Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand engage in a lively and informative discussion about their recent clinical successes with their patients using the functional medicine approach. Listen to them as they dig into the root cause of their patients’ issues and turn chronic and seemingly complicated problems into success stories.
Know about the tapping technique which involves turning something negative into a better, positive thought. Learn more about GI infections, the bacteria or parasite that may be involved, as well as the tests and treatment options that are proven successful in the functional medicine world.
In this episode, we cover:
03:50 Immune System, bacteria, and infection relationship
15:50 Tapping Technique
19:17 Treating Hypochloridia
24:10 GI infections
28:34 Enzyme Tests
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live on YouTube here. Podcast live on demand. Also, live here on Facebook. Evan, how are you doing, man?
And again, Facebook people you gotta click on the link here uhm—I’ll put in the comments to see Evan’s pretty face and go back and forth on this. How we doing, man?
Evan Brand: What’s going on? I’m feeling really good today. We’ve got a blue skies, the trees are blooming which they probably—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome.
Evan Brand: a year ago in Austin. So I'm enjoying myself.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. So we got podcast on demand. So anyone wants to write in some suggestions as we chit chat here, we’ll figure out what exactly we want to talk about moving forward.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I might as well post a link over here to my Twitter page and see if uh—people are paying attention over there. That way, if they’ve got questions, they can get them answered here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Totally makes sense. Same thing, anyone on Facebook, too, every chimes in first we can get this thing moving. But let’s uh—just talk about some clinical successes in the last week with patients. Any updates from you, man?
Evan Brand: Yes. So interesting update is uh—there’s a female client that comes to mind and she had seven, I believe, I have to go back at here stool test and count. But I believe it was seven infections and this is a combination of two parasites which—let me just pull it up, that way, I’m not just shooting into the dark here, but—Uhm— with these infections, we started a gut protocol and symptom improvement was seen. She was having a lot of irritable bowel symptoms uhm— running to the bathroom. So she showed up with H. pylori, Blastocystis Hominis, Entamoeba and Fragilis and Proteas and Citrobacter. Somehow, cal protectin level was still low which is intestinal inflammation where—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: –I look at but I was surprised. And so anyhow, we put her on this protocol. And this is like 8 weeks. And the H. pylori while it's still positive, instead of two viral factors, now she's got one viral factor. The level of H.Pylori has dropped. The Citrobacter is completely gone. The Proteus completely gone. The Blasto is completely gone. But we still got Entamoeba. So there’s still the parasite and there is still the H. pylori there. So we've got work to do but yet, we’ve seen 3 or 4 things disappearing. So I think what the takeaway message is from me is that the bodies gonna heal in an interesting way. It may not heal everything at the same time. Some things may be easier to kill. Some things may disappear first, but you gotta heal yourself especially your gut, your microbiome. You gotta heal these things in layers. And that’s what we’re seeing here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So typically with a lot of patients that have chronic issues is there are some underlying stress, right? Emotional, physical, chemical stress but even deeper above and beyond that, there is some level – there’s some level of infection that’s deeper that creating inflammation even though it didn't show via calprotectin or it’s just creating leaky gut. And the whole leaky gut mechanism is getting the immune system fired up. The more the immune system is fired up, it’s just an energy suck for your body. It’s like uhm—let’s say guests in you guest bathroom that you never go into your house. And they just leave the water on. Just a little bit—little drip, drip, drip. And then you get your water bill at the end of the month, and you’re like, “Where the heck did that bill come from?” And you’re like, “Oh, yeah. The faucet’s on.” But it’s like that with your energy resources. When got these bugs, it really—when the immune system is overactive. And even just a leaky gut, right? The more your immune system is overactive, the more it’s gonna suck your energy dry. That’s why when you get sick, the first symptom you get when you get sick is what? You get a lot of fatigue and malaise coz the immune system is sucking resources. Go ahead—
Evan Brand: I wanna hear uh—a recent case from you, but first I wanna ask you the question that I get asked all the time. And the answer really doesn't matter because we need to fix the root cause no matter what. But people often ask well– chicken or egg? Was it that ma—my immune system got taxed first? And then I picked up these bacterial pathogens or these parasites? Or did I pick up the parasite and the bacterial pathogens and then that that set my immune system? What’s your take? Can it go either way?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So typically it’s one of two scenarios, right? Typically someone gets exposed to a very high amount of infectious debris, right? Parasitic—parasites. So you drink some really bad water, you to go Mexico, you have really bad meal or at a foreign country, you get the Bali belly, so to speak. And then you’re overwhelmed with all of that infectious debris and then there’s so much of it that it compromises your immune system, you get diarrhea, you have a lot of gut inflammation that creates malabsorption. That malabsorption puts stress on all of your glandular systems and then you spiral downhill. That's scenario number one. So just the infectious—the infection was so overwhelming, it just threw everything else downhill. Scenario number two is there some type of immune compromisation that’s happening. Meaning adrenal stress, poor diet, poor sleep, or poor diet and lifestyle habits, low nutrient density. The immune system's kinda a little bit weaker underneath the surface then you get exposed to some of these infectious debris at smaller micro levels that are in the food. And eventually makes its way to the system and creates inflammation.
Evan Brand: So yeah—so let me—let me clarify there. If we’ve—If we’ve got diet, lifestyle mostly dialed in, but let’s say people are cheating with gluten, for example. They still got intestinal permeability going on. You can still have good class, good sleep, blah, blah, blah. But if you’ve got just a simple thing like leaky gut, for example, you could potentially be more susceptible to pick up these infections regardless of whatever else is dialed in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean—here’s the deal with leaky gut, too. If you’re creating leaky gut, and then there’s some research, you know, on the non-celiac, gluten sensitivity side of the fence, that looks at these foods. Even if you're not like reacting to a it, like symptomatically, and even if you're not like having like IBS -like symptoms, bloating, you know, gas constipation, diarrhea, that gluten can still create leaky gut. Where the undigested food particles in the gut can make their way into the bloodstream and create stress. And then the LPS that comes in there along with that, that’s the— the bacterial debris can get into bloodstream and create a lot of mood issues as well. So you can still have leaky gut and not risk from gluten— and still not respond to gluten in general.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. I just posted a post on uh—Facebook which I think might be a slightly controversial which was I wrote this little bit of a letter and I put kind of like these five things that have happened over the last year or so where people have said, “Evan, I’ve ditched psychiatrist or I’ve ditched my psychologist or my marriage counselor, or my conventional doctor because of functional medicine.” I kinda wrote the reasons why of how if you lower inflammation, you may need less adjustments at the chiropractor, for example. If you heal the gut, you start producing your neurotransmitters optimally, you might not you’re your antidepressants anymore, so you might not need your psychiatrist. Or if you heal your adrenals, you’re not gonna snap at your children anymore, so therefore you’re not gonna need the marriage counselor that is telling you need to stop yelling at your kids. And how basically how functional medicine can literally, not intentionally, but it’s just a side effect is that we can replace these other industries. I’m not saying these other industries are bad for mental health care or anything like that. But a lot of times, this is not root cause medicine. And my wife and I went out you with a friend of ours yesterday and she said she had a lot of stress, she had to put her dog down and she called up her psychiatrist and said, “Hey I need help, I’m freaking out.” What does he do? He prescribed her 60 Xanax and says, “Here's your Xanax bars and take these.” And I told her, I said, “Listen, your anxiety and your stress from this issue is not a Xanax deficiency.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: How about we do some emotional freedom technique. We start tapping. How about we cleanup the diet? And then before we left, out the parking lot, I had her do the quick coherence technique, the Heartmath, like the heart focus breathing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And focusing on someone that she loved and we got done with it, and she said, “That was weird.” I said, “What happened?” And she said, “I got tingly and warm.” I said, “Oh, it worked.” And she said, “What happened?” I said, “Well, you just took yourself out of fight or flight that you’re probably stocked in which is causing you to be dependent on Xanax and now we've pushed you into that parasympathetic rest and digest mode.” And she feels better. And this is what this is all about. Uh—a little bit of uh—off-subject uh—, but I just wanted to mention to people, check on my Facebook post and you'll read about what I'm saying. I’m not saying these other uh— practitioners out there are garbage. What I am saying is that if you're not getting a practitioner to focus on root cause, even if they are psychiatrist, if they’re not a root cause psychiatrist, then what the hell are they doing?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s all about resources, right? And in functional medicine world, we’re trying to help enhance your resources. So just like someone with more money in their bank account can buy more things, well if we enhance our mental, emotional bank account via healthy and diet and lifestyle functional medicine principles, we have more resources to deal with stress in our life. Whether it’s family, friends, being a parent, being present for our partner, just being able to do the hobbies of a hobbit—hobbits—uh—
Evan Brand: Haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The hobbies and the habits that we have going on in our life. I got uh—I guess I’m missing my uh – Lord of the Rings movies there. Yeah. So—It ‘s all about resources, right? So we have to make sure that we have enough resources in our system so we can allocate them toward these stressors. And I always tell my patients, “Have you ever tried dealing with stress on 0 night sleep? or “Try doing your taxes the next day when you’re getting like three hours of sleep?” You’re just not gonna be able to handle it. You don’t have the resources. So everything we’re trying to do is let’s test the resources of our body systems, let’s look where the hormone’s at, let’s look at where the gut resources are at, let’s look at detox and nutrient resources are at, let’s support them and let’s work on fixing them.
Evan Brand: Well, the analogy I like to use is we’re just using a big spotlight. Because a lot of different industries and health care, what they do is they use like a little laser pointer or like one of those tiny little keychain flashlight. And they shine something real dimly into one corner. And you’re like, “Oh, Justin looks like we found something. We found some anxiety issues, here’s the Xanax.” But instead, we come in with a giant spotlight and we’re like, “Whoa, look at the left corner of this microbiome. We got parasitic and bacterial infections, which can steal your nutrients, can mess up your blood sugar and cause anxiety. Look over here, we've got some adrenal issues. You got spiking of cortisol that’s gonna need to be addressed.” And then we shine the spotlight over here, “Oh, take a look at our detox pathways on the organic acids, you’ve got trouble over here.” And “Oopp, we shine the spotlight behind us, here’s mitochondrial issues. This is why you're so fatigued.” And that's the—I think that’s the greatest analogy. It’s a little laser pointer or a little small keychain flashlight, which is just pinpointing one industry of psychiatry or psychology or whatever versus exploring everything. Which is why for you and I, it’s tough for us to become the blank guy. You know people out there, “the thyroid guy” “ the detox chick” “ the bone broth chick” You know what I mean? It’s really gonna be tough for you and I to just say we’re the blank person because I don't want to limit myself. I wanna let everyone know it is all encompassing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And if rest and niche yourself down, I think it’s a bad thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Like from a marketing standpoint, right? Marketing is just telling the truth attractively. You know it’s good to have the niche because you wanna reach the people that have special conditions. Because if like, my specialty is thyroid. Number one, I have—I have or had a thyroid issue. It’s under control. Autoimmune thyroid issue. So I’m more passionate about that issue. But again, to treat a thyroid issue, you have to be able to treat all of the systems. So it’s kind of a mythology, like you don’t just ever treat thyroid, you treat the whole thing. But you may mark and put information out there that’s gonna resonate and speak to someone with a thyroid issue more. But again, the underlying issue is from education and clinical standpoint. We’re addressing the key underlying surface issues and the deep root issues as well. So we’re never ignoring it. We may speak to someone uhm—more specifically and get into the more nuances of that condition, but it all comes back down to the foundational stuff that we always talk about.
Evan Brand: Right. I would say my specialties would be— it’s become parasites really. I mean, I'm seeing so many each week and it’s just so fun. I guess because I had parasites.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You had a parasite, you.
Evan Brand: Uh—Yeah. And also depression, I mean because depression is what got me into this whole thing. IBS and depression in college, I mean, like I told you before, I had to figure out when I went into a college class, where’s the bathroom. Coz I have to get out in the middle of the class to run to the bathroom.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And so for me, depression, IBS, parasites, you know, those are all linked together—the whole gut-brain connection. And I really am empathetic for people that have struggled with that because it’s so common and if you diagnosed with IBS, that's a pretty generic diagnosis. And unless you’re with functional medicine practitioners, you’re gonna get an acid blocker, an antispasmodic—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely.
Evan Brand: — or some other drug and—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well actually, you were diagnosed with IBS, right?
Evan Brand: I was.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you use the antispasmodic, you used the medications that helps with the gastroparesis. You know—
Evan Brand: Well, they never –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They even do that—
Evan Brand: Well they never got to use it. They try. They wrote me the prescription pad but I denied all three of the drugs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the thing is, too, we can also use natural medicines for a lot of those things. That may not fix the root cause, right? There’s root cause medicine and there is using natural medicine in a way that’s gonna help alleviate the symptoms that’s gonna up regulate physiology so things work better. But we have to still be investigating and digging to the root cause, right? So we’re dealing with someone with gastroparesis or low motility, we may add in things like ginger. We may add in things like carnitine. We may add, you know, higher amounts of mag citrate to keep that uhm—migrating motor complex moving. But we are still digging in deep. We’re still making the diet, the lifestyle. We’re still enhancing digestive nutrients, uh—hydrochloric acid enzymes. And then we’re digging deep for the infections. And we’re trying to lock in those diet and lifestyle habits, right? The supplements are great because they can give us that symptomatic relief while we continue to dig over here to the root cause. So as long as you have, you know, that four pace envision that addresses some of the symptoms without the side effects, you know of some of the drugs, which may have more side effects than what you’re treating, and then working on the functional medicine plan, I think we’re in a really good place.
Evan Brand: I agree. Yeah. I actually got a good—good success with that IB Synergy product from designs which get Bonigut in there. It’s got the 5-HTP. I had a guy with just super bad IBS and I said, “Man” I mean he was critically, critically stricken with both diarrhea and constipation just alternating every other day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So I have him going with that 5-HTP Bonigut blend. And he got better. Now we start to wait for lab results but yeah—I mean sometimes we will do some of the quick fix of band-aid situations to fix things, but we still got to work backwards. I guess to answer these questions uh—should we answer the question about the cancer question here or shall we just make a whole show on the future?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We’ll do a whole show on that. I’ll get some experts on. I got Dr. David Jocker is coming next month as well. He was in the truth about cancer series. And we’ll go on ketogenic diets and we’ll talk more about therapeutic ways to address cancer outside of just the natural chemotherapy. So we’ll hold that one that—we need more time for that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Agreed. Uh—Samuel asked, “What is the tapping technique? Can you show us? Well since most of our audiences are gonna be audio listeners we’re not gonna take up the air time to show you the technique, but the best resources—EFT (Evan-Frank-Tom) EFT.mercola.com and you can just view the different acupressure meridians that you’re gonna tap. But then also, you’re gonna learn about the affirmations that you can use for emotional freedom technique and that’s something Justin and I use all the time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s helpful. I’m—I’m gonna just give it 15 seconds of airtime here, so—just—I do two hands coz it’s adding it’s more efficient. But you just tap the inners part of the eyebrow, the outer parts of the eyebrow, under the eyes, I do under the nose, and the bottom part of the chin the same time. And then I do both collarbones. So I do this, and you can go top of the head and tap midline. So I do two hands coz I just feel like you get more stimulation. So I go here, and I’m just thinking about whatever is pissing me off, my wife, I just think about it.
Evan Brand: Haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I kinda give it a number. So if I’m a t like 6/10 regarding irritation, I just think about it. Whatever that issue is, whether it’s like, you know, the person driving in front of me is so slow or whatever. And I try to knock that 6 out of 10 so that 10 is the worst. 6 is like 60% to being at the worst. I try to knock it down to a4 to a 3. And so every round—every 2 rounds or so, you kinda just check back in and see if you knock it down. And you go as you kinda knock everything down to a 3.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And we have—I—I start at the top of the crown which I usually like—many ways—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You can do that. You can start there, you can end there.
Evan Brand: Now do you do the sides? I know Mercola, he’s big on the side of rib cage under the armpit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I do that, too, sometimes. It’s just wasn't good for a video.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So you criss cross?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I do two at the same time just coz it’s stimulation.
Evan Brand: No. I mean you criss cross your arms so the underarm’s like this. I do like a monkey.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Haha
Evan Brand: And then—and then finish with the wrist. I typically finished by tapping the insides of the wrist together then doing the affirmations. So even though I’m angry, or even though I’m anxious, I deeply love and accept myself. But you gotta say the affirmation verbally. I tell people if you can, if you’re just embarrassed, then don’t do it. But why be embarrassed? Nobody—nobody is paying that much attention to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That depends, too. Like you can do this stuff, and you can kinda say like if you’re at—let’s say, if you’re lying in bed and you’re just really stewing on something and your wife’s next to you and you don’t wanna wake her up, then you can just kinda think it in your head. And then you can just, you know, do the affirmations, tap like this. And then you can tap here, and think about the issues.
I like them to end, though, with a positive thing. So you can end with something positive. So then I just go into like, “What is it that I want to manifest?” So I’m going into right there. I’m thinking about whatever I’m gonna try to create or produce in my life, I just tap it while I’m thinking about it. And the whole idea of tapping is you’re just stimulating various meridian systems that have been mapped out via acupuncture system for thousands of years. And really what it’s doing is it’s neutralizing the negative response that’s stored in the limbic system or in that subconscious of your—more in the psychological side of it. And you’re trying to kinda rewire it so you can get a good pattern there instead. So then, naturally that reflux is to go back to the better thing and not to the negative thing.
Evan Brand: So if you do affirmation about the bad part, would you do like an affirmation about the bad part and an affirmation for a positive?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So I start off with the negative and just try to lessen—lessen it first.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coz if you’re—feeling negative, it’s really hard to be positive when you’re negative so I try to decrease the negative to about a three. And then I go into the positive because then, you are in a better place to deal with the positive, right? It’s kinda like when someone tells you to relax and you’re pissed off, like relax, calm down. You just wanna punch him, right? Like, “No, I’m too wound up, come on.”
So I wanna get that dialed in and then now I’m relaxed, now I can rewire it and create some positive things.
Evan Brand: I like it. I like it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So calm down first, and then work on manifestation.
Evan Brand: Should we answer a couple of more questions here?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Let’s hit it, man. Let’s hit it.
Evan Brand: Solam asked, “How long does it take to heal hypochloridia?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It totally depends, right? If you have emotional stressors that are unresolved ore you’re eating foods that are incredibly inflammatory, maybe never. But if you're making the root causal changes and your managing your stress, and you’re fixing the underlying gut stuff, I would say within 3 to 6 months, you have a really good chance of not needing hydrochloric acid to digest your food. But again, everyone is different. A longer—the longer the issues been going on, the more severe the infections, and the more infections that are layered in there, I’d say longer, up to a year, at least.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I’ll just have my two cents to that, too. If you had a previous history of a prescription, as a blocker’s proton pump inher—inhibitors are now it’s open to counter like the Xanax or the Toms, or anything like that, or—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: Or if you've had H. pylori which we've chatted about many times, then I would say it may lengthen that time, too, to fix that stomach acid issue.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The longer that gut’s has been worn down, the more the immune system is revved up like you get patients are just supersensitive to every little thing. Like I can’t even put in an enzyme, I can’t even put in our apple cider vinegar or lemon juice or the smallest fermented food sets them off. It’s really hard and you’re looking at a couple of years to really dive into it because the immune system is so revved up and it’s so ready to attack the smallest invader that it's so hard to put things into help and heal it because it's looking at everything as a foe not a friend.
Evan Brand: Right. We really, really have the baby step in those cases so that's why—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Yeah. I mean, just like you heal, with you know, food is medicine there, you go really slow and you do lots of things in broth form, in soup form so it’s – so it is so palatable. There is very little digestion that has to happen. And typically one supplement at a time and one nutrient at a time, titrate up from low to high. Even if it’s something that they can handle, if they go high dose, off the bat, their immune system just freaks out.
Evan Brand: Well I wanna hit on something you just mentioned which is if we’re talking 1 to 2 years, it takes extreme patient—extreme patience for patients and clinicians because for us, that is a very intensive case for us to take on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: And you know, maybe this is to toot our own horns, maybe it’s just calling out the obvious that we do take the time, you know, with people we’re working with. Sometimes it maybe 30-45 even an hour-long call for a follow-up just to take these baby steps. Whereas, let’s jus say some of the clinicians that we've seen out there, it's too cookie-cutter approach and they don’t have the mental bandwidth or capacity for empathy to baby step this people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So it’s here’s your cookie-cutter protocol, good luck.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Where with us, we’ve really, really, really gonna get super details.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And so this is why if you go and you buy like a leaky gut online program or some other type of program, and you get limited results and you get to us, we’re not gonna be surprised if you suffered through that, and you didn't get a good result. Because at the end of the day, that's why Justin and I haven’t created online courses at this point because it’s—it’s hard for us to sleep at night thinking that we've created a program that’s too cookie-cutter. We’ve really got to figure out a way that we’re gonna be able to work in all the minutiae and the small details and the variations—variation A, B and C, D for different people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: So if someone uh—packages something up all beautiful and says, “Oh, it’s $297 and all your problems are gonna be healed.” Uh—please be a little bit skeptical of that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I agree. And I’ve talked to you about a patient that I had today that email in that was dropping out of care. And we try to always set realistic expectations. This person just had her labs reviewed a month or two ago, and had multiple parasitic infections, severe adrenal dysfunction, HPA axis dysfunction, and then a lot of issues on her organic tests. Uh— detoxification issues, mitochondrial issues, and we just started with simple adrenal support, made diet and lifestyle changes and she had some— some side-effects so we try to cut things down, go slower. And we’re gonna kinda reconvene and work on supporting detoxification, but person had dropped out. Now, the problem is, to have expectations that things will work off the bat when so many things are wrong like that, expectations are incorrect. So a lot of people they have preconceived notions even if you spell it out to them and you let them know, “Here’s where we’re at now, here’s where we’re going.” They forget because they—they want it done now. And they think because things didn't work in that initial uhm—in that initial experience, that there is no way to fix it. So continuing to harp on patients in managing their expectations, even though they have a lot of stuff they’re projecting from past failures, we kinda have to get through it. Make sure expectations are real and that make sure they know, “Hey, here’s where we’re going now. Here’s where we’re going next.” These things ahead that may have to be dealt with for us to really see great changes.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. We got another question here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s hit ‘em.
Evan Brand: Let’s hit Steve’s question. After all GI infections are eradicated, how long does it take the gut to fully heal? All my infections are gone, but I'm still dealing with IBS, leaky gut and issues after H. pylori.” I’m gonna hit on this first Dr. Justin Marchegiani, if you don’t mind.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. I know you’re gonna say it, by the way.
Evan Brand: Okay. So – haha if—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you say it—If you say it, I’ll—I’ll tell you that.
Evan Brand: Okay. Alright. Please. Alright. So here’s what I’m gonna say. You say all your infections are gone, but you’re still dealing with IBS, leaky gut, and issues, I would like to know what test was this that says all your infections are gone because I bet all of your infections are not gone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes! Whoo! I knew it. Yeah. You’re totally right.
Evan Brand: Haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You’re totally right. And then also, just making sure that you have the digestive nutrients on board to help heal the gut lining and the digestive support to break down the food and then I would make the food more—more palatable right now. I'd be looking more at the GAPS or an SCD or more of a soup or broth approach that makes the food really easy to take in. No raw veggies, uhm—try to keep it really palatable so the body can access it without much stress.
Evan Brand: Alright. So the beauty of the Internet, Stevie says—Stevie replied and he says, “DRG” Well, uhm— Justin–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s missing a lot of them. It’s missing a lot. You gotta do the DRG with the GI map. I a—I never do the DRG by itself for the most part—always both. You gotta do both.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if there’s still an issue with the DRG and the GI MAP, I want them go for the 41 side-by-side.
Evan Brand: Yup. Agreed. So, Stevie, not that—you know, we’re not diagnosing you. That’s not what these calls are for. But, hey, Justin and I have seen a lot of false negatives with DRG and some other test out there. So potentially some stuff going on. And I would like to add a couple of points about like the—the issues, the leaky gut type stuff. You know, make sure you are doing some of the easy supports, too. You know, chamomile is great. You can do chamomile in a supplemental form. You've got chamomile teas, uhm—you’ve got L- glutamine. So there are some leaky gut supplements that why your til—still trying to figure stuff out, you can still be taking support of nutrients in the meantime while waiting for retest.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Totally. Let’s hit the uh—last question there by—E Center Riley. See here, just diagnosed with Hashimoto's, TPO and TGB bodies, 465 is that high? Eliminated the foods, gluten, dairy, soy, balance in blood sugar, hard with 5 kids. What should I focus on next? So 465 is definitely high. The LabCorp reference range for TPO is 34. Anything 34 above is considered positive—I think it’s above 34. 34 below is considered positive. And anything about 20, for me, I considered to be subclinical. So that is high. Anything above or around 500 is definitely high. I’ve seen patients at 2000, though. I’ve seen patients that go from 2000 to below a 100. Now, my goal is to get people—If I were you, I’d like to see a 70 to 80% reduction in that. Again, maybe you were higher before you made those changes. So I'm not sure if it was gluten, dairy, soy. That stuff was cut out and then you saw the drop. But either way, uhm—getting enough selenium in there, 400 micrograms of selenium, addressing the underlying infections, things like H. pylori, Blasto and Yersinia can be coming to increase the antibodies. And then making sure the adrenals are looked at. There’s a strong adrenal-thyroid connection and a lot of people who have thyroid issues also have adrenal issues. And remember, TPO is a microsomal or essentially it’s uh—intracellular microsomal antibody that helps bind the thyroid hormone together. So if you’re making antibodies to that, it’s gonna prevent that thyroid hormone that I—Iodination process from occurring. So making sure we have the adrenal support there because the adrenals help produce cortisol. Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory that’s gonna help with the inflammation. And with the TPO there uhm—you could potentially have increase in hydrogen peroxide, especially if there’s small amounts of iodine getting in there. So get them the selenium will help neutralize that hydrogen peroxide into H20. High quality H20 which is uh—not gonna be as inflammatory.
Evan Brand: Well said. Yeah. And so uhm—Isabella Wentz, I just did podcast with her a couple of weeks ago. Actually that was my last uploaded episode. And uhm—we’re talking about bacterial infections, too. So you mentioned some of the parasites and she’s seen the same thing the parasite but also the bacteria. The Klebsiella, the Citrobacter, and all these autoimmune triggers has been bad guys for uh—these Hashimoto's situations and these antibodies, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, look for the bacteria, too, and you can definitely fix this stuff and you can make significant progress.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I mean one person here, wildlab access, “How do you test for various enzymes?”Number one, if you have gut stress, you probably have low hydrochloric acid. And if you have low hydrochloric acid, you probably have low enzymes. Why? Because hydrochloric acid is important for acts of—for converting pepsinogen to pepsin which is the proteolytic enzyme. Hydrochloric acid lowers the acidity of the chyme, which is the mixed up food in the intestine. That inten—that food that chyme that goes into the small intestine which the acidity then triggers the pancreas to make bicarbonate, it also triggers CCK that then caused that the gallbladder to produce bile that also stimulates the pancreas to make light based trypsin and chymotrypsin and all the enzymes that come down. So if you have enzyme issues, you also have hydrochloric acid issues, but we can also assess it by looking at enzyme markers, like elastase, too, which will uhm—look at that in the DRG or the GI MAP test.
Evan Brand: You better get that frog out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Frog out. It just attacked me, man. I’m like, Ugh—
Evan Brand: Alright.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: My water—so uh—yeah. Elastase, I think it’s elastase 1 is the enzyme marker we typically look at for uhm— low enzymes. But typically, just assuming that we have digestive stress, let’s assume it for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I mean that’s the same—the same answer that I would say for the leaky gut. I had people say, “Oh, can you test me for leaky gut?” It’s like, “Yeah. We can go to Cyrex and spend 500 bucks if you want to, but based on your symptoms, I guarantee there’s intestinal permeability. You’ve got XYZ. And we can—we don’t need to spend the 500 bucks on that test. Save your money for the organic acids, your comprehensive stool panels, the GPL-TOX, maybe heavy metal testing. Save your money for that stuff that you can’t really guess on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely. I agree, man. Well, anything else you wanna hit off the bat here? I mean I think—I had some really good successes last week, too, with some patients that had chronic pain, chronic mood, chronic energy, hair loss. And I mean—just really simple things. We—we fix their hormones, this person has autoimmune thyroid, uhm—hypothyroid as well. T3 was super low, it was uh– T4 to T3 conversion issue, dysregulated cortisol. They had a lot of malabsorption and they had a couple of infections and we just—we just took them down the map. An then just everything first time around, uhm—just knocked in place. I mean it’s like you swing the bat once and it’s connected. It’s gone. Those were the patients where its like, “It’s just so rewarding coz it’s just—it’s easy” And then you have some patients where it’s a lot more trial and error and digging in. So it’s nice to have those home runs every now and then.
Evan Brand: Oh, man. I—so I had a home run earlier with this guy that I got off the phone with name Dion. And he was on an inhaler. An asthma inhaler.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And also I believe he was taking uh—allergy medication, like a prescription allergy medication.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Maybe it was one or the other. He alternated or he was on the inhaler something. But he was on prescriptions for allergies. And all we did is we cleaned up the diet, we've addressed some gut infections. He had candida and I believe a couple bacterial infections. I don’t believe he had parasites. I have to look back. But I remember a couple of infections, fix the gut, uh—supported adrenal's basic adrenal support, some adaptogens. And I talked with him today and he said, “Evan, I’ve not used my medication in the last six weeks. And everything is blooming here right now. All the trees and plants and everything are blooming and normally, I’m debilitated. He said, “I’m completely fine.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t that awesome?
Evan Brand: How in the world just by working on the gut and adrenals am I not allergic to the environment anymore? It’s just like, “Oh, it makes me feel so good.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see that all the time, too. And hydrochloric acid is one of those things that’s really great with allergies, too. You notice that?
Evan Brand: Ain’t that weird? I mean since digestive enzymes, I told him, I said, “Man, we’ve gotta keep up digestive enzymes.” And then actually I am gonna send him a bottle of some of the like natural herbal anti-histamines, just in case. Because he started sneezing on the phone. I’m like, “Whoa, maybe you’re not all the way out of the water yet. Have this on hand, in case you need it.” So the coresatin in, the rutin, some of those–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hesperetin
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The things I love for allergies: number one, just really get a good air filter. I used one by Advanced Air. You can see that at justinhealth.com/shop Look at the approved products. I like it. It’s good. Uhm—and then your natural anti-histamine degranulating compounds. In my product, Aller Clear. Stinging Nettle, coresatin, and then you’re gonna have like some vitamin C in that, some potassium bicarb as well. So those are really good. And you can go up to eat. The nice thing about it, just not gonna be drowsy. So you can get that allergy support without getting the drowsiness and then really make sure the diet is anti-inflammatory. Up the hydrochloric acid because HDL is really important with low—with allergy. It’s gonna make a big difference.
Evan Brand: Yup, Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ginger. Ginger is phenomenal, too, for allergies. Really good.
Evan Brand: I love ginger. So it’s a great nutrient. I'd do teas, ginger kombucha, there’s so much you can do with ginger.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. By the way, right after this, I’ve got a new grill. So I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna grill some grass-fed hotdogs, right? And then I’ve got some sauerkraut with mustard. And I’ve got a nice ginger kombucha, I’m gonna open up. So I’m really excited for my lunch break today.
Evan Brand: Nice. What kind of grill? Is that one of those pellet jobs?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I actually—I got a new Webber just because it’s—it’s—my other one was 10 years old. And then the knobs are starting to go. So I got a nice, little Webber Spirit. So it's great. It’s got three burners. Love it. And uhm—I got a smoker that I use sometimes for ribs on the weekend just like a 4-hour job. So it’s good to have a day or an afternoon to kinda be at home to enjoy that one but—Yeah. So love my grilling. Try not to get things charred. Try to keep the heterocyclic amines and the polyaromatic hydrocarbons to a minimum.
Evan Brand: Agreed. Agreed, man. Cool. Well I don’t have one on my end.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You wanna have a share?
Evan Brand: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hope you guys are liking these calls here. We wanna do more. We wanna connect with the listeners. Our purpose really is to serve and help people get their health back. If people want more feedback, or want more kinda like rolling up the sleeves and specifically diving into your case, go to notjustpaleo.com or justinhealth.com, click on the schedule buttons. And we are here to help you out. Evan, anything else, man?
Evan Brand: That’s it. Have a great day people, drink clean water, get rest, reduce stress, be grateful. It’s gonna go a long way.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And people on Facebook, I’m hoping we can get Evan on here soon. We gotta just figure that out. So hopefully, soon we’ll do that. So Evan, great chatting with you, man. We’ll talk soon.
Evan Brand: Take Care. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/aller-clear/
https://justinhealth.com/products/advanced-pure-air/
http://catalog.designsforhealth.com/IB-Synergy-60
http://notjustpaleo.com/227-dr-izabella-wentz-hashimotos-protocol/
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