Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand uncover the hidden connection between parasite infections and mental health issues like anxiety, depression, insomnia, and hormonal imbalance. They emphasize that parasites are common—even in developed countries—and often go undetected. Microscopic organisms such as Blastocystis hominis, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium can disrupt gut health, trigger immune responses, and inflame the brain, contributing to brain fog, rumination, OCD tendencies, and poor mood regulation.
They note that conventional medicine often overlooks parasites, instead relying on symptom management with antidepressants, anxiety medications, or acid blockers without addressing the root cause. Dr. J and Evan strongly recommend comprehensive stool testing, particularly the GI-MAP test, which can reveal parasitic and co-infections missed by standard labs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [00:00:00] Free audio postproduction by onic.com. Hey guys, it's Dr. Justin Marjani. Welcome to the Beyond Wellness Radio podcast. Feel free and head over to justin health.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. J, and or our colleagues and staff to help dive into any pressing health issues you really wanna get to the root cause on. Again, if you enjoy the podcast, feel free and share the information with friends or family. And enjoy the show. And we are live.
It's Dr. Jay in the house with Evan Brand. Today we're gonna be talking about parasites and mood. Is your parasite infection causing anxiety? Is it causing depression? Is it potentially impacting your sleep? Maybe it's, is it part of why you have some PMS issues, right? And some hormone issues. We're gonna dive into that topic today.
Evan, my friend. How we doing, brother? Hey, I'm doing well.
Evan Brand: And I had parasites years ago. I don't think you've ever tested [00:01:00] positive for parasites, have you? You've had like bacteria, yeast, but not parasites, is that
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: right? Yeah, bacteria, yeast. I think I may have h pylori at one point, but yeah, for me it was more bacteria and yeast never had a big infection.
My wife had blast at one point. So I saw a couple patients yesterday with blast, so that's a pretty common parasite infection too. And yeah, no I got spared on that one, but it's really easy, it's really common. Your conventional medical doctor, typically, your tropical disease specialists.
Usually it's more like your third world, this countries that tend to be thought of as having parasites. But we see it all the time, and it can be a stressor in the gut. It can lower stomach acid, lower enzymes, it can create low grade inflammation, low grade diarrhea, bloating, gas, or sometimes. With parasites, it's just gonna create mood issues because it's impacting the gut.
It's creating gut permeability. It's maybe creating different chemical stressors that are moving their way to the astrocytes, the blood-brain barrier, and then they make their way in there and then create a. Immune activation, they activate the microglial cells and then you can get this brain fog. Then you can get some mood [00:02:00] issues.
Then you can get some excess glutamate, which causes excess rumination, OCD kind of symptoms. And so the gut can easily drive issues that aren't even connected to the gut. People get the fact that, okay, parasites, yeah, I get diarrhea. I ate this food. Monos is revenge. I get that. That's a parasite. But now there's an element that you can get exposed.
You can have some of these stressors and it can really impact the mood, the mitochondria, the energy, and the sleep. Yeah. And if
Evan Brand: someone has told you that it's rare. It's not rare. Now I do wanna clear one thing up. Though, because on social media it's very common. You'll see these like crunchy moms talking about parasite cleanses, and they'll show videos of them eating like papaya seeds and all these like at home remedies for parasites.
But a lot of people they misconstrue parasites for worms and they think that a parasite is this foot long creature that's hiding in you and you're gonna see it in the toilet. No, when we're talking blasto, inba, histolytica, giardia, crypto, a lot of the stuff I've personally dealt with and what we see clinically.
[00:03:00] Every day, all day. These are microscopic bugs, so please don't think you have to see some scary creature in the toilet. That's very uncommon. Now, if we were to add in some mimosa to the protocols, we can see some stuff that's interesting. It's hard to identify some of it, but you and I've got an inbox full of some pictures of some weird stuff over the years.
Every week
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: there's someone texting me pictures.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So who knows? I like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: my wife grabs my phone one night and she's I'm like, be careful with that bone. She's what do you mean? And of course she's peeking around. I'm like I got patient texts coming in there. Stay away.
You may see something you don't wanna see. Yeah, it's wild. It's, that happens every now and then. It's wild, but a lot of times it's microscopic. So don't think it's some scary thing that's gonna crawl outta you. It's typically not gonna happen. However, the impact on your mood is pretty significant. For example, when I had h pylori and parasite combo, I was anxious for no reason, and I'm not an anxious guy.
Evan Brand: I'm pretty chill most of the time. But I was just walking around with this lining anxiety and I wasn't un, I wasn't really sure where it was coming from. And so we can talk about things like [00:04:00] supplemental gaba. You and I have used Rhodiola. We love holy basil. We formulate and sell adaptogenic herbs to tens of thousands of people in the last decade.
We love these herbs and things. Ashwagandha, rishi mushroom to help regulate the mood. However, the herbs will only get you so far, and ultimately you have to fix the infection load to fix your mood. Now, your psychiatrist, you mentioned how your GI Doc may blow you off, but what about your psychiatrist?
They're not testing you for parasites. They're gonna put you on an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety med and never consider the impact of the microbiome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A hundred percent. That's super common. Psychiatrists typically don't even look at the raw material building blocks. Like we know our raw material of our brain and our neurotransmitters and our hormones are made from saturated fat.
Cholesterol and then of course high quality protein, and that provides the neuro, the peptides to make our serotonin dopamine. GABA provides the cholesterol to make our steroid hormones, and then of course, the raw material of our cell membranes and our neurological tissue is good, healthy, saturated fat.
The myelin. Sheath that coats the [00:05:00] insulation for our nervous system is all gonna be cholesterol based. Here's one article here, this is cambridge.org and I'll pull up some other studies. It's talking about the impacts of parasite infection on mental illness. I'll try to zoom in a little bit more for you guys, but really it talked about here, let's see here, 2020 alone, over a billion people were affected by these different infections and then baseline inflammation due to high parasite pathogen environments.
Could be seem to be contributing The development of depression and even an increase in psychiatric disorders and parasite infections may play a role in many mental illnesses. And this is a systematic review. So very interesting that these studies are starting to pull this correlation that we've seen for over a decade in our functional medicine practice.
We've always seen the gut and different in gut infections being a player. Furthermore, nearly 60% of the overall participants from the paper with a mental illness also had a parasite infection. And again, it impacts the brain and the central nervous system via the blood [00:06:00] brain barrier and the vagus nerve and the immune system.
This is what I was talking about earlier with the BBB, the blood brain barrier and the astrocytes, and how that impacts the immune cells. The immune cells specifically are the microglial cells, and then the more stress and inflammation we have, the more it decreases the parasympathetic response. IE, the main master of the parasympathetics is the vagus nerve and look a key role in the susceptibility to parasite infections and the prediction of depression.
For example, a parasite infections are known to cause increased activation of the immune system and with some genes are linked to increased risk of mental illness. Fascinating.
Evan Brand: Grace asking the chat is the best test. The GI Map. Yeah, we really like the GI Map. We've been using it for a long time. They should be paying us now.
We should be on the board or something at this point. Yep. I know that we run more than almost anyone in the world. Correct. And we've seen competitors, we've looked at Doctor's Data, Genova, some of these other Vibrant, there's several other competitors. I'm happy. It's always a balance of like sensitivity and price.
Some of these other labs may be more expensive. There's new labs that'll pop up every few [00:07:00] years, but I haven't seen it to be very good. Like ome I'm not impressed with at all, for example. I know that's been trendy, but it's not impressive for me. Now let's talk about the constellation of symptoms.
We did talk about mood, but let's also hit the IBS. So you're gonna get diagnosed with IBS. You're gonna get diagnosed with, let's say heartburn. You're gonna get put on a. PPI medication and acid blocking medication, which we know long-term impacts on dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, like there's neurodegenerative diseases linked to long-term PPI use.
So if you have these infections, you could be put on an antidepressant for the mood. You could be put on an acid blocker for the reflux, and who knows, maybe there's some joint impact as well. I had joint pain years ago. Maybe it was Lyme, maybe it was mold, maybe it was parasites, but. I could have been on, who knows, a freaking biologic or something.
If I had joint pain, I could have got misdiagnosed with ra. So these bugs can confuse conventional medical docs. And what'll happen is you're gonna get put into a [00:08:00] box, you're gonna get labeled, you're gonna go to the gi, and then you're gonna go to the psychiatry. And then before you know it, you're three, four prescriptions deep and all you needed was.
What would you say, two to three months is a reasonable timeframe to clear bugs with
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: herbs? Yeah, I think two to three months is pretty good. Buhner always talked about it. There's synergy in herbs, so when we give certain herbs, we use herbs that are more synergistic. So there's a history of different berberine type of herbs, like golden seal, for instance, having a synergy with Artemesia or wormwood.
And so we, and then we also wanna use higher doses. I see a lot of pixie dusting happening and people just not doing enough. And so that's a big thing also. Dropping some serious herbal bombs in someone's gut if they don't have inflammation down. Digestion, improved motility better can create a lot of problems because you're getting a lot of inflammation and a lot of toxins from these microbes.
And then if you reabsorb them or you let them sit in your gut too long and it creates more gut lining inflammation, then that's gonna create more problems. So you gotta be really careful and set the [00:09:00] table appropriately when you deal with. Knocking out bug infections. Yeah.
Evan Brand: And a lot of times parasites are coexisting with bacteria, yeast, fungal infections as well.
So I would say it's quite rare to see a stool test with just parasites on it. It's often gonna be strep, staph, pseudomonas, klei. There's often other bugs there too. So that's the fun thing about herbal meds, that even if you were to go to, let's say, an infectious disease specialist, right? Let's say they put you on.
Anti parasitic medication, metronidazole, something like that. Alinea whatever, to kill the say Giardia. What about the SIBO that's happening too. What about the candida? Are they just gonna put you on different drugs and antibiotics for that, or are you gonna leave those bugs unchecked versus compare and contrast what we're doing in the functional medicine space?
You and I are using blends that not only can kill parasites, but they'll also knock down the bacteria, the yeast, the fungal. All that at the same time. And that's really where the beauty happens. And we've seen cases where people have had lifelong depression completely reversed just [00:10:00] by clearing out bugs.
So if you and your loved ones are suffering from mental illness, let's say you and your spouse, or you and your mother, you and your father, we've seen multi-generational infections where mom has bugs, kid has bugs, grandkid has bugs, and all of 'em have mental illness. I would say before you get put on a bunch of medication on the pharmaceutical side, get a stool test done.
Let us help you. We can do this worldwide with the lab test. We can investigate and just check it off the list. Okay? Maybe you don't have parasites after all. Maybe it's just sibo. We can fix that. But if there's parasites there, it could be life-changing. It certainly was for me. You saw how skinny I was a decade ago.
I got down to 130 something pounds, woo. Now I'm up to about one 70, so I'm 40 pounds heavier. Much stronger, and I feel way healthier than I did a decade ago. And my wife got skinny too. She lost weight without trying. Parasites are real. My daughter she had h pylori, not a parasite, but I've had personal experience with
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: bugs.
This, back in the day, you could find like magazine clippings, I [00:11:00] think 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, they were selling worms. Women could swallow to help lose weight. 'cause it would decrease their appetite and they would eat some of the food inside of them. It's I'm not sure I'd wanna trade a parasitic or worm infection just to lose some weight that's not that healthy.
Oh God. I wanna see if I can find that. I know. Isn't that crazy? Like a tape
Evan Brand: worm? Like a tape worm they were suggesting or?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Oh my God. Oh yeah. Here it is right here, man. I'll put it in the chat and you can pull it up. Let's look at that. It's there, it's in the chat for you. They're calling it the tapeworm in the Maria Callus Diet Mystery Revealed, and it has a photo.
Oh, it says that this is a fake photo. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, I've seen it. Yeah. Here's one right here. Who knows how much this is fake or not? There's so much fake stuff out here today. I'll put it up here. Share this tab instead. Hold on. It'll come up here. Oh, it's making me go outta Facebook.
Evan Brand: So Maria Callis diet was known as the tapeworm diet. The historical facts about the use of tapeworm pills [00:12:00] is inconsistent. That's
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: interesting. Yeah. Yeah, lemme just go log in here. Keep chatting. I'll I'll pull it up here. It's making me log into my Facebook.
Evan Brand: So it was titled The Hollywood Tape Worm Diet.
Oh my gosh. They're talking about the Victorian era. That was an advertisement, supposedly showing his parasites ass this was exposed as a fake poster. Who knows? Oh my gosh. But we don't see worms that often. I have seen it in Latin America. I have seen it in South America. We've seen it in Guatemala, Ecuador, we've seen it in Columbia.
So I have seen worms, actual worms, tape worm whipworm, things like that. But commonly it's gonna be the more. Tiny parasitic pathogens. A question from Lloyd here, is it true parasites have a lifecycle based on the full moon, meaning you attack adult parasites during full moon and wait till the next cycle to attack again, I personally and clinically do not have any cycle where we're cycling on cycling off based on the moon, however.
There are lots of [00:13:00] reports of people seeing their symptoms do flare up around a full moon. Insomnia tends to worsen teeth grinding, especially in children, tends to worsen, but I can't say that. I'm not gonna like back off when it's not a full moon. I'm gonna stay consistent. What's your
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: comment on that?
Oh, I agree. There's definitely anyone that works in a mental health facility will tell you that at around the Full Moon, people go a little bit crazy in there. That is a common thing. How much of that's just a full moon versus the full moon impacting parasites and people's guts? Who knows? Now, here's this one right here, Dr.
Quacks tapeworms. Who knows how much I've seen these before, over the years over the last decade or so. So I definitely have seen it, but either way. Pretty crazy.
Evan Brand: Oh my god. Pretty
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: crazy outta the gates. In general though. When it comes to worms, I see a lot of patients that think they see worms in their stool.
Sometimes it could be right, if they pull out a tape worm and it looks pretty close, we're gonna hit it with certain herbs either way. But I've had patients, Hey, put that in the baggie, put it in a little plastic container. Let's send it in, let's get it looked at. And a [00:14:00] lot of times it's just fiber or it's muco plaque.
Yeah. And so moid plaque does look very similar to worms. We know this. You take Mimosa Pica High dose, you will see moid plaques come out, and that does look similar. Would you agree, Evan? Yeah. This got popular
Evan Brand: many years ago, Seco, which now they've gotten bought out somewhat, I think, and j Davidson's probably stacking lots of cash now after some of that buyout, but Oh yeah.
Seco got very popular with. The idea of people having worms and they were really just selling mimosa, which mimosa will cause like you said, these kind of muco plaques to come out where it sure looks like a worm, but it's not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's not. And
Evan Brand: yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: it can't hurt to, here's my thing, if someone has that.
Type of inclination that it could be, and we see some decent evidence, we're gonna hit some higher dose wormwood, some artemisinin. We're gonna do mimosa, we're gonna do high dose clove, we're gonna do high dose oil, liver, oregano. We're gonna do things at a high enough of a dose to ensure that we're gonna knock it down.
Evan Brand: For sure. It can't hurt, it can't hurt. And if they feel better, why not? If [00:15:00] someone does it and they say, Hey, I have relief. Hey, we're just trying to get people better at the end of the day. And if that helps them get better, I'm open to it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. Yeah, that's where I'm at too. You gotta look at the risk reward and you gotta figure out, what the simplest thing is that has the least amount of side effects.
And if I see an infection and someone has a lot of autoimmune issues or skin issues or chronic gut stuff, we're gonna go after it. We're gonna make sure we get to the bottom of it. Yeah. People are asking about
Evan Brand: insurance. I don't know, we don't work with insurance. The standard of care is quite low.
In the conventional medicine world, what we're doing are labs that are above the standard of care. So these are things you typically elect to purchase. Do you know anything about that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The problem with dealing with insurance, you get better insurance coverage when you work with someone who is in network with insurance.
The problem is once someone is in network with insurance. They are beholden to your insurance company, not you. And so what they start doing is they start recommending things that the insurance company will or will, may pay. But then what if you have to [00:16:00] retest? The insurance may say you can't retest inside of six months or.
They don't wanna do too much because they don't wanna have an insurance audit. And so I see doctors will typically hold back on recommending certain things and do less. 'cause they don't wanna create an audit. They don't wanna have to go to court against the insurance company. And so what happens is you're dealing with the patient, you're trying to make recommendations, but here you are worried about, Hey, you're gonna pay me.
Are you gonna audit me? And it creates this weird friction where it puts a wedge between you and the patient. Yeah. And so I'd rather deal with a patient and say, Hey, if you or my mom or my dad, this is what I would recommend, and I'm not letting this entity over here get in between me or you, or create a ruckus in my life by doing an audit on me.
And so that's the real issue. And you don't see that stress with the doctor and the insurance company. So you keep the insurance company out, you're outta network. You can create a super bill for that patient. That, Hey, this is what we're gonna do. This is the cost. And then you can go submit it with them, but then you deal with them.
But it keeps me out of it and it keeps them from trying to blow up my practice.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And I saw a video that went pretty viral yesterday [00:17:00] about a guy saying that he actually is much happier uninsured because he is saving a lot of money. He's working with the hospital saying, Hey, I'm gonna do cash for this, cash for that.
And he was saying that the insurance companies now. A lot of the doctors are spending half of their clinical time fighting the insurance companies to even get paid. They're denying a lot of stuff, so it sounds like a mess right now. So we basically don't mess with that system. And in fact, you're gonna save a lot of money when you work with us because you're not gonna be getting hospital bills, you're not gonna be getting, a thousand dollars for a bandaid, like just crazy fees. The markup and stuff on hospitals are out of this world. So everything we're gonna do is telemedicine, meaning this stool test is gonna get mailed to your house. You're gonna do this at home. We recommend once a year get a workup done. If you've never looked at this, it's important to look at and you can do it once a year.
It's less than the cost of a new iPhone. Everybody's walking around with a I iPhone 15 or 16 Pro. I see everybody with their triple cameras, but then they'll say they don't have money for a lab [00:18:00] test. They've got a 75 inch tv, they've got a GMC Yukon Denali, and yet the $80,000 SUV. But they don't have a, they don't have a four.
400 bucks or so for lab. So you gotta prioritize your health. And unfortunately, people wait until they're so freaking miserable. They're at rock bottom. And then now it's harder. And when you've been sick for decades, it takes longer. So I would encourage you if your mood's off, if your skin's off, if your gut's off, if your sleep's off, start looking now.
Here's
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: the hack, right? Insurance is only helpful if you have a chronic health issue or a weird thing that is very expensive. If you're willing to take care of your health, eat good food, take care of your body, just raise your deductible up above the HSA minimum, that's $3,000 for a married couple.
You could even go to five or $10,000. Then all of your out of cost. For let's say your kid gets a little bit Ill, you have to see a doctor for an antibiotic, God forbid, right? We use herbs preferably before that nebulizers, but let's say you have to, [00:19:00] you can negotiate that price in cash, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks max.
But the more important thing is you raise the deductible above 3000 for a family. Now you can use an HSA, and now you could put up to. 7,500 to $8,000 a year in an account that has no taxes on it. It grows tax free. You can invest that money and then you can draw it out whenever you want for any healthcare qualified expense, supplements and labs count, and you can use that.
And so instead of spending a thousand bucks a month on your premium and you're not using it, maybe you can cut your premiums down in half. Then put the difference in an HSA every month because you raise your deductible and then you can max out your HSA, and then you have that for your emergency fund, or you can use it for supplements or labs.
We have patients do that all the time with HSA or HRA, there's flex spending as well. That's a use it or lose it thing, and you only could do a small amount. So HSA is the better way to go on that if you. Yeah,
Evan Brand: and this is something that can pay massive dividends. What I mean by that is the money you spend on investigating your gut can fix the mood, which then allows you [00:20:00] to save your marriage, to grow your business.
And so we're actually helping people make more money. We've worked with pilots and teachers and all sorts of different walk of life business owners, and by improving brain function, by fixing the gut clearing parasites, we've been able to help people get back to their jobs, get back to their careers.
So it's a really rewarding thing. It's not for us. It's not just about, okay, does the lab test say negative? We've now cleared the bugs. Hooray. That's awesome. That makes us feel good. But in reality, it's me helping a dad be a better dad because he's not as angry and irritable because he cleared the bugs that were affecting his mood.
It's helping a mom who had such low energy, she was having trouble getting through the day. Now she has enough energy to play with her kids, or it's helping a grandma who had such severe digestive issues. She couldn't. Be a babysitter. And so those are the fun stories and that's really why we love and do this.
So I encourage you, Tess, don't guess with your health. If you need help from us, justin health.com, you can reach out and we can do these labs worldwide. So they're mailed to your house, you mail 'em back. We have international [00:21:00] distribution. I'm at evan brand.com. So Dr. J at Justin. Or Evan brand.com. Reach out to us, let us know how we can help you and your family.
We love doing this stuff with kids too. I see 2, 3, 4, 5 year olds all the time with gut bugs. So this is not a rare thing. And unfortunately your pediatrician's not testing for this stuff either. So I've had many referrals from pediatricians saying, Hey. All I'm gonna do is antibiotics. What can you do?
And we can usually do something better and safer. Yeah. And antibiotics have a time and a place. But if you jump on things early with good food, good diets, botanicals, digestive support, bitters. Whatever, whatever's in our toolbox you can usually avoid a lot of these things. And so that, that's a big deal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It's always good to have things that you can use early on in a process. And again, when it comes to a lot of these gut things, especially these gut bugs, it can easily create mood issues and you're never gonna connect it. And odds are if you go to your family practitioner, you're just eventually gonna be put on an SSRI or a benzo or antipsychotic.
And it's not gonna fix the underlying cause. And we always wanna be focused on root cause That's the key here. [00:22:00] Yeah. And the benzos are scary. The withdrawal, the
Evan Brand: side effects.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Like
Evan Brand: man, scary.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Benzos deplete acetylcholine, and acetylcholine is really important for memory and brain function.
So when you're on these benzos for a while, acetylcholine just gets depleted and that's a big deal.
Evan Brand: Wow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. There's a reason why these medications. Become difficult coming off them. Usually it's impacting other nutrients and it's it's same thing with statins. So statins deplete coq 10 and you wonder why energy and muscle soreness and muscle breakdown increase.
It's 'cause you're blocking that me acid pathway that then makes coq 10. And so that's a big deal too. So you gotta look at the root cause and when you reach out to someone like Evan or myself, Dr. Jay, we're gonna look at that. We'll get to the underlying cause, come up with a plan that makes sense.
And guys, if you guys wanna reach out to Evan brand.com to reach out to Evan. He sees patients worldwide, so feel free, you can reach out and schedule there. And again, Dr. J justin health.com. We see patients worldwide. We've been doing this for almost 15 years between the two of us, over 10,000 patients at least, and almost 500 of these plus [00:23:00] podcasts.
Lots of good information. So if any of this resonates with you, put a comment below. Share with family and friends. There are things that you can do. So if you have a chronic health issue. Mood issue and you have not investigated the gut connection. Let's dive in and look there. Evan, anything else
Evan Brand: man? No, I think you covered it.
Let's do it. We'll be happy to help you guys. Two, three months. We can get you in a much better place. But first, let's get the data test, don't guess with your health, and we'll be back to talk with y'all again real soon. Excellent. Take care y'all. Bye later. Free audio post production by onic.com.
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