Collagen & Inflammation Reduction, Sunlight, Epigenetic & Anti-aging Strategies – Dr. Bernd Friedlander | Podcast #377

Collagen supplements are associated with several health benefits and very few known risks. It may increase muscle mass, prevent bone loss, relieve joint pain, and improve skin health by reducing wrinkles and dryness. And since your body naturally produces collagen from amino acids, you can support collagen production by ensuring that you’re eating adequate amounts of protein from foods like animals, poultry, fish, beans, and eggs.

Lastly, Dr. J and Dr. Bernd share that collagen promotes gut healing in inflammatory digestive conditions, such as irritable bowel disease (IBD). By taking collagen, you would help correct a deficiency and potential injury.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:00 – Introduction
5:13 – Diet Modifications
12:10 – Collagen and mTOR
37:35 – Protein
1:00:37 – Take aways

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys! Doctor Justin Marchegiani here. Really excited we got a guest back on the show. High demand doctor Bernd Friedlander, a great guy, known him for many years. He is a fountain of knowledge on many different health topics. We’re going to dive in, let’s see what we hit. I know we’re going to be coming out of the gate.Talking about collagen, reducing inflammation, sunlight, 5G, epigenetics. We’ll dive in and see where the conversation goes. Doctor Bernd, how we doing, man? What’s cooking?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: How are you, Justin? I’m doing great. You’re wonderful. Yes. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good, excellent. So let’s start off. We were talking kind of pre show, let’s kind of take that here. You were a chiropractor for the 1984 I think was it the the summer or Winter Olympics?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It was. No, it’s the Summer Olympics. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was in LA, right?. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In LA. Yeah. And matter of fact, I got selected for the 1980 Olympics, but there was a boycott in Russia, so we never went there. So what we did is we took over from 80 and get and training the athletes from 78 to 80 while I was going through chiropractic school and I also had a degree in physical therapy and exercise physiologies in a strong nutritional bracket background. So that helped me with uh, you know, working with athletes and now it myself played professional soccer. I ran track in college, I swam in college, so I did a lot of sports. I was into the sports arena quite a bit. And having six, eight years of physical therapy training from 72 to 78, that seemed to have helped me the most, you know, in preparing myself for training and rehab and nutrition and getting into Chiropractic work, all of that help and so in 19. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you had to have had a connection to get picked for the beat of the Doctor of the 1980 and 84 Olympic Games. So how did that happen?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Boy, it’s karma. What happened was I was finishing up my degree in.Glendale getting my LACC chiropractic license. And I was, I didn’t like. I wanted to be closer to the ocean, to the beach, because I grew up there and I moved down to Santa Monica. And had bought a house down there and I was going to UCLA and working out every day, and then I devote relationships with coaches and athletes there.They started realizing that I had some knowledge about training and rehab and and also injuries because of my physical therapy and they found out I was going through chiropractic school and I was getting my degree there.One of the coaches, Bob Bush, they named the stadium after him at UCLA. He asked me to work with him and many of his athletes. He and they were training for the 84 Olympics because the 80 got boycotted and we were working for the 80 at that time with Bob Bush, but we got, you know, cancelled. So we started the program again at UCLA and then I get, I gravitated to Patrick Connolly, who was training Evelyn Ashford, the fastest 102 hundred meter women athlete in the world at that time? And then I was working with Bob Kersee, who was, who took over for Bob Buesch as the head of the UCLA track and field coach. And he started using me for all of his athletes and training them and rehabbing them and giving them exercise programs and then work on nutrition as an alternative to steroids because that was my background there at UCLA, was working on alternative steroid programs for the athletes, and then I started to gravitate with him and all these athletes were coming down to train at the 84. Olympics at UCLA. So many countries came, you know, England, Russia, Germany, East Germany, all these countries came down to train with us. And then I became very good friends with John Wooden and the president of UCLA, and he saw what I was doing and he came up to me and I treated him on a couple injuries that he had and he says you, you know, I couldn’t even walk the other day. Now I’m walking today. You know it’s amazing. So he asked me to come in and he gave me a position, Durham and honorary molecular biology degree that he gave me and he asked me to head up the Sports Medicine Research Center at UCLA.  And that’s how I got involved with everything. And then the coaches that I was working with, they asked the US Olympic to have me on the team and that’s how I got involved with it. And I also had my own athletes that was trained.The 84 Olympics, like Ron Brown and I was working with Carl Lewis and other people like that. So I had quite a few people. Bob Kersee had all the female athletes that I was training with. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when you look at a lot of the athletes that you’ve had insight to how deal with their diets back then when they pretty crappy and they just were relying on good trading in genetics or were they dialed in back then? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, Twinkies was their popular dish. Can you believe it? Peanut butter. Yeah. Peanut butter. Reeses cups. That’s what they ate. And that’s why they were always inflamed and injured. And then when I worked in 85, 86 with the Raiders and Rams and Lakers, their diet was mostly pasta and bread and carbs. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean you know you’re you’re exercising so much so from a caloric standpoint an insulin wise you’re going to be able to burn that off but your fatty acid profiles so inflamed. So you’re if you get injured, it’s gonna be hard to heal, plus you don’t have any connective tissue building blocks coming in. So as you get injured, the pliability of that tissues and then we just, uh, you get less pliable tissue, less ability to absorb force over time with injuries, it’s crazy. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely. So what we did was we worked on nutrition with them protein, eggs, fish, you know meat and cut down the carbs like pasta and breads and less, uh, rice and potatoes. So we increase almost like a carnivore diet with these people. And 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You do healthy. I mean, obviously they’re burning a lot of carbs. Could you do starches like sweet potato and squash or even white potato? Would you? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh yeah. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you consider those still more anti-inflammatory type of starches?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, yes. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you were trying to grain and gluten back then, the out in the early 80s too. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we knew it was leading to a lot of information. I was very fortunate at UCLA that I was involved with so many great minds, you know. One of my patients was Roy Walford, who was the father of caloric restriction diet. So I learned everything about restriction diet and what it contributes to and how it works on the body and he took it too fa into it. I did not. I kind of realized that we can’t do a strict diet like that because we need calories or we’re gonna have oxidative damage and stress and the athletes need to eat. They need 6-7 meals a day. OK. And they needed small protein and they needed the route, right? Amount of carbs from vegetables they have to be cooked and potatoes, they have to be mashed potatoes or rice, they have to be white and they have to be. And we added butter with it. Not Gee at that time because we didn’t have Gee, but it was mostly butter that we used. We use butter for all our training sessions with the athletes. And then fortunately I got a mini companies donating uh research to us, you know, like supplements like Co-Q10 came from Japan, didn’t know anything about Co-Q 10, we started using it, so amazing results. We started using pycnogenol from France. And started giving that to the athletes and saw an increase in oxygen levels. It was amazing. And then knocks gelatin came over and supplementing us with Knox gelatin powder, which then that’s how I got into the collagen. Before I I didn’t know anything about it. And I started talking to the Knox gelatin chemist at that time and they, they were explaining to me how important, you know, it was in rebuilding and rehabbing, you know. It was more for rebuilding, regenerating and and and helping with injuries, recovering it faster and that’s what we use at that time. We use a packet of Knox gelatin with vitamin C at three times a day. And the increased results were amazing with that, wow. And that’s when 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll talk about the amino acid difference with gelatin or collagen, obviously collagen peptides are probably even better because those long chain peptides are broken down, so they’re better absorbed, would you agree?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Gelatin is a great product, but it has to still be broken down by the stomach. OK, you need hydrochloric acid, you need pepsin, and you need B6. Collagen is already broken down into peptides. I just knew how to do it even faster and better by eliminating uh by doing a certain enzymatic process to make collagen which made it into a signaling peptide. So you have what’s known as signaling peptide collagen in your product. And that’s what 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With that. So, so what’s the signaling peptide? What does that mean? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, what it does, it actually turns, it turns on the signaling effects of the peptides in the collagen. That’s what it does. So you’re going to get better utilization from it, that’s all you know, uh, you know, I started it in an 84 collagen. I was probably the only person out there that knew a little bit about it and was trying to find researchers.Out there, and there weren’t that many companies making collagen. There was only a few companies. And then I started in the 90s, I started meeting a guy, Bob Buesch, I mean Bob Buescher from Great lakes. He was the only other fellow that I knew was into gelatin and collagen at that time. He was more into gelatin, so Great Lakes was more of a gelatin thing. And then as I, you know, got into it, I realized that you as a chiropractor, your patients coming in are all cartilage damage, are ligaments, tendons, muscles and bone. And so I realized one of the most important foods we can supplement people with is collagen, and that’s how I got into the collagen business in the late in the Twenties, 2000s, you know, because at that time I was just using whatever I could from anybody, you know, it wasn’t abundant at that time. Today, everybody’s using it, you know, I got David Asprey bulletproof involved with it. He didn’t know anything about it. I got vital proteins involved with when they came to my lecture at Expo West in Anaheim and they were listening to my lecture and that’s how everybody got involved. They realized the importance of collagen and one of the key importance of collagen is, it’s devoid of three amino amino acids. It’s the only protein on the planet that’s devoid of these three amino methionine, yes, and they’re leaders of mtor, which are inflammatory compounds. They cause oxidative damage, they can lead to thyroid oxidation, thyroid damage. So it affects mitochondrial function. And that’s the molecule that we all live on. It’s mitochondria. That’s the key. That’s what I studied over 30 years ago, was how athletes train and why do they train differently in different countries. And what makes a good athlete versus a bad why I sold the Kenyans and Jamaicans and all these other athletes being so good at, in track and field, it’s because sunlight and mitochondria was the predominant thing in the 80s that I didn’t even realize then yet that I discovered later on was the key to everything and the type of food stage, which was very gelatinous foods, you know, collagen derived foods. That’s where we ate you know many hundreds of years ago and maybe 30-60 years ago, 1000 years ago we were more gelatinous people.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to dive a little bit deeper in there. We can go then we can move on. But collagen is so important for me because, one like you said, we eat a lot more muscle meat which is going to be more methionine, Cysteine rich right, not necessarily a bad thing, but we’re missing the connective tissue because we always talk about old foods don’t cause new disease, one of the biggest, oldest foods they’re there was, was, was soups and bone broths putting the bones in, in the pressure cooker or in the pot and really extracting those amino acids. So collagen is really high in hydroxyproline, proline, glycine, both of those. One are really high and connective tissue, glycine so important for gut health that’s I think part of the the guts diet is a lot of these bone broths which really what’s that healing property, it’s that glycine to help with those enterocytes. So you have connective tissue you have gut health, right. And they’re also good precursors, especially glycine. That’s a backbone for glutathione too, because you comment a little more on that. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, well, we know collagen is a perfect food, almost. You know, as you get older. What did they give you in the hospital? Gello, right? Yeah. Besides the other things. Yeah. But you’re getting a sort of a good protein that helps with recovery and rebuilding. One of the things is we’re eating a very inflammatory diet today you know we’re eating fried foods. The worst foods on the planet Earth for the last 30-40-50 years has been fried foods. Anything that is seed oil made with canola or even  Avocado oil, olive oil, any of these oils, they’re very lipid, oxidative. They cause mitochondrial damage and thyroid damage, and causes 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t avocado a little bit higher smoke point though, I know it’s you.You always want to use a saturated fat. It’s better your tallow your coconut oil, but isn’t it a little bit higher of a smoked point than the other ones though? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, but in the body the oxidative chain of the these fats, fatty acid composition are very long. And so they’re more exposed to oxidative damage. And the smaller the chain is, the less oxidative power damage we’re gonna have, you know, and that’s the key. I mean that’s, yeah, that’s why get everything from ghee and  butter. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they did it, beef tile. They had a beef tile up to 89 and then went to soybean oil. So yeah, having it low or some kind of saturated fat that that has the doesn’t have all the double bonds between the carbons. They’re going to be a lot less prone for oxidation. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. So you want less of these little acids, Omega 6, which is the most conducive problems we have today to every disease we know of. An aging is number one. You know, my background was at UCLA was studying aging you know, and athletic performance and and so I got into everything what causes aging, it’s a pathway that we take. And we take the right pathway and don’t make the wrong turns. We live longer and and also we survive longer and we feel better and healthier if we take the wrong pathways and eat fried foods and starches and carbs and you know, in and out burgers, everything out there is conducive to medical medication, that’s what they want. They want the medications, you know, and the more you get.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if we choose good fatty acids, ideally we want to be choosing more saturated fats, probably more animal fats, or exactly and if we choose. Probably on the more dressing side, avocado oil may be addressing olive oil. Olive oil may be more of a dressing. And then obviously you probably like cooking with ghee over butter just because it has that lactose and casein kind of more pulled out, right? Would you agree? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I love ghee. Ghee is my predominant, uh, butter that I use right now for everything. It has a higher point. It’s very high in the antioxidant vitamin E, and it’s very high in Gerald Pollack’s book on 4th phase of water. You know, and how to keep, you know, we gotta maintain that water in the cells. That cells and gels the engine of life. And I was very fortunate to meet the Gilbert Ling on the phone and Gilbert is probably the greatest scientist of our time who discovered how cells function and how energy works in the in the cells in the cytoplasm of the mitochondria and the MRI device was developed by Raymond Amanian, who we just lost recently, and so sad, he was a genius and it was because of the water structure and the protein of the cells, that was the basis for the foundation of how cells work and that’s how the MRI came up to play because of Gilbert Ling work and that’s how Gerald Pollack discovered the cells and gels the engine of life and then the fourth phase of water, it all came around, it accumulated because of the knowledge of all these great minds we have today and going back to college, and one of the key things I think is that collagen is on the nitrogen utilization. Uh, you know, chart. Egg is maybe number one and collagens #2 and then meat. So, also the other thing with collagen does it, it protects us from mtor pathways, inflammatory pathways, oxidative pathways. It the nutrients in the peptides and proteins in the collagen balances us from getting

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What mTOR is? Just so people have a little background. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: mTOR is a, it’s a wrap on myosin compound which helps to what it does when we’re young, OK, like we’re growing up in that early, uh two to five, 10,18 years old, we are growing. We need muscles, we need the growth and repair, and we need cell growth. mTOR is part of that pathway. So that’s what helps in helping cells replicate faster. So we get bones, we get muscles, we get organs we get. But as we get to about 30 years old, these things can lead to damaging uh cells like senescence, they can lead to cancer cells, they can lead to diabetes, heart disease. They can overdo too much and we don’t want that extra growth at that period of time, we already fully develop. We don’t need it, so we need to keep it down. And it’s the same thing with the deuterium, the water deuterium is the same thing. We need it when we’re young.The deuterium is a heavy hydrogen nuclear um, you know, that’s found in all the water and foods all over the world. We need it when we’re young. As we get older, it can disrupt the mitochondria from functioning and making ATP correctly so it can damage it. There’s a spin in the ATP process of the cytochrome 5 which makes all the electrons takes the electron, protons and protons. Protons from our foot. With oxygen and sunlight to make every single component of energy that’s made in the ATP chain, and if we have too much deuterium in there, it slows down the spin cycle so the batteries are not working as well, so the body has 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break a couple things down. You’re saying a lot of good things. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. So First off on the collagen because you really went into that right now talk about collagen and mTOR is it because it’s missing some of those big free amino acids it keeps you need low. So essentially mTOR good when you’re younger, anabolic protein bone, but at some point having it too high as you get older it can cause this cancer growth so. Collagen amino acids are in a profile that is gonna limit mTOR. What else is? Is that correct? And then what else can we do to also limit mTOR?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It’s cutting down, well collagen has the best safety factors because it’s so it has zero, um, of these three amino acids. So if you have a certain level of these amino acids, let’s say leucine is a mTOR pathway. It’s in a branch chain amino acid, right? But leucine has to be over 2000 grams of, 2000 grams of leucine a day. If you keep it under 2000 grams like 1000, you’re not going to get into our pathway because there’s not enough of those amino acids to switch it to it. And that’s why collagen doesn’t have these tryp thing, methionine, cysteine foods. So it’s not going to promote it, but certain foods in nature like you know organ meats and meats in general can do that. You know, if you’re eating a lot of it, it will produce mTOR pathways and this research the only known true research today is that was a extension of lifespan by 40% was by the reduction of mTOR. By lowering methionine and tryptophan, specially methionine in the diet. Low methionine diet. Richard Miller, MD, PhD published this work and now it’s well known out there in publication that you know, Life extension is really by lowering methionine and then cysteine and tryptophan.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what else you mentioned the Omega-6 especially the processed Omega-6is it’s really the Omega-6 that’s gonna be from processing that’s going to get oxidized and damaged and rancidity we have that, does that affect mTOR, what about carbs, what about insulin resistance, what else on your diet and lifestyle can Jack up mTOR? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Anything that is rich foods that are in tryptophan, methionine, those cysteine. So if you have a lot of high cysteine foods, high methionine foods, like you know you will, I mean if you over process too much of these type of foods and a lot of fruits and a lot of vegetables have high methionine and tryptophan.Think of this yogurt. OK, yogurt whey protein is very high in tryptophan and methionine, especially methionine. So any of the whey protein that people are using today that are above 25 years old, 28 years old, 30 years old. There’s so many people using it in their milkshakes, in their athletic performing drinks. Whey protein has the highest form, methionine, so it you keep constantly taking that you will get a mTOR and I have seen that with professional lifters, they got increased heart disease, enlarged heart, they had cardiovascular damage, they had kidney failures. So I seen it that these athletes, so if you’re going to have yogurt, have Greek  yogurt because the way protein is totally removed from that. So you’re not getting any of the 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of these amino acids like cysteine for instance, a lot of studies on and N-acetylcysteine with all kinds of different things from lung health to glutathione levels to to helping with virus stuff and and viral replication and immune function, a lot of data on that being beneficial, how does that, how does that connect? Because we see a lot of data on some of these things being beneficial, also tryptophan, you know, that could be really helpful for serotonin, sleep and all that. How do those connect? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK glutathione is a very controversial thing. I never use it, never have, never will. I’ve been doing Cancer Research for almost 40 years, 50 years now, and one thing I learned from the Germans, they were the best in this field. In the 80s when they were visiting me. In the 90s when I went to Mexico and worked with clinics. Glutathione is an antioxidant that protects cancer cells from chemoradiation surgery. They know how to protect themselves, they know how to build the defense systems, and glutathione is one of the key defense systems that cancer cells use to protect themselves from oxidative damage, from death, or whatever. There’s another thing that we need to know is oxidation reduction. OK. Oxidation is how everything is electron flow into the chamber to make energy. In the end of all this is the reduction state. All the electrons are received and they need to be converted back to donation instead of receiving, only if we only receive electrons and don’t know how to donate back. That’s how we end up dying, and that’s how we end up being sick. And that’s how we start aging. It’s called oxidation reduction NAD NADH. And there’s one other thing that people don’t understand is called glutathione, oxidative glutathione and reduction glutathione and everybody today is in that reductive state of glutathione which is only grabbing electrons but is not converting it back to energy. And that’s what we need to do as a living system. We need to have those things functioning. Oxidative reduction states low. NAD High, NADH low. Then we have the glutathione stage, the oxidative stage and the reductive state and oxidative. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break some of it down for the listeners to make sure we’re on the same page, so when you’re talking reduction, reduction is nothing more than a gain of electrons. You have an extra electron and we’re talking oxidation, we’ve lost an electron. And so the goal with a lot of antioxidants, they’re trying to come in there when they’re in an oxidized state, they’re trying to give off that electron to bring that electron back up to a stable place, is that correct? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Right. But then a lot of that, yeah, a lot of the antioxidants are in the reduced state. Think of vitamin C. What does vitamin C? Vitamin C is an antioxidant, but in the cell, It’s ,uh, we oxidative state. In the normal chemistry of this cell or vitamin C supplements, they’re in the reduced state, so they need to be converted inside the cell to dehydroxy C ascorbic acid, which is a oxidative state of vitamin C. Vitamin E is one of the few other ones that really is a very strong antioxidant that can be used as an anti-inflammatory, as an oxidative state. Umm, vitamin and not too many. You know a lot of your polyphenolic, so you know all your fruits and vegetables, especially your juices. They have a lot of flavonoids. And flavonoids are very important in reducing inflammation. But also, they’re also reducing oxidative stress. And promoting electron flow in the electron chamber because they can produce an increase electrons in oxygen and that’s what we need.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How does sodium potassium pump come into play because we know sodium potassium really important and we know a lot of these vegetables have a lot of potassium. Many large percent of the population deficient potassium. Where do those electrolytes come into play here? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK, that’s Gilbert Ling has shown that these cells do not have sodium potassium pumps. They don’t work that way. That’s Gilbert  Ling. Read cells the engine life. Ray Peat is one of the best in the field in understanding sodium pumps. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We need these potassium and we need these electrolytes though, right?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, we don’t really need it. We get enough of those in the cell. It, uh, here’s what it is. If you studied the electron mitochondria. Douglas Wallace, he’s the father of mitochondria by far, you know, and there’s many others. Every disease, 99% of all disease is based on what we call mitochondria decay. OK. And it’s the damaging effects of mitochondria, OK. And that’s all the diseases out there, you know and can. So what we’re seeing is that in nature, there is no, energy is required by the cytoplasm of the cell, and that’s where the mitochondrion takes electrons and makes energy ATP, and that’s how the cell survives. And water is key in structuring the cells, the gels of the cells and so is protein and that’s why it looks like a jello and having that, that’s the key to everything out there. And so if you read the book Cells and Gels, you read Gilbert Ling work, you leave Tom. Do you know Thomas Cohen? The MD. Yeah, he is very controversial because he was against the vaccine and all that and the virus. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He was up in San Francisco, right? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: He was in San Francisco and he’s in New York now. And he has now. Yeah, yeah, he’s doing consultation and he’s 100% right about the cells and gels of how the cells exist today. They don’t have any sodium-Potassium, you need sodium and you need potassium as an electrolyte for nerve function, for electricity to occur in the body because we’re a DC current, we’re not an AC we’re DC current. That’s Robert Becker’s book on body electric, and I had a chance to work with him when I was at UCLA and the guy was a brilliant scientist. And that we’re all a DC electrical system. Everything works on that. And it’s all on low frequencies and low, uh, hertz. And everything is low gas. We’re a very extreme low gas human being and when we’re under a lot of high gas, we get damage. And so, uh it if you have a chance, read the Cells and gels by Gerald Pollack, Read Gilbert Ling book, Ray Peat. He’s got millions of articles on sodium pump and then Thomas Cohen’s work and Jack Cruz on who’s a neurosurgeon on biohacking the mitochondria with sunlight. They all know about the cells now they understand, and that’s how they know how to work with the cells and fix it again. And that’s what I’m doing today, is understanding chemistry and how it started 303 billion years ago, how it all came into play. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, so we put a lot of things out here, but in regards to it like the average person listening, they’re like OK, like what am I gonna do? What’s the action item? So give him one or two things that they can do to help improve the cells and gels, the mitochondria, I mean outside of we already talked about a couple of things with processed food, we already talked about sunlight, collagen, you know, having the mTOR, the Omega-6, what else can be done kind of low hanging fruit wise? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, I think, I think going back to how we were created OK and who we are OK and what chemistry of life created us? 600 Billion, uhh, million years ago, sunlight was starting to develop and just going back to little history so you understand who we are. The sunlight was developing and was maturing and chlorophyll was present 600 millions years ago. But it was needed by plants. And then 500 million years ago, the Sun developed even stronger and UV light, A, B and C was the foundation of the sunlight. That’s the strength of the sunlight. And it was maturing 500 million years ago. And guess what, that’s what helped to create the hemoglobin, which was the iron part of the blood, not the magnesium is part of the plant. But then the mitochondria was developing because at that period of time, the UV came through the ozone layer and tripled the lay amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and that’s what created life. All of us. So that’s what helped with us was the sunlight. And the sunlight and the mitochondria was perfect. The oxygen levels was perfect. Thermodynamic temp, Temperatures of the ocean and the land was perfect. And that’s why things started developing humans and everything. So going back today, we live in an indoor world. OK. All the food we can eat today, it doesn’t make a difference because what we need is the function of the mitochondria and that is stimulated by the whole spectrum of the sun’s, not just the portion of the spectrum. The ATP cycles this cell electron transport C1,C2,C3,C4 and C5 requires photosynthesis to occur in order to make energy in the food. So we need to be exposed in the sun more early in the morning. So we get our circadian going, our pineal gland and thyroid going. That’s how we get a stimuli. Then at lunchtime, we need to expose ourselves 30 to 60 minutes of with no shirt to get vitamin D and unique cholesterol to make vitamin D so you cannot deprive yourself of the cholesterol foods. That’s how you’re going to get sick. And then again, you need that they are reduction of blue light at night, so you need to escape blue light and that’s where you try to get some sunlight in the evening because a different spectrum of light, so we’re exposed to blue light damage, artificial lighting, and it was all discovered by a guy named Kessler.  We need to develop the AC current. Remember that? And what did they operate in the 1800s? Kerosene in the street. So we were using artificial lighting then, and that’s what started the decay of the human population since then. And then the other thing is realized, we need good food. We need to get good water, Not fluoride, fluoride, you know fluoride is a damaging effect in water. We need to get non fluoridated water. We need to ,Um, We need to eat a higher amount of protein and less, Uh, starches and carbs and not. So we don’t, you know, vegetables are good, but they’re not because they can cause a lot of oxalates and oxidative damage to the thyroids. Yeah, there’s a lot of estrogenic foods in nature. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So can you get protein from animal products? Can can you be making vegetarian in your mind and be healthy and get your protein from animal products strictly? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You have to be from animal products only. That’s how we do. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And why though? Why?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well. Did I lose you?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I’m here.You’re going. Alright. Well you’re well you’re kind of getting your stuff here. I’ll kind of riff on a little bit. I mean the reason why I think Dr Bernd may be a big fan of animal protein and they I am as well obviously is going to be just the amino acid profile you’re going to get essential all your top eight or nine essential amino acids with a lot of vegetarian proteins. You gotta combine them, and when you combine them, usually you’re missing either methionine or lysine or protein. You get to combine them. The problem is when you combine them, you get a lot of extra carbohydrates. You know when you typically combine animal or or vegetarian proteins? Rice, beans, whatever, quinoa. Usually it’s about a 60 to 70% starch.To your 15 or 20 grams of protein. So you end up getting a lot of carbohydrate. So people attend to do OK on the vegetarian, vegan type, they tend to be more ectomorphs, tend to be people that do well on high carb foods if you’re more prone to insulin resistance like I am, or most of the population.You you’re gonna get too much carbohydrates for you and for your activity level and so you really gotta choose good animal proteins where you get the proteins, you get the fats obviously. You’re also getting less Omega 6 less to the inflammatory foods that are going to be in those vegetarian protein, so it’s good to get it from animal sources that are pasture fed, um, naturally raised, grass fed, whether it’s eggs, chickens eating bugs, whether it’s whether it’s beef and grass and cows and grass, whether it’s chickens, whether it’s Lamb pasture fed diets going to shift that fatty acid profile and that fatty acid is more in the natural state, it’s in any more anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense and you’re going to get a lot more nutrition in in the animal product. So we lost Dr Bernd here. So I’m going to just keep on riffing unless he can jump back on here and just try to provide a lot of value for y’all and if you want to kind of chum it, come in here in the chat guys and just put some questions in. Feel free and rip off some of that. So just summarize, collagen, really helpful, really good building blocks, connective tissue for your joints, ligaments, tendons, you’re not going to get that animal protein. So, love collagen, again, I worked out to Dr. Bernd to kind of formulate my own collagen that has the the peptide form. We’ll put links down below where you guys can get it. Um, the problem with a lot of collagen on the market, they’re made with sulfuric acid, so when you blend it in coffees and teas, you taste it. It’s got this really not so good after taste. So when you use proteolytic enzymes, it’s gonna blend better, it’s not gonna have the after taste and then you get these signaling, uh proteins in there which are which are really important. So if you have joint issues, especially as you get older and you started to see your gaps and your X-ray start to drop a little bit. That the hip or the knee and you started to go bone on, bone in knee, the connective tissue building blocks to build back up that joint base. Very important. If you don’t bring the raw material in, you’re gonna have a problem. Next big thing, you should need the Omega. You know, good quality fatty acids, more from animal. If you’re gonna do more of the vegetable, make sure it’s keeping on the the low temperature side. Very important. I’m a big fan. Doctor Bernd, is more of a carb guy, but you can see him. He’s a leaner, he’s a leaner kind of wiry guy, right. He’s going to do really good with more carbohydrates, those kind of things. You gotta adjust your carbohydrates for your body type. So if you’re kind of a an ectomorph, think of that as the the dancer, the basketball player, leaner, taller person, then you need to adjust. You could probably handle more carbs, if you’re the mesomorph, that’s the in between. I’m kind of the mesomorph. I’m kind of like the, the linebacker, right. You can be lean, but you can also get big too. And then then you have the endomorph. That’s the the lineman, right? That’s the the person that’s more prone to just to be big. And gain weight with carbohydrate, yet to figure out where you sit. And then you also have to look at your activity level. If you’re walking ten, 15,000 steps today, doing a little bit of lifting, you can always get away with more carbs. The more active you are, the less active you are, you got to adjust that.Well, get that to Dr. Bernd back on here. Let’s see if I can plug them back in. Alright. Bernd. We were just kind of riffing that. I was riffing a little bit here on collagen and fatty acids and we had a little collagen. Yeah, no big deal, we’re just kind of roll with it. Can you go back and just talk about joint issues? Umm, have you seen a lot of case studies your experience people with bone on bone or serious joint issues. Have you found they’ve been able to build that joint back up with collagen? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know what, in combination with your, uh, the work that we do and using red light in infrared light. Heat lamps. I think the combination we definitely need collagen for the recovery, I found an interesting study 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Have you seen clinically though, you can build that joint back up when it’s already worn down, when you’re like, hey, I may need a knee or hip replacement in a couple of years. Can you avoid that? Can you build it back?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: If you still have cartilage left, OK. And I think, you know, most of us do.If we use a certain, I found that if we go from 60 grams to 100 grams of collagen.There’s a greater chance of recovery and rebuilding and restructuring the cells, yes, if we get you know. Umm.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We lost some folks. I’m gonna keep riffing here. So yeah, Bernd’s talking about bringing that collagen up to 100 grams or so. Again, usually you get about 10 to 15 grams per scoop. I do about 20 or 30 grams a day. I put it in my coffee. My collagen, it blends well, it just acts like a Creamer. It just thickens it up and then I’ll throw a little bit of butter and MCT oil and blend it up. I try to get good fats cause you gotta think of eating good healthy fats. That’s support for your cell membranes, right? Cell membrane health is so important because that’s how your cells communicate. And the more you consume fatty acids that are going to be more on the oxidized side, that’s going to create oxidative stress that’s going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. It’s also going to make your cell membrane stiff and inflexible. We’re just talking about cell membrane stiffness with all the excess fatty acids here, but go ahead with the collagen and the joy of recovery. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So I feel if we, uh, use a combination of.Vitamin D calcium and a good gym diet and keep the collagen up about 45 to 60 grams a day, which is, you know, and I’ve had 100 grams a day with many of my athletes. I seen faster results from college and you know, I’ve seen better results with the higher level of you know collagen in the grams, adding calcium, vitamin D and light therapy and as much as he, If we can generate into that area. So we can get 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: better more articulation over like chicken or fish multi collagen, is there a reason why you like the beef better versus the other?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: The reason I like better and I you know I’ve used it only if pretty much in my whole career going back to the 80s, maybe a little pork at that time because of Jello. Gelatin.Yeah. Um, At least I today I know I’m getting quality I would would beef. I know I can get grass fed beef. Chicken. There’s no way of getting grass fed chicken. They’re mostly using, uh, soy and corn, right? And so you’re getting hormones in there, you’re getting estrogen. And then in the no control of the environment that then because there’s so much contamination today in the water. And what they’re feeding them. So I don’t really use that either. It’s all because of the process of how they’re made. If I can get collagen and I get beef that’s grass fed 100% all the way to the end, I know I’m getting quality and I’m getting, you know, consistent results.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. So that’s very good And how does, how does the? What? What the animal eats? Whether it’s cows eating grass or chickens eating bugs, how does that affect the amino acids? Do you notice like collagen from let’s say factory farm chickens or factory farm carbs? Does the amino acid spectrum in that collagen change? Which shifts? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In collagen, you know, the only thing I notice is the quality of the collagen comes from a good source of grass fed cows, OK? Umm. So I can tell the difference with my clients and patients for years, their response, their results are better. I’m getting you know, yeah and I’m not getting any of the inflammatory conditions and I don’t have to worry about any of the hormonal factors that may be found in residues and really low residues in these things. You know and then the vitamin E level and collagen is a little bit higher in grass fed animals than and they’re lowering in you know the polyunsaturated fats. So I’m getting almost none of that in my grass fed.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s good. So someone else listening here, we talked about sunlight, that’s easy. Obviously we don’t want to get a sunburn. We talked about mTOR and insulin and fasting and fatty acids. What else can someone do to kind of help put their kind of start signaling those healthy anti-aging Epigenetics, right, the genetics are just kind of what’s there that’s that’s the hardware that’s already written. We’re talking about the epigenetics which is the software to help maximize that hardware use. What else can we do to optimize our epigenetics to be in that anti aging, healthy aging kind of path? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know, eating a good meal, right? Having the right proteins, almost reducing the levels of polyunsaturated oils from seed oils. Umm. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any other thing, is anything else more nuance and anything that yeah, my life reducing, they got anything else that’s more nuanced that they may not have heard before?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Reducing stress. Go for walks, get in the sun more often. Eliminate the amount of exposure indoors with blue light technology, you know, uh, put, if you’re going to bed here is the most important thing you can do at a certain time in the evening, do not look at your video or cell phone after 5,6,7 in the evening, OK? Get your body and mind ready for sleep and regeneration and anabolic steroids and all the stem cells that comes at night.That grows back. Get rid of all the Wi-Fi. Turn it off. Do not have your cell phone in the bedroom. Put it on airport mode or.I turned the whole phone off and I never have my Wi-Fi on during the days. Most of the days I’m inside and I’m very rarely inside and so I try to keep my bedroom free of any EMF electrical magnetic or radiation and I have a meter and I use that meter to give me sort of an idea what’s going on and I like, I like to try feel that’s the one I use because, Yeah, and that’s one I use every day for everything. You know, I go in the people’s home and I see what’s going on and I can say here’s your EMF levels, you need to reduce that and the only way to do that is unplug most of the electrical keep your refrigerator yeah and you know certain things on but you can pretty much turn everything off and if you can the, best thing is get a Ley line you know i know we’re out of it people don’t even know there’s Ley lines anymore. But you know we don’t lay line is where you you plugged in everything you know

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: a landline. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. I’m sorry, landline. I meant landline. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some of my patients that they’re. It you, you can also just try killing your breaker box to your house. Just kill the power for the night. Again, may not work. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, fridge come. But you can at least kill your room if you want. Again, it just depends upon how chronically sick you are too. You know the more sick you’re right, the more you can decrease that electromagnetic stress if you’re pretty healthy you could probably. That’s probably something you can adapt to. How do you manage the 5G stuff? Because that’s kind of everywhere now and these things are harder to avoid.

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I go in the sun pretty much every morning, every afternoon I’m 2-3 hours in the sun. If I’m exercising, I’m exercising outdoors totally. I’m walking. I’m grounding myself. I walk in concrete. Or the best ideal place to walk is is in the beach. You know, being by the beach is ideal. That means there’s no 5G’s there and you’re grounding your body and you know, uh, getting back to nature, that’s really who we are. And try to limit the out indoor as much as you can unless, you know, get John Ott’s lamaran or any of those full spectrum lightings. Start using natural lighting back in the inside you know no LED’s and you know try to avoid that and get more of a full spectrum light. Where the it almost gives you the same resonance of a sunlight you know and that’s what you want to do and eliminate as much as you can 5G just don’t be near it and the like I said don’t be on the phone, don’t be on a video and avoid it. And I wear blue light glasses for last 10 15 years anyway at night, so if I’m exposing myself to anything I always wear my blue lights. And I have it all over my house now, blue light lamps. You know where they produce red lamps. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Dr. Bernd, very good. Well, anything else you want to highlight and leave with the listeners? I think you kind of put some really good information out there, fatty acids, collagen, the right types of collagen. We talked about sleep, we talked about light. Obviously with light you don’t want to get burned.Right. You want that minimal erythemal dose, morning hours, yeah, 8-9 or so. Later on. But just don’t get burned, would you agree? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, here’s how you do it. Your body is exposed. The uh, you know, exposing yourself to UV light is how life started. OK, that’s the creation of every living system in our planet, OK, and UV is part of the importance of the mitochondria and building the mitochondria and all that. So what I’m thinking and what we need to do is, you know, don’t if you expose yourself slowly every day a little bit to sunlight.you’re not going to get burned OK. Burn only happens when you have a bad diet. If you eat a lot of polyunsaturated. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: mornings exposure, you haven’t acclimated your skin to it. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, I have no problems because I’m in the sun all the time, so if you go out in the sun. And you expose yourself, uh, 30 minutes, 15, 20 minutes in the morning. You’re protecting yourself already by doing that. Then at lunchtime 12 to 3, where UV is the highest, you’re not going to be damaged by it so much because you’re already developed a defense mechanism against that through the early sunlight, right? And if you’re worried about it, take an aspirin. And if you take an aspirin before you go out in the sun, you won’t get burned. And this was a study done in Israel, in Australia, about 1990s, that sunlight, taking an aspirin before going out on the sun doesn’t cost any inflammation or sunburn. And that was one of the two studies that they’ve done in Australia, the papers I read. It was phenomenal. So I take aspirin every day, especially at night, to protect myself against clotting mechanisms and strokes and cardiovascular things. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So why you choose an aspirin over ginger or some kind of something a little bit more natural? Because there’s an aspirin have other type of potential side effects though. Gastrointestinal upset or maybe a liver stress?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: when I attended.The anti aging conference in Las Vegas. One of the people I met at the one of the speakers was the head of Bayer aspirin researcher. Yeah, and his whole speaking assignment that day was on Fox 2 Gene. It’s an anti aging gene that’s seen to be found in certain animals like you know worms and mice and now it’s shown to be in humans, aspirin actually extended the Fox 2 gene. So you’re not going to get diseases and aging and aspirin has probably more clinical studies than any other nutrient on the planet today. For anti-inflammatory condition for it’s mitochondria function I used to give my athletes coffee and aspirin to increase uncoupling mechanism which increases mitochondria function in the cells. So it has so many potentials, you know it, it is a truly, instead of causing reduction state in the cells, which we were talking about how oxidative states is the key and keeping electron flow going into the mitochondria and keeping our Redox cycling function going. So we’re donating electrons back to the energy chamber. Aspirin does that and and when you take with coffee in the morning, it doubles the uncoupling mechanism. So our athletes is so much like a steroid for them they can see a difference. And I’ve had people say this is worse than a steroid. I’ve never seen anything so good as aspirin and coffee and if you take it at night, it lowers the inflammatory condition. And one thing I learned from a cardiologist at Harvard was that it protects us from ever getting a stroke. When we get up in the morning, our cortisol levels are high.The potential for a blood clot to occur is greater at 4, 5, 6, 7 in the morning then any other time of the day. It’s because we’re just getting up and the blood is getting very stagnated and there’s a clotting mechanism and aspirin protects that. It prevents the platelet aggregation so it doesn’t happen.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What about curcumin though? I’ve seen a lot of drug companies kind of focusing on the research of curcumin with anti cancer. It’s everywhere plus we know curcumin is really good for that platelet aggregation reduction that blood thinning effects. What about using that too, what do you think about other natural compounds? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, it’s interesting. Um, I work with Elizabeth Dimarzio,  University of Florida AMM. OK. She’s the leading world expert in inflammatory compounds from herbs from all over the world, OK? And I’ve been involved with her for over 10 years now, and I’m on her board. And curcumin was not even close to being the highest in the anti-inflammatory or anti tumor cancer things, there were so many other compounds like Boswellia. If you’re gonna take anything Boswellia would be my second choice from aspirin because it has a Cox 1 and Cox 2 inhibitor. Yeah. And so there are many other herbs she found that a lot of the Chinese 1000 year old herbs, 2000 euro have tremendous medicinal benefits in anti-inflammatory and antitumor and frankincense is one of the big ones and Boswellia and ashwagandha.Those yeah, ashwagandha is very good. I would pick those over curcumin and turmeric would be on my second choice. My down the line 10th, 11th, 12th, because turmeric is the whole plant and has much more medicinal purposes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if you had to choose like whether a drug like aspirin or ibuprofen, you would choose the aspirin any day?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Every day because it also has a key molecule in there that we discovered in one of the research at Ohio State University Medical Center and at the Florida AM. It promotes ATP production, Mitochondria. Ibuprofen, Tylenol has a reductive state. Aspirin is an oxidizing state.It helps with oxidation. So that’s why I would choose that, because of the oxidative state. The oxidation of aspirin is very high, so it helps with mitochondria uncoupling. So we’re getting more ATP production, where Tylenol and all the other ones do not have that. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aspirin profound effects on mitochondria is it uncouples mitochondria oxidation and induces mitochondrial permeability transition. Interesting. That’s cool. Yeah. Take a look at that. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I have hundreds of papers on aspirin, so we can move on that anytime. Absolutely. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s very good. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that, Doctor Bernd, very cool. OK, anything else you want to leave the listeners with, drberndfriedlander.com We’ll put links down below and we’ll put some reference links to the collagen that we’re talking about and they’ll be show notes.Up with everything. Kind of transcribed for y’all. So you wanna go through. They actually read the transcription. That may be easier for you all. Anything else you wanna leave, listen with Dr. Bernd? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, starting out the day. Get some sunlight, have a good breakfast. Don’t skip on protein. Protein is just so crucial. That again in the, uh, utilization of nitrogen.There was no plant protein on the top list. This is scientific studies that were done. And so you wanna stay on a good protein diet. You wanna make sure you get plenty of sunlight, you do the right exercise. Don’t overdo it. Don’t get into oxidative stress. Um, you know, casually. Uh. Be careful with fasting too, because fasting is a stressor. The body goes under stress, so you don’t want to go on too much. People are doing too much. Uh, fasting and not getting enough protein. And so the quality of repair, regeneration is reducing itself. So we’re seeing more injuries, we’re seeing more carless from like you probably have everybody’s talking to me in the gym say, well, you know I gotta get knee replacement this replacement that replacement because you know they’re stressing the joints out and not eating the right foods and like you said, collagen is necessary in keeping our cartilage up and ligaments and tendons and muscles up, but it lowers the inflammatory mechanism that is produced by majority of all the foods we eat today. And that’s all the fried foods and all the carbs and starches and wheats and grains. And we got Roundup in all our foods anyway. So that’s another problem. We haven’t even talked about Roundup, you know, and how it’s damaging mitochondria. It’s literally damaging the mitochondria. It’s costing ATP damage. And that’s another study 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have a question I wanted to hit you with. So we talked about kind of cardiovascular exercise, right? There’s a lot of different types of cardio you can do. There’s some data on just kind of that long term steady state type of exercise being harder on your adrenals, more catabolic, but there’s data out there on Tabata, our interval type training is also I think it’s couple of people out there. Peter Attia kind of brought it to light the zone two type of cardio. Uh, where you’re keeping your heart rate and that you know mid to low one hundreds, you’re, you’re, you’re you’re still able to talk while you’re doing some exercise, whether it’s rolling or an elliptical. What’s your take on different types of cardio and their application, whether it’s an interval, Tabata, zone two? What do you like? What do you recommend for the average people?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, being an athlete specialist, exercise physiologist, I have changed my attitude to a lot of these things from the beginning, when we were excessively training people. I’ve learned more in the last 20 years about how to preserve the mitochondria. How not to damage it. OK, so if I do anything, I like walking. I don’t wanna stress my body out anymore, OK? I’ve done. I’ve been an Olympic athlete. I’ve been a professional athlete and I’ve seen the injuries that come with that, I’m very fortunate that I never had an injury in my young life, you know, until about 60 when I had to replace my hip because of the excessive wear and tear of my body as an Olympic athlete.Training five different professional teams. Coaching 3 Olympic teams, you know, 80, 84 and 88, it was too much. So I find that it is best to do some walking and some concentric workout. What’s a concentric workout? Short centric shortening the muscle, but on your way back down you still wanna show use resistance so you’re using resistance in both direction like slow push up 10 second push-ups, where you only count to 10 seconds going up, going down, 10 seconds holding in

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Holding it the whole way. That’s a long contraction. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: That was our studies in the 80s at UCLA, was concentric and short 10 second uh, workout so when you’re doing a curl. You take uh, I’m trying to show you it’s the curl is goes. You going like the bicep and you code down. Slow, slow, slow. Yeah. And you do 10 seconds up 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 10 seconds. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander:  Yeah, same thing. You get a better workout in the shorter reps than you need. You don’t need that many reps. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, I’m a big fan of slower eccentric because the problem is that prevents you from lifting too heavy weights and it’s lifting too heavy with crappy form that  bounced the weight or that hurt their back and the deadlift or squat. So when you have that slow eccentric, it’s really hard to hurt yourself on the end. Also, I just, I was thinking about this here. You got guys like Tom Brady who are just playing forever, is he consuming collagen? What do you think he’s doing? Obviously we got the book. He’s kind of autoimmune paleo guy. What’s he doing then to kind of keep himself longevity wise with his joints and everything else. You have any inside game on that? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know when I was in a starting to work with a lot of the athletes we were introducing.Uh, hyperbaric chambers. We were introducing infrared saunas in the 80s. You know, nobody knew about it. Today, most of your athletes are using, you know, some many different forms. They’re using infrared saunas.They’re using red Infrared light therapy, they’re using heat. They’re using vibrational things, Shockwave. A lot of them are getting PRP. They’re getting uh, ozone therapy. I can tell you a lot of these are professional athletes and are becoming more aware of what’s going on. I used, I knew Tom Brady. I played basketball with him when he was in high school in Sierra High. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is he in San Mateo, because you’re, you want right down the street from him at San Mateo. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I gave him a couple adjustments, you know, quietly at the gym. I knew he was a very bright individual and you have to be very bright. Like Howie Long was my favorite athlete overall. OK, here’s my really first really favorite athlete that I work with at the Raiders. And at that period of time he was very bright. He understood diet and he understood, you needed to do a lot of flexibility, like Pilates, yoga or stretching. Jerry Rice is like that. Jerry was very much into stretching. Tom is much more into that as well because 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pliability work. He talks about it. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, it doesn’t do a lot of weight training. And when Howie Long started working out with Lyle Alzado, his, you know. He started getting disc herniation and hamstring and calf damage and that’s How I Met him. And I think was you don’t want to do too much weight training. You do just enough. But you gotta do flexibility and if you don’t do that, your career is not gonna be long.You need to elongate the body, you need to do it alright. And I think people becoming smarter, you know, and I think nutrition is very important. I can only tell you the athletes I work with. I cut down their carbs, I increased their proteins and fruits and et cetera so that they have a better quality of health. As they’re working out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Doctor Byrne. Well, let’s put a book in on this. Let’s bring this conversation back up. I’ll get you back on in a few months. We can continue the dialogue. I appreciate it. We’ll put links to find you. drberndfriedlander.com. Anything else you want to leave the listeners, Doc? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, just enjoy life. Don’t get into everything you know. Stay away. Medicine really is your, you know, eating right, getting sunlight.Little exercise. That’s the medicine. That’s all you need. You don’t need anything else. You can live without taking any blood pressure medication or other medications because nature was there. That’s where we started. That’s what we need to get back to is live outside, eat, right and get plenty of natural lighting and enjoyment in your life. Just let food be your nature, but now your sunlight too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Bernd, I  Appreciate it. You’re the man. Great chatting with you. We’ll talk soon. You take care. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Alright. Thanks. Bye. Talk to you then. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://drjabanmoore.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/collagen-inflammation-reduction-sunlight-epigenetic-anti-aging-strategies-drbernd-friedlander-podcast-377

Recommended Products:

TruKeto Collagen

TruCollagen (Grassfed)

Multi Nutrient Supreme

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TruPaleo Protein Vanilla

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The Top 5 Anti-Aging Techniques to Age Gracefully | Podcast #342

Hey guys! In this video, Dr. J and Evan discuss the factors that affect the aging process. They are more straightforward—and less invasive—ways to look younger than mainstream or conventional ways. Dr. J suggests incorporating a few of these habits into your daily routine that won’t just leave you fresh-looking and it’ll boost your overall energy. Watch the video to learn how. Of all the places on your body, your gut is silently receiving different food that can cause the entire aging process. That includes standard precautions such as maintaining a well-balanced diet rich in good fats. But there are also quite a few ways that you may be aging your body without knowing it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

3:00:   Inflammation

7:21:   Insulin Resistance and blood glucose

16:59:  Sleep in the aging process

27:46:  Fasting Techniques

30:26:  Importance of movement and exercise

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are Live! It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re gonna be chatting about natural strategies to help detoxify round ups or glyphosate. Really excited to be chatting with Evan today. Evan, how are you doing today man?

Evan Brand: Doing really well! This is a super important topic.You sea many many lawsuit around the country happen and bayer who bought monsato. They’re really trying to get out of it. I’ve seen several, I’m no law expert but I’ve seen several stories how basically they’re trying to just, throw one lump sum out there for all the cases, as there are thousand and thousand of cases coming at them, because of different cancers like non-hodgkin’s lymphoma that people are claiming that has been linked to their glyphosate exposure. Whether it was like the school grounds worker who was a famous story  or other people. They’re really coming at them hard and they’re really really trying to weasel this way out of it and then I saw news just uh, last week actually, that glyphosate is actually going to be phased. I don’t know if you saw this but it said it’s going to be phased out by 2023. So I sent this new article over to Stephanie Synep who I’ve interviewed several times about glyphosate, and she goes “yeah, I saw this. They’re probably just going to come out with another slightly different molecule that’s just as toxic”. So she didn’t think it was that exciting news.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting! Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s kind of like a lot of the medication they have many me’s for it right. Something they can re-patent, um, almost the same molecular structure so they know it’s going to work based on the previous medication or compound but they don’t really have to do too much RND on it because, it’s so close to where it was. So yeah, I get that maybe, probably, the same toxicity profile too. So that makes sense, hopefully that’s not going to be the case but either way, we have a lot of toxins in our environment and roundup’s just one that we have a lot of other pesticides, herbicides, or genocides that are out there. Obviously, a lot of potential chemicals in the water, air, and so roundup or we can kind of put roundup of pesticides – all in the same category, I think that’s pretty fair . So you know first thing is, try to mitigate the use of them on your property, I mean, I use a little bit of pesticides in a spot treating, man. Are we trying to avoid anything blanketed or anything just, you know, blanketed across the board, and you know, we don’t really play out in the grass that much, I mean so if your kids are rolling around out in the grass definitely pay extra money and have those weeds picked up by hand. I think that’s a better way to do it but every now and then, there may be a necessity to spot treat stuff but do your best to avoid that especially if your kids are playing near glass like that, or just have a grass in your yard that you know, this is the play area this where the kids go. We put a nice little rock pit in our backyard just because we know that the rock pit’s going to be perfect right? Put some like, soft help you know, small pebbles in there, um, that are you, um, still fun to play in and they have a digger pit and all that so just try to do your best if you have kids that are young that are playing; mitigate any playing on areas that have any pesticides at all; try to mitigate the use of them, 100 percent and try to have safe, safe spaces in your yard that, you know are perfectly clean.

Evan Brand: There is an alternative to roundup. I’m trying to figure out what it was the moms across America did and article on it-I’m trying to fin it here-it was like a non-toxic weed control. I don’t care about weeds; my grass looks cool and it’s got clover. We’ve got many other different species of plants besides just grass. I mean, I think it’s a myth and it’s dumb you have all these neighborhoods where they think you got to have the grass looking perfect, and grass is just like another version of monoculture. It’s like if you go and walk through my yard, you’re going to see so many different types of plants so I just don’t care. I think people have been brainwashed by the mainstream industry. Even our neighbor we’ve seen you know just out in flip-flops, spraying the glyphosate on their weeds. It’s like who said dandelions are bad? Like, that’s the first food for bee so for me, I’d rather see the field full of dandelions. I guess it’s personal preference but I kind of like it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It just depends. You know, the biggest problem with weeds in relationship to grass as they grow like, three times the speed, so if you haven’t cut your lawn for a week your grass in this long and your weeds are this long, right? So you missed the nice homogeneous, kind of, clean lawn. I’m a big long guy, I like a nice, clean, homogeneous lawn so I’ll walk out there, you know, halfway through the week if I see any weeds popping up; it’s easy because they grow twice the speed, it’s grass, and I’ll just go and take five minutes, and I’ll just pull my hand. You know, I’m like I  like a really nice pretty front lawn. So I’ll go there spend 5-10 minutes a week walking around, pulling by hand, just to mitigate the chemical usage but. First thing is, decrease the chemical usage, decrease the chemical dependency out of the gates. I guess that’s the easiest first step.

Evan Brand: So here’s one. So it’s called, there’s one called Dr. Kirchner natural grass and weed killer. I’m gonna to try to look it up, see what the ingredients. There’s another one, another competitor to it called, Green Gobler. And that’s a 20% vinegar weeding grass killer. And this thing’s got crazy high reviews of it. This Dr. Kirchner k-I-r-c-h-n-e-r natural weed killer . This is just, so it’s four percent sodium chloride, interesting. And they say this ocean water-based product is made for non-selective control of broad-leaf weeds and wheat grasses results in hours. So there you go, I mean it sounds like they’re just using like, concentrated ocean water, they’ve got thousands of five-star reviews on people, people on Amazon are posting their reviews of them in their garden after spraying this stuff and it literally kills it all. This lady said here that it’s magical and safe. So there you go!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we’ll have to put some links down below. So you have what, so what are those two products? Those ones that was an apple cider vinegar-based, what else?

Evan Brand: Yeah, and then you got this other one that’s salt water, it’s literally like, four percent ocean water concentrate, and then you have another one called, Natural Armor which is a 30 percent vinegar concentrate.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

Evan Brand: My wife even saw one at Target recently. She saw like an organic herbicide. I had a picture of it, I don’t know if I could find it on my phone or not but, she sent me a picture the other day. She said there’s no excuse for people using glyphosate; I said I know, I know, and then she sent me that picture-let me see if I can find it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good. That’s good. I mean glyphosate, what is does is, it it basically is a chelator, it pulls away all the minerals from the soil, and so it decreases the minerals getting up into the plant which then kill it. And so, if you’re using it even worse on food you’re eating, It’s it’s way worse. Because now you’re destroying the quality of the topsoil, you’re destroying the minerals in that soil, and we know that soil requires minerals so that plant can, um, let’s just say express it you know, express it’s full nutritional potential if you will. So if we have nutritionally deficient soil, like manganese for instance, you know, vegetables are going to have less vitamin C in it, right? So we know the minerals have a major role  and they and the quality of that soil, plays a major role in the kind of nutrientsthat plants will produce. So you’re gonna have less nutrition in soil where there’s a bunch of roundup that’s chelated out a lot of those minerals.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I was gonna say, let’s hit on the mechanism . So that’s definitely a big important one, and then the other one that you and I test for in the gut is, we’re seeing the glyphosates damaging the beneficial bacteria in the gut. And this is happening at even PBB – parts per billion levels. So once you kill off the beneficial bacteria in the gut, now you see the overgrowth of clostridium, and there’s a famous chart-I know you’ve seen it before and hopefully others have seen it. But you could just look it up, type in glyphosate autism chart, and you can see the correlation where glyphosate skyrockets along with autism rates, and I’ve seen many many autistic children and we test their glyphosate levels and they’re always high. So, this is not saying causation, but this is in correlation; and William Shaw, Bill Shaw-he’s a guy at great plains lab that we, that we use for these toxic chemical tests. You know, he wrote a great paper on this. He had a paper published about the mechanism . Essentially, it was like an order of operations. It was the glyphosate, as you mentioned, will cause nutrient deficiencies but then damages good bacteria. Bad bacteria like clostridium overgrowth. Now you’ve got these organic acids that go high which mess up an enzyme that breaks down dopamine, now you’ve got excessive dopamine, now you’ve got brain toxicity and the you damage the mitochondria. So it’s a long, a long route there but, this is directly damaging mitochondria which is certainly linked to chronic fatigue and other issues so, when we’re looking at someone’s picture of health, and we see they’ve got a major overload of pesticides, and they’re fatigued, we’re not gonna say, “Hey! This is you number one smoking gun of fatigue” but, it’s certainly a big peace of the puzzle; and I can tell you personally but also clinically when we use nutrients which we’ll get into to detox these pesticides-we see that energy levels go up; and you mentioned exposure, so also, you got to consider where you live too. So even if you’re having Joe Bob next door spray, that might not be as big of a deal as more agricultural areas which is you know, partially where I am which I don’t like. There’s a corn and soybean around here. This is just part of the country where I, where this happens and there’s papers on even one mile of pesticide drift. So the question is…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Far more worried about you because, just the load, you know, if you look at the, just the load coming through.

Evan Brand: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh, and your area is just got to be, you know, orders of magnitude. 10, 100x more than just a general uh, you know, residential person that’s just trying to knock down weeds a little bit.

Evan Brand: Totally. Which, which we’re aware of. We’re working on it and we’ve got, we’ve got an exit, so we’re working on it but, yeah. Luckily, we’ve been doing a lot of things. Are you ready to talk about some of the solutions? Obviously, avoidance, external exposure, trying to stay away from it, watching out for like, playgrounds. You know, a lot of playgrounds, they’re too lazy to pull the weeds so they’re just going to spray it so you’ll see often signs at playgrounds like, “watch out!”, and you can tell that they’ve sprayed on the mulch where the kids are playing, and then you may say, “Well, oh! We’ll just go to a rubber playground”, where you have all those chopped up tires but, those are really toxic too. We mentioned those rubber chemicals on the chemical profile for children too. I had a child, a young child actually, was a client who was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, and we looked at the levels of 1-3 butadiene and maybe some other chemicals; and these are all from synthetic rubber, and this kid was like a stup, a superstar soccer player. He was playing indoors, like 24/7. This kid was these fake rubber mats and his levels were like a hundred x higher than 95th percentile and that was a known carcinogen so we can’t say the rubber caused it but, man, it was certainly a big smoking gun in this case.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the chemical name?

Evan Brand: It’s so, it’s 1-3 butadiene. It’s on the great plains chemical report. It just says using the production. Yeah, just as used in the production of synthetic rubber.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So it’s definitely possible, right? So, I mean, out of the gates, the first thing is, we look at our food. Right? First this is make sure you food’s organic because you’re going to have major exposure if you’re taking things in, internally. Right? Things on the outside of the world like yeah, if you’re touching it, right? That’s going to be a problem so one try not to use it at your property or if you do you know, like you know, we try to use it more like glyphosate but kind of more natural version in the front yard spot treated. But in the backyard or in the play any area where we know that kids actually play. Like that’s just going to be off-limits. We try to make sure it’s super clean and good there; and then number two is um, you know, air is going to move all this stuff around. So even if you know you yard’s clean, your neighbors may not be clean. So you got to make sure air filtration in your home is dialed in so you can mitigate it potentially being in the home and breathing it in constantly. So air filters in the home, water filer because there’s also the worry about it getting off into the water table, and if we have a well or anything else, very concerning so you want to make sure good quality water filtration and then like I mentioned earlier-organic food and try to mitigate it’s usage around your property, or try to choose natural sources.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned the water too because that’s important. Believe it or not, even glyphosate’s being found in rain water which is crazy. It’s literally raining down glyohosate because it’s evaporating from various farms and agricultural than it’s moving through the wind currents and then getting rained down on people, and you may say, “Oh well, that’s got to be such a trace amount it doesn’t matter. Well that’s the thing, we’re finding that these, these compounds are active against the beneficial bacteria in your gut at these per billion levels. So you really can’t brush it off. People will try to brush it off but, it’s the small levels, and it’s the synergistic effects, right? So you’ve got a little bot of that and then you’ve got it from your diet. Plus you’ve got it from your water supply, plus you’re getting rained on in your organic garden. This adds up overtime and you and I see bacterial overgrowth everyday, all day; and we know that this is certainly linked to the disruption of the gut-these chemicals. So it’s too important to ignore the air filters is a tough one. I asked Stephanie Synep about that I said, “Hey! What is the actual size of glyphosate? I can’t find it. I’m trying to figure out because you’ll see air purifiers talk about a one micron or a three micron filtration, and she said “Oh, no. There’s no way you’ll be able to filter it. It’s too small so that’s what she said bit, I can’t find anything about the size of it. I’ve asked a couple of companies about is and they say, “Oh, yeah. NO problem. Our air filter will take care of it”, and another company said, “Oh, yeah. Our air filter should destroy the molecule” but, I don’t know how you would yest that. You’d have to like, I don’t know; Have somebody spray a bottle of glyphosate into a room and then run the purifier and see what happens but, it’s removed so many other things that it’s a non-negotiable us, and I know you do the same like, air purifier…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It’s moving a lot. I mean, you know, we like the Austin Air just because they have the 30 pounds of activated charcoal and zeolite, and those binders, you know, would have a positive effects, binding up these things and so it’s definitely going to decrease the load for sure. If it’s blowing through a hepa filter and also  through the 30 pounds of zeolite and activated charcoal. It’s going to have mitigating effects. It’s going to be better off, you know, on when it’s out than, than before, right? So I think it’s still a good thing to have to what degree, um, I don’t know but, in general, it’s good to have, of course the water is a big one. So I try to have all my water that I drink personally-reverse osmosis, so we have a whole house filter that’s carbon-based that filter a lot, and then I have a under the counter filter where I drink my water, and like you know, make smoothies from, or make my coffee from, or use for cooking like that’s all RO. And so we have a little mineral support supplement that will add minerals back in. Because the biggest problem with RO water is the depletion of minerals but, um, I’d rather always have the water cleaner and then add minerals back. It’s always easier to add minerals back than take toxins out.

Evan Brand: Right. Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Always easier.

Evan Brand: For sure, for sure. I mean, yeah…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So like, Oh my God! The minerals In the water. There’s no minerals. Like yeah, but there’s no toxins are way less, so now I’m okay with way less toxins and just being able to add a good trace mineral support back into the water.

Evan Brand: Yep! Yeah, and people…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you can do like, a redmond. You can do like a redmon’s real salt, you could trace mineral support with some extra potassium and magnesium-all that’s fine.

Evan Brand:  I’ll do some of the sea water too. Like some of the sea water like, quinton and there’s a couple other professional brands we use of sea water, that stuff. I tell you, I was kind of skeptical. I’m like how is adding like, basically salt water going to help me bit, it sure did. I mean, it definitely is like a thirst quencher. So it’s pretty remarkable the difference.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, yourself, your cells need uh, they run on a sodium-potassium pump. There’s this gradient of minerals on wither side of the cell. I think it’s what sodium, sodium is on the outside, potassium’s in. It does a little switcheroo. Sodium goes in, potassium goes out, and you need that gradient to happen for the cells to communicate properly. So it you’re low in sodium or potassium, that sodium potassium pump is not going to work optimally.

Evan Brand: you can feel it. I’m telling you. It’s, it’s significant. All right. Let’s hit on some of like, the detox strategies if you’re ready. I think the easy one…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the first thing is all the lifestyle stuff. That’s foundationthat we stack up. So easiest thing out of the gate is going to be glutathione. So glutathione, whether it’s s acetyl, lyposomal, reduce, whether we do, whether we’re making it with all the precursors like, NAC, ALA, glycine, collagen, right? All these things are going to be really important to help make your master antioxidant out of the gates-that’s probably the big one first.

Evan Brand: Yeah, glycine’s huge, and there’s actually some papers just on glycine by itself in isolation helping with glyphosate which is awesome. So I actually take glycine before bed. It really helps sleep too. So that’s another cool benefit but…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you can mix collagen, peptides, like I use my TrueCollagen with a little bit of magnesium powder before bed. That knocks it right out and glycine’s helpful with other toxins like strippers like xylene and things like that. It will, it will detoxify xylene-thses kind of chemicals too. So glycine is excellent, and then of course um, you know, roundup’s very destructive on the gut and so if you’re doing glycine, it’s very helpful to kind of heal the enterocytes and repair those too.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I would say probiotics are somewhere on the list now. I don’t know in terms of priority and the mechanism is the same as it is for mycotoxins. There’s some cool research coming out about probiotics actually being able to convert toxins into less toxic forms, and then that makes them more water-soluble, and able to excreted from the body. So there’s some cool mechanism involved with probiotics and of course, if you’re working with a practitioner like us, we’re going to coach you through when and how, and what we’re going to use. But that another cool piece of the puzzle. I’d say my next one is going to be micronized chlorella. There’s a couple professional that we use of it, and this is better than the broken cell wall chlorella because, it’s smaller molecules, and then that’s going to allow better transfer across the blood-brain barrier to get some of these heavy metals out. So we’ll actually use some products that are basically designed for heavy metals but, we’ll use them off-label for like mold and chemical detox.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and so like I have a heavy meal clear product that has some of the, some of the chlorella in there. It also has some of the sodium alginate, and then also some of the modified citrus pectin. These are really good binders that will help with metals and they’ll also help with uh, pesticides too which are great, and then, um, some of the research you’re talking about probiotics actually converting some of the mole toxins and also, they also have an effect binding them too. It’s that what you’re saying too?

Evan Brand: Yeah. I know it’s a conversion. I don’t know if it’s actually binding but, there’s a lot of like great planes they’re doing a lot of work on like promoting the idea of probiotics being like the universal mold detoxifier now – even better higher rated that charcoal for example, which is crazy .

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s why we always talk about dealing with the gut and working on the gut before we push any crazy detox because we know, the gut’s so important. It’s like a lot of these functional medicine principles are like you know, they’ve tried and true but, if you look at the science, like you find more little nitty-gritty within the science of what’s happening, why that is the case like we just kind of know clinically, you get better results doing it so we kind of go that way, and then we just see more data kind of just supporting that hypothesis.

Evan Brand: It’s cool. Yeah, it’s fun because you and I have been basically using the methods we use for years, and then new stuff comes out that’s like, “Oh, cool!” Well, we were doing that already; now we know that it was actually doing other things that we needed it to do for. It’s like get rid of toxins. So that’s, so that’s awesome. How about sauna too? I mean, sweating has been proven to help excrete so many things. I’ll tell you, you know, I had a lady that was in her 70s. We ran a chemical profile test on her. This lady’s test was so clean, I was almost in disbelief because I’ve seen 5, 6 year-old children that are just off the charts with chemicals, and then we have this lady in her 70’s who you think just lived through all sort of different eras of toxicity. Man, I tell you, her chemical tests were as clean as a whistle. I said, “What are you doing?’, and she was in a sauna three to four times a week for half an hour. I said “Wow!”, I said, ”You are living proof that the sauna works and that sweating is an incredible detox pathway.”

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see a lot of women, too. Like “Oh, man! I’m pregnant.Like, what’s the best way to detoxify when I’m pregnant?” I’m like, well number one, we don’t want to really push any detoxification. The only thing I may gently recommend is maybe a little bit of a, kind of a natural fiber, eating organic, drinking lots of water, and maybe a little bit of an infrared sauna. But you have to shower right afterwards just because you don’t want to move toxins to the skin, and then have them reabsorb back in. So you want to make sure you use a good 10 sulfur soap, break up that film of toxin on your skin so it flushes off your skin. So would you agree that you know, potentially doing a little bit of sauna therapy as long as you’re not depleting yourself, dehydrated, is probably a safe, probably one of the more safer, gentle ways to detoxify if you are pregnant?

Evan Brand: I guess it depends on temperature. Like I’m not going to put a lady in like, a hundred and eighty, like a hot rock one.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Evan Brand: I think an Infrared one…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It can be infrared were it’s lower temperature.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I think if you’re probably at like a 125 degrees or something. That’s somewhat natural that you could experience on the planet. I think would be no problem; the chlorella should be no problem, too. You know, we’ve actually…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Stays in the gut. It stays in the gut. You’re probably okay, I mean, chlorella, some kind of a gentle, more food-based binder is probably okay. I mean, if you’re gonna do some kind of a sauna and you’re pregnant, one, make sure you’re hydrated, make sure you have minerals. Start with like, three or four, or five minutes, and just kind of add like a minute of two every time so you don’t overdue. I always rather know you go at a lower level where you’re confident- you can handle it, and gently nudge it up, and just make sure you shower right afterwards. It’s probably the only detoxification means that I would really push outside of a gentle binder. Uh, that’s food-based for my pregnant females. Back on that, would you agree?

Evan Brand: I would say, I, I don’t see a problem with charcoal and chlorella during pregnancy because, you have to kind of weigh the pros and the cons, right? And we know that for example, these toxins go through the placenta. We know they go through breast milk, so here you are, willingly letting this toxins go through the unborn baby, when you could simply  use a gentle binder to try to mitigate some of that or even detox; that there’s actually been crazy stuff being done behind the scenes. I won’t go into too much details because I don’t think it’s published yet but, showing that these micronized chlorella molecules can literally detox the baby before the baby’s even born. So you can actually have a baby come out cleaner than it would’ve been, chemical wise, by being detoxed throughout the pregnancy by the transfer of the chlorella from mom to baby; and then of course, once the baby’s born, through the breast milk, also there is some transfer of chlorella. So there’s some crazy, crazy stuff coming out on that but, too soon to say exactly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. I like that. So, yeah. We have our binders, we like the binders, and again, talk to your, your OB if you’re a person that wants to look into that. When you’re pregnant, just be careful. I always recommend do all this stuff before but, if you waited and you have issues, and you got to do it now, talk to your OB, talk to your functional medicine doc before you ever do that. We typically don’t push any hard detoxification when uh, patients are pregnant just because we’re mobilizing a lot of toxins unless, we do it very very gentle-way like we mentioned before. Uh, outside of that, I would say we talked about all the big binders of water filtration. We’ll put some links down below with some of the RO and whole house activated charcoal, carbon-based filters that I personally use and Evan uses. We’ll put some recommended links that you guys have that. That’s going to be really important. I’d say air, water, organic food-those are going to be big, and then we can set them in on top of that. So uh, in my line I use heavy metal clear, my detox aminos that have calcium gluconate, and all the sulfur aminos, and reduced glutathione. Evan has some similar glutathione, and sulfur, and mineral-based products that are mineral, that are like our binders, like fulvic minerals or things that help bind up some of this things, too. So we’ll put some links down below if you want some recommended products that we personally use, and we’re kind of gave you some of the big mechanism, right? One’s binding, right? You’re binding some of it up, and the other one is you’re working on enhancing your own detoxification pathways, so they can excrete them. And then of course, low-hanging fruit, right? The solution to pollution dilution. You take any toxins, you hydrate well enough, good clean water and minerals, the more you hydrate that mineral, that toxin becomes less potent, the more it’s diluted. So that’s, it’s low hanging fruit. It’s easy to forget but, solution to pollution is dilution.

Evan Brand: Cheers! Yeah, and this is real stuff. I mean, we’ve seen many, many, I mean, hundreds of this point; before and after case studies of measuring these chemicals. It’s absolutely remarkable what can be done. So if you’re just like, “Oh, toxins are bad.”, and that’s all you get from this podcast, no. Remember that goes deeper than this. We’re talking the way you perform in terms of your mitochondreal function, your energy levels, the health of your gut. Whether you have bacterial overgrowth which then leads to bloating, and burping, and gas, and issues with your joints and potential autoimmune issues because now you’ve got chlostridium overgrowth. So if you hear this, all you think is” toxins are bad, I need to detox.”, no. Remember, this goes into every body system. This goes into adrenals, mitochondria, liver, gallbladder; I mean, the whole system is involved so don’t just blow this thing off. I still see people-I won’t name her but, there was a lady I knew from my, my town. Now she’s super big and she’s got a supplement company that’s like all these vitamin shop stores and everywhere, and she did a Q&A, and I mean this lady is a multi-millionaire, and people asked her, “Do you eat organic?”, and she said “No. I think it’s a waste of time.” It’s like you’re just, you’re just, uh, what’s the word? Not dumb, that’s the rude word. Uh…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ignorant.

Evan Brand: Ignorant. She’s ignorant. Yeah, that’s the word. She doesn’t know what that means. Like how important that truly is and how that’s changing everything from her offspring, and the health of her babies to her own health. So to people out there, if you’ve got the means to do it, which hopefully everyone can, I can see people have that brand new iphones but then they say they don’t have the extra dollar to buy the organic strawberries. You got to make thins thing a priority or you’ll see a brand new Mercedes SUV in the McDonald’s parking lot, like you’ve got to make organic a priority.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely. So you git to make it a priority. It’s shift that for sure, and again, people’s say organic’s a fad. Well, again, before 1950, everything was organic, right? That’s where the pesticide kind of fertilizer industry came kind of post-World War II, and so, everything was organic before that point. And again, like first thing I recommend in the order of priorities is, make sure your meat are organic and pasture fed first, okay that’s the first order of, um, let’s just say investment. The second thing is, eat from the clean 15-these are pesticides that have, these are foods that have a pesticide load; and then, avoid the dirty dozen. That’s kind of environmental working group thing. So we’ll put a link for the clean and the dirty dozen; and then from there, you can start getting organic vegetables that are frozen; that’s cheaper. And then of course, start to buy them, you know, more fresh and organic across the board but, that’s kind of the progression. So just try to at least start with the meats because the meats hold the most toxins, and so fats are in the toxins. So you want to start with meats first, and then you can work on going to clean 15, avoid dirty dozen, frozen organic, and then full fresh on organic. That’s kind of the algorithm there. Anything you want to say about that Evan?

Evan Brand: Yeah, local too. I mean, if you can get local beef too, where it hadn’t traveled thousands of miles from Brazil, and they didn’t cut down the rain forest to get that grass fed beef, then I would totally do that. I get my meat from 15 minutes down the road. It’s just hundreds, and hundreds of acres of beautiful chemical-free pastures. So I feel really good about it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great! I love it. Well, very good. So out of the gates here also, one last thing, if you don’t have good gallbladder function, or good digestion, right? You’re constipated, you’re not pooping everyday, you’re having a hard time digesting food, not breaking fat down or protein adequately, your stools are floating, excessive skid marks streaks-those kind of things that means you’re not breaking down fat, you’re not breaking down protein adequately, you’re not moving toxins through your bowels adequately, you’re gonna be reabsorbing that, you’re gonna, you’re not gonna have good gallbladder flow to push that out in the stool. So you’re potentially reabsorbing or not eliminating toxins via your digestive tract. And so if we have digestive issues, we got to have some stool testing, we got to fix whatever is going on from a microbial imbalance or gut infection in the intestines. That’s really important. Got to work on live, gallbladder, and making sure enzymes and acids are adequate to break everything down.

Evan Brand: Yep! Good call. And if you need help, you want to get some of this testing done, investigate your gut, look into your chemical toxicity, you can reach out to Dr. J or myself. This website is justinhealth.com if you need to reach out, it worked worldwide (facetime, phone, skype) any way you need to connect there. So justinhealth.com, and for me Evan, it’s evanbrand.com. We look forward to helping you. Also reach out. We offer intro calls too! You can chat with us and figure out exactly what’s going on, symptom wise, we’ll see if you’re good fit for care, and look forward to helping you out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We’re here for you all, guys. Awesome! And if you enjoyed it, thumbs up, comments down below, and um, we’re here! Justinhealth.com, evanbrand.com, and write us a review too! We appreciate it.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-5-anti-aging-techniques-to-age-gracefully-podcast-342

Recommended products:

TRUCOLLAGEN (Grassfed)

Organic Grass Fed Meat

Air Doctor Air Purifier

Austin Air Health Mate Plus

Magnesium Supreme

How Your Diet And Blood Sugar Can Weaken Your Adrenals | Podcast #340

Changes in blood sugar levels may be a sign and symptom of adrenal fatigue. In the early phase of adrenal fatigue, you can see hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) and, in an advanced phase of adrenal fatigue, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is the usual presentation. 

The thing is, you may not notice a problem with your blood sugar levels, but that doesn’t mean it’s terrific. It is essential to monitor and know the symptoms of having a diet full of food content that send your blood glucose on a roller coaster ride of high and low levels. These glucose level swings can result in damage to your blood vessels, raising your cholesterol, and put you at risk for heart disease.

Dr. J and Evan recommend having yourself tested (not guess) and checking the food you include in your food template because they can be the reason for your chronic issues for so long.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:47    Adrenal Blood Sugar Physiology

9:26   Intermittent Fasting, Carnivore / Keto Diets

18:45  How Intermittent Fasting Helps

24:43  Hypoglycemia and Adrenal Stress

31:08  How Mold Affects Adrenals

35:00  An App that Helps Monitor Your Diet

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we have an awesome podcast topic on the queue here, we’re going to be chatting about how your blood sugar can weaken and negatively impact your adrenal glands, we’re going to be talking about blood sugar, how it affects your immune system, how it makes you either strong or weak, we’ll be talking about nutrient supplement changes that you can do to help with that, as well as diet and lifestyle changes. So I’m excited to dive into this topic. This is a relevant topic that we are applying and seeing with our patients every day, especially ones that have adrenal issues, or adrenal and cortisol imbalances. So really excited to chat about this. And what’s happened today, man?

Evan Brand: Hey, not too much. Let’s dive right in. So let’s set the stage for people. This is a conversation that maybe didn’t happen. Historically, we didn’t have the chronic 99% of the time, we’re stressed and 1% of the time we take a vacation, we didn’t have that kind of lifestyle historically. And so I think now, you’re kind of talking about this with me, before we hit record, the average person is just so toxic, they’re so stressed. They’re sleep deprived. They’re on stimulants like caffeine, and they’re having these spikes and crashes all throughout the day, pretty much everyone is on both the stress rollercoaster. But they’re also on this blood sugar rollercoaster too. And that really affects the adrenals over time. So that’s where I want to set the stage with people is that we’re in a society that’s doing quick fixes. When we feel a blood sugar crash, we go when we eat the organic cookie. Now it’s an organic cookie instead of an Oreo, or it’s a gluten free cookie instead of an Oreo, but it’s still a cookie, and then you end up crashing again. So I want to set the stage of even though you could be doing paleo or similar diet, a lot of people are still having issues of blood sugar regulation, and we think adrenal is is is one big part of it, which is then connected to the gut. So really, we could make this thing like a three hour episode, but we’re going to try to condense it to half an hour.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So let’s kind of do like an adrenal blood sugar kind of one on one physiology review for people just kind of coming into this. So your adrenal glands produce a hormone called cortisol, right, which is a glucocorticosteroid. Big word right, the first half of that word is glucose, meaning it helps pertain to blood sugar and energy. And so the more your blood sugar debates goes up and down, the more hormones have to be produced to buffer the highs and lows. So the more we keep our hormones snaking along, or we keep our blood sugar at let’s say in this example snaking along or stress snaking along throughout the day without big up and down spikes. Our hormones are called to the rescue far less. So. If I eat, let’s say one, I’m not eating at all. Let’s say I’m fasting, right and I’m not really good at being fat adapted, your blood sugar is going to drop and when your blood sugar drops, that creates a stress response. The first thing that happens on this low blood sugar drop is going to be a spike of epinephrine or adrenaline. Right? So epinephrine or adrenaline is like the key catalyst to wake up and call cortisol. So you get this epinephrine or adrenaline or catecholamines surge again, they are all the same thing. You have epinephrine, norepinephrine, you have adrenaline, you have noradrenaline, you have catecholamines. They’re all the exact same thing, same name. They’re just meant to confuse people. So just kind of put that out there. If I use these words, they’re 100% interchangeable, okay. So you’re going to have this surge and adrenaline. And that’s going to bring up your blood sugar when it brings that blood sugar up. This is when you may feel anxious. heart palpitations, this is May when you get a little bit dizzy, nervous, sleepless, irritable, right, sweating, you know. So when you start to have when you’re on those blood sugar rollercoaster, when this blood sugar drops and starts to come back up, you may have symptoms that make you not feel that well. And so then, of course, what comes up after that adrenaline surge is then cortisol is now going to help bring it up the rest of the way. So think of adrenaline is the it’s the, it’s the first responder, right. It’s the person on the operator line, getting the police ready to come to your home and then the police to come 1020 minutes late, that’s cortisol. Okay, they come a little bit later to the show. And so that’s important. So when you understand your physiology, that’s, that’s good. The next component is when your blood sugar goes back up on the high side, that’s where you make a whole bunch of insulin. So insulin can make you feel tired, it can make you feel fatigued. Insulin activates a lot of lipo Genesis, that’s fat storing lipo, meaning fat Genesis, creating and so when you start to have when you’re on a blood sugar roller coaster of high to low blood sugar, okay, this creates this high level of insulin, a lot of label Genesis that creates fatigue. And then of course, when you have a high level of insulin that brings your blood sugar back down, because insulin is opening up the cells trying to get blood sugar into the cells to either burn it or store it. And if you’re not active, and your cells are already full of glycogen, and you’re not actively doing something like walking or running or lifting guess what your body then shunts and partitions that fuel into the storing phase. So if you’re active, great, you’ll burn it. If you have muscles that have glycogen storage, you’ll convert it to glycogen which is glucose. Storage sugar storage. And if those two capacities are tapped, then we start going to fat storage starts going more to life with Genesis. So we’re on this blood sugar rollercoaster. So high blood sugar up high blood sugar up, a lot of insulin drops it down, right, then we have this, this really high drop high to low drop, this then stimulates a lot of adrenaline, catecholamines and then cortisol in the app, this is called reactive hypoglycemia. And then the other type of glycemia issue that we’re going to see is going to be usually fasting too much not eating enough low calorie diets, skipping meals, that’s more like this, that’s your blood sugars like this. And it just starts to drop into this hypo category, you know, maybe below 75. One goes up first. That’s the reactive, it’s reacting going high and then dropping, that’s reactive hypoglycemia, that’s typically going to happen due to poor diet, too much sugar, too much carbs, not enough protein on a fat. And then we have just general run of the mill hypoglycemia, usually from poor meal timing, skipping meals, too much fasting, typically low calorie dining. And again, if you’re doing a lot of intermittent fasting, but you’re low calorie in general, throughout the day, that can easily drive low blood sugar too.

Evan Brand: Wow, well said so the average American, they’re experiencing more reactive hypoglycemia because they’re on sodas, they’re on the Milky Way bar and hiding in their desk drawer at lunch, the person listening to us who’s hopefully relatively dialed in, they’re going to just be more in the standard, we’ve just called to us maybe a standard hypoglycemia situation. And then how do the adrenal is play into that? Because what you’re saying is happening is that, let’s say, and this happened to me, I can tell you firsthand what happened. But what kind of open it up. So intermittent fasting, you’re saying that could could drive that and you’re saying there, you’re kind of hinting at the fact that maybe the adrenals are too weak to help you’re seeing the adrenaline can be released, and it’ll crank it up. But you’re saying, Okay, I got like a recording, stop and start. So just making sure we’re good. Okay. So you’re saying that, in a normal situation, the hypoglycemia can start to happen, adrenaline should come up, kind of bump you up, give you the little nitrus booster, but you then you need cortisol to push you to the finish line. But you’re saying in the case of adrenal stress, the cortisol may not be able to get you up to the right amount. And that’s how an intermittent fasting situation could be not good for you. Is that right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So then if you don’t have good adrenaline output, or catecholamine, output, like so how do we know that as we look at organic acids, if we see imbalances and vandal Amanda later home of anolyte, these are amino acids that are precursors for dopamine and adrenaline. And again, dopamine is a precursor to adrenaline. So when you’re constantly stimulating adrenaline, you’re actually pulling dopamine down. And dopamine is really important for satisfaction, mood focus, right? So if you’re chronically stimulating adrenaline, you’re going to have adrenaline issues, you’re going to have dopamine issues that can create a whole bunch of problems. We’re going to know that because we’re going to see an organic acid test showing a lot of imbalances in those catecholamines. And if our blood sugar, if we have very low cortisol, we run a good quality Dutch test we see chronically low free and total cortisol, it’s going to be hard for our body to bring that blood sugar back up and we can kind of stay a little bit more hypo. And that can cause that irritability, that faintness, that fatigue, cognitive issues, mood issues, brain fog, it can create all those problems. So if we don’t have good when people talk about adrenal is people mostly just think about cortisol. When it comes to adrenal, they don’t think about the adrenaline catecholamine dopamine connection. And so when we talk about adrenals, we have to really look at the outer part of the adrenals. That’s the cortex. That’s where cortisol lives, that’s where aldosterone lands because we’ll talk about it in a minute. aldosterone plays a big role with minerals and holding on to minerals. And if our minerals go low, like we see in pots, right, which is a postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome that has to do with minerals being low sodium chloride, potassium, right, that can create a lot of symptoms similar to hypoglycemia. And so we have to look at the the cortisol component, but also the adrenaline the adrenaline tends to happen more in the medulla medulla M for more middle part of the adrenal gland. So it’s good to look at both and that’s where having a high quality adrenal test that looks at free and total cortisol, as well as an adrenaline, dopamine via the organic acids to look at what’s happening with the catecholamines and neurotransmitters.

Evan Brand: So how would this work? Let’s say if you weren’t doing intermittent fasting, let’s say you switched off of that maybe you were having these hypoglycemia episodes, the adrenals. were too weak to give you the cortisol output you wanted. So instead of intermittent fasting now you’re just doing like a carnivore breakfast, maybe you’re going to do a grass fed steak or maybe you’re going to do some pastured eggs or some pastured bacon. Is that enough to pull you out of that? Are you going to need some support? Would you recommend we throw in like a little bit of honey, some blueberries, you know, maybe something else to pull you out of that spike like is meat is meat enough? I guess is the simple question.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what happens with proteins that you’re consuming is your body is going to be able to one, it’s going to be keto adapted. But again, not everyone’s keto adapted, you have to be metabolically flexible to be keto adapted, where you can actually take a lot of the fat, right, you have a glycerol on a free fatty acid, and you’re able to break that down, pull off some ketones and start burning more fat for fuel. A lot of people just can’t transition to that, because they’re very metabolically inflexible. And so protein and fats not going to be a viable source unless someone’s really dialed their diet in for two to four weeks, and really had that metabolic adaptation. Now, some people, their their insulin levels just dropped to low, and let’s say maybe below four or so or even below two on a fasting insulin test, they may need more carbohydrate. And, again, if they’ve been doing the diet for a month, and they’re in there, they’re having good proteins and good fats at every meal. And maybe their carbs are really low, we may want to add a little bit more starch in because sometimes they feel better doing that because it actually blunts the cortisol spike or the adrenaline spike that the body is trying to create to mobilize that glucose. So it’s like, we can add a little bit more carbs in via healthy, safe starch. And that blunt some of the cortisol and the adrenaline is being produced to mobilize that internally, some people, their insulin levels are really high. And by keeping the carbs super low, they’re bringing their insulin back into the sweet spot, and they’re actually good. And then when they add more carbs in, they actually feel worse, because their insulin is going out of balance, and they’re starting to get more into fat storage mode. So most people I find tend to be more on the insulin resistance side. So I always default to lower carbohydrate out of the gates, and then fine tune later once they kind of hit the wall. And you know, a good way that to see how you know, if you’re hitting the wall or not, is get to a place where you’ve been doing it for a month or two, make sure your body is pretty good at burning fat, right? So you’re eating good proteins, you’re eating good fats, that initial keto flu is over right, that first couple of weeks of getting fat adapted headaches, mood issues is over, then you can try adding a little bit more carbs in maybe at night. Have a sweet potato, a little bit of white potato, a little bit of a say starch, see if you feel better or not. If you sleep better, if you have more energy, if your workouts are better, recovery is good, that’s a good sign that that’s better for you if you don’t feel better. Or let’s say you’re you know, you’re very overweight, and you probably want to work on keeping the carbs in check longer, again, the benefit that you have with good fats and proteins, it’s hard to over eat when you’re eating good fats and proteins, because there’s good satiation signals to your brain that tell you to be full. That’s like peptide yy, adiponectin. coli cytokinin. There’s really good feedback regulations, people are like, well, it’s all about calories in calories out, it’s like, but not all calories, tell your brain that you’re full the same way. So you have to look at the the epistatic regulation of appetite, right and certain neuro peptides are going to be produced with certain foods, you’re not going to get that same stimulation, eating pizza eating Pringles drinking refined sugar, you’re not going to get it. And that’s why it’s so easy to overeat those foods, and you never really feel satiated, try eating you know, half a dozen eggs with you know, cooked in butter, it’s gonna be really hard to still be hungry afterwards. As long as you don’t eat things too fast, where people really go awry with proteins and fats is they eat things too fast, is about a 10 to 20 minute delay in those kind of chemicals telling you you’re full. And you really have to give your body that 10 to 20 minute buffer time. So eating slower, chewing your foods up really well, not overly drinking, when you consume those foods, giving yourself five or 10 minutes once you finish your meal before you get seconds. That plays a big role, because it’s really easy to overeat with these foods, when you don’t give it enough time. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, look at the marketing of potato chip companies, veggie candy, just one, they know that you’re not going to get leptin and all these other beneficial compounds and tell your body your full. So the marketing companies know what they’re getting into, they know you’re going to eat a whole bag of chips, because you’re never going to get that signal that you’re satiated. And that’s where you’re going into trouble. So let’s go back to the adrenals for a minute. So you mentioned running a Dutch panel looking at low cortisol. So what you’re saying is if you’re going to see a flat panel, or maybe just maybe it’s not flat, maybe there is some sort of peak on the cortisol in the morning, but it’s very weak. So overall, you would just say there’s a low cortisol output, you’re saying those people are going to tolerate intermittent fasting less, those people are going to tolerate very low carbs less so they may need a little more bump while they get their adrenals back on board. Is that safe to say? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If their cortisol is really low? Yes, it just depends kind of where they’re coming from. Right? If they’re coming from being overweight, being more insulin resistance, being more tired, being more fatigued out of the gates, always in a default to lower carb. If they’re coming from already being at a reasonably healthy weight and being pretty active already. Then I’m going to default to adding a little bit more carbs and so it just depends upon where someone’s coming from. So it’s always good to look at someone’s Samantha type right? ectomorph endomorph mesomorph right. endomorphs like The linemen write in football. And again, this can be like any one, but they’re just have a larger, higher propensity to put on weight, write the message, or then they have the ectomorph. This is more of the natural kind of basketball player type, they’re just more taller and more leaner, hard to put on muscle, hard to gain weight. And then you kind of have a blend between an ectomorph and an endomorph, called a mesomorph. Think of that as the M for middle, right. And this is kind of more like your linebacker in football, right. And again, these are extreme examples, but helps to kind of tell the tell the story, right? Not everyone’s a 300 pound lineman, I get that, right. But people have this propensity to put on more weight. But a mesomorph, someone that’s kind of more in the middle, like they could be taller and leaner, but they also can be bigger as well, they’re kind of in between. So usually, people are in one of the three of these categories. And usually, if you’re more on the ectomorph side, you’re going to be able to tolerate carbs pretty well. So that you have to just kind of like you know, see kind of where, where you feel best. And there’s a lot of people out there like let’s just say let’s people on the diet side, I’ll just I’ll call Chris kresser out, right? Chris? kresser is a ectomorph. Right? suit. You know, Paul jammin a ectomorph. A lot of people out there that like recommend more carbs, more higher carbs, more whole food, carbs? And it’s like, well, of course, you’re going to recommend that because you’re an ectomorph, of course, right? So you have to look at the people that are recommending certain things and look at what somato type they are because certain somatic types are going to have a propensity to handle macronutrients differently than someone else. So it’s good to look at that as a general template. But in the end, you got to fine tune it, you got to look at it, my default way of looking at because of insulin resistance is being so prone, because refined and processed foods have been eaten ubiquitously, you know, over the last 20, if you look at the macronutrient trends over the last 20 or 30 years, right, its proteins gone down a little bit fats has actually gone down a little bit. And actually cards have gone up. So when you look at that general trend, we can just assume out of the gates that most people are going to have carbohydrate problems, not protein and fat problems. And if they do have protein in fat problems, it’s usually from junky trans fats and or junky omega six refined vegetable oils, not healthy animal fats. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, very, very great points. And that’s important for people to listen, I mean, you’re hearing a clinician speak, you’re hearing the clinicians brain, because as you mentioned, if you get into some of these other people that may not be practicing clinically with people, they’re going to be able to give you a cookie cutter answer and you did not I was kind of probing you to give me some like buzz wordy, you know, like something I could post on Twitter type answer, but you gave me a clinicians answer. And I hope people appreciate that. Because there’s a lot of variants with this. And I know it’s frustrating, because when you listen to a podcast, you’re like, I just want to be told what to do how to do it. Give me the sparknotes? And your answer is there’s not really a sparknotes there are some categories, if you will, that we can put people into I’m definitely probably closer to ectomorph. And so I do better. Like if I do a grass fed steak and I throw some extra organic wild blueberries in with that for breakfast, I feel so much better with that extra little blueberry hit, as opposed to just the steak versus let’s say, my grandmother who had an high a one c score, she’s going to do much better with just the steak and she’s going to go but better lower carb overall.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So it’s good to know, I’m kind of more of a mesomorph I’m kind of in the middle. And I just I look at you know, the problems that we as society have as a whole, generally speaking, and I kind of just create my recommendations to have the largest bang for the buck regarding the average person. And then of course, when patients come in, then you kind of look at them, you kind of look at their height, their weight, you know, especially you see a lot of women, you know, in their 40s. I’m like, well, where were you in high school in college it regarding your weight? Oh, I was 80 pounds lighter. Okay, so we know there’s some metabolic damage there. If you put on 80 pounds since that time, right. So then, then it’s good to really make sure we we support them being better fat burners, I think the next step I wanted to hit would be intermittent fasting. So someone in the comments here will talk about this, they talked about omad, or one meal a day, I’m not a huge fan of omad. Now people can do it, if they’re wanted, they have pretty good adrenals their diets really good and they’re very metabolically flexible. Okay, with omad. It’s one meal a day. So you need all of the calories that you need in one day in one meal. So number one is you’re going to be eating a meal that’s like two to three times bigger than what your typical meal would be. Because if you need, let’s say, you know, I’m six to 2015 pounds, right? I need like 3000 calories a day, if I’m you know, relatively active, well, 3000 calories is a lot of food at one meal. Okay, it’s a lot of food. Because you need your your micronutrients, you need, you know, your amino acids, I need probably at least half a gram per pound of body weight minimum for protein. So I need at least let’s say 110 grams of protein, that’s a big meal. So one, you need really good digestion, you probably needed over an hour to sit down and actually eat that meal if you’re not going to be sick because that’s a lot of food to eat at one time. So you probably need an hour to eat it. You need really good digestion really good enzyme and acid secretion. You need an hour to sit down and be able to handle it and you probably can’t move much for an hour afterwards because the meal so big, it’s it’s the equivalent of a Thanksgiving Day dinner. Right? And so you got to be careful with that.

Evan Brand: I think let me just give you a little I’ll give you some numbers real quick just to show how hard what what you’re describing would be. So for example, I love bison. So if you were to do a which this is going to be your fattiest cut, if you could do a bison ribeye, a 10 ounce bison ribeye, you’re going to get roughly less than 500 calories, maybe like for something like 450 to 480. So if I just did it as 10 ounces. So I mean, God, let’s say you did 20 ounces, which would be very hard for me to do a 20 ounce bison ribeye, you know, you’d be maybe close to 900 calories.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and so you’d probably need at least you know, if for me, right, you’d probably want about 25 to a third of your calories coming from protein right around there. And so you’d probably want about that steak would probably have to be about 20 ish, maybe a little more ounces than that. That’s a lot to do at one time. And that’s not including the six to seven servings of vegetables that you may want to do with that as well.

Evan Brand: And then what Yeah, I was gonna say, and then what else are you going to do? Let’s say you did like a cup of broccoli, that’s like 40 calories.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So you need like literally eight cups of that or like, you know, 60 it’s becomes really hard. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, cuz I see why you don’t recommend it. So so your overall, your overall messages, you think maybe two meals a day, you could get away with a one meal a day you think for this type of conversations can be really tough.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, two meals is good. Two meals, you can do it in the morning, I mean, you may want to have like a little bit of bone broth, or something very gentle on the liquid side. Again, if you’re just trying to do intermittent fasting, it’s easier to do one, I don’t recommend it every day. But it’s easier to do like, you know, keep your eating window between 12 and eight, or let’s say two and eight, I think it’s easier that way gives you enough time to have a meal at two o’clock, five o’clock, or let’s say to, let’s say two o’clock, six o’clock, and maybe a little snack before bed, if you’re still hungry, you want to fill in the gap, right? So it’s a little bit easier from a nutritional standpoint to get your needs met. Again, if you’re having a lot of hormonal issues, I don’t recommend doing a lot of fasting out of the gates. Think of fasting as a stressor, it’s a stressor on your body, just like exercise is a stressor. So imagine your personal trainer, someone’s like super unhealthy. They’re out of shape. And you’re like, hey, come to my CrossFit class tomorrow, I’m 100 pounds overweight, come come across it, it’s like well, you know, with their weight being where they’re at, and how inflamed they’re at, they’re gonna be like, literally in bed the next week, with sore joints sore back totally hurt. So you have to make a recommendation based on what’s best for them. So you may say, hey, let’s just do like a 10 minute walk tomorrow, right? So a 20 minute walk, let’s say a five minute walk after every meal, that may be a better recommendation, right? So think of like the Oh, Matt, or like a lot of this intermittent fasting. That’s the equivalent of jumping a very overweight, unhealthy person into CrossFit. It’s the equivalent, it’s still a stressor on the body. Now, if you’re healthy, guess what? It’s a stressor that you can adapt from and get up and get stronger. But if you’re not healthy, that stressor is going to break you. And so you kind of have to know that, hey, this is an application of stress. And the question becomes, does your physiology have the ability to adapt to that stress based on where you’re at now? And for most people that are that we see clinically? No, that’s not gonna be the case. Yeah, there’s always weather. Yep. I always weather under Should I rather undershoot it have that person feeling better, less or less tired? And kind of in kind of gauge up then overshoot and make them feel worse?

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. So this is the anti boot camp podcast. You see those boot camp signs? It’s like, they’ll just come in and they’ll just kick your ass on day one. I mean, they don’t care. You’re 300 pounds five foot tall. 300 pounds, haven’t walked a mile in 10 years and they’ll just come in and throw you down. Give me 50 them Yes. Boom, boom.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, if your life if you can come home and just like recline back and chill and read and watch TV or just hang out all day, you’re not doing much. Okay, fine. But most people have like, have to work they have to do things, they have to do chores, they have kids and family and responsibility to take care of so it’s like their life can’t revolve around that right? So obviously with the TV show and that’s what their life is, you know, you can get away with stuff when that’s what all your focus is. But for most people, you know, that’s not the reality that we’re in.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and if you want to go another direction with this, please do but I just wanted to bring up one question here that came in the live chat. And for people listening if you want to join us at the time of this recording, maybe we change the schedule but for now we go live every Monday somewhere around 11am Eastern on Dr. Jay’s Justin health YouTube channel so if you want to check them out, that’s how you can join us in the live chat question here. Does sugar or caffeine effect? I think they meant effect. The sugar caffeine weaken the adrenal is the most. I don’t know if they’re saying like either one. I would say both are a factor in people going to Starbucks and getting their dessert in the cup, which they call coffee. That sugar caffeine combo, I would say is a super big issue with hypoglycemia and adrenal stress. What would you say?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it depends if someone’s doing a cup of coffee or two in the morning and they’re consuming it with some fat and some protein like maybe they’re throwing some collagen MCT oil in there. That tends to time release, the caffeine tends to not be as big of a deal because the caffeine is going to be out of their system, you know, by the time they go to bed. So if they’re doing a cup or two, as long as they are not getting anxious, anxious or irritable, or Moody, or any of those negative symptoms afterwards, I’m okay with a little bit of caffeine. And again, if you’re on the fence, just pull it out or choose something that’s more decaffeinated. Choose a coffee substitute, like to Chino, or do a decaf, kameel or decaf green tea. See if you feel better if you don’t notice a difference where you’re not feeling worse with caffeine, a little bit’s okay. And if you want to time release it, a little bit of fat in there and a little bit of collagen, will time release it and just do it in the you know that first hour or two getting up, don’t do it in the afternoon hours. If people that get in trouble are the ones that do it usually after lunch, and they’re trying to get at that second when between three and five. And then it’s it’s causing a second cortisol surge at night because that caffeine still in their system around 10 to 11 o’clock at night.

Evan Brand: So what you mentioned is good, but your average person’s not doing what you’re you’re doing. They’re wrapped around the Starbucks drive thru, they’re gonna go get a venti caramel frappuccino with frickin whipped cream and six pumps of syrup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so what we’re talking about zero sugar in the coffee, we’re talking totally black with the exception of maybe some MCT or, or a heavy coconut cream. Or if you can handle dairy, maybe a heavy whipping cream, some kind of a good fat in there that you can tolerate. Maybe it maybe it’s just MCT oil, maybe it’s some collagen as well, because that time releases it and really allows it to go in your system slow. Someone on the chat talked about using glucose and sugar to keep their blood sugar stable throughout the day. Like that’s literally like going camping and keeping your fire going all day with paper and kindling. It’s just it’s not practical, because you’re never going to get keto adapted, you’re never going to become a fat burner, when you’re literally relying on glucose to keep your blood sugar stable all day. That’s the problem. And that’s like, you know, physiologically, the antithesis of health. Because really be healthy, you really want to be fat adapted. So you can help burn can help get energy from fat, it’s the most stable energy source, that’s not going to require up and down dips. So the equivalent of that is getting energy from logs in a campfire, which burn a lot longer and stronger than let’s say kindling a paper. So you just have to look and say, if I’m camping, the goal was I want to really get my heat from those good logs, not killing your paper because I don’t have to be feeding it all day long. That’s the difference.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and some of this biochemical talk people may dislike to now and like, turn into a zombie. So if you’re listening to this, you’re like, well, how does this actually change how I’m getting through my day. So that example that Justin’s mentioning with the really good fatty coffee versus the really sugary coffee. So this is the person who, like I know, you’ll do fatty coffees, like during our podcast, so you’re going to be burning clean, and you’re going to have a good energy burn throughout the entire morning, versus the person doing the sugary caffeine, they’re going to crash Two hours later. And then they’re going to go for maybe as this person mentioned in the comments, or they’re going to go for fruit or fruit juices or something else, they’re going to get that quick hit of kindling again, and then they’re going to crash. So when you’re at work that you’re not going to be performing at your best. I mean, if I were in charge of like a massive company, and I had the ability to give people support, I would say, hey, look, everybody can do a nutritionist console, let’s say you had like a warehouse worker. And we found that the output of the warehouse workers were 20% more efficient, if we all had them on more animal based higher fat diets, as opposed to these people. You know, when I used to work at UPS to pay for my college, you’d have these guys who on a four or five hour shift, they pull out two or three candy bars just to get through the shift. And here I was eating just my grass fed ground beef before I went in, and I was stable the whole time. These guys could work for an hour, they got to go do a bag of chips, they go to the vending machine, get the coke, and then they go do the Cheetos. I mean, it was literally it was crazy to watch.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And there’ll be a lot of people out there. And this is why I talked about this amount of time to people that you’re going to see breaking all the rules that I’m saying these are going to be the vegan vegetarians, the high carbers. And when you’re an ectomorph, you can handle lots of carbs your body has the ability to take those carbs shunted in Burnet right away. And then these are the people that get energized with more carbs. Like if I if I give you a glass of orange juice and a bunch of carbs, these are the people that want to go out and literally run a marathon because their body handles carbs, and it just fuels them up and makes them so energized. And so we all have vegan vegetarian friends that just literally eat carbs all day, right? You know, you see the fruitarians that are out there. This is a big thing. I think in the 80s. at Apple, there was a big like fruitarian called they all ate fruit was like unbelievable. And you see people that are energized, energized. These are ectomorphs these are people that can handle that I still don’t think it’s healthy, I think as long term ramifications with insulin and oxidative stress. But people can do that based on kind of their natural genetics, metal type and how they can handle fuel. Most people aren’t at that place. And so you kind of have to really look at getting good proteins and fats in there and manage your blood sugar accordingly. And so, the only other thing I wanted to highlight was oh yeah, let’s say let’s say you’re doing a fast like a two day course. free day fast if it’s a punctuated fast, and most people want to faster, they’re keeping their stress down, they’re not going to go work 12 hours a day and deal with stress, because when you’re fasting, you’re not getting nutrients in your body via vegetables, or fruit or protein. So you’re relying on primarily your fat for fuel. And obviously, protein, you’re doing what’s called cellular autophagy, where you’re recycling proteins. And ideally, you’re recycling some of those, you’re getting some of those for fuel, you’re also getting a big bump of adrenaline and cortisol for those couple of days. So you may feel pretty good and pretty alert if your adrenals are strong. And then of course, you’re you know, you’re getting a lot of the fat because you’re tapping into fat, but long term, that’s not good, right? Because we know, any person that’s been on a long term starvation, like diet, you know, you just look at people will were to post concentration camps that were starved, but no one walks out of that healthy, right? It’s impossible. But for a short two to three or four day period, you definitely can. And the key is you have to keep your stress down and under control, maybe do some bone broth, or do some minerals as well to keep your minerals and your electrolytes up. But most people that will still be the equivalent of a CrossFit workout. And if they’re metabolically unflexible, that could break them as well.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said another question here, I have a friend that lives in mold and is super stressed. How does mold affect the adrenals? Well, it is a huge cause of adrenal issues, mainly because it’s creating this alert response, it’s creating a sympathetic stress, the body’s trying to react to it, hopefully, the body’s reacting to it, meaning that there is some sort of immune response. And maybe there’s some antibodies that come in, maybe there’s some detox pathways that are ramping up. So hopefully your body has a reaction, but it’s a huge adrenal stress. And I would say, even if they’re not living in mold, and you just have mycotoxins in your system, that can be an adrenal stress, or two, I know for me, I had a lot more baseline anxiety when I had just mycotoxins in my system, and I wasn’t being exposed to mold, my wife experienced the same thing. So we were doing adaptogenic herbs to help regulate the adrenals. But once we’ve detox quite a bit using binders, when we’ve done many podcasts on that, my baseline anxiety is back to the way it was before, which was I didn’t have baseline anxiety. So yeah, I can tell you firsthand, it’s a big, big factor.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, the first thing we have to do, if we have issues with mold is you one, you got to get your environment more stabilized, make sure you’re able to digest and break down foods and get good proteins and good fats in there. Also, on the flip side, right, I’ve talked about, you know, some of the fasting benefits and stories, we have a lot of we have a large group of people out there that are carnivores, like they literally just eat meat all day long. And they do amazing, right, and so like, you have to look at both sides of the camp, because their success stories on both sides of the camp. And so you have to understand why someone may have a success story over here, and not over there, or why someone over here has one but not over there, you have to look at it in a kind of non dogmatic type of, of mindset, right? People kind of have their camp and say, Well, this person over here has to be lying. It’s like, Well, probably not. And, you know, we’ve seen 1000s of patients. So I’ve been able to kind of understand why certain people on the high carb get great success and why people on the extreme low carb, and why somewhere in between tends to be the biggest bang for your buck, right and, and then who are those people that way you can make recommendations and push people to either direction, so they can get better results. Because it’s like you’re either you either have like my allegiance is to getting the patient the best result not to using a tool to get them to the result, I put enough tools in my tool belt so I can be non attached to the tool because I want the result to get happen for the patient. Some people are really, they’re really attached to the tool, and they want this tool to be what gets them the result. And you really have to, as a patient, find doctors that are unattached to the tool, they really just want to get you the result that you’re looking for.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said and, you know, me being an ectomorph, you would think I wouldn’t do well with just tons of meats and fats. But I do great, really low carb and there is some discussion of mold and fungal infections and candida overgrowth and CBOE and CFO and some of these things, that people will do better. And I definitely had a history of a lot of gut issues. So I think for me, that’s part of the reason I do so well low carb as an ectomorph. But I certainly feel fine on starch and white rice and berries and, and all of that. And I’m kind of lucky, I guess I think it’s a blessing to be able to do both, it’s a blessing for me to have a grass fed steak with just blueberries for breakfast and feel fine all day. But it also be cool to do some rice with some dinner and have no issues with it. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You have enough of a solid foundation with your proteins and your fats and your nutrient density. Where those those a little bit of carbs, it’s not gonna be enough, it’s kind of like you have a fire going you have a good log already in there. If you throw a little bit of kindling extra in the fire, it’s the fire is still gonna be there, right still gonna be strong. And so that’s kind of where you’re at and the more metabolically flexible you get, you know, but in the end, you got to listen to your body, right? We got we got to be we got to be data results driven, not not dogma driven. And if you feel great doing something, and you know your nutrient density is up and you’re in you feel good and you feel energized and you feel flexible and you don’t feel inflamed. That’s really important.

Evan Brand: Here’s what I recommend this podcast is brought to you by Daybook. No, it’s not actually brought to you by Daybook. But Daybook‘s a cool app that I have on my phone. And I love it, because I’ll pull it up real quick. I love it. I wish I could share my screen on my phone somehow. But anyway, I love because I can just scroll through it. So people don’t audio, you’re not going to see this at all. And I apologize. But anyway, it’s cool, because you can look at it. And you can go may 27, may 25, may 23. And you could just scroll through and you could be like, oh, look on May 3, I wrote here that I did a grass fed steak and a big old bowl of white rice, and my blood sugar crashed. So it’s fun to be able to report back. I know there’s a million apps out there. But that’s just one that I like, because I like to be able to hit the plus button, start new notes, do voice to text, whatever I can and then boom, I can look back, and I’ll just be like, oh, here, here’s where I messed up. And so I think people have to track this. You’re mentioning that listening to your body. If you’re busy, you got kids, you got a job, it’s tough to know, oh crap, what day was that, that I did the rice and then I did the grain free this and the gluten free cookie or whatever. If you can track it in the app, you can report back, so picking out but that’s what I like.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like that. Also, just for my autoimmune patients listening I see a lot of patients that have thyroid issues hashimotos other autoimmune issues, blood sugar fluctuations high to low can definitely increase immune activation. I have a couple of studies here. I’ll just kind of give you all the overview just so you could take on what sticks was study right here talking about the effects of hyperglycemia on an inflammatory response. Another one here, the effects of induced hypoglycemia on inflammation and oxidative stress with patients that have type two diabetes that they made diet changes where they restricted calories and gave them Metformin to cause low blood sugar levels. And they saw an increase in immune response, they saw an increase in monocytes, and platelet aggregation, a whole bunch of things right. And so you know, we’re talking about inducing low blood sugar in a in this could get out of a study on this directly. But we could do this with a bad diet with hypoglycemia from a reactive hypoglycemic diet, like someone consuming a Starbucks macchiato with extra pumps of Carmel in there and you create a low blood sugar response. That way, you’re going to activate interleukins cytokines monocytes immune responses that are not going to be helpful and may even flare up your autoimmunity. And so the more you can snake your blood sugar along throughout the day, with good proteins, good fats and the right amount of carbs for you and your activity level versus up and down swings, the better it will be we know the data on on low blood sugar and the immune response is profound and people that have autoimmune issues, you really have to work on that. Yeah, right here. Although the underlying mechanism remains unclear, increase inflammatory cytokines and leukocytosis are reported after hypoglycemia, suggesting a link between hypoglycemia and in formation. And again, this hyperglycemia will be a little bit different than let’s say intermittent fasting, hypoglycemia, but the faster your blood sugar drops, right? The more inflammation, the more your body’s gonna create a hormonal response, that’s not going to be helpful.

Evan Brand: Makes total sense. Here’s a lady grace left the comment for it. She said she used to do one meal a day and two meals a day. And it felt like a badge of honor when I could fast for longer, but I realized it was stressing me out and not optimal for digestion. Probably meaning saying she’s not optimal for digestion. Yeah, it’s just too much too much at one meal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you know, if you do that, you know, I think you come at it a couple days a week, make sure you’re relatively healthy. Make sure you take some extra HCl or enzymes, make sure you carve out a little more time to eat that meal, so you’re not stressed. Also, just just go and run your food through chronometer. Like, if you’re getting two meals a day, you know, go go carve out what that meal has to look like you’re gonna find it’s about 50% bigger on average. And that’s just a lot more food and a lot more time and you got to make sure you’re not stressed because we all know what happens when you eat a big meal and then you’re stressed you feel even worse you feel totally weighed down, you feel nauseous, then your next meal you don’t even want to eat it because you’re still just upset. So yep, I think we hit today really good. I would just say like understand the connection between cortisol, adrenaline, your immune system, why some people get great results doing different diets and other people right read between the lines be results driven, not dogma tool, modality driven. It’s really important right? Check your biases at the door. Outside of that I hope this podcast resonates with different folks if you want to reach out and you want to get individualized help from Evan, EvanBrand.com you can reach out to Evan. Dr. J here JustinHealth.com. You’ll see schedule links. We’re happy to work with patients worldwide. You know we are in the trenches rolled with our sleeves rolled up dealing with people every single day so we’re here to help outside of that if you enjoy the content, put your comments below let us know what you liked the best and please share with family and friends that could benefit it really helps propel kind of our life’s mission to help more people every day. Appreciate it. Anything else Evan?

Evan Brand: No that’s it Take good care and yeah leave us a review on your Apple podcast app we’d love it if you’re on Justin health show or if you’re on my show and brain show, give us a review, we’d love to see what stars you think the show deserves. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of five stars we’d love to add to it that helps us in the rankings so more people can hear us. So thank you so much in advance and take care yourself.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/how-your-diet-and-blood-sugar-can-weaken-your-adrenals-podcast-340

Recommended products:

Adrenal Boost

Adrenal Revive

DUTCH Adrenal Test

Deluxe Mold Test Kit

Organic Grass Fed Meat

TruKeto Collagen

TRUCOLLAGEN (Grassfed)

Amino Acid Supreme

Genova NutrEval® FMV

Telomeres: How to Have Younger DNA

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Can your DNA predict your lifespan? Well, maybe partially! New research on telomeres, a structure found on the ends of our chromosomes, may give us a glimpse into our health and longevity.

What Are Telomeres?

The protective caps on the ends of our chromosomes are called telomeres. They protect our DNA similar to how the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces keep the laces from unraveling.

Each time a cell divides, the telomeres shorten until they are too short to divide, at which point the cell’s lifespan is over. This is essentially how we age. The shorter the telomeres, the “older” you are on a biological level.

Babies are born with telomeres between 8,000 to 13,000 base pairs in length. Each year of life, we lose about 20-40 base pairs. So for example, at age 40 a person may have lost up to 1,600 base pairs from their telomeres.

The good news is that scientists have found factors that contribute to telomere shortening, and we now know ways to protect our telomeres and stay healthy as we age!

What Shortens Telomeres, and How to Protect Yours

• Environmental Toxins

Telomere shortening may be expedited in those whose jobs put them in contact with harmful agents, like traffic police officers exposed to traffic pollution. Relative to telomere length of office workers, those who worked near traffic daily had shorter telomere length in each age group. The reduction in telomere length correlated to the number of years the workers were exposed to the pollutants.

Protect your telomeres by reducing your exposure to environmental toxins. If you still use household cleaning products or personal care products laden with chemicals and fragrances, this is your reminder to stop! 

At home or at the office, consider investing in a quality air filter. See the air filters I use for myself and my family to filter out common environmental and household toxins like formaldehyde and other dangerous VOCs.

Click here to work with a functional medicine doctor to protect your telomeres and increase your lifespan! 

• Stress

They say stress ages you, which rings true even on a biological level. In a study on women who felt chronically stressed, the difference in telomere length between the stressed women versus the control group was equivalent to 10 years of life.

Glucocorticoid hormones are released by the adrenal gland in response to stress. These hormones can reduce antioxidant protein levels, which can cause increased oxidative damage to DNA and accelerate telomere shortening.

Protect your telomeres by managing stress properly. Find what works for you: gardening, yoga, talking it out with someone trusted, meditation, journaling… whatever it takes to help you release stress is worth it–it could save you 10 years of your life!

• Poor Diet

Antioxidants reduce the rate of telomere shortening and can protect DNA from oxidative damage. In a study done on animals, eating less food kept the animals in a biologically younger state and increased their lifespan by up to 66%.

Protect your telomeres by reducing your serving sizes (most of us are eating servings that are much too large), or try intermittent fasting. Fasting has powerful anti-aging properties including inducing autophagy and helping protect your telomeres.

• Smoking

Smoking accelerates telomere shortening. One study found that the rate of telomeric DNA loss in smokers was an average rate of 25.7–27.7 base pairs per year. Those who smoke a pack of cigarettes daily lost an additional 5 base pairs. Therefore, as far as your telomeres are concerned, smoking a pack a day for 40 years causes a loss of 7.4 years of telomere length.

Protect your telomeres by saying no to cigarettes! If you are already a smoker, there are plenty of resources available to help you quit. If you’d like to work with me to help get through the withdrawal period, you can click here to talk.

• Obesity

Researchers have found that a person’s BMI strongly correlates with biomarkers of DNA damage, independent of age. Obesity is associated with increased oxidative stress and DNA damage, which may expedite telomere shortening. In fact, the effect of obesity may be even more severe than that of smoking, at least as far as telomeres are concerned. The loss of telomeres in obese individuals averages out to 8.8 years of life.

Protect your telomeres by eating a healthy diet and moving your body daily! You don’t have to be an elite athlete to move. Try a zumba class, beginner’s yoga, or even start with daily walks. A healthy diet is also correlated with healthy biomarkers. Choose organic foods, and consider trying a paleo or keto diet.

Takeaway

We are faced with choices daily–what to eat, whether to watch TV or take a walk, if we’re going to raise our cortisol by checking our email at 10pm or waiting til tomorrow–and these choices impact our health both short term and long term. It is my hope that with an understanding of the various factors that contribute to living a long, healthy life you feel empowered to make the best choices for you.

Click here to work with a functional medicine doctor to protect your telomeres and increase your lifespan! 

References:

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/telomeres-of-human-chromosomes-21041/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/

https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-a-telomere

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/01/telomere-extension-turns-back-aging-clock-in-cultured-cells.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17416776

The Best Bone Broth for Gut Health

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Bone broth seems to be all the rage these days, but what exactly is it about this bone juice that has everyone obsessed? Bone broth is so much more than a trendy drink: it has the power to aid in healing many modern issues, from leaky gut to wrinkles!

The Power of Bone Broth

What is Bone Broth?

Bone broth is made from animal bones, tendons, ligaments, marrow, skin, and other flexible connective tissues. In modern times these parts are usually discarded as they aren’t easily eaten on their own. However, when simmered in water for long periods of time, animal bones and tissues make a healing nutrient-dense elixir. The best bone broths are made from the parts of organic, grass-fed animals. To pack even more nutrient density, you can also add organic vegetables to turn bone broth into a flavor-packed sipping broth or use it as the base for a soup.

Bone Broth’s Secret Weapons: Collagen and Gelatin

The protein providing strength to animals’ (including humans!) bones, cartilage, and tendons is called collagen. When cooked, collagen turns into gelatin, a jello-like substance. 

The best bone broths contain collagen and gelatin which provide your body with a host of immune-boosting properties, amino acids, and gut lining support to aid and heal many modern ailments.

Click here for help from a functional medicine doctor to determine if you have leaky gut and how to heal it!

Healing Benefits:

Bone broth is easily digested, unlike many other foods which can be hard to break down. But the real power of bone broth is that it is actually healing to the digestive system. It has been found to aid in cases of leaky gut, IBS, food allergies and sensitivities, and much more.

Collagen is a protein that forms the GI tract lining. Consuming the collagen and gelatin in bone broth helps heal the walls of the gut lining, preventing food and toxins from escaping and causing inflammation and other damage outside of the tract. This is major good news for those suffering from poor digestion and gut-related health issues (leaky gut, IBS, Crohn’s).

The collagen and gelatin from bone broth are also great for anti-aging effects. They keep the skin youthful by reducing wrinkles and improving elasticity, aid the growth of hair and nails, and strengthen your bones! Collagen also helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite over time.

Essential nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, and silica are all electrolytes in bone broth which keep you hydrated, help with bone health, and can reduce brain fog and fatigue.

The amino acids found in bone broth include glutamine, arginine, glycine, and cysteine, and proline. Together these amino acids offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Skin elasticity
• Build up the walls of the intestines
• Aid in proper bile and stomach acid production
• Enhance the immune system
• Anti-inflammatory, reducing oxidative stress and autoimmunity
• Promote human growth hormone
• Liver detoxification support
• Generate glutathione

Where to Find Bone Broth

You can make bone broth yourself, at home! Below is my favorite recipe for cooking up a big batch of anti-aging bone broth. If you are someone who would prefer to purchase bone broth, or are looking for something easy to take on-the-go, I recommend Kettle & Fire bone broth. Kettle & Fire is the best bone broth I have found, and they use premium ingredients like 100% grass-fed bones, organic produce, and apple cider vinegar to create a delicious and nutritious product that is easy to heat up and sip, or use as a base for soups and other recipes! Bonus: it’s also paleo and keto friendly! You can check out Kettle & Fire bone broth here.

Takeaway

Bone broth is incredibly simple to make, especially when looking at the benefits reaped from consuming this healthy elixir. The collagen, gelatin, amino acids and minerals in collagen make bone broth an incredibly simple and powerful solution to create healthier joints, skin, bones, and gut. If you’re looking to try my favorite bone broth for both flavor and health benefits, click here. 

Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor who can help you diagnose if you have gut issues that bone broth can help heal!

Sources:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/09/21/hilary-boynton-mary-brackett-gaps-cookbook-interview.aspx

https://blog.kettleandfire.com/4-amazing-ways-collagen-bone-broth-heal-your-gut/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949208

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358810/

Scaldaferri F1, Pizzoferrato M, Gerardi V, Lopetuso L, Gasbarrini A. The gut barrier: new acquisitions and therapeutic approaches. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2012 Oct;46 Suppl:S12-7.

Autophagy: Anti-Aging, Self-Eating Cells!

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

The word “autophagy” comes from the Greek “auto-phagein” which means “self eating.” Autophagy is a normal process in which compromised cells are cleared away. Even a healthy person must undergo autophagy, it’s one of the body’s natural modes of detoxification. Cellular damage can happen as a result of normal metabolic processes, but the rate at which damage occurs can be increased by things like stress, electromagnetic radiation, and free radicals.

How Does Autophagy Work

“Self-eating cells” sounds scary, but it’s a good thing! By clearing out old, damaged cells, you make room for new cells that are young and healthy. Without autophagy, you would continue to accumulate dead, damaged, and oxidized cell parts which accelerate aging, neurodegenerative disease, and cancer.

Naomi Whittel, autophagy expert, uses the comparison of a kitchen. Imagine cooking dinner, then wiping the counter, throwing away the scraps, and putting the leftovers in the fridge. That is autophagy working correctly.

Now, imagine cooking dinner, and leaving the mess. Grimey counters, pile of dishes in the sink, and smelly food left out. In this scenario, the smell and mess will continue to build up to the point where you will get unwanted consequences such as mold and bugs. When autophagy is compromised, dead and damaged parts linger in the body, which also leads to unwanted consequences like disease.

Autophagy Benefits

Autophagy is being touted as one of the best anti-aging hacks. What exactly are the anti-aging benefits of autophagy? Read on to find out!

Click here to talk to a functional medicine doctor about taking back control of your health.

More Efficient Cellular Recycling

If you thought self-eating cells are weird: apoptosis is cell suicide! This programmed cell death can be useful for getting rid of seriously compromised cells, like those with disease, but in general apoptosis is much more wasteful than autophagy. Apoptosis also causes more inflammation and metabolic waste. Autophagy is a cleaner, more efficient way to keep cells healthy.

Virus Elimination

While a healthy immune system will turn off a virus making it dormant, it doesn’t actually get rid of them. The virus is still in your body and able to replicate. Cue autophagy, which is how your body can actually rid itself of the infected cells. If you’ve ever experienced nausea when sick with a virus, you know it’s hard to keep down anything (sometimes even water). This is your body’s way of inducing a fast–fasting sets autophagy into motion.

Additional autophagy benefits include:

• Better skin, with less eczema, acne, and signs of aging.
• Stronger and more resilient muscles.
• Better brain function, including mood, memory, and mental processing.
• Preventing neurodegenerative diseases.
• Reducing inflammation.
• Healthier gut; less chance of leaky gut syndrome.

How to Increase Autophagy

Fasting

Fasting, whether for several days or intermittent fasting, is one of the most powerful ways you can call upon your body to stimulate autophagy. 

One or two days of fasting is enough to induce autophagy, though days four and five is when you will reach peak autophagy. A fast-mimicking diet, in which you consume between 800-1100 calories per day, can also induce autophagy.

Intermittent fasting has a ton of benefits:autophagy being one of them! By restricting your eating window to an 8 hour block (or less), you can maintain a healthy level of autophagy daily. A common intermittent fast is skipping breakfast.

A Ketogenic Diet

When we are eating a lot of carbs and sugar, our body is burning glucose for fuel, has sharp blood sugar spikes, and high insulin levels. By getting into ketosis, using fat for fuel, we stabilize our blood sugar, lower insulin, and start producing ketones. Mixing ketosis and intermittent fasting is a great combo: once you’re in ketosis, it’s easy to go longer between meals because you start burning stored fat for energy. Ketosis plus intermittent fasting is an excellent way to mimic fasting and induce autophagy.

Exercise

Just like fasting, exercise is a ‘body stressor,’ but they are the good kind of stress! At least 30 minutes of exercise has been shown to induce autophagy. 

Sleep

Autophagy and metabolism follow diurnal circadian rhythm–your body’s sleep-wake cycle. By getting good sleep, you boost autophagy. These days, people face a lot of sleep issues, like insomnia. It’s important to practice good sleep hygiene in order to prepare your body for bed time. Blue blocking glasses, turning off electronics, and keeping lighting low at night can all help your body prepare for bed time.

Takeaway

The literal translation of autophagy as ‘self-eating cell’ does not do justice to the importance of the body’s natural process of cleaning compromised parts. Everyone can boost their levels of autophagy, whether by getting into ketosis or partaking in fasting. The anti-aging benefits will keep you looking, feeling, and functioning young!

Is fasting right for YOU? Click here for a consult with a functional medicine doctor.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990190/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3790331/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3389582/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463459/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4260725/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991639/

Top Anti-Aging Foods

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Everyone ages, the question, therefore, is not will you age, but how will you age? Will you suffer from chronic pain and inflammation, develop diseases such as dementia, diabetes, and cancer, lose your mental capacities or your ability to walk and run? Or will you remain in good health with good posture, retain a great state of mind and mental clarity, keep balanced hormones and healthy relationships?

The truth is, the choice is yours, and it is exactly that: a choice. If you are determined to live a long life with your body and energy at their fullest potential, you can do so! However, there are no magic creams or pills that will prevent you from showing signs of aging. The secret to aging gracefully and successfully lies in a series of healthy diet and lifestyle choices which we will outline below.

What is Aging?

Disease, dementia, cancer, loose saggy skin, slowed brain function, slow and weakened body: these are NOT predetermined signs of aging! These are the consequences of the Standard American diet (SAD) and lifestyle that have been normalized by our society. Recent discoveries have shown that inflammation, the shortening of your telomeres, and  mitochondrial deterioration are what control the aging process.

Click here to schedule a consult with a functional medicine doctor to determine your personal causes of inflammation and illness!

What Causes Aging?

Inflammation causes the diseases and health decline that are hallmark symptoms of aging, which can eventually lead to autoimmune disease and cancer. This can be combated by finding the root cause of inflammation (commonly diet-related) and taking steps to prevent it.

Telomeres sit at the end of our DNA, and their length is related to our biological age (different from our chronological age, which counts birthdays, your biological age is how old your body is in relationship to your health). Telomeres are shortened by unhealthy habits such as smoking, and eating inflammatory foods.

Our mitochondria produce 95% of our energy, in the form of ATP, but the byproduct of the energy production is harmful free radicals which cause damage to the mitochondria. Science has shown certain foods, as well as the enzyme CoQ10, to be powerful in defending against free radical damage.

How to Age Successfully

We are able to curtail disease, wrinkles, and a general decline in health through taking proper care of our bodies. A big part of preventing disease and deterioration as you age is dependent on your diet. The following foods are just some of the many healthy options we have that are full of the nutrients and minerals vital for good health and longevity:

Bright colored fruits and veggies provide beta-carotene and vitamin A, which protect against cellular damage and premature aging. They are also great for your skin and eyes, meaning less wrinkles and better vision. These include: bell peppers, carrots, sweet potato, and broccoli.

Leafy greens, such as spinach, collard greens, lettuce, and kale, contain several top antioxidants. Lutein and zeaxanthin have been shown to reduce the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration. Beta-carotene, vitamin C, and sulforaphane are cancer-fighting antioxidants present in leafy greens. The folate in spinach improves your short-term memory and might even lower the risk of developing heart disease and cancer. Vitamin K1 is found in collard and salad greens, which is linked to vascular health, strong bones, prevention of heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and can treat certain cancers.

Eggs also contain lutein and zeaxanthin, making them an unexpected friend of your eyes. They are a natural source of vitamin D, as well as choline, which protects your brain, nervous system, and heart. Be sure to buy organic, pastured eggs for all the benefits they have to offer!

Blueberries are chock-full of antioxidant power. By fighting oxidative stress, blueberries can help neutralize the damage caused by free radicals. They help reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and arthritis while boosting your vision and immune system!

Citrus contains vitamin C, which helps your body produce collagen. Collagen is responsible for healthy joints as well as tight, healthy skin. The quercetin in citrus has anti-aging properties and also helps fight inflammation.

Takeaway

You are what you eat, so if your goal is to be healthy and thriving in old age, the food choices you make today need to be healthy ones. Luckily, these foods are not only dense in important nutrients, they are also delicious!

Click here for a consultation with a functional medicine doctor and a personalized health plan!

REFERENCES:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/

http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/pdf/S1097-2765(16)00081-2.pdf

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/64125

http://enews.tufts.edu/stories/101399BlueberriesMayImproveMemory.htm