly back on me if we give him our product and it doesn’t work. That’s not very sustainable for us. So that’s why it’s much, much better enough for us. That’s why we have access for people that don’t work with us. We allow other people outside to access our uh—products because they’ve been tried and true and tested. And if they didn’t work with people, we wouldn’t carry them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And if it doesn’t work, too, then it allows us to say, “Okay, there’s not some crappy filler or there’s some sub—sub nutrient in there. Let’s look a little bit deeper.” So it gives us the confidence that we just need to look deeper now. So it’s gonna be on both sides.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And just a firsthand experience with NOW foods and the secondhand, I guess, through clients. I’ve had people taking like their super enzymes, for example, and I get their digestive health markers investigated on the urine and stool test, and it looks terrible. Their digestion is not working at all even with the high dose of their enzymes. So does that mean the quality is bad? Does that mean they’re not dosing it properly? Maybe they’re not consistent as much. I don’t know. Probably a combination of factors, but I always switch over people over to my professional enzymes and then I retest and then all of a sudden, it’s fixed. Is it compliance? Is it quality? Probably both.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And you know everyone has got their bias and we kinda state our bias there. You know, we’re trying to be uhm— super transparent. Uhm—but yeah, I think there 95% of companies that are out there are bad. But I think that would be in that—I would say they’re in that 5% at least are better, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s it for questions. Anything else you want to hit before we wrap it up. I think we did pretty good today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think James uh—who is it—someone came out there—was it James—Yeah. James asked about Tom Brady. Again, love Tom Brady. Huge Patriots fan. Again Tom Brady does lots of things I would say go back and check out the podcast I did on him a year and a half ago for more specifics but he does use the green stuff. He does kinda promote like a Paleo-Alkaline diet. A lot of people have really uh—let’s just say Tom Brady like have a vegan cook. So because he had a vegan cook, Tom Brady was now on a vegan diet. No. He eats 20% meat. That’s far from vegan, okay? So just kinda keep that in the back of your mind. A lot of misnomers about Tom and he has a lot of a different training uh—modalities, too, that I’m hoping— I would love to get Tom Brady’s coach or strength coach on there.
Evan Brand: Or just get Tom Brady and the coach in a three-way podcast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I would love that, man. I would love to hang out with Tom and get some secrets down. That’d be awesome. I think he may need to wait til he retires to truly unveil some of the stuff. But we’ll see.
Evan Brand: That’s true. That’s true. Well, reach out. I’m sure there’s a media/press person and tell him, “Look, we’ve got insanely popular health podcast. Uh— we’d like to interview Tom and his coach.” But yeah, they’d probably be like, “No way, dude. We’re not giving you the secret sauce, hold on.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. I know. Exactly, so— I know Alex Guerrero is— is his—uh coach that does a lot of the stuff. So I mean— really, really interested to get Alex on a uh— podcast. That’d be freaking awesome.
Evan Brand: Never hurts to ask.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, absolutely, man.
Evan Brand: Well, let’s wrap this thing up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We had a great call today. I’m late for my next patient here, but uhm—keep dropping knowledge bombs all day, man. Really enjoyed this call with you. Anything else you want to add or say?
Evan Brand: Well I think we mentioned it all. If people wanna work with us, we work with people around the world. So Skype and phone consultations is what we do and all the lab testing except for blood you do at your house. So if you want to get help, get to the root cause, reach out justinhealth.com or Google Dr. Justin Marchegiani or myself evanbrand.com or type in Evan Brand. Find us. Subscribe. And if you have more questions, concerns, get a hold of us. That’s what we’re here for. We love helping people. That’s what makes us thrive so we won’t help you thrive, too. So, have a great day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And leave some comments below. If you like this podcast, tell us. Tell us what you like. If you don’t like stuff, tell us what you don’t like. And tell us what you want us to talk about next time and give us a thumbs up. Give us a share. We really appreciate it, guys. And you all have an awesome day, Take care you all.
Evan Brand: Take care.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/magnesium-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/emulsi-d-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/gi-restore/
Lowering Histamine Naturally – Getting to the root cause of high histamine – Podcast #154
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand engage in a discussion about histamine. Listen as they talk about finding the root cause and driving factor of the issues related to histamine. Learn all about the symptoms associated with histamine issues and find out how problems with the adrenals, hormones, gut, diet and lifestyle contribute to these issues.
Know how some of the medications like anti-depressants, immune modulators and beta-blockers are related to nutrient deficiency. Gain information regarding higher histamine foods and natural supplements. Apply some of the natural solutions and recommendations regarding diet and lifestyle that would address histamine issues.
In this episode, we cover:
04:12 DAO& HNMT: role in our bodies
08:13 Medications and nutrient deficiencies
10:38 Higher Histamine Foods
18:39 Natural Supplements to lower histamine
21:57 Toxic mold
28:42 Diet and Healthy enzymes
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live on YouTube. Evan, to it’s Dr. J here. How are we doing today, man?
Evan Brand: Hey, man, Happy Wednesday! You and I have been pulling out the research books today. We’re like, “Hey, let’s make sure we know everything as— as much as possible about histamine.” A few have been asking you, asking myself, you’ve done interviews with histamine experts and what was it, the histamine chef is that who you chatted with?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yup. Yasmina Ykelenstam. She’s the histamine chef and we did a podcast last year on this topic. And uhm lot of good stuff, we’re kinda rehash some of the key take homes, we’ll talk about getting to the root cause and we’ll also talk about ways that we can supplement and just support histamine issues in general, more specifically.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So what you and I were talking about affairs. We— we don’t really market ourselves necessarily, it’s like, “Hey, histamine practitioner” There’s a lot of people the kind of attached the word “histamine” to their name or to their marketing efforts, but, you and I, as we start to dig deeper and find root causes of the histamine intolerance which we’ll talk about exactly what this means, we’re fixing histamine intolerance just as a side effect of doing all the other good work we’re doing to support the adrenals and support the immune system and ensuring that people are free of infections and fixing neurotransmitters like all the stuff, Oopp, it just happens to fix histamine intolerance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Like in the functional medicine world, you know, there is ways that you can market to so you can kinda row people in specifically coz you talk to their issues, but again, if you really are a good functional medicine practitioner, clinician, you’re hitting all of the body system. So in general, you’re not gonna really miss anything but there are ways that we can dive in deeper to issues such as histamine. And we’re gonna try to do that today. We’ll kinda zone out a bit. So we have like the big picture perspective, so people don’t forget what the root causal things that can’t be ignored are, and then we’ll also talk about you know, palliative things we can do on top of just the—the functional medicine principal stuff to get even better results.
Evan Brand: Sure. So should we start with some symptoms? What exactly people are noticing when they’re coming to us and they’re saying, “Hey, I think I have a histamine issue and I believe it could be coming from my diet.” We’ve got symptoms like headaches, could be anxiety, it could be your face flushing, it could be an itchy tongue or runny nose. What— what else am I missing symptom wise?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Headaches. All those different things. It could be flushing, it could be even hives or the eukaryotes, those wheels that come up on the skin uhm— those can be all, you know, things that are happening. And again, what’s histamine doing? Histamine is a neurotransmitter. And there are various receptor sites for histamine in the body. There’s you know, H1 or histamine 1. Histamine 2, 3 and 4. And again, these things can control for instance, smooth muscle and endothelial tissue that affects blood vessels. This is what like Benadryl and like Claritin would—would utilize. So if you have like an allergic reaction and like your skin get super blown up, right? That’s why you do like Benadryl, right? Or histamine two controls acid secretion and abdominal pain. So histamine can also increase acid as well. It can also increase the heart rate. Histamine three has an effect on controlling the nerves, sleep behavior, appetite. Histamine four has an effect on the intestines, the spleen the colon, white blood cells and the inflammatory response. So it’s kind like this, right? You take your hammer; you whack your thumb, and all of these different reactions that happen, right? So you can look at all of the clotting factors and the cytokines and all of the inflammation and the white blood cell mobilization. And if you just kinda zone back, zone back, zone back, what caused it all? The hammer. So we’ll kinda zoom in, alright, what’s happening and the nitty-gritty, but then we’ll kinda zoom out and say, “Okay, what’s the hammer in this analogy?” Coz if we can focus on the hammer, it’s way easy to wrap your head around, “Don’t whack your hand—don’t whack your thumb with a hammer than it is to look at all of the nitty-gritty. But we’ll kinda do both. So people that are looking to nerd out a little bit, kinda get satisfied and the people that just want the action items get satisfied, too.
Evan Brand: Sure. So let me just pronounce what we’re actually talking about. Diamine Oxidase also known as DAO, so basically, this is an enzyme that we’re making on our own in our body which is basically just like when we’re talking about proteases and lipases and lactases and just different digestive enzymes. DAO is an enzyme that’s basically going to find, it’s gonna seek out like the CIA, it’s gonna find the bad guy which is gonna be excess histamine in your foods and it’s can help break those down it could be foods or beverages so we’ll talk about the alcohol component in DAO when it works properly, it can break down up to 99% of the histamine. And then there’s 1% of histamine that actually enter circulation but we’ll talk about some of the root causes here. There could be going on with the gut. When you’re deficient in DAO, which is why you can supplement, which Justin told me off air, “Man, this stuff is sold out everywhere.” But when you’re supplementing with it or you’re fixing the root causes, and your getting your DAO in time to be back in adequate amounts, you’re able to break down the histamine and you no longer have histamine intolerance, which is why people can take DAO supplements and they can feel better but you’ve always got to work back to the root cause of other issues why is it not working in the first place.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It’s also this DAO which is Diamine Oxidase and there is also another one called HNMT Histamine N-Methyl Transferase and these both have an effect of breaking down histamine. So if we take off our functional medicine root cause hat and we put on our palliative natural medicine hat, we wanted to just control symptoms, well, we can give enzymes like DAO which has been backordered for years. They are typically extracted from kidney or thymus tissue and big back order for a while, but we can give those to help lower histamine, alright? Coz that enzyme helps break histamine down so, you know, it’s like someone that has a lactose intolerance issue, they may take Lactaid which is milk enrich with lactase, the enzyme, right, to break down the milk, the milk sugar and they have less diarrhea. So kinda into that perspective where we’re adding in the enzyme to be able to break things down uh— which can be helpful from a palliative perspective. Uh— number two, we can avoid— we can make sure we have all the nutrients required to make a lot of these enzymes. So like the HNMT enzyme, we need SAMI, right? We need SAMI, S- Adenosyl Methionine which is really important for MTHFR. Uhm the Diene Oxidase we also need B6, we need copper, some of these other enzymes to for histamine processing, right? We need B2; we need iron; we need B5, right? And a lot of these nutrients we’re also gonna deplete with adrenal dysfunction, too. So you can see how adrenal issues and low histamine can be affected. Anytime you see B vitamins we know how important healthy gut bacteria is for producing B vitamins. So you can see, if we have a dysbiosis or SIBO, we have food allergens driving inflammation, driving leaky gut and/or gastrointestinal permeability, that can all affect our ability to make enzymes to lower and process histamine.
Evan Brand: Well said. So any gut infection, I mean, Justin and I that’s one of the things that we work on so much because it’s so common you probably heard our stories but, you know, I had H. pylori, I had parasites, I had bacterial overgrowth, I had yeast and all that’s driving leaky gut. So if you got something like H. pylori, for example, which we see every single week on lab results when we’re looking at people, the H. pylori is going to suppress the stomach acid and so if you’ve got undigested food, even that alone, could be causing leaky gut, therefore causing low DAO, therefore causing you to have “cortical histamine intolerance”. So if you work with a practitioner on histamine, we’ll talk about the diet piece in a second, but you’ve got to get the gut in healthy spot. You’ve got to fix the—the diet. Make sure that the gluten is out of the diet, or anything that could be causing a leak ego situation; otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. And then, surprisingly enough, which maybe you know more about this than I do, but it’s interesting that a lot of these medi—medications, I don’t know the mechanism but like antidepressants like Cymbalta, Prozac, Zoloft, you’ve got the immune modulators like Humira and Enbrel. You’ve got the Metaprololol, the beta-blockers; you’ve got Zyrtec and Benadryl. All of these things are causing the DAO enzyme to become deficient. I mean I guess the mechanism isn’t too important but it is interesting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I think some of the mechanism pretty straightforward. Uhm— a lot of this is via nutrient deficiencies. A lot of these medications create nutrient deficiencies and a lot of these nutrition these nutrient deficiencies and a lot of these nutrition deficiencies revolve primarily around B vitamins and minerals. So it makes sense. If we create deficiency with B vitamins and minerals, of course, that’s gonna create more issues. I mean it’s like blood pressure. If you look at the acid block—the beta-blockers or the uhm—water pills like hydrochlorothiazide or the Lasix.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They are either diuretics but they create deficiencies with potassium and magnesium, which are really important for blood pressure. So you can see a lot of these drugs actually can make the problem worse. It’s an amazing business model if you’re only looking at you know the money factor, but if you’re looking at fixing the root cause, like we are, it’s definitely not good. You wanna really back up.
Evan Brand: Agree. Well said. You wanna talk about diet?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just to kinda—just to kinda back out just a little bit. Uhm—we talk about the nutrient deficiencies, right? We talked about medications and antibiotics, antacids, antihistamines, right? Uhm—We talked about uhm—well, I’m gonna add it, nutrient stressors. So if we have more stress, more adrenal stress, more fatigue, poor sleep, inflammatory diet, that’s gonna drive more in a higher increase in histamine. If we have hormonal imbalances whether we’re estrogen dominant or that we have adrenal dysfunction, right? Imbalance in our stress hormones, cortisol, rhythm issues, a lot of that’s gonna be driven by a lot of these lifestyle stressors. That’s gonna really create more histamine issues. Now, I always backup. How do we know someone has a histamine issue? Well, do they have any of those histamine symptoms we mentioned in the beginning? Coz we know histamine does a few things. It helps increase heartbeat; it helps with gastric acid secretion; it opens the blood vessels, hence why when, you get allergies or allergic reaction, you swell. It helps increase bronchial dilation; it helps with gut permeability; it increases adrenaline. But if people get headaches or flushed or rashes or headaches with higher histamine foods, we definitely take notice. And those higher histamine foods, the big one, is going to be fermented foods. Do you get worse with fermented foods? Do things like teas create, you know, problems? If you have bone broth, does that create problems? Does citrus fruits create problems? Do meats over, you know, they’re too old, create problems? Uhm—does chocolate and coffee create problems? So if we start seeing issues with some of those symptoms, I really look a little bit closer to see what could be the driving factor.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ll list down a couple of more, too. Kombucha—that’s gonna be popular for our crowd, our community.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: Yogurts, even if it’s like a grass-fed yogurt, your sauerkraut, if you’re having flare-ups, I’ve had some women that said have flare-ups on their skin after doing sauerkraut, that’s a sign right there and then alcohol, too. So wine, beers, champagnes even if it’s organic wine, it’s not gonna matter. Cured meats— so salami, could be pepperoni, the beloved bacon—bacon an issue, unfortunately for the time being. You mention the citrus fruit, aged cheese and then nuts— walnuts, cashews, peanuts, avocados. I believe— I don’t know if it was histamine, but I had something going on where I had to pull out avocados for like six weeks. I was having headaches from them. It was no other foods. It wasn’t any other nuts and seeds but I believe I had—I’m gonna guess a histamine issue because why else would avocados give me a headache?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, exactly. Yeah, totally. So—
Evan Brand: I was doing like everyday they’re so good and so easy to add to a meal, so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And then we also have things like mast cell activation disorder, right? Histamines produced by mast cells, so you got these like basophils, which are like in our white blood cells, right? They’re like one of the smallest amount of white blood cells are basophils. And these basophils go into our blood straight to our tissue. They become uhm—mast cells. And these mast cells will produce histamine, alright? So then you have this thing like called mast cell activation disorder. So like the more inflamed you become, right, the more your body tends to dysfunction. And—and you get more names for that kind of inflammation whether it’s IVD or IBS or mast cell activation disorder or some type of you know, allergic issue or some type of autoimmune issue. You can just go through all the different names. The more inflamed someone gets, the more symptoms. And basically diseases are nothing more than grouping a constellation of symptoms together. That’s why it’s funny when people tell me, “I just need a diagnosis.” Well, a diagnosis is nothing more than someone in the medical field taking a set of symptoms that have been, you know, trace for you know, many, many years into a disease name and someone studied and published. But it doesn’t do anything, it just basically groups these symptoms together and maybe there’s a drug for it, which is typically how a disease, you know, gets name because of the drug or treatment for the most part. But in the end, does it really help you fix the issue? A lot of times, “No”. But it gives people relief to know that it’s something, but again, if you’re depressed and you’re stuck on antidepressant your whole life, well, do you really feel good about that if you’re not fixing the issue? Maybe not.
Evan Brand: Right and I had a—I had a diagnosis of IBS, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: We have no idea what’s going on but here’s some acid blockers I was never talked to about the root cause ever. So, for me, if you’re seeking a diagnosis, I would just let that attachment go because you really don’t need a term for the symptoms. We just need to figure out what’s going on. So, you mention the diet piece, we hit the gut piece, we hit the—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Adrenal and hormone deficiency, too, I think.
Evan Brand: Say that again.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We hit the adrenal and hormone piece, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Adrenals. That’s very important. So, how should we go about this? I mean, we’ve— we put all the pieces on the table, now how should we arrange this kinda step 1-2-3-4-5? Diet first?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, off the bat, I would say, look at like kind of like your histamine bucket or your stress bucket. Everything goes in that bucket. Some people—it just sucks, they are brought into this world with the poor genetic constitution and their bucket’s smaller. What that means is they just can’t tolerate as much stuff. That means, hey, if they got a little bit of gluten and a little bit of stress, their bucket is full. Some people can have a lot more things. They could have some medications in there, some stress and sleep, some poor food, some nutrient deficiency, and then maybe their symptoms start to increase. Now, again, over time, we naturally have a smaller bucket overtime because our hormones become less restorative the older we get. So we just want to make sure that we know that theirs is bucket mindset and the more we take stressors out of the bucket, we can make a small bucket uhm— we can add more space to it. So someone that’s got a big bucket but is three quarters full, well, if we have a smaller bucket that’s a hundred percent empty, we may create more resiliency for us, even though our bucket, genetically, is smaller. So we have control. We’re not victims. We just got to be honest with ourselves. If we got a small bucket, we just gotta be on point more frequently. So, we do that by working on blood sugar stability, we do that with the baseline Paleo template, that you can work on customizing with your functional medicine doc regarding what that looks like macro wise and whether or not uhm—you have to add an extra digestive support to be able to breakdown the proteins and fats that’s important. Now we can look at the hormones, if there are significant hormone or adrenal issues, we gotta work on it because that helps improve our ability to regulate blood sugar inflammation and stress. And then, we also got to look at our hormones, too. We have significant hormonal imbalances, we have to work on supporting that so we can develop our healthier cycle or healthier anabolic hormones. We could put on muscle and recover. And then, of course, this goes without saying, gut issues. Coz if we have dysbiosis, leaky gut, we have chronic infections like H. pylori or Blasto or Crypto or Entamoeba histolytica or Giardia. Any of these parasites are gonna create leaky gut. They’re gonna create more nutrient deficiencies. And a lot of these nutrient deficiencies are needed to make healthy DAO or HNMT enzymes to break down histamine. And these enzymes, all these nutrients also help make healthy uh— nutrients for a detoxification system as well.
Evan Brand: Well said. So you got to get tested. That’s our philosophy—Test, don’t guess. I mean, you could probably fix maybe 50% of the issue just by working with a good nutritionist, their practitioners are gonna help you dial in the diet, right? Just getting that piece started even if you’re closer to an AIP approach, you are already gonna be eliminating a lot of the problematic foods including alcohol. So if you’re working with a nutritionist, you make it 50% there, but to get fully better, adrenals— test them, we’re gonna run the stool panel, we’re gonna look for infections that way. We’re gonna look for a lot of problems on the organic acids, too. Fungus, yeast Clostridium bacteria, uh— detox problems. I mean, all of that is a factor, so there’s never gonna be just one silver bullet. If somebody tries to sell you my online histamine course and there’s like one silver bullet they’re promoting, I would be skeptical because like any topic we discussed, there’s 20-30 maybe 50 factors that all need to be factored into that pie chart which is the pie chart being your problem. How is that problem broken down? Maybe it’s 50% adrenals for one person, but it could be 5% adrenals for another person. If they’ve got a super positive attitude about it, that could change things, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So we fix the nervous system stimulation, the stress— that’s the diet and lifestyle, that’s also the adrenals. We fix the gut bacterial imbalance, which could be infections, it could be just low beneficial bacteria. We cut out the high histamine foods. We cut out the histamine blocking, the DAO blocking foods: coffee tea etc. And we try to add lower histamine, paleo foods, in the meantime, which typically are gonna be uhm— low sugar fruits, the citrus-free, typically vegetables are gonna be okay, uh—typically fresh meats are gonna be okay. Healthy fats, maybe minus avocado, are gonna be okay. Uh— avoid the—you know, the aged meats and fermented foods for a period of time. But as we get the gut healed and we fix these issues, we should be able to get better and better and better. And then there also additional supplements we can add in as well. They can make a difference. So in my line, we use one called, Aller Clear, that I formulated that has things like, stinging nettles, it’s got promalin, potassium bicarb uh—these are things that have been used for a long time to help lower histamine naturally. Uhm— big big fan of that. Uhm—let’s see. What else can we do on top of that? I got my list here. Quercetin, like I mentioned, vitamin C, these are in Aller Clear as well to help lower histamine levels naturally. Well I also did a research on that. Grapefruit, seed extract and pycnogenol, which are in these kinda category of league Proantothocyanidin which are these kinda antioxidant bioflavonoid and some of these really good uhm—fruits that can be helpful. We have green tea. Again, it can be a natural antihistamine but can also be a DAO blocker so you got take that with a grain of salt. Uh—magnesium can also be very helpful, stinging nettle can helpful, omega-3 fatty acids uh—can be helpful, uh— some essential oils— peppermint, lavender, lemon can also be helpful. Again, but be careful because some of them are citrus there. You just got to test it out. And of course, a lot of the herbs to help knock down dysbiosis can help in the long run so like the berberines and the goldenseal can also be very helpful as well. So a lot of different alternatives there. Any other comments or concerns, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m guessing some of the medicinal mushrooms can help, too. I’m not too familiar on the exact mechanism, but I’m assuming things like reishi, cordyceps mushrooms. I’m guessing those may help too depending on how they were grown, of course, uh—would probably make a difference modulating the immune system can be helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Is there any other questions or comments you wanna add before we start hitting up some of our listeners questions. I don’t think so. Let’s hit the questions. I’m gonna pull them up, so I can see here, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. And if you guys uhm—putting comments in the live chat if you can kinda keep the questions kinda pertinent to the topic, it always helps and again, right now, for answering your question and you like it, give us a thumbs up right now, give us a share, give us a like. We appreciate it. We get really pumped and motivated coz of that.
Evan Brand: Should you—should you interview—uh, not interview—Should you introduce us, I mean I don’t know, maybe we’ve got new people that don’t even know who are these two guys talking about histamine all of a sudden. Should we briefly do that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely.
Evan Brand: Alright. Tell us who you are.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I’m Dr. Justin Marchegiani, a functional medicine specialist, a functional medicine Doc and yeah, I see patients all over the world and we work on chronic health issues, from hormone to gut, to detox autoimmune issues and you know, we’re trying to always get to the root cause so that’s me.
Evan Brand: Absolutely. I’m Evan Brand, functional medicine practitioner and Justin and I been doing this— doing this hustle on the podcast for— for several years. We’ve got hundreds of episodes together and I also work virtually with people via Skype and phone. And we do the live thing because we get comments like this, so let’ dive in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we’re the real deal. We don’t get a script here. We’re, we’re on-the-fly taking our clinical knowledge and plugging it into you guys, so you guys, the listeners can get healthier which—which is our purpose here.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So off the bat, couple things, uhm— I just saw here, Dale made a comment here about toxic mold. So yeah, I’ll connect Dale’s comment to toxic mold. But yeah, mold can definitely be a stressor that can fill up that histamine bucket.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So of course, things that we use to help with mold is number one: good quality or filtration. If the house is really bad with mold, we got to get that remediated maybe even move depending on how bad it is. I never have someone move unless they can—they leave the house for a week or two and they’re like, “Oh my God, all of my issues got so much better!” And again, we gotta be careful because if you’re leaving for a week or two, it may be a vacation where you’re not –
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We gotta kinda like control those variables. Maybe you get a hotel room or you go somewhere else and you work outside of the house for a week. But if you notice significant improvement, there could be a mold issue. So air filtration can be good uh—do that little one to two-week test that I mentioned and binders such as modified citrus pectin, zeolite activated charcoal, liposomal glutathione these are all great things to use. A lot of the nutrients to help improve phase I and phase II detoxification. So, in my line, we use Liver Supreme or antioxidant uhm— Antioxidant Supreme or we’ll do Detox Aminos. which have a lot of those phase I and phase 2 nutrients. That’s very helpful there.
Evan Brand: Good. I just wanna double comment on that with the recent hurricanes that have hit people in Florida, Georgia, Texas, all the other states affected this mold issue is probably gonna be a lot bigger. A lot of people will probably try to remediate their old mold. Uh—one of my wife’s friend down in Texas posted a picture of her car, they got flooded in Houston. Her entire car, I believe it was leather, may be a fake leather, her entire car was covered in mold that look like a lab experiment, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my gosh! Sounds terrible.
Evan Brand: So if there’s mold there, please please please don’t try to mitigate that stuff unless you’ve got like proper mask and all that coz you can make yourself sick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Couple of questions here. “What are the best herbs for parasites?” Again, I would go look at some of our parasite podcast, we dive into it. Again, in my line, we have GI Clear 1-6 that we use for herbs uhm—to help knock down these infections. Evan has some similar ones in his line as well. So you can check out either Evan site, evanbrand.com or mine at justinhealth.com for more information on that by clicking on the store button.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ll hit the second part of the question there. “Are herbs usually enough to beat up parasites?” The answer is, “Yes” We do not prescribe drugs herbs is what we use for bugs and yes bacteria fungus, yeast, parasites. With the right protocol, the right approach, all the other factors, yes, you can successfully get rid of it. I’m a success story. Justin is a success story.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And you know, thousands of people in our belts that we’ve been able to successfully eradicate parasites with herbs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just to highlight one thing, I think you put in there, but just to make sure any new listeners don’t assume it, we’re also factoring in diet and lifestyle changes into that because that is a massive effect on changing and making the immune system more resilient which has a huge effect on decreasing the chance of reinfection, too.
Evan Brand: Yup, well said, well said. Yeah, you can just take one magic pills, you got to do the hard work, too, which is putting a fork to your plate with good food on it, is organic as much as possible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. 100%. And then, again, some people here talking about H. pylori and SIBO and eradicating H. pylori, uh—they still have stomach issues. So I’ll connect this persons question to the issue. But if you have SIBO and H. Pylori, does that go into your histamine bucket? Yes. So these type of critters and infections can increase that histamine bucket which can create more histamine reactions like Evan and I talked earlier and the breathing issues and the burping constantly, yep. Those are all symptoms of that and that can drive histamine problem. So we got to get to the cause of those infections and again, I refer you back to our H. pylori or SIBO podcast where we spent a full hour talking about that one topic.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Get that test to get that treated. Rosalin, she has itchy skin, scalp. “Is that a symptom of too much histamine in the body always itchy?” What would you say? Sounds like probably.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It could be a histamine issue, it could also be just a fungal issue, too. Seborrheic dermatitis is what affects scalp like that or a.k.a. dandruff and that can be fungal in nature. So I would just look at just the whole gut biome imbalance and/or histamine as a byproduct of that, right? Remember I gave you the a hammer and the thumb analogy, right? The— the histamine is just the collateral damage caused by the— the hammer, right? That’s kinda the whole idea. But, yes, it could definitely be— be part of it but more than likely, not the whole thing.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Kelly had a question, “Thoughts on the Biome test worth the money?” So Biome is a pretty new company who’s running stool testing. I met the guy who created the test. I’ve had a few clients who’ve had that run and they sent it to me. And the readout is— is terrible. I hope they improve on it, but currently, I’ve had a few clients send me their readouts, it’s crap. There’s a bunch of information but there’s no real action.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not actionable, right?
Evan Brand: Yeah. It’s not actionable at all. It’s just too much data. So, Kelly, I do not use and Justin. Neither of us use the Biome test. We use more functional test that are available through practitioners. Which I like the idea Biome give people the power to get their own testing, but we still are gonna use other companies like the G.I. MAP on our clients.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. But the biggest issue is like you get companies that are trying to give you like more information, they’re trying to like dazzle you with all this information, but then you sit back and you’re like, “What the hell can I actually do with it?”
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What lifestyle change? What diet change? What supplement? What can I eradicate? What can I support or balance based on this information that will help the patient get better? That’s always the question. And the second question is, well does this test allow me to leverage my patient to make an action to allow them to get healthier? And if I don’t get one or two—if I don’t get an answer for one, primarily maybe two, then it just—it becomes not worth it. Kind of you know, glittery, you know, it’s very like, it’s kinda like glittery and flashy and like, “Ooh, look at this!” but it doesn’t really do much to me.
Evan: Yup. Should we get James’ question.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So James put friends nine-year-old sons on a new drug, which I looked it up here, Spinraza for spinal muscular atrophy. And it’s a brand-new drug looks like December 2016, it was the first drug approved for this disorder. Now he’s having swollen lips and hives. Any suggestions will DAO help enzymes? That’s a hard one. Coz who knows if that’s a side effect of the drug or is that some type histamine issue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Number one, the kids—Again I don’t know enough about this patient. So this is, take it with a grain of salt, this is a medical—medical uh—you know, uhm—advice. This is just me kinda talking here. So off the bat, kids notoriously have the worst, freaking diets in the world, okay? Especially if they go to school and they’re eating the school lunch and they trade in with their kids. They eat like crap. So number one, clean up the diet. And again, it’s hard because if you’re a parent who’s not eating healthy then it’s your house is full of crap. So first thing is the parent, get all the crap out of your house, create a really good environment, have really healthy snacks, get all of the crap out. So get on the Paleo template to start. Do that for at least a few weeks to a month. That may fix so many of the issues, but in the meantime, yeah, can you had add in enzymes like DAO can maybe hard to get them, but can you add in regular digestive enzymes and HCl, yes. Can you add in things like stinging nettle and bromolein and an acetylcysteine and all of the nutrients that I mentioned, yes, you can. So I would definitely add in all those histamine nutrients. Uhm— I would try maybe be going lower histamine, kind of a Paleo template and really get the diet a hundred percent and make sure they’re able to digest their food. HCl enzymes, all of those really good things and that’s a great starting point and then from there, if that still not helping, our only getting part of the way there, you want to really get a functional medicine doc to look deeper at what’s happening with the gut and things.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. That was what—my next thing I was gonna say I’ve seen uh— little girls as young as three and little boys four, five years old with massive gut infections, parasites, and H. pylori and the rest of it. So it’s very possible that that’s going on in the gut depending on the history and use of antibiotics in the kid and things like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Patient here— my w— My mom has been diagnosed with lichen sclerosis, that’s an autoimmune condition that affects the skin. I’ve seen a handful of patients after that cream after cream the probably referring to hydrocortisone, a corticosteroid cream. It gets worse, any tips regarding the root cause of this? Yes. Autoimmune. Get the autoimmune stuff dialed in. I’ll use some stem cell types of creams like J Bio Serum, it’s one of the nice sell that I sell it works great. It’s got some stem cells in it, but you gotta make the diet and lifestyle change. Autoimmune template to start with and then dig in with all the functional medicine principles, next. One of the symptoms of histamine tolerance all the things that we mentioned earlier, from swelling to flushing to headaches to rashes. Anything you wanna add there, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah. Fast pulse or a rapid heartbeat. I’ve had women say they eat the food and then their heart starts racing. So could be mood issues, could be physical changes as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And the best way to test for histamine issues, in my opinion, is I just look at people symptoms and I connect them to higher histamine foods and we just pull those foods down a little bit and if their symptoms get better, then we know. I think for me the telltale sign for histamine issues, fermented foods and citrus fruits.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Those are the big telltale for me. Coz they’re relatively healthy foods. No one’s gonna say like, “Oh, eating a grapefruit is bad.” You know having some low sugar Kombucha or you know some sauerkraut is bad. It’s relatively good but if you’re –if we’re doing that history and we see symptoms of those food, then we’re like, “Ooh, there probably is a histamine issue.”
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. See, what else we got here. I’ll read a couple off here for you. “Does everyone have some degree of histamine tolerance, don’t think I have histamine problems but not sure.” Well, if you say everyone— the average person is very unhealthy. Autoimmune diseases ramp it, the standard American diet which is the same in Australia, the same in Europe, the same and most developed countries are following kind of a standard American diet— processed grains, sugars, conventional pasteurized dairy, meats that are not organic, they contain hormones and antibiotics. So, yes, most of people are taking Ibuprofen and over-the-counter drugs, they’re taking steroids and doing in antibiotics. They’re getting them in the diet. They’re doing acid blocking drugs, they’re not sleeping well, they’re addicted to their smart phones. So, yes, so many people have things in their bucket. Then, yes, I would say everyone has a degree. Now, kind of our tribe that Justin and I are building of you know, healthy people that are doing as many right things as possible, they’re probably gonna have a less risk of—of histamine intolerance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Hundred percent. Makes sense. And how about the bone broth stuff? I mean, I see, you know, I see uhm— lots of people with issue with bone broth and it kinda falls in and around the fermented food issue, right? If you’re having issues fermented foods or things that are slowly cooked, like bone broth, that can increase histamine and that can create a problems. So, again, we may hold off on the bone broth or cook it in a way where it’s cooked shorter. What kind of preparations for bone broth do you do to help lessen it? I know there are some out there.
Evan Brand: Well, I’m spoiled. I haven’t been making it because I’ve been using Kettle & Fire Bone broth that they sent me, so I literally does have to throw it in a in a pot and heat it up. I’ve been fine. I know they slow simmer or slow cook theirs for like 48 something hours like it’s an extremely long simmer time. So I don’t know how that would affect somebody that they were sensitive. But for me, I feel quite well with that. I don’t have any symptoms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I don’t know. I haven’t had to modified it at all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So a couple, you can skim off the scum of the top of the bone broth. You can skim that out. Uh—it may be helpful, you can also do just the shorter brew maybe an 8-12 hour one. Uhm—that can be good. You can also just try buying some maybe your higher-quality or they may have a way of you know, producing it that produces low histamine like the Kettle & Fire. So that could be some good options. But again, if you have a food that we consider to be healthy like bone broth or Kombucha or fermented foods and you can’t respond to it, you can always put that food aside. That’s kind of like that’s like you’re free-histamine test, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you can work on the gut. You can work on a lot of these hormone and diet things. And then you can add that thing as your free test add back in the future and that’s a good objective marker to see how you’re doing with your gut. And if it’s starting to heal, you may be able to handle more of that yet.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I believe my link should still be active Kettle & Fire sponsored my show for a while. They’re not anymore but they should still be giving people 20% discount so you can try it. If you do, evanbrand.com/chicken you should be able to get 20% off— so try it out. I think they pay me like a buck if you buy some, but that’s good bone broth and definitely—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll support the cause. I know the products—only products that we ever mentioned on our shows are things you believe in. So again, you guys gotta know that we’re coming from a place of authenticity. So if you want to support us and we reference something, just know that it’s got to go to the filter of actually being a high-quality product and we actually have to use it on ourselves and our friends and family for us to recommend it.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We appreciate that support.
Evan Brand: Another question here. “What herbs do you suggest for fungal issues?” Once again, I’m gonna say it depends. And I know Justin would say the same thing because we’re gonna make our protocols based on what you’re up against. So if it’s bacteria plus fungus plus yeast plus parasite, that’s gonna be far far more heavy hitting protocol. If it’s just fungus by itself, which is not too common, because most people have a lot of issues together, you may be able to get away with some garlic or some oregano or like Justin mentioned earlier, Berberi or the barberry or the—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. Berberines.
Evan Brand: Berberines. That whole can be great and we’ve got several formulas if you just stalk our stores a bit look on justinhealth and look into his categories and you can check out mine, too. We’ve got many, many different combinations of herbs. Could you go and technically just buy a couple herbs and just you know, shoot a shotgun approach and maybe get success, yes. But I would of course, advise you to get tested because if you have fungal issues, you probably have other issues, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And here’s one like clinical pearl that I’ve kinda find over the years. I’ll throw it out there for everyone listening. How I know fungal issues are more of an issue for— for some people than others, is number one, we’ll see the fungus on a stool test, which will be helpful. We can see either multiple kinds of yeast or fungus where it’s Geotrichum, Microsporidia, Candida, etc. We’ll see different kinds of species. But also on a organic acid test, we’ll see the uhm— D-arabinose, which is a metabolite of Candida but that also kinda means it’s gone systemic. It’s gone more more systemic coming up the urine. So if we see something like the D-arabinose is more of a systemic marker in the urine and we see in the gut, then we know that fungal issue is—is a lot deeper. Now a lot of fungal issues tend to be driven by other issues like H. pylori, other parasites are bigger but some people just gonna have a rip-roaring fungal infection. We’ll see it systemically via the organics as well as on the gut, too.
Evan Brand: Let me ask you this. I mean let’s say you see somebody with a really, really gross fungus fingernail like it look like their fingernails about to falloff because it’s so infected. Would you assume that person has got a massive amount of fungus in the gut and it’s manifesting on the nail on the—on the fingernail?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: To a certain degree, I would say that’s a good, you know, you can’t hurt yourself faulting that, coming to that conclusion. But again, if you knock out some gut stuff, it can be hard for those herbs and for your immune system to get all the weight at that peripheral tip of that nail to knock out the infection. So sometimes we got topically hit things coz they just got to travel a long way so we’ll either topically hit our herbs there or we’ll uhm—have to do some kind of a soak to hit it as well. Even if we were to address the gut, it may not be enough to make its way down there.
Evan Brand: Coz I’ve seen that. I remember it was a cashier or somewhere, I saw a guy with his finger like his index finger, the nail was literally about the come off and it was completely—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There are different degrees, right? There’s like, “Oh, I had a slight fungal nail and I knocked it out with some oregano and a soak and just a few—in a few weeks.” There’s somewhere it’s like nail is incredibly like sclerotic and—
Evan Brand: It was extreme, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Almost falling off and then like totally dis_ that’s like the highest degree. I mean it’s just like, “Oh, it’s a little bit rough and then it’s got a slight yellowish hue.”
Evan Brand: No. I’m talking when it was like—it look like if you flicked it, it would fly off.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s one of the extreme. And then the other extreme is maybe– is a light, it’s kinda like a little bit sclerotic like it’s rough.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if you were to file it, it would get smooth but it would grow out of the bottom again rough. That’s how you know it’s fungal. And typically it’s slightly yellowed. And again, it can go really dark and brown, like dark yellow brown the longer it’s there.
Evan Brand: So what is that? When is that extreme? I mean how in the world would that happen? What sets the stage for that since we talked about—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just chronicity. It’s just deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into that nail bed.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Wow! Last question here: “What does it mean if a rash shows up only on the legs and not other parts of the body?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have no idea. Uhm—again typically the body’s just gonna push stuff out. And again, if things are in the body systemically, where or why the body pushes it out there, beats me. Maybe that’s a stronger area for the body to push it out, hard to say. Again, as things get worse and worse, problems tend to be more systemic, so I wouldn’t worry about why it’s there. Uh the fact that it’s in a local spot is better. I would just want to make sure there’s nothing constant— contact dermatitis issue where things are in contact in that spot. And when nothing is contacting, I wouldn’t worry about it. We’re treating the body systemically as a whole. We’re really work on lymphatics and the detox so everything will get better.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. And I mean—in a rash in the leg, that could be so generic. I mean, that could be something from your skincare products. That could literally be allergy to parabens or something. My wife—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A contact dermatitis issue where something is actually touching it.
Evan Brand: Right. Yeah. My wife she had a reaction on her legs and it had nothing to do with diet or histamine or anything. It was just uh—uh she had a sample of the skincare product and it must had some ingredient in it that we didn’t know about and she had a rash on her leg. So don’t—maybe don’t freak out, don’t think too deeply. It could be something that simple.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And my baby just had some baby acne. My wife is freaking about it a little bit. But it’s just you know, he’s just metabolizing her hormones. So he’s getting over it pretty fast uh— which is good. But again, things happen and if it’s a contact issue like control all the vectors of what’s going on your skin. And then second is like, what’s in your body and just try to decrease inflammation.
Evan Brand: Yup. We got uh—you got time for one or two more?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sure. Let’s do it.
Evan Brand: Alright. James he said, he’s not allergic to nuts and seeds but every time he eats peanut butter, he always gets a fungal rash around his glute region.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Don’t touch peanut butter, man. I mean it’s known to be higher in aflatoxin, it’s a legume as well. So that could be some gut-irritating stuff in it. Stay away from that. Switch over to high-quality almond butter instead and let us know how that works.
Evan Brand: Yeah. There’s a brand I use—what is it? Cadia. C-A-D-I-A. It’s like the only organic almond butter I found that’s less than 20 bucks a jar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I actually created my own brand called Justin’s. You’ve seen that brand at Whole Foods?
Evan Brand: I did. Good job!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nah, I’m just kidding. It’s convenient to say it, but, no. Not my brand.
I won’t take credit for it. But I do like Justin’s. Uh—I will do that a little bit sometimes. And I do like just the whole food 365. I’ll get the organic. It’s also a cool one. Its’ really expensive! It’s called, NuttZo, in an upside down container so like the lid is on the bottom and it’s upside down kinda thing. That’s kinda cool. Really expensive, but it’s really a nice treat.
Evan Brand: Here’s another question. Uh—little bit off-subject. How is holy basil an adaptogen for stress?” Uh—we’ve done—I could go so long on this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: That I’ll have to shut myself up right now. You just have to check out our other episodes on adaptogens because I love them and Holy basil, __rhodiola, ashwagandha, all the ones you mentioned.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good.
Evan Brand: We do use all those. They’re great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. I think it’s good. It’s good to kinda rotate through some or use a combination to use them individually and have a rotation to it. I think that’s great. Evan Brand: Yeah. “Is water sounding in ears related to histamine?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The first thing I would look at are just food allergens in general. Uh– especially mucus-producing food, so like dairy and things coz anytime you get more mucus that could go in the ear and that can create issues. Just gluten and inflammatory foods to begin with. So, yeah. Definitely kinda hit that overall Paleo template, you’ll hit a lot of those things out.
Evan Brand: I think that’s it. We should probably wrap it up. We’re gonna turn into a pumpkin here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know.
Evan Brand: If there’s any last questions please ask us.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How much salt did you ingest for every liter of water you drink replenish lost—I mean, I would just do half a teaspoon to a teaspoon twice a day of high quality mineral base salt. So like my favorites, Real Salt, or you can do Celtic, or Himalayan, just really good minerals that you’re gonna put back into your body. I like that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I saw a new study about sea salt. I posted it up—I think I put it up on my twitter account where all the sea salt from US and Europe was contaminated with micro particles of plastic and so I’d support your idea of using the real salt which is gonna be an inland sea as opposed to the ocean sea salt that’s contaminated. Dr. J, do you think Tom Brady is on a low histamine diet?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, let’s breakdown Tom Brady’s diet. He’s eats 20% meat. There’s a lot of means out there. If Tom Brady goes vegan, no—you’re not vegan if 20% of what you eat is meat—not even close. But, as a qualifier there his meats are organic and grass-fed, so there’s really good quality meats. He avoids nightshades, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers. He eats lots of vegetables. He eats very little starch. He eats a little bit of fruit. So I would say relatively speaking, yeah. I mean, his kinda thing is, “Oh, I’m eating acid alkaline kinda thing”, right? That may be the result of—that may be what he thinks he’s doing, but my thing is he’s really just doing an anti-inflammatory diet.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m not worried about acid alkaline. If he is worrying about so being alkaline a hundred percent, he’d avoid the meat, right? But we know that meat has a lot of important nutrients and it’s balance the meat with a lot of the veggies that are very alkaline. I don’t worry about that so much. Most of the acid your body’s gonna get is from inflammation. Inflammation is like 1000 times more acidic than actually eating an acid-base food. So I’m more worried about the food’s inflammatory qualities that I am about whether it’s acid or alkaline. But, again, grains are 10 times more acidic than meat. So if I can leverage that conversation or that idea with the patient, I’ll say, “Hey, if you really wanna be more alkaline, at least meat’s 10 times less acidic than grains.
Evan Brand: Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I would think he would be indirectly not his goal but again, anyone that’s on anti-inflammatory diet indirectly, would be lower histamine outside it may be citrus and fermented foods and such.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Well, we’ll wrap this thing up. We hope you enjoy it. If you have more questions, more ideas, more things that you want to hear us cover in terms of topics, reach out. We both got contact forms on our website. Send as an email.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Subscribe. We appreciate it. Give us a share, give us a thumbs up.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Justin— Justin’s over 30,000 on the YouTube, man. So great job! Keep it up. Hit the subscribe button so that we can keep pushing up this content in helping you guys achieve the most optimal health on the planet to help us get more people healthy we really appreciate health on the planet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Help us get more people healthy. We really appreciate it. Healthy people make healthy decisions. They’re better parents, they’re better employees they’re better bosses, they’re better everything, so—
Evan Brand: Yeah. I saw Mark Hyman he was talking about autoimmunity and how it’s twice or even up to 10 times more expensive to take care of a sick patient with autoimmune disease and so we guys want you to be healthy because to save our population from collapsing. We’re kind of in the midst of healthcare collapse. Basically, the health of society falling apart. We’re trying to make a healthy dent in the universe by helping you guys. So thanks for the feedback. It means a lot to us.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it, Evan. Alright, man. Great chat today. I appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Take care. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You too, take care.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/aller-clear/
https://justinhealth.com/products/liver-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/antioxidant-supreme/
https://justinhealth.com/products/detox-aminos/
https://justinhealth.com/products/gi-clear-1/gi-clear-1-2/
https://justinhealth.com/products/j-bio-serum/
https://www.kettleandfire.com/
https://www.seasalt.com/gourmet-salt/himalayan-salt.html
Tips for a Healthy Pregnancy – Dr. Justin Podcast #153
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand dive into a discussion about having a healthy pregnancy. Gain some valuable information as they talk about nutrition, diet and lab tests before and during pregnancy.
Learn how different factors such as estrogen dominance, autoimmune diseases, toxic substances and nutrition issues affect fertility. Find out about In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), understand the reason why some people choose this option of conceiving and discover some of the natural solutions and recommendations to health-related and nutrition issues that hinder people from having a natural and healthy pregnancy.
In this episode, we cover:
11:08 Factors affecting fertility
21:36 Food sensitivities and miscarriages
25:00 In Vitro Fertilization
35:14 Blood sugar in pregnancy
36:08 Thyroid issues in pregnancy
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live here. Dr. J in the house with Evan. Evan, how you doin’ man? How’s your day goin?
Evan Brand: Life is good. How are you doin’?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. The first podcast officially as a dad—feels really good and really rewarding. Little bit sleep deprived and my wife is taking the brunt of it, but I’m doing my best to uh— be a supporting about— a very supportive husband providing all the nutrition she needs, cooking all her meals. We got a little fridge right outside the baby’s room put upstairs. And I got—it’s stuffed with bone broth, Kombucha, sparkling mineral water, uh— filtered water electrolyte and hence, she’s got a handful of meals. Paleo meals I already prepared. She’s got some really good healthy snacks. She gets some collagen smoothies and shakes up there, so I got her like stock up some. My goal is to try to feed the baby uh—kinda proxy, right? getting all the nutrition she needs and therefore, she could take it in as easy as possible and then provide the best nutrition for the baby.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, man. Well, congratulations. I’m super happy for you. It’s been a— been a long time coming. When you’re waiting for stuff like this, a day feels like a week and a week feels like a year, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And the baby’s name is Aiden Raymond Marchegiani. And Aiden means little fire, so. The boy— we’re really, really stoked to have him and we’re just trying to provide him as much nutrition as possible. He was in the NICU for a day and a quarter. Maybe two days, let’s just say. He had a slight collapsed lung birth. He was doing great and then as soon as the cord was cut, which we’re trying to delay clamping as much as possible—but it’s a C-section, right, so like you know while the baby’s got the cord attached, you know, mom’s open bleeding, right, so with the weighing out the benefits—
Evan Brand: Ahh..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Normally we’d wait ‘til that cord with pulse turn til it’s white. You know, go white and such, which maybe 10 minutes or so. We didn’t quite have that luxury, so, you know, we framed it out with the OB. Had a time we delayed as long as we could, and as soon as that cord was cut, he crashed. His O2 suction levels dropped. They put a C Pap on him. They got his O2 up; they run a chest x-ray and right after there’s a slight collapsed lung. But in a day and a quarter, day and a half—healed.
Evan Brand: Wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So he was super, super resilient. And we just—you know, we have to contribute the fact that my wife’s nutrition and sleep and all that stuff was just really great during her pregnancy. And that probably attributed to his resilience.
Evan Brand: I’m glad it all worked out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And you guys are home safe.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean the NICU docs were pretty—I think very shocked. They were telling me if we could be in there up to three weeks. And she was like, two days.
Evan Brand: Wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it was pretty great to see that.
Evan Brand: So the people are probably like, “what happened?” you know, “You guys talk so much about holistic self why a C-section? Do you care to elaborate some of that?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. Let’s talk about that. I’ve talked about it in other podcast, in other episode, but people may not listen everything, so will kinda make it so it all connects. My wife had a large fibroid removed about a year and a half ago— about the size of a baby’s head. There’s a very big fibroid. She’d taken birth control pills for 15 years, you know, in her late teens into her early 30s.
Evan Brand: You think that might have caused it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think that’s a contributing factor if you listen to my podcast with Dr. Horwitz, he’s a fibroid expert and he says that you know, estrogen dominant states can definitely drive fibroid growth. There’s not a lot of research on it. I don’t think there’s gonna – there’s gonna be a lot of motivation to do a lot of research on it, but we know estrogen dominance can cause things like fibroids to happen. And then the question is, what can drive estrogen dominance, right? We know stress drives it. we know, you know, estrogens drive it. We know phyto estrogens, right? We know low progesterone states can drive it. We also know birth control pills can drive estrogen dominance, right? So it’s the milieu, the hormonal milieu. And also, just not getting pregnant. Getting pregnant later in life can also drive it because when you get pregnant, you’re really driving a progesterone dominance state. And then breast feeding, right, you’re keeping progesterone levels really high, too. So my wife got pregnant at age 40 and we decided that to get the fibroid removed just because one, it was so big and number two, we just have a smaller fertility window.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The fertility window’s a lot smaller and we can get that fibroid removed we can get pregnant like that. And again, her hormones are that of a young 30 year old woman. So we had done work with her, helping her hormones, PMS, all that was really good. Her hormones were that of someone 10 years younger. She just had this big fibroid which acted like an IUD, right?
Evan Brand: Wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Intra Uterine Device which basically just— imagine this fibroid there just sucking up blood flow so that when an egg comes in, it’s not gonna be able to stick because there’s not enough blood flow to sustain it, right? So soon as that fiber was removed, we get pregnant. Two weeks after it was removed. And the doctor was like, “Okay, you know, you can try.” But he’s kinda not expecting much. But as soon as we tried the first time, we got pregnant. And yeah, we actually uhm— lost that baby but it was a blighted ovum. So none—is really a baby. There was no like heartbeat or anything, which is the sack but we lost it which was tough, but you know, we just kind of attribute it to the fact that she’s went to a major surgery, right? She was under general anesthesia. She’s on pain meds. Probably wasn’t the best time to try to get pregnant. We only did because the doctor said it would be okay. But as soon as you know, that— the hCG dropped and she got her period back, we tried again and then we got pregnant. So uh—that’s the baby we had now, Aiden, so, we’re very stoked. So the reason why we had to do the C-section, coming back, is because the incision was along the posterior section of the uterus which had kinda weaken the uterus which had her increase her chance of a uterine rupture. And because of that increased chance of a uterine rupture—the uterus rupture is you know baby and mom can die. So they had to pull the baby out four weeks sooner week 36 just to ensure that uterus wouldn’t rupture. It’s only a 1% chance but you know we spoke to midwives and OBs and no one recommended— no one would even do a natural birth.
Evan Brand: Oh, wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just because of the liability was so high. But I was able to watch the whole entire surgery. And I literally—you know, they her uterus in her hand and I was like, “Hey, can you look at the backside?” This is after the baby was born. They turn at the backside. “How’s the posterior incision? Let’s look at it.” And she was like lookin’ at it, “I can’t even see an incision.” So the uterus healed up so strong and what I attribute that to is I have my wife on the Tru Collagen every day. She was doing about 30 g of collagen every single day. And I know that those collagen, amino acids had to— made a huge difference in helping to provide extra building blocks to the— to her uterus to heal up. But they couldn’t even see an incision to the back.
Evan Brand: Well, also, you mentioned she had no stretch marks, too, which is a pretty remarkable testimonial.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. She had no stretch marks. Again, the baby came four weeks early so some women will say, “the stretchmark comes that last 2 to 4 weeks” But again, in my opinion a lot of people are getting a lot of their protein from muscle meats which is, you know, still good. But, again, collagen is gonna be connective tissue protein. That’s ligaments, tendons, cartilage, hide skin, right? So you’re getting a lot more building blocks that are gonna help the connective tissue and the skin. And a lot of what’s happening with the stretching of the skin and the fascia and all that tissue is gonna be connective tissue-based. So I think that providing one, lots of healthy fats and two, providing all the extra collagen peptides really help number one, her uterus heal, number two help the skin heal and number three, I also think it will help uhm—the breast. A lot of women, their breast tissue kinda gets flattened and kind of, you know, really just kind of uhm—just flattened a bit. Maybe the breast will start sagging and hanging and such after a long time of breastfeeding. I think the connective tissue support will also help the integrity of the breast tissue as well.
Evan Brand: Ahh.. That’s interesting.t I believe that there’s probably gonna be benefits. I mean, I wonder if we compared standard American women compared to hunter-gatherer women. Like what was the difference in their skin quality probably huge difference coz the hunter gatherers eating the marrow and the collagen and the bones and doing more stuff than typical women do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean if you look at some of the anthropomorphic kind of research, like they talk about literally taking the organs and like harvesting them. And the organs would be like literally given to the women that were fertile, that were trying to get pregnant because they knew the organs were incredibly, you know, nutrient dense. And there’s also research to these women like would literally give birth uhm— that— that day and be back out on the field later on that day or that next day working.
Evan Brand: Wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s crazy, right? I mean they probably had a lot less stress in her life, too, right?
Evan Brand: True.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very, very little stress, but still uhm— it’s amazing what the body is capable of doing. So that is kinda like my back stories that just kinda summarizing uh—history of fibroid and there are natural ways to reduce fibroids and I’ve seen them reduced and it help with those kind of situation in the past. We just—we’re dealing with the time window, right? And if a woman’s like in her 20s or early 30s and has a few years, hey, that may be a good thing to try, but in my opinion, uhm— you know, if you’re up against a pregnancy window, getting it surgically removed is good. But if you listen to my interview Dr. Horwitz he said women that he’s removed the same fibroid three times. So what does that tell you? That just because you remove a fibroid, that does not fix the underlying issue of why that fibroid is growing anyway, right?
Evan Brand: That makes sense. So the birth control, for example, could’ve been one thing. There gotta be an insulin components, my guess.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s probably an insulin component, too, for sure. There’s probably toxicity component too, right? Coz a lot of toxins are estrogenic compound.
Evan Brand: Yup. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So there’s some of that. So we’re trying to do our best to support all that and again one, of the protocols will be doing is using some systemic-based enzymes or peptidase etc. to really help. She has one tiny fibroid still there. It’s in around the fallopian tube. The fallopian tubes is so patent. So it’s still open and I literally was like, you know, you’re yellin’ at the OB, “Hey, can you check out her left fallopian tube. How does it look?” She’s like, “Oh, that little, tiny fibroid—like you know, half of the fingernail, still there in the fallopian tube, but it’s not growing. So, you know, our goal is we’re gonna try to work on dissolving that one naturally uhm—you know, over the next few years.
Evan Brand: That’s amazing. So when it had to be cut out, you can just go in there with tweezers and yank it off or something, it’s not that easy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The fallopian tube’s kinda—you could, but you’d compromise the fallopian tube.
Evan Brand: Oh, wow!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the fallopian tube is still open, so it doesn’t make sense. She had one little, tiny fibroid actually uhm— there at the incision site, where they cut the uterus to deliver the baby. So actually, she got two for one. They removed that little baby fibroid at the incision.
Evan Brand: Wow! Did you see that? What did it look like?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, it’s just—I got pictures of it, but uh—yeah, it’s just like a little, like mini golf ball.
Evan Brand: Really? And what—what’s the texture of it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s kinda like uh—fibrous.
Evan Brand: Oh, that makes sense.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So like uhm—I’m trying to think of a consistency— it’s just— it’s dense but it’s a slight bit of squishiness to it, but it’s still—
Evan Brand: Yeah. That makes sense. That’s amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Almost like a tennis ball-like consistency.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But it’s still pretty firm.
Evan Brand: Yup, I understand.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s kinda like the back— the back history on myself and my wife but when you’re looking at fertility, right, we look at a couple of things. Number one: How are the hormones, right? How are the hormones? Number two: How—how are the pipes, right? Are the fallopian tubes open? How’s the endometrial lining? Is it—is it okay for something to be able to, you know, implant there. And then number three: is we look at the dad.
Evan Brand: Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How’s the sperm count, motility, morphology. I was actually, really has no problem at that moment—that I was rock solid on all those numbers. So I felt very, very good about that.
Evan Brand: See that’s the problem, you know, You and I worked with so many— so many women. Primarily, men aren’t coming to us for fertility issues, but they have to come on board because it’s part of the equation. And a lot of these women that we speak with, the men, they just have a terrible diet. So we may put the mom or the future mom on AIP, but then the dad is still eating ice cream and pizza. And then they end up at the—in the—what do they call it, the vitro fertilization doctors, who want to spend what? 10-12-15 grand. But they may be unnecessary in most cases if we get the dad straightened out as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I mean, a lot of times, you know, what’s gonna affect the fertility is number one: having a nutrient poor diet; not having enough high-quality nutrients like zinc and arginine and healthy fats and proteins. And then also uhm— mitochondrial support coz sperm needs mitochondria to move or needs a healthy mitochondrial nutrients to be able to the kind of propel it, so to speak, right? So we have to make sure a lot of the good mitochondrial support there. And then we’re just not putting a bunch of toxins in there, right? Like we’re avoiding the plastics, we’re avoiding the pesticides, the chemicals, the round up, the glyphosate—all these compounds that are not gonna be so good for it.
Evan Brand: Yeah. The endocrine disruptors like you mentioned, like the plastic, so getting men and women off of Tupperware. I guess, by the way, if you haven’t figured out, this topic we’re— we’re talking about fertility today. Since Justin and I are both dads and our wives are both moms. This is a good topic for us. We’ve had first-hand experience on. So this is not theory and there’s also some science behind what we talk about. But that the endocrine disruptors that can cause things like the PCOS, which a lot of women that come to us, they’ve had PCOS. Previously are there—they’re trying to get help in reversing PCOS. That can be a huge, huge hormonal function disruptor that can affect fertility. So we’ve got to get rid of the the plastics. Plastic straws are a big one because your saliva, you know, my opinion, you’re breaking down that plastic a bit and you’re absorbing some of the— the phthalates in the plastic softeners when you’re chewing and using straws as toothpicks, that’s not a good one. Also, you’ve got flooring, too, like vinyl flooring. So if you’re walking barefoot on a vinyl floor, that’s typically gonna have phthalates in it. You’ve also got issues with the men as well. They’re just as susceptible to exposure to phthalates and other type of toxins. You mentioned pesticide so definitely going organic. If someone’s a mom, a lot of times women they’ve already had her first kid but they wanna have another kid and they are coming to you or I would see that a lot, too. You know, I tell a lot of moms have got to stay away from a lot of the playgrounds because they use the rubber tires, the recycled tire playgrounds and those are very, very toxic and I’ve measured moms with the GPL tox chemical profile test from Great Plains and they’ve got the rubber toxins off the chart. And I say, “where are you playing?” And they say, “Oh, we go to one of those playgrounds with the recycled rubber tires” And that stuff is just super toxic or let’s say the mom has a kid who started sports, my God, I work with the woman last week who lived in London, and her child he was off the charts himself. So we haven’t tested mom yet, but we tested the kid coz we’re working more with him than her. And the kid was off the charts with 2,4-D— the agent orange chemical that they used in Vietnam. And I said you know, “Where are you guys playing?” And she goes, “Oh, he plays soccer” I said, “Is that football or soccer?” Coz she call it football. So is that football football or is that soccer?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: And so she’s on the field with this kid multiple times a week. In the field, just sprayed, I’m sure, pounds and pounds and pounds of glyphosate and 2,4-D
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean I kinda go back and forth, what’s worse, right, being on the artificial turf stuff or being on the grass? Coz you know the grass has given a whole bunch of chemicals, right?
Evan Brand: I Know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I—for me, and again, how many research? I’m just—a lot of what I do is common sense and based clinically.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz I probably rather be on the synthetic turf grass because at least you know it’s not being spray with round up.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: ..and pesticides all the time.
Evan Brand: I know. I don’t think they spray anything. One other thing about men, you know, when we’re talking about fertility for men, sperm quality. Heavy metals is huge. Mercola had an article about infertility where he was talking about how men are much more susceptible to issues in their fertility with heavy metals than eggs. So the eggs in the female were less affected by heavy metals and other pollutants than men. So that’s pretty interesting. A lot of guys have metal amalgams in their mouth. So we may— I’ve not personally had to go that far with any of my clients but what would you say? Would you say that could be a possible step? Does the man have to— may have to get a amalgam removal is done?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean I think that’s definitely an option. If we’re seeing elevations in heavy metals—anytime I have someone a male with fertility issues, once the diet’s good and we’ve eliminated toxin exposure, then it’s about what nutrients can we add to enhance sperm quality, and then what things can we add to enhance detoxification.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Maybe phase I or phase II detoxifying nutrients and maybe things to help push the heavy metal binding. So again, I’d wanna look at all that and if we’re seeing high levels of metals, and we know Mercury’s there, and then we’re seeing the person also the history of fillings— heavy metal fillings and then we wanna get that removed.
Evan Brand: Tapwater. Gotta have a good clean water that the person is drinking. We talked about the— the phthalates. So the xeno estrogens—coz that’s gonna affect the males.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So if the male is more like a woman, you know, he’s got a lot of excess breast tissue and things like that, and we can assume, “okay you’ve probably got some estrogen problems” So just like you mentioned about females. Same thing for men, it could be an estrogen dominance problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And we can look at that from two perspectives. I did a video called the “Hormone Switch” I recommend everyone to take a look at that. Will try to put links below for the “Hormone Switch” But when men’s blood sugar’s off, when they start moving into a direction of insulin resistance, they increase this enzyme called aromatase, which causes the hormone to switch. It will cause their testosterone to go more towards estrogen. And we see that quite frequently. And again, one of the best thing get one of the best thing you can do is put on more muscle. That will make you more insulin sensitive. A high intensity training type of regimen where you’re doing like a long, slow movement to get muscle activation or to get HGH, where you’re doing interval stuff. That’s gonna help significantly get the blood sugar under control and get the inflammation under control. A lot of these stuff, we always go back to the foundation coz we know there are people that are new that are listening every day so we don’t want to assume that the foundation is there. And all of our patients that listen, you know, listeners they get that. We kinda feel like a broken recored, but just to emphasize for new listeners.
Evan Brand: Yeah. We wanna get rid of dairy. I mean that’s gonna be huge on the diet piece. We’re talking about or talk about stabilizing blood sugar; we’re getting refined carbs out; were getting sugars out, but dairy, too. You know, depending on what piece of research you look at, that could be 60 to 70% of the estrogens consumed is coming from dairy, especially these cows that are not organic. So for us, the dairy is always gonna come out. Organic veggies are always good come in, organic fats, your nuts, your seeds, your vegetables. Unless the woman has some type of like Hashimoto’s problem which that can complicate things with fertility. Sometimes if there’s a thyroid issue, but let’s just assume that the person can do a good quality butter, can do some nuts, some seeds, maybe a little game meat even. That’d be cool. If we could get the mom eating some—some deer, or some type of game organ meats, or sardines.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand:..or other home-cooked, home-sourced wild turkey, which we have ton of turkeys here. Those are awesome, too. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like local fish is an option here in Kentucky. I was reading the report by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife. They said that most of the fish are toxic here, unfortunately. With the— with high levels of mercury. So they set for people wanting to get pregnant or pregnant people should avoid the fish, which kinda sucks.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Actually when it comes to the fish component, uhm—I have an article that I give my patients but really, it comes down to number one: trying to get the wild—you know, the wild Alaskan or like some kind of flash frozen, kinda wild fish, I think is great, is ideal. But it’s looking at the selenium to mercury ratio. Because fish are going to have a little bit mercury. The question is, “Is there enough selenium to combat it?” Because the selenium is the natural chelator of mercury. So just try to choose high selenium to mercury ratio fish. So skip Jack tuna. It’s gonna be the best type of fish off the bat uh—cod, haddock, sole, halibut. Those things are good. I have a good article in my member’s area for my patients. But if you just google like “high selenium to mercury ratio fish” you’ll get a nice list there.
Evan Brand: Uh—cool. I love cod, haddock. Those are awesome. I had something pulled up. I was trying to see I may have lost it, but just mentioning the link between food sensitivities and also miscarriages. Basically what happened is the link between having some type of allergenic reaction, you’ve got the cytokines that are basically suppressing the killer cells.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: But when the immune system is off, the body can accidentally attack the egg. So basically, long story short, it sounds like just searching, investigating and finding out for food intolerances, which we’re gonna push most people into kind of a Paleo template as the starting place. Probably no grains, but at least no gluten, no dairy as a starting place. Will probably gonna rule a lot of those food intolerances out within the first month.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Even push to autoimmune shtick as well. I know you kinda talk about a deer. That’s good when you’re doing autoimmune shtick, but I think adding at least back in the ghee and definitely the butter, as long as you can tolerate it, as long as like, there my patients are following the reintroduction protocol, which is adding the food back in over a three-day period. Gently increasing the amount as long as no negative reactions that’s fine coz you know, butter butyric acid’s a 1:6 uhm— carbon fatty acids. So it’s a medium chain triglycerides, so to speak, right? It’s very short chain length. It’s four carbons or six carbons, but it’s a really good fat; it’s a lot of nutrition, a lot of vitamin K which is really, really good for fertility uhm— so that’s uh—excellent fat as long as you can tolerate it, I think that’s great.
Evan Brand: And other bad things, too, like alcohol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of course. Like alcohol number one: it’s a toxin. Again, in moderation maybe okay but number two: it gets metabolized to sugar. So if you have a little bit insulin resistance or blood sugar stuff, that can be a stressor. Again there’s ways to hack it by just using higher-quality alcohol and by timing it with protein and a little bit of fat uh—with your meals. It can slow down some of the absorption but you know, for a time period, if you have health issues, cutting it out for a month or two maybe a good idea to start with. And then choosing some of the drier, you know, white wines or drier champagne or Presecco or doing a really clean tequila or really clean vodka. Again, my Dr. J Moscow mules is one of my go-to’s use with uh—Tito’s vodka and the ginger Kombucha and some lime. Or I just do a really good like Sean Don or like a really good brewed Presecco, very dry. I like the bubbles. Bubbles are uhm—you know the uh— the seltzer or like the CO2 carbonation. The bubbles are actually—there is actually research studies where they increase alcohol absorption with the bubbles. I was reading one study. I was like, “Damn, I love to be in the study.” Like— you know, 15 years ago when I was in college, they were like, “ Yeah. We had a group of college kids and we gave one group alcohol and one group alcohol with you know carbonation and soda water.” I’m like, “that’s a great study for college.” Right? I know like, yeah, the group that got the carbonation with their alcohol uhm—you know, felt the effects, felt the intoxication effects or the buzz, you know, the so-called buzz effects sooner. So there’s some research with the carbonation in there helping to absorb the alcohol. So what does that mean, right? It means you’re a cheaper date.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You— less of it to get that same buzz, which means less toxicity on the liver. So that’s why like add the bubbles in there, that’s better. And you get that with my Dr. J Moscow Mule. Uh—you can do it as well with my Norcal margarita and we just you know, do a little bit of soda water in there when you can also do a really dry Sean Don or brewed Prosecco kinda drink there.
Evan Brand: Perfect. Let’s talk about IVF just for a minute. A lot of people and you know, the in vitro fertilization is like the first step if they are struggling. Diet, lifestyle, stopping smoking, which is insane. My wife had some friends that she’s not friends with them anymore because they’re just there were not good people overall. So we— we cut them out. They were too toxic in many ways.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Emotionally and physically, smoking cigarettes around her when she was pregnant, all sorts of crazy stuff. So we got rid of them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s hard for someone to truly be emotionally balanced and healthy if they’re not physically healthy because the mind-body connection is just— it’s so strong, right?
Evan Brand: I know. Uhm—so anyway— but these people that used to be her friends.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: The guy, the dad, they were struggling with years. I think they were in their early 30s. They were struggling for years. They still do not have a child to this day. The guy was drinking beer almost every weekend, daily smoking of cigarettes, Mountain Dew’s. But yet they went to an in vitro fertilization doc and they were gonna spend 10 or 15,000 for the therapy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: It’s just insane. You’re not addressing the root cause.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, you’re not. I mean, typically the first, you know, thing they’re going to do is they’re gonna do some kind of Clomid or FSH stimulating drug. The core goal of that is to increase the eggs, increasing amount of eggs, right? So they’ll do like Clomiphene Citrate or some kinda Clomid and then depending on sperm quality. If the sperm count is low, they may do IUI which is like intrauterine insemination kinda fancy turkey baster.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The sperm up and they may wash it and stuff and pick the best ones and then they’ll inject it right into the uterus. So then there’s no journey of these guys have to— the sperm cells have to make to get up there, right? Coz if they’re a little bit more mitochondrial depleted, or they don’t have good mor—motility, like they’re not moving in the right direction or their shapes not good. They may not be able to make the journey. So the whole idea is to use that uhm—artificial turkey baster. You can get it right there, so their journey is shorter, right? You’re cutting their journey down by 80% and then they’re stimulating the heck out of the eggs. That’s the first step. And the next step is full IVF which is they’re basically giving you drugs like Lupron to shut down your HP AG access, you know, your hypothalamus pituitary axis, And they’re gonna give drugs to stimulate FSH. Uh—they’re gonna give drugs to then manipulate ovulation. And then they’ll probably give some kind of uh—progesterone afterwards to help hold the implantation of the egg. That’s pretty much the cookbook. There are new medication that comes in—Gonal-F, Follistim, Lupron. All these different drugs may be used uhm—but the goal is kinda the same— stimulate, you know, egg production, enhance ovulation, help hold onto uhm— progesterone levels so the eggs stick better.
Evan Brand: Well, I remember seeing a picture. I think it’s a picture of my wife that showed me where this couple had had hundreds of vials— like an entire couch or an entire floor full of vials that were daily injections, I believe, for that whole process. Which this is one: it’s expensive; two: that just doesn’t sound very fun; and three: in a lot of cases, I don’t have any numbers. I’m not gonna make up a number on the spot, but in so many cases, if you just address diet, lifestyle infections, thyroid health, adrenal health, you’re doing the fatty acids like you talked about, the collagens, your zincs and selenium’s, and your natural folate’s, and your vitamin C, and your omega-3’s, it’s like that’s a prescription that’s gonna have far higher success rate and it’s gonna be virtually free because you have to eat to survive. So you’re going to be eating all these good things, anyway.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And we do things like chase tree and tribulus to modulate LH and FSH. So like that will modulate FSH; the tribulus will modulate LH with chase tree. And these are things that help talk—help the brain talk to the end gonads, you know and create stimulate the follicle or help the progesterone, right? So will do that with some herbs. We can always c_ augmentation protocol where we put estrogen—I’m sorry—progesterones in there, right? at certain times of the cycle, day 15-27. We can even add in some uterine supporting herbs like maca, m__, dong quia, alpha alpha, raspberry leaf extract. These are great uterine tonic herbs that really help the blood flow get to the uterus which is good because that uterus— these adequate blood flow to help support that egg when it sticks. So I tell patients think of progesterone as a sticky glue that helps the egg hold, but we need good uterine flow. That’s why my wife and I had a hard time getting pregnant at first because we have this fibroid that was sucking a lot of the angiogenesis out, right, the angiogenesis’ blood flow. So it’s creating a lot of blood flow to the fibroid and not to whatever else was gonna stick there i.e. the egg.
Evan Brand: So did you all have to do herbs? Or did you do herbs or just the diet lifestyle is all you needed?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh—we had herbs going in the background the whole time.
Evan Brand: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We had that the whole time there and uhm— a little bit of progesterone going as well. And again, we just— I measured it, like I want 15 or higher, 20 is ideal. So Iike after she got pregnant, we measured progesterone. We make sure it was adequate. And it was, so we pulled off it.
Evan Brand: And what were you doing? Like drops or—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Progesterone drops. Yup. Exactly. So, like typically like a 100 mg is a good starting point once you get pregnant. And again, we just monitor it and it just kept on rocking. And again, if the ACG is high enough, typically the progesterone will be high enough because the hCG is uhm—gonna be produced by you know the follicle and also the placenta will kick in and produce it as well. And that hCG will then jack up the progesterone, too.
Evan Brand: Oh, that’s cool. all that’s cool okay you didn’t you didn’t have to continue, you’re saying?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. You know, we didn’t have to. But some women who have lower progesterone, they may have to keep that progesterone going for the first trimester.
Evan Brand: Now is that something you have to get via prescription or are there over-the-counter natural ones you can get?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It depends. I mean, I typically give my sublingual one until I can get the fertility OB to write one, just more from a legal standpoint. I rather have the OB write about identical prescription just so, you know, if they’re working with that person that we know it’s covered. But the protocol is gonna be the same and typically will do like an intervaginal uhm— progesterone just so we know it’s getting right to the tissue. It’s—it’s— it’s being released closest to the tissues. So will do that. If we have an option, some OBs that they won’t do it uhm— just because they’re not looking at the progesterone or because a woman doesn’t have a—a history of miscarriage. They’re not gonna even look at it. But I mean, do you really wanna go through a miscarriage then know your at risk to then wait to the next time to do it?
Evan Brand: No joke. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I rather be monitoring it. And you know, if it’s below 15 or you know, I’m gonna be supplementing with some progesterone to make sure their support there. You can’t go wrong with it. Just make sure you’re using the good-quality progesterone. And again, we’re giving a lot of clinical advice here. And there maybe a lot of people that are just lay people listening. I don’t recommend doing this by yourself if you really want to work with the provider that’s done this a lot, so uhm— you know what’s going on and you wanna have everything looked at. So you want to make sure that we’re supporting the adrenals. Typically when someone’s pregnant, the only thing I’ll keep them on are nutrition, nutrients, whether it’s vitamins, minerals, amino. I’ll typically keep them on probiotics, I’ll keep them on digestive support, HCL enzymes and the only hormone I’ll typically keep them on, when they are pregnant, if it’s necessary “necessary” is the progesterone.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Well that’s the thing. We love talking about adaptogens so much but nobody’s gonna do the research on rhodiola or these other herbs and how they could impact the fetus. So we just, you know, we love those things but we just can’t safely recommend them because we just don’t know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s probably safe, but again, like, think about it, who’s gonna sign up for that study?
Evan Brand: I know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Whose gonna sign up? “Hey, by the way, congrats! You’re pregnant. Hey we’d love to have you sign up for this study where we test these adaptogenic herbs on health and viability” “Uh—no, I’m good.
Evan Brand: Right. So I mean—some of it we can draw from—from ancient peoples what they’ve used. Like you mentioned the chase tree which has been used in extreme long time. So a lot of it, we’ve probably already lost due to just modern life. We’ve lost touch with our hunter-gatherers, what herbs and plants and trees and stuff that they use during pregnancy, unfortunately. But like you said, diet lifestyle, foundations, HCL, enzymes, probiotics, fish oils, vitamin D. Did you hit— did you mention that one?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We did not. But vitamin D is definitely important. We have to have to look at potentially even give my baby a little bit extra. I was speaking to one of the in the neonatal uhm— docs there and he was telling me you know, you may want to give your child an additional above and beyond what’s in the breast milk 400IU sublingually uhm— for the baby. So we’re looking at getting some extra bit of that, but, you know, we’re gonna weigh it out. If we can get the kid out there at 8 AM in the morning 15 minutes out in the sun at 8 AM that may be enough, right? We don’t even need the drops.
Evan Brand: Yeah. What the—lady we spoke with said. She said as long as my wife was getting 6 to 8000 units that which I think this is just probably her making up numbers on the spot but she said that if my wife were supplementing with 68,000 units daily that the baby would probably end up getting at least 500 to 1000 units from that that would pass through.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think that, too. I asked that and they were like, well you should still give it. But it’s probably like a CYA comment.
Evan Brand: Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You don’t know exactly, but I think if she’s getting 6 to 10,000 the day, I think you’re gonna get 5% transfer to the—the baby in the breast milk.
Evan Brand: I guarantee it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s probably good. So we’re probably gonna make sure she just getting 10,000 a day with the K2 and just get the kid out in the sun a couple times a week in those early morning hours and you know, just enough to give him a little sun kiss. Nothing else.
Evan Brand: Yup. Do you wanna talk about lab test for a couple minutes and just talk about what we would recommend someone get if before they even think about conceiving. You know, we kinda talk about pregnancy and birth and delivery and all that, but really, it begins far before that. So you and I kind of talk a bit like a five or six trimester is really what pregnancy is coz you gotta do the preparation then the postnatal care is important, too. So vitamin D—we hit on that. As a blood panel, insulin or blood sugar if you knew you, had a history, you could get the stuff done. Uh—fasting insulin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The fasting insulin’s great. We want less than seven, ideally, less than five. We may even want to just do some functional glucose tolerance testing, i.e. just testing your blood sugar with a blood sugar meter. Fasting one hour, two hour, three hours after a meal. Choose a couple of different meals a couple times a week, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some people we hire in the morning coz of the somogyi effect which is totally cortisol driven. So you’ve gotta keep that in mind.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And uhm– I would say, we’re gonna do an adrenal test, for sure. And we may just do a female hormone test around day 20. We’re looking at estrogens and progesterones and such and testosterone, but if there’s a more of a fertility history there, we may run was called the “month-long test” or on the 209 panel from Bio health which is a month-long panel. Will look at progesterone level starting at day 2 every other day in the cycle.
Evan Brand: Thyroid markers. I’m gonna look for antibodies, your TPO, your TG antibodies..
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: To see if there’s autoimmune going on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If there’s some history going on, or symptoms, will definitely do it, but you know, TSH, T4,T3 antibodies, reverse T3’s is great. And you know, one of the things that I give my wife during pregnancy is a couple hundred extra micrograms of iodine a day. There’s some good research about helping the babies IQ. So we did a little bit of that.
Evan Brand: You can have a genius baby now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now the goal is to give the kid all of the all the resources it possibly can, right? That’s the goal of you know, being a great mom and great dad is giving your kid as much potential as possible. And a lot of that’s gonna be uhm— healthy pregnancy, right? Healthy nutrition, healthy prenatal nutrition.
So healthy fats, healthy protein, healthy carbs, nutrient density has to be high, inflammation has to be low and uhm— making sure there’s enough calories and good macros. And we’re going a little bit higher on the carbs right now. But this is true when you eat for two.
Evan Brand: A 100% man. Tell me, my wife, she— she ate way more than me and she still—she actually weighs now than she did before she got pregnant which is interesting. I mean—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s a great benefit in breast feeding.
Evan Brand: It’s definitely depleting, though. It can be depleting, so we’re doing our best to keep her— to keep her full and—and satiated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We also did placenta encapsulation as well.
Evan Brand: Oh, sweet man. Yup. Cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I actually have pictures of a placenta. It’s pretty cool.
Evan Brand: I planted my wife’s with a tree.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Really? Wow!
Evan Brand: A little tree sprout, a little maple tree sprout at our old house. I had the placenta coz we’re going to do encapsulation. We had a doula that’s gonna do it for us, so we decided—she felt so good postnatally that she didn’t need it. And—and so I had the placenta in the freezer, took it out so I could actually mold at first, you know, mold it a little bit and dug uh— dug a giant hole, buried it couple feet under with the— with the little maple sapling right there. So there should be a tree there one day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow! That’s amazing. So we had it encapsulated, so she’s doing three capsules 3 to 4 times a day. And then we have uhm—we actually had a tincture made, too, which is pretty cool.
Evan Brand: A placenta tincture?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And we’re gonna save that for menopause for her.
Evan Brand: Really?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When she transition to menopause, we’ll use that tincture.
Evan Brand: That’s a thrift.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Isn’t that cool?
Evan Brand: I did not know that. So what’s—what’s the idea there? There’s gonna some naturally occurring hormones in the placenta that will help to ease menopausal symptoms?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: Ahh—Okay. We’ve got uhm—we’ve got a couple questions. I think they may not be related to our topic because our topic’s pretty niche today. But do you want to look at these questions here?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We try to grab the ones that are most relevant for sure.
Evan Brand: Okay. There was a person named, Chris here, that said he was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and is displaying signs of hypoglycemia with perfect blood sugar, what could it be? That’s gonna be a good question. Do you get that question?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So his blood sugar may look good but why does it look good, right? The question is— are the adrenals coming to the rescue to make that
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz if the adrenals are coming to the rescue and lifting that blood sugar up, there’s gonna be a lot of cortisol and adrenaline in the background which are gonna create a lot of anxiety, and mood issues, and irritability, and a lot of things where your blood sugar may look good, but the question is, what’s lifting that blood sugar up? Ideally, we want healthy blood sugar by diet, meal timing, nutritional density so the blood sugar is lifted up naturally not relying on the adrenals to keep it lifted.
Evan Brand: Yeah. With the adrenals are kind of the backup generators of the adrenals are getting involved with your blood sugar regulation, that’s not good. That means something else is off elsewhere, but if the diagnosis of Hashimoto’s is there, too, could we say that if—if there signs of hypoglycemia maybe it’s not hypoglycemia, maybe it’s thyroid as well because I mean the thyroid can make you feel like your fatigued and lethargy and then all of a sudden, you’re over stimulated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. If you have hyp—If you have Hashimoto’s there’s probably potentially some T4 to T3 conversion issues.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there’s probably some adrenal issues so all that stuff needs to be looked at and then again, we don’t even know where that— this person is in the hierarchy of diet and lifestyle.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we’re assuming that diet and lifestyles are already even adjusted. 30 g of protein in the first waking, eating— eating healthy proteins, fats and the right amount occurs every 4-5 hours or assuming that that’s already dialed in.
Evan Brand: In preferably on an AIP approach and until the antibodies are very, very minimal in the single digits or less.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If possible, I typically wait till there’s a there’s plateauing of uh symptoms. Some people may not be able to get them all the way low but you know, we at least want to get them under 500 or so. It depends. If we could get someone under 500, that’s a pretty good reduction.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Again—
Evan Brand: What’s the highest you’ve seen with TPO? I think the highest I’ve seen was like 1600 on a TPO.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve seen over 2000. I mean I have patients literally go from over 2000 to under hundred.
Evan Brand: Yup. What’s the timeline? A year?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve seen it happen in six months to a year.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. The average person that I work with, we have at least a 50% reduction in antibodies.
Evan Brand: Right. That’s awesome. I love seen that on a piece of paper. When you actually get to validate it, but then their symptoms are better, too. It’s such a double win.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh and I had so many patients say their endocrinologist just says, “there’s nothing you can do about that”
Evan Brand: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it’s like over and over again, and we just continue to prove them wrong and it’s just like, “man!”
Evan Brand: It’s a great feeling.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I feel so bad. It’s just like, you know, imagine having someone like, you know, hiring someone to fix your house and all they have is just a hammer. It’s like, “dude, you’re missing the saw and the screwdriver, this and everything” It’s like functional medicine is that we get so many tools at our disposal. We’re not limited to just like that one pharmaceutical tool that’s supposed to be in our toolbox, right?
Evan Brand: Yup. Well the same thing with fertility question. I mean, you and I have talked to dozens and dozens of men and women who’ve been told that they will never be able to have children, yet we’ve aided, and many, many babies, you know, just being made by helping women get their hormones back on line and fixing the underlying issues, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it, man. I 100% agree. So, I hope that helps there. Anything else we can grab before__
Evan Brand: Yeah. Let’s see what we have here. That was unrelated questions—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Someone was asking about Probio Flora and Sacro Flora. And again, those are some of my probiotic products. Sacro Flora is a high-dose saccharomycin, Probio Flora is a high-dose bifido-lactobacillus uhm—probiotic. We typically do that for at least 60 days after a parasite killing protocol.
Evan Brand: Here’s a good— here’s a good question here from Naomi. She said she’s been diagnosed with blastocystis hominis, which for those listening, that’s a common parasite infection we see. She’s exclusively breast-feeding a six-month-old and the antibiotic metronidazole did not seem to work. “Is it possible to treat while still feeding baby?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The only way I would treat it is with probiotics right now. I would not do any herbs. I would choose two probiotics. I would do Saccharomyces and high-dose probiotics that’s the only thing I would do right now to treat it.
Evan Brand: Yup. So, Naomi, when the time comes for you to wean off the baby which if it six months this may be another year or so, we don’t know how long you intend to breast-feed, at that time, reach back out to us. Justin and myself we can help you get rid of the blasto using herbs but, yeah, with these anti-parasitic herbs, we—we just— it’s just not—not a safe. Well it might be safe, but we just don’t know. We don’t know if that’s—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It probably would be safe, but we don’t want a chance and we rather be just conservative, right? Always do no harm. So I feel very comfortable recommending probiotics. There’s been studies done on kiddos, actually, looking at Saccharomyces polarity uh—compared to Flagyl Metronidazole Tri and Blasto, and it’s just as good, if not better.
Evan Brand: Yup. So look it up, Saccharomyces polarity. Check out Justin’s, we both got Saccharomyces polarity products. There’s a lot of good ones out there. Just make sure you get professional grade, so that actually works.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: Cool. Yeah, I think that’s it, man. We can wrap it up. Will send people back to your site if you wanna learn more about you or work wit you. justinhealth.com myself, evanbrand.com Check us out. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of episodes. So if we just hit the surface of one piece of the conversation you like today, then I’m sure we dove deep somewhere else and give us a review. I know you may be watching elsewhere, YouTube, Facebook etc. but iTunes is where it counts. So we need to continue to beat out people like Jillian Michaels who promotes just not sound advice and so we wanna really bring functional medicine to the forefront of humanity and help to save some of the crises that are going on in terms of depression, anxiety, infertility, obesity diabetes, cancer. We want to put a dent in the universe. So give us a review so that we can do that and stay in the top of the charts.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome! And you guys, subscribe right now, my YouTube, justinhealth.com; Evan’s YouTube. Uh— click on our YouTube link. We appreciate the subscriptions, care—you know, sharing is caring. We love it. And again, give us feedback. We want feedback about what you guys want to hear because this is all about how we can serve you guys better. So let us know so we can provide more awesome information. And again, what makes us different Evan I different is, we keep it real. You’re gonna walk away from our show and our podcast with actionable item not esoteric BS that’d gonna make sense you up in the ether, right? But what can you actually do. So that’s how we’re different. We’re trying to keep it real and make it actionable for you guys. So we appreciate you listening. And everyone have a great day.
Evan Brand: Take care.
REFERENCES:
https://justinhealth.com/products/sacro-flora/
https://justinhealth.com/products/probio-flora/
https://justinhealth.com/products/trucollagen/
Jim Klopman – Improving Your Balance and Performance – Podcast #152
Dr. Justin Marchegiani welcomes Jim Klopman, the founder of Slack Bow, in today’s podcast. Listen as Jim shares some interesting and exciting information about his product, the slack bow. Learn the inspiration behind this product and discover how to greatly improve your balance by using it.
Know about the types of movement, the muscles and the exercises involved in using a slack bow. Understand why this product is very effective in improving balance and performance athletically.
In this episode, we cover: 
3:45 Inspiration behind slack line
15:12 Diet’s connection to Balance
18:36 Portable Neurostimulator
33:12 Top three movements on a slack bow
Jim Klopman: Thank you. I’m really happy to be here. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well tell me a little bit more about yourself, and kind of your journey and how you gotten up to this point today.
Jim Klopman: Well at age 50, I wanted some—I ski well. I was skiing since I was 3. And I wanted to ski well in my 70s and 80s and I was trying to figure how to do that. I saw a lot of guys stop skiing or not ski as well. I knew I couldn’t be skilled coz I’m way_
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And I didn’t think it’d be a strength coz you know, I’m 64.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: I’m as strong today as I was when I was 30 so fitness stays awesome. Health because of guys like you is awesome, so. What was the missing factor? And I determined, I think at the time that it was balance. So I looked into the industry for some balance training. There wasn’t anything that really was a challenge to me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: So I created some of my own methods and my skiing got better which I was kinda shocked that. And I took these methods and I applied it to other athletes and they were all getting better in their sports and I just kinda came to this one determination that balance is a subconscious autonomic system or part of ANS
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: And you can always ski as fast as your balance allows you. You can always hit a golf ball as hard as your balance allows you. Just you go over that limit, you’re not gonna to be able hold up when you hit the golf ball or you’re gonna fall on your ski.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And we’re talking Alpine skiing, right?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. Absolutely. But we have great experience with skate skiers and cross-country skiers as well. We have skate skiers that we’ve trained that will say, “I can’t believe it. Day one, first day of this year, I was as good as I was last day of last year. There’s a massive amount of balance and those two uh— forms of skiing as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m actually a water skier and I also was a long-term Alpine skier as well.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So huge fan of skiing. Lot of proprioceptive coordination with that.
Jim Klopman: Right. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I totally agree. And again, you know, people forget one of the main feedback, the mechanoreceptors to the brain. That’s where a lot of the feedback comes from the brain is from movements.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If we’re not moving and if we’re not stimulating the muscles and the ligaments and the tendons to work in certain way—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That brain loses that nourishment, that communicational feedback which is so important.
Jim Klopman: Right. Right. What— we spent a lot of time working with athletes improving those—their peripheral vision. So we’ve seized it and we believe at our numbers. We’ve looked at it. About 90% of the information that comes in—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: —to the subconscious system comes in through peripheral vision so when you do things like a balance challenge, you’re engaging every its of bits of—it’s a total neural load and it’s the thing we do to have fun; it’s the thing that makes us feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jim Klopman: Nobody else says, “Hey I need to spend more time in the office.” You need to get out. You need the motorcycle riding, waterskiing, snow skiing any of these things, or going to amusement park. A balance challenge will just make us feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 100%. And so tell me about the slack bow. The slack bow is one of these things that you created. I mean, they’ve been and slack lining for a while.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: My friend massage therapist, he’s a huge slack liner.
Jim Klopman: Right. He puts slack lines across the uh—the board walk down to Lake Austin and such and he does slack lining and he did want to think that it Moab last year was a three or 400 foot slack lines.
Jim Klopman: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s great— it’s great that it really has a lot of proprioceptive stimulation to the brain. But tell me about how you came upon the slack line? How that helped improve your health and just describe what that is, in case listeners don’t know what that is.
Jim Klopman: Slack lining is—is a 1 to 2-inch wide flat web—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: –that people will stretch over long distances and walk on like a tight rope. Now they’re doing this high line stuff nowadays which amazing like a __.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: They’re 400 feet of the ground.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: I mean they have safety built.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: And they’re hooked with a__ in a harness, but what I—It started on this slack line years ago was that I didn’t want to walk on it coz I didn’t feel like there’s any athletic position. For one, it’s directly in front of you. In fact, there’s a tendency to be a little back on your heel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: All athletic sports, they’ll play in the front part of your foot. So, I created the slack bow which is a form that’ll hold 2 inch of web line that we can have infinite levels of adjustment in terms of the drop of the curve, or how loose or how tight it is. And we just do one-foot position on it. So I then took that and advanced to another step.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: And we actually have applied for a patent on something called the “slack plate” which is something— is a three and half inch wide plate we put on a 2- inch line. What we determined is that a tight wire is easier than a rope. A rope is easier than a 1-inch line. A 1-inch line is easier than a 2-inch line and a 2-inch line is easier than a 3 1/2 -inch plate. So the wider the platform is under your foot, the harder it is to balance. And we take people through three positions, uh—we call that routine—we do straight on uh—parallel, we do diagonal where the big toe and second toe’s on the board and we do perpendicular, where across the board. 3-3 positions represent the three major balance challenges that you have. Your left or right, you’ve a rotational balance challenge—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: and your front-back challenge. So when we get on there, we did what’s called two minutes of attempts. Now I’ve had slack liners come in to the studio, and say, “Hey, can we play on your equipment?” I’m like, “Sure.” So they walk back-and-forth, turn around. They do some cool stuff, jump around. “Bet you wanna try what we’re doing?” “Okay” To stand on a slack line on one foot for two minutes is pretty damn hard. And we’ve had the _athletes in the world come in and they go, “I’m sweating after 30 seconds” So what’s happening is you’re engaging every little muscle in your body and no big muscles. And then we add other components to that. What we do— what’s called neural loading. We will have you pick up a kettle bell or throw you off balance. We’ll start throwing things at you. After you catch or not, we’ve made noises around you, we’d bang you with foam sticks all these things kinda load the neural system differently while you are in this maximal balance challenge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And did you say when the surface area gets wider, it gets harder?
Jim Klopman: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that what you’re saying?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That almost sounds counterintuitive.
Jim Klopman: It is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You think more surface area, you think more stability. Can you talk about that?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. Well, well I’m not sure why. Okay, number one, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Here’s my guess. One is that we have this ape-like prehensile ability to kinda grab the bottom of our feet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: After all, our hands have 25 so the bones and muscles in our body. Well, feet also have 25 some bones and muscles in our body. In a sense, they have similar characteristics in terms of their movement and how they are structured. Now, that’s one theory. The other theory is a more mechanical one. If I’m on something and if I’m just rolling from side to side on a thin form, that’s one thing. But now if I’m out here and I rolled to the outside, it’s turning the whole foot, so to speak. And it now becomes – and we find that. If this is the inside of foot, this is the big toe, this is the outside foot. As soon as somebody gets the outside of the foot, coz there’s really no muscles here, right? As soon as they get here, boom! they go. So we’re always trying keep them slightly pronated and this is what we talked about, too. We believe knee pronation and I know it’s a sin to talk about that because weightlifting is straight over your knees, straight over your toes. But every athletic move, I don’t care what move it is, whether your turning, hitting, throwing, you end up pronating one knee inside the toe. So we’re a big believer in turning the knee to balance better. And again, it works, that plate makes it more difficult. When you are on a line, makes it less difficult. And I used to keep a 1-inch line in the gym because I get the same challenge all time. I get it out and I’d string it up and show people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: But I tell people now they come in, they’re trying to message us. Next time you see a rope fence, go stand on it. It’s easy compared to standing on a 2- inch line.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. And that makes sense. Your pronation is based on the knee kind of moving inward a little bit.
Jim Klopman: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you’re not putting it under load outside of your body weight. So it makes sense that it’s more for balance than it is for, kinda loaded wraps, correct?
Jim Klopman: Well, we will load it, too but we won’t load it with massive load. It’s not gonna be wrong. If you’re doing, you know, maximal weightlifting and we talked about this the other day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like squat—
Jim Klopman: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Front squats, those things. You don’t want your knees to collapse out much with those.
Jim Klopman: No. It’s a different thing all together. What we will do and you know, they’re talking, some of these__
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: How do you build strength inside the leg? Coz when you’re doing squat, you’re building a lot of strength on the outside of the—I don’t know why they called them quads—I don’t know if you know they discover new muscle amongst the quads. So now it’s the ___but—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, really?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. [laughs] But the point is you know, when you’re building, in those squats, you’re building a lot of strength outside, right? But it’s the inside the leg that’s pushing off and moving.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: — in directional, you know, that change directions and where they hit things, so we’ll actually do strength work but it’s not a maximal strength work. We’ll get people into it—what’s what we call uh—we’ll put one leg low, one leg high up on a platform and have him do a squat and what happens is that lower leg will actually pronate a little bit and carry most of the weight and the upper leg won’t have any weight on it at all. And that’s a position at your end when you run and cut.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Interesting. So just trying to understand your progression. So you’re—you kinda went to this from a performance enhancement.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: — for the skiing aspect.
Jim Klopman: Right. And were there any neurological issues in the past or neurological brain issues that you are trying to improve or uh—address?
Jim Klopman: None that I knew of.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Jim Klopman: I’ve always had this fascination with— you know, I have one of those brains that’s, you know, flunked 8th grade two years in a row.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: I flunked ninth grade and you know, you know the report card—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: “Jim’s brilliant, why isn’t he getting his work done?” That kinda thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: And uhm—you know, I found the board of a large uh—organization that has professional mental health care practitioners and I was their advisor. So I was exposed to the best psychologists in the world. But finally, one day, in my late 50’s, I had said, “Something’s not right.” So I went to see Dr. Daniel__
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup
Jim Klopman: And they came back and said, “Boy, you have a lot of brain damage. You’ve got the brain of an NFL football player.” So that means I’m on my way to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, early Alzheimer’s or dementia. So I was like, you know, “oh, crap mode” and then one of the great things about their post-review when they’re showing me the scans__ “You have—have a tremendous amount of damage to your cerebellum.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm
Jim Klopman: And we believe in neuroplasticity so what we want to do is you need to balance train.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Jim Klopman: I do that every day coz that’s my business. They go now, “You need to do more”. And I’d go, “You don’t understand there’s nobody in my age in this country that has balance as good as I do. I balance train all time.” And they kept arguing with me and I finally say, “Screw it. Okay, I’ll do more balance work” But then at that point, it sort of makes sense to me why I did it and why maybe I felt so much better and more integrated. And for me, when I’m skiing, you know, you’re former Alpine skiing, you’re a water skier. Those are high-speed, high intensity.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Huge amount of data coming through your system. Your brain goes quiet. That’s when my brain was quiet. Was it at 60 miles an hour slope? It was not quiet if I’m sitting around the desk.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: So I pushed him through that. I talk a lot about on the book. Because a lot of great research that says, you take a walk in a cityscape, your brain maybe, it improves little bit. You take a walk in an uneven surface uh— on a path with you know, fractal surfaces like those trees behind you all over your place.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: These are all balance challenges. You produce a different level of chemicals in your brain. So there’s some real solid proof that says, these balance challenges do help the brain. And its— you go do these things on the weekends, you can get up and go to work. I mean—and have it sort of drawn out by Friday and you get up and do it again on— on Saturday.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. So walk me through that. So you got this PET scan. Were you doing this type of slack line training before the PET scan?
Jim Klopman: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you were already doing that pre- So then you mentioned, certain areas of the cerebellum which is this are right in the back that of the head, that first bump. Those areas weren’t lighting up? Is that what you were saying?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. I mean, what they show in this PET scan is— is they showed uh— it looks like a tissue scan but it’s not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: You see these black holes. I don’t have a photo with me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: But see these black holes and those are non-functioning parts of the brain. So you don’t have a giant dang in the prefrontal cortex which makes sense because I’ve used to have real bad judgment. I’ve got a big, big dang in the corpus callosum area.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: But in the back of the head, it’s just totally muddled and sort of knocked out and I just— I just sort of gonna say we all think that the balance center is in the cerebellum.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: But one thing I found, you know, clearly and you’re a doctor, is it the 40,000 neuroscientists in the world—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: In about 20,000 are researching the brain-body interface. So if we knew what the hell’s going on, these things wouldn’t be happening, or somebody like me has adversely destroyed cerebellum but has great balance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, absolutely. These other parts of the brain that can definitely compensate and pick up what where others aren’t doing as well.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so what happened, post-op? So did you increase your training? What happened and what of the post scan were like? Were there improvements?
Jim Klopman: I haven’t done post scans. But just to let you know that I went to the—coz I have no problem going onto bleeding as__ technology. I started doing some __stem cell work and I think that’s had a help. That’s help me some, too. So I just take, you know, they’re pulling it from my bone marrow three years ago. Now they are doing it from fat. But we’re spending it and pulling out and then just doing with a little IV push. And I—I’ve had a couple of __ down as well. I think those things may help. But I’m waiting probably another year to—before I go back and have a test done. So I— I work at it from a couple different angles. I do a lot more balance now. I used to do balance instinctively. I just felt better afterwards and it’s really a business model problem for me. But uhm–But I do it instinctively now, I’m more conscious about doing it more regularly. And it helps. And the reason it’s a business model problem is it— people come in and they work with us and they get a massive work out but they leave feeling good. They would leave feeling integrated and typically people associate feeling like shit means a good work out, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: “Uh, my trainer kicked my ass.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: So we don’t give you that sensation but we have that clients that leave and go “You know I left your place and later that afternoon, I went to go spin class and I had to beg out halfway through because I was out of gas.” We do deplete the system, but we deplete it and you feel wholly integrated and well. Just like it—you feel like after you’ve waterski for the day, you’ve snow ski for the day. Man, you feel great, but you know you’ve been gassed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I mean, you’re really stimulating the nervous system to recruit more fibers and a different way to provide that stability versus just that gross power and force, so to speak. So that makes a lot of sense.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And how important right now for you and for your improvements and the people that you work with, is the dietary component? Are you really making sure the inflammations reduced? The nutrient densities up in decreasing toxins? What’s that component like?
Jim Klopman: Personally, I do a lot on it. You know, I’ve been on a—coz I read somewhere—I jump on things when I shouldn’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: 25 years ago, the brain, you know, needs a massive amount of fat. I’ve been on a high butter diet my whole life, so to speak.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And it really helps me because now it has become popular with Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof guy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Ketogenic. All that. Yup.
Jim Klopman: And I’ve trained him. And you know, I think it’s an important factor is just something I stay away from. I point people in that direction and what I’m—you know, basically I’d say high-fat and you got to get more microbes. I don’t think any of us get enough of the right microbes in our system. And I know myself when I’m in sort of microbial imbalance, micro—micro biomes not correct. It will affect my balance. It will affect my performance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jim Klopman: We work with—we work with MS patients uhm— and we work with—like you said, these people have concussions and you can see sometimes in them that things change. You know, I’ll ask him, “What did you eat yesterday?” And you can see things change with that, too, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. I see that a lot and there’s some even some research study showing that just gluten exposure to decreases blood flow up the carotid artery which these little garden hose that’s inside of you head.
Jim Klopman: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That can decrease frontal cortex—
Jim Klopman: Sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: kinda output and stimulation, so—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Again, like you mention, your cerebellum wasn’t as active. There are probably other areas that are picking up the slack.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we want to make sure we have oxygen and nutrition.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s all gonna happen via blood flow. And for pinching that off, that make sense for the impairment, for sure.
Jim Klopman: Right. And it’s a neural loading, too. Your vagus nerve is your biggest nerve.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And it’s overworking coz it’s trying to coordinate crap between your stomach and your brain and that’s a problem. You know, recently—I can’t remember the name of the University, it escapes me—But recently discovered that there’s a brain tissue in the lower back that actually takes data from the feet and manipulates it and sends the sense back down to lower extremities. So even balance information that’s not going to the brain, you know, you have these little pockets of brain tissue in the stomach, in the heart. And now they found a little pocket of brain tissue in the lower spine. So to me, it’s all these— people talk about brain and—and I, you know, my own brain, right? But just think that this balance system is like magic. I mean, this stuff going on everywhere we teach people how to use their hands. And I had a guy this morning had amazing breakthrough and goes, “I get it. I feel it. I understand it.” And I think that there’s data that comes in through here that we don’t know about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Jim Klopman: And it’s hung. We see people all the time position at times in different places.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: And there’s research that came out University of Wisconsin with Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita who sort of discovered the whole neural plasticity deal—They take a neurostimulator called the PoNS device, a portable neurostimulator. They put it on the tongue and they have people with zero vestibular system—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: –that put on the tongue and they stand up, and they can walk, and they can move within seconds of putting the thing in. and the crazy thing is, they take it out as a residual effect that’ll last an hour or two. And the more they use it, the longer the residual effect goes for. So it’s like, “okay, they got it destroyed the whole tube system and the rest of your systems gone. But here they are, up walking and moving. What the hell is going on?” It’s such a complex system. I don’t think we can say it’s one thing or another. It’s everywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what was that device in the mouth, again?
Jim Klopman: It’s called the PoNS Portable neurostimulator. It was developed at University of Wisconsin, Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita’s lab. I forget what they call it now. And there’s a—now I think a Canadian Company had it for awhile and they were trying to get FDA approval and now it’s in a company in Pennsylvania someplace. But the problem is you know, FDA nowadays—how does it work? What’s the—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: How does it work?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: Nobody knows how it works. What we see with the concussion patients is when we stimulate the whole nervous system. The whole neural load, they get better. And these are—we have physical therapist that had—had concussion, post concussion syndrome in their own team, their own, you know, group of doctors and other physical therapist can help them. They come in, they get fixed because we stimulate all this nervous system. Well, they believe with the portable neurostimulator, that just by stimulating the tongue’s richest nerve part of the body, stimulating those nerves somehow connects the other—makes, I don’t know, they don’t know—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So this device, it sits in your mouth and provides like a stimulation of the tongue. Is that what it’s doing?
Jim Klopman: So they put it in your mouth—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And it’s got a plate with a little stimulators all over it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Jim Klopman: And there’s this little piece out here that’s got a level eye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: So you lean your head on your left, you get stimulation on this side. You lean on the right, you get stimulation—lean back. So the tongue becomes this sort of what those three__ that’s supposed to do in your vestibular system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Starts to sort of tell you where you are and that’s pretty cool. What’s cooler, though, is when they take the thing out yet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you keep that benefit.
Jim Klopman: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s really cool.
Jim Klopman: And it stays for a while. And we have the same results. It will stay for a while and then, boom! There’s uh like, two hours later and you tell them before about well being and balance uhm—back where his first patient was a woman named, uh—last name was Schwitz. She had a destroyed balance system. She put this thing in her mouth, she—15 seconds she’s up, she’s got her balance and then she take out the residual effect that’d last an hour. It would last longer, longer but she said every time—and she knew she had a cure to her balance problem. She said, “Everytime my balance— I lost my balance system after a residual effect wore off, I immediately got depressed.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm.
Jim Klopman: And so you have people that—who have Meniere’s disease, they go, “Oh, it’s caused by depression.” I’m not so sure that the Meniere’s disease is the primary.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: And the depression is secondary.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Okay, so—and by the way, I think I remember the slack bow over at Bulletproof. Did Dave Asprey had it at the Bulletproof conference?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. I had it there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Two years ago. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I remember that. Absolutely. Okay. Alright. Very cool. And so—
Jim Klopman: So you look familiar, too. So now—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Alright. Cool. We’re putting it all together. So, looking back here, right? So, did you start just doing slack lining before you went to the bow and then created the bow more of this kinda convenient? Is that kinda how it worked?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. That’s a good question. So I put up a slack line, you know—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: I was looking for something in the industry, you know, I can stand on a bagel board—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And do all sorts of things on that. Bows were never any challenge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: So we use bows with very unique ways now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: Uhm—and we use balance boards. I make my own—we make our own balance boards now. I got on the line, I said, “ I can’t do it. This is a balance challenge.” What I need—you know, you can’t—you’re not gonna get stronger if you lift 5 pounds a day, right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: You gotta lift 5 pounds, you get better; you lift 10 pounds, you get stronger.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Well, the same thing with balance. You just can’t do it—“I’ll just do this”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: Coz you’re not gonna get better unless it’s a real challenge. Well where’s the challenge? And then I started playing around with it, going—well, you know, all balance is on one foot or the other. Whether you’re skiing or whatever the sport is, you are putting weight on one foot. Even in your sport of waterskiing—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: It used to be all back. Now you’re moving forward, turning, moving back, one foot, two-foot type of thing going on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah.
Jim Klopman: You run, you’re on one foot, you got uh—you hit something, you’re transitioning from one foot to the other. It’s just all one foot. So I started doing some 1 foot work on it and adding other components to it. And A I said, “Well, this is it.” It’s not the walking because if you have one foot directly in front of you, that’s a very unstable position. Everything—you know, this is by feet. I’m gonna be here or here. I’m never gonna be like this. So, after that, I said, “Why, I gotta do this on a regular basis, but I can’t keep stringing it up on tress. I can’t keep wrecking trees, you know. So I try to build my own frame, that didn’t work. Uhm- I contacted Auburn University, uh— and they hooked me up to their senior class. In their senior class, engineering class design my slack bow for me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing.
Jim Klopman: And it—I got 7 students on my patent with me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s very cool. And what does the slack bow cost?
Jim Klopman: They’re 14.95 plus shipping. You know, it’s a big device. It’s 15 feet long. We have this thing called the slack block and I’ll send you a couple. It’s uh—13 inches long and probably 80% replicates the movements that you have on a slack bow. We say—I say the way you define a good balance challenge is it has to engage the whole body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Jim Klopman: If you’re just wiggling the bottom of your feet, or just your butt’s moving, your ankle’s moving and the upper body has to stay still, that’s not a balance challenge. Until you feel like you have to engage this whole system up here, that’s become a true balance challenge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So someone wants to, you know, try one of these devices or exercises, what’s the best—if you’re on a slack line, or on the slack bow, what are the best top three movements to start to kinda get your, you know, your foot, well, so to speak.
Jim Klopman: That’s a good question. So if you get on a slack line—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: First of all, it’s best to have it close to the ground. If you have to have it high up, you—now it seems today, if you get on our slack bow, we have you close to it. So there’s no, you know, there’s no kinda push to get up there coz you’ll get exhausted.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: where? At your quads so we just want you to roll on and lift off the other foot. So close to the ground is important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: The other is to be on an athletic position. The athletic position is like a 1 foot on the line on pressing forward on the inside front quadrant of my foot, my knees bent—I’m not bending over at the waist—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: I’m dropping down into it. And the other leg is kicked back a little bit. And then you just kinda have to let things move freely. You can’t—you know, we have dancers coming, they wanna hold positions and cheerleaders, other athletes wanna hold tight.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: You gotta let loose and we’ll see—we’ll see athletes that come in and do a lot of uh—big weights and I know these are good medical terms, so I hate to talk like this in front of a doctor, but we—we have big mobilizer muscles—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: — and the small stabilizers muscles.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Of course.
Jim Klopman: So these guys that are super active with the big muscles they come in and they can’t move. And it’s funny you’ll see them and all they can do is waive their hands. And they’re like, “Why are my hands doing this?” And I’m going, best—the only thing that you have left that you can move. Over time, the more balance they get, the more things start to release. And people who have back problems come in, they got a back problem and then they’ll work for two hours and they’ll come back and they call me the next day and go, “My back problem is – I have no more pain.” And I think it’s because they have done so much work with the big muscles that all big muscles can do is kinda go on-off, on-off. And you know that whole spine area has got thousands of whole stabilizer muscles and they have to be able to move and flex. And once we activate those, it takes the big muscles from going on-off, on-off and the little muscles start to take over.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And I totally agree. I think a lot of people, too, just from training and going to the gym, they typically train the muscles in 2-dimensional ways. They—they use machines that essentially make the muscles big and stupid. And they are two-dimensional, that’s the problem because muscles need to work in three-dimensionals. That’s how you get the tendons and the ligaments to work and stabilize, right? And so when you jump on these slack line for instance, or any type of device that requires three-dimensional stabilization, you’re right. You can barely do anything because your nervous system has to recruit every big muscle that you don’t have much range of motion left after the fact.
Jim Klopman: You’re 1000% right. And—and you know, we see that. The other things that are driving me crazy is it when you see in a gym or—and you see weight lifting, it’s all bilateral movement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: There’s nothing in sport that is bilateral movement. Everything’s gonna be ipsilateral, crossing the body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jim Klopman: So this is crazy. Number two, you see people who uh—you know, it’s a lock out, so I gotta go back on my heels. I take my pelvis, I know there’s some more anterior-posterior toe but I call it rolling on or rolling back.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: They hold their ass under, they’ve locked out their knees, they’re on their knees.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: No sport anywhere is played on your heels. Nothing is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: And then when you, I’m sure you see back problem coming in. You see old man, lose their asses.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Coz they’ve rolled them under the whole time. They’ve lost structure and muscle and their glutes and now they’re back’s carrying all their weight, their hamstrings are small and they got bad backs. I think it’s just—I don’t get it. Why would you build strength in all these positions and all these motions that you don’t use anywhere athletically?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s the thing. A lot of people who would have back issues, they lose the ability to have proper hip extension out of their glutes—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Insead of uhm—bending or instead hinging at the hips, they’re bending at the back and you’re getting more ligamentous activation and the biggest muscles of the body, right? The ones that make the best filet steak ever, right in the glute. They’re not even working
Jim Klopman: [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like you said, these guys that come in, their glutes are all atrophied, right?
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You should have that kind of—uhm, you know,
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the heart-shape is the right side up.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because their gluteus medius are overactive and their glute max at the bottom are all weak and atrophied.
Jim Klopman: Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, so you get it. So it’s—but when we got the gym, we don’t – we don’t look at that. And the other is we see people walk—uh—we teach people how to walk. You know, you’re walking on these
shoes that have, you know, 10 to 15 mm lifts and then you get the toes rolled up and people are walking in that. We actually stand— people stand with a good posture and then I push them on the shoulders, and they just fall over.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: They go off their shoes, get on the inside part of their toes, bend their knees a little bit, roll their posterior a little bit, so engaging their glutes, they’re stable as they can be. Then they go back to walking like that. And so we teach people how to walk coz if you wanna be an athlete, don’t just be an athlete for the two hours you’re on the task or you’re on the football field.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And then you walk like a noob device
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: You’ve seen great athletes. With great athletes walk, it’s clear that they’re great athletes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Jim Klopman: Coz they move like cats.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And if you think about that, move like that all day long, you can become a better athlete.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And I think Paul Chek and Mike Boyle talked about this, too, where a lot of the lifting movements, whether it’s the squat or deadlift, or even the bench press, you’re—you know, you’re mounting on the ground, you’re pushing, or you’re extending, or you’re pressing.
Jim Klopman: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they talked about, for instance, you have someone that has a
4-500 pound bench press, well, you get them on a cable on a one leg.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then do a press forward with a single arm.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They can’t even press nearly as close to when they’re stable because the stability is in there. Coz you gotta have it stable before you can recruit, right?
Jim Klopman: There’s no doubt about it. And I had an interview with some CrossFit guys the other day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm. And we talked about CrossFit and they said, “Well, I said you can’t lift any more weight than what your balance is__”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: They say, “So what do you mean?” Because your body goes, “No, damn it. You’re gonna get hurt”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: So subconsciously, it is the most powerful part of ANS. I can slow down my heart; I can speed up; I can stop breathing; I can change blood flow. Y,ou can’t sit here and go, “I’m gonna lose my balance.” You’ll fake it, you know, but you’re not losing your balance. You can’t say, “I’m gonna make my balance better” I can’t run and cut any faster than my balance will allow me, so the weights it holds—you know, I can only lift up so much. Well the guy who won CrossFit games this year, they had a trail run.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: I mean a gnarly ass trail run.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: I don’t know if you saw it. God, it was brutal. He kicked everybody’s ass and you could see him moving it was the first event. And I just said, “This guy’s gonna win. And then he uh— placed second in the sprints coz he cut around the cones better than everybody else. And I looked at his performance here before. So he placed second in sprint, I was thinking he would have placed first if he’s been in the same heat as the other—the guy who got number one.
Last year, in the sprints, he placed 24th and 32nd. We’ll you don’t get that much better but training over the year. He did something different. And I think somehow he’s done something to improve his balance, improve his coordination and agility. So even as finding his way in a sports like that and I agree, even when you—lifting weights on your back is patently stupid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: But you know, lifting weights when you’re standing, you—if you improve your balance, you’d be able to lift more and improve your kinetic chain at the same time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m a huge fan of contralateral and ipsilateral’s single leg work.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Whether it’s single-leg deadlift—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or even just presses—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or just, you know, movement that involves single leg whether it’s a push or pull—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s a great starting point.
Jim Klopman: Right. Have you heard about the research on Parkinson’s and boxing? They’ve discovered—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Are you talking about the head injuries, the head trauma?
Jim Klopman: No, Well—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, more of the actual movemement. Okay, go ahead.
Jim Klopman: Elderly people with Parkinson’s and in the—I don’t know what you call it, but retirement homes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Jim Klopman: Some trainers several years ago took him to the gym and they just started boxing. People who hadn’t talk for a couple of years started talking. People are getting up on their wheelchairs. And to me, it’s like, “Oh, well, what’s the boxing?” Now that research is looking, I’m going, “It’s simple. You’re doing an ipsilateral, crossing to the line movement.” And they’re just doing this and they’re getting healthy. You know, I’m sure you’ve seen chronic patients that come in that just seem to have that homolateral left leg, left arm movement and their missing that whole ipsilateral movement in it when they walk and move.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And that makes sense. And hopefully they’re not—you know, taking the punches on the other side of the fence with the— with the brain Parkinson’s issue.
Jim Klopman: [laughs] They’re not hitting each other, just hitting their bag.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s just the punching movement. Yeah. And it’s interesting, too, because she’s going to deny hitting each other listening and it’s interesting to because I see, you know, some of the main benefits of exercise is really being neurological.
Jim Klopman: It is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think there’s a handful of CEOs that a written article where they talk about exercise for them is more about—it’s more brainwork than it is muscle work. Frankly, a lot of people, they are motivated to exercise typically to lose weight and to look better naked. And that’s frankly, the major motivation. But we want to step it up one notch and say, “Okay, that may be great for the superficial, aesthetic side.” But your brain, and the neurology and your nervous system is even, you know, one level up, I think.
Jim Klopman: You get it. You get it. My god, you get it. I love that you get it. But you’re right. I mean marketing companies I’ve spoken to said, “Well you need to have some, you know, buff guy.” And I say, “Look, I’m 64 and I got like low body fat and I’m fit and all that. And they go, “Yeah. But you need to have somebody with you know, the big, massive muscle, tits, and all that kind of stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Well, I’m not gonna do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Right. And so, I just wanna make sure, let’s say people wanna, you know, go all in and get some – just start doing some slack line or procure your device—
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s just go over those top three exercise, one more time. So they jump on it. If they’re on it, you know, they’re kinda in tandem. Left leg is in front of the right—go ahead.
Jim Klopman: Well—I wouldn’t—They don’t have to start on slack line. They can start on the ground.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, great.
Jim Klopman: So start on the ground, one foot, knee bent, the other foot back.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Jim Klopman: And just balance for just a couple of minutes like that. Now if you want an added challenge, you don’t have to buy me slack lock, you could just put a couple of sets of folded bath towels underneath it. And that creates enough instability right there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we have left leg, right leg kinda like in tandem and then vice versa?
Jim Klopman: Exactly. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Jim Klopman: I wish I could stand back, but you know, this is your left leg and your right leg. The toe is you know, lined up with the heel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: But you bend forward and you’re on your knee, and you’re like this—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And you let that whole body move. Now, if you wanna add—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So are you just going back and forth? Or just trying to move your hands and kinda adapt to it?
Jim Klopman: No. You just try to hold still.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hold still. Okay.
Jim Klopman: Try to stay up for as long as you can. Two minutes. It all locked out but let the body move.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Jim Klopman: Now, if you want to add a challenge to that, take a kettle bell and put it on the ground, like a foot in front of you. Pick it up. Put it down 6 inches in front you. Put it down another 6 inches in front of you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: You can’t bend at the waist to do that. You have to drop down into a deep one-legged squat with that other leg. And it’s a master balance challenge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I get it.
Jim Klopman: The lower you get on one leg, it’s a massive challenge. Now get the other leg off the ground, right? Only on one leg and then reach out as far as you can.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Jim Klopman: And you find it. You have to collapse in an organized way. You can’t bend at the waist so your chest will always line up—your chest will always line up your knees and as you drop down, you go down, down ,down. It’s harder and harder to pick that thing out in front of you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you’re saying the front leg comes off the ground with that coz you’re bending over?
Jim Klopman: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Jim Klopman: I’ll create a video for your folks if you wanna hook up, you know, link up to that. But that’s one uhm— the other is uh— you know, if you wanna advance to a slack line, do that. But, you know, there’s a lot of people__who’d do that. Same thing. Just get on one foot and just stay up as long as you can on one foot. We—my partner, Janet, give me help coz I’m always teaching people how to push them along. The reality is if you stand on slack line on one foot, your body’s gonna find the right position. Your kinetic chain is gonna find the right—all those things that’d come together. I don’t have to teach you a thing. And my business would be easy and I would make more money if I’ll just say, “ Just get up there and I’ll come back and check on you 20 minutes from now.” Because you’ll get better automatically. It’s a—here’s the thing, it’s a software system. So if I teach you how to play golf, you have to spend time learning how to build the skills and those muscle memory things. If I want to lift weights, you’ll lift weights so much, you get better. We have people that will come in and train and at the end of uh—say, the session, level II, they come back to be at level III. The body just is starting to work on immediately.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jim Klopman: The improvement is massive. The thing that will happen to you when you go on a slack line, stand on that one leg, is your leg goes—will start to go what we call, “sewing machine” motion. And we call that neurological confusion. So if you see me on a slack line, I’m steady. I kinda float, but I still move. I can’t hold perfectly still. That “sewing machine” motion is you have the same firing pattern I do, you’re just not organized. So your muscles are going, “No, you fire” “No, you fire” With all that sewing machine motion to upset you, you— you— you can’t consciously go stop it. Although I have great athletes go, “Stop, stop, stop!”
They’re yelling.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: — Grab the leg— just let it happen because it’s your body going, “Hey, we’re figuring this shit out”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: And they do, and it’s amazing how much better you get, how quickly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Okay, so we have just kinda your tandem stand, you have the bend when you’re almost doing a one-legged squat or deadlift.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: As you pick up your kettle bell. What’s the next movement that they could do?
Jim Klopman: Well, you know, another thing that we talk about with the pronation, and again, this is so you know, it’s like I know young girls have problems with pronation and—and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: They’re tearing ACLs. But you know, what we do is we say, “don’t pronate, build strength outside the pronation” I’m like, “No, if you pronate, build strength in that.” __lets you need pronation massively. So why can’t—why am I not allowed to pronate? So we do where just simple leap side to side. We can call it, “side to side” but it’s—again, wish you’d get away with it. If you’re like this, we want you to go out and land on the inside of your foot. If you land and you roll to the outside, you’ve lost control and we want you just to narrow that stance. So you just go, “boom boom boom” and in order to make this happen your knee has to pronate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Jim Klopman: There’s nothing— if you try to go straight knee over your toe, you’re gonna land. And once you’re out here, you’re gonna find yourself tipping over. It’s once you get to the outside of the foot, you’ve lost your balance. So there’s no balance there. So all that balance is on that front inside quadrant of the foot.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what’s that last third movement? I just wanna make sure we get it for the listeners.
Jim Klopman: Let’s just call it “side to side” So if this is your fee, you’re standing, I’m just going—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: Boom-boom just side to side like that. I’m just moving from one foot to the other. Maybe only 2 feet and I then I go wider and wider, but I’m always trying to land on the inside of my foot. If I land on the inside of my foot and I rolled to the outside, I’ve gone too far.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Got it. So your feet aren’t in tandem then. You’re more wider and you’re just going from side to side.
Jim Klopman: Right. One switch to the other foot. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, then what would be one more exercise on top of that?
Jim Klopman: Let’s see— balance challenge—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then—how about just—like if you’re in tandem, can you just move one extremity away from the body? Wouldn’t that start to recruit? Cause your body to be a little bit more unstable and have to recruit more stabilizers?
Jim Klopman: Yeah. But if you do that, you end up getting—you gotta be careful coz you’re on the outside of your foot.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: We’d much rather if you did something similar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: You get on one foot and you take the off leg that’s not on the ground and kick it behind you and that’ll cause you to get more in the inside of your foot. So if I’m doing – so—like you said, I wish was in the studio. But if I’m doing this here-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: I could be dropping down and have that other foot kicked behind me this way and I’m on my left foot. That’s more of a balance challenge. That is to have one foot and try to kick that foot out like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Okay.
Jim Klopman: So once we’re here and the other foot to kick behind it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Jim Klopman: So you just stand there now in your left foot, just take your right leg and put it behind your left and then just drop down. The more you can kick that left leg out to the side—see, my left leg is all the way up here, right? My right leg is all out here, my left leg’s here. That’s more of a balance challenge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you pull that back leg out and then you push it back and out a little bit.
Jim Klopman: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Awesome. Well, is there anything else you want to let the listeners know about kind of exercise, the slack line or just improving your neurology and nervous system?
Jim Klopman: I just think it’s – you get it. It’s wonderful to speak to someone who gets it. Uhm—it’s a hidden loss. We have four main categories which are four main things that we say causes to lose our balance. And it’s the modern world and you know, I’ve developed this one—I’ve developed this index, called the “common balance index” KBI. 0 to 150 is average, 20 is you need a cane or walker; 80 is like a college athlete, pro athlete-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jim Klopman: 90 is like accessory. A 100 is like a Cirque du Soleil performer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: The world we live in is built for 10. And level 20 is built for people with walkers and canes. So you spend your whole life on perfectly flat floors, perfectly vertical surfaces around you, every step is perfectly sized, so you have no balance challenge when you live in the modern world. So what happens is you don’t use it, you lose it. You don’t know that your system’s getting degraded from a 50 to a 40 to a 30. Then you have a 60 challenge, you may not fall, you may not get hurt. But falls in—in are he number one cause of injury and death for people over the age 65. And that number is not going down. It is nearly doubled in the last 15 years. So how can that be with great doctors like you, great health all over the place.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jim Klopman: The falls will get worse. It’s because we’re losing our balance system and we don’t know it. It’s an unseen loss and there’s other, you know, reason for the losses as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. There’s also some research on vitamin D being a big thing with the vestibular system and balance as well, which is interesting.
Jim Klopman: I can imagine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Well, excellent. You’ve given us some great information. Last question I asked everyone. If you’re stuck on a desert island and you can only bring one supplement, herb, or vitamin, or nutrient with you, what would it be?
Jim Klopman: [laughs]Butter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Butter. There you go.
Jim Klopman: Grass-fed butter because it’s loaded with vitamin D, anyways. And uh—huge amount of nutrient value to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. I love it. I appreciate that, Jim. and again, Jim’s website is slackbow.com More information there. And will put some—any of the links that you mentioned earlier, will put it below the podcast description and the YouTube description as well. Awesome.
Jim Klopman: And I’ll do a little video of those exercises so people will see what I’m doing, so –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Thanks, Jim, for coming on the show. Well, you have an awesome day.
Jim Klopman: Thank you. I appreciate it. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thank you.
REFERENCES:
https://blog.bulletproof.com/about-dave-asprey/