Beat Burnout Naturally: How Adaptogens Can Transform Your Stress Management with Evan Brand | Podcast 411

The video discusses the benefits of adaptogens in managing stress and burnout naturally. Adaptogens such as ashwagandha, rhodiola, and ginseng are highlighted for their ability to modulate cortisol levels, and improve energy, cognitive function, and immune system health.

Highlights

Adaptogens are effective tools for managing stress and burnout.

Ashwagandha helps modulate cortisol levels and has numerous benefits for sleep, mood, and cognitive function.

Rhodiola improves energy levels and has antioxidant properties.

Ginseng provides resistance to physical and mental stress and enhances cognitive function.

Different types of ginseng have specific benefits for hormonal balance and overall health.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justinhealth. com. We have all of our podcast transcriptions there, as well as video series on different health topics ranging from thyroid to hormones, ketogenic diets, and gluten. While you're there, you can also schedule a consult with myself, Dr.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really want to get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marchegiani here today with Evan Brand. We are gonna be chatting about beating burnout naturally.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How adaptogens can help transform your ability to manage and deal with stress. Really excited for today's show. Evan, my man. It's been a while. How you doing, brother? Evan

Evan Brand: Brand Hey, man. Good to see you. Doing really well. You know, as time goes on, life just seems crazier to me. I mean, you and I test children, we test teenagers, we test adults, everybody's nutrient depleted, Dr.

Evan Brand: Justin Marchegiani Yes, sir. Evan Brand Thank you. Everybody's got some sort of gut issue, I mean, you, you go to a public place, you go to a church, you go to a grocery store, you're gonna see people that look exhausted, people that have cast and crutches and wheelchairs, and it's like, God, we're becoming a major disaster.

Evan Brand: chronically ill population. And that's pretty overwhelming. And so adaptogens are to me, one of the best tools that we can use to help us manage the insanity that is 2024 coming up and beyond.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, no, I totally agree. And again, adaptogens are a wonderful piece that sit on top of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So obviously we want to have that. Good healthy, anti inflammatory, low toxin, nutrient dense diet. You want to make sure nutrition is getting in there, sleep is good, movement's good, stress management is good, and if we have those things dialed in, this is a wonderful adjunct to sit on top of that to really facilitate healing and optimal

Evan Brand: performance.

Evan Brand: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, and there's, there's Published studies. I mean, I don't know how much people truly care about studies. I mean, you and I could bore people and look at this for three, four hours. Like if you put in, for example, rhodiola fatigue, there are studies on showing how rhodiola, which is one of my favorite adaptogens, how it helps with not only fatigue and athletes, but also as a natural anti anxiety antidepressant.

Evan Brand: So, you know, I'd be curious to get people's feedback as we publish this type of content. Like, do you all truly care about us picking apart the studies or are, or do you trust us to just give you the takeaway? Cause the takeaway is when I was in my early twenties and I was exhausted, doing lots of physical labor, working out in the woods.

Evan Brand: Rhodiola was truthfully a lifesaver for me to get me through that stress of the heat. It helped improve my heat tolerance in the hot, humid summer. The fatigue in terms of just doing incredible physical amounts of labor. And then also with the mood piece of it as well. If I felt depleted, I felt less depleted with having some of that in my system.

Evan Brand: Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And so, what we'll do is, we have our top 10 kind of favorite adaptogenic herbs here. We're gonna go through each one and just kind of riff for a few minutes on each one and let you guys kind of know what we think. I just gotta highlight here, a lot of these herbs, they have similar mechanisms.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Again, certain herbs may, may do different in regards to immunological, certain ones may be more neurotransmitter or HPA axis or anti inflammatories. In general, we're doing a couple things here. We're trying to modulate the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. That's how the brain communicates to the stress organs.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We're trying to modulate neurotransmitters, help with brain inflammation. Some are gonna work on helping to improve fatigue by stimulating ATP production, we'll talk about that. Some will work on modulating the immune system, increasing T cell function and overall immune function. Some will have additional antioxidants like, like the rhodiola and the, the different compounds there and the anti inflammatory.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some will work on hormones. and helping with estrogen or progesterone, and helping with endocrine regulation, and some will work on gut function, helping with the gut and the mucosal lining. So we'll kind of go through, those are the general kind of mechanisms, we can go in deeper, I don't know how much more that's gonna matter, cause in the end, you wanna understand, you know, what's the benefit, why is it used, what are some of the things I can expect to happen, how do I take it, that's kind of the general question, but if you wanna go deeper, let us know, and we can dive in out of the gates.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, anything you wanna say?

Evan Brand: Well, a lot of these are synergistic. And so you and I were talking before we hit record that some of our friends and colleagues, they will do an entire video on one herb and it's like, okay, great. That's great for like YouTube SEO and watch time. And this allows the person doing the YouTube videos, not to run out of content because now they could spend an hour, you know, on this herb and that herb and that herb.

Evan Brand: But the truth is. A lot of these are synergistic. So there are times where you and I, and I know you personally and clinically also, you might use an urban isolation, but a lot of times you and I are stacking these things together because you may take the anti fatigue, anti depressant effect of rhodiola.

Evan Brand: Yep. Once that's combined with some cordyceps mushrooms, now you're enhancing how your body is getting oxygen. So now you're actually performing better there. And then you may see there's a cortisol issue on the lab testing. And so now we're actually using corticosteroids. So, if people go to Whole Foods or Amazon and they're looking for specific adaptogenic herbs in isolation, that's fine and beneficial, however, you and I love and produce and manufacture blends, and the blends is where the magic happens.

Evan Brand: A

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: hundred percent. Totally agree. Well, let's start out out of the gates. My first favorite herb is going to be ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is also known as Indian ginseng. A couple things about ashwagandha, it's wonderful to use whether someone has overly high cortisol, tends to, there's data on it, modulating and bringing cortisol down, but it's also wonderful if someone is burnt out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you go look at the transcription, we're going to go in deep. If you look at the transcription of what ashwagandha means in Sanskrit, it literally means to impart the strength of the horse. I mean, how cool is that? So, really cool is it helps modulate cortisol down, also brings it up. According to Steven Buhner, Ashwagandha is one of those herbs that can be used in the long run.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He'll recommend it for patients, you know, even for years at a time. Because it has wonderful effects on the cortisol high and low, with anxiety, with sleep. with mood, anxiety and depression. So, it has some really good benefits in a lot of those areas. And I'll typically dose anywhere between 500 mg up to 2 g spread throughout the day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there's some people even using adaptogens and certain formulas for hair loss too. They're doing it in like exosome kind of compounds and they're topically putting on the hair. Some of the hair companies are doing it because it modulates cortisol and when cortisol is overly high, it can be very catabolic.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Then it can break down tissue, i. e. skin, hair, nails. And so, it uses a lot of good benefits for hair, skin, nails, mood, cognitive. And of course, if cortisol is overly high, it can severely impact the limbic system and the hippocampus, which is an area that's important for memory and in learning and being able to pull in new concepts and ideas.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, if cortisol is overly high, ashwagandha could help modulate that down and indirectly help mood and

Evan Brand: memory.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan

Evan Brand: Brand Yeah, well said. And the cool thing is it's not going to impair your sleep. It may actually improve your sleep where some of these others next, next on the list is rhodiola. It's one of my favorites, but I'm not going to take rhodiola before bedtime.

Evan Brand: It could be too stimulating for most people. So I would say maybe a 12 p. m. or 2 p. m. cutoff or something like rhodiola, whereas ashwagandha, you could do it before bed and it will likely help.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani 100%. So with things like rhodiola, the, the compound in the, well, the ashwagandha has the.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Withonioid compound in there. And the rhodiola has the, the, the rocevins. This is like the active kind of constituent. I'm a big fan of getting the whole herb, just because when you get the whole herb, there's other compounds in the herbs that are, whether they're antioxidants or various nutrients. I know ashwagandha is also very high in magnesium as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you get other nutrients and minerals and other compounds that could be very helpful too. And so when we say, Oh, well, we're just going to get you this, you know, withoniosomnifera, this, this active compound, it's like, well, I prefer the whole herb. Just to make sure we get everything in there. And so, rhodiola is gonna help on the energy side.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's gonna help with burnout. It's gonna help with fatigue. And again, it's gonna have different antioxidants in there. I'm pretty sure rhodiola, isn't that more of a red herb too? Kinda be redder. Dr. Justin

Evan Brand: Marchegiani the color of it? Dr. Justin the herb. So like the plant, I've seen pictures of it. I haven't seen it growing wild.

Evan Brand: It's like a Siberian type, you know, location where it grows, but it's like yellow flowers with green leaves.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so you're going to get various bioflavonoids and antioxidants that come, especially when you see colors to the herbs, then you know, there's bioflavonoids, which tend to have B vitamins and vitamin C in there too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So all of these are going to help improve. Your immune system, stress. Some of these herbs may have nutrients that plug into the mitochondria as well. So that's pretty cool. Oh, next on our list, ginseng. Same thing. Ginseng is gonna help with resistance to physical and mental stress. It's gonna improve cognitive benefits.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's kinda like an espresso shot. So if patients wake up and they're feeling really tired in the morning, we'll do a little bit of ginseng starting out anywhere between three to five hundred milligrams and up, and When we look at a cortisol rhythm, if we see very low cortisol, we'll plug in ginseng sometimes, or we'll even plug in licorice to really bump up some of that lower cortisol if we see low cortisol there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Obviously, it's gonna have antioxidant qualities, it's gonna have some mental functions and mental stimulation there. It's gonna help with some of the neurotransmitter stimulation, so it may bump up dopamine. and provide more alertness. So these are some great benefits of adding in something like ginseng in there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now, if you already have high cortisol or you're already a little bit anxious, then it may. push you a little bit over the top. So you have to look at kind of, it's good to have a good cortisol rhythm test when you're recommending these herbs to the patient, because if you see someone that's very high cortisol at that time, or they're very stressed and anxious, that may be not, that may be not one of the herbs we want to add in at that point.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And if you look into PubMed, if you look up Panax ginseng, you will see benefits for regulating blood pressure. So it may help stabilize any kind of blood pressure issues. Also, it discusses helping with mitochondrial function. Also, they're talking now about Panax ginseng being used in any sort of neurodegenerative disease because of all the antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects of the ginseng components.

Evan Brand: They call it, I think it's ginsenawide. Like ginseng, but that's, that's the active component of it. And this is amazing. So endothelial function is improved quality of life. There was a study here on using pinnex ginseng in cancer, and they also report quality of life and mood, decreasing fatigue, nausea, fatigue.

Evan Brand: Vomiting and anxiety. And these are in cancer patients. So this is something that really you would love to see being passed out in hospitals, helping these cancer wards, helping these people deal with trauma and the stress of being ill. And unfortunately, that's just not going to happen. So it's up to you to really implement these things into your life or use somebody like Dr.

Evan Brand: J or I, a functional medicine provider who can help build this protocol with you to support you, even if you're still bringing conventional medicine into your life. The functional medicine strategies, the herbal medicines we use, they integrate very, very well in terms of like side effects, negative interactions.

Evan Brand: I mean, these things have been used in China and across Asia for thousands of years. So we're not reinventing the wheel with these herbs. We're just trying to bring these to light because most people on the street corner still are not aware of these. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, there's different kinds of ginseng.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just to kind of highlight here, there's like a red root ginseng or Korean ginseng. Okay, there's Eleuthera, which is also known as, that's not known as Siberian ginseng, because that's found more in the Russian area. Regular ginseng, typically panic ginseng, and they'll also call it American ginseng.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then Ashwagandha is also known as Indian, or Peruvian, I think it's Peruvian ginseng. It could be Indian. Indian sounds right, I think I've heard that before. No, Indian, yeah, Indian ginseng. And then one is called Peruvian. I forget. I think that's Maca. I think Maca is called Peruvian ginseng. Let me just double check that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Peruvian

Evan Brand: ginseng. Evan Brand And it's rare that you'll see them marketed that way. You'll probably always see ashwagandha. You'll probably always see it called Maca. But yes, these are so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Peruvian ginseng, Maca, very good for female hormones, modulating estrogen receptor sites, helping with LHFSH signaling, which is great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you have a lot of hot flashes, that's going to bring that LH and FSH down. Indian ginseng, ashwagandha, panix ginseng American ginseng, red root or Korean ginseng, and then you have your Indian ginseng, ashwagandha. So this difference, you tend to go, and then Siberian is going to be Lutheran. So when we talk about them, ginseng is kind of just our overall kind of, usually more for American ginseng per se.

Evan Brand: Evan Brand Yeah, and like I said, this is not new stuff. This has been around for thousands of years and been used for so long. Now obviously, there's less money into studying this as opposed to a drug that's going to generate billions of dollars of revenue. There are some studies though, so for example, in maca, you know, I really appreciate you turning me on to maca many years ago for helping with female hormones because you have these perimenopausal menopausal women that are miserable.

Evan Brand: And yes, ashwagandha and others can help, but maca is a really special one for them. And there's studies helping with not only just fertility, but also just all of the effects of aging, if you will, on hormones and the stuff that comes with that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: modulate that significantly. Okay, so we hit ginseng and the different types there, and again, some of those are already going to be on our list.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So there's some overlap there. Holy basil is the next one, otherwise known as Tulsi. There's a really good tea out there called Tulsi tea that's loaded with different types of holy basil. Holy basil is wonderful. It actually got its name because when people When they'd make it in the tea, they actually, when they drank it, they would have this feeling that they were connected to the gods at the time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it got this name of being holy basil because you almost had a spiritual experience when taking

Evan Brand: it. How about that? Huh? I believe it. I mean, I remember one time back in Kentucky, I took a pretty high dose of a new brand of holy basil. And I remember just feeling euphoric. I was just sitting there and I felt my life was perfect.

Evan Brand: There was nothing that changed in my life. It was just the administration of that herb all of a sudden is like, wow, my life is amazing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani And this is the adaptor that I would definitely take at bedtime when you're winding down because it helps modulate and bring those cortisol levels down.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It would not be one that I would take during the day. I would take it at the end of the day to kind of relax and calm down. Holy basil has lots of anti inflammatory, lots of antioxidant properties in there. So if you're stressed, you're inflamed, you're trying to get extra nutrients in there to help kind of oxidative stress in your body, it's gonna have a lot of good benefits there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You could take it in the tea. You can also take it in a capsule. So, a lot of good cognitive and physiological benefits.

Evan Brand: Evan Brand Yeah, I've taken it during the day. It didn't put me to sleep or anything. So I feel kind of invincible on holy basil. It's a very interesting feeling compared to other herbs.

Evan Brand: It's almost dangerous. I was joking one time with my wife like, you know, somebody better not come mess with me. Cause like, I feel like I'm so strong right now. Like it's a, it's a very empowering herb. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Nice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Also anti inflammatory. decreases pain also can help with blood sugar benefits, which is good because blood sugar creates lots of oxidative stress.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, when you have a lot of oxidation going on there, you want to bring that blood sugar down, but you also want to decrease the oxidative stress. All that means is it's just giving up electrons freely. When you have cells that are missing electrons, they become unstable, right? They become oxidized.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Think of cutting open the avocado or the apple, letting it sit there, it browns. So, when that compound comes in there and gives up electrons that help stabilize that tissue so it doesn't get inflamed and oxidized. Excellent. Alright, next, so we hit holy basil. Let's do cordyceps. Now, I like cordyceps because cordyceps is actually a medicinal mushroom, which is really cool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And, kind of put mushrooms into that adaptogenic family. It has the ability to help the, immune system, the hormonal system, the endocrine nervous system, it helps it adapt and function better and respond to stress. So it helps improve physical stamina, it reduces fatigue, some benefits that scientifically wise it will show that increases DHEA.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we'll bump up the anabolic hormones. They come from the adrenals. Those anabolic hormones help can feed into testosterone if you're guys or as a woman, it could be more into estrogen, help build your body back up. So excellent for recovery. Also helps improve immune function. So it's an increase natural killer cells, T cells, which are the first line of defense for your immune system to go after and attack invading bacteria or viruses coming into your body.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love

Evan Brand: cordyceps. It's a great for athletes. So any athlete, you should probably be taking some.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. Absolutely. So, love that. Again, physical stamina, it's gonna help boost energy, it's gonna help with endurance, and it's gonna help also cope with physical stress, which is great, it's gonna help with the mental function too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right, next one, Maca. We already talked about this, Maca slash Peruvian ginseng is its alter ego name. It's gonna really help with the hormones, it's in a boost mood. It's gonna help with FSH and LH signaling in the brain, so that your pituitary makes goonadotropic releasing hormones that then talk to the ovaries.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: to make certain hormones. So FSH will help with estradiol and you essentially have follicles in your ovaries. All the eggs that you ever had, all the follicles you ever had are there. And so as those follicles mature and grow due to FSH, that FSH stimulates the follicle to grow. As the follicle grows, now it starts to produce estrogen.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So FSH is really important for follicular growth, helping to mature eggs and thus indirectly stimulating estrogen. LH is gonna work more on progesterone. That's gonna talk more to the ovaries and to the uterus to make more progesterone. Progesterone is progestational, so it's the sticky glue for the eggs to implant to the uterus lining.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Progesterone is also very active. It's not inflammatory because it's made from cortisol. It's also opens the GABA chloride channels and so it helps your, you feel relaxed. It brings GABA into the brain to chill your body out. Now most PMS is because women have very low progesterone. Why? Because they're inflamed and the body is prioritizing to make cortisol to put out that fire versus have healthy levels of fertility hormones.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when progesterone starts to fall, if here's the last half of the cycle, progesterone does this arch. But if you're stressed and inflamed, that progesterone is gonna fall out sooner, and that deficit in progesterone is gonna create mood issues, cramping, energy issues, sleep issues, because progesterone helps with all of those different things.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so we could bioidentically give you progesterone. We could actually add another herb in there called chase tree as well, or vitex agonist to actually help with. progesterone production. We also have to support the adrenals because the reason why your progesterone is going downstream is because you're making more cortisol.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we may also want to support cortisol levels, but we also want to make sure we get to the reason why you're over secreting cortisol. Because if we don't get to the reason, we're just adding gasoline to a fire on a fire. And so when we look at things holistically, we say, Hey, well, we're going to band aid this.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We're going to support this. We're going to help with the upstream signaling here, but we also have to make sure we're getting to the root cause. So we try to hit it from both sides of the fence. So we get the best results possible.

Evan Brand: And, and said another way, I mean, you could take all these adaptogens and still have underlying issues with your gut that's affecting hormones.

Evan Brand: You could have glutathione problems, glucuronidation issues, nutrient deficiencies, parasites. So we're still working on these other things. We're just using these tools to help you better. So next on the list, Schizandra. Love Shoshanna Berry. There's actually some cool papers on it helping with not only being an antioxidant like all of them, but also helping with estrogen.

Evan Brand: So helping to modulate estrogen, prolactin, even testosterone and low progesterone. So that's cool. I love it as almost a hormone adaptogen. So if you put in, in the literature like schizandra estrogen, you know, you can read about it. It's pretty neat.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. Also schizandra helps improve liver function.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it aids in detoxification. It's going to help with endurance. So it's going to plug in more to the mitochondria too. It's shown to also be very helpful for coordination. which is really cool as well. And it's also going to be helpful on the female hormone side. Menopausal women take it and it can be very helpful with hot flashes and modulating things like that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's going to be very helpful for skin. It's also going to be a good digestive support. It's going to stimulate enzymes and acids as well. Some studies on it helping also to lower inflammation. It's gonna help also with the HPA axis. That means the brain communicating with the adrenals to help modulate cortisol and have a good healthy cortisol rhythm.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: See here, there's a couple other studies in China showing that help improve liver function and help with fatty liver as well. So fatty liver is typically, Too much carbohydrates, those carbohydrates get con converted to palmitic acid and get stored in the liver first. And when that liver gets saturated, you're gonna see an increase in ALT, AST, different liver enzymes, cause that liver is getting stressed out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They call it a non alcoholic fatty liver cause you have these raised enzymes, like you're an alcoholic, but it's not because you're drinking too much alcohol. And then also, it's gonna bump up glutathione peroxidase, glutathione reductase. That's gonna those are gonna be the enzymes to synthesize glutathione.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it's gonna really bump up and improve. glutathione production. And glutathione, again, is the master antioxidant in in our body. So, antioxidants, like I mentioned earlier, they give up electrons freely, and so they help stabilize cells from oxidating. Think of the cut up avocado or apple on the table.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, really good benefits there. Again, they've gave it to liver transplant patients as well, and they found that they had less side effects and better acceptance of the new liver. So, there's some really cool benefits there. Protects the skin, protects mental performance, and also it's gonna help with sexual function, they're gonna help up the hormones a little bit, help with healthy libido as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, we kind of went pretty in the depth on that. Question on that, Evan? Evan

Evan Brand: Brand Love it, man. Let's hit astragalus, one of my favorites. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yes, go ahead. Evan Brand I take astragalus pretty much all summer, just in case of exposure to tics. So, Steven Buhner, you mentioned earlier, passed away, I think it was this year, earlier.

Evan Brand: Amazing guy, amazing herbalist, he wrote all the great books on Lyme and co infections. And so, he turned me on to astragalus, maybe, Maybe a decade or so ago, and it's incredible for immune health. And the idea is that when you're taking a stragglers, you're helping your immune system in case you were to have tick bites.

Evan Brand: For example, the idea would be that the immune system would be on top of that infection in no time, and it wouldn't become a chronic infection. So that's how I really got into a stragglers, but I'll also use it. Fall winter time. If the kids are bringing a bunch of stuff home from school, sickness wise, I'll bump up a stragglers a gram or two per day.

Evan Brand: And it's been an amazing tool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I would say a good dose on a lot of these things starting is usually at 3 to 500 milligrams starting up to 1 to 2 grams is usually a pretty good dose. You have to just look in the back of the bottle because some of these herbs will be concentrated. They'll be concentrated extracts and so 500 milligrams of material may be equal to 3 to 5 grams.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you have to really look at what the equivalent dose is if it's concentrated. Now, a couple things about Astragalus, there's a couple studies on it where they gave Astragalus to lung cancer patients and they reported an increase lifespan while taking it. So there's some good benefits on the immune system standpoint.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 2013 study showed Astragalus was very helpful with upper respiratory tract infection in kids. So that's awesome. They compared that group to prednisone alone. And so that was, that was a cool thing to see there as well. Again, bumping up the immune system, bumping up T cells, helping them to be a significant benefit with that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is some pub med study that looked at here out of the gate. Also helping with kidney issues, kidney disease. I'll use a stragglers. I have a cat that has kidney disease and we'll give him a little bit of a straggler. So very good. If you have any kidney issues, Kidney stress, low glomerular filtration rate, low increased bond, increased creatinine, any kidney stress will give cordyceps, will give astragalus champignon mushroom.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: These are some good nutrients. Ginseng is actually really good for the kidneys too. So, ginseng, astragalus, cordyceps, wonderful for the mushrooms wonderful for the kidney function out of the gate. Amazing.

Evan Brand: Let's hit licorice. Licorice is probably well known. Most people know about licorice in regards to adrenal formulas.

Evan Brand: And so pretty much most off the shelf, adrenal support formulas will have licorice in them. Now, for some people, rare, but some people, whether it's a blood pressure issue or maybe there's high anxiety, I do find licorice to be a little too stimulating in some people. And so, I don't use it all the time, but there's lots of literature on it in regards to chronic fatigue syndrome and licorice.

Evan Brand: So, I think it's a good tool. Me personally, I don't take a ton of it. I take a little bit just because my adaptogen blends have a little bit in there, but I don't hit it as hard as I'm going to hit something like Eleuthero or Rhodiola or Ashwagandha. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I have a licorice. that I provide to my patients and we'll base it off of like cortisol rhythm and cortisol is overly low.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We'll put licorice in there. There's two kinds. I draw the line at this. We have non diglycerized licorice and diglycerized licorice, okay? So when you see DGL, right, that's going to be licorice that's going to be used more for soothing the gut lining. Very anti inflammatory, very soothing for the gut lining can help reduce inflammation.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So very good there. And then we have our non DGL. The glycerized component is glycyrrhizal component is present and that's gonna actually slow down the enzyme that breaks down cortisol. It's the Levin beta hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase 2 enzyme. Remember that one. That's the enzyme that breaks down cortisol.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, licorice that's non DGL will actually inhibit that enzyme. So think of cortisol as water out of the sink. Right? You take licorice with the non DGL form, it puts a plug in the sink and allows the water to accumulate, i. e. the cortisol to go up, so it slows down the breakdown of cortisol. So, if you have higher cortisol or you're already a little bit stressed, may not be the best thing to add in.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, this is why working with a functional medicine provider like Evan and I, we understand the mechanisms, we know how to apply it, when is there a better herb, and this is why it can be nice looking at a good cortisol rhythm test. Like the Dutch test or a good salivary cortisol rhythm to see how your cortisol awakens in the morning, the first hour or two, and then how it goes throughout the day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then looking at total and free cortisol to see if that makes sense. And so, licorice can also stimulate digestive support, enzymes, it can stimulate acid production so it can help stimulate digestive as well. And again, like we'll use it to help really bring people back from a very low cortisol state.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there's also components in the licorice that mimic aldosterone. So it'll actually hold on to, it'll help with mineral. Retention and water retention. So one of the side effects you'll see with licorice, oh, you can cause you to get puffy or hold on to more fluid because it mimics aldosterone. It helps you hold on to your minerals and your electrolytes better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And water follows electrolytes, sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, etc.

Evan Brand: Amazing. Yeah. And most people have issues with minerals and electrolytes. If you've been exposed to mold and you have mineral imbalance issues, this is a great tool to help that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Well, I think we hit all the major adaptogens here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just to kind of recap guys, top 10 ashwagandha, one rhodiola, two. Ginseng and your different various subtypes of ginseng. Holy basil four, cordyceps five, maca root six, schisandra seven, astragalus eight, licorice nine. Oh, last one. Last, one of my favorites. I had it this morning. Reishi mushroom. I have a little bit of an upper respiratory tract infection because I have two young kids that have not learned to wash their hands yet and cover their mouths fully.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that's a battle that any parent with young kids knows. But reishi is wonderful because there's triterpenes or Triterpenoids, depending on how you pronounce it. I had Jeff Chilton on a couple weeks ago and he kept on letting me know. It's, it's it's, it's not triterpenes. All right. And triterpenes are basically compounds in there that deactivate viruses.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it actually will come in, deactivate viruses and make it so they're less virulent. It'll also stimulate your natural killer cells. Triterpenoids, the correct way of saying it, is also 1, 3, 1, 6 beta glucan in there. These things will stimulate your immune system, stimulate T cells as well, very powerful antioxidants, and it will decrease the virus's ability to replicate.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: These triterpenoids will help prevent the virus from getting infected. Replicating deeper on because how a virus works, it comes in and then it starts to replicate itself because it's not actually living. And then it's the viral load that starts to correlate with symptoms. So the more that virus replicates, the more symptoms you have.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so if we can come in there, support the natural killer cells and we can decrease the virus from replicating, then we can helpfully decrease the symptoms of our illness and also recover faster. So Rishi is wonderful, also known as Ganoderma lucidum, using a lot of Asian countries first line therapy for cancer, by the way.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, love Rishi mushroom. Dr. Justin

Evan Brand: Marchegiani Yeah, me too, me too. I take some form of mushrooms every day, so they're incredible. And They also call it the Mushroom of Immortality. Did you know that about Reishi in particular? And then a lot of times we'll stack that, so we may throw in some turkey tail on top of that.

Evan Brand: You know, Paul Stamets, he claims that along with, there might have been some other therapies, I don't remember the full story, but you know, there's this famous video we did years ago about his mother who had breast cancer. And he implemented turkey tail and likely some other compounds and she beat it. So it's an incredible tool and I think mushrooms should be in your pantry and there should likely be a good professional blend, you know, not all mushroom products are created equal.

Evan Brand: So if you need help, if you're confused on this, if you need help with where to start, do I go and. So, if you want to gather all this and take it all at the same time, you could reach out and let us know what's going on with you. There's likely symptoms you're suffering with and that's why you're watching this or listening to this.

Evan Brand: Maybe there's issues with fatigue, anxiety, depression, insomnia, hormone imbalances, infertility PMS, menopausal symptoms, right? And so we can help. So, we'll plug in these specific nutrients where we need to based on your functional medicine workup. So, we'd be happy to help you with this. We work with people around the world.

Evan Brand: So, we can do urine. We can do saliva, stool. We can even do blood if we need to. Mail you the kits. You send them back. We get those reports back. We jump on a call together. We'll hash all this out and make a customized protocol to help you fix this. So, if you need help, Dr. J, that's Dr. Justin Marchegiani at DrJustinMarchegiani.

Evan Brand: com. Just in health.com. So just in health.com, you can reach out worldwide and myself, Evan brand@evanbrand.com. We're happy to help you guys. Thanks for being here. Give us your, your comments, your thoughts. Let us know what else you want us to help you with because there's a lot out there and most people don't talk about this stuff, so we wanna help illuminate these opportunities illuminate.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Very good. I feel like you're a character in Zoolander right now. Yes. Illuminate very good. In general, excellent. Sendoff just to kind of. Highlight with the listeners here. It's really easy to be like, all right, I'm going to just pick one or two adaptogens and try it. That's cool. That's good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just make sure you're getting to the root underlying cause of, of your health concerns. Can't hurt to try one or two of these things help improve your health. Just make sure you don't ignore the root underlying issue. And if you're struggling even above and beyond that, you know, feel free to reach out to Evan and I were happy to help and dive in deeper and do the right testing to get to the root underlying issue.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan Sink, thanks so much for the show today. Awesome podcast. And you guys have a phenomenal day. Take care of y'all. Evan Brand My pleasure, man. Peace. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Peace. Bye.