Managing Blood Pressure Naturally – Understanding the Hidden Causes of Hypertension | Podcast #429

Managing Blood Pressure Naturally – Understanding the Hidden Causes of Hypertension discussed various physiological reasons behind high blood pressure, including stress, toxins, and infections.

Highlights:

 🌱 Nutrient deficiencies, particularly in magnesium, potassium, and B vitamins, can contribute to high blood pressure, emphasizing the importance of supplementation.

💊 Adaptogenic herbs like Motherwort and Ginseng offer a natural approach to regulating blood pressure by addressing underlying stress and inflammation.

🍔 Dietary choices, such as reducing sugar intake and opting for whole foods, play a crucial role in managing blood pressure and overall health.

🏋️ Lifestyle factors like cold exposure and infrared sauna therapy can support blood pressure control by enhancing parasympathetic tone and toxin elimination.

🧪 Comprehensive testing, including organic acids testing and gut assessments, can uncover underlying issues like nutrient malabsorption and infections impacting blood pressure.

💡 Understanding the historical context of sugar consumption trends highlights the role of government subsidies in shaping dietary habits and health outcomes.

🔄 Building awareness around the impact of societal stress, processed foods, and nutrient deficiencies is key to addressing the root causes of hypertension and promoting natural management strategies.

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

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really want to get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Hey guys, Dr. Justin Marchegiani here with Evan Brand. Today we're gonna be talking about blood pressure and the root underlying causes, physiological reasons why your blood pressure may be high.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, how we doing man? What's cooking? Evan Brand

Evan Brand: Doing good. And you know, I just found something fun that we could add to the notes here, which is about adaptogens. Because I thought, you know, you and I have been taking some form of adaptogens for probably like a combined 20 plus years at this point now.

Evan Brand: So it turns out Panex Gen Sen has massive benefits as an anti-hypertensive and a Vasso relaxant. Hmm. So that's cool that there are adaptogenic herbs that can help you maybe through several mechanism. Sure. I'm sure there's a, a cortisol mechanism. I'm sure there's. Vasorelaxant mechanism they're talking about here, maybe like a nitric oxide impact, but this is interesting.

Evan Brand: The only time I've really struggled with blood pressure personally was when I first got exposed to mold and then I got those three tick bites in one summer. I believe what was happening for me though, it was more of like a histamine masoactivation problem that was driving my blood pressure. I mean, I was up into the 150 over a hundred, which is not good.

Evan Brand: Maybe it's worth us pulling up a chart of the different blood pressure levels. What do you think? Like the stage one hypertension, the stage two hypertension, you want to pull something like that up that way people can see where they're at and the brand Omron, O M R O N, they're pretty good. They're pretty cost effective.

Evan Brand: I know you and I both keep blood pressure cuffs on hand. I think it's a great thing. If it, if it's like an arm one, I think it seems to be a little more accurate than a wrist one. I think it's a good investment. You're looking at maybe 50 bucks or less for a decent one. I think it's worth having it home because there are times in the past where if I didn't feel my best, I would run the blood pressure and I would look and I'd see, Oh, I'm running, you know, 20, 30 points lower, or, Oh, I'm running 20, 30 points higher.

Evan Brand: And if you're in tune enough with your body, you can feel and perceive those different levels of either hypotension or hypertension being too high. And some of it is stress related, but I think a lot of it is, it's, for me at least, it seems to be toxins and infections are driving this up to. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. So, if we look at kind of your normal blood pressure, we have our 120 over 80. So, let's kind of talk about that. So, your systolic, that is when your heart is pumping. So, your heart's squeezing down, right? Typically that's gonna be You have lub dub, so you're going to have your atria contract, and then you're going to have your ventricles contract on the, the bottom side.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So top part's your atria, bottom part is your ventricles. One second, I got a dog barking here. Evan Brand

Evan Brand: Go for it. All right,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: while he,

Evan Brand: while he's riffing on that, the hypotension is what I see a lot of people that have Lyme and co infections. So, people that have like, Bartonella Babesia Lyme. These people tend to run low.

Evan Brand: So if you're one of those people, you're like, Hey, look, I'm here for the blood pressure podcast, but I'm never high. I'm always low. You know, it could be, it could be Borrelia. I mean, I've seen it so many times where women are reporting that they're somewhere in the 90 over 60 range, which that's a problem as

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani 100%. So when we look at it, just you have your, your atrials. your atrium, top part, top chamber of your heart, and then your ventricles, the bottom chamber, okay? And so, kind of physiology 101 for your heart, you have essentially deoxygenated blood coming back to your right atria, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That goes to your ventricle, that gets pumped, that goes to your lungs, it grabs oxygenated blood, that goes back to your left ventricle, and then goes to your, sorry, left atria, and then back to your left ventricle, and then goes to systemic circulation, so your body gets oxygen. And so, when we look at your systolic, that's your heart.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: squeezing down and then when it opens and relaxes, that's your diastolic. So some would say your diastolic is more important because that kind of gives you an idea of where your blood pressure is when you are relaxing. So when you're relaxing, that tells you that bottom number, that 80 number and then that, that top number, that one 20 or so or less, that's going to be when your heart's squeezing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so having lower blood pressure is important. Why does that matter? Because that your heart has to squeeze less hard. So if you're Blood pressure is 130 or 140 on the top number. Your heart has to squeeze at least that amount to get the blood moving. If not, it doesn't move. And so that means your heart has to work 20 or 30 percent harder.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then when you're relaxed, that diastolic number tells you where you are at when you are totally relaxed. That just puts more stress, more pressure on the vasculature, you know, and then it's a sign of inflammation a lot of times, because as that vessel gets more narrow. The pressure also goes up. Think about you using an open hose to kind of water your garden, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Put your thumb over it, the pressure increases, right? And so this is what's happening in the vasculature. A lot of times you have that vasculature narrowing or you have contraction of that vasculature, and that's usually a sign of inflammation. Now, so for guys listening, that could be a sign of ED happening.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: ED, right? That lack of blood flow to the penis area, genitalia area can be a sign that you start to have ED. blood pressure problems. That could be your first sign. Again, so you gotta look at things holistically. And so if your blood pressure is chronically high, what is happening in the vasculature that's causing that level of constriction?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or am I so stressed where I'm dumping out lots of cortisone, lots of adrenaline, that's causing my heart rate to go up and causing that blood pressure to go up as part of the stress response is. higher blood pressure and the heart beating more because of the cortisol and the adrenaline response. So if we're in that stressed out response for too long, that could also be assigned to.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it's crazy to think

Evan Brand: to my age, I was above stage two there. I mean, I think my peak, my peak was probably maybe like one 60 over one 10. I mean, I felt it too. It was not a good feeling at all. Luckily it's calmed down. It's, it's normal now, but this is a table. Symptoms of mast cell activation that I pulled up.

Evan Brand: Can you pull that on screen? Yeah, let me pull that screen here. You see it? I see the blood pressure one still. Do you see the one I shared the mast cell one? Oh yeah, there we go. Yep. So, you know, this is a little, this is a little geeky and maybe a little deeper than most people are going to go on. blood pressure conversations, but if you look in the, this is the common symptoms of mass activation.

Evan Brand: If you look at the cardiovascular here, right here, hypertension is one of them, but then also this right here, blood pressure, lability, just meaning that you could have some days where you're low, some days where you're high, and I felt those fluctuations palpitations, we see that a lot, chest pain, obviously that's pretty typical.

Evan Brand: If you go to a cardiologist, they're going to ask you about chest pain. This could, this could be you. So if you look at this list, if you have hypersensitivity reactions, if you have blood pressure regularities, if you have tinnitus, you have hearing loss, you have nasal issues, you have dry eyes, difficulty focusing, you have flushing, you have.

Evan Brand: You have itching, you have eczema, all these skin issues, you have fatigue, maybe you have POTS, maybe you have hypothermia or hyperthermia, maybe there's like weight fluctuations, you have chemical sensitivities, like this is massive activation. And I think just in the last four years since the virus and the injections have come out, we've I see way, way, way more complex cases and I know you see the same.

Evan Brand: It's people that things used to be a little more simple for us in the clinic and now it's way more complicated and it seems like the injections and the virus both have created a lot more masso issues. So, I'm seeing more people complain about blood pressure even in just the last four years than before.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, when your nervous system is out of whack, right? You're dysautonomia, right? So, you have your automatic nervous system, autonomic. Right? And that's going to be part of what beats your heart, causes you to breathe, right? Obviously, you can override breathing, you can override blood pressure, but part of that autonomic nervous system, I call it the automatic nervous system.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When you're chronically stressed, you're going to have major impacts. When you're chronically stressed, chronically inflamed, there will be problems there. So, we talk about blood pressure, right? We want to be under 120 on the top and 80 or less on the bottom, right? The diastolic, and then you get 130 over 139, starts to become a little problematic, 80 to 89, then stage 2 is going to be 140 or higher, 90 or higher, and then anything usually 180 or higher and 120 or higher is going to be, hey, go to the ER, go to your doctor, you can have a stroke.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that's kind of generally speaking, usually conventional medicine doesn't do anything with blood pressure meds until we get to 140 or higher. on the systolic and then usually 90 or higher on the diastolic. But if we look at how conventional medicine tends to handle things, they tend to use either a water pill or some kind of a diuretic or some kind of an ACE inhibitor or some kind of an angiotensin receptor blocker, an ARB.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, you have your hydrochlorothiazide, you have your Lasix, your water pill, you have your your angiotensin converting enzyme blocker, your ACE inhibitor maybe even a beta blocker as well. So those are the big mechanisms of drugs that conventional medicine uses. And the problem is a lot of the nutritional deficiencies caused by those medications actually further perpetuate more blood pressure problems because they will cause nutrient deficiencies in magnesium, for instance.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, magnesium is a vasodilator and a relaxer. It's also a natural beta blocker that relaxes the heart. So you have to look at this holistically and say, well, do we want to micromanage a system of the body and get a result now that causes longer term perpetuation and need for that drug, and further, further lack of nutrients that are needed to run that physiology?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or are we wanting to just do a band aid for a short period of time? Because if you look at a drug situation, you're gonna have a long term problem because you're gonna further cause more deficiencies in the nutrients you need to run that system. You can get the result you need short term, but you're gonna cause a long term side effect.

Evan Brand: Well said. And metaprolol, I know that's passed out quite a bit too. And the mechanism is what? It's on adrenaline? Is that? I need to look up metaprolol mechanism.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. I mean, you have your angiotensin converting enzyme. So you have. Angiotensin gets converted to renin and that increases blood pressure.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so the angiotensin converting enzyme, so it goes angiotensin to renin and it blocks that. And then you have the ARB is the angiotensin receptor blocker. So blocks the receptor site that angiotensin and renin would bind in. And then you have the beta blocker, which on the heart, there's a receptor.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: that calcium would go into. And that receptor is now blocked with a beta blocker. Now, guess what also is a natural beta blocker is magnesium. So magnesium would naturally kind of block some of those receptor sites that calcium would bind into to cause contraction. And so, and some of the nutrients that are needed for, you know, on the diuretic side.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani would be depleted, lower sodium, lower potassium, which are needed for your sodium potassium pump, and your normal cellular physiology, you need potassium. You don't get enough of it, right? The DRI is 4, 700 milligrams a day. Most people are getting half that. If you go on Chronometer and run your chronometer.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most people are getting maybe around 2, 500 milligrams or 3, 000. You need 4, 700 at the low point. And if you're on a diuretic, now you're peeing out your potassium, which you need. Evan Brand

Evan Brand: Yep. Yep. Yep. That's what it said. Yeah. Metaprolol beta 1 receptors. That's what it's blocking.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yep. Beta blocker. Yep. Marchegiani That's correct. Evan Brand

Evan Brand: Not root cause and Dr. Justin Marchegiani No. Evan Brand I think this society in general, the trend has shifted to people just being in fight or flight. I mean, I don't know if you see it where you live, but here I just feel like even in the past several years, the way people drive is even different.

Evan Brand: Like people are more aggressive, people seem more rushed, people cut people off more like I just see more aggressive driving in society. I mean, that was kind of picking up five years ago, but I think it's ramped up significantly. How much do you think the chronic stress of just like societal stress is on people.

Evan Brand: Like, how much do you think that's factoring into like a hypertensive case? Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, you have your your adrenal stress, your cortisol stress that's gonna be problematic, right? That's gonna cause your heart to overstimulate and to pump harder and, and faster. So you have that component, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that's gonna be picked up on an adrenal test. When we see that cortisol rhythm, it'll be chronically high. And maybe we'll see a lot of vanomate, vanomandilate or homovanolate. We're burning up adrenaline and dopamine. So that's definitely a possibility. Okay. And we have to fix that. We can use the dapagens.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We can use diet and lifestyle hydration nutrients like ashwaghanda. We can use additional things like hawthorne to relax the heart, magnesium. We can use beetroot powder, things that improve nitric oxide. We can do arginine. You know, beetroot powder is gonna be an excellent thing as well, because that's an increase that endyl Thio nitric oxide synthase, which causes the blood vessels to open up again.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Many people are consuming lots of gluten and lots of high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is inflammatory, creates insulin resistance. High levels of insulin cause more sodium retention, so you're retaining your sodium higher, and that's increasing the blood pressure. So there's that component.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also you're knocking out your endothelial synthase, which is your vasodilator with the high levels of fructose. So you have fructose issues. You have your you have your lack of nutrients. Gluten in itself will, will increase or decrease blood flow. Lots of studies looking at the carotid arteries with gluten issues and migraines and that there's a decrease in blood flow and perfusion up the carotid to the brain.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we have decrease in blood flow, we have endothelial nitric oxide synthase, we have high levels of insulin causing more sodium retention, right? We want to have good seesaw, but if we have extra retention of it, we're not moving it through our body back out our kidneys. Now we hold on to it and water follows sodium that increases our blood pressure too, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you see how that works? It's it can, it can hit on both sides of the fence.

Evan Brand: Evan Brand And I, and I want to say it back to people too. Just because if someone's driving and they're distracted while they're listening to this, or maybe like they're laying in their bed right now, half asleep, trying to listen to this podcast to put them to sleep, hopefully we're not that boring.

Evan Brand: So what he's telling you is the gluten, the sugar, the inflammatory foods, driving up insulin is creating more water, more fat. Slash sodium retention, which is in driving up. So it's not the salt That's the problem right because the conventional doctors are going to say you got to cut the salt You'll see these this whole section in the spices aisle at the grocery store salt free seasoning And you're saying here salt is not the problem the context of insulin resistance Process gluten grains sugar driving up insulin.

Evan Brand: That's the problem with the sodium retention, correct? So salt is not the bad guy. It's just yeah, so

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: when you see all these things also If you get a good quality salt, right, you're gonna get a lot of other trace minerals. If you're getting a good Celtic or Himalayan or Redmond's real slot, you're gonna get a lot of other trace minerals that are important.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your nervous system needs sodium and chloride and all these good electrolytes, potassium, magnesium for your nervous system to function, to carry action potentials. You need these electrolytes. And so, lowering them, you know, you may have, you know, if you go too low, you're gonna have, you know, Dr. Justin Marchegiani, M.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: D. your aldosterone is probably lower, it's probably harder for you to hold on to your electrolytes. Now you add a diuretic, now you're peeing out potassium, peeing out magnesium, and now your cells just aren't gonna function well. That sodium potassium pump is really important for your cells to be able to communicate and have good healthy cell membranes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, you can see when your conventional MD is like, oh, well, yeah, you need to, It's like, but is it really, should I get the insulin resistance better so the salt isn't a problem? Or should I leave the insulin alone and just manipulate the salt, right? So you always want to get to the root cause, right? If someone's like, Hey, I don't want to make a diet and lifestyle change.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to keep on being inflamed to eating crappy. Maybe that makes sense. But I think people should have informed consent and say, Hey, if we do this, you can actually have this quality salt and the actual root cause is this high level of insulin. Let's get to the root cause. Right? Evan Brand It's amazing.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's

Evan Brand: amazing to think drinking a Coke could be your blood pressure problem. Like my grandpa. I mean, I suffered for 20 years trying to get that guy off Coke, but instead he just takes his blood pressure drug, his little magic pill, and it just keeps going on. Now, long term impact. Dr. Justin Marchegiani There's

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: tons of sodium

Evan Brand: in

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Coke, by the way.

Evan Brand: Tons. Oh, is it really? We have to look that up.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, if you look at it, if you look Coke ingredients, there's definitely, because if part of the repeat, people don't know it, right? There's a ton, maybe the phosphoric acid I'm thinking of. So the same 45 milligrams. Now there's something else in there. I think it's maybe the phosphorus in there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's really high. There's one thing that's really high and they have to use a bunch of sugar. to cover it up. And I'm pretty sure it's the sodium. And then that also makes you more thirsty. So then you consume more of that drink later to cover up the thirst because there's a ton of that sodium there that makes it so your, your thirst really never gets fully quenched, No,

Evan Brand: definitely

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: don't quench

Evan Brand: your thirst.

Evan Brand: Dr. Justin

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani

Evan Brand: No.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan Brand

Evan Brand: It's amazing, though, to think of the people that are waiting in line. Like here, I drove past a donut shop the other day, and this was on a weekend day. And And there was like a line wrapped around the building for these donuts and all the people standing in line are overweight.

Evan Brand: Some of those are clearly obese people And some of them are standing in line with giant like polar pop, you know those big styrofoam cups that are filled with like 48 ounces of whatever, high fructose corn syrup, you name it, it's amazing. It's amazing. It's, I don't know why people don't care about this.

Evan Brand: I mean, long term impact, obviously, stroke is possible, heart attack is possible, but for me personally, just feeling high blood pressure, it drives anxiety, too. And one of the papers that I was looking at one of my favorite herbs is, is motherwort. And so, there was a paper here that was effect of Leonis Cardiaca.

Evan Brand: So that, that's the Latin. Leonuris, maybe. Motherwort is, is the name of it though. But motherwort is one of my favorite herbs because of its anti anxiety effects. It's kind of like a mild sedative, but then if you take higher dose, it can help you with insomnia. So long story short, they did They did a study on 50 patients, they were treated for 28 days using 1, 200 milligrams of a motherwort extract.

Evan Brand: And there was a significant improvement in not only blood pressure, but anxiety and depression as well. So that's really cool that you could use a plant instead of a beta blocker. We're using a plant extract, which not only is helping you sleep better, it's reducing your anxiety, reducing your depression and reducing your blood pressure.

Evan Brand: Also for heart palpitations, mother war is one of my favorite. So if you're listening, if you have that issue, obviously Let's get some labs on you. Let's figure out what we're doing. Let's not just throw mother war and just move on. We still need to figure out root cause here. Is it heavy metals driving it or what the hell is happening?

Evan Brand: Let's help you figure it out. But in the meantime, it's been one of my favorite, like if I had to go to a desert island, I could only take a few things. That's certainly one of them.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. A hundred percent. So, I mean, we look at the root cause. We got to get to the root cause. We talked about some of the nutrients that with Coke, it's the phosphoric acid that I'm thinking of.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, Phosphoric acid is going to throw off your sodium as well, going to create lots of craving issues, and you consume more fructose. And the fructose then causes more of the blood pressure problems, decreases that endothelial synthase. Which is really important for vasodilation. So again, what are the big nutrients?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So also vitamin D plays a very important role in modulating renin, right? So you go angiotensin, angiotensin to renin, renin causes more fluid retention. Vitamin D modulates renin, similar as an ACE inhibitor, but it's not gonna be have drug like effects. Plus vitamin D has a lot of other immune benefits.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It does help with calcium and phosphorus absorption, helps with your immune system, modulating your T regulatory cells, especially if you autoimmune issues. Very important. So, vitamin D, very important. Potassium, magnesium, important for your cells to work. Important to relax your heart. Again, hydrochlorothiazide, water pills, Lasix are gonna decrease and deplete a lot of those nutrients.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We already talked about, you know, arginine can be good. Your beetroot powder are going to be excellent. Great ways to increase vasodilation. Getting your insulin and check getting your insulin below seven is very important, at least below 10 to keep the sodium retention down. Is sodium a problem? Only if your insulin is really high.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is it a problem? Now, should you decrease sodium? Maybe if you're like, well, I don't want to have my insulin, if I, I'm, I'm open to keep my insulin high and eating crap, then maybe there's an argument to keep that down. But I think you get to the root cause, which is the high insulin plus that causes all kinds of vascular inflammation issues.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It causes the advanced glycation end products that causes lots of oxidative stress in the vasculature, especially the small vessels like the eyes. And you're more likely to lay down lots of foam cells and have blockages. So that's a problem there too. And then we can add in things like Hawthorne. Benito peptide, this is an amino acid kind of peptide that's been shown to be very helpful as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mentioned Hawthorne as well. Anything else you want to highlight, magnesium's good, grape seed extract is really good from actual grapes, a lot of the resveratrol compounds in there, very helpful for vascular health. Anything else you want to highlight nutritionally?

Evan Brand: Evan Brand Man, well, I almost put herbs into the nutrition category, but I guess it's more supplemental.

Evan Brand: You know, the interesting thing on the paper about ginseng was that it can have an anti It's a hypertensive effect, but then it says here paradoxically, it also could be known to increase blood pressure. And so that's the cool thing about adaptogens and why you and I use them so much clinically is because if someone's coming in too low or too high, the adaptogens can help you to regulate your body.

Evan Brand: So rather than just saying, Hey, I'm hypertensive, my blood pressure is high. Here's a drug that's going to do nothing but lower you. And by the way, it can make you completely exhausted. I've had several people who were above 60, they were put on beta blockers. Now you don't really. have that same adrenaline response when you go to play sports.

Evan Brand: So some of these people I was working with in their 60s, they had to stop playing tennis or they had to significantly reduce their physical output because you can't respond to that running. You can't respond. It's almost like you have you know, like the, if you ever been to like a golf cart place or, or like a go kart track where they have a governor on the engine, that's basically the way I perceive beta blockers affecting the physical output.

Evan Brand: These people just literally. like on a scale of one to ten, their energy output is now limited to like a six. They can't do that same oomph when they're on these medications. Dr. Justin

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Marchegiani 100%. Totally. Now, we can also add in pomegranate or olive leaf or cranberry extract. These are all really good things.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mentioned Hawthorne earlier. Olive leaf, we use in a lot of our gut killing products, but it's shown to be very helpful too. You can even, I mentioned the grapeseed extract. We talked about magnesium, whether it's a malate or a glycinate, very good as well. You can even do a magnesium sulfate, Epsom salt foot bath very good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Garlic is amazing as well. You can also throw in dandelion, which is good for gallbladder and digestion. Passionflower is very good as well. If your heart's under stress, it's going to require more CoQ10, it's going to require more carnitine for fatty acid burning. And so if your heart is under stress, make sure you increase that CoQ10, have good carnitine there as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sure your B vitamins are dialed in. Again, the more carbohydrate and the more elevated your insulin is, you're going to burn through your B vitamins. You're going to burn through your magnesium. You're going to burn through your CoQ10 because it's expensive transaction to process lots of fructose, lots of sugar.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just to give you a, for instance, in one 12 ounce thing of Coke, you get 10 teaspoons of sugar, 10 teaspoons. Now your body, guess how much? And you're six liters of your blood. If you're 100 mgs per dl, right? That's like your typical, like you want to be under that just slightly for your blood, right? For your blood sugar, 100 mgs per dl.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Guess how much sugar that is in your entire six liters of blood. Dr. Justin Marchegiani It's not much. I remember you told me this before. Dr. Justin Marchegiani It's one teaspoon. So when you literally consume a Coke 12 ounces, that's 10 teaspoons of sugar. Your body's freaking the heck out. Where do I do?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What do I put? Nine to 10 teaspoons of sugar. Did I put it? If it's fructose, it preferentially goes to the liver over the muscles. If it's glucose, it goes to the muscle over the liver. Once those sites are all stored full of glycogen, right, right, liver's full of glycogen, it starts to get converted to palmitic acid and fatty acid and stored as fat, starts to become a non alcoholic fatty liver, and then it goes to fat on your body.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, so this is why you want to make sure you mitigate the sugar because your body is like, what do I do with this? And most people don't realize how much sugar is already in your blood. And if you have, let's say, a half a teaspoon, right? Because one teaspoon is normal. A half a teaspoon, you're in a coma.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. So that's your, your blood sugar is so tightly regulated by your body. And so it will, your body will freak out and send that to the muscles and the liver. You'll have a non alcoholic fatty liver. You'll start gaining weight. You'll get insulin resistant because the more fatty your liver gets, the more insulin you need.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: for those cells to open up. So you become insulin resistant. The cell becomes numb. You start seeing your fasting insulin go above 10, 11, 12 into the twenties. And that starts set a table for lots of inflammation. And when you have inflammation in your body, it's an impact the brain. So mood issues, energy issues, depression, brain fog, and then more than likely a lot of the foods that you're eating to increase that blood sugar have lots of processed grains and flowers.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then you have a whole gluten sensitivity, leaky gut thing going on there next.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and what you're saying to the average person on the street corner, that may sound extreme, like, listen to this crazy guy talking about nutrition. Oh my God, sugar's the devil. You know, that's how the average person may perceive it.

Evan Brand: But, all you gotta do is take a walk in the woods, anywhere on this planet, and you're gonna realize how rare it is. That level of processed sugar and or processed grain is like right now if I were to go I've got thousands of acres of state forest around here if I go hiking right now I'm gonna find literally like zero zero zero zero sugar Possibly i've seen a few wild strawberries growing.

Evan Brand: They're tiny. They're like the size of my pinky fingernail I've seen some blackberries They're not ready yet, but I've seen the flowers. So there will be blackberries soon. So let's just say the blackberries are in full harvest. I'm like a black bear. I come across this big old patch of berries and I just gorge myself on those blackberries.

Evan Brand: They're gone. That's it. Once I've had those, it's, it's gone. And then maybe, maybe, maybe if I'm crazy enough and I find a beehive, And I'm going to somehow like a crazy person get the honey out of there. I'm going to binge on that and then that's gone. So, you know, what you're describing to some people, if they haven't been in the nutrition world, the functional medicine world, it may sound so extreme.

Evan Brand: Like, Oh my God, this guy's just demonizing Coke. Coke is the devil. Like that's my takeaway from this podcast. Just look at nature. It's rare to come across that amount. And that's not even a fair comparison because You know, the blackberries that I go find in the bush there still doesn't compare to the spike you're going to get from an actual soda, an actual Coke.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani I've actually put this article in my book and my thyroid book coming out.

Evan Brand: Evan Brand Hey, while Dr.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Justin Marchegiani Really,

Evan Brand: really good. Evan Brand While you're getting that, will you pull up this oat test on screen real quick? I just want to show people nutritional markers that we're measuring because you referenced a few things.

Evan Brand: I just want to show people the graphic here. Yes. So one of the tests we've run on pretty much everyone clinically is an organic acids test. This is an at home fasted urine sample. You wake up, pee in the cup, you get it back to the lab. And we've covered a lot of aspects of this. The neurotransmitters, how those are measured on there is incredible.

Evan Brand: The bacterial and fungal issues that we measure is incredible. But what you're looking at here, if you're watching the video, if you're just listening on audio, we're just seeing the different bars here. And what we're, what we're seeing in this particular client is a lot of. low nutrient levels. And this is extremely common.

Evan Brand: So you were talking earlier about the depletion of CoQ10, for example, you can see here, this person was pretty low in CoQ10. We see biotins on the low side, vitamin C is low all the time, B5 low, B6 low. So this is your average person on paper, even if they're eating grass fed meats, even if they're on an organic diet, there's a lot of factors and reasons behind this infections and different stressors.

Evan Brand: But yeah. The average person is nutrient deficient, even if they're eating a very clean diet. So, don't think you can eat your way out of this. There's some cases where you need actual supplements and nutrients to fix this.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, 100%. I totally agree. Now, here's an interesting article here that I have from Stephane Guillene.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: came out about 10 years ago, but the sentiment is still the same. They looked at U. S. sugar consumption. They use USDA reporting based on production, not consumption. And they used based on how much loss there was on average. And they were able to figure out production and loss averages, and then come up with the U.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: S. sugar consumption by decade. So you can see 1820, we were around four pounds per year, and now we're over a hundred pounds per year, 2010, 2020. So you can see, Four pounds to a hundred pounds plus. And here's the deal. People like me and you aren't eating a lot. So someone's eating two or three hundred pounds to make up for us.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right? Isn't that crazy? And so it used to be sugar used to be a rich man's food, right? It used to be like, Oh, if you were rich. you know, in the 1800s, like, you had the extra honey, you had that extra brown sugar, right? Extra molasses. And now it's the opposite. It's the people that, you know, are more wealthy are staying away from the sugar and the people that, you know, aren't as, you know, wealthy, they're eating more processed sugar, they're eating more processed food.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So there's been this total switch. And I think a lot of this is due to government sponsored agriculture, sponsoring the soy. sponsoring the, the corn, sponsoring all the sources to make sugar artificially cheap. There was a book by Michelle Simon. She was a attorney over in the Bay Area, but she looked, it's called Appetite for Profit.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And she basically looked at the fact that all the junk food that we have out there, right? We perceive it as being so cheap. It's artificially cheap due to government subsidies. Yeah. And imagine if like you actually, you know, if we took away Government subsidies of these cheap foods, it'd be so much more expensive.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It'd be harder to eat a lot of these junky foods. This is why you don't see someone who's homeless or impoverished, super malnourished and skinny, right? Our people on the people that are homeless today are, you know, a lot of times are overweight. They're calorie nourished. This is a total opposite from the 1940s.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For instance, if you go look at the 1940s, people that were being recruited into the army, we had a major problem of our, 17, 18, and 20 year olds being totally malnourished that they couldn't even be drafted. I remember stories of my grandfather in 1940, 42, he was drafted to go to World War II, and he was 6'1 6'2 120 pounds, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: People back then were incredibly malnourished, and now we have the exact opposite thing, but the calories are coming from a lot of processed crap food, and so we see this kind of challenge happening, and why it's because of. you know, a lot of subsidies artificially making this food cheap. So you have an intention over here, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. All right, let's make food cheaper, but then you get more of the wrong food that creates more inflammation, and here we are. Now we have this major obesity, cardiovascular, cancer, you know, you name it, epidemic, autoimmune disease epidemic.

Evan Brand: Oh, yeah, I mean, you could overlay that graph you just showed with hypertension, you could overlay that with cancer, anything, and it

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: would, it would,

Evan Brand: and then other people are going to say, Oh, but you know, it's seed oils.

Evan Brand: Oh, it's, it's, it's, that's a part of it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's part of it. I mean, I would argue that a lot of the seed oils are also follow that government subsidy kind of track, right? You were artificially creating these foods or making them cheaper. Yeah. I mean, getting tallow and getting ghee and getting like good coconut, it's a lot more expensive to get those foods than to get government subsidized seed oils that you can, you know, have a longer shelf life, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of it started from like the hydrogenated fats. We could take vegetable oils, we could make them solid at room temperature and then have a longer shelf life because they're already oxidized. And so a lot of it was like, how can we take fats and give them a longer shelf life? And a lot of the processing of coconut oil and, you know, animal fats, they're just a lot more.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, it's going to be a lot more labor intensive.

Evan Brand: These good quality meats though are becoming more readily available. Even at Walmart, you can get grass fed ground bison for in the ballpark of 78 a pound. You can get I've seen I've seen a hundred percent organic grass fed burgers. You're talking about two dollars a burger at Walmart They're either a third or a quarter pound.

Evan Brand: I forget they come in this pack a hundred percent grass fed grass finished organic burgers for less than any drive through in America. So, it takes a couple of minutes, get your stainless steel pan, put it on high, throw your butter, your ghee, your tallow, whatever on there, boom, salt it, flip it, boom, done, and you're in for a few bucks.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your chicken thighs, too. Chicken thighs are really good to get on. You can still get at least some decent free range pasture raised eggs under five bucks for a dozen. I mean, do the math. If you need four eggs for a meal, that's a buck fifty for your protein for a meal. That's still pretty good. Yeah, that's still pretty cheap.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, if you can eat, you can have a decent meal for under four to five bucks a meal, you know, I remember being in the bay area in the mid two thousands and, you know, living on 14, 000 a year, 15, 000 a year financial aid. And I still ate organic every week. I just had to be careful. Chicken thighs, ground beef.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I couldn't do filet. I couldn't do ribeyes. And I, you know, I would kind of supplement with some organic frozen vegetables here and there and just try to choose what was more in season, right? Because those would tend to be a little bit cheaper. And we had a farm co op that we went to as well where we got a bag full of, you know, organic vegetables for 30 bucks a week.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Huge bag. And so there's ways you can do it. There's ways you can mitigate if you can't use the Clean 15 over the Dirty Dozen, right? So there's ways you can mitigate. And it's good, if you can't go all the way. Well, there's, there's a better version. There's still a good version. So, you know, essentially good is the enemy of great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So don't allow being good. Something that prevents you from even trying at all. Right. You know, an A is better than a B, but a B is better than a C. So just do the best you can with what you got.

Evan Brand: Yep. Amen. All right. Well, let's wrap this thing up. So we covered some of the root causes here, insulin messing up your sodium retention.

Evan Brand: We covered some of the adaptogenic herbs. You could potentially use motherwort, your ginsengs obviously getting some testing

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: done. Yeah. Magnesium, potassium, Epsom salt, foot bath if you need. Oh, also Cold exposure, cold plunges. Excellent. Huge parasympathetic support, huge parasympathetic tone from that cold shock protein.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that's wonderful as well. And on the heat side, infrared sauna, very helpful on that side as well. Plus you're getting toxins out. So if you have any mold issues or metals that are causing blood pressure issues, which they can, it's at least a gentle, natural way of sweating and then, you know, get a shower afterwards.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you get the toxins out and you don't reabsorb it. So cold and hot are nice, easy, simple modalities that you can play into the mix too.

Evan Brand: Evan Brand Yeah. Tests don't guess. So get, let's get some more testing done so we can look at your nutrient levels. There's other testing we could do for nutrients as well.

Evan Brand: Obviously the gut infections play a role too. We'll look at the gut, see how your nutrient absorption is. How is your fat digestion? How is your gut inflammation? Are you not even absorbing all these things you're taking? You can go deeper.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We can go deep in this. Good nasal breathing, four seconds into the nose, get the parasympathetic fibers going.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All really good things. You could throw sleep in there, but you know, we're just trying to keep it simple. You know, what are some of the diet lifestyle things? What are some of the supplement things? I think we have some good reviews and good ideas so far. We'll put some links down below. And if you guys want to reach out to Evan, evanbrand.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: com. Evan is available, you know, worldwide for patients. telemedicine wise. I am as well, Dr. J at justinhealth. com. If you guys want support, people that have been in the trenches 10 plus years we are where it's at. So, we appreciate you guys listening. Put your comments down below. Love to see what you're thinking, what you're saying, and future ideas for topics.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Anything else, Evan?

Evan Brand: I'll just give the links one more time. Folks listening, if you need Dr. J, that's justinhealth, justinhealth. com. You can reach out. We'll help you to facilitate labs. We'll get these shipped to you. If we need blood, we can do blood. It's pretty easy. And you get the results, go on a call, make a protocol, get better.

Evan Brand: Myself, evanbrand. com is the website, and we're happy to help you all.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Justin Marchegiani Excellent. Well, appreciate it, guys. Evan, excellent chatting with you, man. Talk to you soon. Evan Brand Alright. See ya.