Using Nutrition and Functional Medicine To Enhance Energy and Mood | Podcast #302

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It’s summertime! Summer is the hottest of the four seasons. With the summer heat, this affects our body, activities and our energy level. For today’s podcast, Dr. J and Evan Brand share tips on how we keep our energy up and running. More of the information below. Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:02        Electrolytes

07:05     Staying Hydrated

15:47     Adrenal Fatigue or Dysfunction

21:44    Cortisols

26:12    Minerals

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Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. I hope everyone's having a fabulous day. I'm here with Evan brand, we're going to be chatting about ways to enhance your energy. In the summertime when the heat is here, certain things have to be done to really keep your energy up. And we'll kind of start out here with electrolytes first before we do, Evan, how are we doing today, man?

Evan Brand: I'm doing really well, actually just got done. I would show you the color. But now it's just clear. But right before this was water, this was electrolytes. And I've been doing that every single morning. And my oldest daughter now she begged me every morning Daddy, Daddy, I want electrolytes. Okay, and she loves it. I put a little beet powder in there for her too. And she sucks it down. If you want her to drink an entire mason jar of water. How do you get her to do it? You put electrolytes in it. It's amazing. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's awesome. Is this week with any stevia at all to give it a little more flavor now? 

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, there is stevia in there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, that's good. Yeah, cuz electrolytes by themselves, especially with high amounts of potassium. Pretty, pretty raw.

Evan Brand: Yeah, these are good ones. These Good, these are my brand that we that we make. So they're good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's good. Yeah, how I start my day every day I go downstairs and I have a nice big mason jar, probably maybe 12 or 16 ounce size mason jar, I fill it up and I use the Redmond Real Salt minerals just kind of coat the bottom and I just do two full swigs of it kind of get 25 or 30 ounces down to start the day. I also when I when I finished my shower, I also do a cold shower and I kind of drink as much as I can out of the overhead shower when it's cold at the end. So I try to get about 30 or 40 ounces with extra electrolytes to start my day that's important. Especially in the summer, people are starting their day with a coffee or some kind of a natural diuretic. If you don't really hydrate intentionally in the morning, you're going to deplete your minerals. And especially when it's hot and you're sweating, you're going to lose more minerals on top of that, so it's very important in the summer, especially when you're engaging in a diuretic like a coffee or tea. You really have to start your day intentionally with at least 30 ounces of water, clean filtered water ideally reverse osmosis process And you really got to intentionally add some additional electrolytes back there to make sure you kind of prime yourself to start the day.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And people are like, okay, that's such low hanging fruit. It is. But it's something that 99.9% of people don't do and it has a massive impact on your energy levels. I will tell you, if I skip a couple of days, and I'm not doing electrolytes, my energy will tank and I will tire more easily. So if I'm outside, cutting up a tree, or, you know, I was cutting down some honeysuckle and getting that crap cleaned up. If I don't have electrolytes in my system, I tire out more easily. So would you say that this is just due to minerals that are fueling Krebs cycle or what do you think's happening? When you're noticing fatigue and someone who's dehydrated or depleted of minerals?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, a couple things right? So our cell membranes work through the sodium potassium pump, right? sodium and potassium out, right? What is it I think it's two sodium at three sodium into potassium out right? This is the sodium potassium pump. This is how our cells work. So If we aren't getting enough sodium and potassium, our cell membranes are not going to work correctly. Also our nervous system and how nerves work think of electrolytes as the liquid wiring that helps our nerves conduct in our body, right? We know something called hyponatremia happens many times a year around marathon time when people over hydrate, they actually dilute their electrolytes and they can create a heart attack, the heart just stops, they go into cardiac arrest. Why? Because we need adequate levels of electrolytes for our nervous system and for muscles to work, right? You see this at a subclinical level with cramping? Okay, you can see this at a more acute level with a cardiac arrest due to hyponatremia. So we know electrolytes play a really important role for our muscles for our heart, but we know the adrenals play a big role too. So when someone has adrenal dysfunction, right or the slaying is adrenal fatigue, I like dysfunction better because it's more descriptive because some people can have this functioning adrenal cortisol is high or low or just somewhere in between but imbalanced. So adrenal fatigue just kind of portrays one side of the adrenal, you know, the adrenal being low, but we know it can it can dysfunction, a lot of different ways that your adrenals play a major role in you holding on to your electrolytes. People think, well, I'm getting enough electrolytes, but they're not counting in the fact that they have adrenal dysfunction, which makes it harder to hold on to your minerals, because you make things called aldosterone, which are mineral corticoids that help you hold on to your minerals. And the weaker your adrenals are, you may be picking up your minerals at a higher levels that way you got to you got to go over the top. So I start my day with really good fluids, really good minerals. I like Redmond Real Salt. You could probably do Celtic or Himalayan as well. And my wife kind of brought it to my attention last week. She's like, I'm really chronically thirsty. And then we kind of looked at her routine and she started her day with two cups of coffee with no water. I'm like, that's what it is. She had a little bit of mastitis last week, you know from You know, breastfeeding and I think a lot of the mastitis happened to just not having a fluid in her lymph. Now, we treated the mastitis with ginger and po group and then infrared light that works phenomenal knocked it out and 24 to 48 hours, no issues. But we looked at what was the root cause, right? We felt like the root cause was just not getting enough hydration to start the day and starting the day with the diuretic that depleted her.

Evan Brand: Yeah, my wife had that wants to when, when my little girl summer was little she had it and we ended up doing I think it was a dehydration issue too, because she was doing coffee in the morning, but we ended up doing like a topical coconut oil lavender essential oil mix, and just rubbing, rubbing, rubbing towards the nipple and then boom. It worked. It was miserable. I mean, it was like the flu. I mean, she got hit like a train. I mean, she was sweating. She had a fever. I mean, it was like whoa, what is wrong with you? And then as soon as that cleared up, all her symptoms went away. It's kind of crazy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, a couple easy, natural thing that's been around for a long time is Poker poker works phenomenal. It really helps with the limp and just kind of takes all that coagulation of all those cells kind of stuck together and it kind of loosens it all up. And you can do ginger as well. Ginger is great as well, those are phenomenal. And then if you have access to red light, red light slash infrared light, it's even better because that just kind of just calms down the inflammation. And then it really helps just kind of dissolve any clots or agglutination that's happening in there. So I like it. But the last thing you want to do is get your wife on antibiotics that can be passed down to the baby. So there's a lot of natural solutions out there so we can we can easily just kind of book in this part of the podcast for a separate video on mastitis poke rose how to be a phenomenal thing as well. And gingers going to be a phenomenal thing as well. And then if we kind of go back to the root cause of our episode here is getting me electrolytes and the hydration to start the day is so important because when you don't have enough fluids to start the day, you're more prone to inflammatory issues like this. Now this is, you know, mastitis in the breast tissue but you could just have it Extra inflammation anywhere in your body due to not having enough good fluids and good minerals for sure.

Evan Brand: Yeah. So if you're like, well, I'm a 50 year old woman I breastfed 30 years ago, okay, this still could apply to you because we've seen women with various types of edema, where if you kind of grab your ankle and push your thumb in and you'll see that pit in the, in the front of your shin there that could be related to some type of a lymphatic issue as well. So yeah, hydration is definitely key. And I mean, here's the deal. I try really, really hard to to stay hydrated and I still probably don't do a good job. I've got the clearly filtered that I keep on my desk just in case I run out and that we've already got a glass to pour but man makes you wonder how our ancestors had such you know, I don't know, we don't know. But how were they hydrated all the time. I guess they would just stop at a river and drink straight out of the creek and they were probably they were probably not as stressed as we are. So maybe they weren't depleting as much minerals from the adrenal perspective. Or the the food may have had more nutrition in it? Of course it did and maybe more moisture in it too. I don't know it just it makes you wonder like we're our ancestors sitting around drinking mason jars all day. No. How did they stay so hydrated?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, they had access to wells and rivers and there wasn't the pesticide runoff for all the chemicals. I mean, you wouldn't touch that today. But you know, also, for our ancestors got a parasitic infection and had severe diarrhea. I mean, it could have easily died, right, we still know amoebic dysentery is like the third, the top five causes of death in third world countries. So we know parasites are kind of a big deal across the world when there's when there's not clean filtered water or access to antibiotics if needed. I mean, a lot of these cultures are smarter, they have kind of their own herbal medicines like like we've formulated for our patients to help these things, but some people don't have access to that. So for sure, so the water the hydration components really good and we want to keep it clean. My natural kind of electrolytes support which people don't Want to start them that you can do celery juice, celery juice is excellent. It's a lot of really good minerals in there and it has a lot of potassium. So you can get about 20 to 25% of your potassium in one day in certain celery plus, that slows a whole bunch of other many minerals, sodium and chloride. Other things besides just the potassium, but potassium is huge. and celebrate just primes a lot of these minerals that are needed for digestion, right, a lot of the minerals that are needed for hydrochloric acid. So I love celery juice, if you want to start your day with, you know, a couple glasses of water and some good minerals and then throw in some celery juice later, then that really Prime's up your potassium because the two biggest minerals people are missing on the electrolyte side is going to be potassium and magnesium. sodium and chloride. Don't get me wrong, people aren't getting good forms of it, but it's in a lot of processed food. So people still get a lot of access to it even if they're eating a standard American diet. Now, I'd argue it's not the best form, right? We want one that's full spectrum like when you do like a Redmond Real Salt or high quality seesaw, you're getting 60 or 70 different trace minerals along with that sodium and chloride. So you're not just getting one thing, two things, you're getting a combination of different things, which I think is important. And then we can always add in the magnesium and potassium because those are just hard to get in FDA I think, or CDC, one of the two says that 50% of the population is deficient in magnesium. And I would say about the same is deficient in potassium, if you have any kind of heart issue or arrhythmia stuff, or is anything on the cardiovascular side don't look any further than magnesium and potassium. They really move the needle a ton. Go ahead.

Evan Brand: Yeah, Carolyn Dean. She's a medical doctor. He's written extensively about a fib and other heart issues, and it's all about minerals and repeating minerals and talking about the soil being depleted. I mean, so minerals in the heart go hand in hand, which is why we talked about when electrolytes are low, you're going to have issues with energy. So the reason that this kind of spurred today's conversation was I had a woman over the We can email in and say, Hey, I'm wanting to get in my garden and be active and be outside, but I'm just I'm too exhausted. And she was sleeping fine and diets dialed in and all that. But what are the other missing pieces and it could be something as simple as electrolytes. Now, obviously, when it comes into fatigue and chronic fatigue, we talk about all the different branches of that all the time. But we're talking today about some of the more action steps you can do regarding low hanging fruit, like the electrolytes, but then let's go into some of the herbs because there's a lot of things I do in the summer differently. That kind of keep me going, specifically rhodiola is something I bring out more in the summertime because I'm a lot more active in the summer. I'm riding my bike, at least a few miles a day, and I've got this little kid carrier so I strapped my daughter onto the back of the bike and I'm pulling her in this carrier and that thing's heavy. So it requires a lot more work. And so I'll usually do somewhere to two to 500 milligrams of rhodiola and I can tell you 100% of my I guess you would just call it my peak output. Imagine if I'm like a electric motor, my peak output of wattage coming out of my legs is much higher on I'm on rhodiola, as opposed to when I'm not.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: On this makes sense too, because we, we always talk about the root cause, right? Like, of course, there could be a root cause of just like one, you're doing too much of a diuretic, and you're not getting enough of those nutrients and minerals, those micronutrients in the morning, right? That's always possible, and that's the low hanging fruit. The second thing is just your need and demand for it's much higher, right? So you could be having high levels of cortisol or chronic stress, which is going to cause you to dump more potassium, you can go pull open and guidance, physiology. And you can go to the endocrine portion of that or the kidney section of that book, where it talks about cortisol actually increases potassium dumping. Now, this is important. So you may be going on chronometer, right, Justin health.com slash crono meter and because I tell my patients to go there and run their minerals throughout the day, like you can put your breakfast your lunch and your dinner meal in there. And that calorie calculator will look at micronutrients, which is great. And it will obviously look at the macros most look at the macros, this looks at the micro. So it'll look at your B vitamins and your magnesium and your potassium. And you want about 45 to 4700 milligrams of potassium a day. And then maybe about a gram or so of the magnesium per day. And again, it depends because certain magnesium is like a mallet or a glycinate. They absorb better than like a citrate or an oxide. So it just depends on what kind of magnesium but maybe about 1000 or so total a day, right, everything all factored in. Some people need a little bit more because they're dumping these things out. Now, you'll dump potassium out when there's cortisone stress issues, you'll dump a lot of magnesium when you're consuming lots of carbohydrate and alcohol and you'll dump a lot of B1, especially when you're doing a lot of alcohol. It's why a lot of friends people that are Irish descent, there's a lot of b1 deficiency because there's a large percent of alcoholics so B1s really important. And B1 can create hard issues to write berry berries. Which is a deficiency for B1, which is B1 is timing right? Find means B one, B two is riboflavin B three is niacin. And berry berry is Swahili it means I can't, I can't because the heart can't pump I can't, I can't. So b one's really important. So what alcohol and sugar and carbohydrate, you're going to drive B one deficiency. With a lot of that too. You can also drive magnesium deficiency, and that can affect your nerves and your heart and your mood. Magnesium is a natural sedative so it helps you relax. And then of course, our potassium, potassium can help with the heart as well. It's going to help with blood pressure, it's going to help with mood. Anytime you affect your cell membranes fluidity and how your cell membrane works, right? that's going to affect so many different issues, so many different issues. And it's like, we need to have healthy cells to work for our bodies to be healthy in the first step for healthy cells outside of good hydration and not putting a whole bunch of toxic soup. There is going to be sodium and potassium.

Evan Brand: Yep. So I think a good test, like if you're somebody who's getting into this adrenal testing could be valuable. So we do both. We do saliva, we do some urine. I've done some blood just to see. But I just wanted to confirm everything that you and I've learned, which is kind of that blood testing for cortisol is typically useless. But I wanted to compare and contrast and so I've done some blood testing for adrenals. And it was pretty much useless overall. And reason why you and I've talked about this before, but unless you have a very big problem, blood doesn't really change much. It's not functional. It's more of like disease state or not disease state, whereas the urine and the saliva we're running are a lot more functional. So you mentioned this adrenal fatigue or adrenal dysfunction. You know, we've seen people who are exhausted, but their adrenal cortisol is showing sky high and vice versa. We've seen people who they say they quote feel fine and their adrenal cortisol is flat. So rather than, you know, I'm not going to mention tired people who want to go play in the garden, I'm not going to say go take a bunch of licorice for example, right out of the gate without testing, we'd push you more towards the minerals and all that because if cortisol is already so high, you don't know that it's so high, you go on licorice, which is kind of like, I use the analogy like plugging up the iPhone to one of those little portable battery banks. You're kind of extending the half life of that cortisol. You don't want to do that if it's too high. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, that's a great analogy. I love that one. That's good. I'm going to add that to my to my Compendium or my my Rolodex of analogies Dr. J's Rolodex of analogies. I love it. That's great.

Evan Brand: Yeah cuz that's you know, cuz cuz part of me wants to go well, let's talk about this herb, let's talk about that or but but I kind of have to hold back of doing too many that are going to modulate cortisol in that way because I do find that it's concerning how many people just go buy something off the shelf or online, because it's an adrenal booster and they think I'm tired. It's got to be adrenals and then they're going to go pop licorice and a bunch of different stimulating genes. And all that, and then they feel more anxious or they feel worse and they don't know why. So I guess I would encourage people get the testing done first so you know where you're at, you could still do the electrolytes bump up, magnesium, potassium, everything that we're talking about behind the scenes, but that might not get you out of an adrenal situation that's dumping those minerals in the first place. So yes, more minerals, do the chronometer all that but you got to work backwards to Why are you dumping so many minerals in the first place? And another answer for that question is mold. I was up when I first got exposed to mold. I was peeing like three, four or five times a night and obviously I'm too young to have prostate issues. So it wasn't my prostate. And as soon as I started going higher dose with the binders. I started sleeping through the night and I was not peeing as often through the night and that's because okra toxin damages and affects the kidneys. And one of the ways of excretion of the mycotoxins is through the kidneys and through the stool, so I was definitely pooping more and definitely paying more which is good. My body should do that. But man, you talk about parched I mean, was like a camel in the desert. I mean, I could not get enough water. It was ridiculous.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And you had to know if it's a prostate issue or not, because usually prostate the swollen pneus of it's going to prevent good flow. So you're constantly going into the bathroom because you never get a complete evacuation, right? So you're always trying to finish off that first piece. So with your situation, you probably had a lot of flow and a lot of stream and a lot of, you know, volume, but it's just you were dumped. You were just chronically dumping out that toxin via your kidneys.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and I'm much better now. Like I said, I'm not up in the middle of the night anymore. So that's something else to consider. If you're listening to this and you're up in the middle of the night. Let's say you do start out with the coffee, but then you're doing electrolytes through the day, but you're up three, four or five times a night peeing. You know, you're dumping minerals there too. So you kind of have to address that and figure out what's going on. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I also find just the adrenal dysfunction alone can can cause that because when you have a lot of adrenal and aldosterone issues, aldosterone helps you hold on to your minerals and without it, you're going to dump it so you'll just pee a lot more in general with adrenal issue so yeah, it's possible there could be a mold thing. It's also called possible, the more than likely thing is just adrenal issues in general, just from stress and food and whatever else. So that's why you have to see someone that can evaluate it. Because Could it be a mold issue? Sure. Could it be just an adrenal issue from poor food and gut stress and just, you know, poor diet and lifestyle? Sure. So we have to really evaluate both of those. Now, I want to go back to one thing you mentioned, I think this is really important to dive into. So blood testing for adrenals. So Evan highlighted this a little bit already. So blood testing is very helpful on the adrenal side to look at pathological level. So if we look at like an am cortisol serum, if we see it very high, that could tell us there could be some definite adrenal excitability. Now high levels of cortisol is Cushing's right we remember that because Kush, we think push right Cushing's we're pushing cortisol really high Cushing, we're pushing cortisol really high. So if we see high levels of cortisol on a blood test, it's you know, we're in the top 20 25% we're thinking okay, there could be a problem with that, right? Why don't I like that because People by nature don't like getting pricked with needles. Okay, so some people just go into the doctor's office, they could get a lot of cortisone adrenaline going in their body because of that needle prick. And then that's going to cause a false high reading. So I don't like it because you can get a lot of false high readings. Number two is, I do a lot of the Dutch test. And I liked the Dutch testing, because I can look at cortisol serum total via the urine. Now I like it for two reasons. One, it's not a big stressful thing to collect that right, it's not a needle prick. So you're not creating a lot of stress during the extraction process. Number two, we can collect that total cortisol throughout the whole day. So we're not just looking at cortisol as a snapshot in time, we can collect the cortisol throughout the whole day, which gives us a better window of your overall cortisol output for 20 hours. So if we see higher levels of cortisol over 24 hours, we know that this probably isn't a blip thing. This is probably a more stronger pattern of adrenal dysfunction when we see that and that test can also separate the free cortisol out which is What Evan highlighted earlier, that's the more bioavailable cortisol. So think of free cortisol, two to 5% of cortisol free, this is the cortisol that's not bound to a protein. Think of that as if you're a woman and you have your purse, right? And you have a key in your hand and you're putting that key in the lock, right? The key in your hand, that's the free cortisol, right? It can work, it can go into the lock, think of the other 20 keys in your purse, or your back pocket if you're a guy, right? I remember like back in school, there were these janitors that walk around with these key chains were just like huge, right, like massive t chains. So imagine the key in the hands, the free cortisol, the key in the back pocket or the purse. It's the total cortisol or the serum based cortisol meaning you have it you're carrying it around, but you can't quite use it to open the doors. That make sense.

Evan Brand: Yes, it does.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, so that's another Rolodex analogy on the cortisol side. So we can swap one today, right? We can swap one. So in general, cortisol can be an issue and we have to know the right way to test it. So blood testing really good on the pathological side. If you I have a lot of people that just come in with these data already. And if I see someone in the top 25%, I'm like, ooh, could be a problem, right? Or someone in the bottom 25%, that could be a problem, we'll still do further testing. But you know, there's a lot of data that comes in. So we have to know how to interpret it either way. So cortisol, we know about it, high or low, could be could easily affect the adrenals. High levels of cortisol, you can still dump minerals, right? Because you're buffering it for the stress, low cortisol, you may not have enough aldosterone function, because the same area of the adrenals, right? The the the cortex of the adrenals, right? That is the same area Well, dosterone is made. Right? It's right there. So if you have weaker cortisol area, there could be weaker aldosterone. So it's good to know that on the testing.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And there's a lot of people that poopoo this now and they say, oh, Adrenal Fatigue is fake. Adrenal Fatigue is a myth. That kind of thing. We're not saying we're not we don't even use fatigue anymore.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right makes sense, because the functions are better terminology.

Evan Brand: Because that kind of insinuates that the adrenals are tired. And that's not true. It's really more of a brain issue that's kind of down regulating this process. It's kind of like, you've been running from a bear for so long, and you're starting to eat away all your muscle tissue. Because cortisol is catabolic, it's breaking down the gut barrier, which is why we see so many gut issues and like CrossFit athletes and stuff like that. It's breaking the body down. So eventually, the brain has to come in and say, hey, we've really got to kind of down regulate this guy system. He's really been running from the bear. She's really been running from the bear for so long. So to those people like, mad at us right now, Adrenal Fatigue is a myth. Oh, my God, how dare you guys, you're charlatans or whatever? People say, No, it's not fatigue, it's dysfunction. And you have to support the brain. And you got to support the gut. I mean, the whole system, rarely do we come in. And this is just a, quote, adrenal protocol. It's going to be a whole program designed to fix the issues that are stressing the whole system in the first place.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so I always tell people when you're working with the practitioner, Right, you always want to talk about certain things are going to be used as a palliative way to kind of get you feeling better, and to jumpstart physiological and biochemical pathways, and other things are going to be root cause and a lot of times they work together, right? So if I work in support your mineral levels, right supplementally if I work on supporting your adrenals while we get your sleep better, while we change your food while we look at infections, while we help with digestion, and good diet and lifestyle strategies, that's what promotes the healing overall. It's kind of like if you if you go and you have to jumpstart your car, right? Well, why the heck are you jumpstart in the car? Well, because I didn't turn the light on in the car, right? Well, okay, so the root cause is we're going to make sure that lights turned on moving forward. But if we always leave the light on, then you jumpstarting the car's a palliative issue, right? It's not a root cause issue. So we're always doing palliative things in together with root cause things. We always combine the two because a lot of times, that's what pulls people out of it faster. If you just focus on it. Cost stuff, it takes a lot longer to feel better. And people need to feel better fast to be compliant and get paid. Yes.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I mean, and that's something that you learn clinically. So when you have people that just write blog articles or do podcasts, but they're not working clinically, they don't understand that so they'll come in and, and I'm not calling anybody specifically out, but just this idea I've seen on the internet where or people say, Oh, you know, this whole, it's a myth. You know, just take adrenal support, you should need it data. Well, here's the deal. Like if someone has gut infections, and they're exhausted, and they have poor digestion, and they have no minerals and they can't sleep. If we give someone calming an adaptogen adrenal support in the evening and maybe some stimulating stuff in the morning based on their, their adrenal profile, if they start feeling better, they're going to be more motivated to cook because we've got to get these people cooking real food. So the adrenal support could be used to help them to stop going to the drive thru because they're too tired to cook a meal for themselves. Now they have enough fuel in the tank, they can come home they can cook. Now they're going to feel better because we're getting More nutrient dense foods, they're going to have more minerals so they may sleep better, they're cramping or pain issues may get better. So you kind of have to give people some good functional medicine crutches sometime and there's no issue with that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. So the minerals are really important kind of getting back to our our clickbait thread of the day, enhancing energy for the summer. Why is it so important for the summer because with higher temperatures, you're more likely to sweat and get and lose a lot of these minerals. So now if you're stressed and you have adrenal issues and you're drinking coffee to start the day, and you're not adequately hydrating, you're not getting minerals, and now the heat and the hot of the summer can really compound more of these issues. So you may notice more exhaustion, more fatigue, more heart palpitations or attack cardia or blood pressure issues either low or high. You may have all these different mood or energy issues, and that's going to be exacerbated by the summer heat because the more you sweat, the more electrolytes you use. So just be very mindful of that. Starting the summer out is really make sure you start the day you get good electrolytes if you go outside, you know bring a nice bottle of extra electrolytes in there whether you put a trace minerals in there from Redmond Real Salt or you get a good Pellegrino or a good sparkling mineral water that has things in it, you know, make sure you're on top of that. And then if you're doing a lot of physical work, you can even come back in with a good post workout shake with some coconut water or something that has, you know, a little bit of extra glucose and potassium could be wonderful. And don't forget about our favorite potassium source, which is going to be avocados, I mean, they got twice the amount of bananas. So people think well, you know, everyone thinks in general, Hey, what's up but high potassium food, the first thing they jump to is bananas. Potassium is twice the amount in avocados which is great. That's a good fat too.

Evan Brand: Give you a good reason gives you some good cassava chips and some nice guacamole with some lime or lemon juice squeezed in there we go.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, mango. It's a great way to do it. Anything else you want to talk about in regards to the heat I would say people that are more photo phobic or sun sensitive could have adrenal issues too. So good adaptogen formula is always going to be our favorite, you know, additional B five and there may be some additional tyrosine and some our favorite adaptogens are going to be asked Wakanda and rhodiola ginseng and Aluthro and and maybe holy basil. And again if you have a lot of high cortisol issues you got to be very careful on doing too much of the stimulators too much of the Ginseng's and things maybe too much you may have to focus more on Holy Faisal and and magnesium and ashwagandha to kind of really modulate the High Courts or maybe even phosphorylated, serine and Gabba. Those are all things we're going to be more careful to use when cortisol is higher for sure.

Evan Brand: Yeah, omegas are key too. So I noticed that I don't get as tan and if I'm not taking enough or eating enough fish or taking enough omegas I noticed that I burned more easily. So omega is are pretty helpful in that aspect. And then always looking for a deeper cause to because with good weather people are hopefully outside more and unless you're in like New Mexico where our friend JW lives where he says he hasn't seen a tick in 25 years, which is ridiculous. A lot of places have ticks and if you're getting tick bites, you know even The CDC who underestimates the numbers they estimate 300,000 new cases of Lyme, per year in Lyme and co infections like bartonella, or babesia can cause a lot of issues with temperature regulation problems. So if you're somebody who you can't handle the heat, but your friend next to you feels fine, but you're burning up and you feel like you're gonna die or pass out in the heat. You know, it could be minerals could be low hanging fruit, but we're always looking deeper because for me, before I started treating myself for babesia, I had extreme temperature regulation issues, I would just be chilled to the bone in the winter, and I could not tolerate the heat in the summer, once I addressed the babesia. And I've had so many tick bites over the years, probably 2025 tick bites over my lifetime, even probably more as a kid I lost count, but, you know, I've been exposed to all these pathogens, unfortunately. But my temperature regulation system works a lot better now. So I would just encourage people that if you feel like the odd man or the odd woman out everybody's fine when it's 85, but you're dying, you know, address the low hanging fruit that we discussed, but you know, feel free to reach out To a practitioner like Dr. J or myself and we would love to help you and make you resilient because it sucks if you're trapped inside in the air conditioning because you can't handle the heat that's not a way to live in the summer. I like air conditioning, but I don't want to have to use it if I want to be out in the sun I want to be out in the sun having fun. So if you need help, please book a call with Justin at JustinHealth.com, and if you want to reach out to me my website, EvanBrand.com. We work with people around the world, we send lab test to your door, you send them back to the lab, we do a follow up call to discuss the results we make your protocol to feel amazing. So that's what we do.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% really appreciate it. Again, if you guys are enjoying this content, share it with friends or family most important thing is you take one or two things to apply out of this content and make yourself healthier, the healthier you are the better boss or employee or employer or mom or dad You can be to your community and to your family. And that really kind of spreads the wealth right across the board right? healthier people make better decisions, better decisions help the world so I think we're on the right track there. If you guys enjoy the content, give us a thumbs up. Give us a share. Put your comments down below, let us know your experience with electrolytes and adrenal dysfunction and things that you've done that have helped. I really appreciate it. And Evan, fabulous podcast, man, really appreciate the content and the great back and forth, man.

Evan Brand: Yeah, oh, last thing, we could do a whole nother hour on it. But blood sugar. Make sure you address blood sugar. I tell you, I don't feel as good. I get weak. I get woozy if I'm having a blood sugar crisis. So I'm not saying you got to prick your finger every two to three hours. But I'm saying you got to make sure you're getting adequate fat, adequate protein. And especially if you're moving more, you're going to be kind of burning through those reserves. So you're not sitting there reading a book, like you're in the winter, you're out you're moving. So you may need to increase calories, increase fat, increase protein, if your blood sugar's crashing, you're going to feel weak, you're going to feel depleted, you're not going to feel good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you're having a lot of chronic electrolyte issue, there's probably some adrenal issues as well. So it's good to have breakfast in the morning. Don't do an intermittent fast if you're having a lot of chronic electrolyte issues. Once you're more stable and you're feeling better in that department feel free and go do that. But until then, really make sure you're having a good breakfast in the morning and even myself, right? I'm doing coffee, I'm doing 2025 grams of collagen protein, I'm doing some butter fat in there I'm doing I'll do a glass of celery juice in a minute. So I'm still getting, you know, kind of a more of a liquid breakfast because I just like a liquid breakfast in the morning. I like feeling lighter. But then I'll also make sure I get the extra potassium and good fats and proteins through a good through my coffee, so I won't just do coffee by itself. I'll combine it and again, if you're caffeine sensitive, feel free and use a decaf or a decaf tea. And you can do the same kind of a model with that as well.

Evan Brand: Yep Awesome. Awesome. Well once again, the links JustinHealth.com you need to reach out EvanBrand.com, we're very grateful for the opportunity to help you guys so take good care and we'll be in touch.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Take care. Bye. 

Evan Brand: Bye now.


References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/water-pitcher

Audio Podcast:  

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/using-nutrition-and-functional-medicine-to-enhance-energy-and-mood-podcast-302

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