The Nuts and Bolts of Your Mitochondria – How to Enhance Mitochondrial Function | Podcast #349
Have you ever thought about what powers are inside your body? In this video, Dr. J and Evan talk about mitochondria and how to boost them.
When we talk about your body’s powers, the easy answer is nutrients, of course! Our body transforms those nutrients into energy, and it’s that energy that boosts the cells in our body. All types of cells have small generators called mitochondria that, in many ways, are their sources for life. Mitochondria are the only part of the cell where our basic life requirements — food and air — are combined to make energy in a process known as the Krebs cycle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00: Introduction
1:30: The role of creatine in mitochondria
6:34: Energy pathways
14:47: Cell Danger Response
16:07: Citric Acid Cycle
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mitochondrial function, your mitochondria, little the powerhouses in your cell and they help generate ATP which is the cellular currency of energy so to speak. And we’re going to talk about natural ways to improve mitochondrial function, Evan, and how we doing today, man.
Evan Brand: Doing really well. I think first, let’s dive into some of the big assaults that we have as a modern society on mitochondria. And that could be anything from viruses, bacteria, parasites, gut infections, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, plastics, phthalate’s, the BPA, the BPS, flame retardants, nonstick chemicals, car exhaust, air pollution. That I miss any I mean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like you hit a lot of I would say being sedentary. There’s a lot of mitochondria in your muscles. And if you don’t do enough, you’ll put enough force to those muscles, they will atrophy. And so just not doing enough about creating enough stimulus on your body. That could definitely we can and decrease your mitochondria in your muscles. So, I would say, sedentary and in active resistance through your muscles.
Evan Brand: OK, OK that’s a good point. That’s a good point. So, you’re saying that, like, just in general, you have to have some level of physical stimulation physical activity to keep the mitochondria working. I guess it’s kind of like an old car that you’ve sat there…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All your muscles at least. Yeah, ’cause if you decrease, you know your muscle levels via just atrophy due to lack of use. Yeah, your muscles will shrink absolutely and that’s your mitochondria will shrink for.
Evan Brand: Sure, what about creatine? Do you know anything about the role of creatine in mitochondria? ’cause I know when I’m taking creatine, I just I feel stronger? Obviously, there’s creatine’s used a lot in like bodybuilding world, but there’s gotta be a mitochondrial mechanism there because I’ll tell you I feel like. I can lift, you know, at least a good 1020 pounds heavier on particular exercises with creatine in my system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, me crazy definitely has an effect on growth hormone and improving growth hormone stuff that will help with muscle. Creatine is like instant energy for the muscle. So, it’s it’s there. It’s ready to be used right away in that first 10 seconds or five, five to 10 seconds of muscle use or like explosion movement through that muscle. So, that definitely plays a role in muscle. I’m not sure how it plugs in 100%. I see ’cause really you know with ATP right in the mitochondrial function? If you look inside the mitochondria you have glycolysis and then you have the electron transport chain. Or I’m sorry, you have the Krebs cycle citric acid cycle and that plugs into the electron transport chain. So, glycolysis that’s going to be utilizing the carbohydrate in the muscle right glycogen in the muscle. Fast immediate source. I think creating plugs into that top part. And then you have the Krebs cycle citric acid cycle, where B vitamins, magnesium. All these different things kind of plug into that and with that. With the citric acid or Kreb cycle, that didn’t mean the same thing. Essentially, they’re grabbing hydrogens, right? So, there it’s it’s a reducing agent, so it’s just grabbing reproduce. Reduction is a gain in electrons and so you have NAD goes around. Then it grabs NADH so you get 3 NADH and I think 1FADH2 so you have FADH. And it grabs another hydrogen and that becomes FADH2, and so it’s grabbing all these hydrogens. And then it’s essentially bringing those hydrogens downstream into the electron transport. Jane and Beta fatty acid oxidation there and so yeah, I think you generate was at 36 to 39 ATP through the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain.
Evan Brand: Unless you’re in like chronic fatigue stayed, this cell danger response, and I think you’re spitting out something low like 2 maybe 3 ATP. I’ve read about this cell danger response. They just call it HDR in the literature, but it talks about how. The cell danger response, could be initiated by trauma or a car wreck or even mold exposure or tick-borne illnesses, or viruses. There’s a lot of you know, Epstein Barr. You’ll see the link between like mono and chronic fatigue. It said that these people are in this state of just a low power output, or even if you have the nutrients, you’re just not generating the ATP with some I don’t know if it was Caitlyn or somebody that you and I had looked into where there was a talk on this about. How the w the the ATP was literally in the single digits. The low single-digit output in some of these states. So, the message here is that for people that have chronic fatigue, you got to realize there is a mitochondrial component to this. Why don’t we talk about testing a little bit? The main thing that you and I are going to look at is going to be the organic acids. I know there are some other tests out there. I’ll admit I’ve had clients send them to me such as the mito swab. I’ve not run the model swab. Personally, I don’t know enough about it to speak on it much, but I’ll just say that it does exist. I believe it is a a mouth swab and it’s probably looking at just a couple generic markers in the saliva. But we like to use the organic acids test because, as you mentioned, there’s the Krebs cycle metabolites on there. We can look into the supinate or what some people call succinic acid. You’ve got the malic acid. You’ve got fumarate. There are other markers on there, and we we see when people have talks and exposure. Like I said in the beginning, the heavy metals, the mold, the pesticides will see those. Mitochondrial markers go up. And the higher the numbers go, generally, the more tired someone is because that indicates more damage to that Krebs cycle. So, the oh is huge, and then obviously we’ll look at stool too. Now the stool test you don’t measure like the stool tests we’re running. You’re not measuring mitochondrial function, but I look at it in a roundabout way. Meaning if you have all these gut infections producing toxins that could be damaging mitochondria as well, so we know that when we clear the gut out, we see the mitochondrial function improve.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Yep 110%. I want to just put something on screens. People can see it here I guess is really helpful.
Evan Brand: Have you seen or heard about that my to swab before? Have you seen anybody send you those?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have, I’ve ran up. Fulham, it’s kind of a binary test. It gives you a result my the issue I have it’s not a lot of actionable information. It’s like OK, you know there’s some issues there, but then now what’s, what’s the remedy that you’re going to plug in from a diet lifestyle supplement? Toxin reduction execution right? What’s the next step on it? So that’s the problem with some. Of those tests, I always. Look and I always ask well what’s the corrective action based on the test showing uses a concern.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense.
Evan Brand: That’s the problem with a lot of them like I’ve seen a lot of these stool testing companies. Same thing there’s like so much data. Well, this percent of this bacteria and this percent of that. It’s like, what do I do with that? Is that an infection? Is that not an infection? So you and I’ve seen the same problem in other categories of health tests do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. I want to show a couple things on screen here? Just so it’s crystal. Where the mitochondria is and how all these different energy pathways plug in, I think it’s important I’m going to pull it up here on screen in just a second so people can see it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, people listening on audio, they’re going to be lost. So just look up Doctor Justin YouTube page and you’ll be able to view some of this stuff. Some stuff, like mitochondria, gets a bit geeky. The the main thing here is toxins are a big factor in damaging this cycle and you gotta get toxins out. Reduce exposure where you can and we can run actually chemical test on your current too so we could talk about that in a minute.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, and so if you look here right. Do you have the mitochondria right here. Some middle part, the mitochondri. The outer part is the cytosol. So, from what I understand, like creatine is going to plug more into the cytosol and glycolysis, OK, but then you’re going to see you get about two ATP which is adenosine triphosphate. And this gets broken down into ADP and you get energy right? And so, you have glycolysis which generates a little bit of ATP 2. And creatine to plug more on the outside then that goes into your mitochondria. Now you have the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain electron transport chains part of also the beta fatty acid oxidation. That’s how you burn fat for fuel. OK, so Krebs cycle that churns around twice, and essentially what you’re doing is you’re gathering NAD and FADH2. NAD&FADH are grabbing hydrogen so and a design to grab a hydrogen making NAD. HFADH is going to grab a hydrogen, making FADH2, so I think you’re going to grab it’s like two or three. NADH is, and then one FADH2. And all those hydrogens then go into the electron transport chain here and this is where you generate most of your ATP. And again, what comes out, oxygen comes and this is why, if you’re like anemic right? And you’re not carrying oxygen. Well, that’s why you’re going to get tired and this is going to have an effect on your thyroid and your adrenals because the mitochondria is important for energy at all levels. And so if we have anemic issues or were inflamed because inflammation is going to make it harder to carry oxygen all. And also nutrition, because this electron transport chain, when we run the organic acid test, we can look at citrate, malate, fumarate, succinate. These are important metabolic essentially inputs into the Krebs cycle that correlate with certain nutrients like amino acids, alpha-lipoic acid, magnesium B vitamins, and so we can get a window on how this. Krebs Cycle was functioning based on the organic acid testing at some of those compounds and then all sister connotate citrate, right? These are really important, and then electron transport chain we can get a window into things like carnitine and Co Q10 ’cause they also play a major role in the electron transport chain. So we get a good window with how the mitochondrial function functioning by looking at the B vitamins and looking at a lot of these nutrients and so essentially things that can impair this. As you mentioned, pesticides. Heavy metals, mold toxins, antibiotics, and all these things have a negative impact. But that’s kind of how things look, so we have. Glycolysis is the first part that then goes into the mitochondria, and then we have Krebs cycle and electron transport chains. These are the big three. If you can kind of zoom out and see how it looks and how it makes sense. That should hopefully make more sense, so on that front. Any question that, Evan?
Evan Brand: Well people listening to that. They’re going to be like wow, this sounds like a really crazy rare problem, right? This must be just rare. This must be like a one in million case and I would say. Not going to say 99. I would say 90% of the people we work with. I see some level of mitochondrial dysfunction or damage either on the chemical profile test, so that’s something I alluded to earlier. We can run chemicals so we can look at gasoline. We can look at xylene. We can look at phthalates, all sorts of organophosphates. 24D is a major herbicide. I still see people at Lowe’s and Home Depot in the Garden Isle buying grass seed. That’s called weed and feed, weed and feed is a grass seed mixed with three different types of herbicides. It’s 24D, I believe it’s dicamba and glyphosate. Wait, I could have mixed one of those up, but either way, it’s three different chemicals, very toxic substances mixed with grass seed, and that’s like people just buy it and they don’t think anything of the term weed and feed. That means you’re going to be killing all the good stuff in your soil and poisoning yourself at the same time. It’s just not smart. So this mitochondrial thing. My point was, this is not rare, like when you show that image and people see that like. Oh no, that’s not happening to me. It’s like it happens every day, all day. I had mitochondrial damage, my latest test shows our mitochondria are much, much better, but I had significant mitochondrial damage from my mold exposure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very interesting, I want to highlight one thing here so you can see creatine does primarily exist here in the cytosol, right? So if we zoom out, right cytosol is outside of the mitochondria, right? Right glucose, pyruvate here, so just so you guys can highlight here, creatine does go from the cytosol and it can go into the mitochondria. So, we did talk about creatine. It does primarily happen more in the cytosol outside the mitochondria, and it can go in via this. Mi-CRT kind of transport. Compound, so yeah, so creatine is a compound that we talked about that goes outside but can also go inside the mitochondria. To yeah Doctor Neil Nathan.
Evan Brand: That’s awesome! Doctor Neil Nathan did a huge thing for 155-page slide show that people can look up just called the Cell Danger Response. It’s very complex stuff. There’s going to be maybe a few geeky on that. People want to dive into that, but for your average person there’s not much takeaways built into that. But if you want to look into more of like the biochemistry side of it, then then you could look at it. But I think the big summary is it’s all. It’s all the Chemicals, and this is a relatively new problem I mean we face now over 80,000 chemicals are in the environment. Depending on what number you read, there’s only a small amount of those that are even tested. You’ll see stuff in Europe like oh Europe has banned these chemicals and makeup and personal care products, but the US was very far behind. And if you look at the environmental working group, they have a water testing report. You can look at and you can plug in your zip code. I mean just the amount of trihalomethanes’s pesticide herbicide residue pharmaceutical drugs that are in the municipal tap supply in your city are massive and you’re getting hit with this all the time. If you go to a restaurant and you eat rice, what do you think they make that rice with? They make it with tap water so you’re getting exposed to it that way too, which is why if I go out to eat, I don’t really do rice that often anyway. But if I do it, It’s going to be at home with good, clean filtered water.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it. Anything else you want to say on that, so obviously get the toxin exposure. Super important hydration obviously really important to anything else you want to say on that?
Evan Brand: Yeah, you hit you hit the the Co Q10. You mentioned some of the markers we’re going to look at on the oak test, so we will use those. We have a formula. I believe you’ve got 1/2 mines called my to boost. It’s essentially like a multi for the mitochondria with all the Co Q10, ribose, carnitine B vitamins. So, when we see mitochondrial dysfunction, we can supplement that and we tell people this is a band-aid for your mitochondria. This is not some of it is the root cause, right? If you just are simply low and depleted in Co Q10, one could argue supplementing Co Q 10 is the root cause, but in reality it was usually. Oh here we go. Let me see if I can share this slide with you. Mainly it was the the toxins that led to this so let. Me share my screen really quick.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there is going to be because we do make Co Q10 on our own via the mevalonic acid pathway. And of course, as you get older, just like stomach acid, you’re gonna make less of it and so there there could just be a depletion based on age as well.
Evan Brand: Does that show up at all on your side? The video is that screen share show.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Try again.
There’s like a little bell there. Let me let me pop it up again. How about that, yes? Oh yeah, let me let.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Me highlight it, go ahead.
Evan Brand: Yeah, there we go. So, this is this is kind of what I was alluding to, and many many other people may have different ways to look at this, but this is from Neil Nathan. He had a great paper on this cell danger response and it just shows at the top here. Basically, everything I already mentioned like a flame. Heavy metals, pesticides, infection, so that would include viral issues as well. Mass cells, NK killer cells, cytokines, the microbiome. All these issues here are what really breaks this role. You know, the one of these is the final straw that breaks the camel’s back and then you end up in this what’s called the cell danger response phase. And then that’s where you get the issues with the mitochondria down regular. So there’s more in that. Like I said, it’s 155 pages. It’s like you got to be, you got to be, you know, have your bulletproof coffee before you look through that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, that makes a lot of sense, so your kind of really focusing on the toxicity and how that negatively impacts it. I want to just kind of tie in the dietary component. Why is food so important to enhancing the mitochondria? Let me let me break that down for a second here. This is important. OK, so this is really important. We talked about like Kreb cycle right? And so like this is our zoom out right? What’s happening here? We have glycolysis, Krebs cycle, electron transport chain outside of the mitochondria with the cytosol inside. Now check this out. This is a good one. This is from textbook of functional medicine, so. We have fats, carbs and proteins. These are our primary nutrients where everything comes from right. Fast could be coconut oil, grass fed butter could be fats from. Uhm, grass fed meat right? Our carbs can be vegetables, fruit, starch and our proteins could be protein powder or it could be animal protein, right? All of these essentially shuttled downstream. Fats get carried into the mitochondria via carnitine, so if you go into any biochemistry textbook, it’s called the carnitine. Shuttle right. Every medical doctor, doctorate level person would studied this at a graduate level. I studied as well now in the textbook of I think that guidance Physiology, but there’s another textbook of biochemistry that’s common at the graduate level. You know what the rate limiting amino acids to make carnitine are. It’s methionine and lysine and so really important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Guess what some of the rate limiting amino acids are in a vegetarian diet.
Evan Brand: Oh yeah, well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Medallion Leisinger actually very deficient in vegetarian diets, and so this whole process of a carnitine shuttle here that helps bring carnitine converts it into acetyl Co A. So then the actual it can get inside the mitochondria. And run through the citric acid cycle again. That’s the same thing as Krebs Cycle. They have multiple names. In medicine for the same thing, it’s just meant to confuse people. So citric acid cycle or the Krebs cycle. This is how we get fat inside the mitochondria is via carnitine. So very important, right so if we zoom out. Here, we have energy out here, fat. We get it inside via the carnitine shuttle. Super important there and then you see carbs. Right glucose, other sugars. We go pyruvate to lactate and we need guess what B vitamin? So if we’re putting in lots and lots of refined processed sugar and we’re insulin resistant, we can actually deplete B vitamins. And we can actually deplete a lot of magnesium and other nutrients downstream. So, this is really important. Too much carbs, too much sugar, especially if you’re insulin resistance and you’re putting on weight due to too much carbs. That’s going to be a problem, and you’re going to deplete nutrients now. Then we have proteins, amino acids. These all get converted downstream. We also need B itamin to support that now the difference is if you’re eating high quality protein. Guess what? You’re getting good quality B vitamins in that. Protein if you’re doing a lot of refined processed sugar, guess what? You’re not getting vitamins and nutrients with it. So carbohydrates, it’s possible to eat a lot of empty carbs that are actually going to deplete your nutrient levels. Protein not as much if it’s grass fed and organic right now, really, you’re taking all these nutrients, fats, carbs and proteins. You’re converting them into acetyl Co A. OK, you’re converting it to acetyl Co A and again we spit off beta-hydroxybutyrate what’s that? That’s a ketone now this is important. If we keep our carbs in check we can use ketones for fuel, so this is a really important fuel source or people that are going to be lower carb because we’re going to be more keto adapted. We’re going to be able to use that and then you can see here that acetyl Co A. Runs around the Krebs cycle. Twice we go 2 turns. Guess what, we need cysteine amino acid iron really important. So if you’re a female you have heavy bleeding your estrogen dominant you heavy bleeding that’s in effect energy magnesium manganese B vitamins lipoic acid magnesium B vitamins B vitamins tyrosine phenylalanine aspartate, glycine, histidine, arginine, proline. Glycine, valine methionine, right? These are all amino acids over here. So, we need amino acids to run these systems. We need B vitamins. We need magnesium and then of course, once we pump these things around, here’s our NADH and then our FADH should be there somewhere as well. So here NADH, it may not. They may just be oversimplifying it not showing it. But we have NADH here. We should have an FADH2 coming in. This all goes right into. Guess what? This is the electron transport chain and base. Yeah, fatty acid oxidation right there, right? This is now now hydroxymethyl Glutarate. This is Co Q10. This is where Co Q10 comes in and this is where it runs through the electron transport chain and burning fat for fuel and we generate our 36 to 38 ATP from all these three sources 1-2 and three and so that’s what’s happening in your mitochondria. So just to kind of highlight macro nutrients, fats, protein, carbs, very important two, don’t junk it up with all the toxins that you mentioned. And then of course, making sure we. Can breakdown protein. Make sure we’re getting enough iron making. Sure, we’re not. Anemic right? All of those things kind of flow into allowing all these pathways to to work optimally.
Evan Brand: That’s amazing, I love the breakdown to that. The visual super helpful. So just to clarify a little bit. So for women out there, you’re saying that if having heavy ministration, they have low iron. It’s not just the the low iron that we assume is creating like a low oxygenation, you’re you’re showing here. The low iron is literally creating a mitochondrial deficit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. You’re not getting the oxygen in right? If we go back to here, right? Mitochondria, what do we need to get into the mitochondria? Oxygen, what’s one of the big carrying capacities for oxygen in the body? Hemoglobin and then iron affects hemoglobin in red blood cells, right? Hemoglobin is part of the red blood cell carrying capacity and we need the iron to really keep the hemoglobin levels up so we can carry enough oxygen.
Evan Brand: Wow, so there’s why you’re tired.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Could be. Yet, one and then of course all of the other nutrients play a role. Not enough of the amino acids. The only issue with this graph, any biochemists that are looking on? I think the only thing that’s missing is really the FADH2, so it should. So, all these things, they’re just reducing compounds. Really, the whole goal of this Kreb cycle to run is just grabbing hydrogens. And then once we grab these hydrogens, Uhm, these things get cleaved off, and then it generates ATP. What’s happening there? And all these things like hydroxymethyl iterate. These are right. These are all driven through Co, Q10, right? We need Co Q10 to make that happen.
Evan Brand: Now for people like supplementing ketones, if you go back up to the top there, you can basically kind of inject your own spark plug into the cycle, I guess right? If you’re taking exogenous ketones, what is that doing in relationship to this whole cycle?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s giving you more beta hydroxybutyrate. The problem is your body is going to primarily want to use that when insulin levels are lower, so you have to keep your insulin levels and check. If not, you’re not setting your Physiology up to want to burn that. If you’re probably, gonna pee it out more like more than likely versus burn it. Cause typically, your body has an enzyme called hormone sensitive light pace where it wants to break down fat and convert more of these ketones. Hormone-sensitive light base is inverse with insulin. So hire your hormone-sensitive light pace is you need lower insulin to make that happen.
Evan Brand: So the lady who eats the donut and then goes to the store and buys her exogenous ketones, she’s wasting her.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Probably not as good. There may be some mild benefits that you get cognitively just ’cause your brain has some additional fuel to run on. If people brains are insulin resistant, they may have a lot of sugar from that doughnut, but the cells in their brain maybe so numb. To it that they may not be able to access it so some ketones could be helpful, but in the end, you want to fix the insulin resistance if you’re going to do it. Try doing both. Don’t just do the ketones. Try to do both that you can.
Evan Brand: And you can make your own ketones too. For free.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah, that’s how you’re doing that you keep in your insulin in check. And you’re going to start. Making your own. 100%.
Evan Brand: Yeah, cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool, that was awesome. Very cool guys. I hope you guys enjoyed today’s podcast. We’re trying to be a little bit more visual; you know. Go into some hard hard science Y stuff, but you know just kind of zoom out. Like what’s the take home right? The take home is don’t put junkie toxins and that screw up your mitochondria right? Antibiotics, I mean antibiotics? You know if if you have an acute infection that’s not resolving, you know you gotta do what you gotta do, right? You have an acute pneumonia. You gotta do what you gotta do. Talk to your doctor about it. Just don’t go to antibiotics all the time as your first line defense. Try to do some. More natural things to fix it #2 you know, try to be aware of mold in your environment. Make sure you’re not. Getting exposed to pesticides. Chemicals heavy metals. Make sure you’re doing your best to hydrate right. We need water to make this whole thing work too. I would say after that make sure you have your macronutrient style, then good quality protein fats and carbohydrates. Organic sources dial in your carbs so you’re not insulin resistant and make sure your inflammation is good. Inflammation helps with oxygenation and blood flow. Then after that we can look at using supplemental nutrients in my line and Evans line we have mito supports products mine is mito synergy. Evans is my toe. Boots will put links down below. Those products have a lot of these nutrients. It’s going to have the ribose to creatine the carnitine, the B vitamin. Since it’s going to have the Co Q10, it’s going to have actually Kreb cycle intermediary compounds like fumarate malate, succinate. All those different nutrients or run those pathways better. Of course, that all sits on top of a solid diet. Don’t take supplements if you’re going to eat crap, eat really great and then say OK now I’m going to work on enhancing it. And again, we can run testing on organic. Message to look at some of these intermediary nutrients, like citrate to connotate succinate bloomer, a mallet we can actually test them, which is pretty cool.
Evan Brand: Yeah, the testing is the best part because you you know if you actually need it. I can tell you the average person has mitochondrial problem, so in general, could you just take this? I kind of call it a multi for the mitochondria. Could you just take that test? You know like a guess and check you could, but we like to see the data and obviously my biggest thing is looking for mold colonization. Candida overgrowth clostridia. Some of these gut infections and how that affects your brain chemistry too. So when you do the oh, you really are getting the best bang for your buck in terms of testing. Like if you could only do one test out there, I think the oh it would. Probably be the number one most.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Important 110%. Anything else you want to say?
Evan Brand: If people need help, they can reach out to you worldwide or me worldwide. Doctor J at justinhealthcom me Evan at evanbrand.com and we would love to chat with you about your symptoms, your goals and we’ll tell you for your good fit for care, so please feel free to reach out. Look forward to helping you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Foot and get adjusted. Help calm here and then you guys have any questions, comments or concerns. Put him down below. Let us know. Kind of what you’re doing. What’s working that really helps us out as well. Very cool. Alright guys, well you guys have a phenomenal day here and we’ll. Be in touch. Take care of y’all.
Evan Brand: Sounds good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright Bye bye.
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Mitochondrial Dysfunction & Other Causes of Chronic Fatigue- Mold & Candida Contribute | Podcast #287
Welcome to another episode of Beyond Wellness Podcast! For this episode, Dr. J and Evan Brand talk about chronic fatigue, which is a disorder characterized by extreme tiredness that doesn’t go away with rest. Because sometimes, chronic fatigue can also be associated with mold issues, Candida and etc. Check this podcast out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:06 Mitochondria
8:26 Toxins that damage Mitochondria
14:40 Mold Issues
22:22 How Mold and Candida affect Mitochondria
31:05 Nutrients and Vitamins
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan brand. Today we’re going to be chatting about chronic fatigue, mold issues and other different causes that could drive chronic fatigue. Evan, how are we doing today?
Evan Brand: I’m doing really well. We’ve got just a couple of papers on this. And we don’t really more than that, because we have so much experience now ever since I had my issues. And you and I started digging into this. It’s like you and I jumped into the mold whirlwind over the past few years together. And it’s been really fun learning and educating people simultaneously. We’ve implemented stuff in our houses that have been game changers for us. We’ve implemented stuff clinically, that have been game changers for others, but I believe this is one of the biggest triggers of chronic fatigue is mycotoxins and I experienced it personally and so I can tell you my own issue, I was exhausted and I’m still recovering from that and your exercise intolerance goes down and a lot of that has to do with the mitochondrial damage to happen. So could you just give us maybe like mitochondria 101 What like, how do they help people? Why are they so important? What happens when they get damaged and all that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so your mitochondria, they exist inside of yourself, okay? And it’s going to generate ATP. And part of you know, so you have glycolysis, right? That’s going to be outside the cell where you’re kind of taking glucose generating energy. And then you have the Krebs cycle where you’re spitting out different amounts of hydrogen and ATP. And those hydrogens then now go into so you have these things called reducing agents, called FADHNAD and they gather up hydrogens, okay? And then these hydrogens, right, they enter the electron transport chain, they generate more ATP. So you have glycolysis to the Krebs cycle, right, or citric acid cycle, same thing. And then we have from there into the electron transport chain. And this is where we start to enter the mitochondria. And we need things like carnitine to help shuttle fat into the mitochondria. We need B1 B2 to help with fatty acid oxidation in the mitochondria, it’s part of how the mitochondria burns fuel to run the Krebs cycle and to get the electron transport chain set up we need B vitamins, we need magnesium we need carnitine like I already mentioned before, we need creatine we can use things like ribose we can use things like co q 10. These are all really really important nutrients that fuel these different metabolic pathways obviously, intermediary nutrients like Fumarate and malate and succinate. And then different amino acids are involved with the electron transport chain and or the citric acid cycle, Krebs cycle the leading up to it. So all of these pathways, they roll and they really help generate energy and generate ATP, which is that energetic fuel source.
Evan Brand: And there’s a really good picture of the citric acid cycle some of the stuff that that you and I’ve learned from some of our books and study so we may be able to put that up in the shownotes to where people just want to download it look at it, I think it’s kind of cool because you could look at it and you could just quickly learn all the different nutrients that fuel each part of the cycle. So then I don’t want to say you could spot treat but for lack of a better word, you could kind of spot treat and go, Oh, magnesium, boom, I might be missing that be six. Oh, I might be missing that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% Yep. 100%. I’m gonna try to pull up a good picture for everyone to see here. So they can kind of wrap their head around it. A picture’s worth 1000 words. So if you guys can kind of understand the concept. I think that makes it a lot easier. I’ll pull that up here in a minute. Okay. All right, cool. Anything else you wanted to highlight on that before we dive in a little bit more?
Evan Brand: Well, you mentioned a bunch of different nutrients. And so I think the most important part to pay attention to is that today we’re focusing kind of zoomed in. But you mentioned a lot of stuff that people could be deficient in for other reasons that we might not cover today. So parasite infections, bacterial overgrowth, any kind of dysbiosis. That’s not allowing the gut bacteria to produce some of these nutrients that may be involved. But that’s not the highlight of the show today. Today we’re focusing on other triggers and other causes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110%. Exactly. Very good. So of course, the first thing is we have things that enter the mitochondria. And that major nutrient, that major compound that’s going to enter that mitochondria is going to be acetyl co a, and acetyl. co a is made from fats, carbs and proteins. So the first thing I always tell people is we have to make sure we can digest and break down our fats, carbs and proteins. And we have to make sure we have good proteins, good fats, primarily carbohydrates. You know, of course, if you’re more active, you know, you can always do more safe starches and make sure you’re not doing too many grains and an inflammatory refined sugar. But we need good fats, we need good proteins because that performs and creates a really good building block for that acetyl. co a, and we need that for really, really, really good mitochondrial production.
Evan Brand: Yep. Let’s dive into this study. This is really cool. One of my favorites, this guy, Dr. Brewer-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you don’t mind, I want to just hit one more thing. Just I want to set the table a little bit more for the listeners. Okay, let me just do this here real quick. All right. This is a really, really good picture. Can you see that on my screen yet?
Evan Brand: Yep, there it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, good. This gives you a pretty good idea. So the mitochondria is kind of the powerhouse of the cell. All right. And so when you look at energy, we first have the cytosol that’s outside of the cell. This is glucose. Glucose comes in glycolysis means breaking down glucose. glyco means glucose. And then license means breaking down. So we generate a little bit of energy here, ATP from glycolysis. Okay, then that then that little bit of energy then moves into the mitochondria. So this is the mitochondria here right now. So we have acetylcholine, acetylcholine then starts going into the Krebs cycle, that Krebs cycles in a turn twice and it’s typically forget exactly, I think it’s two to three NADH or going to be spit out for one fa, d h2. And this is going to turn around twice. And then these different electrons, these hydrogens that are collected from the Krebs cycle, the NADH and the FA, d h 22 to 3, NADH, one fA d h two going to enter the electron transport chain, and then more ATP is then created. So I want to say it’s like 36 to 39 ATP are created from glucose to Krebs cycle to electron transport chain, and I want to say it’s two or three for glucose. Like Allah says two or three for the Krebs cycle, maybe six for the Krebs cycle. And the electron transport chain is the majority where it happens. I want to say 33 or so I want to say it’s about 36 to 39 total ATP, per this whole thing and this is a mitochondria right here. So all most of this stuff happens in the mitochondria and then some of it happens outside in the cytosol.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you. So if someone has major mitochondrial issues according to this picture, it looks like you would still be able to generate some, but it’s going to be a minimal amount of ATP created from glycolysis. Is that true?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct and then glycolysis is going to be dirty fuel right? So you’re going to get a lot more oxidative stress because of the advanced glycation end products that occur when you start making a lot of sugar right? A lot of sugar you coat your proteins right this increases oxidation oxidation and and then require more electrons to stabilize because when you when you oxidize something, right, think of cutting open an avocado, and it browns right or think about cutting open an apple and it browns, you’re losing electrons. That’s what’s happening there. Now you can easily go take a nice lemon or lime and squeeze the vitamin C from that on there, and that will prevent it from oxidizing. So the difference in your body is going to require a lot more antioxidant reserves. If you start creating a lot of oxidative stress, so glucose always burns dirty, okay, and there’s a really good book by Kristofferson called ‘Tripping Over the Truth’. And it’s a book all about mitochondria in glucose and cancer. So there’s a lot of data on this stuff already. So it’s really important to know that’s why we want to be more fat burners, good proteins and you can get carbs, you know, according to your metabolic needs. If you’re more active and, and you’re healthy, healthier and more fit and more lean and more active, then you can definitely add in some good high quality safe starches, but you really want to dial that in according to your metabolic needs. It’s not a set kind of size for everyone.
Evan Brand: Very cool. Thanks for the picture. That’s awesome to see. So where do the toxins come into the picture? Well, the toxins are going to damage the mitochondria. So as you showed here, you can make some energy outside of the mitochondria. So you can still quote get by, but you may be exhausted if that Krebs cycle isn’t working properly due to potentially some of those nutrient deficiencies you covered that could be fueling the Krebs cycle. Maybe you’ve got infections or malabsorption issues going on. But we know that mold toxin damages the mitochondria law as well and actually sent you another paper in the notes if you wanted to look at it. It’s called mycotoxin its impact on gut health and microbiota. And this is pretty cool, because the end of this paper discusses that if you have good intestinal flora, they say here, it’s now well established that a healthy gut microbiota is largely responsible for the overall health of the host findings revealed that gut microbiota is capable of eliminating mycotoxin from the host naturally, provided that the host is healthy with a balance of good gut bugs. So long story short, and there’s a cool picture on that paper to just I don’t know if you can pull it up, but it’s called frontiers, cellular infection, microbiology, it’s a really cool picture of the gut and it just shows on the right that you’ve got all these different infections, like helicobacter, you’ve got E. coli, you’ve got reduction of beneficial bacteria, and therefore, the mycotoxins are not going to get treated as they should.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, I see that right here. Yep. So on that you see a whole lot bunch of decrease in good beneficial bacteria. I can share it right real quick here with y’all. You can see a decrease in a lot of your beneficial floor right here, man, you don’t see an increase in a lot of the pathogenic floor right here. And then of course, you have lipid polysaccharides. These are going to be your endotoxin that are the outer coating of the bad Gram negative bacteria. And then of course, you have more than mycotoxins. And of course, that’s going to stress out the microbiome stress out the immune system is going to increase gut permeability. The more gut more your gut is permeable, aka leaky gut, the more immune stress you’re going to have, because now your immune system is interacting with compounds and toxins that normally wouldn’t Is that correct?
Evan Brand: Yep, that makes perfect sense. And this makes sense of why probiotics can be beneficial right out of the gate. A lot of people discuss and you and I discussed binders and Bluetooth ion and fixing the environment and all of that, but I mean, this shows here that bumping up your good bacteria is going to be a critical component to so I personally implemented a 50 to 100 billion have some multi stream probiotics and I have felt better. Is that the magic here? No, I’m doing a lot of things, but it has been pretty beneficial.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% Yep, pull up that pull up that Brewer paper. Now I think that’s going to be the next thing we should talk about. So let’s go over that.
Evan Brand: This is crazy. This is crazy. So if you scroll down, long story short, in clinic, Brewer and some of his associates in this in this paper, they were testing using urine testing, which is what Justin and I run in clinic as well. We do a urine mycotoxin screen. And right here on the first page. It’s crazy says right here that urine specimens showed that 93% of his chronic fatigue patients these are known chronic fatigue sufferers. 93% of those were positive for at least one mycotoxin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So if you look here, right, here’s 112 patients 93% had at least one mycotoxin, again you have different mycotoxins, you have the aflatoxin- This is common like peanut stuff okra toxin and then you have the tri coat the scenes which is common in the in the black mold the Stacie buttress black mold, okay, so these different toxins we can actually test and now it’s important. Some people may test these things and they don’t do a really good glute. If I don’t push people that have really poor to toxification they may not push these things out. So you really want to make sure a couple of days ahead of time you do a good Bluetooth ion push and and even that you may just want to even look at the home too and do a really good play test on your home. Again, we use immunologic labs, we’ll put some links down below if you guys want to procure those tests, but some people they may have a hard time pushing it out. So yeah, so number one is I always recommend do a glutathione push. If you feel achy or really bad or brain foggy or tired or fatigued that could be a good time. Also, if you have a lot of mold in the home, especially molds that have these mycotoxins The nice thing about the amino Linux. It’ll tell you if these mycotoxins are produced by the species of mold they find so they see Aspergillus, or different mold that can be produced during water damage, then usually there’s an oak, there’s usually going to be a mycotoxin attached to it. There are some molds that are natural, like in soil and just plant degradation outside. Those are different some more from pet dander and those kind of things. So you’re able to get a window into all those things, as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and I just want to say one comment about the push. When I first did my original mycotoxin urine screen, I did do Bluetooth ion for maybe three days and I guess that wasn’t enough because my Michael phenolic acid, which is a mycotoxin that comes from Penicillium, which I was exposed to my level was a 12, which was in the red range, but it was just barely. And then when I retested six months later after trying really hard and doing sauna therapy, which is another way you could actually do provocation. If someone doesn’t have glue defi on, you could do a sauna session, then collect urine, that could also help but six months later, my levels went from a 12 to a 1700 my levels were off the chart, even though I’d been trying for six months to get it out, and I did feel better. Some may look at that. And I’ve had some clients, you know, call me and they’re like, I’m crying. I’m freaking out, my levels went up what’s going on, and we explain most of the time, that doesn’t mean new exposures happen. That just means you’re getting better at detoxification, and you’re pushing more out. And that’s what happened to me. So my levels were really, really low. Six months later, they were really, really high. And then another six, eight months later, they were low again, indicating that I did actually detox it and push it out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now part of the reason why we were able to stick with it is because we knew that you had high levels of mold in your old home, correct?
Evan Brand: Well, so it was a crawlspace exposure. Looking back at the plates. The house was minimally bad honestly, what I think happened based on talking to Scott force grant, he his theory on it is that my tick bites that I got sort of set the mold in motion because I had the most exposure when I was a kid hanging out in my grandmother’s house. Were her babies basement flooded many times. And I remember going down there and smelling musty basement. So I guarantee you, I’ve had mold toxin, you know, just because I’m genetically unable to detox it like a lot of people are, I probably had it since I was a very, very young child. But his theory was that the tick bites basically weaken the immune system enough to allow the mycotoxins to really take me down. Whereas before, I may have had some symptoms, but it wasn’t as it wasn’t as brutal. So it was the combination of tick bites, and then some more recent mold exposure, that kind of retriggered things. Yeah, and I think it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I think it was a combination because I didn’t really get exposed to that much upon looking back at my plates and comparing those to some of my clients. I’m like, you know what, this wasn’t that bad. I mean, we had a though, I remember them being more high. So everything in the house was in single digits. It was just the crawlspace that was in double digits. And then once we did the fog treatment, everything was back to normal but what really screwed me is when we modified the the hva system. And we were trying to circulate the air in the crawlspace. Better. So the ductwork was changed to make a complete loop system from the crawlspace, sucking that air pumping that air into the house, and then the house pumping back in. So it was a continuous loop. And that’s what really screwed me because that setup wasn’t there before. And that’s what really cranked the levels up. And that’s where, even after we did an initial treatment, the levels went way up. Because now we were bringing in bad air into the breathable air. And so once we reverse that correctly, so if I remember correctly, is you had this crawlspace right, there was mold in the crawlspace. That was really high. The rest of the house was okay, but there was a lot of whole mold in the crawlspace they fixed the ventilation part of the home before they treated the crawlspace. Is that correct? Yeah. So we Yeah, we treated the home silly. I mean, absolutely. I can’t believe that happened. I’m just like, How the heck did these guys screw that up? I know, I know. So So then we treated it again though. And then the reverse the duck system that we had put in we reversed all of that. And then treated it again. And then it was fine. So technically, I could have stayed because the plates were incredible after that, but I needed a bigger house. Anyway, we had another kid come in. So it was a good excuse for me to just say, hey, let’s just go ahead and leave.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right but that was a big trigger for you. And then I think even in the new home that was still a little bit more mold that came back on that home to right near the retreat that address.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, we treated this house as well. We had some high colonies near the kitchen, which is potentially from the kitchen empties out into a screen room. So if those screen doors were always open, bringing bringing in outside air outdoor molds over time can accumulate in the house and make mycotoxins so yeah, we’ve we’ve treated it and now we just do some of the maintenance solution and we do some of the candles and such and now we’ve got it under control. So and then-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also in general, you have the dehumidifier put in so then the humidity is now a lot less in the home. So that helps so there’s less breeding ground for it. And then you also just have air filtration throughout the home. So even if things were to come in your filters would naturally grab it anyway.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I would assume my house is probably one of the few in Kentucky that doesn’t have mold in it because even with our whole house dehumidifiers, I mean, it’s pouring rain as we speak right now the ground rarely dries out because we have so much rain here lately. And even with the whole house dehumidifiers running, we’re barely keeping the house at 50% 45 to 50% humidity if you didn’t have those Running Man, who knows outside right now is like 86% humidity. And you and I’ve discussed this many times on the podcast, but you know, if you have humidity levels above 50% continuously in your home, you don’t have to have a water event. You don’t have to have a dishwasher overflow or a toilet leaking. Just the high moisture from the humidity alone can create mold, and that’s what happens in many homes that you and I’ve tested.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it really happens in areas where the temperature is just a little bit low. So you don’t have the AC because the AC will act with a natural dehumidifier but it’s temperature driven where humidifier is humidity percent driven. So I had a little bit of so if you have a you know 65 or 70, and it’s not quite triggering the AC, that’s where you really get screwed, but it’s not cold enough, not hot enough to trigger an AC but it’s also very humid 6065 70 or it’s just a basement area where basements are really cool but humid, that’s where you really need it because then if you get a humid basement, that’s cool. Well guess what it’s going to that ventually those molds are going to go upstairs to the rest of the home even if the rest of the home is is you know nice in and low humidity because of the air conditioner. So having a dehumidifier is important. I had a little bit of water issues over the weekend I was changing my water filter. And there was like three vowels you have to turn off. I only turned off two out of the three so it leaked a bit. Nothing bad I you know, got three or four towels cleaned it up. But what I did is I went in crank that dehumidifier down to 40%. And within two, three hours, any residual water that was hanging out was all evaporated, gone. But if you had 60% humidity in that basement, that water would just sit there for days on end. Once that water sits for 48 hours. It’s gonna start raining mold toxins.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m glad you got the dehumidifier too. That’s, that’s pretty much essential for where we live with higher humidity. So, back to the chronic fatigue thing. So let’s keep going back on this paper because this is what I had.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you want you can go share your screen here, Evan, you can share your screen if you like. Evan, are you there? Can you hear me? I lost that and guy, so I’ll wait for him to kind of come back on here. I’ll just keep on riffing. While we are waiting for him. I’m just gonna give him a message here.
All right, awesome. So just chatting with Evan here on the on the side here. He’ll be back on the show in just a minute. Let me keep rolling with you guys. So in general, we have the mitochondria we have different mold toxins that can affect and poison the mitochondria. One of the things that we get with fungus or mold is we get things called oxalates. And oxalates can enter the mitochondria enter the Krebs cycle, and make it harder for that Krebs cycle to work and harder to generate energy. So of course, that’s going to be a big component to stressing out the mitochondria. So when we look at molds coming into the end environment, whether it’s mold from outdoors, whether it’s molds or fungal because it kind of have molds, right, and then you have different things like funguses in your gut like Candida, they kind of have a similar mechanism where they’re going to affect and poison the mitochondria. and different things like that can create oxalate and they can really make it harder for the mitochondria to generate ATP.
I’m going to show a couple of articles here I got an article on mold and how it can affect or Candida and how it can affect the mitochondria. I’m gonna pull this up with you guys here right now so you guys can see it. So this is interesting right here, you guys can see my screen chronic intestinal candidiasis as a possible ecological factor in chronic fatigue syndrome. We talked about Candida syndrome, also known as Candida related complex, putatively caused by an overgrowth of Candida, so that’s an overgrowth, not the Candida is not ever going to be there. It should be there and maybe at very low levels, it’s the significant overgrowth. That’s the problem.
And essentially in response of large number of patient with chronic fatigue to an oral antifungal agent, there’s evidence that Candida infection of the mucous membranes depress our T cells and natural killer cells. Similar abnormalities of the immune function are found in chronic fatigue. So it’s altering our immune function. So our body’s ability to deal with an immune response and deal with infections and deal with stress is going to be impaired big time. This is this is really, really, really important to kind of highlight and then it says, um, and it’s important in preventing reactions like epstein barr cytomegalovirus, herpes virus, there are other viral infections that could play a role with chronic fatigue. Right? And again, with chronic fatigue, the question is what comes first? Is it the chicken or the egg? In other words, when you have a an infection, is it the infection is cause is the underlying cause or did you have a weakened immune system leading up to the infection that caused the problem to begin with.
That’s really what the underlying issue is, did you get the infection first? Or did the infection come as a result of the weakened immune system, and I’m not sure if it matters too much, we always try to line up what the what the likely causes. But we know here things like Candida and gut issues can affect the T cell and the natural killer cell, this is going to be our th one branch of the immune system. So our th one or those kind of special forces, they get in there and really do a lot of killing ahead of time. And they kind of the first line defense of the immune response. That’s like kind of really, really, really important to highlight and then it talks about here. And so then when you have a compromised immune system, other parasites other viral issues may be an issue then mold may be more of a problem. So now when you get exposed to mold, you may have been able to whip through it no problem you adapted to a bun now it’s like dang I think really knocked on your butt. So then said yes. The immune dysfunction found in the sorter has been considered the primary underlying cause. So this imbalance of cytotoxic T cell and T helper cells and natural killer cells is the underlying cause. It proposed that the chronic intestinal combat is maybe an agent, which leads to the immune depression in many chronic fatigue patients, and therefore, it could be a causal factor in chronic fatigue. So a lot of times we have the guts stuff leads the way. Okay, the guts stuff leads the way and then everything else happens after that, that makes sense. All right, excellent. Excellent. Very good.
I’m going to just take a pause here for one second. We lost Evan here, so I’m gonna see if I can get him back on the show as we chat. All right, let’s keep on rolling. So we talked about some of the guts stuff now you can see some of these things here with Candida and mold. We can see the same thing with CBOE as well. All right, if we look at small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, SIBO and chronic fatigue, guess what we’re gonna see similar things and why? Why is it? Well, it’s because of the fact that the God is where 80% of the immune system lives this is important. So when you look at research, research suggests the high prevalence of SIBO among chronic fatigue patients, One study found 77% of chronic fatigue. patients had SIBO why because when you start to have gut issues, the immune system starts to get revved up, right. And when the immune system gets revved up, it gets weakened or you start to create an imbalance like that th one part of the immune system starts to become depleted. And when that th one becomes depleted, that’s going to make it harder for you to go after and deal with other stressors like SIBO like Candida like mold, right. This is why the gods plays a big role is because you have this tube.
That’s technically outside of your body yet when you swallow food, it’s technically outside of your body because when it goes into the bloodstream, that’s now inside, technically, it’s outside of the body, you’re have 80% of the immune cells in the golf, the gastric associated lymphoid tissue, that’s the part of the stomach. And then we have the mall. That’s the mucus associated lymphoid tissue that’s in the in the small intestine. And if you have stressors, whether it’s bugs or bad food that stresses out the immune system, the more chronically the immune system is stressed. It creates imbalances and makes it so other things that now encounter your body like mold or Candida or viruses like epstein barr mano, right? The kissing disease. Now that’s going to create more stress and really, really, really knock on your butt. So we always have to look at what the underlying root cause of everything is. So, so we don’t lose sight of that. So we always want to understand what’s the root cause? What are associated causes and just because it’s an associative cause, you still want to make sure you fix it. Because sometimesyou’re not really sure if there’s three or four different infection 234 different bugs, does it mean that hey, each one is 25% equal, maybe, sometimes one’s a bigger one. And we also have to make sure we set the table. So if there’s food or other issues that are driving the problem, to begin, we got to make sure we fix that. What if those things have created an autoimmune issue? And now you have Hashimoto is because of the mold or because of the bug issue. Right. And now, the thyroids been attacked for a decade. Well, now what do you got to do? You can’t just ignore the thyroid and be puritanical and say, well, the root cause is Candida.
Therefore, if I only fix the root cause, then everything else should be fixed. No, you may still have to go in there and support the thyroid because the hormone levels have now dropped, or the adrenal levels now have dropped. So you, you, you know, it’s easy to be like, well, the root causes this, everything else goes downstream, yes, but you may have to come in there and support those other pathways so you can get better and feel better faster. If not, you may be suffering for a long time. Really, really, really important points. All right, I’m going to roll with questions guys and see where you’re at with everything. So in general, with foods, big things that are going to stress this out, if you’re eating lots of refined sugar, and you’re and you’re spitting out a lot of candy to the candy doesn’t make a whole bunch of lactic acid, and that can make it and though that can easily eat a lot of your B vitamins, so the more Candida and the more bugs we have, the more you’re going to be consuming and ripping up a lot of your B vitamins. So B vitamins are very important. When you have bad bacteria, it’s gonna make it a lot harder for you to consume a lot of those good healthy B vitamins because your bugs in your gut are going to be consuming it for you. That’s like super, super important bugs in your gut are going to be consuming it. Number two is the bacteria is and it produced toxins. And this is big because these toxins now put more stress on your guts. So put more stress on your detoxification pathway.
So when you have a lot more gut toxins, like polysaccharide or endotoxin, or the different mycotoxins may be made by Candida, and now your detoxification pathways get stressed. And now the sulfur that your body needs to run detoxification pathway have to get up regulated, you’re going to need more B vitamins like b 12, and fold a and be sick. So you’re going to need more of those nutrients as well to run those detoxification pathways. And so that can also drive fatigue as well because if you’re really like your body only has so many so much resources, so if you’re really toxic, if you’re really toxic, your body’s gonna allocate a lot of the nutrients on the B vitamins side or the sulfur side that may plug into the mitochondria. ….. ossification have less resources over here. So just just very, very, very, very important to keep that in the back of your head. Okay, awesome. Okay, very, very good.
All right, excellent. So it’s very, very important to really keep an eye on all the resources here because the more stressed your detoxification pathways gets, they’re going to pull a lot of that sulfur, they’re going to pull a lot of the B vitamins, and those are all nutrients that would plug into that mitochondrial pathway to begin with. So really, really, really, really important. You need so for people forget you need sulfur to actually make a lot of your dopamine and adrenaline. So dopamine and adrenaline. You need good sulfur. All right. And so if you if you’re chronically stressed, you’re going to be making a lot of adrenalin and eventually you’re going to be depleted because you’re not going to have that good software to take dopamine to norepinephrine, epinephrine, so you deplete sulfur because when you have dope mean that’s your feel good neurotransmitter you feel good, helps you focus. It’s a good reward center neurotransmitter, and that will go downstream, the more stressed your app is epinephrine, norepinephrine, that’s basically adrenaline or catecholamines. And these things are going to get very, very depleted, the sulfur will, will get very, very depleted, the more you’re chronically stressed, and then you’ll have less sulfur. And then the less sulfur you have, you’re going to have less building blocks for glutathione for your methylation, for all your detoxification nutrients, so it really plugs in. You want to look at everything holistically, so it all makes sense. All right, wonderful. All right, guys. Hey, phenomenal chat with you. If you guys enjoy today’s podcast talking about Candida talking about mold and mycotoxins connecting it to the mitochondria connecting it to energy. These are all very, very important components and on how and why everything you know is vitally important, why it all connects. So in general, co q 10. Very important, you know, anywhere between 100 to 500 milligrams a day. B vitamins, you know, a good high quality B Complex especially if we see on an organic acid test more forming a glutamate or more methylmalonic acid that tells us B12. And it also tells us full later benign, we may see things like xanthi urinator, kind of urinate which tell us B6 is important because B6 helps with our brain it is needed for the synthesis of neurotransmitters, right serotonin and dopamine. So if we don’t have good neurotransmitters that’s gonna really really affect our body’s ability to sleep to deal with stress mood, our adrenals right B five is a really important one pens authentic acid, we need it for our adrenals and also plugged into our mitochondria. Krebs cycle amino acids like I’ll see on these mitochondrial tests, we’ll see low sulfur like we’ll see low sulfate or low power of glutamate, or we’ll see low Pokorny, which is a sign of lower amino acids and these amino acids plug in to the Krebs cycle.
And you can see here I’ll try to pull it up on screen how the amino acids plug in, but there’s a bunch of amino acids and the Krebs cycle. I’ll try to pull it up here. Now, why is this important? Well, because if you have poor digestion, because of mold, because of Candida, guess what’s going to happen to your body’s ability to break down protein? It’s going to drop, it’s going to significantly drop. Okay, I’m going to pull this up here so you guys can see how amino acids plug in. They plug in significantly. Okay, I got it right up here for you guys. Alright, cool. Let me just show this to you guys so you can see it. So this is what the Krebs cycle looks like. Okay, so you have remember this is the glucose here is in the site is all that’s outside of the mitochondria. Okay. All right, and then this stuff here comes in glucose phospholipids animal pyruvate pyruvate to acetylcholine. Now this starts to enter into the mitochondria, so sudo Coase now in the mitochondria, so look at these building blocks a Piru a to acetal koi look what it is people listening here we have a video version two so you guys can see my screen alanine cysteine glycine serine three Nene trip the fan right I so loosing all these things are big these are all essential amino acids that plug in to pyruvate and the seal co a and these kind of provide the building blocks to ratchet through your Krebs cycle and this thing is going to turn around twice. So you have saturate the ISO citrate and then you have alpha ketoglutarate more glutamine more prolene more histidine more origin and get plugged in. Then you have [inaudible] when you have more isoleucine more veiling right these are branched chain amino acids. Now this is part of the reason why working out with branched chain amino acids helpful refining 3d and then it goes from succinylcholine to succinate or we have tyrosine and phenyl alanine, which helps dopamine and adrenaline and then Fumarate to melee, melee to oxaloacetate, which is aspirin gene and aspartate. And then it plugs right back into we’ll see the code so you can see how that works. All right, you can see how that works very, very important amino acids. So if we have very poor, if we have very, very poor digestion, we have low hydrochloric acid, we have low enzymes, that’s an a play a really, really big role in this whole thing. So getting your enzymes and your stomach acid up really having a clean diet, really breaking down your food, and then really working with a good practitioner to look at the mold toxins or the gut stress the Candida in the gut. Right, and it’s more of an overgrowth, maybe looking at SIBO maybe looking at H. pylori or other gut infections. Looking at the environmental mold, if there is mold, how do we fix it right? What’s the root cause of that mold? Is it a muted humidity issue? Do we just need an air filter? Do we have to do a bio balance protocol in the home to get the mold level down right? So we have to look at the whole picture so we get to the root cause I hope that makes sense.
Any other questions? Feel free I’ll chime in and try to answer them here for y’all. I think we got most stuff here that’s on point kind of already dialed in. So if you guys want to reach out to Evan, EvanBrand.com is a console link you can feel free and schedule. Also head over to my site JustinHealth.com to schedule a consult with myself if you want to dive in deeper we’ll put links down below. If you guys enjoyed this content, share it with friends and family make sure you subscribe hit that like button hit the bell so you get notifications. It’s phenomenal chatting with y’all really appreciate it. Just do me a favor try to apply some of this information so that you can make yourself healthier. It’s really important when you’re healthier. You become a better parent, a better person a better employee, a better boss, and it just it really helps the whole world get better the healthier you get the whole world gets better. Alright guys, it was phenomenal chat and you guys have a great day. Take care. Bye
References:
Audio Podcast:
Joov Red Light Therapy Boosting Your Hormone & Mitochondria w/ Scott Nelson Interview | Podcast #269
In this podcast, we are going to talk about red lights, a device that helps us in boosting our hormones and internal health. Today’s episode is with Scott Nelson, one of the founders of Joov Red Light Therapy.
In this episode, we cover:
01:59 All About Light Therapy
13:37 Light Therapy Benefits
26:12 Fluorescent Light Issues
34:03 Joov’s Dose
35:09 Red Light’s Safety
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here today is going to be a fabulous interview. I have Scott Nelson, who’s one of the co founders of Joov. Joov is a phenomenal red light technology really good, with lots of cool benefits. I’m really excited to have him on the show today and talk all about things red lights, and how we can use it to improve your health. Well, Scott, welcome to the show.
Scott Nelson: Dr. J. Pleasure to be on the show, really looking forward to the discussion.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, Scott. So first, tell me about your background. How did you even get into a field where you’re, hey, I’m going to invent red light technology and bring it to the masses. How does that even work? How do you even get to this point?
Scott Nelson: Right? Well, I’d like to say it was all planned out and very strategic, but that’s not really the case. I personally, I spent most of my professional career in the traditional med tech space. So with companies like Medtronic, Covidien, Boston Scientific, and really more specifically the peripheral vascular arena, so have have a really strong med tech background. But the the story of how we we found juvies is really probably not too dissimilar to any other startup. This is, you know, back in early 2015, and my wife and her, her sister purchased a red light therapy package at a local from a local Spa in Minneapolis. That’s where we started the company and saw really good benefits. But when we looked at the the product landscape and the available information online to learn more about this, this technology, there really wasn’t a lot of good, good offerings. Either way, right? Whether it was to learn in a sort of easily digestible way more about light therapy, or photobiomodulation, or from a product standpoint, there really wasn’t, you know, very good, very good offerings for when it comes to devices that you could use at home. And so we kind of thought how there might be something here, there might be an opportunity to kind of like, you know, see if we can see if we can build a product that kind of suits our own needs first, and that’s a high level overview, but that’s sort of how we got started.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. So like, what is red light we have obviously, it’s a spectrum, right? Like, what’s that frequency? How does that compare to like UVB light where you can make vitamin D but also get a sunburn? How what’s that comparison look like?
Scott Nelson: Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. Because light can be kind of one of these abstract things right for people, especially if people are new to it, when I’m new to it in terms of how it can, how it can affect our health and so, to your point, you brought up the electromagnetic spectrum, it’s actually very, very broad, you’ve got invisible infrared wavelengths of light, to visible light that we see you know, every day blue, green, red, etc, to UVB, UVA, UVB, etc. Various various wavelengths. And when we talk about light therapy, or photobiomodulation, there’s actually a very narrow range of wavelengths that have been proven time and time again and clinical science to support some really strong benefits when it comes to overall health. And those those wavelengths kind of generally fall in the in the red and near infrared range. But to your point, it’s really it’s almost like that the comparison would be like, think about 10 football fields, right? And we’re focused on be on the the 10 to 20 yard line on one of those football fields, right, and that’s where kind of the that’s the those specific wavelengths of light red and near infrared are sort of like where the magic happens when it comes to you know, health and wellness.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and that wavelength that frequencies right around what 650 to 750 nanometer frequency?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah. at nanometers is typically the, you know, the, the, the metric that’s used when we’re talking about wavelengths and it’s, it’s visible red light, and that kind of that low to mid 600 nanometer range. And then near infrared, so not not mid or far not infrared, like an infrared sauna. And we can certainly talk about that later on in the conversation but near infrared in the kind of the low to mid 800 nanometer range. And those, those are not to say that other other wavelengths of light can have can have benefits when it comes to certain health health categories. But those two specific ranges have been been proven by the most science.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, so on your device, I have a two device, it’s phenomenal. And there’s two options. There’s a red light option, then there’s a near infrared light option. So is the difference just the near infrared, just the frequencies a little bit, little longer set of 650 to 750. It’s a little bit higher up in the frequency?
Scott Nelson: It is. It is a little bit longer wavelength. And that’s probably the number one question we get all the time is what’s the difference between the two red versus near infrared. And there’s there’s probably some some different mechanisms that have action at a cellular level that will learn about over time. But for the most part, it’s really just depth of penetration. So most of the energy from red light is absorbed in the superficial layers of our of our tissue. So primarily the dermis and epidermis of your skin. And the near infrared has the unique ability to penetrate into deeper tissues and that’s why you see it studied more often for you know, reducing joint pain and inflammation or for for bone health, stimulating, you know, bone bone regrowth as an example, because-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: in the infrared, you have deeper penetration in for infrared, regular red light, it’s more superficial.
Scott Nelson: You got it. You got it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then so let’s go over that frequency. So split 650 to 750 or so for the red. And then the infrared is what, what’s that frequency there?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, it’s about the mid six hundreds for red and then the low low to mid eight hundreds for near infrared.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A mid 100 Okay, great, so I can wrap my head around that and just people listening. You kind of go violet, violet Blue, Green 400 to 500. So you keep on creeping up in that spectrum, those wavelengths get longer as you go into red and infrared. Is that correct?
Scott Nelson: You got it, you got it. And each, I think the important point to call out here and the analogy I like to use when we talk about different wavelengths of light is kind of thinking about it like food. We all understand our bodies metabolize different macronutrients in various ways right proteins, carbs, fats, and and and it matters the time of day right that you eat those as well. Like if you eat a high glycemic carbohydrate late at night, not a great recipe for success, you know, for health success anyway. But when it comes to wavelengths of light, those also have unique our bodies respond uniquely. From a physiological standpoint, different wavelengths, you mentioned UVB wavelengths of light as an example, we all understand that that our bodies produce vitamin D in response to UVB exposure. Well, our bodies are the cells you know, the mitochondria and ourselves are respond in a unique ways to when exposed to red and near infrared light as well. So it’s just kind of important understand our bodies, they react and respond to these different wavelengths of light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Can infrared or near infrared- can that burn your skin?
Scott Nelson: No, no, not not like not like you, you know your ultraviolet rays from the sun as it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it so the ultraviolet rays that’s going to be on the 400 ish frequency. So you got to be in that lower 400 450 or so to start getting the burn. Is that correct?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah, it’s in the kind of the mid the mid three hundreds is there’s a there’s a there’s a little bit of a range there like mid to high three hundreds into the low four hundreds, and then you start getting into visible, you know, visible blue light as an example.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what’s happening like, why is it that wavelength gets longer? It’s not having a burning effect? Is there a reason why your body’s able to dissipate it or tolerate it better?
Scott Nelson: That’s a great question. Probably a little bit above my pay grade. Yeah, be more more applicable to like, you know, a photobiomodulation researcher but not not entirely sure that the mechanism at play there, but I think For people listening is our bodies just respond differently to these various wavelengths of light just like food. And so you know, ultraviolet wavelengths of light can be beneficial they can help our bodies produce more vitamin D but like prolonged exposure you know isn’t isn’t isn’t isn’t great because you know we’re likely to burn it’s likely because of skin burn so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, now some people they also talk about you know vitamin you know, like the ultraviolet light that’s going to stimulate cortisol to take down melatonin that’s why we keep lights off at night so to speak, but tell me about red light on melatonin effects like can you do red light before bed? Well that negate your melatonin and make it harder for you to go to sleep and stimulate you. What do you notice with that?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, when it when it comes to red light, this is kind of one of the emerging categories within the world of light therapy that is showing some interesting promise right exposure to red and near infrared light and can can it help your body produce more melatonin? There’s some early some some small studies. I mean, we’re kind of early and learning more about this. This this category, but they’re out there. There are some interesting studies, you know, one in particular that stands out to me, while we’re while we’re chatting here is one is researchers that evaluated female basketball players that were exposed to full body red light therapy. I think if I remember correctly over, it was a relatively short amount of time. But they saw tremendous results in terms of their sleep quality. And researchers then concluded that, you know, it’s highly likely that these wavelengths of light are stimulating, you know, melatonin production. And so I think that that’s one of the and that’s, you know, anecdotally we’ve heard now from, you know, hundreds from hundreds of our own customers that have reported back, you know, benefits with regards to sleep, enhance the quality quality when using, you know, red and near infrared light on a consistent basis. And so, it appears that yes, that that’s definitely happening. And there’s no doubt that it’s definitely a better it’s a better wavelength of light to be exposed to once the sun begins to set. Because you know, if we’re, if we’ve got if we’re looking at me, I know you’ve covered this on your on your show before Dr. J. But if we’re exposed A bright blue light or bright white light at night, that’s very disruptive to our circadian rhythm. Yes, it serves as almost a signal to our brain, right? Our brain says, you know, body you should be wide awake because it’s, it’s, it’s sunny out, it’s this bright blue and white light that’s stimulating. And so we think our body thinks that it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, mid day, you know, it’s the middle part of the day when in reality, we should begin to prepare for bed time. And so that that is it’s a much it’s a much more gentle form of light to be used, you know, in the evenings, there’s no doubt but it does appear that there’s some some therapeutic effect as well in terms of, you know, stimulating more melatonin production.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So we have typical ultraviolet light. So like we have like the spectrum, right, all of the infrared stuff at the top of the spectrum. Then the Colors kind of go down, like red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet, violet here, and then you have the ultraviolet just below so it’s the ultraviolet that’s going to be burning you and then one step above is the kind of the blue and that’s most of the lights that you’re going to see indoors right.
Scott Nelson: Yep, yet white, bright white or bright blue light. Exactly. And blue light has some interesting effects. Right? It gets it gets a really bad rap, right in terms of overexposure from from devices, but usually that’s because we’re using that the wrong time of day. You know, using bright light in the morning is not mean depending on the source, of course, but it may not be bad because it helps to reset your circadian rhythm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it can actually there’s, there’s a fair amount of clinical clinical research that suggests blue light is is very good for, you know, bacterial induced acne as an example. So it has, it has its benefits, but most of the most of us, at least here, here that here in America, you know, use it the wrong way, you know, or we’re getting blasted with it at night at the wrong time of day. And you know, it’s completely disruptive to our, you know, to our our circadian biology.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So let’s kind of before we talk about, so people listen, this is going to be like the soup to nuts, everything about red light that you guys want to know about the science diving in deep but also kind of pulling it back and having the application so if you guys just don’t care, you want to know how to use it. We’re going to go over that too. Hold tight. Like let’s what’s happening when light hits your skin, you get red light going, what’s happening to the mitochondria? What’s happening underneath the hood? People can wrap their heads around that.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, and we’ll start high level and we can certainly go deeper if you want to Dr. J. But I’m at a high level, the mitochondria and ourselves. So the powerhouses of our cells are being stimulated by these wavelengths of light. So there’s a there’s a process called cellular respiration or mitochondria. Our mitochondria follows that process to produce more ATP energy adenosine triphosphate. And so we’re actually there’s a it’s there’s a pretty well understood mechanism, it’s it’s it’s probably the most well understood mechanism that red and near infrared light play a key role during the fourth phase of that process, that cellular respiration process and the end result is that our mitochondria are functioning better, they’re producing more energy. And because of that core kind of stimulation at the mitochondrial level, you’ve seen a wide range of benefits right? Everything from improve skin Health Increase Collagen Production, it anti inflammatory reactions, right, you know, through and the byproduct would be reduced, you know pain and inflammation, etc. But it’s all because of that core mechanism of action that these specific wavelengths of light are stimulating our mitochondria to produce more energy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. So it’s stimulating the mitochondria producing more energy, we have more ATP, obviously, we’re making ATP from our food as well, right? And so essentially, we have our food and then we have the light. So we’re kind of supercharging our energy system so we can generate more ATP.
Scott Nelson: You got it, you got and there’s also some I mean, that’s probably that’s, that’s in the world of photobiomodulation. That’s, that’s kind of been the gold standard mechanism of action for quite some time is is, you know, these wavelengths of light and their ability to resonate with an enzyme called cytochrome c oxidase. But as as this kind of this, this field of light therapy emerges. We’re learning we’re beginning to learn a lot more about about various mechanisms at play. There’s a lot of interesting data around light therapy and cognitive health as an example and the wavelengths of light being able to increase or create new synapses in your brain as an example, right? There’s some interesting research which we make it into related to oncology and the ability for these wavelengths of light to stimulate TGF one beta, which is a certain side of cytokines. So there’s a lot of new learnings and and certainly, we’ll learn more about the mechanisms, you know, over the, over the next 5 10 15 20 years. But that that core, that core kind of function of these wavelengths of light being able to help your mitochondria in your cells produce more energy. That’s That’s why we see such a such wide ranging benefits when it comes to the red and near infrared light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what’s the number one benefit you’re seeing your customers experience? Like? They’re like, Hey, I plugged in, I used it my first week. This is what I’m feeling. I love it. What is that typical feedback.
Scott Nelson: There’s probably there’s probably, you know, three or four core core benefits that that we hear back and that are also supported by probably the most science what would be skin health. That’s it’s very, very quickly That it’s it. You’re gonna, you’re gonna be hard pressed to find someone that uses red near infrared light, especially red light on a consistent basis that doesn’t that where their skin doesn’t look better over time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve noticed my skin tone the last week is really even just gonna say it looks good glowing. Yeah, it’s really glowing. So I’m like, Okay, this is good. I’m gonna do that five minutes after this five minutes after work. This is great. I like it.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah. So that that’s one of the key benefits. And then there’s, there’s a few others that really stand out to most most people that that purchase our devices that are trying to reduce pain and inflammation. That that’s one of the they usually see pretty, pretty dramatic results, it kind of depends on on how severe that pain is and whether they see like immediate results after maybe one session or if it takes you know, two to two to three weeks but the reduction of pain and inflammation is a is another you know core benefit as well that we often hear so skin health reduction of you know, pain and inflammation. And then there’s a few others. We have got a lot of a lot of kind of fitness enthusiasts that that purchase our devices to the Typically, they find that they recover a lot faster after training. So they know, you know, they know how, you know, after doing maybe a typical hit workout or a CrossFit workout or something like that, they know how their body typically feels, and using red and near infrared light, especially near infrared light, you know, they’re seeing some pretty, pretty significant decreases in turn in terms of their, their recovery time. So, muscle recovery, that’s another big one. And then there’s kind of some early early interesting things that we’re beginning to study ourselves as a company, one of which is hormone health. That’s another kind of emerging kind of benefit that we we hear a lot back from from customers on, you know, that have done blood work and they’re seeing these bio these these biomarker changes with respect to different different hormones, and that’s kind of another kind of emerging kind of health health benefit. That’s that’s interesting as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. You said a couple things I want to circle back to but I want to just hit this off the back because I specialize in thyroid health, and I see hundreds of patients that have autoimmune thyroid disease like Hashimoto is for instance, and I’ve used Red light therapy where they’ve kind of really gotten close to the device gotten their, their throat right up to there. And we’ve seen a reduction in their antibodies and swelling and how they felt. So I’ve noticed it clinically seeing that antibody reduction and just seeing the symptomatic improvement, swallowing tightness reduced. So I think that’s phenomenal. Really cool.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah, it’s certainly exciting for us. And this kind of there when you look at like the pub list, pure peer reviewed evidence around light therapy and hormone function and really specifically the thyroid. There is some some interesting data for sure. But it’s it’s fairly limited. But over the past two to three years, we’ve seen a ton of responses from our customers that have like Hashimoto is as an example or some sort of thyroid condition, or just like guys in general that are like, man, my, I’m on TRT and it’s not you know, that’s the only way I can keep my testosterone up as an example and they’re doing you know, pre and post bloodwork. You know, what, before and after using, you know, red light therapy. And so we like those two things, you know, the lack of kind of the minimal amount of Existing evidence combined with like a lot of anecdotal, you know, feedback from our customers is kind of, sort of caused us to look at this even further. And in fact, we just wrapped up a clinical study with a group in in Minneapolis, Bristol cone medical, where we actually study this. We took both male and female participants and looked at progesterone to Ester dial ratios and women and then testosterone to estrogen estrogen ratios in men. And the two, the two groups that we looked at were people that just they were on a normal, you know, kind of standard American diet, and just incorporated red light therapy. And then the other group, Incorporated red light therapy, and then also did the ketogenic diet. And so we looked at those those two cool cohorts in this particular study really interesting. In fact, we’re recording this year in in kind of mid to late January, and one of the one of the researchers, Dr. Kelly, get us is actually going to be presenting the data at the metabolic health conference here in Southern California this weekend, but really, really interesting results. Yeah, for sure. And Just to kind of just to kind of follow that up the the participants that that ate a normal, they didn’t do anything, the only thing they did probably was introduced red light therapy. So eight they’re kind of normal normal diet. They saw significant increases in both testosterone and men and estrogen I’m sorry, progesterone in women, really significant, statistically significant differences. But then when you looked at the group that was on a ketogenic diet, and then introduced red light therapy into their daily routine, they saw phenomenal increases, it was like it’s it’s, it’s mind blowing, I mean, we’re talking about 50 to 100% changes and in testosterone, and progesterone. So really, really compelling. It appears that there’s definitely some some metabolic synergies going on, when it comes to, you know, red light therapy and our body’s ability to produce those, those those, those hormones.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what’s the mechanism right, like, I’m just trying to wrap my head around this. I’m thinking okay, well, we know red light has a major effect on inflammation. We know the more inflamed you are, the more your glandular system is kind of always hardwired to deal with stress and inflammation. healing, recovery, reproduction right, these hormones are all reproduction hormones, but they also help you as well put on muscle feel great, but the more stressed you are, the more you’re going to make your anti inflammatory stress hormones to put out the fire. So I see one possible mechanism is just reducing inflammation I see the other one is mitochondria and all these glandular tissues as well. We’re enhancing mitochondrial function which has to then on the other side, increase glandular output my kind of in the right wheelhouse there What do you think?
Scott Nelson: That that would be my hypothesis is is is what you just recall there Dr. J. And that’s actually what what Dr. Give us reported back and one of her conclusions is like this, this ability for red and near infrared light to reduce what she she referred to as metabolic congestion. So think of like cars going down a busy Interstate and you got this traffic jam. And that’s what kind of happens in in our in our in our mitochondria where if we’re overloaded with food, if our if our mitochondria has too many different choices when it comes to food, or to freedom to to too many different choices to fuel itself. There’s like a log jam basically you get you get you get sort of you know cars leaving yeah backed up cars kind of blocking you know changing lanes and red near for lights ability to like enhance cell signaling and reduce that congestion may lead to you know some of these some of these enhancement enhancements when it comes to hormone function there’s other people though that believe, you know, with guys as an example, that that the the light excels in our in our testes that you’re responsible for producing testosterone that you’re you’re helping the mitochondria, those cells function better and a byproduct is more testosterone. I don’t I think there may be some some merit to that, but I think it’s actually more of a metabolic and metabolic kind of mechanism. But nonetheless, there’s, we hope to learn a lot more about like what’s really going on there in terms of the the mechanism, but it’s, it’s it’s pretty interesting and just to reiterate, I tend to agree with you that it’s probably it’s probably, it there’s there’s something systemic going on versus like, you know, a direct therapeutic effect on a particular cell type.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when you say metabolic you mean kind of modulating that the mitochondria. Right?
Scott Nelson: Exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. All right. Very cool. And I know I think I think it’s correct that every cell in the body has a mitochondria except the red blood cells. So it makes sense that, you know, those cells would all have a mitochondria and would be would benefit from that. So that makes a lot of sense. You know, from an application standpoint, what does that look like? So if you’re, you’re a guy, I mean, are you just trying to get your kind of general area four to six inches away from the red light? Or do you have to be right up against it? So if I’m inflamed, my shoulders hurt right to be right up against it a couple of inches. I’m trying to have glandular modulation do I’d have my my genitals are my ovaries, like within a couple of inches? I’m right up against that, that wall. How does that look from an application standpoint?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, you want to be pretty close to the device. And this this comes down to really the power that’s delivered from from the device, generally speaking, like we’ve had our products independently tested. So we like we’re really, you know, we acutely understand like the dose of energy that’s being delivered at a certain distance from our device, which is why we recommend generally speaking about Six inches away from our from our product, but it kind of depends, but generally speaking, yeah, you want to be pretty close. You know, if you’re, say you’ve got a bum shoulder or something like that, and you’re trying to reduce the pain and swelling as an example, yeah, you want you want the device to be pretty, pretty close, you know, we’re talking inches you don’t I mean that the further you The further you get away from any type of device, even if it’s a high powered one, the the power or the radiance that’s delivered from it drastically drops off and it’s not linear, it’s not one to one. So like, as an example, at about 12 inches away from our device, the power that’s delivered to your tissues really, really begins to fall off pretty dramatically. So what that means is you just in order to receive the same clinically relevant dose of energy, you have to use it for a lot longer period of time. And so if you want something like that’s short and impactful, and you know, includes kind of that clinic, like a clinically relevant dose of energy, like Like I mentioned, you want to be pretty pretty close to the device.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if you have inflammation issues, you probably want your body almost touching that right my shoulders hurt. I must want to be right up against it, right.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, you got I mean, we recommend some distance from from from the device, just because we’re not, if you’re if you’re right on top of it, you can do it can result in like set like a heating effect. And that’s not what we’re really trying to do. We’re not trying to induce like a sauna type type effect. But But yeah, you want to be pretty, you know, you want to be generally speaking, you want to be within, you know, inches, you know, three to six inches.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Yeah, I know in the manual, it says four to six. That’s good. That’s really good. Alright, cool. So we have that and then we can just get our body within that four to six inch bubble and we’re pretty good there. I also noticed it. My son, I five month old son Hudson has having a little bit of eczema. So we’re doing a lot of different diet tweaks and things like that. We’re on top of that, and we’re starting to do a little bit of the red light on XM for the X amount of skin. What have you noticed with autoimmune skin issues like eczema?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, that’s, that’s another kind of overall skin health is is supported by a lot of peer reviewed science. When it comes to you know, red light therapy, but certain skin conditions are really super interesting, as Especially those that are that are autoimmune autoimmune related and so yeah, there does appear to be a positive effect when when using you know, red light therapy for you know skin conditions like you know, rosacea, eczema psoriasis. And it kind of depends. It’s like, I’m sure there’s I’m sure there’s like a direct physiological targeted kind of effect with, you know, when in terms of I’ve got eczema on my face, and I’m shining the light right out my face. Yes, there’s probably a direct effect there. But I also I also tend to think that if it’s auto immune related, and you’re exposing your full body to red and near infrared light, there’s probably a inflam a positive inflammatory response as well. That’s also helping. So but but yeah, that’s that’s certainly that’s certainly an interesting category. We hear a lot. We hear a lot of positive feedback from customers that that are seeing benefits when it comes to you know, red light therapy and conditions like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s obviously modulating the immune system, probably just through inflammation reduction or just bumping up the mitochondria. there any other mechanisms that You could think of why it would be modulating the immune system.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, there’s it there appears to be a shift in our immune system from what’s you know, an M one phenotype to an M into phenotype where immune system becomes just, I kind of like I like to use, it’s just kind of a, maybe a silly example, but I kind of think of like Pac Man, everyone understands, like, yep, old school Pac Man, when our immune system begins to shift to an M to phenotype, like, our white blood cells become more Pac Man, like, you know, so they’re able to kind of Eat up, you know, cells that we don’t that we don’t want around. And so you do you see a positive immune response. And I mentioned one of the other mechanisms of action that we’re learning a little bit more about, is is this ability for reading near frehley near infrared light to stimulate TGF one beta, which is a pretty important cytokine in terms of within kind of the broader immune immune function or immune system, and that’s something that Dr. Praveena Ronnie touched on a recent a recent interview we did with him. He’s one The one of the world’s leading researchers in the world of photobiomodulation. But that’s that’s something his lab is learning a lot more about is that, that ability for, for these, these wavelengths of light to stimulate that that really important cytokine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Excellent. So lots of good benefits there. And then a couple questions, so why is it? People have issues with fluorescent light? They’re in buildings. What’s that frequency? What’s that doing? And why is that so noxious?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, it could be it could be fluorescent, it could be just any any poor source, right? It could be a cheap led device. It could be a bad incandescent source, but it’s the fluorescent light doesn’t is not necessarily the negative impact is not necessarily because of the brightness of the light, like the white light it delivers. It’s more of the the the the flicker effect that’s happening with the flicker. Yeah, yeah. And so that’s kind of a sometimes that that led is get a bad name as an example, but it comes down down to like the wavelengths that are delivered from that light and whether or not the sort that the actual sources is high quality. And so sometimes you’ll get, you know, inferior fluorescent bulbs that do have a tendency to flicker, and it’s pretty clear that that that could lead to some, some negative, you know, some some bad health consequences, you know, with overexposure to any sort of any sort of device. That’s a light source that’s flickering, but again, the key there is overexposure right, I mean, if you’re if you’re five to 10 minutes a day, you know, it’s not gonna hurt you. But if you’re over if you’re inside an office, you know, for eight hours a day exposed to you know, fluorescent bulbs that are you know, have a tendency to flicker probably not great because that’s a long period of time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when it comes to that, what’s that frequencies that a blue light frequency?
Scott Nelson: That’s delivering from for me it’s really it’s, it’s more that the pulsing actually that’s that’s going on the pulsing of that frequency of light, right? So it’s most indoor lighting as an example is delivering white or blue light you know, so on the spectrum like we know blues at the at the lower end of the spectrum meaning like 400 ish.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How about white? Where’s that at?
Scott Nelson: White light? Yeah, it’s even lower.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s even lower than that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay, cool. Very cool. And then I’m just curious with the red light. What do you have the ability to make vitamin D off that at all? Was that strictly ultra violet lights that do that ultraviolet lights?
Scott Nelson: No, it’s just, it’s just UV UVB wavelengths of light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. So you had to be on the ultraviolet kind of lower 300 ish range. So you will make no vitamin D off the red light. And then you give an option on the job, which is interesting. You have the red light option, as well as the infrared option. Yes, the point of that. Do you typically should everyone just be doing both? And if they’re not, why would one person do one over the other?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, it’s the major difference is the depth of penetration. So near anitra? Yes, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Near and vertical red, deeper infrared? Yep, got it.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, and most of our customers, it’s pretty rare that you’d use one or the other. But as an example, like someone that’s just using red light therapy for skin health as an example, they may not respond favorably to near infrared light, maybe they’re prone to hyperpigmentation as an example, and that scenario they may want, they may want to turn off the near infrared light, because near infrared light does have does, I mean, it’s been shown that to stimulate the production of pigment in our skin. So if you if you do have if you if you’re kind of prone to, you know, hyperpigmentation of any of any kind that might not be, you know, a great wavelength to use as an example.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. could it give you a tan?
Scott Nelson: No, no, that’s not typically not that not that not the response physiologically that you’re going to get from red and near infrared light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, God, that makes sense. So in general, we probably want to have both frequencies on
Scott Nelson: Yeah, most of our customers doing less and less. It’s kind of a rare use case where you know, you don’t you don’t want to use you know, near infrared light as an example. But yeah, there’s there’s really, there’s there’s a lot of benefits to using both, you know, and you get to kind of get the best of both worlds in terms of both the superficial and Deep depth deep penetration with near infrared light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, the only reason why maybe you’re sensitive superficially, but you want the deep near infrared benefits essentially
Scott Nelson: Yep, yep, you got it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then what about far infrared? I mean, people talk about that too. Is that not as therapeutic?
Scott Nelson: No, that’s that’s what that’s next to like, what’s the difference between red and near infrared? What’s the difference between red light therapy and and an infrared sauna? That’s probably the second most second most common question that comes up, you know, kind of in this in this world. And again, it all kind of goes back to the mechanisms at play when it comes to how our bodies respond to different wavelengths of light. And so the infrared wavelengths of light that you’ll find in a dry Infrared Sauna are most of the time going to be mid and far infrared. So we’re talking about wavelengths in the, you know, 5000 to 20,000 millimeter range. So it’s really really broad spectrum that that infrared spectrum and it’s, it’s a it’s divided up into infrared a, I’m sorry, infrared, near mid and far. wavelengths of light So our devices deliver near infrared, which has been proven to, you know, stimulate ourselves in a certain fashion, where mid and far infrared, those wavelengths, our bodies respond to those wavelengths. That I guess the result is the production of heat, which is why they’re using the sauna. And so, most of that most of those, most of the time those wavelengths those mid and far infrared wavelengths are absorbed by the water in our in our cells. And so, that’s that tends to be why you’ll see dry Sun is used mid and far infrared because they just they do a great job at generating heat, but you don’t necessarily get the same physiological response that you do with red and near infrared light.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And then with the red we’re in the we’re in like the six of like the low sevens and then we go up another hundred or so with the near Is that correct?
Scott Nelson: Yeah you got it, you got it-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: and then and then another hundred or so for the far
Scott Nelson: I mean thousands and other thousands so so the the mid and far or the infrared range, the infrared kind of range within that broader EMF spectrum. The infrared range is, you know, anywhere from like 800 nanometers to 20,000 nanometers. So it’s really, really, yeah, it’s really, really broad and with the far we’re at the top end of the 20,000 Yeah, yeah, you’re you’re into the thousands and so our body there’s a different physiological mechanism that’s happening when you’re exposed to you know, infrared wavelengths and heat is a byproduct, which is why, you know, a lot of saunas incorporate or utilize sources that deliver mid and far infrared wavelengths is because they do a great job at producing heat. It’s kind of one of the same things that you you know, the, the infrared heat lamps that you can pick up like at Home Depot or Lowes as an example that the kind of the they have like a red, they typically have a red tint to them. Those those they’re called infrared heat, they’re heat lamps because it’s kind of the name is self explanatory. They do a great job at producing heat, because they’re delivering mostly mid and far infrared wavelengths of light. And so that’s why they do it. Good job at producing heat,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But they’re not going to provide that red light as much as like the job would, for instance?
Scott Nelson: you got it. Yeah, different wavelengths of light. So our devices deliver red and near infrared. And it’s kind of it’s kind of, yeah, and, and this, this can get kind of like, you know, technical pretty quick, but it’s just again, it’s just important for anyone that’s, that’s kind of interested in learning more and going deeper, and maybe even potentially, you know, picking up a device, you really want to make sure you understand which wavelengths it delivers. It’s like, it’s like, you know, picking up a, you know, looking at a label on a food product, you want to understand, like, how many how many grams of fat is in this product? Or how many, you know, what, what are the what’s the carbohydrate content and the protein content is kind of the same thing. You want to understand which wavelengths of light are delivered from this device. Because the our bodies respond differently to all these different types of types of wavelengths.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Yeah. And I have a joov in my bio hacking layer. And so anyone wants to pick it up. We’ll put a link down below if you guys want to grab that. So let’s talk more about the application. So what’s the typical dose? Are we talking like 10 minutes once a day, can we break it? what’s the what’s the smallest dose for the maximum benefit?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, and we’ve we, we when we first designed our devices we wanted to we wanted a product that could deliver a clinically relevant dose for general health and wellness in a short amount of time. And so with our devices we generally record we talked about the treatment distance you know, kind of that three to six inches away from the device for about eight to 10 minutes per treatment area. So like if you have are like a product like our mini as an example which is kind of like the size of maybe like a 15 inch MacBook you know it’s thicker right worse but like the footprint that’s that’s great for like targeted treatments right if you want to treat your face if you have like a sore hip as an example, great device for that. But if you want a you know, a full body system you know the only difference between something like the Juve mini and something bigger like the quad or the Juba elite is really just coverage area, that’s all it’s the same power the same, you’re going to get the same dose as long as you you’re kind of within that same treatment distance. It’s really just treatment area. That’s the only that’s the only difference. So if you’re, if you’re interested in like, you know, if you’re interested in kind of a full body treatment in a short amount of time, you’re going to want to go with a bigger system, of course.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, very cool. And then when you’re in there, you know, it’s kind of instinctively you want to keep your eyes closed, is it okay, if you look at the light, will that damage your eyes at all?
Scott Nelson: That’s, that’s, it’s that’s a great point. I’m glad you brought it up. Dr. J. Um, the, we’ve actually done as part of like the FDA registration process with our devices, we have to do certain IEC safety testing, one of which is photo biological safety testing, primarily focused on on eyes is that are these wavelengths delivered from a product harmful for your eyes, and we’ve obviously passed those those safety tests, which is why we do not include eyewear with our with our product. But but having having said that, there’s a lot of really, really solid clinical evidence published evidence that suggests that these wavelengths of light are actually very beneficial for your eyes, in terms of just overall vision enhancement, but also reducing symptoms like you know, macular or condition generation. degeneration as an example, so so we actually kind of it aligns, I mean, from our perspective, it’s kind of twofold like our devices aren’t harmful for these wavelengths from our devices are harmful for your eyes. But plus, you’re actually it’s actually beneficial to expose you know, your eyes to these wavelengths of light as well. So you get it’s a, there’s kind of a two a two pronged approach there in terms of our recommendation not to wear eyewear with our devices if as long as you like you’re not I mean, if it’s so bright and you can’t stand it, of course, that you know, you maybe you know, get used to the therapy by by wearing some sunglasses or something like that, but uh, but over time, we tend to recommend try to try to expose your eyes to the to the device, it’s it can be pretty helpful typically-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So a 10 minute therapy you could just do it for a couple of minutes and then kind of close them and relax them or grab some sunglasses that’d be okay?
Scott Nelson: You got it like as an example when i when i i have our biggest system that the the jubilees and when I when I start when I use it, I just close my eyes at the beginning you know and kind of in you’ll notice that it by closing your eyes for a couple minutes, you can begin to open them over over time. You know, your eyes are less sensitive.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when you have a system that they do recommend just kind of stripping down and going naked right in front of it. Is that kind of the best thing front and back?
Scott Nelson: You got it. Yep. Yep, I don’t I just use it for proactive health, you know, so I’m not I don’t have like maybe a, you know, I don’t I fortunately don’t suffer from like bad conditions or anything like that. So I typically just do the front side of my body, you know, in about 810 minutes, kind of, depending on how I’m how I’m feeling I actually I stand on a vibration plate at the same time. So kind of operation vibration therapy, as well. But I think of that, that’s a great idea that the important point yeah, I mean, stacking different things at the same time is pretty great. Also do some breathing, you know, some some breath work at the same time. That’s a it’s a great way to it’s another kind of stat or thing that I do as part of that, that that red light therapy session, but I think on that note, one of the important points to call out is that and I mentioned this earlier, like some some people, um, they think you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna buy a smaller device and then stand further back from it. And and I can get the same benefits because it looks like you know, my body’s being, you know, fully irradiated with with a slight And I think it’s just important to remember that that when you’re, when you’re farther back from any device, right, even something that’s you know, delivers a lot of power like ours, at about 12 inches or so 12 to 18 inches that the the dosage really, really begins to drop off dramatically. And so just it’s important to remember, like, you can’t really get a full, full body treatment with a smaller device unless you’re literally kind of moving it from body part to body part.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And once you go 12 inches at like a 90% reduction?
Scott Nelson: I’d have to I it’s close to that it’s pretty dramatic. I’m not sure if it’s like 90, it might be like, you know, 70 to 80%. But it’s not like, you know, every one inch away, it’s, you know, the dose is drops off kind of linear like that. It’s not like it really, really significantly drops off. Yeah, you know, foot foot and a half away or so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, Got it, if that makes sense. Very cool. And I think we hit all the major things. A couple things here. So in regards to competitors, you have competitors out there, what makes you stand apart from other products that are there?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, and I don’t I mean, I certainly don’t want this to turn into a product pitch. By no means So I’ll call out a few things. You know, if you’re in the if you’re in if you’re if you’re into this, you heard people talking about light therapy, you’ve looked at the science and are ready to kind of pull the trigger on our device. First thing I’d say is don’t go by device right away and try to get more natural sunlight exposure, right? That’s free medicine great as a doctor, yeah, Dr. Suppiah, you know, likes to coin it’s free medicine. So try to get more natural light exposure and but you know, if you’re in a climate that doesn’t allow for that, or, you know, we I used to live in the mid in the Midwest and so you get long periods of the year where, you know, you don’t get a lot of natural sunlight, maybe you need to need to supplement your lifestyle with some, you know, with some light therapy. So if you’re in if the next step is to purchase a device, we already touched on this, but make sure it delivers you know, the right wavelengths, red and near infrared, or the wavelengths that have been proven time and time again, based on peer reviewed science. And, and you want you want like third party data to back this up, right. You know, because any, any manufacturer can say, of course, our devices deliver these wavelengths of light but you want you want third party data to support that. So make sure it’s delivering the right wave lengths, Make sure it’s it’s delivering the right power. You can you can get away with using an underpowered device. But again, you just have to use it for long periods of time longer. Yeah, yeah. So you can, you know, there’s not that’s not to say that an underpowered you know, handheld device on Amazon can work. But instead of using it for, you know, eight to 10 minutes, you may have to use it for 30 to 40 minutes, you know, if it’s super underpowered, so make sure that makes sure it delivers a clinically relevant dose of energy. And again, supported by independent third-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Are a number we’re looking for on that.
Scott Nelson: Um, it kind of it kind of depends on what you’re what you’re looking for, in terms of irradiance, and really, you want to look for joules of energy, you want to do that calculation, we’ve got a really health article on our site on how to effectively measure power from from a light therapy device. So I encourage anyone to check out that article if they want to go deeper on that topic, but But yeah, you want to look actually for joules of energy that are delivered from the device so not like what wattage consumed, right? You don’t want to look for consumption wattage consumption. You want to look for those, the inner jewels that are delivered from the device. And so just make sure it make sure you just do your research there and make sure ideally, it’s supported by independent third party data. So wavelengths power and then we’re big believers in full body light therapy. And so we designed our devices to be modular in nature. And because of that, you can start with something smaller, right? Like a like a GIF mini or a juice sola, which is the next size up. You can get your feet wet if you don’t want to go all in with a bigger system. But because they’re modular, they connect together, both physically and electronically. So you can add plug, you can you can add it to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you got the solo. That’s what five feet five feet.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah, it’s about Yeah, three. Yeah, yeah, three and a half, four feet. So I’m like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then you could put one next to it and then plug it in, and then it’s there in sync when you turn it on.
Scott Nelson: Right. Got it. You got it. Yep. And that’s kind of that that’s a that’s something that we’ve, we’ve we’ve smart. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a patented design. And we did that because, because of our fundamental belief that full body light therapy is is more clinically efficacious, but not everyone. I mean, everyone has thousands of dollars to pour into a life this thought like that. There’s like, yeah,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: allows you to build on to its you don’t have to start over every time. Yeah, one piece. Okay, maybe next year if I like it, I’ll get a second piece for it. And then you have, you know, you got your therapeutic output. That’s great. Yeah, yeah. What about people that have autoimmune skin issues? Like the middle, I go, right, middle I go or melasma issues? Can they can they benefit from this too? Well, that kind of helped even things out or modulate the inflammation? Yeah. pigment stimulation.
Scott Nelson: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in fact, near infrared light can can actually stimulate melanocytes, right, which are the cells that produce you know-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Melanin.
Scott Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, on that note, though, like so if you if you do if you are prone to hyperpigmentation, you do probably want to stay away from near infrared light. But red light is actually very beneficial, because-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: that’s why you have the option so you can use a button for near infrared and then also just read so you have those options. That’s cool. Yeah.
Scott Nelson: And then and you know, in something like a condition like hyperpigmentation, you don’t want pigment right. Trying to lessen less than your body’s responses. And typically, as you know, Dr. J, there’s a lot of probably underlying things that are happening-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: to dominance or maybe maybe maybe birth control usage, things like that. Yeah,
Scott Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. That early leading your cell is to produce that, that pigment. It’s a it’s an inflammatory response. And so, yeah, so I mean, these wavelengths of light can actually be very, very beneficial in terms of helping with that positive immune response. But on the flip side, just just you know, obviously, you don’t want to use near infrared light if you’re trying to avoid stimulating your, you know, milana sighs to produce more more melanin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And I’ve seen some critics online that talked about the talk like that are extra critical about some of the red light devices now their big complaints are I’m not even sure if it’s real or not. They complain about the the flicker rate. What’s your opinion on the flicker rate? does this matter? Does this change any of the therapeutic benefit? What are your thoughts?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, the concept or the subject of flicker is really, it’s a it’s kinda like the Wild West a bit. I think a lot of people are like, tend to over exaggerate it. But I’ll say this with our This is our View one of one of the co founders of g of their son suffered from his, I’ll say is very, very sensitive to, to EMF and flicker his body for some, I’m really I don’t at least I don’t think I am but but he has, he’s actually very sensitive as an example like he’s, I think he’s How old is he now he’s 20. But like in his, in his, in his teenage years, she worked at Best Buy as an example, couldn’t like, it was very, very difficult for him to function inside that, that that environment because all of those devices, all of that lighting, constantly emitted, emitting some sort of modulating flicker, or, or just it’s a bad it’s not a great source of you know, of light from a wavelengths perspective. So anyway, I say that because we’re very cognizant of trying to reduce EMF and flicker as much as possible with our devices. So we’ve implemented you know, various design various various things in our in the design of our products to help help lower those as much as possible. But when it comes to flicker, it’s overexposure that’s critical, right? If you’re, if you’re if you’re using something like our juice solo device for eight to 10 minutes a day, like, we’ve won, we’ve reduced the flicker as much almost as much as you possibly can with the device. it’s plugged into the wall. And we have independent data to back to support this. In addition, you’re only using it for eight to 10 minutes a day. So you know, I mean, it’s, it’s, you know,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: if it was harmful, you wouldn’t be seeing the studies producing some of these positive benefits. Yeah, it’d be some kind of confounding variable in there.
Scott Nelson: Yeah. And and I hundred percent and then I In addition, it, there’s actually a lot of evidence that suggests pulsed light, right? So basically intentionally causing a light therapy device to flicker right to post that a certain modulation can actually be like much more efficacious than continuous wave light therapy. Right? So there’s actually there’s actually and most photobiomodulation researchers agree that the evidence is like overwhelming that actually pulling So intentionally inducing a modulation, a modulation type of effect can actually lead to better better results. So I think long story short, like, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to under appreciate like the whole flicker and EMF topic by any stretch of the imagination and we’re very cognizant of designing devices around for that and trying to mitigate those two things as much as possible. But there’s, there’s a lot of like misinformation and people generally speaking don’t understand the, the, the impact, don’t understand those two, those two subjects within the context of light therapy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Excellent. And is the device is it an AC current or DC?
Scott Nelson: Uh, it’s it’s a AC you I mean, you plug it in, you plug it into the wall.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, walk out. Okay. Very cool. Excellent. Is there anything else you want to leave the listeners here with I mean, this is kind of my soup to nuts Compendium. I’ll be making sure all my patients get access to this and they know the benefits and people can get to use it as a as a resource will have everything transcribed as well so people can get to the information faster. Anything else you kind of want to leave with us Scott?
Scott Nelson: Yeah, I mean the thing that I would probably leave the one or two things that I probably leave everyone listening to this is, is just be more like first step when it comes to kind of light in general just be more cognizant of it right there’s like simple easy steps that you can do to help you know help prevent disruption in your in your circadian rhythm at night as example wearing blue light blocking glasses, replacing, you know, certain light bulbs at home. So just be more cognizant of just your light exposure in general, you know, try to appreciate a little bit more maybe maybe similar to how how focused you are on your diet you know, try to try to try to do the same when it comes to your light exposure and then you know, if you’re if you’re interested in digging into this topic in more detail, we have a wealth of resources on our website, educational articles that on these various you know, benefit categories, whether it’s cognitive function, hormone health scan, etc. So I’d encourage you to you know, if you’re interested kind of just learning a little bit more about the space check out or check out our website and there’s there’s plenty of information there to go deep on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, Scott, thank you so much. You’re a wealth of knowledge. And again, I love the device. How I wouldn’t have you on the show if I didn’t already think the technology is phenomenal. I think you really said it just right is kind of work with the foundational things that are already there that are already free. Once you’re kind of maxing out that and you want to take it to the next level. This I think is a really powerful tool to add to your kind of biohacking medicine cabinet so to speak, will put links down below. So if you guys enjoy it, want to check it out, let me know we’ll put the link down below. Feel free to get it there. Also, I’m going to do more videos in the coming weeks with my joov device. You really inspired me with the vibration plate in front of the joov. I’m like, Oh, I’m going to do that. I’m going to make that happen. So thanks, Scott, for your great feedback and knowledge. Anything else you want to leave?
Scott Nelson: No, no, that’s it. Thanks. Thanks for having me on Dr. J. Really appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks so much, Scott. You’ve a great day.
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Functional Medicine Tips to Survive the Holidays | Podcast #262
Happy Monday! It’s the holiday season and everybody is feeling the holiday rush. As much as we are excited for the holidays, it is also important to keep our body sane and healthy. Today’s chat will be all about functional medicine tips and tricks to keep our health, sanity and stresses down in the holiday season. Check out this episode to learn more.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:40 Portable IQ Air
5:35 Stave off stress during Holiday Season
14:38 Nebulizing
25:04 Air and Water Filtration for travels
31:34 Tips on Traveling
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live it’s Dr. J here in the house, Evan, how we doing today my friend?
Evan Brand: Hey man, Happy Monday. I’m glad to be back. I took a week off and felt like a month off. And I was like, God, I can’t wait to get back to work. So I’m glad I’m here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally man, I hundred percent agree. So that’s good. We got the holiday season. We are here in the thick of it. I know you were off in Florida this last week trying to get some sun and some good rays. Let’s kind of chat a little bit today about you know, functional medicine tips and tricks that we can do to keep our health and our sanity and our stress down in the holiday season.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so why don’t we start talking about just the travel component and then we could go wherever you want in terms of like herbs to help the immune system and nervous system. I think there’s a lot of cool directions we can take this but I’ll just start out with the air travel because I just got off the plane yesterday. Right? And it wasn’t terrible, but I’m not a huge fan of air travel for many reasons. And one is just The air pollution the fact that you’ve got, there’s no fresh air on airplanes, they’re pumping the cabin full of the research related or recycled air from the exhaust of the engines. And so it’s just really not a good place for fresh air. So what I did and some may say, Oh, this is extreme or whatever, but that’s why you’re listening to us because you want to be the best and you want to be the healthiest you can be. So what I have is the portable IQ air. It’s pronounced autumn, but it’s spelled atom at em. It’s like a desk It looks like a little UFO. And it’s a portable air purifier. We have one in our car that hooks up to the 12 volt outlet. But then we also have another one that we can take for travel and they have a portable battery pack that they sell with it and it fit inside of my backpack, no problem on my carry on bag. And I put this little portable half the air purifier on my tray table on the plane ride with the battery pack and cranked it up on high and you couldn’t even hear it because of the engine noise of the plane. And my my two daughters and my wife and I all got fresh hepa pure air Right in our face, we just angled the vent of it. So it pumped our direction. And the air was noticeably cleaner and more pure. And we’re not talking just filtering jet fuel, you know, you’re filtering potential mold on the plane, you’re filtering out the neighboring people’s perfumes and colognes and all that. So it’s just one simple way to try to reduce your exposure to toxins. And if you’re weak from an immune perspective, hopefully that’s filtering out some bacteria and viruses and other things like that. I mean, I remember, I don’t know if it was this year, last year, whenever it was, I think it was when you went to Mexico and you came back and it was like you picked up a cold from the plane because the plane was Germany or something. So it’s like, I’m not going to say this is a cure all, but I think it’s a good preventative medicine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like it. So the IQ air the ATEM. Okay, cool. We’ll put some links below. And that’s a good portable one, huh?
Evan Brand: It’s gorgeous to It’s very pretty. You can control it from your phone if you want to. You can you know Turn up the speed turn down the speed, there’s blue light on it that you can turn off. So overall, it’s a very, very good portable setup. And when we were in hotel rooms as well, we would just unplug the battery pack and plug up the wall outlet. And then we would just crank it on high in the hotel room and then boom, by the time you step back in your hotel room, you’ve got real fresh air in there as well,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: that says absolutely great. And then did you use the atem desk or the atem car or?
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, good question. So the car is better, because there is an extra layer of carbon or something involved in the car versus the desk. So I only recommend buying the car version and then you can just use it inside your home as well. That is great. That’s awesome. And then you can bring that with you on trips and then you have that extra bit of air filtration. That is awesome. And could you use it in like a kid’s bedroom or a bedroom? Oh, totally. Yeah, I mean, it was the perfect white noise to for the kids to take a nap. We just cranked it on high and it’s just a nice white noise but then you know the kids are breathing in pure air too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And can you keep all the lights turned off to?
Evan Brand: yep on the app. You can just go boom, and then the blue light turns off. So it’s just a completely dark air filter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Awesome. I like the ones that are small and portable. Some of the ones that I have by the Austin area great, but that, you know, they’re not quite as portable, you know?
Evan Brand: Yeah, you can’t put it in a suitcase, you know, and like, you know, other people, Dr. mercola, he had promoted these like neck things where it’s like a portable ionizer that you wear on your neck, I bought one those things are garbage. This thing is way better. I mean, it’s a hepa filtration versus, you know, people try to say, oh, here’s a negative ion generator that you wear on your neck. It’s like, No, those are so stupid. This is way, way better and more functional.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what does it cost to change out those filters?
Evan Brand: I got an extra filter when I bought it. I think the extra filter was maybe 100 bucks. Don’t quote me on that. Okay, good. And you can monitor the filter life from your app. So it’ll say, hey, you’ve got 89% left of your filter, and then it’ll give you a notification when the filter needs to be changed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, God, that’s cool. So I like the air filtration aspect of I think it’s powerful because Air Quality is important, especially on the airplane. I mean, you know, I think you may only be able to do so much because you have so much recycled air coming through. So, in general may not move the needle too much, but I think it’s really cool to have it in your hotel room, especially people using whole bunch of cleaning products that you know, aren’t as nice. It’s nice to have that good quality air filtration at least in the room. That’s great.
Evan Brand: Yeah, filters out the voc right. So yeah, if you had you know, we did request fragrance free hotel rooms and made sure they only clean with vinegar and all that. So it helped a little bit but filter would help reduce or remove any other voc if you’re sensitive like I am.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And we’re really diving into the functional medicine and natural health kind of principles to stave off stress during the holiday season and when traveling and such that’s really the title and the topic of today’s chat. So off the bat we also can be utilizing natural antioxidants to help deal with stress when we’re flying to. I’m always a big fan of when flying or travel or vacation starts. I’m going to be adding in include a phone and or glue to find precursors. This is kind of our body’s natural, very most powerful antioxidant to try peptide antioxidant. And we’re going to use this at higher levels to deal with stress from travel, just the radiation you’re exposed to and traveling. We’re also going to do maybe natural medicinal mushrooms or herbs like a strapless and geographics. akinesia. We’re going to be doing things like this to help bump up our immune system in my supplement line at protocol them, you know, Supreme, and that’s powerful that has a couple of different herbs in there, some medicinal mushrooms and it has some of the stragglers and akinesia that kind of get your immune system right ready. So it’s just kind of getting those natural killer cells up and ready on attention. So if we get exposed any viruses or bugs, we’re more likely to stave off an attack. So herbal support medicinal mushrooms, Reishi, [inaudible], ekenasia, these are going to be very powerful and then of course things to new actually deal with oxidative stress which could be glued, if I own high dose vitamin C, which is going to help include if I own as well. I’d also say you could even add in some natural anti inflammatory support like curcumin, but I’d say if you’re going to keep it simple, high dose kluth iron and vitamin C is going to be very, very powerful.
Evan Brand: Good advice. You know a lot of people post articles and snippets and all that about top 10 ways to naturally fight the flu or top 10 ways to naturally fight a cold, it’s like, well, wouldn’t it be better if you could just keep your immune system on alert, like you mentioned and up regulate these immune system pathways as opposed to getting sick and then now you’re trying to read an article on how to get yourself sick like just if you are on these herbs and your immune systems up regulated, you may not even have to go to the top 10 Natural Ways to fight the flu because you never got the flu because your immune system was so strong
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% so on the vitamin C, you know we’re going to do a couple of grams, so anywhere between two to five or six grams and the vitamins See, again, typically just below bowel tolerance is ideal. So a lot of people will start getting loose stools around six to 10 grams or six to 10,000 milligrams. So somewhere in that two to five, two to six gram dosage range is probably good. You may have to feel it out to see where you sit. And then in regards to Reishi, you know, I’ll go anywhere between two to five grams a day, probably closer to two to three if I’m just trying to like, get my immune system upregulated and I’m not fighting something probably like two to three grams just to be like, Okay, I’m ready to go. And then acutely, I’ll go off to three to five if it’s really acute. And then I would say what the gluta Island probably you know, up to a gram or so a day on the glue to die on and get my immune system kind of hyper regulated and ready to go.
Evan Brand: Yep. And talk about the nebulizer. We spoke about this a few episodes ago, I said, hey, you’ve got to try it. And you’ve tried it. So what’s your what’s your feedback?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so this is a very powerful tool and a means to get Certain compounds into your lungs and into your bloodstream fast because we know when we get sick a lot of times, you know, we have the ability to control essentially our hands by washing our hands. And we have the ability to control not quite as much what we breathe, maybe if we have a mass, that’s probably the best that we can do. But in general, a nebulizer allows us to take compounds in my favorite two things to us are going to be silver, and we’ll choose a 15 ppm to a 10 ppm or less of silver. And we’ll nebulize that and we can breathe it into our lungs. So we have all of the silver in our lungs, in our sinuses, and that’s going to help kill any bugs or biofilms that we may be getting exposed to so I like nebulizing silver, acutely, especially after a flight or after any exposure to someone because you get the silver in your lungs, and it’s anti viral as well. So the problem is, number one, you don’t want to be using antibiotics prophylactically but number two will not touch a viral issues. So the best thing with the silver is you can knock down some of the virus stuff. And the second thing is cluded I own concluded I own really helps with inflammation. And it really is increased so much more especially in your lungs when you do it when you nebulize it and you break it down to really tiny particle. So with nebulize go to dial and you can do that as well. One you’re getting the Bluetooth ion to help with the oxidative stress. But number two, it’s also going to help with inflammation and it’s going to help modulate your immune response. I’m a big fan of nebulizing the silver and nebulizing the Bluetooth ion is a couple of good nebulize that are out there I have one that’s really small and recommended to me there are two really two or three really good small ones. I’ll do a separate video on this and you take the nebulizer and essentially you use some sodium chloride kind of a nice taylean solution that sterile and then you’re going to add anywhere between a teaspoon of silver of there or you’re going to do about 200 milligrams of glutathione and a sodium bicarb form so it’s an a breakdown. And then you can nebulize that 200 milligrams a load of biome, or that one teaspoon of silver, and you get it directly into your bloodstream and the nebulize go to die on significantly increases in your bloodstream and in the lungs even more than oral when it goes orally. It has to kind of go throughout your body. But when you do it in your nebulizer, it goes right into your lungs, it’s going to help with things in your sinuses, it’s gonna help with all the inflammation in your lungs. So you get it right there. It’s fast and it increases your blood sugar levels so much faster.
Evan Brand: Yeah, not to mention, you can cross the blood brain barrier when you’re breathing something in like that too. So I got to give credit where credit’s due. This whole idea of me getting interested in nebulizers and Bluetooth ion and then trying in and then you and I talking about it, Stephen Buner. He’s like one of my favorite herbalists. He’s written a lot of really great books on Lyme disease and co infections. I believe he’s personally suffering from COPD and, of course, many people out there suffering with COPD so he actually came up with this COPD protocol. And I just took a couple pieces from his protocol which was the nebulizer with the sailing and the glue to die on. Now he’s talking about, I think it’s frankincense and some other essential oils. And he’s doing a lot of these other like Japanese herbs and Chinese herbs and mixing all these in a combination as this big old 20 to 30 p COPD protocol. I don’t have COPD. So I just took the pieces that I thought would help me the most from that protocol and then implemented it and then I had had watched the I don’t know if it was a webinar, what it was about, it was a guy speaking about using silver hydrosol which same thing Colloidal Silver silver hydrosol is the is the right name, and he was using this for lung cancer. And he was putting the silver into a nebulizer for lung cancer and I thought okay, that sounds pretty cool. And then I just mixed them I just thought why don’t we mix silver mixed Bluetooth ion. And as you mentioned, it’s the one with the bicarbonate added so it doesn’t burn your lungs or anything, and it’s a very smooth process I get, and I don’t know if it’s placebo or what but I feel like I get a little bit of a head rush after I do it. Like I feel a little bit more mentally clear, you know, Bluetooth ion is, is said to increase energy levels to right because you’re increasing your detox ability and a lot of times that helps increase energy. So after I do it, it kind of hits me like a wave. It’s like whoosh, and then I feel good for you know, a couple hours after I haven’t had any bad side effects. I don’t know if you have I haven’t had any headaches. I haven’t had any like detox reactions from it. Overall, it’s been very, very good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Also, I find it very helpful with kids that don’t want to swallow supplements or take supplements. The nice thing about it is you can don’t even have to put it over the face, you can kind of keep it a couple inches away and just let them read it for a few seconds, and they’ll get it into their system. So I like it because if my son may have gotten exposed to something, I can just give them maybe a minute with a silver, just kind of reading it in or I can give them a minute of the Go to File and I can at least get some good antioxidant support which does help with the immune system, Bluetooth Iowans a really important immune system modulator. And I can also get the silver up there which will help with viruses and biofilms as well. So it’s pretty powerful to have that, especially with kids. And especially with just being around people that are sick, I can get stuff into my respiratory tract fast. And I’m not sure if any studies in this but you know, there’s a lot of times it’s like a one or two, one or a week or so latency period on getting an infection and it manifesting. So I’m curious to know, you may have an infection, it may be an latency period, and I wonder if just doing that preventatively would prevent that infection from manifesting?
Evan Brand: I think it would, right I mean, think about if it’s sitting in the nasal cavity, maybe it’s found a way to hide in some biofilm and the nasal cavity or the sinuses and then the silver comes in and kills it. You know, I think yeah, I think you’re right. I think it could kill it. While we’re on the topic of the nasal cavity area for the holidays. You know, this would apply for people going to a family member’s house where they’ve got air fresheners or plugins are, you know, if you’re a smell smell sensitive person like I am, even if you’re not and you just don’t want that crap in your sinus cavity, you and I really like the x layer, which is the stevia based nasal rinse, or is it Earth return those xylitol, I’m sorry, it’s xylitol. You know, if you squirt that up your nose, I wonder if you could just add some of that mixture to the nebulizer. I mean, it’s the same thing right? You’re squirting it up your nose versus nebulizing I don’t know, maybe overkill, but at least you could use the X ray or nasal spray, boom, boom, a couple sprays each nostril and spit it out. If you end up getting some drainage,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: what I think is even better, what I’ve been doing is I’ll do the Neti Elixir packet so it’s actual packets and and I mixed it with four ounces of water, clean, filtered reverse osmosis water, and then I squeeze it up one nostril and it goes all the way up my frontal sinus and then back down and I do have about two to three seconds of flow. Then I blow my nose, clean it out and then to the other side. Two to three seconds, and then blow. And then what I’ll also do is if there’s any kind of infection that I’m thinking about, I’ll do the Neti actually or packets because you only can spray, barely anything with the spray. But if I can do the packets, I get constant flow for two to three seconds. And then number two is I’ll add a teaspoon of silver. I’ll add a teaspoon of silver as well to it. So then I’ll have the Neti Elixir with the xylitol in there, and then I’ll see it has the minerals in there to make it more you know, sensitive against the mucosa. And then I’ll add the silver and then the silver goes up and can really kill any viruses or pathogens or biofilms as well. So that’s a double whammy. That better Yeah, and then afterwards, then you can do if you want to nebulize some silver because that way it goes in your bloodstream because it’s not going to really go into your bloodstream, right? But when you nebulize a silver now it’s in your bloodstream and in your lungs. So if there’s any incubating viruses That’s where it’s going to be really, really helpful because then I’m really work on knocking and killing that down. And then you could also nebulize the Bluetooth icon, which I don’t think is anti viral, but it will help with inflammation, and it will have an effect on modulating your immune response for the better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m using the nebulize glue to find to get mycotoxins out of my brain. If you just go into PubMed and you just search okra toxin. Okra toxin is a really common mold toxin that we see. If you type in okra toxin cerebellum, you can read that okra toxin has an affinity meaning it likes it goes to that part of the brain, the cerebellum and so you can literally detox the brain. When people say detox the brain. It sounds like it’s like trendy or buzz worthy or something. But no, it’s real. You literally can detox the brain because that’s where okra toxin can can damage it can create damage in that part of the brain. So all right, well, let’s move on. I think we’ve talked about the sinuses all day,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll do a video I’ll do a video of myself kind of dealing with the issues. So I’ll break On the nebulizer and kind of the solutions and, and we could talk about it and go over what those look like. That’s perfect. All right, good. I think those are powerful tips. And then obviously, we have low hanging fruit, which could be getting sick from food. So of course, we’re going to use things like activated charcoal, which is going to be a really good binder. We typically say take activated charcoal away from food and supplements, when you’re using it for like a detox protocol for mold or for bug killing. But if we’re eating questionable food, or we’re getting exposed to things like alcohol, we may want to actually take it with the alcohol or the questionable food. So you kind of have to just draw a line and say, Hey, is this an acute exposure issue? Or is this more part of the long term protocol? If it’s acute, and it’s food or alcohol or just you know, partying, then we’re going to take it with that food.
Evan Brand: That’s a good idea. I mean, think about it. You’re going over to Uncle Jerry’s house. You know, everybody’s going to be drinking wine and cocktails and whatever. There’s going to be bread There’s going to be all kinds of food allergens and dairy and, and who knows what else cornbread and pumpkin pie. I don’t know what all you’re eating that’s not good for you. But, you know our clients report this every year they say hey, I’ve got off my diet on the holidays and now here it is January and they feel like crap, you know, so we’re trying to help prevent some of those calls.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So I like that. Also bug killer so my line I have a product called gi clear 4 which I have found to be the best for me. And for most patients with food poisoning issues, it just works amazing. And it could be food poisoning from a bacteria like e.coli or Campylobacter or salmonella. It could be food poisoning from an infection. Right Giardia. Cryptosporidium H. pylori, maybe a parasite like blasto and this works really good at knocking it down. So I like my gi clear 4 which is very high in Golden seal, which is a really good bug killer, very high in berberine, which is great for SIBO. It’s also very high and all of which leaf which has antiviral properties, and burdock which is really Good for the lymph and the lymphatic system. So my gi clear 4 is good avid has some ones in his micro biome line that are similar to. So you know, we love a good bug killer in case we get exposed, and you can stay on a low dose of those preventatively to like I’ll do, I’ve got one that’s got all of leaf in there, which is just a good antifungal, and it’s been said to take antifungals while you’re detoxing mold, so for me, I’ve just been doing a little bit of a low dose of some antifungals just preventively. And the good thing is with something like olive leaf, that’s an antiviral as well. So you can have that’s the cool thing why we love herbs so much is because you can have as you mentioned, bugs is kind of a generality, bugs could be viruses, bacteria, parasites, you could have an herb that can be antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, all in one so we love these anytime of the year but especially if you’re around like you said potential bad food that who knows what if they didn’t cook the shrimp cocktail good enough, right? Or if it was all shrimp and and you got a exposed to something there. Yeah, so if you’re on vacation like let’s say Mexico or somewhere where the food may be a little bit different than what you’re normally used to people that go to Bali or Mexico or sometimes other countries, they’re exposed to things they’re not used to. So going on like a preventative dose, like one capsule with each meal, a lot of times can be super helpful. We may also do, I always recommend my patients flying with a full bottle of probiotics too, because that can really help with food poisoning as well. So we can do like one probiotic capsule every hour or two. And that can acutely address any food poisoning works phenomenally.
Evan Brand: So I like doing that to help with any food poisoning too. Beautiful and of course acid and enzymes deserve a mention up to just because you mentioned the travel. You know in theory if your stomach acid levels are good enough and you’ve got your gallbladder releasing store bile, you’re breaking down your fats good. Hopefully everything’s okay but it wouldn’t hurt to add in some extra enzymes and acids to hopefully neutralize any pathogens you could expose to
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: one Hundred percent. I think it’s vitally, vitally important. Probiotics clearing herbs we talked about gluta time we talked about silver, these are all really, really important modulating things, HCl enzymes, digestive support, kind of as needed, just so we can digest and break down our food. I think those are all very, very, very powerful things. Next, I think will be sleep support. So you could always do something like a sublingual, melatonin and just kind of do that. Once you get your schedule back on track, you can take it maybe at sunrise the next day. I’m sorry, you could do it at at nightfall. So as soon as the sun goes down, you can you know, as it gets dark, you can take it as it gets dark to kind of reset your cycle. And then when the sun comes up, you could do some kind of the caffeine with some light exposure and grounding can be very helpful to get your circadian rhythm back on track. You take a little bit of a caffeine or a mild stimulant. As the sun comes back up. You do a little bit of grounding your feet on grass or some kind of a stone while getting light exposure to the sunrise. That’s a great way to get your circadian rhythm restarted. And then at nighttime when the sun sets, do a little bit of melatonin, you know you can do anywhere between like a third of a milligram, very small those couple hundred micrograms to it sublingually and that can kind of get your circadian rhythm kind of back on cycle for your time zone again if you’re traveling to Mexico or something or the DR and then you’re only a time zone or two off, or even the same time zone not a big deal. You travel to Bali or maybe Hawaii or Europe then you’ll You know, you’re going off maybe 5678 hours that you may have to do a significant reset there.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good advice and of course light pollution at night always trying to address that a lot a lot of hotels luckily these days have pretty good blackout curtains and such but you know, we had several places where the outside light was still trying to sneak in so we would take extra blankets or towels or whatever else you got to do unplug alarm clocks, cover up lights, take out light bulbs, you know whatever you got to do to to cover it up. We had One room we had had a smoke detector that had a super bright green light and green light can suppress melatonin just like blue light can at night. So I just took a pair of swim trunks and threw them over the smoke detector, boom, we had darkness. So sometimes it’s tricky to get a nice dark room.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One thing I will travel with his electrical tape, black electrical tape and any lights like that, I will literally just take a piece tape, put over light,
Evan Brand: that’s easy, that’s great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So just a little bit of tape. And then you can just tape up all the lights and then you want to make it black so blocks out the lights a little bit thicker, you know a little more opaque blocks the light out better. And I always call ahead and say hey, you know do you have dark shades or blackout shades? I think it’s really important. I stayed at one place that didn’t and I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, man, your sun goes up at seven o’clock you’re up at seven it’s like this, you know, that’s just you know, forget sleeping in. So I always try to call ahead and make sure I do have blackout shade options if not, you know get A blanket, tape it up against the wall. That’s your best bet. It’s kind of Yes. But yeah, go ahead.
Evan Brand: And also on the on the traveling thing too. We talked about air filtration. I travel with the water filter as well. I mean, you can buy bottled water for drinking, I’m talking about for bathing. So you know, a lot of places, a lot of cities really heavily chlorinate the water. And so of course, chlorine is like a natural antibiotic. So first of all, if you’re drinking water with chlorine in it, you’re killing your good bacteria and your microbiome. But regarding the skin, chlorine, I just doesn’t agree with my skin. It makes your hair nasty. It makes your skin nasty. It smells bad. It’s it’s toxic. It’s a neurotoxin. So I personally use the Berkey there’s other brands out there. Yeah, Berkey makes a really good shower filter. And I forgot to travel with my wrench. But luckily the shower head on the hotel was loose enough I could unloosen it. Put on the Berkey shower filter and boom, you got super pure water and for the little kids for my little girls. I don’t want them bathing and chlorine. So Guess what we do we just turn on the shower to fill up the bathtub and now you got a perfect chlorine free bath.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, that’s definitely a good option. Also, if I’m staying at a hotel in the states you know, I’ll just instacart for Amazon Prime now good filtered water, you know, couple bottles, couple dozen, maybe a dozen bottles of Pellegrino or or Voss or Fiji water, try to buy it in bulk or if there’s a whole foods nearby, just buy a couple of gallons and just leave them in the hotel room. So I have clean filtered water, you’re not paying an arm and a leg for the hotel price. But that way you can get some good clean water. Ideally, if you can get like a bunch of Pellegrino dropped off and glass that’s an awesome class may not work especially if you’re traveling a lot and you have young kids, you may have to do classes just for the convenience of it not breaking. So those are good options for you in the states try to use instacart or prime now or they can drop off within an hour to attend to be super helpful. And then I’ll also stay at a lot of places in the states that have a like a little kitchenette. So then I’ll just have a couple of dozen eggs dropped off maybe a pound or two again. again so then I have breakfast covered every single morning at least eggs or bacon and that way you’re set you could at least start the first meal out of the day pretty good and you can control the quality of it and I just try to make sure if I can there’s an instant Carter prime now service available where I could have it dropped off.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s what we did. We did we didn’t do the delivery. We just stopped at Whole Foods, but we did have a kitchenette. So we did bake and we did eggs. We bought some frozen fish. We had a freezer and we had an oven so we were able to bake some fish for a couple nights that was great. And we did find a couple good restaurants luckily they had some grass fed steaks and such but we tried to mix it up 5050 because you know you go on vacation you don’t want to be doing dishes three times a day either my wife’s like I’m doing dishes again what’s going on so like Okay, let’s go to a nice place get you a grass fed burger. And that was a good break from from dishes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah, I actually was able to find so what I believe the country I like going to Mexico for vacation because number one you get, you know, nice little warm retreat, but it’s not far. It’s only just a couple hours from Austin. It’s easy nonstop flight virtually the same time zone. And when you get There, I found a resort The brand is charisma. And if you let them know I sent you over, but I found them because they were one of the only gourmet food brands meaning they grow all their food on site, super high quality. And they cater to food allergens. So really good quality food, lots of good restaurant options, all inclusive so you don’t pay anything extra. You get what you pay, and then you have unlimited access to the food. And then you can you know, you can get gluten free options. They really cater to the food allergen and you get better quality food. And it’s even you know, local locally raised right there on site.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I know you live like a king when you go down there. It is pretty cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s nice because there’s a couple there’s a of like maybe 16 maybe 20 different hotels in the charisma brand, but it’s KARISMA just type in Karisma hotels, but they have a bunch of hotels couple doesn’t have a gore main line and that the formula This the food quality is five star so you have great quality food, organic, and you have lots of options and they cater to food allergens. That’s one of the best things about it.
Evan Brand: That’s beautiful. You know, I actually on my searches for hotels, I came across this website called pure rooms. PURE which was supposed to be this. It’s basically a company that works with different hotels, Marriott and whoever else and they basically put in water filters. They put air filters in the room, they use no fragrance, they take out any feathers for any allergens to like down comforters and such. The problem is every hotel I call they said oh no, we don’t do that anymore. Probably because nobody was ever booking the rooms and they didn’t want those rooms just sitting there wasted. So I called like three hotels and they’re like, Oh, yeah, we had the pure room, but we don’t have it anymore. So I don’t know if it’s somebody had to request in advance. But if somebody super sensitive, you know, you could look up your room and there’s basically a directory on the planet on the whole world where you can look at a hotel that would have a quote, pure room available for you to book.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, the nice thing is a lot of hotel rooms You know, they’re they’re getting better because people are more hypoallergenic people smoking is kind of a more taboo so they have non smoking rooms, I think just the big thing you can do is just try to request in advance, you know, not all the harsh cleaners or harsh smells, or just get a really good air filter like you have kind of drop it off, plug it in for a couple of hours, get the room kind of cleaned out, and then you’ll probably be good to go.
Evan Brand: Yep, that’s what we did. We put it on full blast, took a walk to the beach came back the room was was much better, still not optimal. I mean, I’d rather be at my house with my big ol nice air purifiers, but you know, you got to make the best of it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And then when I travel when I choose vacations, I want to come back on a vacation feeling good. So I don’t want to be eating crap the whole time. I want to be eating quality foods. When I come back. I’m not like bloated and inflamed and feeling like crap. So I want to food quality is a big deal for me. Number two is I don’t want to spend a day on the way there and a day on the way back traveling. So I try to choose places that I can go in a non stop and ideally be there within three to four hours on a non stop. I don’t like to get my sleeping all day. jacked up. So I don’t want to be up at like 3am leaving. So ideally, I try to find flights that I can leave at, you know, you know, get up at six or seven, get to the airport, leave at nine or 10 and get to where I want to be by, you know, three or four at the latest, you know, just because I don’t want to waste the day on each on each side and I want to feel relatively rested. So Mexico, Dr. Jamaica, you know, if if you’re like trying to go somewhere more tropical. Those are pretty good places because you get the tropical feel you can get an all inclusive access, and it’s not going to be too far or too expensive to get there.
Evan Brand: Yep, yep. Good advice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So anything else on the travel side, you want to highlight? I mean, the only thing I could say is, if you know you’re going to be eating more crap, we talked about glutathione. I’m sorry, we talked about activated charcoal. And you can always want if you know you’re going to be having gorging yourself, you can always intermittent fast the next day to compensate. You can always do a little bit more movement before after whether it’s interval or resistance training just to deplete glycogen and to get your metabolism up on that way. The extra alcohol or sugar won’t hit yes hard. Those are all other good options that you can kind of add in.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I would just last thing just in general is some type of good adaptogenic herbs to help cope with the stress. So ashwagandha would be great. I know you love ashwagandha I love it too, but you could use it at night. You could use it during the day for stress, you could use it at night for sleep you could do you already mentioned the the the reishi mushroom for immune support, but that’s also kind of an adaptogen. Basically, you’ve got rhodiola which can help boost your energy. I took a mitochondrial support that I have. So that’s like a B vitamin combo that can be helpful because the stress of traveling burns up your bs B as in Bravo. So mitochondrial support can be helpful. Vitamin D, hopefully you’re going somewhere sunny. You don’t need vitamin D, but that’s also important for immune function. We talked about the enzyme piece, I would say liver support I did take some liver herbs to just some milk this old and some other basic stuff methionine tarin. I think That’s it. I mean, I’m sure we could riff on more but that’s that. Oh, yes. Oh, this is important. So anybody that has like any travel anxiety, which I don’t know if I have traveling anxiety, I just get stressed travels is stressful for me, especially with two kids and is the kid hungry and Okay, and the diaper and you know what I mean? So, what I took is just a blend of some calming herbs. So I took like some other war. I took some skullcap I took some Valerian some thenI, and just had a combo in tincture form. So we’re at the airport, you got 1000 people in front of you, you’re waiting to get past I just boom, boom, boom. Shoot a few squirts of some calming herbs in my system, and I was cool as a cucumber the entire time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Love it, man. Yes, smart. You know, try to do it the right way. Like you said, That’s why I try to do nonstops in and short flights. But if you’re going to Europe or anywhere else, that becomes a little bit tough. So like you mentioned, the adaptogens are helpful. That’s where definitely bringing the melatonin to be helpful. Some of the extra Bs, the B vitamins to help with stress, I think they’re going to be really helpful as well. Anything else you want to highlight or add today, Evan?
Evan Brand: I don’t think so I’ll just make a comment. You know, it’s so interesting. You see all these people that get on the plane, you can tell some people, they’re nervous and they order alcohol from the flight attendant, and they’re trying to drink alcohol to calm themselves down. That’s the worst thing you could do. The elevation of being on the plane causes dehydration. It’s like being on top of a mountain, the stress of it is depleting. So, I mean, if you need to calm yourself down, a glass of wine on the plane is not what you want. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying Would you rather have something awesome? Like, you take a few squirts of some passionflower and ashwagandha then your your nervous system is going to be calm. You’re not gonna have any crazy blood sugar swings on the plane, you’re not going to be dehydrating yourself. So I just, I just, I think in five to 10 years, maybe we’ll see more people like shooting adaptogens down their throat on the plane versus taking alcohol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. I think number one, if you are going to consume alcohol, let’s say you got the upgraded seats and they cover a nice drink. Like when I go to Mexico, I think it was like I think I was I got the ability to upgrade to first class like 50 bucks. I’m like, heck yeah, you know, an extra foot a leg room. And so when I go to Mexico, I think I’m going to be going in February, I will be doing a glass of champagne on the flight because it’s complimentary. But what you do is number one, when you get to the airport and you have time, get a nice like, get a nice bottle of Pellegrino or something, hydrate before the flight where you know, so you have the good minerals in your system. And then if you’re going to drink then just have a nice, bringing a couple activated charcoal with you. So then you have that just kind of go back and forth. And if you are going to drink, just try to space out one drink one glass of mineral water, one drink one glass of mineral water. That way you don’t get too dehydrated, you get the extra minerals in the water, so you won’t be getting to deplete it. But I think that’s really a good important points.
Evan Brand: Perfect. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. If you do want to reach out clinically, we work with these gut issues that we’re talking about detox problems. You know what we do? We love helping people get to the root cause of their problems. You know, we were used to someone being through 510 15 practitioners before they get to Dr. J. Or me And we kind of like being I’ll speak for Justin as well, we kind of like being in that position because it allows us to show them what we do differently. And oh, here’s why you didn’t get better. It’s because you didn’t you didn’t do this or you didn’t look in that ballpark or you did it in the wrong order. So we love and some, sometimes it comes with the territory of our jobs to be in the in the cleanup crew category. We’re cleaning up somebody else’s mess. And that’s fun. I love that and we’re both very grateful to be able to serve you well. So if you want to reach out to Justin clinically, please do so his website is Justin health. JustinHealth.com. My website, EvanBrand.com. And thank you for listening. We appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I think next week is was next year, next week, next month in New Year’s Eve. Yep. So I think I’ll be here next Monday as well. So I’m excited to chat with you again. How about you Evan? Will you be here?
Evan Brand: I’ll be here. I ain’t going anywhere.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All right. Excellent. I love it. You’re back from your vacation. You’re supposed to be refreshed. So yes. Excellent. All right now great chatting with you put it thanks for all the information on the product. We talked about or recommended. We’ll put them in the references links below. Evan, great chat with you have a phenomenal week. Will you take care bye bye. Thank you, everyone. Bye
References:
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/functional-medicine-tips-to-survive-the-holidays-podcast-262
Recommended product:
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Medicinal Mushrooms and their Health Benefits with Jeff Chilton | Podcast #261
Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio Podcast! For today, an interesting topic is all about medicinal mushrooms. We have Jeff Chilton, who is a mushroom expert and CEO of realmushrooms.com. Know the in’s and out’s of mushrooms, how this can improve your health. Check out the podcast below.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
01:42 Growing mushrooms
09:25 Ergothioneine compound and its benefits
23:56 Lion’s Mane
34:00 Chinese Medicine
47:14 Psychedelic Mushrooms
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio. We got a fabulous guest guest here Jeff Chilton, who is a mushroom expert. Today’s talks all going to be about medicinal mushrooms, the ins the outs how they can improve your health. Jeff, welcome to the show how we doing?
Jeff Chilton: Hey, Justin, thank you so much for having me doing fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s dive in and tell the listeners about kind of your background. How did you even get into the mushroom industry? You’ve been doing it for a while. And what brought you here today?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’m a born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, forests, rivers, lots of water, and in the fall, it rains a lot. And so it’s one of the best places in the world for wild mushrooms. And so, when I went to university, I had an interest in mushroom. So I studied mycology, but my major was anthropology and through anthropology I studied all about the use of mushrooms as food as medicine and in shamanism, but when universe It was over. It’s like, how do you get a job in anthropology? Right money now? So So I thought, well, you know, I’d love to learn how to grow mushrooms. And it turns out that there was only one mushroom farm in Washington State and it was 60 miles down the road from Seattle. I went down, I, I ended up getting a job. And I was there for the next 10 years, literally living with mushrooms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, amazing. Yeah. So when you started out this process, did you kind of have to learn the ins and outs of like, how to farm them, how to raise them, how to grow them? Like how did that process kind of unfold? Did you have to study from some really, you know, key mentors in this industry? Or did they just kind of didn’t actually happen organically on your own?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, this was a very large farm and we were growing 2 million pounds of mushrooms every year. I mean, there was there was 200 employees. And so I just started out at the bottom of this and there were a couple of mushroom growers there who are the head grower. So this operation and managers and I essentially was kind of like an apprentice to them. So over the next 10 years, I made my way up to being the production manager. And again, I mean, just think about this every day, every single crop and we’ve got like these crops and rotations, I’m seeing Justin I’m seeing 200 crops of mushrooms. Every year, every year 200 crops, think about a normal farmer and how many crops that normal farmer is going to see.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. So you started out what were your favorite mushrooms to grow off the bat? So obviously, you may have some personal preference based off of what you take or what works the best on your physiology, what allows you to feel the best, what are your favorite ones off the bat for you?
Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, you know, again, we’re growing Agaricus motions and that’s all we really had to eat at the time other than wild mushrooms. But while I was there, we had a Japanese scientist who was growing oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms and man hat Have you ever eaten shiitake mushrooms?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have Yes.
Jeff Chilton: They’re delicious. They’re absolutely my favorite moment. Not only are they excellent in terms of just eating and nutritionally but medicinally they’re really solid so like shiitake mushrooms are one of those food as medicine. I’m foods.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah really big immune booster. So what are your favorite one? So in practice I clinically use Reishi maitake, shiitake, cordyceps. You have Lion’s Mane, turkey tail. Those are some some of the more common medicinal mushrooms. Do you have any specific favorites that you’ve used clinically or that you’ve seen in general?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, my favorite is actually reishi mushroom because reishi mushroom, you know, with medicinal mushrooms, the key compound a medicinal mushroom is called a Beta Glucan. Yeah, and this beta glucan is what activates our immune system. So it’s a potential creator, something that strengthens our immunity all mushrooms have these beta glucans even just edible mushrooms that we think of as medicinal mushrooms day. Yeah, because the Beta Glucan makes up half of the cell wall of mushrooms. And so, so all mushrooms will have that. But medicinal mushrooms, the top medicinal mushrooms have a very specific architecture of that Beta Glucan that makes them active compared to the others. Reishi has probably the largest amount of beta glucans that went to Turkey tail in all of our analyses. And we analyze every single batch of product that we make ratios got one of the highest levels of beta glucans, but it also has these compounds called try terpenoids. And those are the bitter compounds. So so it’s kind of like Reishi is medicinal mushroom plus, and that’s the one if you’re in Asia or something. I mean, it’s a mushroom of immortality. They’ve got stories about I mean, it’s just just really well known.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and we will go into exact companies. But I’ve been told by a couple of different mushroom experts that you want to trigger pain kind of extract about 15% or so in the medicinal mushroom extracts to kind of have a level of clinical potency. Is there a percent? Regarding the terpenes that people should look for or an amount regarding the one three?
Jeff Chilton: Well, I mean, they don’t get as high as 15%, unless you’re really trying to build them up. But just in general, they would be somewhere around 4%. And, and the trouble with just even giving a percentage is that there’s no companies or very few labs that can actually analyze for tried terpenes, but we can analyze for beta glucan. So what you really want to do with any machine product doesn’t matter what it is, look for an analysis of the beta glucans. And here’s, here’s a little key and a trick is that it used to be that everybody would say, oh, our product has x amount of polysaccharides. Okay, well, the problem with that and Beta Glucan is a polysaccharide So, so that everybody would think, okay, yeah, we got lots of polysaccharides lots of beta glucans. The problem is that polysaccharides are actually this starches and so many extracts out there of whatever kind Come on starch carriers. So in some cases, when we analyzed machine products, the level of starch was as much as 60%
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, okay. Wow. Yeah. So if you want to actually look at the certificate for the beta glucans, not the polysaccharide
Jeff Chilton: Absolutely. If companies just talking about polysaccharides they’re hiding something and, you know, we consider polysaccharide analysis for mushrooms to be absolutely useless. And we we’ve demonstrated that through our testing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then obviously the quality making sure there’s no other you know, heavy metals or joke like that pesticides or mushroom is generally grown organically, or do these are typically pesticides that may be given on a conventional kind of farming.
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, there’s a lot of mushrooms probably the majority of mushrooms grown out there have pesticide use going on. It’s gotten much better. Certainly when I was at the mushroom farm in the 1970s. Justin, we had an actual program where it was like it on this day you spray this chemical a month down the line, you spray this chemical. I mean, it was a program for growing mushrooms and using pesticides and fungicides today, in the industry in the United States, they use a lot less than they used to but still, if you have the ability year you want to be looking for an organic we certified mushroom, I mean, and all our products are certified organic, and to me that’s really important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: God and we’ll go over your stuff at the end here, but I’ll drop your website, realmushrooms.com great products there. Also, let’s kind of just back up a little bit. So we talked about some of the Beta Glucan, the one three Beta Glucan. We talked about the tritter pians I may be mispronouncing it for the last decade. Okay, tomato tomato, right, it works. So those are those the big kind of medicinal compounds that are active in mushrooms or another, like hidden compound we don’t know about yet.
Jeff Chilton: Well, there are a couple of those. But and what I want to emphasize here is Look, what scientists do out there when they look at any natural product is they fractionated and fractionated. And fraction it because they’re looking for the latest new drug. Right? So so you a person could say, oh, there are hundreds of compounds in mushrooms, and they all help in the activity. You know what? That may be true, but some of those compounds are going to only be there in minute amounts. And that’s just part of drug discovery, because they they find all these different compounds. So So really, what I focus on is look there are certain compounds occur and measurable amounts, they define this category like the beta glucan. And those are the ones that we can actually measure and use as markers for quality. So so that’s really important. One compound that I want to reveal to you right now that is it are in mushrooms and not into many other things. It’s a compound called ergothioneine. If you ever heard of ergothioneine?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ergothioneine I have not Can you talk about some of that what that is and what the benefits are?
Jeff Chilton: Well, ergothioneine is is a compound it’s actually an amino acid that they have found in a number of areas in our body, and they’re going we don’t produce it. What’s it doing there? And why is it concentrated in areas where there’s high oxidative stress, and then they’ve done a lot of studies with it and they indicate that it’s a very powerful antioxidant. In fact, it’s it’s It’s something that they’re thinking might even be a new vitamin. And mushrooms are one of the foods that contain high amounts of ergothioneine to the point where we now analyze every single product that we got for air go signing to establish a baseline and just to see okay, how much of this do we have in our mushrooms? So ergothioneine is one of those kind of special compounds we also analyze for a compound called air gost are all their gospel is the fungal sterile like our cholesterol, yes, in all fungi, all mushrooms, and and it is something that also has medicinal benefits and we can measure it as well. It’s something that that is has got some, some direct, basically anti tumor activities. It’s it’s something that that you know, plant vital sterols or something that is very beneficial. For us, so that’s another compound that we can measure and and use it as a measure for quality. And that’s really the key for what we do. We don’t try to build up anything in our products, we just want to have the profile that you expect to find in a dried mushroom. That’s what we’re looking for. So anytime we do an extract, we want to match it up on that profile.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Okay, so we have the ergaster all there. Let’s talk about some of the beta glucans. What are they doing to the your immune cells? I mean, I’ve seen some studies, they’re helping increase natural killer cells there is some of the terpenes are deactivating viruses. What do you know, based on your experience and your research you’ve done? What’s it doing to your immune system? How is it helping your body?
Jeff Chilton: Well, these, these beta glucans, we actually have receptors for beta glucans. And these receptors are down in our our lower intestines are, they’re down there and so what how Beta glucans come down, they will, they will lock into these receptor sites, and then they will actually then potentially create or or essentially strengthen any immune response and create more immune cells like NK cells like macrophages, like T cells. So, that’s really where they essentially are going to help boost our our immunity and and what they’re considered is there can they’re considered a immune modulator. So they’re basically sitting there, they’re a potential creator. So they will essentially strengthen our immune response to whether it would be viruses or bacteria or other fungi. They’re there to essentially assist us and and you know, the way I look at that activity is preventive. I really see that as something that is, you know, in fact, we can be Taking them all the time. And they’re just sitting in the background, helping us out as we’re coping with all of these different stresses that come in, whether it be from bacteria, or whatever it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s in functional medicine, kind of where I’m practicing with my patients. We’re testing their stress response, we’re looking at their adrenal and their cortisol rhythm. And one of the herbs I’ve used used clinically for a very long time are various adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha is one of my favorite right here. And it seems to me based on some of the data that some of these medicinal mushrooms are actually having adaptogenic like a fact whether it’s buffering stress, or buffering the immune response. What’s your take on that?
Jeff Chilton: Oh, I think they’re, they’re, in fact considered to be adaptogens. And I would call them premier adaptogens especially something like Reishi I mean, absolutely. I mean, adaptogen really is something that that tries to keep us in homeostasis. It’s like this whole thing of balance and that’s kind of how I look at health. Is is disease is Cut going out of balance. And so what we’re really trying to do is get back to that homeostasis back to that state of balance and, and they’re there to help us, although there may be other things involved. Of course, like, you know, health is not just that simple. But again, yeah, adaptogen is something that will help us to, to mitigate those stresses that we have, or whatever they are, and bring us back into a state of balance. And I didn’t know that that to me is kind of like traditional Chinese medicine is all kind of based on that same principle there of balance and so adaptogens are something that will help us maintain that balance, which essentially means being healthy. I mean, you know, think about it for a second. If you’re healthy. You ever think about your health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re able to adapt you have a certain level of adaptability.
Jeff Chilton: Yeah, well, and yeah, and and, and when you’re sick, all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, my God, you know, you start thinking about your health and what you have to do to come back into that balance. But when you’re healthy, you’re just cruising around thinking yeah, everything is great. It’s wonderful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah 100% I know there are various mushrooms like cortis apps, for instance, there’s some data they help improve DHCP levels, which is a precursor hormone to a lot of sex hormones and it’s made by the adrenals and that helps with stress and inflammation. Can you talk more about sex hormone modulation via some of these medicinal mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I know cortisol has been utilized and is considered to be in that category. Exactly the mechanism I’m not that certain of the mechanism myself and how it does that other than I know that it does have an effect on on oxygen utilization, which I think would be a big part of that. And you know, I think also we have to be very careful with something you know, like I’m not here to tell you Oh, yeah, take quarter steps and your your sexual your libido will improve or anything like that. I don’t know that for a fact. And in some cases, quarter seven, Even could be considered sort of like a doctrine of signatures kind of, kind of herb you familiar with doctrine of signatures if as if something looks like something that it must be helpful that and quarter steps is kind of a little bit phallic shaped, I mean, mushrooms are too, right. But and so it’s kind of like, okay. But I think you know what I think too, and there’s a lot of research done with core deception and it’s beta glucans. And it’s those effects I think anything that can help maintain or boost our immunity is going to have an effect on your, your basic libido and, and libidinous health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I work with a lot of hormone issues, and I strongly recommend not to ever go kind of whole hog go in on just one thing to be the panacea. You know, you obviously want to make sure you’re making diet, lifestyle changes and you’re getting to the root of the underlying issue and some of these things may be a really good palliative support, to kind of throw in there as an important tool. For sure. I agree with that. What about like your national killer cells. What about these helper cells? What about really stimulating these kind of first? You know, these are artists are natural killers, which are the guys that are on the grounds for longer. Exactly first responder to an infection. What what herbs or what mushrooms are best for that? What do you know about that?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what I mean, if you go out and read the literature, and there is so much data out there, on this activity and, and look, much of that data and much of that research is is in vivo? It’s in vitro. We don’t have a lot of clinical data on that on that. So So really, that kind of scientific research, I can read it and go Okay, yeah, this is what this is what happens but going much deeper than that. I mean, I’m not the scientist doing that kind of work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know what happens you kind of have that the general you know, outset mechanism of what’s happening.
Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what? There is so much there’s such a big body of research on the effects of beta glucans on in these kind of tests, I mean, thousands of papers. I mean, they’ve been studying beta glucans now for 30 or 40 years. And so, so that type of activity is something where, you know, I mean, when I looked at that research, I mean, I can only take it so far because I’m not a scientist doing that kind of work. So that’s not the kind of thing that i i really study too much and, and don’t have a hard time keeping up with it all, actually, but the actual mechanisms to me are more important, okay, actually, what is it? Is that fact is it in fact, stimulating these immune cells? Well, what are those immune cells do? Well, I’m sure a lot of practitioners like yourself or immunologists are, are much more capable about going deeper about exactly what they’re doing and how they’re working.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But just in general, just That kind of hundred hundred yard stare. We’re like looking at it. All right big picture, we’re going back, we know that these compounds are having an effect modulating the immune system, mobilizing some of these natural killer cells, can you kind of connect the dots based on what you know, with medicinal mushrooms in cancer? What’s your experience with that your experience or in the literature, you know?
Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, what I would say is, look, medicinal mushrooms are not going to cure anybody’s cancer. What they’re primarily used for is an edge event. In other words, there’s something that if you’re going through a, a standard chemotherapy or radiation or something like that, they’re going to help you your immune system, your body to cope with those two types of protocols which are tearing down your immunity and making you you know, sick to some degree. So that’s really where they come in. And, you know, in terms of folk remedies, I mean, mushrooms have been used as folk remedy for those kind of things, but terms of actually being a cure per se, I don’t look at them in that way at all i just i just consider them something that is going to help you to actually cope with this tremendous stress of not only the disease but also with the therapies that you’re that you know, science right now or the medical profession is actually using with people. So so you know, some of the some of the most well known drugs actually that have been produced from mushrooms one is called KSK. And the other is called PSP and they’re produced from Turkey tail and they but they are not like a just standard mushroom hot water extract or alcohol extract. There there actually have been fractionated Downton and extracted to the point where in Japan pFk is actually considered a drug and it is prescribed with cancer therapy. So that’s that’s an end. You know, it’s not like it’s it’s, I mean, it’s helping people. Maybe they’re getting a longer life by using that compared to the control groups. But there’s a lot of clinical data on that. But it’s not something that’s given to try and cure anybody. They’ve got another drug over there called Lenten and that is produced from Shiitake mushroom. And it is a it is unlike PS K, which is not a pure compound because it’s a protein bound polysaccharide Linton and is actually a pure beta 1316 glucagon, and it is utilized in the same way again, not alone, but along with these other therapies. And there’s another, a tremendous body of clinical work behind it to demonstrate that it does alleviate some of the symptoms and it also gives people a longer life than they otherwise would have, but not like, you know, significantly going to grow no longer live for years and years a year. Yeah, what you normally have.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when we talk about cancer, there’s never just one, you can’t have a cure when there’s dozens of different causes. If you’re getting exposed to toxins, or stress, or sleep or low vitamin D, or nutrient deficiencies, you can’t have just one care of nothing. There’s no such thing as a cure if there’s dozens of different potential vectors, but there’s things that we can do to kind of throw in there to support all the other things that we’re doing to, to bump up our immune response. That’s kind of the context of that.
Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, and and, you know, I think the other thing that we have to remember is that cancer in some ways could be lifestyle related. It could be diet related people eating the wrong things, I mean, or, or smoking or drinking or or any of those types of drug abuses. I mean, so there’s a lot of factors involved. And, you know, in a way, the first thing you’d want somebody to do is go Okay, why don’t you back off all of that you probably would prescribe somebody a certain type of diet you say, you know, you shouldn’t be eating this. You shouldn’t be drinking that. You need to make some real changes if you want to help the protocols. So you’re going to give them and those kind of things that are so important and because it’s if you’re looking at something from a holistic way, which I’m sure you are, then then you know that there are so many different factors that you have to deal with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and these are I consider them to be adaptogen functional medicine tools that are very powerful that we plug in to a comprehensive program. So like that. What other let’s just say less notorious things that are mushrooms are used for besides the common immune adaptogenic kind of immune kind of cancer boosting effects. What else do you see what else do you recommend for
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what’s really interesting is is there’s a mushroom right now that is just like, gotten so popular. It’s called Lion’s Mane you heard Lion’sMane at all, I use lion’s mane.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like big E’s Reishi and cortis apps and but maitake and shiitake but I haven’t really been using it too much, but I do have some.
Jeff Chilton: Well, it’s it’s pretty interesting because there’s They actually the thing about Lion’s Mane is that we have clinical trials out of Japan, where they’ve actually got, like 30 different people around age 70. And then they’ve got a control group of 30 people and they feed them three grams of lion’s mane, they give them a whole battery of tests. 90 days later, they test them again. And what they find is that the people taking the lion’s mane do much better. And then they stopped taking Lion’s Mane for a month, and now they’re back to baseline and the same as the control. So, so they’ve got a number of these different clinical tests with Lion’s Mane lion’s mane. Actually, they found from their research stimulates the production of what’s called nerve growth factor. And nerve growth factor is a protein that essentially helps to maintain and strengthen our our neuron production and our neural network. So So So if you can stimulate the production of this nerve growth factor because what they find is as you get older your production of nerve growth factor starts to go down a bit and so so now I mean and so there you know how it is they’re trying to tie all these things together to find out Okay, why is it that we have this cognitive sort of let down as we get older and and people’s memories start to you know, get a little bit wobbly and they can’t remember as well and then we have dimension Alzheimer’s and all those other things so so the fact that there is actually something like a lion’s mane that let’s just call it a nootropic, which is kind of a category these days you probably heard of it and yeah, and so it’s like, I’m mad. It is just like taken off because.. Well, the compound there’s a couple of compounds in Lion’s Mane that produces they’re called harisonones, arenasenes, arenaserens, and I mean, this is another one of those things where, when you look at the when you look at the literature, there’s probably a couple dozen different, let’s just say, analogs of these different compounds that create these effects and and will boost this nerve growth factor. And you know, we’re just get worse beginning of researching that even though it’s been used in traditional Chinese medicine for these types of issues for quite a while.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s very cool. Yeah, when you look at these things you can read you can have a 20 page study, but if you walk away, what’s the bullet point mechanism? And what’s it doing and as long as you get that action point, that’s the the most important thing in my opinion, right? PhD pile higher and deeper, but you can you can also just get that the key take home action items, so I think that’s powerful. So any research on that connecting improvements and all timers or any neurodegenerative conditions at all?
Jeff Chilton: Actually, there is Yeah, they’ve got a couple studies on dementia. Okay, actually showing that it improves and also they have a few studies on depression, showing that it improves and you know what? Listen, it is not easy to get clinical trials with any natural product, or dandle not only that to get a good one because look, I’ve seen clinical trials done, and you look at them and go, okay, who sponsored them? And and who’s doing them and, yeah, you know, unless it’s a totally unbiased group, you have to be really careful. I like any research. I mean, you have to read the fine print of how this is done and who’s actually doing it. So these particular studies are done it Japanese universities, I like Japanese science, art or culture. Well, that as well. Yeah. And and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think I was seeing things such as like liver or kidney cancer, like one of the first line therapies over in Japan is some of these medicinal mushrooms. I think is we see our quarter steps is like first line in Japan for for liver cancer.
Jeff Chilton: Wow. Well, well, you know what’s interesting about you saying that is that I was at a conference in China in the mid 90s. And it was a Ganoderma Reishi conference and there was a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner there older man, maybe it’s in his 50s or something like that. And I was talking to him and he said his number one herb for the liver was Reishi. Yeah, yeah. And he had times he said, he said he would, he would use as much as 30 dried grams of ratioed. In his treatments. And, you know, the one of the things that’s interesting about traditional Chinese medicine is that when they’re using their herbal formulas, it’s strong. It’s powerful. They put a lot in there, they want to see something happen. You know, it’s not like supplements. What a supplements tell you to take, I mean, tell you to take one or two capsules a day doesn’t matter whether you’re Hundred 50 pounds or 250 pounds, they’re telling you two capsules a day. It’s like, Come on, let’s get real here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That will 30 grams is significant in the capsule, the average ratio is 500 milligrams account.
Jeff Chilton: Well, and of course this is, yeah, this is 30 grams of dried mushrooms. So let’s just say if you if you were to do a 10 to one extract, you could you could get it down to three grams of extract or something like that, which still would be quite a lot. I mean, so So in other words, he was he’s just basically saying, look, we use a lot, we use a high dose. For us. It’s the main herb that we use for liver problems and I thought amazing, and and that’s where the tri terpenes come in. They’ve got a lot of data, long tried terpenoids with the liver.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know some of the mechanisms in regards to I’ll still call them trinitarians. I’m the static. Actually they deactivate viruses, any feedback on that. What do you know about the deactivation of viruses? How does that happen? Is it just like binding to And then making the virus less pathogenic.
Jeff Chilton: That’s, that’s really interesting. I couldn’t really answer that question that’s for a virologist, you know, you know, this is the thing, it’s like, you get into all of that research, and I can read a paper and maybe, especially these days, a week later, I’ve forgotten the whole thing. I mean, whereas the research that I do myself and the research that we do in my company, you know, I can go into that in great detail and what we’ve done there, but in terms of this other stuff, I can read it, but you know what it’s like, it’s just like, if you want to write a paper on something, you pull together all this research, you spend months, dealing with it, working with it, putting it into the shape that you want it in, and by the end of it, you’re an expert, right, and you know it backwards and forwards, it’s like but, man, I can’t do that anymore with a lot of that research because I’m busy doing other things
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: make sense? All the listeners have to know that there’s mechanisms out there, it can provide that benefit. That’s great. If you have anything to add, you know, any value you want to add to it above and beyond based on your experience, that’s great. But you kind of said a couple of things that I wanted to highlight you talked about a lot of the pharmaceutical research in some of these mushrooms are these kind of compounds or isomers. Within mushrooms, you see a lot of that with turmeric or curcumin as well, it seems like Big Pharma is trying to find this like, you know, active compound and isolated. Now we know just with natural compounds in general, you can’t really patent them unless you can find something and then twist it around a little bit and make it so it’s not found in nature. And then you could patent it. So if someone comes in and says, Hey, reishi mushroom as this amazing benefit, let’s put 100 million dollars into this, you know, to these studies, and you see this great benefit, guess what, you can’t get the ROI on your investment because everyone can now sell Reishi because there’s no patent so you have companies that are in there trying to make a drug out of it by tweaking it a little bit.
Jeff Chilton: That’s absolutely right. And that’s that’s where these particular products like Linton It’s a patented product, I mean, because it’s it’s actually a drug and it is like they pulled out this one very specific Beta Glucan for that mushroom. And so that’s what they’ve got a pure compound. And, you know, in what I do, and certainly in the general, let’s just say supplement industry or herbal medicine space, I mean, what we, I believe that any of these natural products, there’s multiple components, they’re all working together, and to try and build one up or split one off or anything like that. It kind of is not the way that a traditional herbalist or, or the way we would like to see these natural products use. We want to see the whole herb used and certainly we can concentrate them in an into an extract because it’s like going, Oh, how am I going to take 30 grams of Reishi. It’s like, you’re certainly not going to want to just eat it anyway. You might want to boil it down into tea and then you can Drinking, okay, but but again, supplement makers, their powders, nobody’s going to say okay, yeah, take 10 capsules of this particular product, they want to have a concentrate when we make concentrates, we want to make sure that the profile is similar to what the raw material has. Because we believe that all of those compounds that are in there need to be in there and should be in there for this to work the way it’s supposed to work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It gets really, really important. That’s good. So when you talk about I mean, there’s so many get my head wrapped around this here. So when we talked about some of these compounds, like you mentioned, the whole mushroom has a lot of other antioxidant, other beneficial properties that kind of work in synergy. So when you just pull one mech one compound out, you’re missing that beautiful matrix that was encapsulating it. So that totally makes sense. I get that. And what’s your take on dosing in general, I know that may be different from Reishi, the lion’s mane to cordyceps. Is there a general dosing structure that you like to adhere to based on weight or certain conditions
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’ve got a physician friend who was originally from Hong Kong where he studied traditional Chinese medicine. But then he became an MD. He practices in New York in 1992. He wrote a paper on the proper dose for a reishi mushroom and he went back and he looked at all of the traditional literature, everything he can find, and he came up and he said, Look, a common dose for that would be a two to five dried grams of the mushroom or extract equivalent. So if you were like, Okay, I’ve got a five grams if I do a 10 to one extract, that means I could do 500 milligrams as a daily dose and so I use that kind of as my guideline for all of the mushrooms I say look, two to five dried grams or or equivalent In terms of an extract and the other thing that we can do to which is which is really great is when we have these clinical trials. For example, with lion’s mane, these clinical trials are based on three dried grams of just Lion’s Mane powder. My God, that is not hardly anything really when you think about it, and just to give you an idea, okay, three dried grams. A normal mushroom is 90% water. So what that means is 30 grams of fresh lion’s mane, that would be like one Lion’s Mane one small Lion’s Mane that you would you would eat. So, three dried grams is not a lot and yet they were getting these benefits from that. And my thing is, you know, I kind of like and I’ve got friends in the herbal industry that have been there a long time making extracts and all that. One of my friends is like, I want my extracts to be strong enough that when somebody takes it, they’re going to feel something And I think that’s kind of interesting because, you know, that’s what, in a sense, the traditional Chinese practitioners are sort of doing when they’re giving people higher doses of these things. They’re like, we want to see something happen. We want to see people feel this, we want to see some benefits right away. We don’t want a low dose people and yeah, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t so so you know, and and look, I don’t want to get too much into dosing because I’m not a practitioner. I’m not on the front lines at all. So that’s something where someone like yourself or others would, would, you know, if you’re in clinical practice, you would see that you would see the effects. I don’t get that kind of feedback so much, but I really think that it doesn’t matter what it is you have to take enough of it to get the benefits.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, I’ve been actually doing three to five grams in general for a very long time. So usually 500 milligram capsule doing six, and then if I’m acute when I’m sick, I’m up to 12 capsules, 556 grams a day. So I’ve seen that have to be very, very therapeutic. That’s excellent. And so when we’re looking at mushrooms, you know, we’ll go into specific brands, what are the things we should look for? To assess potency? What should we things we should look for in the back of the label? What should we taste for? You talked about Reishi kind of tasting bitter earlier. How can someone look on the back of a label and assess what’s going on?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, one of the things as a mushroom grower, I know the economics of growing mushrooms. You know, I mean, I’ve like I was on that big farm. I had a small farm myself for a while I know what the economics are. If you grow mushrooms, you can grow them fresh, take them to the market, you can make a living but the fact of the matter is, is that as supplements, we’re dealing with a dry powder. Mushrooms are 90% water. So the issue is that if you can get $5 as a grower for that pound of fresh mushrooms, if you dry it out, now you have to get $50 for that same pound of dried mushrooms and in terms of the supplement industry. The Economics don’t work. I realized that very early on. And so that’s why I spent a lot of time in China in the 90s. Working with growers and working with processors, and in 1997, I went to China with Octa, which is a large organic certification organization. And we held the first workshop for certification, organic certification of mushrooms in China 1997. So that’s where we grow and process all of our mushrooms. But in the United States, what companies do, there’s not a single there’s not a single company in the United States that grows a mushroom and sells that as a supplement unless they’re a small little farm selling their own supplements and growing their own mushrooms. But in terms of the industry, in general, it doesn’t happen because it’s not economically viable. So what happens is in the United States, we’ve got big companies producing mycelium, which is the vegetative stage of this organism that we call a mushroom They put this mycelium on sterilized grain. They grow it out on the grain. And in the end of the process, they harvested all dry it grind it to a powder, grain and all. So one of the things that I did is in 2015 is that it did a big study with 95 different samples 40, of which I bought off the internet. And they were all these mycelia grain products. We tested them for beta glucans. And the test also allowed us to test for alpha glucans, which are starches. Mushrooms don’t have starch. So so what we found was all of these us grown products were very low and beta glucans like around 5% very high in alpha glucan, which is the starch 30 to 60%. To me, that was obvious because they’re grown on grain and the grains not taken out of the product. A mushroom shouldn’t be 25 to 50%, beta glucagon, and there should be no starch and maybe one or 2% worth of glycogen. So so it was just all these products were just the exact opposite of what you want to get an emotional product. Well it turns out that those products right now dominate the market. And and a lot of companies don’t even tell you that you’re not actually getting a true Martian product. Some companies do. If you look at the supplements, fact some of them will say mycelium and then on the other, they will say, my ciliated grain of some sort oats or rice or something like this. But other companies who buy those raw materials, they’re being sold to those companies as mushroom.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And even the companies that he what’s the fruiting body verse Well,
Jeff Chilton: okay, a fruiting body is a mushroom. Okay, and so, whereas just quickly, a mushrooms don’t have seeds, they have spores, or out in nature germinates into a very fine filament, multiple filaments come together and form a network. That network is called mycelium. That is the The vegetative body of this organism, the mushroom that comes up from that mycelium, that vegetative body produces a fruiting body that we call a mushroom. So, this vegetative mycelium, you can take that and and you grow it out in a laboratory. And actually that’s what they use that seed to grow mushrooms. But instead of actually using it as seed, they will grow it out. These companies will grow it out on the grain it’s sterile, to grind it to a powder. You know, a Tempe is. Yep. Typically, it’s 10 pages. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s cooked soybean with fungal mycelium. So you’re actually you’re actually eating mycelium. It’s a great food. And that’s what these products are, is they’re actually Tempe, disguised as a nutritional supplement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how can people find the real deal then if we’re going to look in some of these companies aren’t saying it’s mycelium. fruiting bodies. What other resources can people utilize to to know what’s really going on with their mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Well, a couple things. One of which is which is made in the USA. Forget it. It’s one of these mycelium and grain products. Yeah. Number two, look, pour it out. Taste it. We were talking earlier, about Reishi. Right? pour out your Reishi capsule and taste it. If it tastes bland, it’s not Reishi it’s one of these grain products, regimes bitter. We used to do what we call the Reishi challenge. We do that at a trade show. And people would taste one and then they taste the Reishi extract and they go, Ah, holy shit, give me some water. You know, it’s like, powerfully bitter. I mean, totally. I’m not kidding you. So it’s a it’s really crazy. So, so I mean, I mean just and there are ways that we can know the other way which is really fun, which I love and you can use on any of these different products is you you get yourself a little bottle of iodine. You put about two or four you put on four capsules and a quarter cup of water. You Stir it all up, you put 10 drops of iodine in there, if there’s starch in there, it will turn black. Do that with a genuine mushroom product, it’ll turn starch in there, do that with a genuine mushroom product, the water will turn the color of the iodine, but it won’t go black unless of course, you know, some some of for example, some of our mushroom extracts are black already. So it’s hard to do a test with them but but some of them are not. And so you can put the drops in and it won’t turn and then it’s just another simple test.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, and if people can call up the company and get their certificate analysis regarding what’s in there, what should they be looking for again regarding the 1311, Beta Glucan or the the terpenes what should they be looking at percentage wise
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what for for the beta glucans you should be looking for anywhere you know depends from machine to machine, but anywhere from, like ratio you should be looking for, for something over 30% So, you’d be looking for 30 to 50% on your Reishi product. Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s right. So, so look for beta glucans. If it says polysaccharides, you know, forgetting most hackers are are meaningless. The other thing too is you can call it the company and say, Look, are there any grains in your product? You know, I mean, can you imagine being at paleo FX, and having somebody come up to me and they see my, you know, big mushroom thing behind me. I love mushrooms. And they they say, and I say like, Oh yeah, that’s great. And I asked them what brand they’re taking and I go like, oh, man, I hate to tell you this, but you’re taking a lot of grain powder, and they’re just like, nobody there pull their hair out, right? Because it’s like, I thought I was taking a mushroom product.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the best sourcing that you find right now is Japan is that kind of where you grow a lot-
Jeff Chilton: No, no we grow everything in China and-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m sorry you’re in China. All China. Okay. Oh, thank you. Kind of harvested there.
Jeff Chilton: We have we have contract growers in China
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: farmers like big farms or
Jeff Chilton: Individual. I mean, individual farmers and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That must be difficult.
Jeff Chilton: Hey, dig this. China produces 85% of the world’s mushrooms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I believe it. It’s part of their culture. It’s embedded.
Jeff Chilton: It is 85%. I mean, and there are 10s of thousands of mushroom growers in China. And I’ve been there again since the early 90s. I’ve developed relationships. I have Chinese partners, they organize the growers. For me, we have beautifully brand new factories where we bring the dried mushrooms we produce our extracts, then we send the bulk powders over and then they all get I mean, Nam x which is my company, we sell our raw materials to hundreds of other companies that put them out under their own label.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So with all the terrorists and China are you getting hit the Last year too,
Jeff Chilton: Man, don’t even talk to me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, well, you produce a great product. So you don’t have much competition over here, you know?
Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, that’s true. But you know what the fact of the matter is, is those products that I’m telling you about, if you look at their front label, it says mushroom. And a lot of people are fooled by that, and you turn it over, and only a few of them will say mycelium, and in the other say, you know, my ciliated grains of some sort. So, unless you’re really paying attention, you don’t know. And so those I’m telling you, those companies have probably 70% of the market out there and because they’ve just been doing it for for quite a long time and they keep selling it as mushroom when it’s not mushroom and I’ve pushed back on that and they’re finally starting to, you know what, there’s an FDA compliance document, Justin, that’s been there since 1976. And it says, you cannot sell mycelium and call it or infer that it is mushroom. Hmm. Interesting FDA compliance done a lot of companies ignore that. They ignore that and why? Because look, FDA is got bigger fish to fry. Right? Oh, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of their bigger issues. Well, hopefully this information will help educate listeners, any feedback at all on psychedelic mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Yeah, they’re wondering about personal feedback. Yeah, well, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you have that, that’s fine. Do you grow them? micro dosing, or?
Jeff Chilton: you know, part of my studies at university back in the 60s was on the use of psychedelic mushrooms. Period. Yeah, I know. I know. We actually had them growing the Pacific Northwest and also I spent a year and a half in Mexico and 1971 72 tracking down people that use them using them myself, so I’m very familiar with them. And in fact, in 1973, I wrote a book called the mushroom cultivator, which is all about growing mushrooms. At home, it includes those in there if people are interested. So, so no, I’m very familiar with them. I think they’re tremendously beneficial. I think, you know, not only just like right now they’re using them for end of life issues. People have fear issues about end of life, they’re using them for mental illness, people now are using them as a trophic. Taking a microdose you know, like, micro dosing with them. You know, what, I think ultimately, they’re going to be revolutionary, as well as evolutionary. But it’s just a matter of how long those authorities out there allow it to proceed right now they’re allowing the researchers to do their thing and and you know, what, I never thought pot would be legal for God’s sakes. I mean, it’s like, I thought that would always be prohibited and then writes prohibition on it and look right now I’m like, I don’t believe it. And I don’t even smoke anymore, but I used to. Yes,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. Interesting so with the psychedelic mushrooms are there different types kind of like you know in medicinal mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Well you know what there’s there’s a genus called Cyclops A B, which is so psilocybin is named after. And in that genus, there are dozens and dozens of species but there’s probably about 12 different species that are pretty powerful, reasonably similar in their effects. Some indigenous people look at them of having different qualities and that’s, that’s probably unlikely, but you’re going to get somewhat the same type of experience from them. Again, it’s really gets down to if you’re going to use them you really need to use the proper set, which is
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: LSD, was that an LSD and psilocybin or
Jeff Chilton: the what’s in there, the actual compounds psilocybin, so very different compound from from LSD. I mean, LSD is you take it in terms of micro grams, right, I mean, micro grams, I mean, small 200 micrograms, whereas With with psilocybin you’d be taking 1000 milligrams 2000 milligrams LSD is tremendously powerful, far more concentrated. Well I guess you could say that but it’s just a different type of compound it actually different way but it gives you a very somewhat similar experience and you know what, I have a positive view of that I don’t see anything again like you like I say setting setting and doing these things properly is really important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it proper setting any particular dose or species of the medicinal or the psychedelic mushroom you recommend or you like personally?
Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what the there’s there’s pretty standard information out there people can find that the the thing about it is is right now if you want if you want to get those mushrooms I mean there’s there’s like, millions of pounds of them grown every year. Wow. They’re everywhere. I mean, millions, I’m talking millions of pounds of them being grown. out there. It’s like,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: did it just kind of grow naturally in nature? Do you have to do some things? Hey,
Jeff Chilton: hey, you’re down in Texas, they actually grow on the Gulf Coast. They grow in a cow pastures. Yeah, you can go out there and find them yourself there in the cow pastures and they’re not really illegal until you pick them up and put them in your hand.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How do you differentiate if you’re the average person going in and hunting mushrooms? And how do you know a magic mushroom from a regular edible mushroom?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you really have to go with somebody who knows what they’re doing. You do not want to pick and eat any mushroom unless you’re absolutely certain you do not. I mean, it’s just like, you know, it’s not just mushrooms, but plants have poisons too. I mean, it’s just common knowledge or common sense that you’re not going to pick something and go Wow, that looks great. Let’s let’s go ahead and eat it right and it’s like yeah, no,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: no anytime soon. The benefits of micro dosing for these magic mushrooms at all versus just regular.
Unknown Speaker: Well you know what, I think it’s a really interesting subject and and what people are looking for is a little bit of mental acuity, I mean, think about it for a second if all of a sudden your eyesight sharpened up a little bit or or all of a sudden your hearing sharpened up a little bit man listening to music or something on on these as on believable. And so people are getting, you know, these sort of like cognitive effects on micro doses where they just feel like they, they are little more focused, they feel like things are kind of coming together a little better. And this is something where we’re going to learn a lot more about it as more and more people come out and talk about it. And and more people kind of study the experience and see what’s going on there. But I think it’s an amazingly evolutionary step. And and I’m very much very positive about it and very much behind it. I hope it happens. We don’t we don’t sell those. But somebody Well, I mean, there’s, there’s already like, like I said, there are millions of pounds being being grown and sold out there right now there’s so many growers that you could not even imagine it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then regarding the you said the micro dosing, is that going to affect like coordination or you’re kind of describing is it more? Is it up regulate some of these things that wouldn’t affect you driving a vehicle or things like that? Or would it still compromise you physically?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what, if it on a microdose, you’re probably okay, but you’re really going to have to know at what level you don’t want to get to because certainly nobody should be driving a vehicle. When there are two let’s just say hi. That’s not a good thing to do. It doesn’t really matter what substance you happen to be consuming. That’s not a good idea. I mean, you know what, dude, you know, take any substance and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: dry and then legal, but you’re you’re saying and somewhat you’re kind of describing it in some ways that it can up regulate some of these senses, which is interesting.
Jeff Chilton: Well, no, it is very interesting. I mean, I mean listen, I don’t know have you ever have you ever you know,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I never had that experience in medicinal mushroom? Yeah, I’d like to at some point but like you said the settings really important yeah
Jeff Chilton: well you know what when you do them and and not just even a micro dose but do it a little bit over the threshold dose so you’re actually getting the experience and you go out in in a natural setting that you are already familiar with and you really like you will see and feel things that you’ve never felt before and it will really open you up to I think one of the most beneficial parts of that which is the realization that we are all connected nature everything all
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome to Beyond Wellness Radio. We got a fabulous guest guest here Jeff Chilton, who is a mushroom expert. Today’s talks all going to be about medicinal mushrooms, the ins the outs how they can improve your health. Jeff, welcome to the show how we doing?
Jeff Chilton: Hey, Justin, thank you so much for having me doing fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s dive in and tell the listeners about kind of your background. How did you even get into the mushroom industry? You’ve been doing it for a while. And what brought you here today?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’m a born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, forests, rivers, lots of water, and in the fall, it rains a lot. And so it’s one of the best places in the world for wild mushrooms. And so, when I went to university, I had an interest in mushroom. So I studied mycology, but my major was anthropology and through anthropology I studied all about the use of mushrooms as food as medicine and in shamanism, but when universe It was over. It’s like, how do you get a job in anthropology? Right money now? So So I thought, well, you know, I’d love to learn how to grow mushrooms. And it turns out that there was only one mushroom farm in Washington State and it was 60 miles down the road from Seattle. I went down, I, I ended up getting a job. And I was there for the next 10 years, literally living with mushrooms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, amazing. Yeah. So when you started out this process, did you kind of have to learn the ins and outs of like, how to farm them, how to raise them, how to grow them? Like how did that process kind of unfold? Did you have to study from some really, you know, key mentors in this industry? Or did they just kind of didn’t actually happen organically on your own?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, this was a very large farm and we were growing 2 million pounds of mushrooms every year. I mean, there was there was 200 employees. And so I just started out at the bottom of this and there were a couple of mushroom growers there who are the head grower. So this operation and managers and I essentially was kind of like an apprentice to them. So over the next 10 years, I made my way up to being the production manager. And again, I mean, just think about this every day, every single crop and we’ve got like these crops and rotations, I’m seeing Justin I’m seeing 200 crops of mushrooms. Every year, every year 200 crops, think about a normal farmer and how many crops that normal farmer is going to see.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. So you started out what were your favorite mushrooms to grow off the bat? So obviously, you may have some personal preference based off of what you take or what works the best on your physiology, what allows you to feel the best, what are your favorite ones off the bat for you?
Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, you know, again, we’re growing Agaricus motions and that’s all we really had to eat at the time other than wild mushrooms. But while I was there, we had a Japanese scientist who was growing oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms and man hat Have you ever eaten shiitake mushrooms?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have Yes.
Jeff Chilton: They’re delicious. They’re absolutely my favorite moment. Not only are they excellent in terms of just eating and nutritionally but medicinally they’re really solid so like shiitake mushrooms are one of those food as medicine. I’m foods.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah really big immune booster. So what are your favorite one? So in practice I clinically use Reishi maitake, shiitake, cordyceps. You have Lion’s Mane, turkey tail. Those are some some of the more common medicinal mushrooms. Do you have any specific favorites that you’ve used clinically or that you’ve seen in general?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, my favorite is actually reishi mushroom because reishi mushroom, you know, with medicinal mushrooms, the key compound a medicinal mushroom is called a Beta Glucan. Yeah, and this beta glucan is what activates our immune system. So it’s a potential creator, something that strengthens our immunity all mushrooms have these beta glucans even just edible mushrooms that we think of as medicinal mushrooms day. Yeah, because the Beta Glucan makes up half of the cell wall of mushrooms. And so, so all mushrooms will have that. But medicinal mushrooms, the top medicinal mushrooms have a very specific architecture of that Beta Glucan that makes them active compared to the others. Reishi has probably the largest amount of beta glucans that went to Turkey tail in all of our analyses. And we analyze every single batch of product that we make ratios got one of the highest levels of beta glucans, but it also has these compounds called try terpenoids. And those are the bitter compounds. So so it’s kind of like Reishi is medicinal mushroom plus, and that’s the one if you’re in Asia or something. I mean, it’s a mushroom of immortality. They’ve got stories about I mean, it’s just just really well known.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and we will go into exact companies. But I’ve been told by a couple of different mushroom experts that you want to trigger pain kind of extract about 15% or so in the medicinal mushroom extracts to kind of have a level of clinical potency. Is there a percent? Regarding the terpenes that people should look for or an amount regarding the one three?
Jeff Chilton: Well, I mean, they don’t get as high as 15%, unless you’re really trying to build them up. But just in general, they would be somewhere around 4%. And, and the trouble with just even giving a percentage is that there’s no companies or very few labs that can actually analyze for tried terpenes, but we can analyze for beta glucan. So what you really want to do with any machine product doesn’t matter what it is, look for an analysis of the beta glucans. And here’s, here’s a little key and a trick is that it used to be that everybody would say, oh, our product has x amount of polysaccharides. Okay, well, the problem with that and Beta Glucan is a polysaccharide So, so that everybody would think, okay, yeah, we got lots of polysaccharides lots of beta glucans. The problem is that polysaccharides are actually this starches and so many extracts out there of whatever kind Come on starch carriers. So in some cases, when we analyzed machine products, the level of starch was as much as 60%
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, okay. Wow. Yeah. So if you want to actually look at the certificate for the beta glucans, not the polysaccharide
Jeff Chilton: Absolutely. If companies just talking about polysaccharides they’re hiding something and, you know, we consider polysaccharide analysis for mushrooms to be absolutely useless. And we we’ve demonstrated that through our testing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then obviously the quality making sure there’s no other you know, heavy metals or joke like that pesticides or mushroom is generally grown organically, or do these are typically pesticides that may be given on a conventional kind of farming.
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, there’s a lot of mushrooms probably the majority of mushrooms grown out there have pesticide use going on. It’s gotten much better. Certainly when I was at the mushroom farm in the 1970s. Justin, we had an actual program where it was like it on this day you spray this chemical a month down the line, you spray this chemical. I mean, it was a program for growing mushrooms and using pesticides and fungicides today, in the industry in the United States, they use a lot less than they used to but still, if you have the ability year you want to be looking for an organic we certified mushroom, I mean, and all our products are certified organic, and to me that’s really important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: God and we’ll go over your stuff at the end here, but I’ll drop your website, realmushrooms.com great products there. Also, let’s kind of just back up a little bit. So we talked about some of the Beta Glucan, the one three Beta Glucan. We talked about the tritter pians I may be mispronouncing it for the last decade. Okay, tomato tomato, right, it works. So those are those the big kind of medicinal compounds that are active in mushrooms or another, like hidden compound we don’t know about yet.
Jeff Chilton: Well, there are a couple of those. But and what I want to emphasize here is Look, what scientists do out there when they look at any natural product is they fractionated and fractionated. And fraction it because they’re looking for the latest new drug. Right? So so you a person could say, oh, there are hundreds of compounds in mushrooms, and they all help in the activity. You know what? That may be true, but some of those compounds are going to only be there in minute amounts. And that’s just part of drug discovery, because they they find all these different compounds. So So really, what I focus on is look there are certain compounds occur and measurable amounts, they define this category like the beta glucan. And those are the ones that we can actually measure and use as markers for quality. So so that’s really important. One compound that I want to reveal to you right now that is it are in mushrooms and not into many other things. It’s a compound called ergothioneine. If you ever heard of ergothioneine?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ergothioneine I have not Can you talk about some of that what that is and what the benefits are?
Jeff Chilton: Well, ergothioneine is is a compound it’s actually an amino acid that they have found in a number of areas in our body, and they’re going we don’t produce it. What’s it doing there? And why is it concentrated in areas where there’s high oxidative stress, and then they’ve done a lot of studies with it and they indicate that it’s a very powerful antioxidant. In fact, it’s it’s It’s something that they’re thinking might even be a new vitamin. And mushrooms are one of the foods that contain high amounts of ergothioneine to the point where we now analyze every single product that we got for air go signing to establish a baseline and just to see okay, how much of this do we have in our mushrooms? So ergothioneine is one of those kind of special compounds we also analyze for a compound called air gost are all their gospel is the fungal sterile like our cholesterol, yes, in all fungi, all mushrooms, and and it is something that also has medicinal benefits and we can measure it as well. It’s something that that is has got some, some direct, basically anti tumor activities. It’s it’s something that that you know, plant vital sterols or something that is very beneficial. For us, so that’s another compound that we can measure and and use it as a measure for quality. And that’s really the key for what we do. We don’t try to build up anything in our products, we just want to have the profile that you expect to find in a dried mushroom. That’s what we’re looking for. So anytime we do an extract, we want to match it up on that profile.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. Okay, so we have the ergaster all there. Let’s talk about some of the beta glucans. What are they doing to the your immune cells? I mean, I’ve seen some studies, they’re helping increase natural killer cells there is some of the terpenes are deactivating viruses. What do you know, based on your experience and your research you’ve done? What’s it doing to your immune system? How is it helping your body?
Jeff Chilton: Well, these, these beta glucans, we actually have receptors for beta glucans. And these receptors are down in our our lower intestines are, they’re down there and so what how Beta glucans come down, they will, they will lock into these receptor sites, and then they will actually then potentially create or or essentially strengthen any immune response and create more immune cells like NK cells like macrophages, like T cells. So, that’s really where they essentially are going to help boost our our immunity and and what they’re considered is there can they’re considered a immune modulator. So they’re basically sitting there, they’re a potential creator. So they will essentially strengthen our immune response to whether it would be viruses or bacteria or other fungi. They’re there to essentially assist us and and you know, the way I look at that activity is preventive. I really see that as something that is, you know, in fact, we can be Taking them all the time. And they’re just sitting in the background, helping us out as we’re coping with all of these different stresses that come in, whether it be from bacteria, or whatever it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s in functional medicine, kind of where I’m practicing with my patients. We’re testing their stress response, we’re looking at their adrenal and their cortisol rhythm. And one of the herbs I’ve used used clinically for a very long time are various adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha is one of my favorite right here. And it seems to me based on some of the data that some of these medicinal mushrooms are actually having adaptogenic like a fact whether it’s buffering stress, or buffering the immune response. What’s your take on that?
Jeff Chilton: Oh, I think they’re, they’re, in fact considered to be adaptogens. And I would call them premier adaptogens especially something like Reishi I mean, absolutely. I mean, adaptogen really is something that that tries to keep us in homeostasis. It’s like this whole thing of balance and that’s kind of how I look at health. Is is disease is Cut going out of balance. And so what we’re really trying to do is get back to that homeostasis back to that state of balance and, and they’re there to help us, although there may be other things involved. Of course, like, you know, health is not just that simple. But again, yeah, adaptogen is something that will help us to, to mitigate those stresses that we have, or whatever they are, and bring us back into a state of balance. And I didn’t know that that to me is kind of like traditional Chinese medicine is all kind of based on that same principle there of balance and so adaptogens are something that will help us maintain that balance, which essentially means being healthy. I mean, you know, think about it for a second. If you’re healthy. You ever think about your health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re able to adapt you have a certain level of adaptability.
Jeff Chilton: Yeah, well, and yeah, and and, and when you’re sick, all of a sudden you’re like, Oh, my God, you know, you start thinking about your health and what you have to do to come back into that balance. But when you’re healthy, you’re just cruising around thinking yeah, everything is great. It’s wonderful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah 100% I know there are various mushrooms like cortis apps, for instance, there’s some data they help improve DHCP levels, which is a precursor hormone to a lot of sex hormones and it’s made by the adrenals and that helps with stress and inflammation. Can you talk more about sex hormone modulation via some of these medicinal mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I know cortisol has been utilized and is considered to be in that category. Exactly the mechanism I’m not that certain of the mechanism myself and how it does that other than I know that it does have an effect on on oxygen utilization, which I think would be a big part of that. And you know, I think also we have to be very careful with something you know, like I’m not here to tell you Oh, yeah, take quarter steps and your your sexual your libido will improve or anything like that. I don’t know that for a fact. And in some cases, quarter seven, Even could be considered sort of like a doctrine of signatures kind of, kind of herb you familiar with doctrine of signatures if as if something looks like something that it must be helpful that and quarter steps is kind of a little bit phallic shaped, I mean, mushrooms are too, right. But and so it’s kind of like, okay. But I think you know what I think too, and there’s a lot of research done with core deception and it’s beta glucans. And it’s those effects I think anything that can help maintain or boost our immunity is going to have an effect on your, your basic libido and, and libidinous health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I work with a lot of hormone issues, and I strongly recommend not to ever go kind of whole hog go in on just one thing to be the panacea. You know, you obviously want to make sure you’re making diet, lifestyle changes and you’re getting to the root of the underlying issue and some of these things may be a really good palliative support, to kind of throw in there as an important tool. For sure. I agree with that. What about like your national killer cells. What about these helper cells? What about really stimulating these kind of first? You know, these are artists are natural killers, which are the guys that are on the grounds for longer. Exactly first responder to an infection. What what herbs or what mushrooms are best for that? What do you know about that?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what I mean, if you go out and read the literature, and there is so much data out there, on this activity and, and look, much of that data and much of that research is is in vivo? It’s in vitro. We don’t have a lot of clinical data on that on that. So So really, that kind of scientific research, I can read it and go Okay, yeah, this is what this is what happens but going much deeper than that. I mean, I’m not the scientist doing that kind of work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know what happens you kind of have that the general you know, outset mechanism of what’s happening.
Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what? There is so much there’s such a big body of research on the effects of beta glucans on in these kind of tests, I mean, thousands of papers. I mean, they’ve been studying beta glucans now for 30 or 40 years. And so, so that type of activity is something where, you know, I mean, when I looked at that research, I mean, I can only take it so far because I’m not a scientist doing that kind of work. So that’s not the kind of thing that i i really study too much and, and don’t have a hard time keeping up with it all, actually, but the actual mechanisms to me are more important, okay, actually, what is it? Is that fact is it in fact, stimulating these immune cells? Well, what are those immune cells do? Well, I’m sure a lot of practitioners like yourself or immunologists are, are much more capable about going deeper about exactly what they’re doing and how they’re working.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But just in general, just That kind of hundred hundred yard stare. We’re like looking at it. All right big picture, we’re going back, we know that these compounds are having an effect modulating the immune system, mobilizing some of these natural killer cells, can you kind of connect the dots based on what you know, with medicinal mushrooms in cancer? What’s your experience with that your experience or in the literature, you know?
Jeff Chilton: Well, first of all, what I would say is, look, medicinal mushrooms are not going to cure anybody’s cancer. What they’re primarily used for is an edge event. In other words, there’s something that if you’re going through a, a standard chemotherapy or radiation or something like that, they’re going to help you your immune system, your body to cope with those two types of protocols which are tearing down your immunity and making you you know, sick to some degree. So that’s really where they come in. And, you know, in terms of folk remedies, I mean, mushrooms have been used as folk remedy for those kind of things, but terms of actually being a cure per se, I don’t look at them in that way at all i just i just consider them something that is going to help you to actually cope with this tremendous stress of not only the disease but also with the therapies that you’re that you know, science right now or the medical profession is actually using with people. So so you know, some of the some of the most well known drugs actually that have been produced from mushrooms one is called KSK. And the other is called PSP and they’re produced from Turkey tail and they but they are not like a just standard mushroom hot water extract or alcohol extract. There there actually have been fractionated Downton and extracted to the point where in Japan pFk is actually considered a drug and it is prescribed with cancer therapy. So that’s that’s an end. You know, it’s not like it’s it’s, I mean, it’s helping people. Maybe they’re getting a longer life by using that compared to the control groups. But there’s a lot of clinical data on that. But it’s not something that’s given to try and cure anybody. They’ve got another drug over there called Lenten and that is produced from Shiitake mushroom. And it is a it is unlike PS K, which is not a pure compound because it’s a protein bound polysaccharide Linton and is actually a pure beta 1316 glucagon, and it is utilized in the same way again, not alone, but along with these other therapies. And there’s another, a tremendous body of clinical work behind it to demonstrate that it does alleviate some of the symptoms and it also gives people a longer life than they otherwise would have, but not like, you know, significantly going to grow no longer live for years and years a year. Yeah, what you normally have.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when we talk about cancer, there’s never just one, you can’t have a cure when there’s dozens of different causes. If you’re getting exposed to toxins, or stress, or sleep or low vitamin D, or nutrient deficiencies, you can’t have just one care of nothing. There’s no such thing as a cure if there’s dozens of different potential vectors, but there’s things that we can do to kind of throw in there to support all the other things that we’re doing to, to bump up our immune response. That’s kind of the context of that.
Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, and and, you know, I think the other thing that we have to remember is that cancer in some ways could be lifestyle related. It could be diet related people eating the wrong things, I mean, or, or smoking or drinking or or any of those types of drug abuses. I mean, so there’s a lot of factors involved. And, you know, in a way, the first thing you’d want somebody to do is go Okay, why don’t you back off all of that you probably would prescribe somebody a certain type of diet you say, you know, you shouldn’t be eating this. You shouldn’t be drinking that. You need to make some real changes if you want to help the protocols. So you’re going to give them and those kind of things that are so important and because it’s if you’re looking at something from a holistic way, which I’m sure you are, then then you know that there are so many different factors that you have to deal with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and these are I consider them to be adaptogen functional medicine tools that are very powerful that we plug in to a comprehensive program. So like that. What other let’s just say less notorious things that are mushrooms are used for besides the common immune adaptogenic kind of immune kind of cancer boosting effects. What else do you see what else do you recommend for
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what’s really interesting is is there’s a mushroom right now that is just like, gotten so popular. It’s called Lion’s Mane you heard Lion’sMane at all, I use lion’s mane.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like big E’s Reishi and cortis apps and but maitake and shiitake but I haven’t really been using it too much, but I do have some.
Jeff Chilton: Well, it’s it’s pretty interesting because there’s They actually the thing about Lion’s Mane is that we have clinical trials out of Japan, where they’ve actually got, like 30 different people around age 70. And then they’ve got a control group of 30 people and they feed them three grams of lion’s mane, they give them a whole battery of tests. 90 days later, they test them again. And what they find is that the people taking the lion’s mane do much better. And then they stopped taking Lion’s Mane for a month, and now they’re back to baseline and the same as the control. So, so they’ve got a number of these different clinical tests with Lion’s Mane lion’s mane. Actually, they found from their research stimulates the production of what’s called nerve growth factor. And nerve growth factor is a protein that essentially helps to maintain and strengthen our our neuron production and our neural network. So So So if you can stimulate the production of this nerve growth factor because what they find is as you get older your production of nerve growth factor starts to go down a bit and so so now I mean and so there you know how it is they’re trying to tie all these things together to find out Okay, why is it that we have this cognitive sort of let down as we get older and and people’s memories start to you know, get a little bit wobbly and they can’t remember as well and then we have dimension Alzheimer’s and all those other things so so the fact that there is actually something like a lion’s mane that let’s just call it a nootropic, which is kind of a category these days you probably heard of it and yeah, and so it’s like, I’m mad. It is just like taken off because.. Well, the compound there’s a couple of compounds in Lion’s Mane that produces they’re called harisonones, arenasenes, arenaserens, and I mean, this is another one of those things where, when you look at the when you look at the literature, there’s probably a couple dozen different, let’s just say, analogs of these different compounds that create these effects and and will boost this nerve growth factor. And you know, we’re just get worse beginning of researching that even though it’s been used in traditional Chinese medicine for these types of issues for quite a while.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s very cool. Yeah, when you look at these things you can read you can have a 20 page study, but if you walk away, what’s the bullet point mechanism? And what’s it doing and as long as you get that action point, that’s the the most important thing in my opinion, right? PhD pile higher and deeper, but you can you can also just get that the key take home action items, so I think that’s powerful. So any research on that connecting improvements and all timers or any neurodegenerative conditions at all?
Jeff Chilton: Actually, there is Yeah, they’ve got a couple studies on dementia. Okay, actually showing that it improves and also they have a few studies on depression, showing that it improves and you know what? Listen, it is not easy to get clinical trials with any natural product, or dandle not only that to get a good one because look, I’ve seen clinical trials done, and you look at them and go, okay, who sponsored them? And and who’s doing them and, yeah, you know, unless it’s a totally unbiased group, you have to be really careful. I like any research. I mean, you have to read the fine print of how this is done and who’s actually doing it. So these particular studies are done it Japanese universities, I like Japanese science, art or culture. Well, that as well. Yeah. And and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think I was seeing things such as like liver or kidney cancer, like one of the first line therapies over in Japan is some of these medicinal mushrooms. I think is we see our quarter steps is like first line in Japan for for liver cancer.
Jeff Chilton: Wow. Well, well, you know what’s interesting about you saying that is that I was at a conference in China in the mid 90s. And it was a Ganoderma Reishi conference and there was a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner there older man, maybe it’s in his 50s or something like that. And I was talking to him and he said his number one herb for the liver was Reishi. Yeah, yeah. And he had times he said, he said he would, he would use as much as 30 dried grams of ratioed. In his treatments. And, you know, the one of the things that’s interesting about traditional Chinese medicine is that when they’re using their herbal formulas, it’s strong. It’s powerful. They put a lot in there, they want to see something happen. You know, it’s not like supplements. What a supplements tell you to take, I mean, tell you to take one or two capsules a day doesn’t matter whether you’re Hundred 50 pounds or 250 pounds, they’re telling you two capsules a day. It’s like, Come on, let’s get real here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That will 30 grams is significant in the capsule, the average ratio is 500 milligrams account.
Jeff Chilton: Well, and of course this is, yeah, this is 30 grams of dried mushrooms. So let’s just say if you if you were to do a 10 to one extract, you could you could get it down to three grams of extract or something like that, which still would be quite a lot. I mean, so So in other words, he was he’s just basically saying, look, we use a lot, we use a high dose. For us. It’s the main herb that we use for liver problems and I thought amazing, and and that’s where the tri terpenes come in. They’ve got a lot of data, long tried terpenoids with the liver.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know some of the mechanisms in regards to I’ll still call them trinitarians. I’m the static. Actually they deactivate viruses, any feedback on that. What do you know about the deactivation of viruses? How does that happen? Is it just like binding to And then making the virus less pathogenic.
Jeff Chilton: That’s, that’s really interesting. I couldn’t really answer that question that’s for a virologist, you know, you know, this is the thing, it’s like, you get into all of that research, and I can read a paper and maybe, especially these days, a week later, I’ve forgotten the whole thing. I mean, whereas the research that I do myself and the research that we do in my company, you know, I can go into that in great detail and what we’ve done there, but in terms of this other stuff, I can read it, but you know what it’s like, it’s just like, if you want to write a paper on something, you pull together all this research, you spend months, dealing with it, working with it, putting it into the shape that you want it in, and by the end of it, you’re an expert, right, and you know it backwards and forwards, it’s like but, man, I can’t do that anymore with a lot of that research because I’m busy doing other things
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: make sense? All the listeners have to know that there’s mechanisms out there, it can provide that benefit. That’s great. If you have anything to add, you know, any value you want to add to it above and beyond based on your experience, that’s great. But you kind of said a couple of things that I wanted to highlight you talked about a lot of the pharmaceutical research in some of these mushrooms are these kind of compounds or isomers. Within mushrooms, you see a lot of that with turmeric or curcumin as well, it seems like Big Pharma is trying to find this like, you know, active compound and isolated. Now we know just with natural compounds in general, you can’t really patent them unless you can find something and then twist it around a little bit and make it so it’s not found in nature. And then you could patent it. So if someone comes in and says, Hey, reishi mushroom as this amazing benefit, let’s put 100 million dollars into this, you know, to these studies, and you see this great benefit, guess what, you can’t get the ROI on your investment because everyone can now sell Reishi because there’s no patent so you have companies that are in there trying to make a drug out of it by tweaking it a little bit.
Jeff Chilton: That’s absolutely right. And that’s that’s where these particular products like Linton It’s a patented product, I mean, because it’s it’s actually a drug and it is like they pulled out this one very specific Beta Glucan for that mushroom. And so that’s what they’ve got a pure compound. And, you know, in what I do, and certainly in the general, let’s just say supplement industry or herbal medicine space, I mean, what we, I believe that any of these natural products, there’s multiple components, they’re all working together, and to try and build one up or split one off or anything like that. It kind of is not the way that a traditional herbalist or, or the way we would like to see these natural products use. We want to see the whole herb used and certainly we can concentrate them in an into an extract because it’s like going, Oh, how am I going to take 30 grams of Reishi. It’s like, you’re certainly not going to want to just eat it anyway. You might want to boil it down into tea and then you can Drinking, okay, but but again, supplement makers, their powders, nobody’s going to say okay, yeah, take 10 capsules of this particular product, they want to have a concentrate when we make concentrates, we want to make sure that the profile is similar to what the raw material has. Because we believe that all of those compounds that are in there need to be in there and should be in there for this to work the way it’s supposed to work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It gets really, really important. That’s good. So when you talk about I mean, there’s so many get my head wrapped around this here. So when we talked about some of these compounds, like you mentioned, the whole mushroom has a lot of other antioxidant, other beneficial properties that kind of work in synergy. So when you just pull one mech one compound out, you’re missing that beautiful matrix that was encapsulating it. So that totally makes sense. I get that. And what’s your take on dosing in general, I know that may be different from Reishi, the lion’s mane to cordyceps. Is there a general dosing structure that you like to adhere to based on weight or certain conditions
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what, I’ve got a physician friend who was originally from Hong Kong where he studied traditional Chinese medicine. But then he became an MD. He practices in New York in 1992. He wrote a paper on the proper dose for a reishi mushroom and he went back and he looked at all of the traditional literature, everything he can find, and he came up and he said, Look, a common dose for that would be a two to five dried grams of the mushroom or extract equivalent. So if you were like, Okay, I’ve got a five grams if I do a 10 to one extract, that means I could do 500 milligrams as a daily dose and so I use that kind of as my guideline for all of the mushrooms I say look, two to five dried grams or or equivalent In terms of an extract and the other thing that we can do to which is which is really great is when we have these clinical trials. For example, with lion’s mane, these clinical trials are based on three dried grams of just Lion’s Mane powder. My God, that is not hardly anything really when you think about it, and just to give you an idea, okay, three dried grams. A normal mushroom is 90% water. So what that means is 30 grams of fresh lion’s mane, that would be like one Lion’s Mane one small Lion’s Mane that you would you would eat. So, three dried grams is not a lot and yet they were getting these benefits from that. And my thing is, you know, I kind of like and I’ve got friends in the herbal industry that have been there a long time making extracts and all that. One of my friends is like, I want my extracts to be strong enough that when somebody takes it, they’re going to feel something And I think that’s kind of interesting because, you know, that’s what, in a sense, the traditional Chinese practitioners are sort of doing when they’re giving people higher doses of these things. They’re like, we want to see something happen. We want to see people feel this, we want to see some benefits right away. We don’t want a low dose people and yeah, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t so so you know, and and look, I don’t want to get too much into dosing because I’m not a practitioner. I’m not on the front lines at all. So that’s something where someone like yourself or others would, would, you know, if you’re in clinical practice, you would see that you would see the effects. I don’t get that kind of feedback so much, but I really think that it doesn’t matter what it is you have to take enough of it to get the benefits.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, I’ve been actually doing three to five grams in general for a very long time. So usually 500 milligram capsule doing six, and then if I’m acute when I’m sick, I’m up to 12 capsules, 556 grams a day. So I’ve seen that have to be very, very therapeutic. That’s excellent. And so when we’re looking at mushrooms, you know, we’ll go into specific brands, what are the things we should look for? To assess potency? What should we things we should look for in the back of the label? What should we taste for? You talked about Reishi kind of tasting bitter earlier. How can someone look on the back of a label and assess what’s going on?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, one of the things as a mushroom grower, I know the economics of growing mushrooms. You know, I mean, I’ve like I was on that big farm. I had a small farm myself for a while I know what the economics are. If you grow mushrooms, you can grow them fresh, take them to the market, you can make a living but the fact of the matter is, is that as supplements, we’re dealing with a dry powder. Mushrooms are 90% water. So the issue is that if you can get $5 as a grower for that pound of fresh mushrooms, if you dry it out, now you have to get $50 for that same pound of dried mushrooms and in terms of the supplement industry. The Economics don’t work. I realized that very early on. And so that’s why I spent a lot of time in China in the 90s. Working with growers and working with processors, and in 1997, I went to China with Octa, which is a large organic certification organization. And we held the first workshop for certification, organic certification of mushrooms in China 1997. So that’s where we grow and process all of our mushrooms. But in the United States, what companies do, there’s not a single there’s not a single company in the United States that grows a mushroom and sells that as a supplement unless they’re a small little farm selling their own supplements and growing their own mushrooms. But in terms of the industry, in general, it doesn’t happen because it’s not economically viable. So what happens is in the United States, we’ve got big companies producing mycelium, which is the vegetative stage of this organism that we call a mushroom They put this mycelium on sterilized grain. They grow it out on the grain. And in the end of the process, they harvested all dry it grind it to a powder, grain and all. So one of the things that I did is in 2015 is that it did a big study with 95 different samples 40, of which I bought off the internet. And they were all these mycelia grain products. We tested them for beta glucans. And the test also allowed us to test for alpha glucans, which are starches. Mushrooms don’t have starch. So so what we found was all of these us grown products were very low and beta glucans like around 5% very high in alpha glucan, which is the starch 30 to 60%. To me, that was obvious because they’re grown on grain and the grains not taken out of the product. A mushroom shouldn’t be 25 to 50%, beta glucagon, and there should be no starch and maybe one or 2% worth of glycogen. So so it was just all these products were just the exact opposite of what you want to get an emotional product. Well it turns out that those products right now dominate the market. And and a lot of companies don’t even tell you that you’re not actually getting a true Martian product. Some companies do. If you look at the supplements, fact some of them will say mycelium and then on the other, they will say, my ciliated grain of some sort oats or rice or something like this. But other companies who buy those raw materials, they’re being sold to those companies as mushroom.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And even the companies that he what’s the fruiting body verse Well,
Jeff Chilton: okay, a fruiting body is a mushroom. Okay, and so, whereas just quickly, a mushrooms don’t have seeds, they have spores, or out in nature germinates into a very fine filament, multiple filaments come together and form a network. That network is called mycelium. That is the The vegetative body of this organism, the mushroom that comes up from that mycelium, that vegetative body produces a fruiting body that we call a mushroom. So, this vegetative mycelium, you can take that and and you grow it out in a laboratory. And actually that’s what they use that seed to grow mushrooms. But instead of actually using it as seed, they will grow it out. These companies will grow it out on the grain it’s sterile, to grind it to a powder. You know, a Tempe is. Yep. Typically, it’s 10 pages. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s cooked soybean with fungal mycelium. So you’re actually you’re actually eating mycelium. It’s a great food. And that’s what these products are, is they’re actually Tempe, disguised as a nutritional supplement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how can people find the real deal then if we’re going to look in some of these companies aren’t saying it’s mycelium. fruiting bodies. What other resources can people utilize to to know what’s really going on with their mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Well, a couple things. One of which is which is made in the USA. Forget it. It’s one of these mycelium and grain products. Yeah. Number two, look, pour it out. Taste it. We were talking earlier, about Reishi. Right? pour out your Reishi capsule and taste it. If it tastes bland, it’s not Reishi it’s one of these grain products, regimes bitter. We used to do what we call the Reishi challenge. We do that at a trade show. And people would taste one and then they taste the Reishi extract and they go, Ah, holy shit, give me some water. You know, it’s like, powerfully bitter. I mean, totally. I’m not kidding you. So it’s a it’s really crazy. So, so I mean, I mean just and there are ways that we can know the other way which is really fun, which I love and you can use on any of these different products is you you get yourself a little bottle of iodine. You put about two or four you put on four capsules and a quarter cup of water. You Stir it all up, you put 10 drops of iodine in there, if there’s starch in there, it will turn black. Do that with a genuine mushroom product, it’ll turn starch in there, do that with a genuine mushroom product, the water will turn the color of the iodine, but it won’t go black unless of course, you know, some some of for example, some of our mushroom extracts are black already. So it’s hard to do a test with them but but some of them are not. And so you can put the drops in and it won’t turn and then it’s just another simple test.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, and if people can call up the company and get their certificate analysis regarding what’s in there, what should they be looking for again regarding the 1311, Beta Glucan or the the terpenes what should they be looking at percentage wise
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know what for for the beta glucans you should be looking for anywhere you know depends from machine to machine, but anywhere from, like ratio you should be looking for, for something over 30% So, you’d be looking for 30 to 50% on your Reishi product. Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s right. So, so look for beta glucans. If it says polysaccharides, you know, forgetting most hackers are are meaningless. The other thing too is you can call it the company and say, Look, are there any grains in your product? You know, I mean, can you imagine being at paleo FX, and having somebody come up to me and they see my, you know, big mushroom thing behind me. I love mushrooms. And they they say, and I say like, Oh yeah, that’s great. And I asked them what brand they’re taking and I go like, oh, man, I hate to tell you this, but you’re taking a lot of grain powder, and they’re just like, nobody there pull their hair out, right? Because it’s like, I thought I was taking a mushroom product.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the best sourcing that you find right now is Japan is that kind of where you grow a lot-
Jeff Chilton: No, no we grow everything in China and-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m sorry you’re in China. All China. Okay. Oh, thank you. Kind of harvested there.
Jeff Chilton: We have we have contract growers in China
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: farmers like big farms or
Jeff Chilton: Individual. I mean, individual farmers and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That must be difficult.
Jeff Chilton: Hey, dig this. China produces 85% of the world’s mushrooms.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I believe it. It’s part of their culture. It’s embedded.
Jeff Chilton: It is 85%. I mean, and there are 10s of thousands of mushroom growers in China. And I’ve been there again since the early 90s. I’ve developed relationships. I have Chinese partners, they organize the growers. For me, we have beautifully brand new factories where we bring the dried mushrooms we produce our extracts, then we send the bulk powders over and then they all get I mean, Nam x which is my company, we sell our raw materials to hundreds of other companies that put them out under their own label.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So with all the terrorists and China are you getting hit the Last year too,
Jeff Chilton: Man, don’t even talk to me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, well, you produce a great product. So you don’t have much competition over here, you know?
Jeff Chilton: Well, yeah, that’s true. But you know what the fact of the matter is, is those products that I’m telling you about, if you look at their front label, it says mushroom. And a lot of people are fooled by that, and you turn it over, and only a few of them will say mycelium, and in the other say, you know, my ciliated grains of some sort. So, unless you’re really paying attention, you don’t know. And so those I’m telling you, those companies have probably 70% of the market out there and because they’ve just been doing it for for quite a long time and they keep selling it as mushroom when it’s not mushroom and I’ve pushed back on that and they’re finally starting to, you know what, there’s an FDA compliance document, Justin, that’s been there since 1976. And it says, you cannot sell mycelium and call it or infer that it is mushroom. Hmm. Interesting FDA compliance done a lot of companies ignore that. They ignore that and why? Because look, FDA is got bigger fish to fry. Right? Oh, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of their bigger issues. Well, hopefully this information will help educate listeners, any feedback at all on psychedelic mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Yeah, they’re wondering about personal feedback. Yeah, well, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you have that, that’s fine. Do you grow them? micro dosing, or?
Jeff Chilton: you know, part of my studies at university back in the 60s was on the use of psychedelic mushrooms. Period. Yeah, I know. I know. We actually had them growing the Pacific Northwest and also I spent a year and a half in Mexico and 1971 72 tracking down people that use them using them myself, so I’m very familiar with them. And in fact, in 1973, I wrote a book called the mushroom cultivator, which is all about growing mushrooms. At home, it includes those in there if people are interested. So, so no, I’m very familiar with them. I think they’re tremendously beneficial. I think, you know, not only just like right now they’re using them for end of life issues. People have fear issues about end of life, they’re using them for mental illness, people now are using them as a trophic. Taking a microdose you know, like, micro dosing with them. You know, what, I think ultimately, they’re going to be revolutionary, as well as evolutionary. But it’s just a matter of how long those authorities out there allow it to proceed right now they’re allowing the researchers to do their thing and and you know, what, I never thought pot would be legal for God’s sakes. I mean, it’s like, I thought that would always be prohibited and then writes prohibition on it and look right now I’m like, I don’t believe it. And I don’t even smoke anymore, but I used to. Yes,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. Interesting so with the psychedelic mushrooms are there different types kind of like you know in medicinal mushrooms?
Jeff Chilton: Well you know what there’s there’s a genus called Cyclops A B, which is so psilocybin is named after. And in that genus, there are dozens and dozens of species but there’s probably about 12 different species that are pretty powerful, reasonably similar in their effects. Some indigenous people look at them of having different qualities and that’s, that’s probably unlikely, but you’re going to get somewhat the same type of experience from them. Again, it’s really gets down to if you’re going to use them you really need to use the proper set, which is
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: LSD, was that an LSD and psilocybin or
Jeff Chilton: the what’s in there, the actual compounds psilocybin, so very different compound from from LSD. I mean, LSD is you take it in terms of micro grams, right, I mean, micro grams, I mean, small 200 micrograms, whereas With with psilocybin you’d be taking 1000 milligrams 2000 milligrams LSD is tremendously powerful, far more concentrated. Well I guess you could say that but it’s just a different type of compound it actually different way but it gives you a very somewhat similar experience and you know what, I have a positive view of that I don’t see anything again like you like I say setting setting and doing these things properly is really important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it proper setting any particular dose or species of the medicinal or the psychedelic mushroom you recommend or you like personally?
Jeff Chilton: Oh, you know what the there’s there’s pretty standard information out there people can find that the the thing about it is is right now if you want if you want to get those mushrooms I mean there’s there’s like, millions of pounds of them grown every year. Wow. They’re everywhere. I mean, millions, I’m talking millions of pounds of them being grown. out there. It’s like,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: did it just kind of grow naturally in nature? Do you have to do some things? Hey,
Jeff Chilton: hey, you’re down in Texas, they actually grow on the Gulf Coast. They grow in a cow pastures. Yeah, you can go out there and find them yourself there in the cow pastures and they’re not really illegal until you pick them up and put them in your hand.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How do you differentiate if you’re the average person going in and hunting mushrooms? And how do you know a magic mushroom from a regular edible mushroom?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you really have to go with somebody who knows what they’re doing. You do not want to pick and eat any mushroom unless you’re absolutely certain you do not. I mean, it’s just like, you know, it’s not just mushrooms, but plants have poisons too. I mean, it’s just common knowledge or common sense that you’re not going to pick something and go Wow, that looks great. Let’s let’s go ahead and eat it right and it’s like yeah, no,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: no anytime soon. The benefits of micro dosing for these magic mushrooms at all versus just regular.
Unknown Speaker: Well you know what, I think it’s a really interesting subject and and what people are looking for is a little bit of mental acuity, I mean, think about it for a second if all of a sudden your eyesight sharpened up a little bit or or all of a sudden your hearing sharpened up a little bit man listening to music or something on on these as on believable. And so people are getting, you know, these sort of like cognitive effects on micro doses where they just feel like they, they are little more focused, they feel like things are kind of coming together a little better. And this is something where we’re going to learn a lot more about it as more and more people come out and talk about it. And and more people kind of study the experience and see what’s going on there. But I think it’s an amazingly evolutionary step. And and I’m very much very positive about it and very much behind it. I hope it happens. We don’t we don’t sell those. But somebody Well, I mean, there’s, there’s already like, like I said, there are millions of pounds being being grown and sold out there right now there’s so many growers that you could not even imagine it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. And then regarding the you said the micro dosing, is that going to affect like coordination or you’re kind of describing is it more? Is it up regulate some of these things that wouldn’t affect you driving a vehicle or things like that? Or would it still compromise you physically?
Jeff Chilton: Well, you know, what, if it on a microdose, you’re probably okay, but you’re really going to have to know at what level you don’t want to get to because certainly nobody should be driving a vehicle. When there are two let’s just say hi. That’s not a good thing to do. It doesn’t really matter what substance you happen to be consuming. That’s not a good idea. I mean, you know what, dude, you know, take any substance and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: dry and then legal, but you’re you’re saying and somewhat you’re kind of describing it in some ways that it can up regulate some of these senses, which is interesting.
Jeff Chilton: Well, no, it is very interesting. I mean, I mean listen, I don’t know have you ever have you ever you know,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I never had that experience in medicinal mushroom? Yeah, I’d like to at some point but like you said the settings really important yeah
Jeff Chilton: well you know what when you do them and and not just even a micro dose but do it a little bit over the threshold dose so you’re actually getting the experience and you go out in in a natural setting that you are already familiar with and you really like you will see and feel things that you’ve never felt before and it will really open you up to I think one of the most beneficial parts of that which is the realization that we are all connected nature everything all
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you like I know with like eyewash cut there’s certain herbs you combine it with to make the hangover kind of feeling less is do you combine it with anything to neutralize certain feeling?
Jeff Chilton: no, you don’t affect combined with anything? No, just take it just as it is. Yeah. And the beauty of it too is that you can actually get the real thing I mean, I mean look back in the 60s. So much of what was going around were like pills. You’re like, you know, someone says, Oh yeah, try this. I had a great experience and you’re like, really? Should I try that or not? I’m yeah, I better know that person very well. And I’m not going to be at who knows what a concert is something says here, try this. Take it. I’m like, Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll just take that pill. No, it’s like, No, no, no, no, be smart about it. Be be cognizant about the fact that you want to be in a in an environment that is supportive and comfortable and something that’s not threatening. You don’t want to be like, especially at a higher dose. You don’t want to be sitting there in the end somebody knocking at the door and you’re like, Who the hell is that? right? Exactly. Well, those are the phone rings.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This conversation is taking so many turns. So we talked about the medicinal benefits for your health, for stress for cancer, and then we talked about the whole magic mushroom section. I think we hit it pretty good. Jeff, is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with? I mean, your website is real mushrooms. com great information there anything else? We haven’t quite touched upon that you want to highlight here briefly.
Jeff Chilton: Well, well, a couple things. One of which is is the Nammex.com is the website for my company, the main company. And what I like to say is we got a lot of information there. So people should go there. We’ve got NAMMEX.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the links below in the show notes below. Realmushrooms.com as well.
Jeff Chilton: and and the other thing is, look, what I tell people all the time is mushrooms are the Forgotten food. They’re the ones that are sitting right in between plants and animals and they’re a food that I everybody should put those into their diet. They’re a great food, high in fiber, they’ve got these medicinal compounds as well as very nutritious. So, get out there, start eating mushrooms, start putting them into your diet. It’s really important and it’s a wonderful food as medicine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the mushroom it’s like the real tall skinny ones that they serve in the steak restaurants
Jeff Chilton: and like kind of very light colored. Yes, yes. And enoki, I love them. Oh, yeah, I mean, but I mean if you apply them and bring them home and you strip them apart and they’re like noodles you fry them up there currently. Yeah. Fabulous. That’s great. Yeah, one of my favorites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I really appreciate you sharing this great Intel here there any other questions that you’d love to answer your passionate about that I didn’t ask you yet that you want to hit?
Jeff Chilton: No, I think we’ve really covered it really well, you know, I and you know, it was really fun talking to you and I really enjoyed being here a lot. So thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, Jeff, thank you so much. We’ll be back. Look forward to checking in with you down the road. You have a great awesome bye.: Do you like I know with like eyewash cut there’s certain herbs you combine it with to make the hangover kind of feeling less is do you combine it with anything to neutralize certain feeling?
Jeff Chilton: no, you don’t affect combined with anything? No, just take it just as it is. Yeah. And the beauty of it too is that you can actually get the real thing I mean, I mean look back in the 60s. So much of what was going around were like pills. You’re like, you know, someone says, Oh yeah, try this. I had a great experience and you’re like, really? Should I try that or not? I’m yeah, I better know that person very well. And I’m not going to be at who knows what a concert is something says here, try this. Take it. I’m like, Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll just take that pill. No, it’s like, No, no, no, no, be smart about it. Be be cognizant about the fact that you want to be in a in an environment that is supportive and comfortable and something that’s not threatening. You don’t want to be like, especially at a higher dose. You don’t want to be sitting there in the end somebody knocking at the door and you’re like, Who the hell is that? right? Exactly. Well, those are the phone rings.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This conversation is taking so many turns. So we talked about the medicinal benefits for your health, for stress for cancer, and then we talked about the whole magic mushroom section. I think we hit it pretty good. Jeff, is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with? I mean, your website is real mushrooms. com great information there anything else? We haven’t quite touched upon that you want to highlight here briefly.
Jeff Chilton: Well, well, a couple things. One of which is is the Nammex.com is the website for my company, the main company. And what I like to say is we got a lot of information there. So people should go there. We’ve got NAMMEX.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the links below in the show notes below. Realmushrooms.com as well.
Jeff Chilton: and and the other thing is, look, what I tell people all the time is mushrooms are the Forgotten food. They’re the ones that are sitting right in between plants and animals and they’re a food that I everybody should put those into their diet. They’re a great food, high in fiber, they’ve got these medicinal compounds as well as very nutritious. So, get out there, start eating mushrooms, start putting them into your diet. It’s really important and it’s a wonderful food as medicine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the mushroom it’s like the real tall skinny ones that they serve in the steak restaurants
Jeff Chilton: and like kind of very light-colored. Yes, yes. And enoki, I love them. Oh, yeah, I mean, but I mean if you apply them and bring them home and you strip them apart and they’re like noodles you fry them up there currently. Yeah. Fabulous. That’s great. Yeah, one of my favorites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I really appreciate you sharing this great Intel here there any other questions that you’d love to answer your passionate about that I didn’t ask you yet that you want to hit?
Jeff Chilton: No, I think we’ve really covered it really well, you know, I and you know, it was really fun talking to you and I really enjoyed being here a lot. So thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, Jeff, thank you so much. We’ll be back. Look forward to checking in with you down the road. You have a great awesome bye.
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Boost Your Longevity and Mitochondria – Collagen Amino Acids with Dr. Friedlander Podcast | #256
Boosting longevity and mitochondria are some of the things that people are so interested to know because they want to know the secret in living longer, as well as the quality in their year’s energy focused cognitive function. Join Dr. Justin and Bernd Friedlander as they talk about longevity, amino acids and a lot more.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
0:59 Longevity
07:30 Important Amino Acids
21:30 Fat Burning
30:40 Exercise
33:39 Coffee
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live is Dr. Justin Marchegiani in the house with Dr. Bernd Friedlander. Dr. Bernd. It’s really exciting to have you on the show today. What’s going on?
Bernd Friedlander: Oh, I’m just excited to be with you. Like always.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I’m really excited here too. So let’s dive in. I mean, you’re, you’ve been in this field for 40 plus years clinically. Your functional medicine, also Cairo documented in the supplement industry for a while you work with athletes, you work with the everyday population. And you have a lot of experience on a lot of different topics. So I wanted to pick your pick your brain here, one of the first topics I wanted to dive into is longevity. A lot of people are interested in improving the in the amount of years they’re going to live, but also the quality In their years energy focused cognitive function. What are some of the first steps that you see clinically that have really moved the needle in that department?
Bernd Friedlander: Well, I think a lot of it is, you know, we’re looking at environmental factors and what dictates our lifestyle is going back 65,000 years ago when we were out and outdoors, and we had no computers, no cell phones, no technology, no EMR. So I think that is another problem we’re seeing today because I think today, the youth of, you know, what we’re seeing is indoors. They’re indoors and working indoors and computers and cell phones and video games. So they’re changing the quality of their life, but also it’s affecting the brain chemistry of the brain. And, you know, depression, anxiety disorders is very high now, as you know, and I see a lot of that. And the other thing is everybody doesn’t understand what’s the right diet, you know, they all think, you know, they go on veganism they go in high protein, you know, diet, low carb diets, you know, a lot of it is activity also what do you do on a daily basis that dictates what you eat. But one thing I tell everybody in the morning as get a little sunlight in your eyes, so you start activating all those important neurotransmitters that the brain needs the mitochondria needs. And I always say have a good protein drink in the morning or a protein meal. And that means over EZA so software legs, and it’s got to be pasteurized and I use ghee butter to get my day going, and I take about 30 grams of collagen every single morning and that’s pretty much my diet and that sustains me to go through many hours throughout the day without really getting fatigue, mentally and physically and I don’t really want to eat much. So that’s sort of like what we call intermittent fasting. And oh, and that’s the other big thing is, you know, is the quality of food versus what people eat, you know, and that’s important calories in calories out. But what type of calories are we consuming today?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s really interesting. So I always tell my patients, you know, especially ones that have metabolic issues, adrenal issues, or thyroid issues, 30 grams of protein in that first 30 minutes, especially if we’re having blood sugar, energy issues, those amino acids really they start the day they’re going to provide building blocks for a lot of your neurotransmitters, your stress hormones, a lot of your you know a good chunk of your hormones that are peptide based, meaning amino acid base, and I start my day with about 15 to 20 grams of my true collagen in my coffee in the morning. I do just the carry gold, better unsalted add a little bit of vanilla extract there. So that’s interesting. You have a very similar routine. Can you talk more about collagen and intermittent fasting so some would say having that collagen in the morning may throw you out of a fasting state are you technically still fasting or at least a modified protein fast with still fast with the collagen in the morning?
Bernd Friedlander: Well, here, you know I had a chance to meet Dr. And, and Marie Claire, both out of Einstein University has done a lot of work in the intermittent fasting scene. And the work I was looking at and working with was a tough itchy, you know, tough issues where we recycle the junk before it accumulates and causes DNA damage and damage. So one of the things that she discovered was if you eat, let’s say, seven o’clock at night, and then don’t eat another for 12 hours, the next day, you are creating what’s called a typology. And that’s what fasting is all about. You know, it’s creating something where the body recycles the junk and utilizes for energy, rather than accumulation and damage and that’s what happened. So, what I tell people is the first thing in the morning, you want to get that brain going, you want to get that body going, you want to keep IGF one insulin growth factors down, you want to prevent em tour pathways, which are all these two pathways. So the leading pathways to aging and disease and cancer and heart disease and diabetes. So the best way to do that is yes, fast 1214 hours from lung last meal to the next day, but have some protein and I think the best protein is something where you consume like cheese, eggs, something that you know if you like fish, but it is important that you don’t go in the morning without having a good meal because it affects the rest of the day for you and how you sleep at night. So I think collagen is important, and I think collagen taken. There was a study that was done and I was involved 2030 years ago, with notch gelatin on A study similar to this where you take 15 grams of collagen, three or four times a day, you actually repair and regenerate tissue cartilage and bone much quicker and you prevent damage from exercise. That’s the key is the damage that accumulates after exercise if we don’t consume the right foods before and after.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting I know a lot of those pathways that are being hit are the tour pathways. I want to talk about that in a minute. So having good amounts of collagen is a great start to the day and the thing I like about collagen is the amino acids are coming from typically connective tissue, we’re not getting a lot of connective tissue, we’re getting a lot of a lot more of the muscle kind of protein which is much higher and refining and with some of the college and you’re getting a lot more glycine which is a good precursor for Luda thigh own. It’s also good, good tissue and building blocks for your own connective tissue, hair, skin, nails, joints, and we’re kind of a muscle meat based society so we’re getting exposed to some different compounds too.
Bernd Friedlander: Exactly. And the other thing about, you know, collagen, it’s very a non inflammatory of bone of all the proteins on the market today, including milk and cheese and eggs and all that there is some inflammatory mechanisms there. But when you take collagen, which are devoid of these three amino acids, which lead to em tour pathways, it’s the only protein that does not have the three amino acids that cause oxidative damage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Can you repeat those amino acids again?
Bernd Friedlander: It’s tryptophan methionine and cysteine and they’re the ones that were shown in research to have less oxidative damage-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Which is the precursor to five ACP and serotonin, melatonin cysteine, which is the glue to find precursor much higher and whey protein, and then methionine
Bernd Friedlander: methionine, yeah. Richard Miller did a lot of work in this area and so has a repeat and when I was Working in the caloric restriction diet discovered, that’s why caloric restriction works, it’s because you are eliminating these types of amino acids in your diet, you’re really cutting down quite a bit of this. And so you’re getting less of that. And therefore, you’re, you’re not causing oxidative damage or mitochondrial damage or thyroid damage, they lead to, you know, suppression of, you know, oxidation of glucose. And that’s the problem. And it’s well known that these amino acids can lead to em tour pathways, which can cause abnormal cells to grow faster, like cell cancers require the tour pathway, which are these amino acids, to allow them to replicate faster and grow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And interesting. So essentially, what you’re saying is we want to we want to keep the tour down. So if we can keep the proteins and again, at least starting the day off this way, kind of gives you the That, that 12 to 16, maybe even 18 hours of living some of those amino is obviously just not eating is going to decrease insulin. Anytime you have food, especially carbohydrate, little bit of protein and very little fat, you’re going to start stimulating insulin, which is going to be a growth factor, it’ll increase the IGF one. So you’re saying, keep the insulin IGF one low, try to keep them methionine, cysteine and tryptophan down and we can do that by using collagen in the morning and that’s also going to be keeping the tour down Is that correct?
Bernd Friedlander: Yes. And when you also take it at night, you are suppressing these amino acids from being developed at night, which are sort of stressors. These amino acids can lead to stressing the body by increasing cortisol levels and, you know, a nitric oxide and other areas of that area where causes mitochondrial damage thyroid damage and replication of cells the immune system especially at night
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We don’t want too much because we do know there’s a lot of data on like, for instance 16, from whey protein having a really good impact on boosting gluten. And we know glutathione’s good, but also tryptophan is very helpful. I mean, you know, the work of Julia Ross talks about tryptophan and helping with serotonin and mood and sleep issues. So is it just the sheer amount of it because we know there’s some beneficial effects in the literature?
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, but there’s also a lot of research has shown that serotonin, which is also a culprit, and when it gets released from the platelets, it goes through the blood brain barrier, it carries through the album into the blood brain barrier, actually, it causes more problems their serotonin leads to depression, anxiety disorders, and it’s also mechanism for Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We talking about the amount of because we know there’s a lot of studies and you know, a lot of clinical data on on using for instance, five HTTP and seeing lots of mood improvements. So how do you flush that out,
Bernd Friedlander: you know, It’s interesting when five HTTP came out, it was used by a lot of patients of mine. And I gave a couple lectures and some of the lectures are Silicon Valley at the anti aging conference in San Jose by the program. I asked the people in the audience, I was sort of interested in finding out about five HDB. I said, How many of you take five HTTP, and half the audience raise their hands? I said, How many of you sleep well at night, and all and none of the five HTTP people really raised their hands? They weren’t sleeping that great. They all answered by saying no, I don’t get a complete deep sleep. I don’t get a 567 hours sleep, so disrupts their sleep pattern because serotonin is also a stressor in the body. It’s not just we need serotonin, but very little actually and serotonin also suppresses thyroid function and if you have a low thyroid and a high serotonin levels then it’s a culprit to a lot of diseases especially you know Alzheimer’s and we’ve seen in studies where MS patients that we’ve seen a lot of serotonin levels go up in the brain when they from MS patients done by a number of clinical studies at UCSF and also other clinics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you saying with everyone or just some people that serotonin at a higher levels and to be a problem.
Bernd Friedlander: everyone it’s, it’s, it’s known to, you know, create a lot of disturbance in the proper function of the cells. It disrupts serotonin does disrupt mitochondria, NAD levels.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We just had I’ve had I’ve had a lot of beneficial effects using five ACP with BCX. with patients though, again, you know what, when I’m doing it, I mean, I’m fixing everything diet, lifestyle, gut. So I mean, I mean-
Bernd Friedlander: I know It’s also using a lot of collagen your products so
Dr. Justin Marchegiani : and MBC to be six is really important. You can get five HTTP or a lot of these amino acids but be six is really that important cofactor to help with the, the synthesis of a lot of these things. Plus, we know serotonin has a major role also in gut parasitosis gut function is really, really important as well with serotonin.
Bernd Friedlander: Yes, no, I mean, if you use five HTTP correctly, the way you do it, most doctors don’t do it correctly, they do too high of a level and they don’t have the other things with it. And-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, you need good other, you know, baseline amino acids. And you also have to figure out why the five HTTP is low. To begin with, I mean, I’ll test a lot of it the organic acids, so I’ll look at a lot of five hydroxyurea last day, which is a precursor to it, or it’s a metabolite of it so you can kind of get a window into it. And you have to fix the gut absorption. And a lot of people based on their stress. They have a lot of hydrochloric acid issues and they can’t really break down their protein. What’s your experience with just people Having poor protein digestion.
Bernd Friedlander: Oh, that’s very common. And you mentioned a very important thing B6 and zinc.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very important, very important too. Yep.
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. And helping with digestion. Another thing also, if you’re low in thyroid, you’re not producing digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid as much. And if you’re low in thyroid, your metabolism slows down anyway. And if you’re not consuming sea salt and ACL, which is a precursor to manufacturing yours, enzymes, it’s necessary. Salt is really how it all started this the precursor to all of hydrochloric acid and Pepcid and all that. And nobody really consumes a drink sea salt, pure 100% clean sea salt in water and one teaspoon in the morning and evening seems to help people with low acids.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You any my patients who are listening they know I recommend a half a teaspoon to a teaspoon of Redmond’s Real Salt or Himalayan Or Celtic salt in the morning. And in the afternoon, I think it’s really important and are drinking a really good quality like mineral water. I like to put Chico Pellegrino is also good bosses good, which has a lot of different minerals in there as well, which are super helpful for the building blocks of a lot of the hydrochloric acid. So I hear that it makes sense. Yeah. Tell me a little bit more, what’s your elevator pitch on em tour, like, we know, we want it to go down. And we know that protein dropping protein down helps drop it at least in that fasting level. But we also want to have protein. So when we eat protein, we it will spike, but it’s kind of more of having a period where we don’t, and then a period where we do so we’re kind of creating this rebound effect. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Bernd Friedlander: You know, and tour is very essential in the early stages of life, because up to the age of 25, we need it. It helps to build muscles and helps to stimulate growth factors. So we need that. So that’s very important. After a certain age, the tour pathway works differently, it starts helping accumulate other cells to grow as well, you know, abnormal cells, cancer cells, they require this pathway in order, you know, to start stimulating their growth and their, you know, their spread is also done by m tour pathways. So, it’s when you have HIF it’s, you know, hypoxia, less, you don’t have enough oxygen and accumulating in the cell correctly, and it’s not being utilized for energy at all. But it takes a different pathway and to lactic acid. So that’s the problem we have when tour and lactic acid gets involved together, they seem to go into and stimulate more of abnormal cells and but the tour pathway is controlled by, you know, the types of proteins we accumulate in our body. Whey protein and milk protein and all these other proteins will, will lead to empty your pathway. And one of the research done 20 30 years ago was that if you balance it with a gelatinous food like collagen or gelatin, anything that’s gelatinous, it seems to negate them these factors in these proteins so it balances the protein. So when I was working with athletes, for instance, and they were consuming a lot of these amino acids that are trip the famous line 16 in the way products, but they were also having a lot of issues with kidney problems. They were having issues with cardiovascular problems, he’s a massive amounts of athletes. So you want to make sure that when you’re doing this, you balance these amino acids and the only way I was able to find that was in research was using gelatinous collagen. It seems to balance the negativity effects of the amino acids and it doesn’t stimulate em tour and I’ve seen it with hundreds of my cancer patients when I added college into their diet. They went back and had an MRI done. Some of them still continue doing PET scans, which I don’t recommend, but the MRI showed that their cancer cells stop growing and almost went into remission.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so regarding em tour, insulin is going to drive up them tour so too much carbohydrates too much, you know, glucose and we know PET scans are basically giving yourself they’re giving you radioactive glucose and they’re seeing where it’s going because they know the cancer cells are going to take it up. So you’re saying on one side, we can decrease some of the protein. The other side we can modulate the carbohydrate in a good range. And then number two is trying to get more collagen based amino acids which aren’t going to spike the tour as much. And you also say you can still kind of be more ketogenic while taking collagen too?
Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely because, you know, as you know, ketogenic diets are basically two things high fat and high protein. And that’s how you, you know, stimulate the ketogenic factors in the body. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’d be some people that would say high fat, but then some people say more moderate protein just because they’re trying to modularize glucose, Neo Genesis and some people are talking about the fact that you can increase glucose a little bit just through glucose, Neo Genesis. So is there is there a percent protein that you like for a ketogenic template?
Bernd Friedlander: You know, I’ve always say that it’s again, the amount of energy that you expire, and the type of physical activity you do during the day. So if you’re more of a weightlifter or more of a bicyclist or somebody, you’re going to need a little more protein than somebody who’s not working in extra I feel as much but you want to make sure that you know we found that after age of 60 the requirement for protein is much greater at that age than any other. So you want to make sure when you’re over 60 you start consuming more protein and fats. And the problem with fats is you know, fats are very highly unstable and you know, unless you eat saturated fats right but there’s also a minimum amount they found that too much fats of even saturated fats can cause problems so you have to know how to control that and you got to take certain antioxidant like vitamin E to help the lipid oxidation factors of NC Yeah, yeah. So the one I found was really good as ghee butter, ghee butter seems to give you more balanced, it has a lot of antioxidants, vitamin E, beta carotene, and it can, it’s clarified so it is a different form. fat and it helps accumulate a fast metabolism in the body. And so those MCT oil, you know, using those two will help with facilitate, but you don’t want to take too much you want to be in the right ranges. So I think fats are important but don’t overdo it with too much because it can cause late on with lip it oxidation, and it doesn’t make a difference what form of pats bats because then you have free fatty acids which are signaling factors to aging anyway.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then how to fat burning how does that affect the mitochondria? I’ve heard that you know glucose kind of as a more dirty are fuel to to kind of burn regarding oxidation and fats a little bit more of a cleaner fuel. I know there’s a book by Kristofferson called tripping over the truth, it’s about cancer, and he looks at cancer as being a mitochondrial issue. And he talks about fats essentially being one you’re not fueling the cancer as well, but you’re burning a cleaner fuel source.
Bernd Friedlander: You know, it’s interesting with cancer because that’s probably one of my more concern and interest in I had more experienced since 1980 and researching cancers anybody else because of my father passed away. It’s the Oda Warburg principle where sugar is not the problem. Here, it’s the utilization respiratory change the Krebs cycle, the mitochondria. The mitochondria does not use the electrons correctly, it doesn’t oxidize glucose correctly. So it takes fat and protein and accumulates those into energy and it goes into glycolysis. And instead of oxidation of glucose, which is the normal Krebs cycle pathway, but everything in the mitochondria and a D plus goes up. When oxidation glucose occurs. When electron donation is properly there is the byproduct the Pyruvic acid is not being converted, right and goes into lactic acid. So it’s where if you don’t supply the body, enough sugar, the body goes into a different mechanism and utilizes free fatty acids in its energy cycle. And that is the problem with cancer cells. When you accumulate too much for you, fatty acids from protein and from fats it utilizes to break it down energy, but the end component becomes lactic acid instead of co2 and co2 is a major mechanism for respiratory function to convert back to normal function again, and if we don’t have enough co2, and that’s why high altitude people live longer, and they have less diseases and mortality because they’re accumulating much more co2 in their blood. And if we can raise that co2 levels, that’s the secret and increase the oxidation of glucose, which is what Warburg says is the key component. And that’s where NAD comes into play. And that’s how it works more efficiently by using nice cinema, right? Because nice cinema is a precursor to NAD Plus, and it’s also inhibits free fatty acids. And so those aspirin, aspirin with baking soda cuna taken together inhibits free fatty acids. So now you’re converting the cells back to a normal function of respiration where the end product becomes co2 and water.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right so with our mitochondria we have glycol says which happens outside the cell and then inside the cell that’s we start burning glucose and then inside the cell, we start generating all this acetylcholine which starts pumping the Krebs cycle and then the goal of the Krebs cycles we develop or we generate these reducing compounds NADH FADH 2 and then all these hydrogens from That from the reduction that happens, enters into the electron transport chain. And then we generate more ATP during that process, spit out a whole bunch of co2 and the cycle continues. You want to add to that at all?
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, no, you hit it right on it. And if we can continue that co2 cycle, that’s the secret. That’s why breathing is important. That’s why when swimmers swim, they accumulate more co2 because of their breath holding, you know, they’re holding their breath while they’re doing strokes. And then they’re letting out the breath. And that’s a very important co2. If you start taking baking soda, it helps with that too. And when you drink mineral water with CO2, you know anything with carbon dioxide, like Pellegrini mode, or the German one general stole just a minor. Yeah, those are very important because they’re accumulating more co2 in your body. And that helps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And let’s talk about some of these reducing compounds you’ve talked about. Improving NAD NADH what are some of the best ways we can actually do it stuff a mentally diet wise lifestyle wise?
Bernd Friedlander: Okay, supplemental. We know that nice [inaudible] does that and it’s the cheapest form of improving NADAN live.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’m a [inaudible], what do you thoughts about Nigen?
Bernd Friedlander: Nigen is from Chroma DAX I’ve been using Nigen for several years now I met the company when they started the process of of utilizing milk and they found a component in milk that goes into NR which is the key factor and Nigen does work very well and in some people you know, hundred to 250 a day seems to work very well and I use that myself every day. So I’ve seen very good results from that. And also I’ve used [inaudible] blue with the complex for you know, helping with site cider chrome oxidase enzyme which is also a key component to NAD levels going up. And probably the best thing we have in nature and besides some foods like broccoli help with NAD, you know, we know that beer but you know, there’s a lot of problems with beer too. And insulin growth factors and all that because accumulation of sugar in that body. But beer has a component in there that helps with energy levels. Most of your fruits and vegetables are very good for that. In general, the best thing we can do is sunlight or red light, sunlight and red light helps with stimulating NAD plus. And I think if we get some sunlight in the morning, from from seven to 11, and then the evening from three to five, three to six, we’re getting an ad function
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: and a fats and proteins effect NAD? Does that help because we want that we want these reducing compounds so we can grab all these hydrogens. How does interplay?
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we’re, there’s there’s some interesting work being done, where they think that fasting, which I think what it does it, it helps to clean the body out a little bit faster, it helps with the toffee function a little bit better. But NAD is an electron transport mechanism. So any way we can increase electron through these mechanisms of you know, lifestyle and avoiding, you know, blue light, you know, avoiding computers and TV and videos, we’re going to increase NAD levels, and fasting and working out. One of the best things in improving mitochondrial function and add is concentric workouts where you do muscles work where you’re stimulating resistance, but you’re doing it in both fashion where you push, like a push up and then you risk you have resistance going back. So it’s called concentric workout. has been shown to be the greatest form of exercise to increase increase NAD levels and mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So interesting. So would that be more of like a super slow kind of training where young slow, but then you’re also resisting on the way back so you’re not just dropping it letting gravity to give you a free ride down,
Bernd Friedlander: You’re 100% right on that. And that’s, you know, the 10 seconds pushing any kind of resistive exercise where you count to 10. And you go down on a count of 10. And any form where you’re pushing against something and you push and somebody pushes you against the movement, you’re using concentric exercise.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what’s your take on some of these bands that are out now some of these really thicker bands, I’m starting to like them because I’m seeing Well number one, and this week or place here or you know, squat where you could get hurt in the detentions last but then as you go further out, it’s more and then you also have a lot of things tension on the way back to it and it’s like what’s your take on bands for some of that stimulate?
Bernd Friedlander: I think bands are utilized correctly are incredible exercise in combination with core exercise, you know, when you do the core at the same times with the band, meaning if you’re squatting a little bit and you’re using your stomach muscles, you know that squatting, you know, anytime you do a plank, you’re using your core muscles or-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some lunges and anytime you’re stabilizing your body where you could fall over, you’re using that whole entire core.
Bernd Friedlander: If you use the whole entire core, you’re getting a greater results on the body in full function and get greater mitochondria function and the repair mechanism increases. Athletes when we used to see athletes with the Raiders, Rams and Lakers. I didn’t realize until now what I was doing then. But I realized that when you do concentric exercise, you’re actually decreasing the amount of tension to the joint and because of that You are also facilitating healing and mitochondrial function. I think that’s the key to the concentric exercises is that you’re leaving eating the stress on the joints when you coming after a surgery or bi or having pain or any kind of thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially what the con centric, everything’s slow so that muscles always contracting. So if it’s the chest here, and then you’re coming back on here, well, now it’s going to be the back muscles that are starting to shorten the stage on the way down. So front, concentric on the chest on the way out, and then back. It’s going to be more concentric on the way back, right slow.
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. And when you do a band workout, if you can do a band workout and you put your doctors and you’re pushing out, you want to also have it somehow resistance going back in, you know, so you’re pushing. So you take your hands, and you know, you do like, push like this and then push out this way, but I’m resisting Celebrate do both ways, you’re resisting on both movements. And that is the best way to train a muscle.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Yeah, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. So regarding the Krebs cycle and NADH, is there any DS or any other let’s just summarize. So obviously we have nitrogen we have nice minimized. You mentioned some of the vegetable compounds, right? What other compounds can we do to improve NADH? And then what about FADH? To that that kind of gets ignored? Can we increase FADH to it all? Right, ADH.
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we can. And, you know, again, I think a lot of it is the quality of life, you know, is the stress reducing your stress value, having a positive attitude, meditation, all these are, you’d be surprised how the respiratory chain uses all this in the mitochondria improves on all levels. One of the things is when you consume foods like you know Color foods like pulp bell peppers, yellow, green and red. They’re very important onions are very important certain fruits like apples have tremendous benefits in that. And if we cook our vegetables specially Aqua ciphers, vegetables and and don’t eat them so raw we break down to cellulose which allows for the digestion to improve and assimilate all the nutrients in that vegetable rather than having too much fiber and causing dissension bloating. I think also, you know, we you know, coffee does that to coffee helps with mitochondria stimulation. People don’t-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s talk about that a lot of people think coffee may not be a good thing. I mean, obviously we overdo it and get too much caffeine or we were a slow caffeine metabolize or there may be a problem there, but can you talk about some of the benefits whether it’s alkaloids and also some of the mitochondria and anti aging benefits with coffee?
Bernd Friedlander: You know, about 15 20 years ago, I met a fellow Radical pathologists, antioxidant expert. And I met him at Stanford when I was working at Stanford at the ESRI department. And I said what we were talking about antioxidants and free route and he says, you know, the greatest antioxidant food we have today, he mentioned was coffee. Yeah. And coffee is truly an antioxidant, has high antioxidants. But one of the important things about coffee, the caffeine is essential for stimulating blood flow and oxygen to ourselves. It helps if you I learned this when I was working at UCLA with the athletes I learned from a cell physiologist. He says if I take coffee and I take an aspirin in the morning, it will increase my uncoupling protein mechanism meaning I will get greater mitochondrial benefits I will get better electron flow better oxygen to myself. And so I started using coffee and aspirin in the morning with the athletes. And not only that improved their cognitive, but their exercise performance and all of that improved dramatically. So I think all of that is, you know, coffee has magnesium, it helps with oxygen. It helps with caffeine. So you get great a flow of oxygen to the brain. And it’s all around probably the best, you know, cognitive drink we have there in nature.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. And then I know what the aspirin that’s the Seattle that’s the Seattle acetic acid. There are side effects associated with that with alterations and liver issues. Do you feel like the benefits outweigh some of the side effects? Is there a dose issue there? And then also, would you rather use white willow bark or just straight aspirin?
Bernd Friedlander: Well, I’ve been using aspirin for oh god going back since the late 80s and 90s. So I’d learn basically it’s if you have an ulcer it’s going to be created by something totally different. Yeah, h pylori, or actually salt deficiency. I’ve used salt and vitamin E and and getting rid of all the severe ulcers. Yeah. The other thing is aspirin recently came out with a great paper on aspirin shown that it has one of the best mechanisms for a toffee and increasing toffee. So it also helps with try back yellow meaning it helps to stimulate calcium into the bone. So if you’re where you’re breaking bone down, because every time we work out we don’t take enough calcium vitamin D where we’re actually using calcium as an excitatory mineral to handle stresses all the stresses in our life so it gets pulled out of bone. Well, aspirin helps with calcium, vitamin D and going back into the bone and keeping the bones From it also has antioxidant components. It helps with platelet function so it prevents platelets from sticking and clotting together. That’s a big factor of aspirin. But I tell people if they’re going to take aspirin, take a with baking soda, you getting the benefits of the buffering system, you’re getting co2 levels and you’re getting the benefits of what aspirin does without causing a disturbance or this stress in the body in the colon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Are there any benefits just doing the whole herb that aspirin comes from, which is the white willow bark over the stage?
Bernd Friedlander: I learned this from a veterinarian actually who’s working with us in race horses, and they buy the pure aspirin powder in potassium, magnesium is sodium salicylates, you know, yeah, and they use that rather than than YN for the horses and animals. They require so much of it, that they have to buy the huge bulk. So if you can get potassium, sodium magnesium salicylates, that’s even better and you’ve got to go to a pets you know compound or somebody that works with animals then you can order from them and now you’re getting greater results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah and then what’s your take on the race syndrome that can happen with the aspirin know that can happen when you’re younger usually there’s a viral infection happening with it. And then so you really want to be careful taking aspirin if there could be a viral infection?
Bernd Friedlander: If it’s you know, that’s something I have not I’ve read and looked at research and I have not found a true paper on that. It’s the same thing with honey they said if you take honey at a certain age, you know it can contribute to this problem to not seen enough of it, but I you know, for a child, you know, if you’re going to give asked me, you want to make sure that child gets very low anyway, extremely under maybe 45 milligrams or less. They don’t need much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll put in the chat here for you an article on aspirin and [inaudible], basically the big thing is it’s just, um, you want to avoid giving aspirin with kids when there could be a viral infection. So in general, just trying to maybe avoid it to begin with until people are older, maybe a good idea. I know people are hearing a lot of the benefits. I just want to make sure they don’t jump on board and, and give it to a kid or just to be on the safe side there.
Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely. I agree.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Well, that’s good. I think there’s some benefits there. That’s excellent. And then what about topically using aspirin? Can you put it in like some DMS or some kind of a lipid normal solution? rub it on the skin of the joints?
Bernd Friedlander: Yes, absolutely. Um, you know, back in the old days, we used to use a lot of that we used to grind the aspirin and then add a little DMSO with it, or anything that our aloe vera anything that helps with driving that in there, you know, essential oils, and it’s a great topical, great topical, because it works. You know, aspirin is one of the few molecules that works on Cox one and two. mean in the prostate gland is wanting to every other anti inflammatory only deals with one of them correct one and that’s it not with two. So aspirin has a greater potential inflammatory mechanisms in anything else and Buswell of those two as well as the only plant that works on both one and two-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Have a curcumin that do both, or?
Bernd Friedlander: No, Curcumin doesn’t work on both only Buswell in nature it was done by a lot of scientific studies done at the University of Florida, Florida AMM by Elizabeth Mazzeo, MA VIO.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, very good. So what other things can we do to help improve mitochondrial function or just improve longevity in general, you mentioned the aspirin you mentioned the coffee compounds, obviously, you like adding fat and collagen to the coffee which I think is even better, because you kind of time release any of the stimulation that you get from there which is nice. Anything else you want to highlight?
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. You know, looking at foods like pasture raised eggs is important I acute, you know, we do need protein, there’s no way a vegan is going to survive long term results. You know, most of the people that I reviewed that live 90 to 100 years old and I did a paper back in the 90s or 80s at UCLA, and I found that the people I interview, they were outgoing, they had a positive attitude. They were in sunlight all the time. They were never indoors. They took walks, they never exercise, but they took walks, they ate really well. They had a great breakfast, all of them. I remember telling me about there was 250 people that we interviewed that were 95 Plus, and they all had a good meal with protein. You know they ate cleaner there because they were from different areas where everything was fresh, you know, they could get it from organic farmers. There was no spraying that that time so they ate everything. Anything with grass fed beef, lamb, you know, black cod shrimp. You know, white fish is much better than salmon. There’s less oils in this in these fish, so you’re not accumulating so much omega threes. So a lot of that and also, breathing exercise correctly getting sunlight and sleep. We got to get quality sleep. And I think the most important thing is at night, get away from your computer’s TV. You can watch some TV but no cell phones, no, you know, anything that has an EMR effect on you because you need to lower the frequency of the brain to from 0.5 hertz to 12 hertz at night. That’s the frequency of the brain at night and that’s everything we work with. It’s in gigahertz and megahertz. So we’re over stimulating the cell so I think relaxation at night putting using, you know, red, orange blue lens glasses at night to keep the filter the blue light out of the blue line. You know, that’s the secret, I think more in nature and condensing and eating right? Eat your vegetables and fruits cut back on your carbs, no doubt about it, your grains in your nuts. Those are the way I would do in law in order to live longer and, you know, less illness. And, you know, the thing is, we’re not going to extend the lifespan like some people think 220 30 we’re not genetically designed yet for that, you know, that may happen when we start accumulating with stem cells and we inject stem cells in our body. But right now, we don’t want to have diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, you know, all these things that come up. Now, even at young people at 40 and 50, where it used to be some 60s and 70s and 80s. Now it’s starting to show up earlier.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Now you talked about red light there any red light devices that you Like I know you’re in sunny california but most people parts of the world’s getting pretty cold and not quite possible to get outside. What are some good red light devices red light options this time of year.
Bernd Friedlander: Um, I’ve discovered from Europe a you know some light devices that I purchased for Matthew cook who’s an MD who’s one of the premier stem cell fellows in in the Bay Area in Los Gatos and we’re using these panel of lights which produce led red and infrared at 600 watts and then 45 watts and at 24 one so we have different watch. And I have them I have the person and patient just stand in front of it and look into it and that also helps with thyroid and FB. Every day I use it myself over my stomach. I think that’s the key because anyway you shine the red and infrared light It helps to facilitate more oxygen mitochondria function. It helps with cider chrome oxidase enzyme, which is the key enzyme which we know is essential to all living systems in our body. All the photosynthesis occurs with cytochrome oxidase enzyme. All the NAD occurs with cider chrome oxidase enzyme and that is found in the 600 to 800 nanometers range and that’s what we want to increase. So using it, I use it every single day and morning and evening before I go out, and at night before I go to bed, I I stimulate all my joints that I utilize the most my my stomach and I do a little thyroid. I treat my thyroid every day in the morning evening.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and using red light for all that that’s cool.
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we’ll be you know, we’ll I’ll send you a picture of the design we’re working with and I think you’ll like it. It’s something I just brought in about 50 to 100 have mostly empties using it right now because they’re using it for stem cells. And they’re seeing they’re increasing stem cell production with it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. So red light helps to improve themselves production. And what’s your take on stem cells in general? Obviously there’s different kinds right. And some people are doing it topically some people you know, where they’re injecting it in specific areas. Some are just doing it systematically be an IV, some are going down, I think Panama’s the big hotspot. I think Dallas and Seattle have a couple of areas where you can get it done. What’s your take on stem cells?
Bernd Friedlander: Well, I’ve been doing some stem cells on myself mainly for an injury that I accumulate, playing professional soccer and running and you know, training athletes from my hip. It helps there’s no doubt, you know, platelet rich blood. Blood PRP. Yeah, PRP is very important. It helps to bring down inflammation it stimulates you the production of your own stem cells. There’s no doubt on shoulder and knees, it works phenomenal. I’ve seen results with no surgeries required for the shoulder and for the knee. We’re working on the hip area and it definitely helps improve the quality of life. I think some serious diseases, neurologic neurological diseases, I think even MS and Parkinson’s, I think it’s got great opportunity, I think we’re going to see some great results with it. There’s different stem cells coming from the, you know, different tissue placenta, you know, from the skin, adipose, bone marrow, those have different functions in the body. And I think you’re going to see more and more of this out there. And especially in sports, you’re seeing more professional athletes gravitating towards stem cells today, in less surgery.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, absolutely. Because as soon as you go get surgery and you start tearing through tissue, tissue becomes a little bit weaker, you’re more prone to injury in the future. Also just, you know, the fact that you’re talking about people that have to twitch their muscles and move with such fast level that they lose just a couple of milliseconds off after moves. They could take them out of the professional sport level. So for sure, that totally makes sense. I see stem cells, probably putting a large chunk of surgeons out of business, I just think you’re not going to need surgery for the more chronic wear and tear stuff, I think you’ll be able to come in there with diet, lifestyle, supplementation and stem cell. So it’ll be really interesting to see how, you know, things evolve over the next couple decades.
Bernd Friedlander: Yes, I think also for ligaments and tendons, it’s got greater benefits too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I think, you know, the biggest issue is people are still going to use stem cells and forget all the diet things, forget all the lifestyle things and use it as triage. I think when you combine it with the collagen, with a good diet with good lifestyle with the light stimulation, right, all the mitochondrial things we talked about today, I think you really have a greater chance of supercharge in your healing.
Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely. And even the people that the MDS that are doing stem cells, they want you on an anti inflammatory diet, first of all, you know, in order for this to work they want you to accumulate. And most of these stem cell clinics, it’s interesting there are using college and now and they have seen better results. They actually prep the person with college and before they come in, and when they take their own adipose tissue placenta, wherever they get it from. They see a better production of stem cells coming out of those people with consuming collagen prior to having stem cells.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, really fascinating. What other things do you recommend? Is there anything else that you wanted to highlight that you think is important for the listeners to know about?
Bernd Friedlander: Again, I think a lot of it is the attitude positive attitude we have every day and look good life and help others you know Don’t stress yourself out, don’t have negativity but look in the mirror every day and just say I love myself I love everything about me I look great. And then start the day with you know, doing the right things red light, sunlight, collagen, breathing exercise, concentric exercises, you know, don’t you don’t need to go and do a robotic exercise like hours a day. That’s oxidative damage. I think walking throughout the day is very important. accumulating the right proteins, you know, grass fed and all these, you know, things that are natural to us. And eating right. And you know, we don’t need to consume as much we don’t need big plates, we need small food. And there’s been studies that if you feed the body with small meals throughout the day, you increase the thermogenic function of the mitochondria, you’re stimulating the mitochondria to burn more fuel more efficiently and And all of that and then eliminating the stressors, you know, like, being on Wi Fi videos, cell phones, you know, don’t use them as much and, and and use more natural light at night because night darkness is a stressor to our body. That’s it. That’s when cortisol goes up. So we want to keep that down. So take, you know, vitamin D and take an aspirin with baking soda night. Take anti inflammatories at night, you know, that seems to work the best.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right? I think I think it’s the opposite. I mean, cortisol is dropping at night because melatonin goes up cortisol drops, cortisol comes up in the morning and then down at night.
Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, and then cortisol suppresses melatonin. Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So as melatonin goes up when you sleep, right, that’s going to help. Yeah, some of that repairing. That makes a lot of sense. What is your supplement regimen look like?
Bernd Friedlander: Again, in the morning, I start with an over easy passionate projects. Yeah, ES I take 30 grams of collagen with vitamin C, magnesium, and I take my and our true nature, you know, which is nitrogen. I take vitamin E, not vitamin E I take that at night, and I take a good because likes in the morning I have to end and then that’s pretty much it and then at night I do again another regimen of collagen with minerals I make sure my calcium magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin K levels are high. So I do that at night with vitamin D and I take every single night and aspirin and sometimes I’ll take tomorrow, but not all the time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Very good. Excellent. Well, you have given us some great knowledge bombs here. I really appreciate it. Any last thing you want to leave with listeners.
Bernd Friedlander: I think you know I think what we need to look at I think a lot of it. I see a trend where people are starting to consume like soy milk Almond milk which are okay soy milk is not good because of the estrogen and raising estrogen. And we haven’t even spoke about how bad estrogen is. Estrogen contributes to lowering thyroid function and suppressing NADNAD molecules in our mitochondria gets suppressed by estrogen of all the hormones that’s why you need you know, progesterone pregnant one testosterone to raise NAD levels. So interesting estrogen down and we need to accumulate a less boost in that area. And I think a lot of the consumption what people are doing today with these soy milk and also almond, you know is a and keeping very important, keep the phosphorus levels down and keep the calcium levels up. There’s a gene called Klotho. KLOTHO is a gene I’ve studied for 25 years. It’s now making a difference. Tremendous regeneration of its you know, research on this shown that it controls aging and diseases and growth though is controlled by vitamin D, vitamin K and calcium and keeping a good thyroid and parathyroid, thyroid functioning and consume less phosphorus foods and you’re nuts a very high and phosphorus and some of the grains are very high. So we want to make more calcium in our diet. We’re not getting enough calcium. People think these these books out there by Tom levy that calcium is bad, actually the opposite. I have worked with a fellow at Stony Brook who reversed his own cancer, pancreatic cancer and hundreds of other people with cancer with increasing calcium in levels that most people won’t even look at.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: His affirmation has enough vitamin K though that higher amount of calcium right?
Bernd Friedlander: We need vitamin K and we get it from kale. If we cook the kale, the juice of the Kale has a tremendous amount of vitamin K. And there’s a lot of cheeses out there like Gouda has vitamin K, and especially-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’ll probably get it in your GI in the morning as well that you’re mixing your coffee. Right, right. And then the big sources for your Vita for your calcium are obviously going to be maybe some of that cheese as well. Some of the butter and energy and also some of your green vegetables and if you eat any fish that have any, any bones in there, what else would you be getting calcium from?
Bernd Friedlander: Oh, some leafy greens and things like that. But I think the greatest any dairy products have the greatest levels of calcium. There’s no doubt about if you can handle dairy, dairy products from sheep or goat on raw milk. I think that’s where you’re going to get the best calcium. Yeah, yes, assimilate the protein helps the calcium go in more assimilated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because we don’t want calcium plaque forming in the arteries so that vitamin K really helps it go back into the bone. So vitamin K into the bone. parathyroid takes it out of the bone and brings it back into the bloodstreams that vitamin K i think is important, and also enough magnesium along with calcium too, because those kind of kind of going back and forth, right?
Bernd Friedlander: Yes, you need both of them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely makes sense. Well, you’ve given us some great information here today. I really appreciate everything. Is there anything else you want to leave listeners with that we had everything?
Bernd Friedlander: I think we had everything I think, you know, I think just like I said, is start realizing that we can, you know, Google and find a lot of information don’t rely just on doctors or even myself, read about what’s really the chemistry of life. And that’s what I did. I went back and I wanted to find out who Justin is and who Bernd and who Lisa’s who we are and how this plan came about. And learning about the chemistry of life is the secret to everything that we’re talking about today. It’s photosynthesis, the sunlight, sea salt, the water, the distance of the Sun and the planet Earth. Earth and, and the amino acids and the sugar complex that created all life. And when I went back and studied, you know, 200,000 years ago, 4 billion years ago, when the 2 billion years ago we had a, an organ LO bacteria called the mitochondria, when the mitochondria started developing in a planet Earth, that’s when every living system started being created everything from fish, the animals, reptiles to certain plants and life itself. And how did this bacteria get here was the key and understanding how this key and this organelles develop, I think gave me a better view of what we need to do in ourselves to maintain that organelles, that organelles we need to maintain.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Dr. Bernd, thank you for all the feedback and little tidbits and advice here really appreciate it. Great chatting with you all and we’ll put burns information down below so if you want to reach out to him, you’ll have all his information down below. Excellent, great shout out to burn you have a phenomenal day. We’ll talk soon.
Bernd Friedlander: Okay. Thank you Dr. You’re wonderful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thank you. Have a great day.
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Immune System Stress TH1 avs TH2 Immune Response | Podcast #235
Our immune system acts as the body’s defense against infectious organisms and other invaders. With the immune response, the immune system attacks organisms and substances that invade body systems and cause disease.
We may think that immune responses are more of a cause. But it is actually an effect on the way we deal with our bodies. Sometimes, our immune system goes out of balance because of infections or stress. In this episode, get a bigger picture of how we could understand our immune system better so we would know how we could address some problems in the future.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
2:07 TH1 & TH2 in Autoimmunity
5:16 Bacterial Infections, Food Allergies, and other causes
7:40 Immune Imbalances
13:09 Different Types of T helpers
20:40 Solutions to the Immune Imbalances
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome to today’s podcast. Evan, how we doing today man?
Evan Brand: Hey man, happy Monday to you. It’s coming up on July 4th so all of our US listeners are probably headed to the grocery store to go buy hopefully, grass-fed burgers for this week. I’m still here, can you hear me?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I hear you. Yep, you’re good.
Evan Brand: Okay, perfect. Yeah, I said everybody’s probably headed out to go buy hopefully grass-fed burgers for July 4th week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, it’s 4th of July coming up man. I got grass-fed burgers, trying to get some more pasture fed pork if I can, gonna do it up really good with some smoked ribs, good grass-fed burgers, gonna keep it real. Really excited man, how about you?
Evan Brand: I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I don’t even have a grill. I do so much cooking, but I do it usually all on my skillet, so I may need to borrow a grill to make a grass-fed burger.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nice! Awesome. Well, I’m excited to hear. We talked about addressing a talk on the immune system, on TH1, TH2, kind of branch of the immune system, and this is kind of a heady topic just because the immune response is more of an effect, not necessarily a cause. So, a lot of people, they kind of look at like TH1, TH2 that they look at it on and they kind of like it’s hard for them to wrap their head around it and they get so focused on the TH1 TH2 – the immune system stuff. But, that is more of an effect and we have the cause – maybe other infections or stress or that are pushing that immune system out of balance. It’s kind of like you got two kids of different sizes, jumping on a seesaw. Well obviously, the bigger kid goes to the bottom and the ladder kick goes up. You could be sitting there so focused on why is that seesaw doing it, but it’s like well you got a bigger kid going up against a smaller kid, like that he’s not the seesaw right? So when we go over this topic, I just want everyone to look at it with eyes that are looking at the root cause. Like, what’s the root cause and don’t get overwhelmed with all of the extra details that we’ll be addressing.
Evan Brand: Yeah, there’s a lot of talk about TH1, TH2 in regards to autoimmunity. So, we were looking at all these studies and it gets really deep, really quick, but when we look at for example, Hashimoto’s – which is a really common thyroid, autoimmune thyroid issue. That one is gonna be related to TH1 dominance and then also what were the others we found here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, let’s break it up for people. So, we have these various T-cells, okay. These T-cells can differentiate or mature into different kinds of T-cells. So, we have our thymus which is like, right here in this chest bone area, and we can make these various T-cells. And, they can differentiate the TH1, TH2, TH17, or these T regulatory cells. Okay. The big ones that we’re going to focus on are TH1, TH2. So what influences these cells in what direction, they go in typically, they’re going to be various inflammatory mediated compounds. So the ones that are gonna push TH1 are gonna be interfering — interferon, and then Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha. So just.. just kind of ignore the big stuff, just know that there’s some inflammatory compounds that cause this T-cell response on the TH1. Now, TH1 is gonna be.. it’s gonna be your Cytotoxic immune response. So think of T1, it’s like, this is your immediate reaction. This is like, “Hey we’re going to war. This is the Special Forces, this is the Navy Seals, it’s the Delta team, this is the Army Rangers”. These are the people that you want going into that territory first, right? They’re the first responders. Now, the big things that can influence TH1 are gonna be various Interleukins and Cytokines, alright? Interleukins could be you know, Interleukin 6, it could be Interleukin 4, it can be interleukin 5, or 10, or 13. These are various Cytokines that are produced and they could be produced due to inflammation from whatever’s happening in the environment. So TH1’s that part, or I’m sorry TH1 is going to be the TNF alpha, and the interferon. The TH2 is gonna be the other ones I just mentioned. That’s the Interleukin 6, the 5, the 4, the 13, and the 10. So we have kind of backup TH1, Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha, and then Interferon, TH2, are all gonna be the Interleukins and the Cytokine. So just kind of draw line in your head, TH1’s gonna be the Cytotoxic immediate immune response, TH2 will be the delayed immune response. Think of food allergens driving this. Think of anything that’s more antibody based. These are people. These are the troops that are coming late to the show. These are the infantry that’s coming. You know a couple of weeks after the Army Rangers and Navy Seals have done their Intel and done their initial strike. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: It does, yeah. So you mentioned the food allergies, and then if someone is TH2 dominant, now there’s different causes of this right? Like you and I work a lot with the gut issues, so we’re seeing a lot of bacterial infections, we see a lot of parasites, a lot of viral infections– it’s not 100% crystal-clear, but, in general, we found most of the bacterial infections those are going to increase your TH1. And, if you’re more TH2 dominant, these are more the food allergies, the people with histamine issues. Now, a lot of people I’ve noticed with Lyme and co-infections and mold, they also complain of tons of histamine issues. So it would make sense based on what we found in the literature, what we’ve seen clinically, which is if people with mold, Lyme, co-infections — these are the ones who report histamine intolerance where they have to go on a lower histamine diet and then we try to use things to stabilize the histamine reaction like herbal antihistamines, and sometimes these people are already put on antihistamines from their medical doctor or their allergist. But really that’s an immune system problem that the drugs are not addressing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So just kind of like, recap, TH1, kind of more immediate type of response. That’s where you’re seeing a lot of the nuclear factor, Kappa beta. That’s where you’re seeking to interfere on the TNF alpha, and the TH2, or all these various Cytokines and Interleukins, all right? TH2, they’re making a lot more antibodies. It’s making all those IgG. It could even be the IgE. The more anaphylactic ones, and these are kind of, they’re making those long-term antibodies to help attack whatever is going on. So a lot of autoimmune conditions we may see TH2 response, and a lot of chronic ones like 5 Alger, and a lot of these issues we could see that chronic fatigue, a lot of asthma issues, hay fever — a lot of these long-term conditions that are hanging out a lot longer. We may see these TH2 things. Now, a couple — people couple articles, we’ve seen TH1 tends to be more intracellular parasites, smaller, smaller bugs. TH2 dominance can be pushed up by bigger bugs, or extracellular bugs — bugs that are hanging outside the red blood cells, outside the red blood cells, bigger bugs, you know they’re bigger. They’re not inside the blood cell. The smaller, more microscopic ones kind of like malaria, or Babesia, they’re gonna be inside the red blood cell. Cryptosporidium is another one. That’s gonna be more TH1 dominant. So smaller critters, TH1, slightly bigger critters and ones that hang out outside of the red blood cell TH2. So, when we kind of go over like the science stuff, like I’m just kind of drawing a line here, science stuff, okay, then we gotta focus on the root cause. So when we see there may be some immune imbalances, right. TH1, where you have more TH1 symptoms, or you have more TH2 symptoms, or whether we actually do a test to look at your TNF-alpha, or your Interferon, or whether we actually look at various Interleukin 2 Cytokines. We can look at this stuff, we can test it, which can give us a little bit of a window on what direction we should be pushing the immune system. Sometimes, we don’t even have to push the immune system. We just work on the stressors, the infections, the food, and the gut and a lot of times that immune balance kind of just naturally goes back to where it wants to be, because the body wants to be in homeostasis. So we don’t necessarily have to go and say, “Well, this mushroom supports TH1, therefore, I’m gonna give this mushroom”. We may just want to be focused on the actual infections or those stressors that could be affecting it, and then let homeostasis kind of naturally happen on its own.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ve got a test kit actually upstairs. I haven’t run it yet. I didn’t know if you know this, but diagnostic solutions actually has a Cytokine. It’s sort of a pro-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory balance test that you can do. And I believe it’s all based on serum, but I’ve got it upstairs. I haven’t taken it yet, but I’ll .. I’ll put this in the chat for you. Other people won’t see it, but in our chat I’ll put it there. You can look at this sample report. It’s pretty cool, so it looks at all like the pro-inflammatory Cytokine. So it’s got like your Interleukin 18, which we know that ones tied in to Hashimoto’s for example, and it gives you an expected reference range. TNF alpha is pro-inflammatory, it’s got IL 6, it’s got IL 7, IL 8 and then it goes into the anti-inflammatory, which is pretty cool. So the anti-inflammatory, they’re kind of generalizing it here as putting proinflammatory TH1, anti-inflammatory TH2, so you can see here Interleukin 4, 5, 10, 13, 15s, on the anti-inflammatory category. Do you see that sample report?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct, that’s pretty cool.
Evan Brand: So actually I should do it now. Doesn’t really change much though. See, that’s the question with things like this right? Like we could spend days and days and days trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out, okay, you know, what are your T helper cells doing? Is your Cytokine balance off? But, if you don’t have a foundation to go back on then you’re really confused with this information. So I find that people may focus on a topic like this, but then they get lost in the science and they don’t really know how to make an action step based on it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, right? So TH1, TH2, these things are gonna differentiate. They’re gonna go ahead our T-cells, and they’re gonna go one to two directions, for the most part TH1 TH2. And in that process where they differentiate, that’s where all these Cytokines or Interleukins or TNF for all these inflammatory things happen. So think of a lot of the Cytostatic ions, or Interleukins, or TNF alpha or Nuclear Factor, Kappa beta or interference. Think of that as like the exhaust of the immune response. So you have these two vehicles driving in certain directions, and these Cytokines are gonna be the exhaust. So when we go and run a test like Evan talked about, with all these different Interleukins or Cytokines, it gives you a window of what cells are more active. Just like if you’re trying to smell the exhaust to see, is that a diesel car, is that a race car, is that unleaded, you know, you can kind of tell a little bit by just on some of that fuel. It’s the same thing here. And then that gives us more of a clinical window to say, well, how do we get to the root cause? Because we know things like gluten can easily throw off that immune response. We may be sitting here thinking about “Oh what kind of infections can we go after?”, but we may magically be able to support someone’s immune balance just by stabilizing blood sugar. We know blood sugar can increase imbalances or fluctuations, and blood sugar could increase Interleukin 6. Interleukin 6 is gonna be a TH2 immune response. So we could jack up our TH2 immune system by just having big fluctuations in blood sugar or gluten sensitivity. Could be something that really increases that TH2 immune response. So, it may be something that’s not that sexy. It’s not like this crazy infection you have, it just could be some blood sugar stuff. It could be a gluten sensitivity thing. Also, we know low glutathione. Low glutathione is a big stress or two because glutathione is a natural kind of regulator of the TH1 TH2. So that’s gonna have a major effect on our T regulatory cells. The T regulatory cells, they’re kind of the governor that can come in there and kind of tip it and bring it back to balance. Right? So think of lower glutathione as a master balancer. Think of lower vitamin D as a massive master balancer. So if we have poor digestion and we’re not breaking down proteins well, or we’re like a vegan vegetarian, we’re not getting enough good clean sulfur amino acids. Well this could be a stressor for our immune system or for not getting enough vitamin D. Whether supplementally and we’re not getting outside, that could be a big stressor, because your vitamin D has a major effect on our T regulatory fat cells. And after your regulatory cells they just come in there and they help modulate imbalance the immune response. That makes sense? Am I-
Evan Brand: Yeah, no. I mean you’re spot-on. I’m looking at the lab right in front of me. They’re talking here about the different types of T helpers and they say right here: T regulatory, the normal role of it is to limit inflammatory responses, which is exactly what you said. The T regulatory is the balancing act, promoting what they call immune tolerance, and it says here if you have an issue or an imbalance, T regulatory cell problem, then that’s when the autoimmune diseases come in, and that’s when inflammatory bowel diseases come in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s why when we like run a lot of organic acid test, we’ll look at certain markers like sulfate, or we’ll look at Pyro Glutamate, or Alpha Hydroxy Butyrate. We’ll look at a lot of these organic acids that correlate to our glutathione precursors, because this is important. If we aren’t able to have enough of these glutathione precursors, that could have a major effect on our immune system, right? That’s that’s really important. Also, for seeing just poor Hypo Methylation , right? If we’re not getting adequate levels of B12 or Folate and we’re HypoMethylating right, low levels of Methylation, we may see an increased amount of Homocysteine. We may see higher amounts of Methylmalonic Acid or Foramina Glutamate. Remember, Methylation is important because Methylation silences genes. So if we have these genes that are going to be like, let’s say genes that are going to be predispose us to diseases or conditions, we want to be able to silence them. So having good Methylation with a lot of those nutrients is important to silencing those genes. So really really important that we have good Methylation, because that plays a huge role in all of us.
Evan Brand: So you can test this. I’m gonna do it just for fun because I’ve got the test kit. If you want to measure the immune system, it looks like, I mean we love diagnostic solutions for a lot of the other testing that we do with them. I’ve not run this yet, but this is the whole Cytokine assessment, which is all looking at the T helper cells. The TH1, TH2, T regulatory — I’m gonna do it and report back on, on what it shows because one thing it says here just back to the TH2 dominance thing quickly: If you’re TH2 dominant, we talked about food allergy, seasonal allergies, you mentioned hay fever, and other things. It also says here chemical sensitivities — which I definitely have an increased chemical sensitivity problem. Since I got exposed to mold and possibly lyman Dorko infections from tick bites, that may be a driver of the sensitivity thing too. So what I’m curious to see is on a piece of paper, am I gonna show up really high with these TH2 ones they’re talking here. Interleukin 4 or 5, 6, 10, 13. If so, there’s the answer, but as we discussed it doesn’t really change the protocol much. It’s just it’s good data, but I’m still gonna do the same things like do infrared sauna, and do charcoal and binders, and excess glutathione supplementation like you said and making sure I’m digesting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and we decided on doing this topic. It’s an important topic as people are talking about it. But if you’re coming into this, and you have health challenges and you’re listening to this and you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry about it. This, this is not the cause, this is the effect. It’s important that you have a good functional medicine doc that they can look at the root cause but then maybe can take some of this data into account.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we’re not gonna base our whole treatment plan off of it but it’s just kind of a guide like a compass to, ‘hey am i moving in the right direction?’ Okay good excellent. I’m moving in the right direction. So it kind of gives you that confidence and ability. Also we were talking about low Methylation. Well, low methylation is also correlated with TH2 dominance. When we have that immune response, those antibody immune responses that are high, we tend to see low Methylation. So you see this a lot in allergies, asthma, autism is a big one, mucus, eczema, hives. You’re gonna see it actually in chronic fatigue as well. So these are conditions we got to keep an eye on, but Methylation is very important. So we got to look at .. So when we run a lot of organic acid testing, we can get a window into some of these root cause stuff before it trickles down and affects the immune system. So I’m still a huge fan of the organic acid testing because it gives me a little bit more of a window to the root of what’s happening versus the downstream Interleukin and Cytokines in and TNF-alpha and Interferon, which I think is more of a downstream trickle.
Evan Brand: I agree. Well, I just want to restate what you said a little differently, because it was interesting, which is that the Hypo Methylation is gonna affect and make you more TH2 dominant. And I would say, I mean you tell me if it’s different with your clients, but I would say 50 plus percent of the people we’re working with, they come and say, “Hey I tested my genetics and I have Methylation issues and I am you know MTHFR with my genetics and I have one snip or two snips and I can’t methyl ink properly.” And these are the same people who come to us with tons of food allergies, they feel like they can only eat limited food supply etc. I think this whole Methylation TH2 conversation is huge and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this before.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah totally. And then again, typically bacterial and viral infections are gonna be more TH1 dominant, and that makes sense right? Because that’s your natural killer cells. That’s gonna be your helper cells. These are the guys that are coming out to the party first. So it makes sense if I get exposed to an acute virus or an acute bacterial that that TH1 immune response is really really important. And then also people that have a TH1 response that’s really really high, they tend to make more Cortisol, right? So when you have chronically high Cortisol, you may actually see a decrease in that TH1 immune response. So this makes sense, right? Just think about it. If you have really low Cortisol, that’s going to suppress your TH1 response, which may make it easier for you to get cold and get sick. So this is why we want really good TH1 immune response, and chronically low Cortisol could have an effect on that so it was a typical adrenal fatigue, or like, adrenal dysfunction type of imbalances could create a lower TH1 immune response and cause you to get sick more. So just getting your Cortisol levels supported, and then getting to the root cause of that. Could have a major effect on supporting your TH1.
Evan Brand: Yeah, which is why we test it. So you can look at doing urine, you can look at doing saliva. You mentioned the organic acids, that’s a urine test. The saliva is what I use. I think you use mostly urine though now, don’t you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah I’ve been doing more of the urine just because I get a window into the free and the total Cortisol. I still love the saliva, it’s still great but it just it misses the total fraction which is nice to see.
Evan Brand: Mmm, okay. So you still have to get your foundational test. What we’ve talked about was kind of like a level like beyond what you typically need to do. This is like above and beyond the foundations. You and I don’t really say when we’re working with someone, “hey we’re addressing your TH1 and TH2 imbalances”. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever said that ever, maybe a couple times, but really what we’re doing is we’re fixing that as you mentioned the downstream effect. That’s what this is. This is the downstream stuff we’re dealing with, but we’re fixing that indirectly by focusing on the root causes. So getting rid of the bacteria and viruses that are throwing the immune system the wrong way, getting rid of parasites that are shifting it the wrong way , lowering thyroid antibodies by healing the gut, replenishing vitamin D, replenishing glutathione, to move out toxins, and molds, and other things that are disrupting this balance so you have to do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So think of like acute cortisol. Acute cortisol could actually bump up the TH1, could stimulate up a chronic cortisol. Chronic cortisol, chronic adrenal stimulation that eventually decreases the cortisol via getting the brain feedback loop dysregulated. That’s called HPA access. This regulation that is going to actually weaken the immune system so just kind of think of it like this — there’s chronic stress make your immune system weaker or stronger most people can wrap their head around the fact that it’s gonna make it weaker. And then we’re just talking about that mechanism. It’s really gonna be dysregulation that TH1 immune response for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything else you want to address here today? I mean–
Evan Brand: So do we list out the major symptoms for TH1. I know I did it for TH2 right? That was gonna be nasal drip, mucus allergies, hay fever, hives, chronic fatigue, a lot of autism stuff think hypo methylation. A lot of allergy based stuff. And then we have the TH1 stuff it’s more TH1 dominant. You’re gonna see that graves Rogen’s. You’re gonna see lupus. You’re gonna see I even think Hashimoto’s is gonna be TH1, and anything else you want to say about the TH1 dominant conditions. Yeah, it seems like the TH1 problems are more autoimmune related, where TH2 or more I don’t want to G over generalize, but TH – sounds more related to histamine allergy type.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Histamine allergy kind of thing so our Hashimoto’s a lot of irritable bowel conditions. T3, lower T3 conversion issues, TH1 MS. I think MS may actually be TH2. I think lupus may have a TH2 connection. So with the research like nothing’s 100% right, there are some nuance to it. Vitiligo autoimmune condition affecting the skin, that’s in the B TH1, Lyme can be TH1, but chronic Lyme can potentially switch the TH2 so there’s a couple of variations with that. Also, this is really cool and this is part of why I utilize pregnenolone in a lot of my patients. A lot of my adrenal patients. It’s because a lot of these autoimmune conditions that are TH1 dominant, they tend to have lower pregnenolone. And it makes sense because the more you’re pregnenolone drops, the more your immune system tends to be dysregulated, right? So the more that TH1 tends to be up that can deplete your pregnenolone, and then the longer that TH1 is up, eventually that immune response can drop too. So you could still be TH1 dominant, but the immune system starts to get weaker and weaker and weaker. It’s kind of like estrogen dominance. You can be a sturgeon dominant while still having low estrogen. Right? I see it all the time. So it’s that it’s all about the balance. And we know the adrenals interplay here significantly, we know gluten and gut barrier function interplay, and we know infections interplay, so if all this stuff isn’t making sense just focus on the root cause and then the immune imbalances should just take care of itself naturally.
Evan Brand: That’s amazing. So the pregnenolone you know that’s considered kind of the master right? So when you throw in pregnenolone, you’re saying you’re allowing the body to go and generate whatever other hormones it needs to from just giving pregnenolone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And again if your people are listening to this, … owns like an adrenal precursor. That’s like can make about 27 different adrenal hormones you want to remember though. You want to have your levels tested, and you want to do it the right way. So work with a practitioner on that and make sure you’re getting to the root cause. It’s easy for someone to listen to this and say well I’m gonna just take pregnenolone, but you may ignore how you got here right? So yeah, pregnenolone taking with the eye to getting all the other root cause, things under control that’s the best functional medicine perspective to address it.
Evan Brand: Beautiful. Well, reach out to Justin if you need help with this stuff. We know we got a little .. a little as you called it heady, a little complex, with this stuff. It can’t get complex but at the end of the day you just have to address the root causes but how do you do that? Well you have to find them first, and so that’s why we do comprehensive testing depending on what the symptoms are we may look at different things like stool, urine, saliva, blood, depending on what’s going on. And someone promises or sells you a silver bullet to fix your chronic health issues, they’re wrong. I would run away. There is no silver bullet, all these people they say, ‘Oh everything is Lyme disease’. Or ‘everything is Epstein-barr virus’, or ‘everything is this’. Know nothing is nothing, it’s that simple. It’s always multiple layers or different pieces of the puzzle. I mean I’ve been working on myself with herbs and gut and adrenals and immune, and all sorts of stuff for 10 years and I’m still in the game. I’m still going so it you got to just keep peeling back these layers.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we’ll put some of the references here in the articles that you guys can take a look at some of the references if you want to digest it slower. We’ll put some pictures here as well, and I’m gonna do a little summary video that’ll be shorter with a little bit of drawings and stuff to help kind of guide you through the understanding of what’s happening. So if it’s too much for anyone or you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t worry, we’ll try to break it down, we’ll put some pictures, some images, some references, and just kind of have a mind to focusing on the root cause.
Evan Brand: Yep. If you want to reach out to Justin, he can help you around the world. justinhealth.com — just go there, and you can find the appointments and you can book yourself on his calendar. My website’s evanbrand.com. We really look forward to helping you address whatever concerns you have. There’s a whole list of different symptoms, conditions, etc on our website, so you can look through that and see if we are compatible with each other.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel so you can get some of these summary videos after the fact, if you guys are enjoying it. justinhealth.com / (slash) Youtube and evanbrand.com /(slash) Youtube as well. Evan, hey man, it’s been great. You have a phenomenal 4th of July. If we don’t connect till after that point. And today was great man, really appreciate it.
Evan Brand: You too. Take care have a good one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan take care. Bye bye.
References:
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/immune-system-stress-th1-avs-th2-immune-response-podcast-235
Mitochondria 101: The Key to Longevity
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
We all remember the mitochondria as the “powerhouse of the cell” from biology class. While most of us haven’t thought about these organelles since high school, the incredible power of the mitochondria has recently been gaining more and more attention. Today we’re going to take a refresher course in mitochondria, and learn how the mitochondria just might be the key to longevity.
What Are The Mitochondria?
Mitochondria are small organelles floating in our cells that produce about 90% of the chemical energy, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), that cells need to survive. Depending on how much energy a cell needs, some cells have thousands of mitochondria while others have none. These tiny organelles turn the electrons in the food we eat into energy our cells can use to power our bodies. Mitochondria are so important that they even have their own DNA, known as mitochondrial DNA (“mtDNA”).
Apoptosis: Cellular Suicide
In addition to creating energy, mitochondria produce other chemicals your body uses for various tasks, like breaking down waste, recycling waste products, and something called “apoptosis.” Apoptosis is programmed cell death and is crucial for a healthy body. When your body senses viruses and gene mutations, it may trigger apoptosis to prevent these from spreading. Cancer and tumors grow when left unchecked; apoptosis is needed to reign them in.
Click here to learn how to take your health to the next level!
Take Care of your Mitochondria
Healthy functioning mitochondria are essential for many of our life-sustaining metabolic processes. As essential to life as mitochondria are, they are also delicate and quite susceptible to damage. Mitochondrial dysfunction is currently characterized by a variety of metabolic illnesses. 
The following conditions are associated with changes in the structure of mitochondrial DNA or are symptoms of mitochondrial damage or malfunctioning include
- Multiple Sclerosis: A neuroimmune disease, multiple sclerosis patients generally have impaired ATP synthesis, which is evidence of malfunctioning mitochondria. Most MS patients also have chronic oxidative stress.
- Autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD
- Fatigue: One of the most common symptoms of weak mitochondria is chronic fatigue.
- Motor skill problems, including trouble walking, talking or swallowing; loss of motor control; balance and coordination issues.
- Digestive issues: vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, acid reflux.
- Muscle aches, pains, weakness
- Heart, liver, kidney disease or dysfunction.
- Neurological problems,
- Age-related hearing loss
- Cancers
- Cyclic vomiting syndrome
- Cytochrome c oxidase deficiency
- Neuropathy, ataxia, and retinitis pigmentosa: muscle weakness, vision loss
- Stalled growth and development
- Respiratory problems
- Migraines
- Hormonal imbalance
Supporting Your Mitochondria Naturally
>>Healthy Lifestyle Habits: Avoid blue light at night, get full-spectrum sunlight, make conscious choices regarding the products you buy, get enough sleep.
Additionally, it’s important to be conscious of carcinogenic EMFs and minimize your exposure to these man-made electromagnetic frequencies. Healthy mitochondria can protect you from suffering too much damage from acute exposure, but constant bombardment from EMFs including cell phones, computers, Wi-Fi routers, microwaves, etc. will wear down your mitochondria. You can read more about protecting yourself from EMF radiation here.
>>Healthy Nutrition: Eating organic, whole foods is important for everyone. For an extramitochondrial boost, consider supplementation. I recommend Mito Synergy for a packed-punch of antioxidants and mitochondrial supporting nutrients.
Mito Synergy contains:
- Vitamin B: B vitamins are integral to mitochondrial energy production and proper mitochondrial function. A deficiency in any of the B vitamins disrupts normal energy production, leading to an accumulation of toxic byproducts and increasing oxidative stress.
- Creatine: Creatine is a substance similar to amino acids that you find in muscle cells. It can help increase muscle mass, strength, exercise performance, and protect against neurological diseases.
- L-Carnitine: Carnitine is an amino acid produced by the body, and is also found in red meat! It is involved in transporting compounds and also stimulates glutathione production—the master antioxidant.
- CoQ10: In order for our bodies to make use of the food we eat, our mitochondria has to turn food and oxygen into usable energy in the form of ATP. This conversion process requires the presence of CoQ10. Read more about CoQ10 here.
- Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA): ALA has actually been labeled a “mitochondrial nutrient” by researchers due to its ability to improve the structure and function of mitochondria. ALA has also been studied for its ability to increase antioxidant levels, restore vital enzyme activity, prevent oxidative damage, and protect against cognitive decline.
- Curcumin: Curcumin is anti-inflammatory: it works on a control switch called NF-κB. Genes generally aren’t turned completely on or off, it’s more like adjusting the volume on your stereo. Curcumin helps downregulate or turn down the volume on NF-κB, which results in less inflammatory markers and less inflammatory stress. Curcumin also upregulates glutathione, known as the master antioxidant that also protects mitochondria, by up to 600%!
Still have questions about the air inside your home? Click here to talk to a professional!
References:
https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/mitochondrial-dna#conditions
Conventional Medicine to Functional Natural Medicine | Podcast #232
Conventional medicine is a system in which medical professionals treat symptoms in diseases using medicines, or surgery. Functional medicine, on the other hand, is a treatment that focuses on optimizing the functions of the body organs, which involves holistic or alternative medicine.
Today’s podcast guest is Dr. Russell Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe is highly respected in the functional medicine industry. As a physician and scientist who aspired to be comprehensive, objective, empiric and experiential, Dr. Jaffe started his career searching for deeper understanding, wisdom, evidence, and insight in mechanisms of health.
Dr. Russell Jaffe
In this episode, we cover:
00:51 Medical Research to Functional Integrated Nutritional World
10:32 Intermittent Fasting
15:02 Keto Diet
34:15 Importance of Vitamin C
58:56 Importance of Vitamin D
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome back to the beyond wellness radio podcast. Today we have a phenomenal guest, we have Dr. Russell Jaffe in the house. Dr. Russell is a Ph.D. MD nine years all at Boston University. One graduation lots of good knowledge there and Dr. Jaffe was really on the conventional medical side. I really want to dive in we’re gonna get his story and how he converted moreover to the functional natural integrative kind of model. Dr. Jaffe runs the perk supplement company, he also runs the company called Elisa Act which does premier testing for food allergens. Dr. Jaffe welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Thanks for having me
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s just dive in. I want to hear your story and how you went into this mainstream medical research kind of world environment over to the functional kind of integrated more nutritional world. How did that happen?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well I was trained in need in academic medicine at Boston University then I matriculated to the National Institutes of Health where I was early on the appointed to the senior staff which is a bit of an indication that my science was acceptable and of course I was skeptical about anything that I didn’t learn in academic medicine in internal medicine in clinical pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In fact, when I heard that Queen Wu, an acupuncturist in Washington DC, could get results that NIH could not get. I went with great skepticism and ended up doing a seven-year apprenticeship with him
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Then I then I heard about yoga and I heard about Dr. Ramamurti Mishra an MD Ph.D. cross-trained in Banaras, wrote the textbook of yoga psychology commentary and Patanjali sutras. I went as a skeptic and I was his acolyte for five years, then I met a Cambodian Buddhist monk named Anti Dharma Aawara and I had the last 30 years of his life from 80 to 110 mostly together
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow that’s amazing
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So, I came as a skeptic but when I… but I was also curious and because I was curious, I went outside my silo I went outside my immediate peer group. Because I can tell you that when I started to bring information about traditional oriental medicine and acupuncture to the National Institutes of Health where it’s practiced today. I can tell you it was met with great indifference and crashing silence. Because these were very smart people who knew that they knew more than anybody else because they were at the NIH and I was you know with them. But I was also outside, curious, finding mentors who had answers, wisdom, traditions that I knew nothing about. You know I mean I knew from nothing. So, I had the time with Queen and with Ramamurti Mishra, Dr. Mishra and with his Cambodian Buddhist monk Anti Dharma, and yes, my world has absolutely turned around if you will. Why? Because I now advocate nature nurture and wholeness, I advocate physiology before pharmacology. I advocate eating what you can digest assimilate and eliminate without immune burden. I can tell you if you get restorative sleep and you keep your neural hormones and balance then gratitude will rise up at least in the springtime when you see the earth renewing itself. So yes, I do think that a functional, integrative, personalized, primary, proactive, predictive, personalized prevention practices is the medicine of the future, and my work is to speed the transition from sick care to health care. Because most people get sick care today, they really don’t get health care. In your clinic they get health care in my world I would like everyone to get health promotion health care preventive, proactive care. But that is a dream today, that is an aspiration. It is also a necessity because the cost of sick care is going to sink the businesses of America. We’re not going to well, let me summarize very quickly who. Uwe Reinhardt, a very famous Princeton health economist. He says, if you just look at the rise of chronic disease today and projected forward a generation or so, everyone’s gonna be in a hospital bed taking care of the person next to them. No one’s gonna be working or paying taxes that’s clearly not a vibrant productive society.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct 100%. Now I’m just curious having it’s such a, you know strong conventional background MD, Ph.D. and having to had such an open mind to pull in other modalities and other forms of natural medicine and you know you’re looking at obviously the outcome you’re looking at the effectiveness. What it’s your colleagues think cuz I mean obviously conventional medicine, the allopathic pharmaceutical surgical approach, it tends to rely on not addressing the root cause and it tends to not have a preventative nature to it. So, when you are looking at these natural forms of medicine obviously prevention kind of comes in we’re gonna be talking about predictive tests that can help us look at and assess and maybe prevent some of these things but what did your colleagues think did you feel like they were threatened? And then what was the atmosphere around with just the drug industry? You know cuz that kind of motion one direction.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well I can. I’m gonna answer your question but before I answer it, Merck Sharp & Dohme gave me their annual award one time. I got the meritorious Public Health Service Award one year; my work was featured in the New York Times at one time. So, I was not unknown or unrecognized, I got to teach every year because NIH has its own University on topics that I was interested in that I was interested in introduced.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But to answer your question especially about people who have advanced degrees they either come out of what’s called the Decartian Reductionist Mechanistic way of thinking, in which case I will not talk to them because they won’t understand what I’m saying and it probably will be uninteresting or irritating to them. Then there are the people who come out of the Garrettian Rudolf Steiner.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Before that, there was a theorist as Hoenn half before that you can go all the way back to Mymanatis and Hippocrates. But I will mention that Hippocrates practiced on the island of Kos because the conventional doctors and Athens drove him out of town.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Because ah was for radical to their beliefs and now, he’s a father of Western medicine
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable so they, you did get some accredited you did get some accolades but not enough to incorporate a lot of these things in mainstream medicine. So, there’s still kind of a block.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well that’s above my paygrade.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: My responsibility at the time was to do my job.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To publish to communicate to inspire to inform to motivate and I’m glad to tell you that many of the people who are skeptical of my enthusiasm at the time have gone on to research in these areas and now they too have come around and an example, a very important example, but it’s just a personal face on this conversation Dr. Tony Lamas, Gervasio Lamas, he is the chairman of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami and he is on the Faculty of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York and he led the tact trial funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute NIH NHLBI he is the superb cardiologist, very conventionally trained, who now has documented the benefits of chelation therapy especially for people with diabetes. And we’re both on the rostrum today, we’re both on the program teaching other doctors. What we find to be the information that inspires us that keeps us younger and I will mention that he and I just got off the elevator just before our interview and he noticed that I had lost 65 pounds and I mentioned
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I wasn’t going to find them again and I noticed that he had lost some weight. And so we commiserated with each other because it’s not easy to get to your lean weight but you feel so much better your restorative sleep is so much better your digestion so much better your moods are so much better. That from my point of view it’s absolutely worth doing in fact it’s an investment in my future and others have heard this I don’t know if you have, Dr. Justin, but I’m planning to be dancing at 120 and I want you and I want you to be with me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful. That’s wonderful that’s excellent. Well, also you got your CCN as well so you obviously have it your conventional medical training. When did you go and start learning more about nutrition, in general?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I actually, I actually helped found the IWCN, I was the program director for the first eight years of the certified clinical nutritionist program, I believe that I have CCN number one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow so before we dive into some of these predictive markers and I also want to you know get a sense of your background too because you also started a supplement and lab company which I think is very unique as well, but before we go into that, what would you say, give me a breakdown what’s your typical day like breakfast lunch and dinner, how do you spend your day doing a lot of research what’s that day like?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well thanks for asking. Here’s my day, I’m kind of a farmer which means I go to bed early, I get up early. I get up usually before dawn and I happen to have a wonderful mattress that I love and I stretch before I fall asleep, I stretch when I get up before I get out of bed, then I kind of check myself then I have a morning shower while the coffee is brewing and I do get organic shade-grown tea buried coffee from a wonderful guy who roasts the beans the day he sends it to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And while the coffee is brewing, I take my shower and I stretch again in the shower and I go through a mental checklist to see if there’s any part of my body that really needs help today. Then the next thing I do aside from putting on some clothes usually, is I make sure I’m well hydrated and I am now following a fellow who believes that it is better, in the long run, to take almost all of your calories in just six hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm so intermittent fasting?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, you can call this intermittent fasting. I like to think of it as intermittent digestion or…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: What is it whatever is the good side of fifth to me fasting is, I don’t want to fast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I have resistance of the word not in the process but I tell you that my mornings at this point now I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day but please don’t knock me out about this. That’s what I actually do and I’m going to be honest with you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: My mornings I stay hydrated I sip on coffee, I don’t put anything into my coffee there are no extra sweeteners in my home. You’re sweet enough as you are you don’t need to add sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And by the middle of the day I’m beginning to feel hungry, and where am I in the middle of the day? I’m at my R&D center in Vienna Virginia which is also my home. So four days a week I get to think write meditate and then I go out in our permaculture biodynamic food forest garden, where my job is to sit and watch the pollinators pollinate and the birds eat the birds, seed. And then my other job is to pick whatever is right for dinner because we like to eat from our land. We have a biodynamic Community Supported Agriculture CSA that we belong to and once a week we get very fresh food. And yes we go to Whole Foods but we only buy things that are whole. In my home, there are very few packages. We don’t need them. There are devices that make it easy to cook things work very well very quickly, yes we have steel cut oats not rolled oats and yes we put them in water or some broth overnight so they pre swell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I’m trying to think what else for me I often in the evening before bed I have about a half an hour where I get in a warm tub of water that has a cup of Epsom salts and a cup of baking soda that helps detoxify and relax. When I’m in the bath five minutes I do deep abdominal breathing just slow rhythmic breathing if you want to know what abdominal breathing is like watching a baby they all know how to breathe in there happen watch most adults, they under ventilate, they hypo ventilate they have so many traumas growing up that they’re daring to move that’s right they breathe from their chest which is not where the action is it’s these little tiny air sacs called alveoli, I really am a doctor at the that you have to expand your lung so I five minutes of abdominal breathing than 15 minutes of active meditation. My friend Robert Leichtman wrote a book called Active Meditation: The Western Tradition and published around 1976, still in addition highly recommend it and anything that Bob Leichtman has ever written because most of us have days that are structured I have earned and I worked hard to get this didn’t happen overnight but I worked hard to get to the point where I had a team with people that could take care of the day-to-day and in fact it’s better for me to not even interact with that because I’m constantly fixing things that aren’t broken.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But if they if they can’t solve a problem well then it’s mine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Four days a week yeah four days I’m a week I’m at the R&D center in the woods I get eight to ten thousand steps a day in and how do I doing that well I have a hands-free telephone and when I’m talking which I offer them, when I’m talking I’m walking.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense I have a setup here where I’m on a treadmill at my desk and when I’m sitting I have a like basically it’s called the QB and it’s put by spending on us and you can bike. So I do the same thing
Dr. Russell Jaffe: That’s wonderful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just can just curious about protein consumption in fat consumption.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: oh well it’s, first of all, understand that the clear and the recent studies completely support what I’m going to say. The Greek Mediterranean diet is the healthiest diet the next healthiest diet is the Japanese diet. In both cases you take in lots of fresh things in joyful ways with lots of herbs and you have 60% complex carbs, 20%, of calories from fat and 20% of calories from protein now why do I say that, because if you want insulin resistance then go on a low carb high protein high-fat diet. If you want to increase your risk of atrial fibrillation and magnesium deficiency and all the consequences thereof go on a low carb high protein high-fat diet. It’s in vogue it’s called keto I even hear that South Beach is now a modified friendly keto. I don’t know what a friendly keto is. I know it keto, I know a ketoacidosis is it’s called starvation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You will lose weight if you if you do what Bob Atkins and others recommended for many years which is eat a lot of fat a lot of protein and zero as close to zero carbs as you have… weight but you but your bones will melt.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what’s your there’s a lot of data coming out from over at Duke University, Eric Westman, a bunch of other Doc’s on the ketogenic kind of template you know they’re modifying it anywhere between 20 or to 50 grams of net carbs typically around thirty thirty net which typically gets you like eight servings of green vegetables a day. What’s your take on that? Because there’s lots of data with less mass…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The folks that the folks at Duke are doing good folks at Duke are doing good work there is an integrative medicine group at Duke at they’re part of. However, you can call that what you want you can call it a rose or a petunia it remains what it is it’s not ketogenic. Ketogenic means you deprive yourself of carbohydrates and you force your mitochondria cells, the battery of the cell to use fats and amino acids for energy. So what they’re saying is if you’re truly ketogenic you’re in starvation and what I said before applies now what they’re saying is we want to have a best of both, we want you to have the option of more fat and more protein. So we’re gonna cut the carbs half of what I said. So I said 60% not and I’m remember I said no added sugar so that 60% from fiber nuts and seeds and things you have to chew those are the thing and fruits and vegetables which turn out to be associated with long life and good health and depriving yourself of fresh fruits and vegetables I don’t think anyone today who really knows about the true functional nutrition literature as a fellow of the American College of Nutrition as someone who was on the National Nutrition Consortium appointed by Mildred Seelig at ACN today. I can tell you for sure that the Greek Mediterranean diet is associated with the healthiest long life and the best energetic mood stability symptom reduction from diet alone. Now it’s not it’s more than diet, of course, it’s what you eat and drink it’s what you think and but in regard to eating and drinking with respect to the folks that do they’re trying to take a very overlooked problem identify it and find a solution by splitting the difference. As someone who is in academic medicine, I can tell you I’m splitting the differences often what’s done but it rarely turns out to be very helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When you say splitting the difference do you mean just instead of consuming zero carbohydrate kind of like a carnivore diet they’re doing essentially you know six to eight servings of green vegetables keeping the net below 30. Is that will you mean by splitting the difference?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes I’m saying that the healthiest diet is 60% complex carbohydrates, 60% lots of fiber, 20% from protein, 20% from fat in which they’re very nicely…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you customize the carbs if you have a patient that’s coming in with a let’s just say elevation in fasting insulin let’s say greater than 10 or at 15 or a functional or a glucose tolerance that stays up high 2, 3 hours after a meal. Would you make exceptions to cut the carbs lower if you’re dealing with those patients?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: If you want to reduce hemoglobin A1c if you want to improve glucose-insulin ratio, if you want to improve Homa which we studied in our diabetes outcome study which we talked about if you want. But if you want to optimize any of those parameters as you should. You must keep the fat less than 20% of calories, and you must have at least forty to a hundred grams of unprocessed fiber in your diet daily. That means 60% from complex carbs, 20% from fat, 20% from protein. Now if you include seeds and nuts if you include seeds and nuts you get healthy oils but remember that as soon as you remove the oil from the seed or them but, the protective factors are gone and now you have something that air is the enemy now and so there are no edible oils in my house. We cook with broth, we cook with wine, we cook with juice, we cook with foods that are wet. We like wet foods we started all of our meals with something wet and warm. That Americans but it’s a makeover that adds years to life in life to years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now you talked about 20 wouldn’t… go ahead.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No I was just trying to kind of guild that point which is I had insulin resistance when I weighed 65 pounds more than I did now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I can tell you the last the last two hemoglobin tests on myself for 4.5% and the best outcome goal value is less than 5% and even a little bit about five and you begin losing years on the far end but losing quality of life today. It’s a bad proposition.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: We need it turns out we need a lot of fiber we also need a lot of probiotic good bugs and then we need a lot of nutrients that come from things like fruits and vegetables. Especially healthy fruits and vegetable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To me today the minimum is organic I prefer biodynamic and actually, I would prefer to grow it myself if I quit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. Now you talked about having the fact go higher that causes insulin resistance. What’re the mechanisms? We know fat doesn’t really have much of an insulin genic response I mean you have some with protein more with carbs. So what’s the mechanism of fat getting higher and causing more insulin and just to be clear right, we want to draw a line between you know process kind of more rancid omega-6 or more trans-fat right and then we kind of have our healthier saturated fats in the category coconut oil maybe gear butter and then, of course, we have our unsaturated avocado, olive oil, those kinds of things.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Let me jump in on that and just just to make a very important point. EVO, extra-virgin olive oil is a fraud waiting to be revealed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay let’s hear it yeah why.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yeah well why because my family I went to Tuscany at the time when you harvest olives and you bring them and overnight they grind very slowly on this grinding wheel you know this is a stone wheel and one comes out is dark green and viscous and delicious and they eat it there and they love it there and you can buy it commercially. What you buy and this is actually what happened we stayed there all night in the morning there was this mountain of spent olive mash outside the building, and this big truck from Bartoli comes by and I say what’s happening and they say, Oh hahaha Portola is going to take our spent olive mash and the first time they process it they’re gonna call it EVO.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So it’s a fraud waiting to happen. Ghee, on the other hand, can be liquid sunshine Beatrice from hunter wrote about that many years ago but remember the ghee comes from the cow and if that was a healthy cow that’s fine. But most ghee is contaminated with the products at the cow ate including glyphosate, including lead and mercury and… I okay and and now if you want to make a fondue and you want to use some organic grapeseed oil a few drops, I will not tear it out of your hand in fact there is i feel to show you I’m not totally consistent there is a small bottle of grapeseed oil and we made fondue with it. If you tell me you have organic peanut oil and you want to do a stir-fry, I’m killing a few drops of organic peanut oil in a wok or a cast iron pan, it’s fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s okay.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But most of the oil should come from Whole Foods seeds and nuts. The complex carbs are what regulate a slow uptake from the gut of sugar and the minerals that are necessary to process the sugar so that you actually enhance insulin functionality by having a lot of fiber in the diet. Now let’s flip to the other side let’s slip to the other side. Assuming that you will agree with me that you’re sweet enough as you are and therefore you don’t need any added sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I totally hear that.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now most now most of the studies that the people have cited included sugar and complex carbs as carbs. Sorry, that’s not fair look at the diet studies that use Whole Foods as their source of carbs. They got the best insulin resistance below 20% of fat from calorie… fat as source of calories, less than 20% of calories from that. Now, why is that? It turns out the more fat you take the more rigid are the membranes of your cells and it’s a little complicated biochemistry but trust me I’m not making this up. When the cell membrane itself this is the wrapper around the cell this is a very important packaging but very dynamic of thing membrane when that membrane becomes more rigid the fit between insulin and the insulin receptor becomes less efficient, and you develop insulin resistance but since your…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Doesn’t that membrane get more rigid more with trans-fats though then or like vs higher quality omega 3s or higher quality saturated there’s no difference in that? mm-hmm.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well let’s go back to the trans-fat comment. Kumar Kumaroh and Marianne showed in the late 70s early 80s, trans fats should not be part of the human diet, trans-fats should be out of your diet it’s not hard today because even the companies that used to advocate for them agree the trans fats bad bad bad yes trans fats do make rigid membranes but they’re bad and suggestible. Now stearic acid saturated fats are more rigid unsaturated fats are more flexible and fluid. You want to have more EPA DHA as omega-3, but you want it from a source that was distilled under nitrogen to remove the toxic metals and to avoid air oxidation damage of the delicate EPA DHA then you need enough magnesium in your body because magnesium acts as an antioxidant to protect the EPS, the unsaturated fats when they’re in trend.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, now when you talk about some of these fish oils how much does it matter if it’s a triglyceride or an ethyl ester what’s your opinion on that?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: In my opinion on that is that there are two points of view, one advocated by company a and the other advocated by company b. There are virtues to both what is critical from my point of view is that the distillation of the oil whether it be a triglyceride an ethyl ester or not, that the distillation be under nitrogen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nitrogen is important is that preventive grantee oxygenation doesn’t happen essentially.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To prevent what will be irreversible oxidative damage to the delicate essential fats that you are interested in it yes so you must have still under nitrogen and then you want to take the traction that has the most EPA DHA of course, and now you want to micellize that in a soft jell because that will protect it until you swallow it and the micellized little droplets get into the body easier because it’s not easy to take up either the triglyceride or the ethyl ester you need some bile you need a gall bladder that works and as I started to say what’s really important is the quality of the EPA DHA because you can make a case on both sides, which means we really don’t know the answer yet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And of course like you know you run a supplement company so we, you’re going out and you’re trying to find a person that to buy raw material offered there are obviously different tiers right you can go and buy cheaper stuff like you would maybe the equivalent of a burger at your local McDonald’s or you can choose the high quality grass-fed organic beef at your local farmer correct, so you’ve different options on your keys…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The reason that Park Integrative Health the reason that Park was founded in 1987 was because I wanted to use pharmaceutical quality and above raw materials all the time. And I was told by people who knew better that our cost of goods was going to be so high than I would have a hobby and not a business. So I did something that some people do which is I took the marketing budget and I put it into the cost of goods I put it into the quality of the bottom the quality of our service and we’ve grown quite a nice business, thank you, over service without having more than a few dollars for marketing. Because you’ll never see a sports celebrity endorsing a Park product but if you take a Park product, you’ll feel the difference because if you use the higher quality raw materials and you put them together so that it’s only active ingredients all the time which is something we pioneered. Now you have a safer, more effective form that when you study it as we have in community-based outcome studies delivers feel the difference results and as you know we have an unconditional guarantee because we trust people to feel the difference that Park approach that is use the highest quality and monitor it very carefully, because people will promise the moon and deliver modified dog poop.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sense. And then with your a fish oil what’s your opinion do you like the triglyceride, or the ethyl does it matter and then what’s the difference is to kind of put it in in layman’s terms.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well right see the difference is that eventually these delicate fats are going to get into a membrane as part of a triglyceride, and a triglyceride is three carbons, that’s the backbone and coming off of each of those carbons is a long chain called a fatty acid. Now the two position there’s one two three the middle position the tube position of the triglyceride is the source for your cytokines thromboxanes and prostaglandins it’s really important so if you put a racemic acid in there or you put it on mega six fatty acids in there you’ve got a completely different response than if you put in EPA or a DHA in there. So in that sense, you would think the triglycerides are better. But it turns out that the body is going to deconstruct and reconstruct a triglyceride so that’s not so critical and the ethyl ester, not the methyl ester ever the ethyl ester is easily taken up it has better bioavailability so if you say to me this is a person with a perfectly healthy gallbladder, across the coin both of them are okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: If your bile from your gallbladder is limited, well then you should have the ethyl ester.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then when you’re producing the product what’s the how are you preventing the oxidation from happening outside. I’m just keeping the temperature down. Are you putting like a rosemary antioxidant, how are you keeping it stable?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well when I said, first of all, there’s a pharmaceutical-grade fish oil company.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re choosing a good quality right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No I’m choosing way above a good quality, the best food-grade right right right so there is food grade which you can think of as floor sweet. Then there is quality grade we can think of as better than floor sweet things. Once you get up to American Chemical Society to reagent grade to pharmaceutical grade and above, now you’re at a different level. You’re dealing with different companies you do different they provide different kinds of documentation you do we do third-party pros production testing on all our products because even though we trust our suppliers verified by President Reagan used to say Rastenburg.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly yeah that makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So what happens is the fish oil is distilled under nitrogen the middle fraction the concentrate EPA DHA is basically put into a sealed container, it then goes to the place where it’s going to be micellized into the soft gel where it is immediately and without any exposure to oxygen, put into tiny droplets that are easily taken up from your gut. And by the way, you don’t get the burping and the comeback that most officials have you can bite into this fish oil soft gel and you’ll find it very delicate because it’s not rancid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and then if you consume, so if you were to consume rancid omega-3s you essentially have more lipid peroxidation correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You would have more lipid peroxidation and it would be a member of studies there have been several studies recently that said, oh we thought fish oils were good but they’re not really good. And if you look at them carefully these were people taking fish shows made in oxygen fish oils that were rancid and should, in my opinion, should not be consumed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: is that just robbing from your antioxidant reserves it’s sucking up more vitamin C what’s it doing in your body?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well it’s doing several levels of harm yes you’re right when you start with something that’s damaged and oxidized than the body has to use antioxidants which is protective but he has to use antioxidants in order to somehow get the oxygen off the molecule that has it. Because when you put oxygen on a molecule like a fat, it’s like putting a hand grenade on the fat. When that oxygen comes off the recoil energy is going to be so high that you’re going to break the membrane of the cell you’re going to damage the cell that’s a bad thing. And now you have a molecule that kind of fits in where an omega-3 or omega-6 should you know triglyceride in a membrane, but it doesn’t have the right shape. It’s got this big extra oxygen on. So peroxides are bad epoxides are bad anything that robs your antioxidants are bad and most people need help with their antioxidants so anything you can do to preserve to enhance the function of your antioxidants like ascorbate. Is to your benefit and anything you do that depletes your antioxidants it’s the opposite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and what does that do to your cell membrane? Is it making the cell membrane more inflexible?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: It’s not only making it more inflexible when the oxygen comes off the recoil energy is so high you actually break the membrane and very often the cell is killed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow I really appreciate your biochem background it really helps and I know you’re also famous for doing a vitamin C calibration. Can you talk about the vitamin C calibration and who can benefit from that?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right so let’s talk about the C calibration also known as the C cleanse and the reason that we focus on a ascorbate, known as vitamin C it’s really an antioxidant does not think of it as a vitamin A vitamin is something you need a little love to activate enzyme catalyst. Albertsons Georgy pointed out that ascorbate is as important to survival as light and oxygen. When you’re that important you’re kind of really important and the end the next question has to be, well how much, how much should I take. Now Linus Pauling famously said 9 grams then he said 18 grams and I got to ask him why he said 18 grams and he said because doctors are so dumb they could only remember a number and if I say it long enough then they’ll remember and I said but doctor timing shouldn’t it be individualized he said of course but doctors aren’t smart enough for that. I think people consumers are and I think that people aren’t a functional integrative and holistic medicine are and so the C calibration the C cleanse means that every 15 minutes you take a certain amount like a gram and a half, three grams, six grams, every 15 minutes and notice I said grams, not milligrams. But of course, you use fully buffered fully reduced l-ascorbic nature’s form is l-ascorbic you want to fully reduced not the partially reduced fully reduced and by the way our source of ascorbic is fermented. It’s done by natural fermentation but under a nitrogen blanket so that during the production of the ascorbate, which is triply recrystallized under nitrogen which is it’s a challenge but it now gives you nature’s form in a concentrated way. And then we have a balance of minerals potassium, calcium, magnesium, and zinc you need all of them in a proportion so if you need one gram 10 grams or a hundred grams you still get the minerals that help the ascorbate come in and help it work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so what’s the goal how high do you go up to and then do you ramp down how does the whole process work and why should people be looking for symptom was.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well what they’re gonna do is once a week they’re gonna check their C calibration they’re gonna do it by taking the ascorbate every 15 minutes until they cleanse, until they have an enema from within, until they have a flush something so unique that until you’ve had it you don’t understand it but once you’ve had it once you know what I’m talking about. So you rapidly get toxic matter and fluid pumped into the rectum and evacuated from the tosh that’s why I meant by an enema from within. They do that once a week we do that once a week now in between you take 50 to 75 percent, so let’s say it took 10 grams to cleanse, you take between five and seven and a half grams. I recommend that people start at 50 percent and move up to 75 percent over time. You do the cleanse every week because the amount you need will likely go up over some period of time as you overcome the repair deficit that your body has accumulated for years or decades, and when you finally get to Plateau which means for four consecutive weeks your cleanse is the same amount. Now you know the amount you need on a daily basis, you’re taking three quarters of the amount to do that cleanse and you keep doing that until you get bulky or lose your stool indicating that repair has finally completed and now you do ramp down see now you check it once a week as you need less and less. And the goal is to need less than four grams, and when we checked about 4,200 people that reported their C cleanse. The people who are asymptomatic and healthy cleanse on four grams or less. They’re people who had just a few symptoms cleansed on four to ten grams the average person cleansed on ten to a hundred grams and there are people who need well over a hundred grams which is a hundred thousand milligrams to cleanse but it is safe and for it is safer for people to do this because the amount of oxidative damage, the amount of oxidative toxic material, the amount of nutrient-deficient oxidative processed foods that people are taking in the stress of high tech living has dramatically increased the amount of ascorbate that people need, ascorbate is the mother or maternal antioxidant that sacrifices herself so that all the other antioxidants can be regenerated and protected. so ascorbate is the critical one to test and the c cleanse is the way to find out how much you as individual mean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially just to kind of recap at your doing about one teaspoon of the L ascorbate reduced powder which is about 3 grams 3,000 milligrams every 15 minutes or you’re taking more of it and you’re trying to get to a place of bowel tolerance where you’re essentially you’ve saturated your bowels or saturated your vitamin C stores and now the stools start to get loose and that number may be higher in the beginning and as your vitamin C levels get more repleted, or topped off so to speak, then that threshold to move the bowels as you said drops. Is that correct?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well no let me clarify my friend Bob Cathcart introduced bowel tolerance. It has a fatal flaw. The fatal flaw of bowel tolerance is you creep up on the amount you need as opposed to the cleanse where you rapidly ramp up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you’re doing degree increments though right teaspoon 3 gram 50 minutes.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No let me say again what I said before. If you’re really healthy if you’re really healthy you use 1/2 a teaspoon which is a gram and a half.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Gram and a half got it
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right if you’re a typical person you do use a teaspoon which is 3 grams but many people there are many people who need 2 teaspoons which is 6 grams and they need it for hours and if you do 6 grams for 4 times in an hour that’s 24 grams if you do that for two hours that’s 48 grams. Most people will cleanse in that time the idea is to rapidly saturate the body with the ascorbic so that the ascorbate can energize the rectum which is really from the kidney embryologically and pump toxic matter and extra water in to the rectum and that would come whooshing out flushing out cleansing up. So yes it’s the same idea, but it’s the next generation after bowel tolerance it’s the C cleanse or the C calibration. And it really depends on how well you are. If you’re really well you don’t need that much but if you’re a typical American, even 3 grams and I just had a someone contact me about this they took 3 grams every 15 minutes for 5 hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a significant amount.
40:45 Yes sir, but if they had done six grams they would have flushed and calibrated but after five hours what they proved was they had a lot of oxidative burdens and they need a lot of ascorbic. So you really do, I really recommend that folks read the literature that we have, this is free to download online, you can look up C cleanse, you can look up joy of living the alkaline way or alcohol a guide, and we want folks to help them we want to help people understand themselves so they can do it smoothly, efficiently, and generally within a couple of hours. So I personally do my cleanses on the weekend and I can cleanse within a couple of hours. But often we hear from colleagues that people try say a teaspoon and that means three grams every 15 minutes, that means 12 grams an hour, but they need 70 grams to cleanse and it’s gonna take them more time than they’re willing to take and. I don’t think it should be your whole day you shouldn’t be sneak on waiting for a cleanse the whole day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if that’s the case, could you go up in tablespoon increments if you wanted to go faster?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well understand that you want something close to an isotonic iso-osmotic beverage so when you go to 6 grams or 2 teaspoons, you’re now talking about at least eight ounces.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And if you go and if you go above that you might go to 12 or 16 ounces, most people don’t want to drink that much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I have no I have no objection to that. I’m just saying that I don’t make it too concentrated and don’t make it too dilute, you don’t want hypotonic, you don’t want hypertonic. You want as close to isotonic as you can get and that’s why what we recommend is as the upper dose is the two teaspoons in 8 ounces. Could be water could be your herbal beverage could be a juice that you diluted one to one with water. And by the way, some people find if they take the recycled glutamine or they take a dose of magnesium and choline citrate or they take a dose of the digestive guard before the cleanse. That things go more smoothly and more easily.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and I’m just trying to wrap my head around what the difference between this cleanse and just typical bowel tolerance by vitamin C. Is it because it’s in the L ascorbate reduced form with the minerals, does that make it different? What’s happening is different.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well Bob has gotten himself recommended sodium L ascorbate and he did that because he knew that ascorbic acid would pull the dentin the calcium out of the teeth you know so you don’t know use ascorbic acid. He didn’t want to use a synthetic form and I agree with him on that, but what he said is you just keep taking it until you feel until you until your poop. That’s called bowel tones. Here’s here’s the fatal flaw with bowel tolerance and I spoke with Bob about this and he agreed with it was a very honest guy. When you do bowel tolerance, you have a very high probability that if you have a long transit time long digestive transit time as many Americans do, that you will recirculate toxic matter throughout your body and feel worse in contrast with the C cleanse you quickly ramp up, saturate the ascorbate throughout every cell of your body, and then pump the toxic matter and the extra fluid into the rectum, and it comes out quickly, and you don’t get the recirculation of toxic matter. People don’t want to feel worse on the way to feeling better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well you motivated me. I’m gonna go pick some up and do my own vitamin C calibration very soon. Excellent. So let’s transition the conversation you talked about there eight predictive markers for your health to kind of give a window kind of your check engine light so to speak to see how you’re functioning in an optimal perspective. So let’s just kind of break down those eight markers briefly and let’s do a quick little blurb on each of them, so what’s number one?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well yes. Now with regard to predictive biomarkers, we reviewed hundred-thousand lab tests because we wanted to know what covers epigenetics and epigenetics is everything that’s not genetics. Epigenetics is everything you can influence with your lifestyle. It turns out to be really important, it’s 92 percent of your life Steinhaus epigenetics influences your genes, your genes are not a fixed blueprint they’re rather dynamically acted upon and modified by your habits of daily living, and your habits of daily living are summarized epigenetics and there are eight of these tests and I’d like to go through them and I’d like to point out what’s unique about our interpretation. And some of these are familiar, hemoglobin a1c. And the best outcome goal value is less than 5%. Now today if you ask most diabetologist, most doctors who specialize in diabetes don’t tell you that they don’t want to know the fasting glucose they don’t want to know the fasting insulin, the 2-hour postprandial. They want to know the hemoglobin a1c. It’s the average sugar stuck on to your hemoglobin protein over three or four months. So it’s a very good average risk predictor, it’s an oil cause morbidity mortality predictor, it predicts whether you want to live ten or more years pretty accurately, and the goal that is less than 5%. Now the second test is high sensitivity c-reactive protein, HSCRP, and you do need the high sensitivity version. Pointed out that while c-reactive protein is a good measure of acute inflammation, the more common chronic repair deficit which is what inflammation really is it’s really repaired deficit, that can be measured with a high sensitivity c-reactive protein known as HSCRP and that should be less than 0.5.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that the same as the cardiac CRP? I think it’s the same, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes yes sir yes sir. Originally Read Crew who is a cardiologist thought that the high sensitivity test was cardio specific, and it’s sometimes referred to as the cardiac CRP
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That helps.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And yes, yes no I’m glad you brought that up. It is it’s not cardiac-specific, but it is sometimes called cardiac CRP and it is the high sensitivity or the HS CRP that we want and the best outcome goal value is less important
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see a lot of patients that want the HS CRP but their lab whether it’s a quest or LabCorp only has the cardiac and from what I’ve seen like you just said it’s the same thing.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh same thing same thing yeah. So the next test the third test in the sequence is known as homocysteine. This is a plasma test and you must process especially within 30 minutes or the lab shouldn’t even run it, but a plasma homocysteine predicts atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, almost better than any other single marker and when you combine the predictive biomarkers the way we do you’ve covered all of your cardiovascular risks and you notice what’s in here and what’s not in here we can talk about what’s not in here at the end. So the next test is your immune tolerance task. Oh sorry, the homocysteine should be less than 6 the homocysteine should be less than six. And that, yes homocysteine should be less than 6 again don’t pay any attention to the lab range healthy people have a homocysteine less than 6, they have a high methionine, a low homocysteine they are protected from cardiovascular disease and they can methylate which is a very important function for moving things around in your body. So homocysteine value less than 6 on the plasma properly done specially
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if that level is on the higher side what nutrients should we add in to help bring that down? Assuming a diet and lifestyles good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes well you’d be surprised actually how much B complex including folate, how much magnesium and choline citrate, how much betaine hydrochloride known as trimethylglycine people need in order to keep a healthy homocysteine, and you can look at all these cycles if you want because I’m a biochemist and I do it in my sleep. But the bottom line is you need at least a super B complex, you need folate probably milligrams a day, you need trimethylglycine at least 250 milligrams a day, you need enough ascorbate to protect and two other antioxidants, and with that and with enough magnesium and choline citrate to activate your ATP, you too can have a low homocysteine a nice high methionine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and they just the back story for everyone listening they can look at it here is Kilmer McCully who was a Harvard researcher that discovered the homeless cysteine atherosclerosis link. Was basically laughed out of Harvard me 10 20 years ago in this discovery, but now it’s becoming mainstream and its even part of your predictive markers for overall health.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Kilmer published in 1967 when I was a young scientist in Boston, I knew him then. He went to the VA and distinguished research career but you’re right he got left by other parties. He was right and he was right, and they were in it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep interesting.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now the fourth test is the immune tolerance test known as LRA, lymphocyte response assay. Lymphocytes are specialized white cells, and they respond to things that are foreign and harmful, but they don’t respond to neutralizing and helpful things. So you want an LRA the LRA by ELISA/ACT is what we recommend and the goal is to have no intolerance is to be completely tolerant in your immune system, and healthy people with a healthy digestion and a healthy intake of the nutrients they need. The few of them that we found too are asymptomatic tend to have no reactions out of hundreds and hundreds of substances that we can now accurately measure on one ounce of blood, as long as it gets to us within a couple of days.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now with that test, how is that different than your typical food allergy IgG your IgA. Is it companies out there like Everly Wells a big one you see on Facebook all the time which I think is looking more IgG IgA? How is that different from that typical you know food allergy that’s more antibody based?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The antibody tests were developed in the 1950s, they were outmoded in the 1980s, they’re still offered by most labs because they’re easy to do and impossible to interpret. So when you get an IgG antibody result, you have to ask yourself. Is this a beneficial neutralizing helpful antibody or is this a complement fixing harmful antibody? You can’t tell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially with the ELISA/ACT, you’re looking at the lymphocytes and you’re able to see if there’s a t-cell kind of mediated response to these foods specifically? Is that how you look more specifically?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes. The innovation that we brought to immunology was the first amplified procedure done on the surface of a white so-called a lymphocyte. And the novelty is that we can do reproducible tests that is less than 3% variance. So we do a functional cell culture more precisely than a physical chemistry lab measures an antibody, and the point you made that you jump to is correct. More important than b-cell antibodies and more important than distinguishing helpful from harmful b-cell antibodies are the t-cell responses which you can only get cell culture, only get from a cell culture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the IgG and IgA, that’s more B cell-mediated and…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Hundred percent. Not more these cells make antibodies
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Antibodies, correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: B cells make antibodies through specialized antibody factories called plasma cells. When you do physical chemistry, say hi GG or any antibody measurement, and I don’t care if you used a cooked antigen, I don’t care if you use a freeze-dried antigen, I don’t care if you used an aerosolized antigen, I’m telling you if you’re measuring antibodies you’re doing old-fashioned physical chemistry and you can’t interpret whether it’s good or bad and since you don’t know the function and you need to know the function I say don’t do tests that are intrinsically incapable of giving you the information you need. And then the point you made is well made which is T cells are more important than the antibodies, and you get nothing about the T cells when all you’re doing is old-fashioned physical chemistry. So we outmoded this in the 1980s we have over eighty thousand cases in our database, we’ve done over twenty-five million cell cultures, we published more outcome peer-reviewed studies that show the benefit of this approach when it was applied just by people living their lives. But as you said a lifestyle program, a program to add life to years and years to life, and we’re more excited today than ever because the data continues to come in that we have an advanced approach. It’s part of this predictive biomarkers suite of advanced interpretations and I’m glad to tell you that we at the Health Studies Collegium have been able to pioneer much of this validate it to the satisfaction of our most difficult critics and now make it available to colleagues and consumers.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Now your test for this is the Elisa act biotechnology test now I’m just curious though. Is the liza the same thing as the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test? Or is that just kind of a play on words there.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no it’s very specifically Elisa act, which is the coming together what you said Elisa, with a CT Advance cell culture technique
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay so it’s combining it. Okay.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So it’s the first time, first time that an amplified procedure was done, not with a sandwich assay like a conventional Elisa introduced by Bursa Aiello in 1953, back then this is using a lymphocyte enzyme that when the cell is resting, when it doesn’t see anything that it reacts against, the enzymes turned off. Because this is the same enzyme that turns the cell on when it needs to go through mitosis and reproduce itself. We were fortunate enough to figure out the specific kinase at the MHC locus for those of you who are super technical. The antigen presenting cell in this autologous ex vivo cell culture wiggles over to thelymphocyte presents the processed antigen at the MHC locus turns on the kinase we see the results of that. This is the bringing together for the first time I’ll be Liza, just as you said and cell culture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting so you’re able to get the antibody response from that, the IgG IgA IgM, you’re able to get the immune complexes, and then you’re also able to look at that the t-cell activation there too, all three
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Exactly right C lymphocytes are smart enough that they will only react to harmful antibodies. So we get the meaningful harmful antibodies and we ignore the helpful neutralizing antibodies and then yes, we get the immune complexes which is IgM anti-ag G antigen and most importantly we get the T cell reactions.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, very good. What’s the next marker?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, the next marker, the fifth one is measuring the pH or the acid alkaline state of your urine after rest. It turns out after six or more hours that the urine and the bladder equilibrate with the bladder lining cells and now you get once a day a measurement of cellular metabolic status. And if you lack magnesium, you have metabolic acidosis if you have enough magnesium you have a healthy happy cell. Why is that so important? Well magnesium is not just an electrolyte that balances calcium you need one molecule of magnesium for every ATP molecule to do any work in your cell. You need magnesium to activate your mitochondria so you can get the toxins detoxified. You need magnesium to activate hundreds maybe thousands of enzyme catalyst. You need magnesium to protect essential fat’s in transit, magnesium is nature’s calcium channel blocker. The problem has been that until very recently magnesium has been notoriously hard to get in, it tends to run out as soon as it comes in, and therefore it’s been forgotten. Now what we did was find out how to make inverted micellar nanodroplets, so you combine ionized magnesium salts with choline citrate and now you get enhanced update and chaperone delivery to the cells we’re hungry for it. So now we should remember magnesium.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful, excellent. What’s the next marker.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well the goal value from pH is 6.5 to 7.5 if you’re below that you’re too acid and you need more magnesium if you’re consistently above 7.5 it might be catabolic illness and that’s something you don’t want but we could talk about later.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we want like we want the urine though the saliva it doesn’t quite matter
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no urine urine and the reason we want the urine is because that’s what we standardized, but more importantly if you put a Kirby Cup, if you put a little plastic discover your parotid gland in your mouth and you collect pure parotid saliva you two can measure the pH of that. But having had that done to me when Frank Oppenheimer was a postdoc and meet at some subjects, very true people will do that. What we call saliva or spit it’s a combination of gingival fluid zero sanguinis exudate some saliva sub submandibular some parotid, it turns out that saliva is not what you think it is. At least not in most Americans mouths and and talk to the dentist. There are very few Americans that have a healthy mouth.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then with the urine, are we testing first morning urination, or they can be another example?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no no there’s only one time of day. You can only get a meaningful measure after six hours of rest. So when after six hours at rest the next urine… yes, and you by the way during those six hours you can go to the bathroom and go back to bed. You just can’t go to the gym or the kitchen
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, because you’re gonna create acid byproducts on your muscle activation.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And other than after those six hours of rest, there are somewhere between 20 and 40 variables that influence urine ph at any random time
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That totally makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right the next measurement, the next measurement is vitamin D, specifically what’s called 25 hydroxy D but if you just ask for a vitamin D that’s what they’re gonna do. Now there are three forms of vitamin D and there are some experts who say measure all three of them. I do not advocate that, partly for cost and partly for practicality. So if you think there is something wrong with the way their kidneys are processing vitamin D or their liver is processing vitamin D then you might want to do all three different what are called isomers. In general you want the 25 hydroxy d and the goal value is 50 to 80. Now there was recently an article in New York Times, and a very distinguished science writer says, almost everyone in America is low in vitamin D it’s normal to be low in vitamin D so don’t even measure vitamin D and don’t supplement. Now did you understand what I just said it do you understand how silly that is?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely yes okay absolutely.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Let me clarify for everybody, because I know you know this, but when vitamin D is below 20, well of course your bones are gonna fall apart, but more importantly you just tripled or quadrupled your cancer risk.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And you probably tripled your cardiovascular risk. Because vitamin D we call it a vitamin, it’s actually a neurohormone. It actually regulates cell division; it does a whole lot of things and we know in my opinion the best outcome goal value 50 to 80 the vitamin D council I believe says 40 to 70 but that’s close to 50 to 80. And the ranges that we have said were the values that we have said give you a certain latitude. So if you take a little bit too much vitamin D, and you get up to 90 or 100 I have no concerns. So when I say 50 to 80 I don’t mean that 81 is a problem, I’m saying the safer range that we know to be effective and protect you from the profound chronic illnesses 50 to 80. And how much vitamin D do you take? How much vitamin D do you take? Well as much as you need to get into the 50 to 80 range.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah as much as you need.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And I take and I prefer for people to take drops under the tongue, so they can absorb, well that’s a turkey word be careful of that but drops under the tongue before you swallow them are easily taken up and many many people over forty million according to my colic. Over forty-million Americans don’t absorb vitamin D from their gut. They’ve got to take it up they’ve got to take it up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting
Dr. Russell Jaffe: From their mouth
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah Hollen he’s also he’s also a researcher over ABU as well right at your alma mater?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: that’s where I met Mike Hollen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay he’s been there for a long time right. 34 years.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: About that he’s developed the fundamental methods in vitamin D research he’s known as dr. sunshine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah absolutely now I’m seeing some people online they’re pushing back a little bit cuz we have vitamin d3 the pre-vitamin D we make on the ski. Somebody hits it that cholesterol I think goes through our liver and gets forming the 25 hydroxyvitamin D, which is calcidiol and then calcidiol hits the kidneys and gets converted to calcitriol. So more people I’m seeing are saying hey we had a measure calcitriol or that the vitamin D that’s activated to the kidneys and they say there should be like one to one ratio on the d3 the 25 hydroxy versus the 125 which is the calcitriol. What’s your opinion on that having that one-to-one or the 125 is?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Having spoken to 12 different world’s experts and their opinions matter and mine doesn’t cause vitamins not my particular expertise. I can tell you they each have a different opinion. With respect to what your folks, were saying if you have the resources and you want to have the maximum useful information. Then at least you would measure the 25 hydroxy and the 125 hydroxy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But you might want to measure the precursor as well. If you’re going to do that, but I will offer to most people for home the value proposition including how much is this going to cost…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Leads me to conclude for most people to start with 25 hydroxy D. No disrespect on the question but just start with 25 hydroxy D bring people into the 50 to 80 nanogram per ml range. Then if you have any question or if you want to just be a more scientific and evidence-based practitioner, when you get them into range then measure and see if you have a one-to-one ratio.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what if there’s not was it would there be something you would do specifically. I know some data says you should give resveratrol to help with that some today it can be an infection kind of thing. What’s your take on why that may be skewed we’re 25 is higher and 125 is lower?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well you raise several very good points. My friend happens to own resveratrol globally and I can tell you they’re going out of the resveratrol business because resveratrol tall has very low bioavailability. It is a polyphenolic it is in red wine, especially granule red wine. However, because it is very low bioavailability, which means very low solubility. When you give it in the doses that people have tried to give it, you end up irritating the gut and irritating the immune system. So we have for a long time at least the last 25 years advocated the safer more effective polyphenolics and activate your innate immune system and do many wonderful things for you. And that’s quercetin dihydrate as the flavonoid, and soluble OPC ortho proanthocyanidins for the chemists as the flavonol, because you need flavonoids and flavonols. These are the colorful compounds in foods but almost all of them in high doses are mutagenic which means oncogenic which means promote cancer because they have such low uptake and they can be irritating, and if you irritate the immune system enough, it will become very upset.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sense
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Flavonol but safer the soluble OPC we have them together in different forms because they help prepare they reduce pain they enhance many functions of the innate immune system and when your innate immune system is functioning, you are in a repair mode where you don’t have to call in the extra troops. What’s called the adaptive immune response which are the lymphocytes and the other delayed immune reactive cells. So, which one is to provide a lot of energy to the innate immune system so it can defend and repair you, so they can recycle foreign invaders down to their building blocks and make them available for the body to build itself up? And then more importantly, after you do defense you have to do repair. Well, most Americans are in defense mode almost all the time. You can think of it this way, during the day we do more defense work when we’re getting restorative sleep, we do more repair work. Ah notice I snuck in restorative sleep. Now if you need restorative sleep, then you might need that salt and soda bath the dichromatic light which we didn’t talk about but that goes along with it the abdominal breathing, the active meditation the magnesium and choline citrate, maybe tryptophane with some zinc and b6 so that your body can make the serotonin and the melatonin. I never give serotonin. I never give melatonin because the body never floods itself with those neurochemicals and neural hormones. I give the tryptophane in a way that it goes exactly in the brain where it’s needed, where the brain turns it into serotonin or melatonin as needed. And by the way, it has a very short life in the body because it’s too potent to leave around. So, we follow physiology before a pharmacology, but that also means we study physiology and frankly most of my colleagues today, they know about pathology and I am a double board-certified pathologist, but they don’t remember physiology and biochemistry flummoxes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I agree healthy egg yeah biochemistry and physiology and when you apply it that becomes Clinical Nutrition and functional medicine essentially, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So now the next, right. The next test is an omega-3 index, want to know where you are omega-3 to omega-6 this is Bill Harris’s test. Can be done on a blood spot, and the goal value was more than 8%, and the quick anecdote is that Bill Harris was in the offices of Professor Patti Deutsch at the Military Medical School, she and I are friends I came by because I was going to confer with her and bill was lamenting the fact that it’s so hard to find adults with healthy omega-3 levels. Patti points to me he pulls out a Lancet he calls me up a few days later he says your omega-3 is 13.2% something like that I said well is that better than eight he said well we think it is if you know that above eight is good we know that above eight is good but let’s say that you were just a consumer or just a listener to this show. You might assume that 13 is better than eight. But I’m a scientist so I had to ask Bill is it really better than eight and he’s an honest enough scientist to say we think it is we pray it is we hope it is come back and five or ten years we’ll have more day. So that’s the omega-3 index. And then we only have one more and that is a urine test, this is the measure of oxidative damage and risk in your DNA it’s called 8-oxoguanine that is 8-O-X-O-G-U-A-N-I-N-E, 8-oxoguanine, and because it’s a urine spot test, we actually have a value per milligram of creatinine. So, your best outcome value is less than 30 milligrams per milligram of creatinine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is a test in organic acid by Genova it’s called 8 hydroxy – deoxyguanosine, it sounds very similar to that I know that’s an oxidative stress marker?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, yes. I think that we’re talking about the same molecule I can tell that this molecule has several different names, they’re all the same you want the DNA, the nuclear DNA oxidative stress marker that’s the one you are.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it that’s correct good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now we help people interpret tests that other labs do. So we folks want to know about these best outcome goal values and how to attain them, then you would talk to our health coaches and our nutritionist. If you want to have them perform they can be performed through our lab or through your lab although the LRA is distinctive to us, and the omega-3 index is distinctive to Bill Harris.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. And then what’s the range you want to be in for the omega-3 again?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, for the omega-3 index you want more than 8% to be omega-3
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And with yours, you were up to 13 you were saying right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: 13 plus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay so what we’re going to do…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: At the moment there’s only one person who has a higher value if I remember correctly from what Bill said, and it was actually a youngster, was a teenager but this mom took very much pride in telling us how much omega-3 she got her kids to eat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if they’re a high threshold for that just because of the lipid peroxidation would you say eight grams, four, six, what’s your high-end recommendation you know we’re assuming farmers pharmaceutical-grade super high quality, so it’s not oxidized.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well if the question is how much EPA and DHA do I take and I would never take an oxidized product and I would never recommend anyone do that. But I currently take 8 to 10 grams a day, and that may seem high but I can tell you that given my particular background, that’s what seems to be needed to keep all the other parameters in the range that I would like them to be. So I’m personalizing my intake.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Plus you’re also probably calibrating the L ascorbate which is you know stabilized membranes too, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh of course and I take the polyphenolics and I take the super B complex that has a full mineral complex, and I occasionally take some extras in because I’m a man. So yes and I take prebiotics probiotics and symbiotic. So yes I actually sent someone a photograph of the 12 supplements that I take a day and I take two to four doses a day of those supplements. Now I’m like everyone else when it comes to opening-closing bottles, I understand that it’s a commitment I have made because it helps me feel and function so much better. By most physical and functional measurements, I’m half my age and if I can keep that up if I can keep that up for another 30 40 years it’ll be a good run.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent Dr. Russell Jaffe, it’s been an amazing podcast. Lots of knowledge bombs lots of great information. Were there any other biomarkers that all the eight?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no we got through all eight of them yeah that was pretty quick but thank you for being such a good host and for making sure that I stayed on top
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I’m gonna put in the show notes here, we’re gonna put the links to the ELISA ACT biotechnology food allergy lymphocyte test. Will put the vitamin c el ascorbate, the potency guard powder links, and everything so if anyone wants information, we’ll put it down below. Is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with here today dr. Jaffe?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh gosh yes, I would like folks to know that in the 21st century we have to save our own lives. You cannot rely on science from the 19th or 20th century. I’m not even sure today you can rely on an expert. As Jackie Mason, the comedian says, in the phone book or wherever you look up your doctor its lists every condition and whether they were present or absence the day your problem occurred. And I’m just trying to be a little bit humorous about it, I think consumers should be very active today learning about themselves through self-assessments, through tests that can be interpreted to best outcome individual levels, as we’ve just been talking. Now, this is a new paradigm, this gives information inspiration and if you put some effort perspiration in, you can recover decades of quality life, and you can feel and function better tomorrow. It’s the best value that I have found in all my years in science and by the, way this is not only how I follow through I do walk my talk. But this is how my parents live near the end of their life and the way my children live today. So put us to the test and find out how well you can feel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well thank you so much I think you did a phenomenal job taking the hard science, biochem science, and applying it and making it practical so people can apply it so, thank you so much I look forward to having you back soon to dive in deeper and you have a phenomenal day that dr. Jaffe, you take care
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You the same, thanks so much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks so much, bye now.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKqHwkdOpc
https://www.merck.com/index.html
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/conventional-medicine-to-functional-natural-medicine-podcast-232
What is CoQ10? Benefits and Uses
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
CoQ10, also known as ubiquinone or ubiquinol, is short for Coenzyme Q10. There are a few supplements that just about everyone would benefit from, and CoQ10 makes that list.
What is CoQ10 and What Does it Do?
Not only does CoQ10 work as an antioxidant, helping to break down free radicals, and as a ‘coenzyme’ helping to break down food— it also plays a crucial role in the production of ATP, the energy currency of life.
You may be familiar with mitochondria as “the powerhouse of the cell. In order for our bodies to make use of the food we eat, our mitochondria has to turn food and oxygen into useable energy in the form of ATP. This conversion process requires the presence of CoQ10.
Why is CoQ10 so essential for your health? Evidence is showing benefits for:
- Heart Health
- Reproduction
- Brain Health
- Energy Levels
- Free Radical Damage Protection
- Anti-Aging
- Eyesight Improvements
- Immune System Support
- Reduced Inflammation
- Firmer Skin
Heart Health: While further trials are pending, we’ve seen promising evidence for preventing and treating heart conditions. Studies suggest that taking CoQ10 may be able to prevent recurring heart attacks: In one study, patients who took CoQ10 within 3 days of having a heart attack were able to reduce chest pain and chance of another attack.
Additionally, one review of CoQ10 stated it “has potential for use in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, particularly hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, and heart failure.”*
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Reproduction: In men struggling with infertility, CoQ10 was shown to help by improving sperm count & quality. *
Lowers Inflammation: CoQ10 has shown an ability to lower two markers of inflammation, NT-proBNP and gamma-glutamyl transferase (an early marker for heart failure). Inflammation is commonly referred to the “root of all modern disease,” so lowering inflammation is powerful for preventing autoimmune disease, neurocognitive decline, and other markers of aging.
Firmer Skin: CoQ10 can help with the production of collagen and elastin, the proteins responsible for making your skin flexible and firm. Topical products may not contain enough active CoQ10, so it’s better to get this coenzyme internally.
Energy Levels: We’ve already learned that CoQ10 plays a vital role in the production of cellular energy, or “ATP.” In addition to this vital role, coenzyme q10 has been shown to help with energy levels post-workout. *
Protection From Free Radical Damage: Also known as oxidative stress, free radical damage is a power to be reckoned with, and a major factor of aging. CoQ10 is one of the first antioxidants on the scene when LDL is oxidized, and can even protect membranes against oxidation in the first place.
Brain Health: There is potential for CoQ10 to treat mitochondrial disorders and neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Additionally, a 2014 study showed that those with higher levels of CoQ10 were 77% LESS likely to develop dementia. *,*
How to Get Enough CoQ10
Some coenzyme Q10 is actually produced naturally in your mitochondria, but natural production tends to decline with age.
Try incorporating more CoQ10-rich foods into your diet. CoQ10 rich foods include:
- Oily fish: salmon and sardines are great choices: remember to chose wild-caught seafood for maximum nutrient profile.
- Grass-fed beef: You also get the benefits of healthy fats and protein.
- Vegetables: Cauliflower, broccoli, and spinach are high in CoQ10 as well as other protective antioxidants. Remember to choose organic!
- Organ meats: Liver and kidney have high levels of CoQ10 (and are sources of a whole host of other rare nutrients!)
An easy way to ensure you’re getting the benefits of CoQ10 daily would be by taking it in supplement form. One pill (100mg) per day is generally a good maintenance dose, though depending on your health status and goals you may take more. For example, if you are trying to prevent or treat brain fog or dementia. Work with your functional medicine practitioner to determine your personal CoQ10 strategy.
Need help solving the underlying cause of your health issues? Click here!