Are You Sensitive to Antinutrients (Salicylates and Oxalates) in Plant Food? | Podcast #336
Food intolerance are very common problems that can be difficult to diagnose. In this video, Dr. J and Evan explain the causes and symptoms of salicylate oxalates sensitivity. Salicylates are compounds that you can find in foods, medications, and other products that can cause adverse reactions in intolerant ones. An intolerrance to these compounds is linked with a wide variety of symptoms, making it hard to identify. The most common symptoms involve the respiratory system. However, the skin and intestinal tract may also be affected.
Oxalates are often known as an anti-nutrient, as they tend to bind up some crucial nutrients in foods, which stops them from being fully absorbed. Intolerrance occurs in your body when the oxalates themselves are not detoxified from the body, allowing them to build up in the tissues. A low-oxalate diet is commonly advised for joint conditions including arthritis and gout and children on the spectrum.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:09 What are Antinutrients
4:15 Diet Templates
12:51 Carnivore based Diets
17:06 Root Causes on Inflammation
21:21 AIP
27:24 Magnesium Benefits
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s not the J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we are going to be chatting about anti nutrients in food. Anti nutrients are one of these controversial topics because a lot of plants have a lot of nutrients in them, right blueberries, right? raspberries, a lot of these really good like spinach, spinach, things like that, right? But they have some of these things known as anti nutrients, whether it’s oxalates, or phytates, or salicylates, right, these are kind of under the overall umbrella of phenol, right polyphenols. And for people that are sensitive, and have gut issues and immune stress, this may be something that actually causes more harm than good. If you have good gut health, the nutrients in those food are going to be obviously beneficial. So it just depends kind of where you sit in that scale. But today, we’re gonna dive in and break it down. Evan, how are we doing today, man?
Evan Brand: I’m doing really well. And I’ll tell a quick story. And then we’ll dive into this thing. So I noticed that my daughter was complaining after I gave her blueberries we do some organic wild blueberries, I may give those to her just on a plate just as a snack or I may just put those in a smoothie and we’ll do like some grass fed beef peptides. And then I noticed she said, Daddy, my tummy hurts. And I thought, huh, that’s interesting. And I correlated it to the blueberries. And upon researching into salicylates, the quote, very high category of salicylate foods would be blueberries, cherries, blackberries, apricots, orange, pineapple, raisin, strawberries, tangerines, and then lower than that, like high but not very high. You got apples, you have avocados, you have Mandarin, nectarine, passion fruit, peach, and then like your very, very low. salicylates would be like pear or banana, or Papa, which we have here. A lot of pawpaw trees in Kentucky. That’s kind of a native fruit. They’re kind of weird. But some people really, really like them. That’s what Yeah, yeah, they’re cool. They’re cool tree. But it’s a pretty short tree, and they’ve got a pawpaw fruit on it. It’s kind of interesting thing. But anyhow. So long story short, I’ve determined there’s definitely a trigger. And totally, we’ve talked about this before, with like paleo and more carnivore type diets. The idea is that if you just go more meat based animal based diet, you’re really pulling a lot of these anti nutrients out. And that’s why people feel better. But that still doesn’t get to the root cause of why you’re having the intolerance in the first place. So I think that’s important, you and I eventually get to that, I think it’s good. We’re gonna give some backstory and education. But I think it’s important to point out early on here that if you have a sensitivity to these foods, it’s not to mean that you can’t or shouldn’t eat those foods. It’s you got to figure out why are you so sensitive, and there are some big root causes we’re going to dive into?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now. I just I like to, I like to have a lot of common sense. Try to be like the mayor of Rio Ville here, right? So if you’re coming in, and you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re on like a standard American diets, so to speak, don’t worry about it. We’re just trying to get you to eat whole foods that are nutrient dense, anti inflammatory, and low toxin like that’s our first step out of the gates. This is all window dressing, right? So once you’ve been doing the right diet, doing the right thing, and you’re still having some gut issues, some immune issues, this is kind of where we’re going to come in and fine tune things after the fact. So if you’re coming in, and you’re like, Man, this is like killing me. I can’t eat blueberries, like everyone’s telling me blueberries are healthy, what the heck, right? I get it, that can be really overwhelming. So don’t worry about that out of the gates just really get a good nutrient dense anti inflammatory, low toxin. Get your carbs and check out of the gate. Start with that before you do any thing. Else. Any comments on that evidence?
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. And if you’re coming in, and you’re new to the diet game, nutrition game, really just organic as much as possible. And paleo is going to be a great starting place for you. We don’t want you to be afraid of certain foods or certain food categories. This is more of like a nutrition 301 nutrition 401 level courses is like a college level nutrition course. Because if you come in, and now like you said, You’re afraid of blueberries, you’re going to be too stressed. So these are this is more designed for people that are maybe working with us clinically, or they’re working with another, you know, functional medicine practitioner, and they’re maybe still teasing apart some things that are irritating them. This is going to be for you guys.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So 90% of people are going to go on some kind of a paleo or autoimmune template, and that’s going to be enough, right? Others are going to have to do things like cooking the food can decrease some of these anti nutrients, it can decrease some of the oxalates some of the salicylates some of the fight dates, right? We know things like knots are very high in fight dates. For instance, you know, soaking those can be helpful. Obviously, going on an autoimmune diet, we’re going to restrict knots, right. So kind of going autoimmune. We’re going to be restricting a lot of these foods just in general, going paleo you kind of restrict a lot of them because there’s a lot of anti nutrients in grains. So grains are going to be a big anti nutrient one beans and lentils are going to be a big anti nutrient one. So just by kind of getting on board of a paleo template where we’re cutting out grains, legumes and dairy. Maybe we have some meats and Vegetables and Fruits and safe starches, safe searches or grain free searches. And maybe some fats, including some dairy, that’s great, we may have to go one level up where we restrict even butter and dairy, and of course, even nuts and seeds, right. And then of course, after that, we may have to be doing extra things like restricting fodmaps, because of the fermentable carbohydrates that are in some of these healthy foods like broccoli and brussel sprouts. And again, the reason why these foods have to be restricted is not because the foods themselves are bad, but because it’s more of the gut, your micro biomes interaction with those foods that are the problem. So if we have bacterial overgrowth, right, and you’re interacting with these foods, then you’re going to be creating lots of gases in your intestinal tract like methane and hydrogen that are going to throw off your your motility that are going to make it harder to digest your food to absorb your food to break down protein to break down fat. So it can really throw off a lot of these different things. So I always tell patients out of the gate, the goal is to eat the right foods that allow you to feel as good as possible, not add more stress on your body. And ideally, your body can break them down because healthy foods not broken down. They ferment they are instead of phi. They putrefy and they basically rot inside your tummy and that’s not good. So we have to have those kind of things lined up and some people with autoimmune stuff, we have to go and restrict the salicylates or the oxalates. And again, for instance, I see a lot of chronic eczema patients. Sometimes we really have to go low salicylates. On XM. I see that a lot with eczema. salicylates are a big one. So I have a handout that I use a patient’s pull it up here in a second, where we kind of work on restricting a lot of the salicylates and potentially some of the oxalates. If we see a lot of vulvodynia, like just random, like joint pain, tissue pain, a lot of times those oxalate crystals can get into that tissue and really create inflammation. And we can assess that with a specific organic acid test and Opus oxalates there. And we can also look at a lot of the underlying skin stuff that we see there’s a lot of chronic eczema that’s not getting better with an autoimmune diet, we may look at going low solicited as well. So there’s a lot of different tools we have in our tool bag. But all of it comes back to the gut, we have to work on the six hours and moving the bad foods, we may have to go deeper, like I mentioned with the other foods with cooking the foods really well. Nothing wrong, really working on enzymes and acids and bile support really working on gut healing support, anti inflammatory support, that’s gonna be the foundation before we go in and address gut killing, because gut killing can be stressful on the gut, and you have to have those first two to three hours lined up to mitigate damage.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and you brought up the organic acids test we’ve seen to clinically the correlation between candida overgrowth and oxalates being high. So interestingly enough, when we come in and we use a protocol, like you’re mentioning, will come in and address gut infections, whether it’s parasites, worms, H. pylori, fungal overgrowth, we’ll see those oxalate markers come down quite a bit. So in a lot of cases where people are sensitive to these food groups, finding the gut infections, and then fixing those gut infections can reduce the sensitivity. So this is the problem I have with people that are just strictly nutritionist is they can avoid going deep enough. And you could just keep tweaking the diet and Someone may say yeah, I feel better with low salicylate low oxalate, and then they think that’s just their life sentence. But that’s really boring over time. And I think there are beneficial antioxidants in the foods that you will miss out on. So I think it is important to be able to have a very diet. I’m a huge fan of animal based diet, but I’m still wanting to do some nuts and seeds and blueberries and maybe some starch here and there. Here’s one interesting thing I wanted to read, which is that excess salicylates work similarly in the body as oxalates that they both can lead to inflammation. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to create the overproduction of leukotrienes. And these are inflammatory mediators that can increase the risk of health issues like asthma and inflammatory bowel disease. And you also mentioned skin issues. So I’m sure the histamine connection is is definitely part of it, too. And that’s why we see benefit with things like course attend or natural anti histamines with these type of people, they tend to do better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. 100%. Because what you’re having, we’re having a major effect on modulating the immune system. So that makes a big difference, right. And then of course, making sure we’re able to break down our foods using things like an instant pot to help break down the foods. Be careful of things like crock pots just because the longer cooking can increase histamine. A lot of people who are sensitive to these females or salicylates or oxalates, or fight dates, they also tend to be histamine sensitive. So it’s kind of it’s overwhelming for people out of the gates that have a lot of immune imbalances because they really have to restrict a lot of stuff. And so, you know, some have to go to carnivore, they need fresher meats, they need to cook it up in a more fast way. And we did not have a lot of leftovers hanging around for days later because of the histamine accumulation. So those are the things you got to be very, very careful of. Also people feel better fasting, that’s also a good sign. When you’re fasting, you’re not eating any food. So you’re also not eating the things that are making you sick either. And so a lot of times, part of the reason why fasting is great for a lot of people isn’t just necessarily because of the cellular autophagy and the insulin resistance and all those mtorr pathways, you know, being reduced. It’s, you’re just not eating things that are making you sick, even if they’re healthy things, you know, like blueberries and your daughter, for instance, no one will be like, Oh, that’s like, that’s like junk food, of course that make her sick. No, that wouldn’t go on most people’s radar screens, but we know that there’s some anti nutrients that could be a driving factor in that.
Evan Brand: It’s interesting how berries, if you think of the just amazing evolution of fruit, and you think of the most vulnerable, most soft, easily ruined fruit, you’re going to think of the berries. I mean, you think of raspberries, I mean, I’ve seen countless times where I pick them up at the store at a farmers market. And man those things in less than a week those things are going moldy, they’re getting soft and gooey. So make sense why salicylates are so high in the berries, because essentially what it is, is a natural pesticide, and it’s an antifungal. So the goal is, the plant is trying to protect itself so that it can get to the proper stage and development that it wants to. So what does it do? Well, it doesn’t have teeth to bite the offender. So it has to create some sort of mechanism. And that mechanism is salicylates to protect it versus something like an avocado. It’s got that nice outer shell protecting it. So it doesn’t have to be as high in salicylates because it’s already protected. So that’s just a really cool thing to think about how nature works.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then animals don’t have any of that, because animals have teeth and the ability to you know, fight back from a certain bit. So you have less anti nutrients on the animal side. And that’s why you see a lot of these carnivore groups pop up that are like, Oh my gosh, like look at all the my autoimmunity is reversed. Why? Well, it’s because animals don’t have the need for anti nutrients because they have claws or hooves or can run and and can fight so to speak, right. And so you have less anti nutrients and a lot of these animal products. So when you see a lot of people reversing significant autoimmune condition with carnivore or semi carnivore diets. And again, a carnivore diet is an autoimmune diet. It’s an it’s a low fodmap diet to it’s also those lists laid, so it’s low anti nutrient as well. But you see these stories, and the question is why? And most people, they’re very dogmatic about it. It’s like, Oh, no, it’s this diet. This is what did it and they don’t really understand the mechanism mechanism of what’s actually happening. biochemically and physiologically, they just kind of a look at it more like a religion than it is. But let’s just break down the science, right? Let’s look at reason, logic and evidence. And so the reason logic and evidence is reducing these anti nutrients. And then also we chatted about our show, a lot of times the salicylates and females and anti nutrients become more of a problem is when we have low sulfur a low glutathione to run a lot of our detoxification pathways. And a lot of times these sulfur nutrients have a major effect on modulating our immune system too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well, here’s the interesting thing. You’ve got these people that are going on the diet, so I need to look them up. George St. Pierre, he’s a pretty- he’s a fighter, an MMA fighter. Yeah, yeah, he’s, uh, I don’t know if he still is, or if he’s retired, or what his deal is. But anyway, I’ve seen him posting that he’s gone to carnivore diet. He was doing like a 30 day carnivore challenge talking about how much better he feels. And he’s posting all these pictures of his, his steaks. And so like you said, it does become kind of religion, like, okay, it’s the vegan versus the meat group. But I think it’s more important to highlight, okay, he’s probably got something going on in his gut that’s driving his autoimmune issue, or whatever his issues were, that led him to more meat based diet. And you could do meat, meat, meat and remove all the anti nutrients, sure, but what did you not address and that’s the problem that I have is when people are gonna go and just eat a grass fed steak twice a day. And that’s it for their diet, or maybe a handful of this or that they’re still missing, the deeper thing. So let’s talk about that. Let’s dive into more of these bigger things. Because people are not going to investigate it, they’re just going to do the diet, they’re going to feel better and that’s as far as it goes, they’re never going to talk about what you and I are hitting on which is you mentioned.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll just hit one more thread one more thread real fast people that would go on like let’s say a meat only diet or carnivore based diet, and they feel worse. Why is that right? They’re gonna just think oh, it’s the animal products is it it’s like no animal products are very taxing on your digestive system. So if you have an adequate C’s and HCl or enzymes or even bile salts, that weakness will be exposed by eating the meat cuz you may not have enough acid or enzyme or bile to break down that protein and fat. Therefore that foods going to feel like a brick in your stomach. You’re going to feel indigestion you’re going to feel bloated, you’re going to feel motility issues, and so that could throw you off too. So if you are going to go carnivore and make changes in these diets, low hanging fruit always is going to be how we cook the food, even if it’s plants, right because just steaming and putting our plants in some kind of a stew or soup, or just even roasting it way better than raw and then of course, enzymes and acids in between. By all of our stool is not being broken down. Well, if it’s floating, right, those are all signs of not breaking down fat. And so we have to really make sure those foundational pieces are addr essed.
Evan Brand: Oh yeah, that’s a great call. Because you’re going to have, you’re going to have a large percentage of the people that that do great. But then you’re going to have these people say, Oh, I tried carnivore, and I felt terrible on meats. It’s not the meats you’re pointing out, it’s not that I just want to say in a different way, it’s not necessarily the meats. That’s the problem. It’s your system can’t handle it. Everyone system can and should be able to handle meats. This is what we evolved to eat. But it’s it’s the matter of the underlying infection. So like the H. pylori, reducing the stomach acid, now you’ve got low HCl, you’re going to try to do meats, meats, meats, you’re probably going to be having tons of gas, you might have diarrhea, because you just simply can’t break down the the fat in the protein and you and I are going to measure this right? We’re not going to just say, hey, try this diet, or try that we’re going to do the testing to investigate and what we may see on the stool, we might see high, stouter crit, which is a fecal fat marker, we may see low pancreatic elastase, we may see high calprotectin. There’s gut inflammation, and then we may see these root causes which I want to transition into the bacterial overgrowth, the parasites, the worms, all these infections, which are disrupting the gut, creating the leaky gut, which is then allowing the histamines the oxalates the salicylates to become a problem. So let’s dive into one thing, which is mold toxin. We know that mold toxin is definitely going to affect detox ability and it can create a mast cell problem and I’ve dealt with mast cell problems myself I’m slowly but surely getting better and better and better by doing two things. Number one, eliminating the mold toxin using binders. And then number two stabilizing the mast cells using things like coarse attend, and other mast cell nutrients nettle can be helpful vitamin C to help degrade histamine do with food to help digest the histamine you’re putting in the diet. So I think toxins in general, maybe not just mold, but I think we could say toxins, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, anything that’s disrupting the gut is going to be important to to look for with testing and then to treat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% Yeah, especially if you can get to the root cause, right? If you’re in a moldy home right now, we got to look at that we got to address it. If you have high levels of mold out of the bat, but you’re not in a moldy home, it may be less important to jump on board with detoxification if you already have a lot of crappy digestion issues going on. Because we know a lot of molds going to be eliminated via the hepatobiliary system. So a lot of times we got a time up isn’t the appropriate time to really push and lean on detoxification. That’s an important thing. We live in a generation where we know if we have some kind of a toxin exposure or some kind of a gut, Bob, we want to go after that right now. And sometimes we got to set the table for it get the foundation moving, so we can manage that better.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. So let’s chat on the solver piece. You brought up sulfur. So what are things we can do to boost sulfur? Because this is going to help with the solicita a problem. And then also, you know, I know, you know, boosting sulfur is going to help with detox. Right? And it’s going to help boost glutathione production too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great question. Let me share my screen here. So you guys can see some stuff. Alright, so this is one of the eating plans that I made, you know, over the years, I’m changing it all the time for my patients to kind of help them give them good feedback. But the key thing is we got to have healthy levels of protein in every meal. All right. And so typically, I’m doing a palm to a fist to a full hand of protein. Now if I have someone coming in with really crappy digestion, and there may be a previous vegan, they may only be able to handle like one bite of like salmon or something, right. So this is like a general template, but it may not work for everyone. Depending on how bad your digestion is. I always tell patients, the worse your digestion is we lean to like gentle stews, and soups where it’s just easier on the body easy to handle. And I try to you know, eat enough. So someone can last about four to five hours. But sometimes if their digestion stinks, they may only be able to eat enough for two to three hours because a smaller amount of food less food in your tummy. And then you just come back more frequently, right? It’s not ideal in the you know, intermittent fasting insulin sensitivity world, right, because you want to have more time between meals and not be grazing all the time. But from a digestive health standpoint, that may be what’s necessary. And then in general, just to look at my eating plan here, healthy proteins, healthy carbs, right, and you can see some of the carbs that are going to be higher in fodmaps. Right, you can see some of the autoimmune foods that are in red, right. So we want to avoid the red the autoimmune foods, we want to be doing more of our non starchy vegetables without the F’s next to them, ideally cooked steamed sauteed and then avoiding some of the five maps right now, for my patients. I have an expandable fodmap handout here. So it’s just it’s more in depth right? You’ll see this come up in a second. This is helpful here is also a great app that I use for things that may be more nuanced called fodmap. A to Z that’s a great one. And then we use some of these oxalates like we’ll look at some of the like I try not to overthink it with the oxalates I just try to look at and say like what are the top three to five things that you’re doing? Maybe on the oxalate side or on the silver This late side, if they’re really sensitive, right, we may just jump onto a carnivore diet and automatically eliminate these, we may just look at these more specifically. And let’s just let’s highlight the ones that are the Most High. Right, and this is one given out by University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. But you can see, we just try to look at the high ones and try to just replace them with a low one. If we’re seeing someone like let’s say, consume a lot of teas, right? or seeing someone do a lot of nuts, right. And again, if you do like an autoimmune paleo template, guess what happens, you’re already cutting out all majority cutting out nuts, you’re already cutting out soy, right? So a lot of times we get a reduction, doing some of like, you know, the the templates that I talked about here, my meal map, just naturally, okay. And then of course, if we have a lot of eczema issues, we may also be looking at this as well and trying to look at some of the higher salicylate foods here. And again, it gets overwhelming. So if you’re, like I mentioned earlier, if you’re coming into this with a standard American diet, and you’re not that great to begin with, don’t worry about this, like, forget about it, just get a good foundation, once the foundation solid, and you’re not quite moving the needle. This is where you work with a practitioner to get to the next level. So I just don’t want anyone coming in that doesn’t have a great day and looks at this. And it’s like holy crap, like, forget this. This is too confusing. Don’t worry about that. Push that aside. This is for people that are already kind of flatlined on that and there are options.
Evan Brand: Agreed. Yeah, well, you mentioned AIP is going to be eliminating a lot of this stuff anyway. So really, we’re talking about just other terms, other names for diets that have tons of overlap. That’s the key thing that’s coming out of this is like whether it’s animal based, whether it’s full carnivore, whether it’s autoimmune. There’s so many overlapping things that are happening, you’re reducing toxins, you’re reducing anti nutrients, overall, you’re going organic as much as possible. So I think it’s important for people not to get caught up on the name or the term of what, quote, diet you’re eating, we just want you to focus on what is going to make you feel the best. And in general, that’s going to be organic pastured meats. And like you mentioned, if you’re coming as a vegetarian, vegan, maybe you can only do a bite of a grass fed burger at first, then we uncover you have all these gut infections. Now we fix the gut infections boost up acid and enzymes. Now you could do a whole grass fed burger and you feel better than ever, compared to your 20 years of being vegetarian, for example. 100%. Let’s go back to the sulfur though, those handouts were helpful. Let’s go back to sulfur for a minute though, things that we can do we know like foods, for example. So like onions, garlic, which these may be fodmap foods, right? So then we’re going to coach you through this if we’re working with you, but we want to go higher sulfur, so eggs are going to be good if you tolerate those, if you’re on AIP, obviously, you’re not so eggs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So out of the out of the gate here, like your proteins are going to be excellent for sulfur, right? They’re going to be very high in cysteine. And a lot of the sulfur based amino acids, so any of your fish eggs, if we can do it, darker cut meats are going to be higher, better in a lot of the sulfur amino acids, some of the vegetables that are going to be more sulfur rich, they also may be higher and fodmap. So you have to look at that collard greens, kale, they may be good, but they may also have some of these extra salicylates in there. So we have to look at the vegetable component. And we have to look at the meat component. So the easiest thing out of the gate with silver is just meat if we’re sensitive, because we’re not going to get the anti nutrients on the meat slash protein side. And the key thing is if we have digestive issues, we really have to lean on enzymes and acids, and maybe bile if our stools floating or it’s taking excessive wipes to kind of clean yourself after number two. So we got to look at those things right got to make sure we’re breaking everything down out of the gates there. And then outside of that, just making sure motility is good. If you start eating more protein it like start moving in the carnivore side, you may not have passed as much stool just because a lot of this is going to be reabsorbed and not necessarily come out via fiber in your stool. So stool kind of motility may drop a little bit and that may be on the normal side. Anything else you want to highlight here Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah, well, here’s something interesting the point that we kind of have this convergence of diets and it really just shows how sick and symptomatic the population is because AIP used to be good enough. And now people are taking it to what I would consider almost more extreme level where they’re literally just doing meats. And of course hopefully a lot of those people can do more animal based which is what I would say my diet is animal based but then I have other foods. But man if everyone is having to go from us to AIP used to clear everybody up now we got to go carnivore to clear people up that just goes to show just how sick as a population we really are, it’s really quite alarming.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is absolutely is and people need to remember like animal products are nutrient dense. So if we’re just relying on muscle meat, that’s okay, if you’re going more carnivore, try to lean into some bone broth if you can try to do a little bit of work in meat or at least some origami capsules. And you really got to be careful with getting extra enough magnesium and potassium because a lot of times those are going to be more in your green vegetables and plant in plant foods. So if you’re going to be decreasing some of those things, you just got to make sure supplemental You have a good magnesium potassium support. You’re putting a lot of sea salt in your water and or on your meat when you’re seasoning. And so just got to be careful with those electrolyte things which can be easily missed.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So how do you boost sulfur to help the salicylate problem we hit on the proteins, we hit on some of the other foods like maybe some garlic, baby, some onion, some broccoli, things that are going to give m-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and those are going to be high in fodmaps. So again, we have to dovetail that this is where having a clinician than a help adding an HCl adding an enzymes being able to break down those foods, adding in collagen, amino acids or bone broth, which is very high in glycine, which is very sulfur, we may need to add in some things like n acetylcysteine. Again, it may not be great out of the gates, NAC is also a biofilm buster. So a lot of the high sulfur stuff can also knock down biofilms for the bacteria. So it just depends kind of where people are out of the gate. So what I tend to do is add in some gentle collagen, amino acids, or some freeform amino acids in a capsule form, maybe some bone broth, you know, as long as there’s no histamine issues, and really lean on digestive support, I’m going to do that out of the gate. And then maybe when it’s time to do gut killing, maybe we’ll add in some extra and acetylcysteine or sulfur amino acids, whether it’s just straight NAC or I have a product called detox amino that has calcium digluconate in there, which is great for beta glucuronidation mold detoxification too, and has a lot of all the other glutathione and NAC and methionine and cysteine and taurine, all those good things. So it just depends out of the gates, maybe we’re just focusing on food, supplemental freeform amino acids, collagen, and really working on digestion.
Evan Brand: Yep. And if you’ve got a kid too, and you’re trying to work stuff into their system, and maybe a little harder Epsom salt bath could go a really long way. And then life is almost Bluetooth ion in a liquid form. So there are some really good like syrups and some things that you and I use clinically, which can be helpful. So it’s not mandatory that you go to the Bluetooth ion level. But that is a really good way to help a lot of different mechanisms because you’re going to be mobilizing and pushing toxins out and protecting them too. It’s a really powerful antioxidant. So we really like gluta fine for kids. And typically we’re going to go like a quarter of an adult dose depending on the weight of the kid. So if it’s a young kid we’re working with, you know, if a normal dose is a teaspoon, we may come in quarter teaspoon instead, or maybe we go half a teaspoon. And then also you mentioned magnesium, so we could do magnesium oil. You could do magnesium lotion, you could do magnesium drinks. If you could get your kid to drink some magnesium. There’s some good options there too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, magnesium is very helpful for brain inflammation. Right. Russell Blaylock, retired neurosurgeons talked about the fact that when he would give his patients magnesium post brain surgery, they healed exponentially faster compared to people, patients he didn’t give it to. So we know magnesium, very, very powerful brain inflammation. Obviously, if you have gut issues, doing Epsom salt bath absorbs it trans dermally, right. flotator flotation tanks, same thing, very helpful. And again, if you’re a mom or dad, and you’re listening to this, and you’re just trying to get your kids eat blueberries away from the crackers that do that first, right, do that first. I mean, he does a lot of studies on eating blueberries and some of these low sugar fruits and being incredibly anti inflammatory to the brain. Go there first. If you’re having a reaction, then we step it up into gear. So my son was born, I think it was it was last year, he was six months old. And he was having a lot of eczema issues. And we had to really work on going AIP and lo salicylates to get the eczema down. Now, once we worked on gut and digestion and good bacteria balance, we were able to add these foods back in, and it wasn’t as big of a deal. And when you’re younger, at that age, there’s some immune issues that tend to happen in that first year life until we were able to get through that point. And it was excellent. And it really never came back unless we eat certain foods that we know are not on his plan. But out of the gates, we had to be more restrictive with salicylates, and then we were able to pull back on that down the road.
Evan Brand: Well, the guts more leaky as a young baby like that anyway, right. So I think it’s somewhat normal to have to be a little bit more restricted with young kids because their guts are forming so they can really absorb all the breast milk. So I think you did a good job. And I think this is important to remind people that all these different tweaks, these are really just tools, but really, you got to get to the big thing here, which is a mast cell problem, generally a mast cell activation that’s causing you to be so darn sensitive, whether it’s chemical sensitivity you deal with, which could also be common. So if you have if you notice, you’re having salicylate oxalate problems, histamine problems, you could have maybe chemical sensitivity or other reactions as well. And you got to get to the root of it. For me, the root of it was tick bites and mold. And I’m slowly chipping away at those things. So I think you just got to keep dig digging deeper. Don’t just stop at the die and get the diet dialed in enough to have you stable. And then once you’re stable, you’re going to investigate these other things. Don’t just do diet and think that’s the end of the road for me. I’ll just never eat blueberries again. That’s not a way to live.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. And again, those foods are relatively healthy and they’re very nutrient dense. There’s a lot of good phytonutrients in there. So if we can have it in and plus, you know, I’d much rather have my kids eat blueberries and crackers or any other sweets, that’s always better. So, yeah, so we got to, you know, we got to make sure we’re seeing the forest to the trees. You So we have a big picture where right we’re focused on what our what our goal is now but then what’s the big picture in the long run?
Yeah, so just to wrap up last, last thing on the testing front, we’re going to look at an organic acids on your we’re going to look at Candida, we’re going to measure oxalates. We’re going to look at bacterial overgrowth, we’re going to look at stool for any type of infections gut inflammation. We’re going to look at any type of pancreatic enzyme deficiencies we’re going to look at fat digestion problems, so just was stolen urine To be honest, I think you could get a ton of information.
100% man, why anyone listening and you guys enjoy the content. Please feel free and share it with family and friends. Give us a share on your social we really appreciate it. Put your comments below let us know what you’ve done that’s been helpful for you in the past. Also, if you want to reach out and get support from Evan and I we are available worldwide love to be able to help you. We’ll put links down below EvanBrand.com. Reach out to Evan. JustInHealth.com and reach out to Dr. J myself. We are here to help you ready to serve. You guys have a phenomenal weekend and we’ll be in touch. Take care now.
Evan Brand: Take care. Bye
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Nutrient density, eating local and grains – Podcast #120
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand discuss about nutrient density and the different benefits of going organic and local when it comes to produce. They explore the nutrients of juicing, how our body processes such nutrients and its effects on our health.
Find out how sugar and insulin affects our body when it comes to burning fat. Discover other nutrient dense sources that are available in the market. Learn about grains, anti-nutrients found in plants and how they are related to gut issues facing some of us. Gain valuable information about organic food sources, how our body reacts to it and how it affects our health.
In this episode, we cover:
4:00 Juicing and how it affects our bodies
11:18 Other nutrient dense sources
14:26 Anti-nutrients in plants
17:00 Grains and how it affects our bodies
25:18 Eating wheat
Evan Brand: Justin, how you doing?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, doing great brother. How you doing today?
Evan Brand: I’m pretty. Well- hey, our audio quality assuming everything goes well should be increased by 200% on the listener side of things. So looking forward to that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So if you guys are like in the better on audio quality let us know so we can keep doing it. If not, feedback’s always great.
Evan Brand: Yes sir. So you brought up nutrient density which I think is a good topic to discuss. Something that’s helpful, that a lot of people are promoting online purchasing of meats. There’s a lot of these different companies out there where people are buying subscriptions of this and that with their food, which is great. But to me when it comes to your produce and especially your meat, I’m a huge fan of going organic and local, not just organic or not just grass-fed. If you’re getting some subscription box of meat from California and you live in New York, yes it’s frozen, yes it’s probably still gonna retain a lot of its benefit but think of the carbon footprint you’re adding to transport that stuff via two-day air to get it to your house so that the ice doesn’t freeze. For example, so I mean just from a total overall ecological perspective, you’re probably could be much more, much more cost-effective and double more eco-friendly to go with a local organic source.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, absolutely. I mean it’s always better to shop local if you can. We also have to understand that there’s a convenience factor too, right.
So if it’s easier for me to get my fridge all stocked up with meat and have it cryovac and sealed that I can put in there actually access what I want, that’s great. If you have a good farm nearby that you can reach out to. You know what, I do it both ways, personally. I have five farms locally where I can acquire stuff, put in my fridge. Ideally I like it cryovak, cryo-sealed. It last longer I can put in the fridge and not worry about it going bad, it getting freezer burned. But is also the aspect of, you know, wanting to support people locally. So I think it’s a fully double edge sword and you have to figure out. Number one, the most important thing is that your compliant, right. Coz you have to eat the food to get the benefit. So number one is making sure you’re actually consuming that higher-quality food coz you get the nutrient density you get all the quality nutrient, that’s number one. And then number two, I consider- well, how do you get it right, you know, if you can buy from sources locally that’s better support your local economy. Number two, you’re not buying meat that has been shipped around which is gonna get a more gasoline, more fumes and all that kind of stuff. So definitely local is better but I always want to make sure that those nutrients in my body first, what do you think?
Evan Brand: Sure, true. That makes a good point if you get a freezer full of bison meat like me, but I got to McDonald’s then what’s the- what’s the whole point? So yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup, that’s totally- we’re on that. Now regarding nutrient density, I think a lot of people when they think nutrient density, they always get into their head juicing or vegetarian nutrients regarding vegetables, kind of stuff which I think is good that you got a lot of stuff nutrients via vegetables. But people forget meat is incredibly nutrient dense. Cholesterol, fat-soluble vitamins, these foods are really really important to up nutrient density and a lot of people I think that are vegetarian or vegan think that plants are kind of the uhm- the monopoly on nutrient density that they juice. They’d be good to go which I think that can be good but juicing is a double-edged sword because you can also get a whole bunch of sugar after throwing carrots and fruit in there and people forget about the fat-soluble nutrients which necessarily snuck in a calm in your juicing. You’re not gonna get the vitamin A, D, E and K. You get beta-carotene but a lot of people may have a hard time converting that over. So nutrient density is also a really important piece of the puzzle.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about that a little bit further with the juicing aspect is you’re also gonna to be removing a lot of the fiber which is gonna act like a sort of a slow digesting product that’s going to help you not spike your blood sugar in your insulin levels up as much. And so you and I both had people we work with that are juicing. Maybe they eat some grass fed beef too. But if they are juicing and they’re unable to lose body fat, for example, well if you don’t have any fiber because you’re just juicing it, you’re not making a smoothie. For example, instead where you’d preserve the fiber content and that blood sugar goes up which causes the surge of insulin you’re gonna be in fat storage mode. And no matter how much you exercise, no matter how much grass fed beef you get, if you’re dumping 80-90 g of sugar into your gut and bursting the morning with your morning juice. Then to me I don’t think you’re gonna get out of fat storage mode through the entire day. What’s your thought?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I mean the big thing the burning fat is keeping your insulin levels relatively low. Now insulin is a storage hormone that’s also a good thing because we need storage hormones to put on muscle, right. People think insulin is just terrible. People in the in the low-carb world think it’s terrible. But go talk to a bodybuilder, a lot of them are actually injecting insulin to help increase uh- protein synthesis. So there’s good and bad. We can use insulin to our benefit the build muscle but from an every day perspective, we want to keep insulin lower during the day on average because that will help us tap into fat. The better and the more –uh – the greater ability we have the tap into fat, the better our mood’s gonna be, the less hunger pangs, the less cravings for bad junk and the more you’re gonna be stable. My analogy to my patient always is this – when you’re burning fat, it’s equivalent to putting logs in the fire right. Everyone has the baby memories of childhood camping and they throw logs in the fire. So you throw logs into the fire maybe throw little bit of kindling and lighter fluid to get it going and you’re good to go. Best logs in the fire that’s being a fat burner know a lot of people they are sugar burners and what that means is that’s like relying on kindling paper and or gasoline. Gasoline being refined sugar right kindling a paper being carbohydrates. The more your rely on paper, think about it, you gotta sit there and you gotta feed the fire every couple of minutes. It’s kinda like people to graze all day because you’re not getting enough protein and fat and so we want to be fat burners. Logs in the fire versus the sugar burner which is the kindling the paper and even the gasoline for refined sugar. So we wanna on to the logs and away from the kindling as a mainstay the staple were doing.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And there’s a lot of research about insulin and food and all of that I think it gets personally pretty boring and so I go to the first-hand experience and when I chatted with Dr. Mercola on the podcast about a month ago he’s actually using that – I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s that device were you injected into your skin and it keeps your blood sugar you can track your blood sugar like hundreds of times per day. I’m not sure if it does insulin levels too or just blood sugar but either way he found out that the only way the he was able to consume fruit without causing a significant blood sugar, which therefore to me would signal insulin spike, was if he ate fruit while walking. And so when we were doing the podcast, he is like, “Oh Evan, you know I usually don’t do Skype like this”. He’s like “I’m- I’m you know shortcutting my daily walk on the beach for you”. And I’m like, “don’t do that. Let me call you on your phone.” So he gave me his phone number and I called him on his phone and then he was walking and he’s like “Yeah, I’m actually eating on these berries I grew in my backyard right now. It’s like this is the only way I can do it. As I tracked it every other way”. He said, “I’ve done berries before walking I’ve done berries after walking and all causes too much of a blood sugar spike.” So while walking blood sugar spike does not happen which is interesting but at the same time it makes sense. Because if you and I were hanging on the woods together 50,000 years ago we were hunting and gathering together today. Maybe we would camp came across a wild blueberry bush and would’ve ate those berries and kept walking. So kinda makes perfect sense really you wouldn’t be just sitting there eating them, you would’ve been moving at the same time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely and again I think it’s unrealistic to think, though eating food at all to create no blood sugar spike.
Evan Brand: The question is how do we keep it within a normal variation so our body can adapt to it right. And that’s kind of the key thing that Dr. Mercola probably was was getting at there. He’s- he’s fanatical right. He’s doing everything to the umpteenth degree, which is great, I love it. It’s great to be at that high level but the question is how do we extract that information and make it applicable to my patients. With devices, you will go eat your fruit while walking they would look at me like I have 10 heads. Seriously they wouldn’t- it would not be something that we can apply but what could we apply is- Well, let’s eat that fruit after our meal so it’s the- the absorption is slower or let’s try not to eat fruit on an empty stomach or let’s try to do a post workout or let’s just use lower glycemic versions. And just the glycemic index unto itself isn’t that important. Because it’s looking at sugar and its effect going into the bloodstream and how fast it goes into the bloodstream which again by itself isn’t a big deal because we eat fruit with other types of food, right. But we know higher glycemic index goes into your body faster. Lower glycemic index food goes into it slower. So if I eat lower glycemic index types of foods or in this analogy fruit like berries or grapefruit or green apples or those kind of things. It’s gonna go in slower and if I eat it with some high quality fats and proteins and veggies, it’s gonna go on even slower because the absorption in the stomach slow down because of the protein, right. Things slow down, your stomach take about an hour to pass through once proteins there. So we do these natural things we can slow it down. And also if for exercising and putting on muscle, the more muscle we have, muscle is a reservoir site for carbohydrate in the form of glycogen so that’s great. Because that means it’s a bigger sponge so imagine you’re going to sop up the mess that your kid made on your table and imagine you have just like one small paper towel. You’re gonna wipe through it in that paper towel’s gonna be saturated and you’ll be stuck just pushing around water, right. Whatever they’re still, right? So you go back, so now you get a handful paper towels and now you’re absorption ability is so much higher that’s what muscle does. So simple movements like walking and those things that are good for burning sugar but they’re not good for making the cloth that you’re using bigger. So resistance training, high intensity interval training put on the muscle and burn the sugar. The walking will just burn the sugar and ideally burn the fat as well. So we want to make that that rag bigger so we can clean up that mess and sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good point. So you kinda transition into talking about building muscle then, which is – which is a great point. And I believe all people should have muscle for sure. I’m still building myself back. I’m actually, I bought a mountain bike this weekend and I’ve been riding that. And I feel really good. I already feel like my legs are stronger and more engorge with blood that feels more heart-pumping mountain bike workouts than before. So, for me that’s kind of goal 2017. Pick up all the muscle I loss when I had those infections in my gut. And maybe we should talk about other nutrient dense things too. Something that I’ve been into is broccoli sprouts and I actually have some other sprouts that I haven’t grown yet. I have some sunflower seed sprouts, as in others. But apparently, broccoli is kind of the brand that yield them all because of this sulfurophane. I believe you’re getting something about 35 times the amount of sulfurophane as you get with actual broccoli. And So I’ve been doing a lot of those cool anti cancer benefits of those. But for me it’s just a great easy thing. And it’s fun, too. So basically, me and my wife will grab the – it’s like uh – they call it sprouting jar or basically it’s just a giant, oversized mason jar with uh – meshed lid. You put a little bit of season in it, put a little bit of filtered water. And you put in the darkness for about a day. You take it out the next day, you rinse it, you put it back in the darkness, you lay the jar on the side and then within 2-4 days, you have sprouts that are couple to few inches tall. And we just basically take in the – I need the little shells too. It’s like a nice little crunch, only the shell of the seed. And I just throw those on salad or even I took a seed the other day, I did a bison stew with sweet potatoes. And I threw sprouts on there. And it was incredible. To me, I think if people are looking for what’s one little, cheap, easy, fun hack that you can do at home to get anti-cancer too. And if it’s – you wanna feel awesome and cooler than your friends who are not eating sprouts. Then that’s it, you can go on amazon and you get organic broccoli sprouts. Broccoli – that’s what they call, broccoli sprouting seeds. It’s like 10 box. So – that’s my seeds. Have you done sprouts like that? Have you tried them?
Evan Brand: I have not done it too much just because of the extra bit of time that it’s involved putting, putting into it. I mean, Doctor Mercola has talked about the nutrient density of it. And they’re also very cost-effective so definitely if you’re on a budget when it comes to food, but you don’t want to compromise the nutrient density, I think it’s phenomenal way to do it. If I was back in school again I would definitely look at making that staple again. But for me right now, I’m just trying to keep it simple so I get a lot of my stuff at whole foods locally. And the whole foods that I use usually do procure a lot of their producer meets locally from different farms in the Texas Austin area, which is great. So I can get a bit of the convenience of going to one place and also still supporting some of the local farmers. And there are still places locally that I do get the meat. I get a lot of my stuff the grass-fed meat or US wellness meats. But again their farms are located in Texas too which is really cool so I do feel like that I’m still supporting a lot of my uh – farms locally and getting stuff pretty close by.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. And you’re in whole food head quarters so that’s gonna make a difference compared to some of the brands that we have here.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And for me, nutrient density is super important. I think a lot of people who were vegetarian and vegan think that they may have the monopoly on that. But I think it’s really important that plants don’t quite have the same level of privacy protection as an animal does. They don’t have the claws and the ability to run and fight and flee. But plants have antinutrients most antinutrients are, are there for a reason. And they’re so seeds pass out through the stool so then it can sprout and create more of that plant. That’s important but those antinutrients also can disrupt digestion. They can also affect the gut lining whether it’s various lectins or various compounds. Whether it’s mineral blockers or mineral binders, whether it’s phytates or oxalates or various lectins. There are lots of them and there are different ones for each compound. Each kind of plant and cooking can help decrease some of that as well which is great. So a lot of people have digestive issues – digestive issues to get better absorption by cooking and also a lot of fiber in plants that can bind up a lot of nutrition. That’s why one of the things we talked about with juicing is that you can cook some of your vegetables down, you can steam, it sauté it. That’ll break down some of the phytates and oxalates but also liberate some of the fibers that are trapping up nutrients and then from there you can throw that food into like a Vita mix or magic bullet blended up. That way you at least get some of the fiber so some of the fiber that will blunt that sugar from getting into your bloodstream as fast. Remember, the faster your sugar gets in your bloodstream, the more insulin your body has to make the buffer it. So the more you can slow that sugar into your bloodstream, the less insulin the body makes. It’s like push-pull. If we’re doing tug-of-war and I pull back really hard you’re gonna pull back the other way probably just as hard. If I pull back a little, you’re in a pull back a little. Imagine me as the pancreas and you are – well, here. The pancreas is the insulin and then your blood sugar is you. So I’m the pancreas, you’re the blood sugar, right. The faster I pull, the more sugar that you put out, the faster – the more I have to pull back. So think of the first pull is the blood sugar. The higher the blood sugar goes, the more you pull, Uhm – the pancreas, I, make the insulin. The harder you pull, meaning the higher the blood sugar is, the more I gotta pull by producing insulin. Does that analogy make sense?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it works.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I just sent you an article that Mercola wrote. And so it sounds like we may have to interview the author of this book that we got here. The author, this guy John. But basically in terms of grains and and antinutrients and all that, Mercola is kind of – he wrote his No grain book like a decade ago.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Actually more that that and now, after talking with this guy, he’s kinda changing how he’s feeling about grains. And so this guy is saying basically in terms of seasonal eating and looking at genetics and history, blah, blah blah. That we were eating grains potentially a million years as oppose to meat, we’re only eating for like 500,000 years. So now this, this long story here is that he’s basically saying that you should be able to get fat, adapt it first. After you regained your fat burning ability, then add back in grains in the right manner and you should be okay to tolerate them. So that’s pretty interesting coz it’s kind of an antigrain diet community out there. And typically you and I see much better results when we tell people to go away from grains. I think there maybe some validity to this. But to me it sounds like – if you’re up against leaky gut issues, if you’re up against infections, if you’re up against the general stress – to me, you’re not healthy enough to handle that. So I would like to look at this information like, “Oh, yeah maybe your ancestors did this, but at the same time they didn’t have the type of – and 24-7 stress test that we use.” So maybe our ancestors were able to tolerate what would’ve been “Organic Grains” a million years ago. Our modern life is different. And typically there’s GMO or the hydrodize or the spray with chemicals. So I don’t know. This is an interesting uh – wrench to throw into the no grain – no grain, what do you call it, bandwagon.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, here’s my take on it, okay. Playing sports when I was younger, you remember like watching like there was a quarterback or a baseball player they would do things differently. They would show off in a way technique-wise, that maybe wasn’t something that you consider to be a fundamental thing. Like you guys going to the plate and doing all these crazy movements or you get people in the field doing all these different flips and such. And I always tell my patients that’s like you being healthy so when you’re healthy, that’s like being a professional athlete. To be a professional athlete, have to get to that high level with the fundamentals at the highest level intact. But you have to have the best fundamentals. Once your fundamentals are 100% dialed in, you can show off and do different things that someone starting out would never be able to do, right. So that’s akin to someone being healthy. When someone’s healthy, they can go and add little bits of cheat here and there and honestly have no problem with it. Now the question is, how do we lessen, how do we decrease the amount of damage that a cheat does. And that’s where I think some of these things can be added and whether it’s sprouting grains or whether it’s choosing sourdough bread or whether it’s choosing breads that are higher in nutria – nutrient density and less got your tuning compounds. That’s a great starting point. But again, most of the people that I’m seeing and you’re seeing, they’re sick or they have some kind health challenge.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. So my goal as uh – a physician is I don’t want to add variables that’s gonna make my job harder when I’m working with my patients.
Evan Brand: Yup, I agree.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna cut all the variables out so I know I’m working with a tabula rasa. It’s a blank slate and then from there we can build them up. And once they write a letter to like, “Doctor J, I feel great. My mood’s great. My period’s better. My brain fog’s gone. My libido’s better. I’m sleeping good. My energy is great. Then we could say, alright – let’s you know, if you wanna have a cheat this weekend, it’s your kids birthday party, fine. But if we have an option to choose a grain or starch or tuber, that’s gonna have less issues. I’m all about doing the thing that could have the least amount of damage. Does that make sense?
Evan Brand: I agree, yeah. Like you and I talk about last weekend. You were telling me about those taro – what was it, taro pancakes or taro fruit waffles.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: – that you had they were freaking amazing. And that’s grain free.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I was at a picnic last weekend and I had for dessert I had the blueberry pancakes with the – with yucca root. It was yucca root.
Evan Brand: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Which is great. It’s a starchy tuber. It’s like in the same family as sweet potato. That’s much better for my gut. And how I feel afterwards is so much better. My skin thanks me. I don’t get the breakout. I don’t get the inflammation but there’s we can also ignore the research that gluten even if you’re not necessarily having a gluten-sensitive reaction can still increase gastrointestinal permeability. And that’s really important.
Evan Brand: I know. I agree. Go ahead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani I agree. It’s how do you – it’s like okay, you can take research on this point and say okay, ancient people would’ve eaten more than just meat vegetables. Ancient people would’ve had grain but then we look at what you say. We look at research between uh- gluten and zonulin and tos- permeability and all that stuff we already talked about. And you got all this leaky gut thing leaning over. We got this big leaky gut elephant in the room. And so I think it’s interesting that you and Mercola kinda talk out. Because I wanna address the perceived conflict between this guy saying in his book Eat Wheat and then Doctor Perlmutter in his book Grain Brain and other books. And so basically, long story short, these guys kinda talk it out between each other and then say exactly what we discuss which is yeah, once your digestion is properly restored, maybe you can reintroduce the grains. So really this is the basic of what we already said in 200 episodes but I like how its- the head honchos of, you know, the biggest anti grain guy our there versus the biggest pro guy grain out there. And they’re kinda going head to head. And sounds like they will come to the same conclusion, which is what you said. So eloquently with the analogy of the athlete which is once detoxification is in the hands, once gut health is taken care of, once leaky gut is addressed, maybe you can add the stuff back in. Me personally, I’m not really gonna go that way because I’ve noticed the difference in my skin health. And for sure, even if it’s an organic grain, to me if I know this can contribute to leaky gut, do I really wanna do that? In our ancient world, where we would’ve had less chemicals, maybe intestinal permeability wouldn’t have been a big of a deal. But to me, in the modern world, I don’t really wanna a leaky – a leaky gut world, leaky brain due to all these other chemicals out there. So for me, I’d rather be more protected and just be grain free. And I think that’s gonna help me sleep at night better, both emotional and dietary perspective. What do you think?
Evan Brand: Oh, a 100%. And then. uhm, Dr. Mercola and Dr. – the other doctor that he interviewed here talked about the one of the Italian studies were the gluten-free sourdough bread, uhm – tend to cause no intestinal inflammation. So I think if we can look at good, better, best, right. In my opinion, my biased on my autoimmune condition and dealing with thousand of patients who have autoimmune conditions and also just facing the fact that a lot of a large percent of the population has silent autoimmune conditions. I would say the majority and again the question is, it’s the tincture time, it’s the tincture of stress chemical physical and emotional that causes these things to express so looking at that I always say, try to keep it grain free but if were going to space good sourdough bread to be a great option if you want to introduce them bread in there and not have some of the deleterious effects or just let myself find places that will have the yucca flour. Like I’ll go to uh – Estancia or Fogo de Chao and get some of the yucca rolls or I’ll do the yucca pancakes, right. Or the sweet potato or pumpkin pancakes. So I try to use starchy tubers to get the same kinda molly feel as I would get from the grains without having the same kinda inflammatory response.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Agreed. Yeah. And I guess at then end of the day it goes back to the clinical application, too. Because we don’t this guy who’s – who’s proposing this now. We don’t’ know what his clinical experience is. I mean, has he worked with – with people with uh – autoimmune disease, very complex disease like you could have thousand of times or I like what I have a thousand of times now. I don’t – I don’t think he probably has that clinical takeaway where he’s actually worked with people where they got Hashimoto or other disease and they got parasites we’re looking at and adrenal problems. I mean, for us, I don’t know – Obviously we’re biased. But to me, the functional medicine background that we both abide to this whole conversation, it supersedes the conversation of wheat or no wheat because there’s all these other factors that are tied in. And when those factors are tied in, they change the conversation to me.
Evan Brand: Absolutely. I mean frankly when someone sees the title book that says, “Eat wheat”, what’s your response? I mean, for me, I think what that does for most individuals, it justifies them continuing to eat a lot of the crap they eat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Agreed. And if you see wheat, that’s gonna say, okay that means I could go back – back to my burger. I can go back to the sandwich at lunch. I can go back to the pasta at dinner. And I think that is a slippery slope and I think if we were to get this author on the show and I think he clarifies, he’s definitely talking about whole food sources. I think he would even clarify the GMO organic sources coz we know 90% of wheat in this country is not organic and it’s prayed with tons and tons of pesticides. And they’re typically genetically modified which is an experiment unto itself when the human studies on GMO really don’t go past three or four weeks. I have a strong suspect of always going to all foods over new foods when the research is not in-depth and very long and extensive.
Evan Brand: Agree. Yeah people will probably think we’re ganging up on him if we do a 3-way interview. But I think it would be a fun conversation. And the clarification is there were says refined grains and blah, blah, blah – those are bad and you want whole grains, etc. But to me, if we’re talking and kinda wrapping up the nutrient density dot. For me the top of the food chain in terms of what do you best think for your buckets can be good quality, organic, pasteur-raised animals. You’re gonna have a good organic – Even if you could do like organic wild blueberries apparently wild blueberries get sprayed. And if they’re not organic, wild blueberries are sprayed, not good. Uhm – so you know, organic berries, your organic veggies, your good organic butters, if you could tolerate it, your coconuts, your avocadoes. One thing I’d like to say now is do avocadoes or avocado, do macadamia or macadamia oil, you know, you have to go through all these processed products. Avocado oil is more processed than the avocado by itself. So if you get actual food of avocado, do that. Your macadamias, your leafy greens and that’s your nutrient density. And maybe, maybe – 5% that you can have some of these organic sourdough bread like you mentioned. And maybe you’re okay with it. If your gut’s clean, you don’t have infections, your adrenals are healthy. Maybe if you worked on chemicals, you worked on heavy metals, maybe you could get away with that. At the end of the day, what is the whole purpose of our show? It’s to help people be healthy. It’s to help people be happy not to hear our conversation like this and leave feeling more confused than before. So this is not us changing our stance on anything. The same things still apply. Get yourself tested, look for infections, make sure you’re clear, make sure you have healthy adrenals. Your detox pathways are working. You have a primarily organic meat and veggie and a little bit berry –focused organic diet. With maybe a little bit of starches like sweet potatoes and some organic white rice in there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Evan Brand: Does that summarize it all?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think it’s really important. And the last piece I wanna kinda harp on, if someone is not a clinician, I mean, they haven’t dealt with the thousands of patients that have these issues or they don’t have an issue like that themselves, it’s really easy to lose the empathy for the cheat. A lot of times people talking about a little bit of this is okay. Well, it depends. You know, what’s the consequence of that? How many days are you setback? How exacerbated is your autoimmune condition? How much, how bad are the breakouts? How bad are the symptoms that arise from it for days or maybe weeks later? So I think you really have to look at that in the equation and you really have to make your decision based on that. I think it’s really important that if you’re a patient or your someone listening to this and want to use that info to justify eating more of these foods always have someone on board whether it’s a functional nutritionist or functional box or functional medicine doctor that can kinda walk you through it and go to the pros and the cons just to make sure you warrant maybe making a decision that’s a little bit hasty. Uhm – because you get those cravings going on there and make sure you’re doing – your health should be the ultimate goal in there. Not to have a quick short-term satisfaction of some bread but to make sure your health number one And again if you need to reach out to someone, Evan and myself are available notjustpaleo.com and justinhealth.com If you want more information, get in your diet dialed. And then obviously, the last piece is if you gut inflammation and leaky gut and you already have G.I. symptoms, the last thing you want to be doing is showing any bread or grains into your diet right now.
Evan Brand: Awesome. Well said. And people may guess and check the inflammation, words that are around a lot. You don’t have to guess and check whether you have inflammation. If Justin and I are looking at organic acid testing with you, we can look at that. We could clinic 5 HIAA ratio on – planes. That’s a great marker for your inflammation. And also on the GI mock that we use, you can also see how protected levels there for testing inflammation. So even just for that perspective, if you’re curious, “Do I have this inflammation?” “Should I be taking this –cumin supplement – wasting all my money on it?” Well, why don’t you just get tested? Figure out what’s your inflammation levels are. You know, number on a piece of paper. Go to a more clinical route and then you’ll know. We’re huge fans of testing, not guessing because in the long term it will save you money. And you’re not buying 20 supplements that may help you but may not be the really needed as much as you previously thought.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Excellent, Evan. Very good. Any other thoughts?
Evan Brand: I don’t think so. We’ll talk next week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anyone listening that’s really enjoying this show. Feedback is great. We’re getting a lot more emails and were getting show ideas up in the queue. And also show us your love. Give us a five-star rating on iTunes. Click below the link and give us some love. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Take care.
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