Surges of cortisol and adrenaline makes one emotionally stressed. They are gonna shut good blood flow to the body, especially to the brain, thus, causing stress. One bad result of it is the inability of the brain to make good decisions. What’s in it for anxiety? Find out more!
Today’s episode talks about mold and environmental stressors which creates histamine responses, creating mood issues, and ultimately, anxiety. Listen as Dr. J and Evan Brand discuss the important points to address these issues in a natural and functional medicine perspective. Continue for more! Stay tuned.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:40 Mold Issues, Blood Sugar and Anxiety
07:22 Fructose
09:45 Emotional Stress
12:22 Fatty Acids
14:14 Going Organic
26:24 Blood Sugar Level Optimization
Evan Brand: Hey man, good morning! We're- we're a bright and early today for this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, we're trying to get our podcast in earlier just to free at time in our schedules to get other things done, so I think it's great. We're gonna be trying to be uh chatting weekly at 8:AM CST, 9:00 AM Eastern Time. So I'm really excited to be here with you, it's a phenomenal weekend, the weather- it's this time of year it's just absolutely amazing. How is it where you're at?
Evan Brand: Oh, man, it's been magical too, it rained for like 48 hours straight, and then, all the sudden, the clouds break up and the sun comes out and the birds are singing and the grass is green and it's growing so fast now, so, I can't complain.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That's great man, excellent. Well today we talk about in our pre-show, we were texting yesterday or the weekend about doing a podcast on anxiety, and I think we can- we can just dive right in. So, off the bat, when it comes to anxiety, let's just kinda touch upon your personal issue with the mold. So we've talked about mold and environmental stressors, potentially creating histamine responses, and then creating mood issues. Why don't we go into your experience with the mold that the mycotoxins and your anxiety?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I- I had for the last 6 months to a year, I've had random little spurts where I was having heart palpitations, and some of that was related to my cavitations. I did that podcast with Dr. Stewart Nunnally my surgeon-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: -who cut me open and cleaned out-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -all my 8 cavitations, but that was a huge source of heart palpitations. But after the heart palpitations disappeared, I still had some anxiety. I'd have these random blood pressure spikes, and I'd hit you up, and say, “Dude, what's going on, my blood pressure, I don't know”, and now I figured it out. It's related to mycotoxins because what mold does when you're exposed, if you're living in a moldy house or uh apartment, or a condo, or you work in a moldy office, or you're a librarian, and you're working around moldy books, mycotoxins prevent nitric oxide production from working properly, and you need nitric oxide to help with your vasodilation. And so, you basically have a constriction of everything which is why my hands and feet have been so cold too is because, nitric oxide is getting blocked by mycotoxins, and so, when I take my detox supplements, whether it's binders, or supplements like chlorella, I noticed my hands and my feet will warm up and then all the sudden, I'll feel better, I'll get more energy, my anxiety just disappears. So I can't say that this is the only trigger. We do wanna talk about blood sugar and some of the diet pieces too. But I'll tell you just personal-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: -experience, I've had all the adrenal stuff dialed in. I've had all the blood sugar stuff dialed in, and I still had anxiety issues, and it was all tied into mycotoxins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But it was better than if you didn't have the- that stuff dialed in.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah, if I- I mean, if I- if I was not taking daily adrenal supplements, and if I were skipping meals, or not eating enough fat, I would probably be a wreck.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, we kinda look at your history like these problems like, you have problems in the past, right, before you kinda got into this field. You had that dialed in, you were better, and then along came the mold mycotoxins stress years later, and then that kinda brought things back to a head again, is that true?
Evan Brand: It is, yeah, 'cause, when I was living in Austin and I was packing up-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -moving back to Kentucky, I mean, we're calling you like dude, “I'm having a anxiety attack, I can't control it”, that was all adrenals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I mean, I was- I was literally working with clients on top of a cardboard box with my laptop, ready to pack up and drive 2000 miles across country. So that was more situational anxiety.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I remember that too, there was a lot of blood sugar issues too, I think you are going like 8 hours without eating, and I think we made a couple of blood sugar tweaks that helped a lot.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I was probably going like maybe 5 hours which is just too much for me. Now I can't do that anymore. And so-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also to remember the end of your day, I think there was just a big gap between when you had dinner when you went to bed. I think you were like eating at 5:00PM, going to bed like at 10:00 and then like not having your breakfast until like 10:00AM the next day.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it was a long time, and I was like 5 hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You was like a 15, 16-hour gap. But you know, that kinda like an intermittent fasting kind of gap but, for some people, that could be a little bit of a blood sugar stressor because when we go and utilize gluconeogenesis, that's cortisol dependent. We will forget the gluconeogenesis which is fine, it's normal, but it's cortisol dependent. And we don't quite have enough cortisol or adrenals or a little bit taxed, we may not be able to enter into those processes, uhm, optimally. So that's something that the he's mind.
Evan Brand: And I did not have enough cortisol, I did my salivary adrenal-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, I remember that, it was low.
Evan Brand: -it was very low. It wasn't like completely burned out, I wouldn't call it adrenal fatigue, but I was at the bottom end of the barrel there without being under the low end of the reference range. My cortisol sum was maybe like a 12, anything below a 10 is terrible and I was like a 12. So I was barely hanging in there with adrenals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So, kinda key things to think about, I want people listening to- to think about the underlying mechanism. What's the mechanism of why you're feeling the way you're feeling? This is important because a lot of times, when you're going to the conventional doctor, really, the underlying mechanism is not addressed. Typically, there's the genetic predisposition, genetics like victimization-type of mindset where like we don't know what it is, err- here the- here's this drug. So people don't really connect the dots to the cause, right? So we're tryna trace everything upstream to the cause. So, if we look at the toxicity mechanism, there is this potential inflammation from the toxicity which then may create histamine, and that histamine can easily create issues with vasodilation by blocking uh nitric oxide, is that correct?
Evan Brand: Yup. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna make sure I say it right, so I- I get it confused. There's laughing gas which I think is nitrous oxi- nitrous oxide, and then nitric oxide is NO, NO, right?
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [Crosstalk]
Evan Brand: Yeah, nitrous. I believe the nitrous oxide, I believe that's fully different, I'm just gonna type in nitrous oxide, versus nitric…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, one was- one was the laughing gas anesthetic, and then the other one, I think it's NO.
Evan Brand: Yeah, NO and then I think it's N- is it N2O, let's see. Nitric oxide is NO, it's not the same as nitrous oxide, N2O. Nitric oxide is one molecule of nitrogen, one molecule of nit- uh, oxygen. Nitrous, has 2 molecules of nitrogen and one of oxygen, that extra molecule changes the gas completely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, exactly. So, NO, we're talking about, not the laughing gas, when you can go see your dentist, and you make a lot of this. And now, one other thing that decreases nitric oxide, NO, is gonna be fructose. Lot of fructose, lot of carbohydrate, this is the one of the major mechanisms behind high blood pressure and extra fructose, and extra sugar, primarily in the form of fructose, right? But that's gonna decrease endothelial synthase or endothelial uhm, synthase which it helps open up. It's the enzyme that help with nitric oxide stimulation. Nitric oxide opens up blood vessel. So imagine we've got this garden hoses on the side of our neck called our carotids, and these essential garden hoses, if constricted, decreases blood flow to the frontal cortex, which then decreases nutrition, decreases oxygenation, decreases the ability for us to calm down inflammation, and that can manifest itself in depression. And today's podcast topic is gonna be anxiety. So, very easily there.
Evan Brand: Yeah, you could have anxiety just from drinking soda and eating pop tarts. I went over to my mother-in-law's-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: -and she still has pop tarts in her pantry. I'm like-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my God.
Evan Brand: -“What the heck is a pop tart?”, so I look at- you know, I ate that as a kid, so I look at-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -the ingredient list, and there's like 3 different types of corn syrup in there, it's like-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my God.
Evan Brand: -corn syrup- it's like corn syrup solids which is guess what, that's fructose, you've got high fructose corn syrup, so-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -Right.
Evan Brand: -small fructose-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: -and then you got like uh another- another corn syrup added in there somewhere- somewhere. On- and then on top of that is, you've got enriched wheat and uh, there was some like BHT and bunch of other preservatives in, I mean, so people say, “Oh, well, I- I'm not drinking soda”, but if you're eating pop tarts, that's just as bad, you're still getting high fructose corn syrup, I mean, high fructose corn syrups' in every process thing ever. You go to the restaurant, you go get a grass fed burger, and you get sweet potato fries, well, then you do the standard ketchup on the table, that ketchup is high fructose corn syrup. So, then you're in the same boat again.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. And then we don't even talk it about. You know, the high fructose corn syrup primarily comes from corn, so it's not organic, you're getting glyphosate which is roundup residue. And then also there's some that a lot of the processing of high fructose corn syrup conventionally, involves a mercury preservatives. Then there's potential mercury exposure that you're getting too. So you have mercury and around up, and then, uhm, then you have the inflammation by the de- by decreasing the uhm- the nnn- nitric oxide which vasodilates. So we have a couple of different mechanisms that are really throwing us downhill.
Evan Brand: Yeah, people are saying, “Okay, why are you on a tangent about ketchup and high fructose corn syrup? How does this relate to anxiety?”. Well, because it's creating inflammation, and the inflammation makes your blood pressure go up. When your blood pressure goes up, you feel anxious. You can feel flush, you can feel-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: -like your throat is closing, you can feel chest tightness, you can get tremors-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: -or palpitations like, when your blood pressure is up, trust me, I've had different personal experience, it does not feel good to have high blood pressure. Even if-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: – it's just temporary.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: Oh, you mentioned the- the life stress too, like the cortisol piece. So cortisol is a big issue with anxiety. You and I have tested thousands of people at this point, we've seen high cortisol and low cortisol, both can cause anxiety. So that's why it's important to test, not guest, because you may look at someone's case history and it may sound like, “Oh, my God, this person…”-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -“…gotta have high cortisol”. But then you test it, and they're just flatlined.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, uhm, very-very important. So, if you look at the diet and lifestyle stressors, that's a big component. Of course, emotional stress is gonna be a big one. What's happening with emotional stress? Typically, we're having surges of cortisol and adrenaline. Right? And of course, What's adrenaline gonna do? Adrenaline does cause vasoconstriction, it tends to shut blood flow to the arms and legs to run, fight and flee. So it's primarily going here for prehistoric survival mechanism, and it tends to be going away from the brain, because you need parasympathetic function to have good blood flow to the in- to the internal organs in the brain. So you're gonna have less to the brain, and that's part of the reason why when you're stressed, and you have over sympathetic, over cortisol, over adrenaline, you tend to have a less blood flow to the brain, and that's why people make uhm a lot of poor decisions when they're stressed. There was- I was reading a study at one point when they talked about uh a lot of violent criminals in jail, that a lot of violent criminal episodes have been made where in a hypoglycemic state by the criminal. So-
Evan Brand: Wow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -essentially with that, your frontal cortex has about, I think it's like, 25 or 20 milliseconds to shut down and impulse. So like, you see someone like that walks by that like, really, bugs you, you're- you kinda think, I wanna get them, well then your frontal cortex goes nope, not- not a good idea. So when you have that decreased frontal cortex activation, which could be decrease from cortisol and blood sugar and stress, then you're gonna have that inability to not- to not uhm dampen down that impulse.
Evan Brand: Well think about, I mean, I just saw a video couple weeks ago of a prisoner who was like sitting in like a courtroom, and he goes up and he just like smacks the lady in the head. One of the ladies is like standing, like testifying, he goes up and smacks her in the head and then he immediately just sits down like he realizes, “Oh, my God, what did I just do?”.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know.
Evan Brand: The prisoner diet, I mean, their diet is terrible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah, I mean, if we were really were interested in this society, uhm, rehabilitating prisoners uh, you'd start with nutrition. I mean, I would've go in there number 1, and involve cri- uh, I'd have criminals working on a farm, producing all their own foods, so society didn't have to pay for it, number 1. And then number 2, get the nutrition up. It's impossible to rehabilitate someone with very poor uh, brain function from amino acids or good healthy fats. They done studies before, I've- it was uh, in the food connection book, and they talked about adding omega 3's in the prison. And then helping to decrease the violence rate in the cri- in the prisons like significantly. So-
Evan Brand: I've read that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -fatty acids are very important for anxiety and mood and behavior function because number 1, your brain's primarily fat. It's 70% saturated fat and cholesterol. But omega 3 fatty acids are very anti-inflammatory. So if we have inflammation and going on in the brain, we have surges of cortisol, right, we have blood sugar fluctuations, we have our microglial cells in the brain are activated, these are our immune cells in the brain, they're gonna be activated when inflammation is going on, whether it's from foods or stress, and good omega 3 fatty acids, anti-inflammatory fats like omega 3s from DHEA and EPA, these are 20 and 22 carbon chain of fat- fatty acids are very anti-inflammatory.
Evan Brand: A lot of people are against fish or they just simply don't do enough high-quality fish. So like in- we use triglyceride form fish oil-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: -we work with professional health care companies. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: -that's a product that you may wanna have in your tool box if you don't already. Don't just go to ___[13:22] and buy their fish oil and assume that's gonna be good enough, it’s not, they're using ethyl ester form which is where they attach an alcohol molecule to the fish oil, your liver has to process that. If your products smells fishy, if you have fish burps, throw it away, rancid by with Justin's product or by my product.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: Because we wanna get you on a high-quality fish oil for your brain.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And if you're consuming fish 3 to 4 servings of fish a week is great, even if you're pregnant, just really- just focus on high selenium to mercury ratio fish. So your wild Alaskan sockeye, your Cod, your haddock, your skipjack tuna, these are gonna have a higher amount of selenium to mercury, and that will help essentially uhm bind up any mercury that maybe there. And if you're on a fence and you're doing sushi, you can always do things like some activated charcoal, things like that, just to be on the safe side.
Evan Brand: Oh, by the way, I bought a TV for the first time in ten years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, wow!
Evan Brand: And uh, it was because I wanted to watch the new documentary called “Our Planet”-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah.
Evan Brand: -tune in Netflix with David Attenborough, and uh, I was looking at some, I mean, our ocean is basically screwed, but uh hopefully we can turn it around. But he was s- showing some of the Bluefin tuna which are like a- almost all the fisheries are being overfished and the whole ocean's collapsing because we're overfishing. They were talking about some of this tuna that could be 1000 pounds. It's like no wonder they're so toxic with mercury, they're a thousand pounds.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I hundred percent agree. But uhm, yeah, it's really important stuff. I'm glad you found the other TV man, I mean, I don't watch TV outside a couple of Netflix show, I mean, right now, I mean, I watch Game of Thrones last night, that was, man, that is my show right now. Love it.
Evan Brand: I- I've never checked it out. But I'll have to, but people should watch that “Our Planet” because it is- you should watch it too, it's amazing-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: -it really- it- it really says, “Hey look, like, we've got a lot of issues, there's still some beautiful stuff left on planet Earth, but, we've really gotta turn things around and, I- I think with our podcast, we're helping to turn things around from an ecological perspective because we're encouraging people to get local meats and pastured meats, and we're trying to turn away from the conventionally factory farmed animals which are creating a lot of damage to the water table and to the soil, and, you know, buying local beef. Because if you go to the grocery store now, you're gonna see grass fed from Brazil, and they're cutting down the rainforest in the Amazon to grow uh, soybean and also they raise cattle for grass fed beef. And so, you wanna make sure you’re not buying Brazilian grass fed beef, and you can get it locally, it's so easy. And then also, with your palm oils. So like if you do snacks like plantains like I do, I love plantain chips or plantain strips. Make sure your palm oil is a certified palm oil, so it's sustainable and you're not cutting down the Orangutan, their forest in Indonesia, they're critically endangered now because of us. Cutting down there, uh, you'll see it too in the- in the documentary where they just clear cut native rainforest and they've replaced it with just a mono culture of palm, uh, palm trees that- that for the palm oil. And so, you know, even look at Doritos like you look at the- a back of a bag of Doritos, even Doritos are contributing to deforestation because the palm oil, it's in there. It's not sustainably certified.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. So, I mean, what's the solution is? Okay, 'cause, we need palms, so, or you cut it down just- just plant it as you cut it essentially?
Evan Brand: Well, the- the goal is just to have sustainable farm. And so, I don't know exactly what the- I think it's called RSPO, there's a whole organization that goes in and certifies them, I don't know if that means they're helping to protect other land like if they buy a thousand acres, they only, you know, grow palm oil on half of it, I- I'm not sure of like what they're doing, but I do know that when you see an RSPO certification, it's gonna say, “Hey, this is a certified sustainable…”-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: “…source” of palm oil.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I've seen a lot of articles on these types of topics, they talk about, like the- the- the number 1 way you can fix a lot of these things, is you don't rent these lands to corporations, you have the corporations buy it. Even the corporation buys the land they have a more- s- a stake in the land to keep it solvent so it can produce more product in the future, right? Whatever that there is, right? So, if you- if I buy a land to cut trees, I'm more likely to then replant all the trees so I have more trees to cut in the future. But if I'm just renting it, think about how you treat your car if you're renting it versus it's your car.
Evan Brand: Oh yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I've seen some articles on that type of uh, topic from a root cause perspective 'cause you treat things differently when you own it, when you have a stake in it.
Evan Brand: Absolutely. You hit a big pothole in the road, alright, “Oop, it's a rental, so what?”.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's a rental- right, it's the same thing when it- when you just have- I- I have logging rights for 10 years in this area. I'm just gonna wipe it clean, it's not my property, I don't have to worry about it, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's kind of a mindset. So, uh I think we start first by decreasing the pesticides in the environment, and the glyphosate, number 1, and then number 2, the mono-culture stops. And if you don't have the conventional GMO crap and the high fructose corn syrup, that's where all the corn, and the grain, and the GMOs are primarily coming from. So if you just go organic, you're gonna totally support more local sustainable farming and it's gonna be in this monoculture formats, putting tons of pesticides, tons of glyphosate, and that's affecting runoff in our water too. And how does this connect back, well, it's gonna connect back 'cause it's a stressor, it's- it's inflammatory to the brain. And a lot of times the glyphosate and a lot of these pesticides can affect the brain as to the gut. Because what they can do is, if you look at Stephanie ___[18:40] at MIT it's gonna decrease that brush border where you produce enzymes. It's gonna make the gut more permeable and more leaky, and that leaky gut is gonna allow more stuff in your gut to get into your bloodstream like endotoxin which is lipopolysaccharide from bad bacteria, it's gonna allow undigested food particles to get into that bloodstream, that's gonna activate the immune system, that's gonna create more gle- microglial activation in the brain which is gonna create cognitive issues, brain fog, mood related issues. So, anytime we look at the brain, whether it's anxiety, which what we're focusing on today. Any inflammation in the gut can then drive inflammation in the brain. Inflammation in the brain manifests in these mood-related issues.
Evan Brand: Yup. When I had- oh, and by the way, Vietnam banned glyphosate. So, good job Vietnam. Uh, I had major anxiety when I had gut infections, and so, my anxiety is much better, but then it was caused from another- another mechanism, right? So, fixing the gut was critical for me to fix my anxiety. Now we could- we probably should do a part 2 on this, 'cause, I mean, we could spend an hour just on omegas and probiotics and restoring gut health but-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: -we haven't even got into talking about like, uhm, relora, and ashwagandha, and holy basil, and, uh, sensory deprivation tanks, and massage, and acupressure, and acupuncture, and essential oils, and, uh, gaba and- and pharma GABA and theanine and, and uh, lemon balm, and I mean there's so much to cover with this anxiety conversation but, I'm glad that we disco- we- we discuss all of these major critical pieces first like restoring their- your brain health, making sure you've got good omegas, testing and fixing any cortisol issues, avoiding glyphosate so you're not killing off your good bacteria and promoting bacterial overgrowth because if we just skip straight ahead to the magic pill like your theanine and your GABA, well then people aren't gonna listen to the first part.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. We wanna make sure the- the biochemistry and the underlying physiology makes sense. If you- if you- that makes sense, we can plug and play various supplements, various diet or lifestyle strategies to helping to affect the root cause.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So we'll do a part 2. Let's do a part 2 on anxiety later because I think that we can do a whole hour just on how you use specific remedies, like I've got a whole timing to adaptogens, like I may do, you know, ashwagandha more towards the evening to help kinda calm down and settle at night versus I may go holy basil in the morning to stimulate. So there could be a full circadian rhythm to your supplementation as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And of course, movement has a huge effect. Apparently, I think, mo- movement is gonna help because you're producing various beta endorphin which has anti-depressant qualities to it. And beta endorphin is- is a 19 uhm amino acid compound. So there's 19 amino acids that make up beta endorphin. So you need protein to make it, okay, uh number 1. So movement is gonna help with that. I think movement also helps with insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity. So it make yourselves more insulin-sensitive and helps kinda soak up extra blood sugar. So if you have these glycemia issues, it's gonna help soak up that extra blood sugar that's hangin' around. And essen- essentially give you a bigger sponge, A.K.A. bigger muscles, especially if you're doing more resistance training and integral training, it's gonna give you bigger muscles to soak up extra blood sugar, as well which is helpful.
Evan Brand: That's very cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I've noticed, my blood sugar has been on the lower end like I was- I actually- my wife let me uh prick her finger to check her blood sugar which is good. We did like a grass fed steak, we did some steamed broccoli with butter, and then we did a big sweet potato. So we have the same exact meal, we ate it at the same exact time, and my blood sugar, within 45 minutes, we'll call it 1 hour, after that-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mm-hmm.
Evan Brand: -my blood sugar was already backed down to an 80 and hers was [crosstalk]- and hers was a hundred. So I thought, hon, now of course she's pregnant, so maybe that has an effect [crosstalk], I thought, [crosstalk] blood sugar crashing too quick, how am I already back down to an 80 one hour later and all I had was, you know, I had a sweet potato. I thought for sure, it'd be above a hundred still.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and just could be that you're really insulin-sensitive. And sometimes if you- if you do too much carbohydrate for you, a lot of low blood sugar issues is from too much insulin. So if you stimulate too much insulin from too much carbs, that can drop a but 80 I don't think it's that bad it. I would wanna see how 2 hours looked-
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -and 3 hours looked and to see if you kinda leveled out, and then how you felt too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I- I feel kinda low at- at 80. Do you- do you track it all? What number you- you feel bad at 'cause I mean, on the conversation of anxiety, like if I get a bout of anxiety and I feel kinda shaky or irritable or nervous, uh, I'll check my blood sugar and sometimes I'll be at- maybe a 70, maybe mid-70s, I'll start to feel weird at that level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it's hard, right? Because what happens is, your faster your blood sugar goes down, the faster adrenaline and cortisol is there to pick it up. So if your blood sugar is like this, and it's a slow arc-
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -and we'd take a picture of it right here. That's different than taking a picture of it right there when you eat too much carbs and it's coming down like this. So the steeper the angle is, the worse for anxiety and mood. Because the steeper the angle, that means you're crashing at a faster rate, which means there's more likely that you're gonna have adrenaline and cortisol lift you up. So the more it's like this, then it's kinda tangentially coming down, less chance of cortisol and adrenaline to pick it back up. But if it's coming like this and you grab a snapshot there, then there's more likely to be adrenaline and cortisol and you may feel that. So when people say, you know, hypoglycemia issues, you look in the Merck Manual. What does Merck say, oh well, you know, take some sugar pills all this crap, that doesn't fix the root cause of how the hell you got there.
Evan Brand: That's right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: ‘Cause how you got there, we're doing that exact same strategy, so what happens is, people that follow those kinds of conventional medical advice for nutrition, they're on this perpetual blood sugar rollercoaster all the time almost.
Evan Brand: Yeah, the people that like travel with the glucose tablet you're talking about, yeah, I'll just eat some candy, let me eat some skittles, okay, my blood sugar is fine now, I had skittles.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Does not fix any of the issues.
Evan Brand: And see, I don't do that. I don't- I don't do any processed sugars per se, you know, I had like some blueberries with breakfast, uh, so, I'm just wondering-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [Crosstalk] what the heck is happening there? You already- you over- you overshoot your blood sugar from too much carbohydrates and refined sugar, so you have a really steep drop in your blood sugar, then it comes down, and then you're like, “Oh, I'm gonna follow the conventional medicine advice”, and so you come back up again, and then you keep on doing these high and low peaks, and you keep on having the smooth it up with extra carbs and sugar, versus kinda come in there like this, where you're sneaking along, versus falling off the cliff. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: Oh, absolutely. It's a much- it's- it- it's- people don't understand, I mean, when we look at like you said, like violent crime in prisons, or we look at car wrecks, or we look at people shooting each other, or we look at any big situation happening where someone's doing something stupid, I'd put a high amount of money on the fact that it's probably someone who's on a conventional American diet, with a crazy blood sugar pattern, and they're hypoglycemic, you can't think straight, trust me. My blood sugar is low, I had period where I was like a 58 or a 60, I couldn't think straight. I mean-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: -you literally can't think straight and make decisions. All you can think about is, “I gotta do something, I gotta eat something”.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And, I'm doing some kinda hand gestations here to kinda symbolize what's happening with the blood sugars. If anyone's listening to this on the podcast, feel free and check below. You can access the video here too, so we're- we're live on YouTube as well as Facebook to see that.
Evan Brand: Well let's- let's wrap it up, but I do wanna go one- one for the question for you, and how would you recommend approaching that? So if you're someone who, like me, you're away from refined carbohydrates, except I will do some organic white rice, I will do some sweet potato, those are my starches of choice. Uh, so, in that situation, is it just more adrenal support for me, is it just staying low carb for my breakfast and lunch, and only doing the carbs at dinner like how would you say if I'm looking at glucose and I'm seeing that I'm going back down to like a mid-70's or an 80, and I wanna hang out around maybe 90, 'cause I feel better there, how would you- how would you achieve that, is it possible to do that with just like fat and proteins?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, number 1, I think with- you're a leaner dude, so I will first look at like what your activity levels are for the day. If you're not super active physically, then I'd be focusing on more proteins and fats for- for your fuel source, and then, you know, work on timing more your carbs later in the day. There's some data that carb backloading, doing carbs later in the day tends to be a little bit better. Again, there are other people- this is so controversial, but I mean, there's been research on it, people in the backloading carb community kinda know that people tend to do better with carbs at night time, there's some data where people take their carbohydrates and they put all at the back end of the day, and then while the control group does it throughout the day gradually, and there's been better weight loss, patterns doing it, like that at night, so there is that benefit. So, I would do more of the carbs at night, and then I would keep more protein and fat as- as kinda your foundational base. Think of protein and fat as like logs in the fire, so if you have a good fire, the logs from the fire gonna keep that fire burning sustainably. The carbohydrates are gonna be like kindling your twigs, and the more refined the carbohydrate, or the more high- higher glycemic index it is, the more it's like, it- it's like gasoline or paper, right, it goes up faster. But if you have logs in that fire, that's gonna keep that fire burning long and strong versus if you just do paper twigs and gasoline, you're up and out. So, twigs and paper and gasoline is the, uhm, too much refined sugar, not enough protein, fat, and then you have this up and down swings of blood sugar. The logs in the fire are gonna be like the high-quality protein in fat, and then we have to dial in the carbohydrates according to your metabolic needs.
Evan Brand: I need to check it act, I mean, I like data, you and I both do. So, I need to just check- check and see… You- can my body take? Let's say I do like a grass fed beef steak, right, and it's like, let's just make something up, you know, 15 grams of fat and 15 grams of protein.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: In theory, I should be able to take that beef steak and convert that over to glucose, even though it's primarily fat and protein, correct?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, you will be able to do with some of that for sure. I mean, your brain know it needs about 20 grams of glucose today. So you won't get a- a ton-
Evan Brand: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -of glucose out of it, but yeah, you'll get a little bit of glucose, via gluconeogenesis, and then you're also gonna get more ketones, right? And people that have- they're higher in ketosis, their blood sugar may go lower, but you gotta remember, their blood sugar can go little bit lower because they have more- other fuel substrates in the bloodstream called ketones. So, they may be able to go lower. Where some is jackin' the blood sugar up and down, through a reactive hypoglycemia e- episode, right? Reactive is up, and then you're reacting by going down fast. It's a steeper angle of that blood sugar dropping. You're gonna have less ketones there because you haven't done the right things in your diet over a period of a couple days or weeks to get in the ketosis, where you have more ketones. Uhm, a- anytime you're surging insulin, you're gonna be not- you're gonna be kicked out of ketosis, because you need lower insulin levels to be making ketones. High insulin blocks ketosis. So for keeping our blood sugar under control, and we're kinda snaking along and not jacking our blood sugar up too high above a hundred or 110, 120, then we’ll have more ketones, and therefore your blood sugar could drop a little bit lower. But I even see some of this people that are really doing a lot of ketogenic diets then they even go a little bit too long, and I've seen people posting 50 and 60 for blood sugar range, that may be a little bit too low. But I mean, tested out, try and see you feel, see how you look, see how you perform and see if we can uhm, connect the dots there.
Evan Brand: That's cool. So, maybe I find it at 70, if I have some ketones running in the background.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. It gives more- it gives enough ketones in the background. I think that's the key thing.
Evan Brand: Makes sense. Well, let's do a part 2 on this later but we gotta wrap it up [crosstalk]-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [Crosstalk] it just depends, if your body needs more glucose because of what you're doing, uh stress wise, then, you may have a cortisol surge to fill in the gap via gluconeogenesis. So-
Evan Brand: ‘Cause that's the thing. So, if I'm at a 70, I feel like I'm getting low, you can feel that anxiety starting to creep in at a 70, it's like well, do I go and eat something like an apple, which I know is gonna raise glucose, or do I go do a beef steak, or do I do a beef steak in an apple to get glucose up?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, O would probably do beefsteak in an apple.
Evan Brand: Do both.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I will probably do both.
Evan Brand: So you can stabilize it with the fat and the protein, but then you do have some actual glucose coming in at the same time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And to get- there'll be fructose in there, but fructose is 55, 45 or 50, it's close. So you- even though you get fructose in, you're gonna get-
Evan Brand: But you don't wanna do just the apple 'cause if you do just the apple, then you're up and down again, depending on what type of the apple too. So that's why we always talk about like putting almond butter, something else on there, coconut [crosstalk]-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or you even do a Granny Smith which has- has- half the amount of sugar as well. But then you get some of the fiber too. So it's less- you- you're not gonna quite have that as much with lower glycemic fruit with full fiber, but yeah, you still- it's good idea to always have the protein and fat along with it, for sure.
Evan Brand: I stay away from Pink Lady. I tested a Pink Lady apple; I went from like a 75 to like a hundred and thirty with the Pink Lady Apple. I mean, that thing is like just candy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah. [Crosstalk]. Yeah, exactly, that's why- my- I primarily do Granny Smith, half the sugar and uhm, I'll typically do it with some cinnamon on it and some almond butter.
Evan Brand: That's delicious. Woooh!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Well, hey, Evan, let's wrap things up, we'll be back next week and we'll talk a little bit more, we maybe can expand upon this topic or even choose a- a new topic. So appreciate all you guys in the background with great questions. We'll continue to expand on this conversation here in the weeks to come. Anything else Evan you wanna leave to listeners with?
Evan Brand: Yeah, people just reach out. If you need help, work on your blood sugar, stabilize it, but, you know, this stuff can get tricky. So if you need help, don't hesitate to reach out, we can work with you around the world. Justin's website is justinhealth.com, my site is evanbrand.com. We look forward to helping y'all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks so much guys, you'd have a phenomenal day, we'll talk soon. Take care Evan! Bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
speak pipe
Rumble
Youtube
Apple
LIBSYN
Bitchute