Collagen Diet: Collagen-Rich Foods for Healthy Joints, and Skin

We know collagen is going to help with the joints because we know half of your bones are protein. We need good building blocks for our cartilaginous tissue and ligamentous tissue. Frankly, most people get most of their protein from muscle meats. That’s a problem because they’re not getting the knuckles, the bones, and the cartilage, as we would from old-fashioned soups. So, if you’re doing a lot of soups and bone broth soups, that’s great. If not, we really want to add extra collagen.

Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor for more information on a good collagen diet and supplements.

I do 20 g of collagen in my coffee every morning. I think it’s amazing. I do my true collagen with some MCT oil and grass-fed butter. I love it. I think it’s excellent for skin, hair, nails, and just for overall prevention of bone loss and cartilage loss. We know the wear and tear that most people experience in their joints throughout the year, especially if they do a lot of long-distance cardio. You really need more building blocks to help prevent and mitigate the wear and tear, so you don’t have knee and joint replacements later in life. Collagen can really help decrease some of that wear and tear.

How do you take collagen?

I like adding collagen in my coffee in the morning because it has a nice little kind of creamer-like effect. It gives that little bit of frothiness which is wonderful. I also do it before bed. Sometimes I’ll do a little bit of collagen (glycine), magnesium, and vitamin C because vitamin C is a really important building block for making collagen. I find magnesium has some very good calming effects as well where there are plugs in the GABA or it’s just a natural beta-blocker as well. It can calm the heart and bring the heart rate down a little bit. I think magnesium does work on some of those GABA pathways as well and, of course, magnesium helps with blood sugar. You’ll get deeper sleep and better REM sleep when you have good magnesium. So, I love combining collagen and magnesium at night.

Where can you get collagen from?

You can get collagen from food via bone broth. Chicken skin is super rich in glycine, roughly 3.3 g for 3-1/2 oz. If you make chicken soup, throw the whole chicken in there. Get a rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods and or get the fattier cuts of the chicken at least with the bone and the skin, so that way you get the best of both worlds if you’re going to do it from a whole food source. Regarding seafood, wild salmon is going to be the best source of glycine.

If you want to learn more about the collagen diet and other good sources of collagen, click this link to schedule a chat with me!

The Top 5 Reasons Why Your Estrogen Levels are High – Men & Women!

Let’s talk about the top 5 reasons why your estrogen levels are high. We’re going to break them down today.

WHAT ARE ESTROGENS?

First, let’s look at the 3 major kinds of estrogens: E1 or estrone, E2 or estradiol, and E3 or estriol. In a woman’s regular cycle, it’s usually estradiol we’re talking about. When you start shifting to more menopausal and the ovary stops working, you start getting more estriol. The adrenals help in kick in a lot of DHEA and you make more estriol. Estradiol is more of the growth factor type of estrogen and estriol is a weaker estrogen.

Click here if you need to consult with a functional medicine doctor to learn more about estrogen and your hormones.

WHERE CAN WE FIND ESTROGENS?

  1. PLASTICS. You’ll get it when the plastic is warm like in a microwave or out of a plastic water bottle especially if it’s in the car and the sun is hitting it or it’s outside. That’s why you want a good stainless steel or glass water bottle if you’re going to go outside or leaving it in the sun. The microwave heat and the radiation is going to cause a big release of plastic chemicals there, the xenoestrogens. One of the big ones are the phthalates but also BPA. There are other types of BPAs that are new which are supposedly safe but there are still estrogen-like compounds there as well. These plastics can affect women and men as well. Men are actually going to be more affected by them because men aren’t used to having estrogen in their environment and getting a whole bunch is going to be a problem.
  2. PESTICIDES. These tend to have an estrogenic quality to them and if you’re eating foods that are not organic, you’re definitely going to be getting organochlorines and various pesticides in your environment.
  3. PHYTOESTROGENS. These are found in soy. For example, I had a vegan-vegetarian patient. We ran a Dutch sex hormone panel on her and her estradiol was through the roof and really high. Phytoestrogens can be a big one, so soy may be a problem. With vegan-vegetarian, there’s a lot of phony protein consumption like fake meat kind of stuff such as the Beyond burger where there are a lot of soy and estrogen-like compounds in there. There are also hormones in meat. You have to make sure you get antibiotic-free, hormone-free, and ideally organic and pasture-fed or if you’re on the Whole Foods scale, step 4 or step 5 is ideal. Step 2 is at least pretty good. Organic means no pesticides, no hormones, and also the food they’re eating has no pesticides or hormones, too.
  4. HIGH LEVELS OF INSULIN. Too much carbs drive high levels of insulin because insulin responds to a high level of blood sugar. The blood sugars in your bloodstream go up and your pancreas comes in. The beta cells make a bunch of insulin to bring it down and bring it into the cellar and converted to fat. So, high levels of insulin upregulate an enzyme in men called aromatase that converts testosterone, the male hormones, to estrogen which becomes a problem. Now, in women, a similar thing happens but it’s the exact opposite or the big switch. Their estrogen is converted to testosterone. So, women can actually get more androgen-like issues which results in weight gain, acne, hair growth, and sometimes you can see some libido enhancements on that. So, that’s the difference between men and women.
  5. POOR GUT HEALTH. In the gut, we make healthy good bacteria in our gut that help us absorb a lot of nutrients. A good healthy gut function helps us break down protein for good HDL levels and good enzyme levels. We need these to break down protein into amino acids which are really important for helping us to detoxify. So, detoxification helps us to excrete estrogens that we’re getting exposed to in our environments such as the pesticides, plastic, or something that you don’t even know you’re getting exposed to. Good healthy detoxification will help your body eliminate that, so that’s a good backup plan.Also, if we have a lot of dysbiosis, SIBO and bacterial overgrowth, we can make a lot of what’s called beta-glucuronidase. This is an enzyme that’s made by bad bacteria and it makes it harder to detoxify estrogen. The beta-glucuronidase takes conjugated estrogens and binds it to a protein that helps us excrete it out the body. It takes that protein and it pulls it apart. It takes the handcuffs off that protein, so that allows that estrogen that’s been deconjugated to go back into the body in the general circulation. So, if we have gut issues, that could be a major concern.

HOW DO WE ADDRESS THE PROBLEM?

We need things like cysteine, glycine, glutamine, sulfur amino acids, and things that help us methylate like B12, B6, and folate. So, these nutrients we have to get them in our diet via a good diet. We need to be able to break down and absorb those nutrients, so we need good digestion to get those things in there.

So, in general, we’ve got to make sure we have a good gut bacteria balance. Even fungal overgrowth can cause problems and H. pylori that can lower stomach acid and make it harder to break down nutrition on one side and then it can create this bacterial overgrowth enzyme that makes it hard to detoxify estrogen. These are really important components. If you have any issues with estrogen, you’ve got to look there.

Now, we may want to do things to help detoxify like make lifestyle changes, food changes, pesticide changes, make the changes in regards to plastics, and make in in regards to your diet, your glycemic load, and your gut. That’s a good first step to get to the bottom. There are also different things we may do to help upregulate detoxification to help get that estrogen. It may be activated charcoal or various soluble fibers. It could be things like bentonite clay. We could use things like DIM or Calcium D-Glucarate or glutathione, sulfur amino acids, and vitamin C. They’re all helpful in different situations. We would recommend them based on what’s happening but at least make the diet and lifestyle changes out of the gates.

If you want to find out the root cause of what’s happening, click this link where you can schedule a chat with me!

Oils That Cause Gut Inflammation

There are various top-causes for gut inflammation but a big one is an oil. The oil you use to cook or bake into foods could be a major culprit to your very uncomfortable gut inflammation. Let’s look at the good and stable oils vs. the unhealthy oils. 

Click here for a consultation with a functional medicine doctor if you have questions about what oils to use for cooking!

If you look at the standard American diet, just even a hundred years ago, your grandparents or your great grandparents, they did not have access to these type of oils. They were cooking with traditional fats. They did a lot of lard and maybe some beef tallow.

If I asked my grandfather, “What did your grandmother cook you and what did she cook it with?” She was not using soybean oil. She was not using corn oils. She was not using rapeseed oil, which is canola.  She was not using peanut oil. If they did something fried, it was going to be fried in possibly bacon fat, which came from the pig in the backyard of the farm or it was going to be cooked in some type of like a beef tallow, where the cows were on the back part of the farm.

When it comes down to fats, most plant fats are not going to be the best unless they are cold extracted or unless they are minimally processed to extract the fats. Partly because of the processes of extracting, it tends to damage the fats because the heat and the extraction process also makes the fats rancid and taste bad. There’s a lot of like deodorizing and filtration and different processes to make it more palatable that you would never be able to have at a natural state.

So the best plant fats are:

  1. Coconut oil because it’s a saturated fat and it’s more temperature-stable.
  2. Cold-press olive oil and good-quality avocado oil, which is primarily a monosaturated fat.
  3. Palm oil, which is more in a kind of saturated state.

There are some nut-based and some seed-based oils, but then you start ramping up the Omega-6 and those may not be the best.  There are some supplemental oils that are more GLA-based that I’ll give supplementally, like black currant seed oil but we’ll give it supplementally and that’s coming from great sources that are going to be in capsules that won’t be oxidized and such.

Bad fats are going to create a lot of oxidative stress and they are going to deplete a lot of your antioxidant reserves because if those fats are oxidized, your body is going to need a lot of vitamin C and vitamin E to help with the oxidative stress that those fats may cause your body.

Now what it you find a good fish with gluten-free breading so it’s not covered in wheat with some type of non-gluten containing flour, but then you’ve got canola oil. Do you think you’re still going to be net positive in terms of nutrition because you’ve still got the good fish, but yet you’ve got the inflammatory oils or would you say, just get you some grilled fish and then if you want to bread it, you bread it yourself?

There’s a product that we like of sweet potato fries that my wife will do for my son because it’s really easy, but they have a little bit of canola oil in there. So you have this kind of convenience factor where ideally if you could you always would want to put your own fat on there if you could and my easy saturated fat or my easy fat for cooking that’s plant-based would be avocado. I like avocado because it tastes a little bit more neutral. I do not like olive oil as much. Olive oil is better for dressings, but I’ll do avocado for cooking. If you have control over it, you always choose the better fat over the junky fat if you can.

So the interesting thing is like coconut oil and avocado they’ve become kind of trendy and I would say avocado is not going to be a traditional fat meaning, meaning like traditional people were probably not doing it because you’ve got to have some heavy-duty equipment to extract the oil, but coconut oil would be super traditional.  I mean, this would be something that has historical use.

Your big fats that are going to be plant-based would probably be primarily coconut. But your biggest ones that I think are going to be used more long-term from generation to generation will be your tallows, your bacon fat, your duck fat, and those kinds of things because saturated fats don’t go bad. They stay good for a long time because the carbon is saturated with 4 hydrogen bonds between them, which makes the fat really, really, really temperature-stable.

Take note of oils are that bad for your gut because they cause inflammation and oxidative stress.

If you have any questions about what the best oils to use for cooking, please reach out to a functional medicine doctor to learn more.

 

4 Herbs That Give You The Upper Hand Against Viral Infections

Let’s talk about four herbs with antiviral properties. 

Click here for a consultation with a functional medicine doctor before taking herbal supplements!

Olive Leaf

As part of a Candida protocol, we’ll have a couple of herb combinations that will have olive leaf combined with monolaurin. Stack those two right on top of each other. Monolaurin is a lauric acid coconut extract.  It has been shown to be very, very potent as an antiviral.  With olive leaf, the main compound in it – oleuropein – and that actually prevents the virus from attaching to the cells. We kind of talk about mechanisms a lot and people ask why does that matter.  It is because some herbs may prevent the replication of viruses.  Things like olive actually prevent the virus from attaching to healthy cells. So if you have multiple herbs, you’ve got multiple mechanisms.  You’re just making yourself even more resilient.

Astragalus

They help with either immune modulation, natural killer cell, antibody modulation which is the infantry that comes in afterwards, or it is going to help with viral replication. Typically, it’s going to modulate the inflammation from the immune response.

Usually it is hitting things in about three to four different ways, and most are going to fall into that category. That is kind of the mechanism how they are working.

Cat’s Claws

We use Cat’s Claw or Samento a lot with biofilms.  They work really well.  These are protective shields, bacteria and critters use. We also use it with a lot of Lyme and various co-infections, but Cat’s Claws is great at the immune system, helping with viruses, and really enhancing the body’s ability to deal with infections. Again, everything we are talking about is not necessarily to treat anything.  A lot of the time it is just to support our own immune response to what’s happening, because our body is really the ultimate fighter in all of this.  Everything we are doing is just trying to give our body’s immune system an edge to address the issue to begin with.  The body has dealt and humankind has dealt with viruses since forever.

Echinacea

When we are doing a lot of these herbs, a lot of times we want to make sure the whole root is present. A lot of times with Echinacea, you will see a lot of flower present. I want the whole root.  I find that it has a lot more of the immune-modulating alkaloids that really have the immune benefit. It is excellent in how it reduces virus levels.  It inhibits the growth of bacteria. It inhibits the growth of viruses. It is also going to modulate with the inflammation caused by that immune response and caused by the cytokines and interleukins.

What can you do to try to gain the upper hand?

These things are just going to improve your resilience. It’s important to have the right mindset. A lot of people are selling like cures or solutions and that is not going to be the case, but it is really going to be our body to begin with.  Even antibiotics, when an infection gets cleared, it is still not the antibiotic.  It is the antibiotic lowering the level of the infection and then the immune system can kind of come in and play.  It is like if we are using a lifting analogy, it really gives a very helpful spot when you’re kind of low in that bench press, it really gives you that little spot to kind of get it up through that sticky point.

If you have any questions about herbs with antiviral properties, please reach out to a functional medicine doctor and learn more.

Why The Weight Won’t Come Off

Why Weight Wont Come Off

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

If you’re past your 20’s, you’ve probably noticed your weight has gone up with time. The truth is, most people are on a gradual course of gaining 1-2 pounds of weight with each passing year. In your teens and early 20s, it seems relatively easy to stay in good shape, and your metabolism is working at full capacity. However, as the years go by, good and bad habits start to catch up with us. Just as compound interest works in your favor when it comes to investing and saving, the compounding of bad health habits will affect your metabolism negatively over time as well.

The underlying cause of abnormal weight gain is a sluggish metabolism. As the years go by, most people’s metabolisms start to slow down. With a slowing metabolism, your body’s ability to metabolize fat for energy becomes impaired, and metabolically the body tends to start burning carbohydrates for fuel instead.

If a sluggish metabolism causes weight gain, then the best place to start to prevent or reverse this would be to address the underlying factors that caused your metabolism to slow over time.

Toxin exposure and its effect on our hormonal system has strong adverse effects on the metabolism, and is extremely common.  It has been shown that the thyroid and adrenal glands work together to help regulate both metabolism and energy. When the body is exposed to high levels of toxins, the adrenal glands becomes stressed and an increase in adrenaline and cortisol is secreted to help buffer the inflammation and stress.  A chronic surplus of cortisol will eventually result in fatigue, belly fat, and decreased muscle mass. You have probably noticed that most people who are overweight carry the bulk of it around the hips and tummy, with very little muscle.

There are many other interconnected causes of weight gain, as you can see in the graphic below, but today we will be focusing on the thyroid-adrenal-toxin connection.

The Fat Loss Web

Need help losing weight? Click here for help from a functional medicine doctor.

The chart below demonstrates the connection between toxins and fat mass. You can see that the people with the highest body fat have the highest level of organochlorines.

Organochlorines are the chemicals used in pesticides and herbicides.  These chemical are used in conventional and GMO produce.  These organochlorine compounds are known to mimic estrogen; and excess estrogen actually causes you to gain and hold onto fat, and also promotes tumor growth and cancer.

Obesity Reviews

It’s interesting to note that one of the proposed mechanisms for how these pesticides increase weight gain is through decreasing our active thyroid hormones. T3 helps our metabolism remain active.  If you look at the graphic below, you’ll see that as T3 function reduces, the chance of weight gain increases.

Weight Loss

Mycotoxins are toxins produced from fungus and commonly cause abnormal weight gain and infertility. They can be found in foods such as peanuts, grains, and coffee!

Mycotoxins such as zearalenone are compounded into pellets and placed into cattle’s ears to increase weight gain before going to slaughter.  The interesting thing about zearalenone is that farmers can decrease the amount of food they feed the cows, yet the cows still gain weight. How many people do you know that keep cutting calories but still can’t lose weight?  This is a common result of mycotoxin intake.

Did you know fungal overgrowth in our intestine can secrete mycotoxins as well?  I personally lost 15 pounds by going on an anti-fungal protocol, including cutting peanuts out of my diet.  The amazing thing with this weight loss story was there was no real fundamental change in the diet or the amount of calories either.

Avoiding common mycotoxins that was see in grains, organochlorines, peanuts, and conventional coffee can be a great way to supercharge your metabolism and help you lose weight effortlessly.

Easy swaps include ditching the peanut butter in favor of almond butter, and seeking out high-quality coffee that tests for mycotoxins. My favorite kind of coffee is Bulletproof coffee, it is mycotoxin-free and can be found here.

Click here if you need help in losing weight!

Shift Your Metabolism

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

You may be familiar with the word “metabolism” in the sense of someone having a fast/slow metabolism, leading them to easily lose/gain weight. But what exactly is your metabolism? While your metabolism and body fat do correlate, perhaps more important is the role your metabolism plays in providing you with energy!

Essentially, your metabolism is in charge of converting what you eat and drink into energy. The more energy you have, the better you look, feel and perform. When clients want to boost their metabolism, generally they mean they want to shed weight. Ideally, we want to improve our metabolism in a sustainable way, rather than looking for a quick (unsustainable) fix in the form of redbulls and heaps of sugar!

Let’s review a couple of body systems that help create energy:

The Hormonal System

The Hormonal system includes the adrenals, thyroid, and genitals. These play a very important role in maintaining blood sugar, dealing with inflammation/stress, and produce specific compounds that rebuild every cell in our body on a daily basis.

Step 1: Eat high quality protein and fat every 3-5 hours; this helps take the stress off of your adrenals to keep your blood sugar stable and keep your metabolism up.

Step 2: Getting to bed before 11pm gives you a nice bump in growth hormone. Growth hormone eats up fat and keeps lean muscle on your body.

Step 3: Keep foods like grains (gluten) and gut irritating foods out of your diet. Sugar and grains increase cortisol, and cortisol increases belly fat (the spare tire effect).

The Gastrointestinal System

The Gastrointestinal system is the next system that plays an important role on our metabolism and how we look, feel and perform. The nutrients that go into your body are the raw materials needed to be a healthy human. Without quality nutrients, symptoms such as fatigue, weight gain, and mood imbalances tend to arise. The great thing is all of this is preventable!

Click here if you want to improve your metabolism.

Step 1: Make sure you are eating a high quality (organic, hormone/antibiotic free) diet based on your nutritional needs.

Step 2: Make sure you are able to break down and assimilate the food and supplements you are putting into your body.  If you have any stomach burning (GERD) or experience consistent gas, bloating and/or consume gluten, chances are you aren’t able to optimally absorb nutrients. Some digestive support, like HCl and enzymes, would more than likely make a big difference in how you feel after eating, and in how your body absorbs nutrients.

Step 3: Research shows that 70% of the population has some sort of G.I. infection, such as a parasite, bacterial, or fungal infection. These bugs compete for nutrition and actually excrete toxins (endotoxin or mycotoxin to name a few) in the process. Get checked to see if you have one these infections, it’s easy via a take-home stool test.

The Detoxification System

Your body is constantly taking in toxins from our environment. We are exposed to toxins in the air, in our food. Your body is constantly breaking them down and pushing them out via the skin, kidneys, breath, and stool. When our body has increased exposure to toxins, we tend to store a lot of these toxins in our fat cells. So, when you have stubborn weight that just won’t come off with the correct dietary, lifestyle and exercise habits, a well-rounded detox program can usually do the trick.  Simple steps to start are:

Step 1: Do your best to avoid toxic exposure coming in from pesticides, chemicals, and hormones in food by buying organic produce and antibiotic/hormone-free meat.

Step 2: Avoid chemicals in skincare products that can be adding to your chemical load. The EWG (Environmental Working Group) has a database of virtually all cosmetics, skincare, cleaning products, and more which reports any health concerns and gives them a numerical safety rating. This database, Skin Deep, is a great resource to ensure the products you’re using on and around your body aren’t causing you harm!

Step 3: “The solution to pollution is dilution.” The more water you drink, the easier it is for your body to flush some of these toxins out. 1/2 ounce per pound of body weight is a great starting point (e.g. 200 pound man = 100 ounces of water).

I am a big fan of detoxification programs that focus on herbs, nutrients and sulfur-based amino acids to help optimize your body’s natural detoxification mechanisms. By employing the methods above to improve your hormones, gastrointestinal system, and detoxification pathways, you are more than likely to naturally notice a great improvement in your metabolism!

Click here to learn more about regulating your natural detoxification mechanisms.

Mike Mutzel – Exercise, The Belly Fat Effect, Weight Loss – Podcast #40

In this interview with Mike Mutzel, we talk about the Belly Fat Effect which is a book he wrote that will help us learn the real secret about how your diet, intestinal health, and gut bacteria help you burn fat.Mike Mutzel In this podcast we will also talk about incretins, mTOR, and all about leptins.

We also touch upon the issue of exercising and they best time to do it for different kinds of people depending on their health situations and how to make the most of it to aid in weight loss. We also talk about the different meals of the day emphasizing on the importance of eating breakfast. We also touch upon the issue of light and how it affects our cortisol levels and circadian clock system, as well as other important information with regards to supplements and hormones affecting our body functions.

In this episode, we cover:

08:05   The Belly Fat effect

11:30   Incretins and how they improve satiety and inflammation

18:35   Exercise timing for fat loss

23:35   Why breakfast is important

01:06:06   Inexpensive ways to boost glutathione

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Podcast: Play in New Window|Download

Since 2006, Mike Mutzel has blended his formal education, a degree in biology and graduate work in clinical nutrition, with his competitive athletic background and personal training experience to help others improve their health. He completed his graduate studies in the Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice (AFMCP) program through the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), and he continually works with healthcare professionals as a functional medicine consultant. He regularly conducts live webinars and workshops to help healthcare professionals keep abreast of the rapid advancements in the fields of nutrition, metabolism, and immunity.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, there! This is Dr. Justin Marchegiani and welcome to another awesome episode of Beyond Wellness Radio. Again, we have a great show in store for you. Before, go to BeyondWellnessRadio.com, click on the Newsletter Signup button and you can sign up for our newsletter and get show updates right in your inbox before anyone else. You can also click on the Questions button and even speak questions live, and we’ll be able to answer it on the air for you.

You can also click on the Write A Review button. If you really enjoy this show, write us a review. Let us know on iTunes. Let the world know. Think of one person that would benefit from listening to this show and share it with them. Sharing is caring.

Also, check out JustInHealth.com, which is my personal site. And I have some complimentary functional medicine consults available. You can also sign up for the Free Thyroid Series and Female Hormones Series as well.

You can also go to ReallyHealthyNow.com. That’s Baris Harvey’s website where he has some great articles and blog and videos for you there as well, and even some consultations.

Again, we have an awesome show in store. Stay tuned.

Hey, there! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani at Beyond Wellness Radio and I have Mike Mutzel here. Is that pronounced right, Mike?

Mike Mutzel: That’s right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, awesome! And Mike, again, we met–Mike and I just met last month in Houston at a Functional Medicine conference, and Mike has a book out called the Belly Fat Effect and he’s got a lot of awesome videos on YouTube and Facebook, and a lot of the things that Mike has talked about with fat burning and a lot of things about methylation really resonated with me and I thought it would resonate with the listeners. So we got him on this show and I’m hoping he’s gonna drop some serious brain candy here today.

Mike Mutzel: That’s the plan. Thanks so much for having me on, Dr. Justin. It’s great to be here.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, Mike! Well, what’s going on your sphere right now? Like, is there anything you’re working on that’s fresh or new that you wanna share with the audience?

Mike Mutzel: Yeah, you know. A bunch of different things. I mean, it’s, you know, spring for us here in the US and so forth and so, I think a lot of people are kind of, you know, wanting to get in shape for summer and so forth and so. I’ve been doing some webinar on some fat loss and trying to kind of reposition our mindset on how we burn fats and try to teach people about that and just in brief, you know. We’re so focused on fat burning and, you know, kind of not so much on the kind of where our fat is burning. It’s burned inside our muscle tissue, so kind of what I’ve been trying to focus, you know, kind of re-frame the thought process is, let’s focus on musculoskeletal health, like the health of our muscle because that’s the site of fat burning, instead of just focusing on burning fat and so, you know, things like adequate protein, resistance training, not just burning calories and you know, knocking it out on the treadmill and the elliptical. Like really getting into the gym and causing the muscles to be fatigued with weights and that’s really kind of the–what I’ve been focusing on and trying to, you know, kind of emphasize, just kind of getting back to basics and you know, just strength training and getting in there and you know, working out the failure and that’s by far the best “fat loss strategy”. You know, a lot of people, we can talk about kind of my back story of competitive bike racing, but I was like a skinny fat guy for a little bit.Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm.

Mike Mutzel: I just trashed testosterone and, you know, my thyroid was off and cortisol was off the roof, and I wasn’t sleeping and all that. And I thought I was being healthy, you know, bike racing and training 20 hours a week, and I was very aerobically fit, but metabolically a mess. So I’m trying to prevent people from going down that path.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. And Mike, do you have a background in chemistry or biochem at all?

Mike Mutzel: Yes. So I did the pre-med undergrad at Western Washington University, so did a lot of, you know, biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology and so forth. I took the MCAT, you know, back in this was 2007 and, you know, was super excited, wanted to go to medical school, and decided that that wasn’t the best approach for me. It was kind of a serendipitous conversation when I was in Boston with–at a bar waiting for my family to come for Thanksgiving because my brother was going to school there at that time. And I was sitting next to this gentleman by himself and he was the chief medical officer of Merck Pharmaceuticals and we started talking.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!

Mike Mutzel: I was just so jazzed, you know, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh! Yeah, I just took the MCAT. I’m so jazzed.” And he’s like, “You know what, medicine is changing big time. So, you know, if you are into biochemistry, you’re into the biology, you can do a lot of things medically related, but if I were to go back through, I wouldn’t go to medical school anymore.” And it just kind of like, “What?” This is the CMO of Merck, you know, chief medical officer, and, you know, he’s an MD from Harvard and all this weird stuff. And so I just kind of thought, you know. So I started asking some of my MD friends and they said, “You know what? If I was you, I wouldn’t go back. You know, things are changing.” So I’m finishing up my Master’s Degree in Nutrition actually next month in April, fly out to the University of Bridgeport to take the exam. And so, I really just decided, you know what, I’m gonna work in the nutrition industry and get a Master’s Degree and I ended up not doing the medical school route, but yeah, so that’s kinda my back story.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Very cool! So you were this skinny fat cycler a while back and you wrote this book, Belly Fat Effects, that you obviously, you know, learned about leptin and all of the hormones and how you can use exercise and all these different tools to basically shunt more of your energy to the mitochondria or more of your storage calories to the mitochondria to burn and also put on more muscle, and there’s a lot of, you know, technicality of how this works. But can you just talk about like the 20%, the 80% of you know what you can do, or how should I say it? The 20% that will get the 80% and the results. So–

Mike Mutzel: Yeah. Definitely.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Can you touch more on that?

Mike Mutzel: Great, yeah, great point. You know, so the book Belly Fat Effects has actually a lot of information about gut bacteria and so I was, you know, kinda going back just to get a focus kind of the back story. I was working in a medical office with this MD doing nutrition and personal training and so forth, and you know, just getting people on real food, you know–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: Turning out the lights at night, just kinda the simple lifestyle stuff that all your listeners practice right now, getting off gluten and allergens and eating paleo and so forth, and was getting good results and then one of the medical assistants who actually never met with me, we’d have like, you know, conversions in the hallway and so forth about tips to help her lose weight. She was morbidly obese, like 350+ lbs. So she had bariatric surgery and within weeks, she was like half the size and then became super skinny, like literally went from 350 to like 115 lbs in a very short period of time.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!

Mike Mutzel: I’m like, “Oh, my, what is up with this bariatric surgery? This is incredible.” So I started doing research on that and it turns out that it’s not just, you know, the way that bariatric surgery causes weight loss. It’s not about restricting how much food people eat. It’s by changing the gut microbiome, and it changes these things called gut hormones, these incretin hormones. So that to me was just so fascinating and I started to look into the research and it turns out that there’s many ways that we can turn on these gut hormones without having to undergo bariatric surgery. Things like whey protein, pea protein, eating fiber, or eating blueberries and raspberries and color rich fruits and vegetables and so forth. So that’s kinda the premise of the book, Belly Fat Effect. It’s just really focusing on gut health, you know, and again kinda the sciences area, you know, the most effective medical weight loss procedure is bariatric surgery and I’m not, you know, a fan of it. I’m not saying anyone should go out there and get the surgery, get the procedure, but if we look at the mechanism of action, we can mimic the hormonal effect naturally. So pea protein, whey protein, fiber, just eating mindfully, chewing your food, very easy way to activate these gut hormones. Eating breakfast, you know, believe it or not, breakfast eaters have suppressions of these gut hormones, have alterations in leptin. So that’s kinda the back story in the book, is really focusing on gut health and that will enable us to become more efficient, better fat burners.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool! And again your book can be purchased on Amazon and also can it also be purchased at bellyfateffect.com, too?

Mike Mutzel: You know, good point. I don’t sell it directly there, but what I do you have on that site, bellyfateffect.com is videos, so if people are–yeah, if they’re like, you know, what is he talking about? Gut hormones. What are gut hormones? We did–there’s like 3 or 4 videos on that and then also kind of a key thing in the book is the circadian clock system. So basically, you know, we have little molecular clocks inside our cells and it kinda sounds science fiction, but it’s really true and so we talk about meal timing and why it’s really important to eat a lot of your calories in the morning, eat a lot of calories at night, I mean, I’m sorry, at lunch, and then and, you know, tone down at night because from our biological rhythm standpoint, our gut is really active first thing in the morning and during lunch time. So it’s important that, you know, we kinda, you know, fuel our GI tract in our body with food when the digestive secretions and motility and so forth are at their highest.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm. I think it’s a really good point. I think a lot of people especially even the standard American diet aren’t eating foods that are fueling appetite suppression, right? They are eating all the carbohydrate, glutinous rich foods that aren’t stimulating the adiponectin, Peptide YY, cholecystokinin, you know, all of those, those neurochemical feedbacks that tell the brain, “Hey, we’re full now.”

Mike Mutzel: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Well, not only that, Dr. Justin, but folks are not eating mindfully, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: So that’s a big thing. I mean, literally research has shown that if you don’t chew your food, you don’t activate these gut hormones, and so just to kinda provide some context of what these gut hormones do is they instruct insulin to be released from the pancreas and so–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.

Mike Mutzel: Everyone knows about insulin resistance and they hear about, like the postprandial or the post meal rise in insulin, but we don’t really think like, “Well, wait. How does insulin rise?” Well, it’s not just because the blood glucose is going up, it’s also from the release of these hormones. They’re called incretins because they help insulin be released, and when you don’t tell your brain and your gut that food’s coming in, meaning you’re not masticating–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: You’re not chewing. You’re not activating that vagal nerve then that affects the release of insulin then blood sugar goes super high and so forth. And so it’s really important just, you know, obviously you eat real food, you know, it’s gluten-free and healthy fats and, you know, well gotten and so forth. That’s all really important. But you also have to chew your food and be in a mindful state. Because so many people are just, you know, it’s like they’re getting gas at the gas station.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.

Mike Mutzel: You know, they just want to refill in two minutes and then be done with it, you know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Go into the motions.

Mike Mutzel: Exactly. So just take, take time for your food, and this is a life-long lesson I think we all need to work on, you know, because we’re all busy. We have deadlines and obligations and so forth. But if we just sit down and the science clearly shows that 42 bites per swallow–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!

Mike Mutzel: Is where you wanna be.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, you just seriously dropped a major knowledge bomb. I just gotta take a second to back up here and take a breath. Alright so, we’re eating, right? We’re chewing more food, right? We’re activating that vagal nerve, right? That’s activating our parasympathetic nervous system getting the enzymes, getting our HCl going, and you mentioned something about incretin? Can you touch more upon that? I didn’t quite make the connection.

Mike Mutzel: Uh-hmm. So that’s the name of these gut hormones.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

Mike Mutzel: So if you just Google incretin, which is I-N-C–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Incretin.

Mike Mutzel: Yeah, I-N-C-R-E-T-I-N, that’s kind of the, like when we think of sex hormones–we have estrogen–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: Testosterone, DHA, and so forth. When we think of the incretins, we have these gut hormones. They are called GLP-1. You mentioned one earlier.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: PYY.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: We have secretin. We have cholecystokinin or CCK. We have a bunch of these hormones and they are called incretins, and kind of a derivative of the word is be–derives from, you know, how they affect or augment or assist insulin in its signaling. That’s kinda where it’s derived from.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, so if we don’t chew our food well, what happens to incretin now?

Mike Mutzel: They’re not released properly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not released.

Mike Mutzel: That’s–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

Mike Mutzel: Yeah, so that’s bottom line. So these gut–so if you chew your food quickly or if you’re under stress or if you skip breakfast, or if you just have long-lasting metabolic issues, then these gut hormones are not released properly and then so insulin–that means–let me just back up. More than 50% of insulin released is contingent upon the activity of these gut hormones. 50%, that’s a really big deal. So, say you’re pre-diabetic, you have elevated fasting glucose. You have a hemoglobin A1c or your red blood cells are being glycated from excess sugar in your blood stream. Okay, you’re trying to improve your metabolic profile, you wanna address the gut first. You know, vanadium and zinc and you know, burbur, all these things are really good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: All that. Right.

Mike Mutzel: It’s all good. It’s great. It’s awesome but you wanna look at the gut first, because more than 50% of insulin’s activity is contingent upon the healthy release of these gut hormones.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, got it. So what you’re saying is, if we don’t chew our food or masticate well enough, we’re not gonna stimulate the incretin and the incretin is what stimulates that glucose so we can suck that blood sugar into the cells. Is that what I’m hearing?

Mike Mutzel: Uh-hmm. Yeah, it does a lot of that but sorry to interrupt, but it also affects appetite and satiety as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ahh.

Mike Mutzel: So if you don’t chew your food, you’re not gonna send messages to your gut that the meal is coming. And then so the message will be almost as though, you know, there’s no fuel there. So that’s gonna cause more craving issues and so forth. And to give you an idea, you know, kinda how effective this, it really is. All the new diabetic medications now that are coming out in the pipeline–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: Are going after these gut hormones, these incretins. Names like Byetta, Januvia, acarbose was ofthe first ones that came out in 2003.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.

Mike Mutzel: So, so this is where the industry’s going, you know. Like metformin has been around forever.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.

Mike Mutzel: There’s sulfonylureas. There’s all these medications for diabetes, but the new trend is to go after these gut hormones. But the problem about the medications is they kinda, they’re challenging. They place extra stress in the pancreas. So it’s better to kinda go after these hormones naturally because we, you know, you don’t wanna mess with the pancreas. I mean, people will tell you that’s the worst, you know, cancer you can get because it–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Got it. So we eat this meal. We chew our food up really well. That’s gonna stimulate the incretin which will help us have a healthy insulin response which will help us suck all that nutrients into the cell and will also help signal that cascade of satiety, allowing to feel relatively satiated not awry. Is that correct? Is that what I’m hearing?

Mike Mutzel: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm. Yeah, and it goes even–everything that you said, but goes even further. The incretins are anti-inflammatory.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great.

Mike Mutzel: They have targets in the heart, in the brain, and so forth. So, you know, whether or not you have a metabolic issue, you can also benefit from chewing your food. Let’s just say you have an autoimmune inflammatory response.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.

Mike Mutzel: Because these are very anti-inflammatory. Yeah, there’s like receptors for like GLP-1 all throughout the body, you know, in the immune system and the brain, and so forth. So really critical, you know, foundation, you know. I mean, if you’re eating gluten-free and you’re in paleo and exercising, you gotta chew your food at the bottom line.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah and I think this–I mean, I learned this from Paul Chek a long time ago, he said, “Drink your food and chew your water.” So I always tell my patients usually for the most part, chew your food up to almost an oatmeal-like consistency, so it’s almost liquid where you can slurp it right down and basically, chew your water to meaning just let your water imprint on your saliva before you swallow it.

Mike Mutzel: Uh-hmm.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s kind of a, a really, you know, I think foundational principle for any nutritionist there I’m sure.

Mike Mutzel: Yeah, it’s huge.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s funny, Mike. I wanna just, thank you. I wanna to touch upon one thing. I remember it’s just like twelve years ago, I was in doctorate school or 10 years ago, and my roommate–we were on a plane together. We were flying out to a conference. I remember at that time I was eating a Subway sandwich.

Mike Mutzel: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know terrible grains, processed meat, I get it. I know, it’s terrible. But I remember eating the Subway sandwich, taking a bite out of it, and then I’m looking over to my right and my roommate is staring at me with his mouth dropped open. I go, “What?” He goes, “You ate that? You ate that–you chewed that food 3 bites and then swallowed.” And I went, “Really?” And then like from now, I’ve been like, you know, really trying to go 3 to 35 at–what was the number you said? 35 bites?

Mike Mutzel: 42.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 42! I think it’s so important. I mean, I recommend just, for the most part, I think if you chew it up to that oatmeal-like consistency, you’ll probably be right around there so you don’t have to be super anal. But I think that’s super good advice and for anyone that’s, you know, eating or trying to be mindful, kind of just have a good idea what 42 bites feels like and then make sure you’re in that ballpark.

Mike Mutzel: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. Just practice, you know, when you have time. Or–and the other thing, too, is just eat with family or eat–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Mike Mutzel: With your friends and try to eat with people and, I notice for me, when I’m eating by myself that’s when I really, you know, I’m not. I’m just trying to–it’s like a pit stop, you know. And so, I think that for most people just–first of all, be cognizant of it. Don’t beat yourself up over it like you said. I mean if, you know, you just–you’re starving and you wolf down a sandwich or some, whatever it is, gluten-free cookies. Just be mindful of it and just being aware of that is the first step, and then just say, “Okay, man, I really what–” And then evaluate, you know, why was I–why did I just wolf that down? Was I lonely? Was I really hungry? Am I mad? Was it a hard day at work and just kind of, you know, just kind of see what’s going on and then that way, you know, going forward, you can, you know, improve and progress and so forth. And so it’s, you know, progress not perfection is kinda what I like to tell people.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Progress not perfection. That’s great. Really good. So on that note, because you’re just–I mean, I got you on the show here and you’re just such a really good, you know, person for hormones and all the biochems, so I’m gonna dive in a little bit deeper. Is that okay, Mike?

Mike Mutzel: For sure, let’s do it!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright and then if we kinda go a little too deep, I’ll kinda pull you back a little bit and break it down for the listeners just to make sure we get the big picture.

Mike Mutzel: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we eat this food, right? We stimulate some insulin. We have some a

Paleo Apple Crisp Grain – Free Dessert

Paleo

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

This Paleo apple crisp recipe is amazingly simple, tastes great, and even leaves you feeling good after you eat it!  I am always a big fan of using whole-food ingredients (things you can pronounce) that provide good nutrition and zero gut-irritating foods and don’t cause your holiday binge to set you back on your health goals.

Ingredients:

  • 8 Granny Smith apples
  • lemon juice
  • 1 cup of pecans
  • 1 cup of walnuts
  • 4 Tbsp. of Kerry gold butter
  • 1 heaping Tbsp. of raw organic honey
  • 1 handful of coconut flakes

Directions:

1.  Slice 8 Granny Smith apples. I leave the skins on because it’s just easier that way. Use an apple slicer to make things more efficient. Once the apples are sliced, add just a little bit of lemon juice to prevent the apples from oxidizing (turning brown).

2. Add enough cinnamon so all of the apples are covered. Mix with your hands until everything is evenly covered.

3.  Put 1 cup of pecans and 1 cup of walnuts in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin.

4.  Add 4 Tbsp. of Kerry gold butter (in gold packaging) and 1 heaping Tbsp. of raw organic honey to a saucepan on the stove set at low temperature till everything is melted together and mixed evenly.

5.  Spread the crushed nuts on top of the apples, and 1 handful of coconut flakes can be spread on top of the apples as well for additional flavor.  The amount of nuts you need is really dependent on the size of the pan the apples are in. I recommend just covering everything as evenly as possible.  If you have extra nuts left over, they can be added to the apples to make the crust thicker if you’d like.

6.  Pour the honey-and-butter mixture over the apples evenly.

7.  Cook for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.  Serve with whipped organic whole cream or sugar-free coconut ice cream and enjoy!  Don’t tell your family till after they rave about how good it was that it was actually healthy for them!

Substitutions:  Coconut oil can always be subbed for butter.  Stevia and xylitol can be used as sugar substitutes for honey if you are trying to keep all sugar out of your diet.

How To Defeat The Stress Cycle This Coming New Year?

How To Defeat The Stress Cycle This Coming New Year

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

It’s that time of the year again where everyone is trying to conquer their New Year’s resolution. These resolutions range from:

  • Losing weight
  • Improving health
  • Increasing energy
  • Enhancing relationships
  • More free time with family and friends
  • Developing an exercise routine

On average, only about 8% of people actually achieve their New Year’s resolution. If you are one of those people that want to be part of the 8% and improve their health in this coming year, then this article is perfect for you.

The “Stress Bucket”

Below is a picture I created called “the stress bucket.” This picture depicts how the cycle of stress accumulates over time and slowly starts to deteriorate your health. All of stress sum-mates (adds up)  from all different areas of your life.  It’s easy to see how a little bit of stress over a lot of different areas can add up in your stress bucket.  Stress tends to accumulate in the following categories: physical stress, emotional stress, and chemical stress. Below are an example of a few common stressors that tend to affect the average person:  If stress goes ignored your health will inevitably break down as you can see in the viscous cycle below.

Stress Bucket

This is the typical experience a medical doctor encounters with their average patient:

Medications

Prescription and over-the-counter drugs are notorious for causing mineral and vitamin deficiencies and putting an increased burden on the liver and kidneys. Many of these medications are also notorious for having side effects, as these side effects occur patients tend to go back to their doctors who prescribed more medications for the original side effects. As you can see in the picture above, this tends to be a vicious cycle where the root of the problem is never addressed and the stress in our stress bucket continues to overflow causing more and more symptoms eventually leading to disease.

Chemicals

There are many household chemicals including cleaners detergents soaps and personal care products that are loaded with toxins. One of the simplest things you can do to remove your toxic burden is to find safer household and personal hygiene products such as the soaps you use to clean your dishes, the sprays you used to clean your counter-tops and improving the quality of soaps and skincare you use on your body. Using the website www.EWG.org, is a great reference to refer to see if the personal care products you are using on your skin and hair are toxic. Your body absorbs more toxins and chemicals from your skin so the last thing you want to be doing is adding more chemicals to an already overburdened body.

Emotions

The root cause of many health issues actually stem at an emotional level. People that are dealing with toxic relationships bad bosses, being surrounded by energy zombies and difficulty with children can have a tremendous weakening effect on the immune system. When the immune system is weak, our body’s natural force fields are lowered, this increases our chance of encountering an infection which can further weaken our adrenals and our immune system making us prone to a whole host of health issues down the road. Using simple techniques such as EFT or the body code can be very helpful to neutralizing these emotions at an energetic level.  Feel free to Google these techniques for more information on them.

Toxic food

Many people’s diets actually consists of food that is toxic such as gluten, dairy products, legumes and refined sugar. These foods tend to be genetically modified loaded and loaded with pesticides and other chemicals that burden our detoxification systems. These foods are also known to be very inflammatory and can cause leaky gut issues as well.  Especially when dealing with grains, these foods are very nutrient poor and actually rob nutrients from our body.

Heavy metals

According to the World Health Organization, one of the biggest sources of heavy metals actually comes from our mercury amalgam fillings.  Some people may know these referred as silver fillings but they are actually over 50% mercury.  The next common source we see is from vaccines, mainly the flu vaccines. These vaccines are recommended on a yearly basis and if you look at the ingredient label on the back of the vaccines insert (ask the pharmacist for it) you’ll see it contain about 50 µg of thimerosal.  Thimerosal is a preservative consisting of 50% ethyl mercury, one of the most toxic Mercury substances known to man. If you are trying to avoid getting sick this winter season there are many other natural alternatives that can boost and enhance your immune system without adding a significant toxic burden to your detoxification system.  Please see previous blog post titled, “What to do when you get sick.”

Below is a great picture showing our body’s ability to adapt to stress.  One interesting thing to note is that many people don’t go and see their doctor until phase 3. At this point, the symptoms have been going on for years and prescribing a medication does not do anything to help our body adapt. Medications usually work by blocking and or suppressing physiologic pathways while doing nothing to up-regulate the body’s ability to adapt to stress and express optimal health.

Phases Of Stress AdaptationClick here for help in determining the underlying cause of your stress

To really address the underlying cause of why your body isn’t adapting properly is to go back and look in your stress bucket and see what areas of stress are starting to add up. As you start pulling the right stressors out of your stress bucket and supporting your diet, lifestyle, sleep and exercise your body will start to regain its ability to adapt. Many people need help to find out where to start and this is where it’s great to find a skilled functional medicine doctor who can figure out the best place to start while creating an individualized program for you.

Simple solutions to reduce your toxic load and help your body adapt to stress:

Solutions To Avoid Stress

1. Eat whole foods

Organic, non-genetically modified, free range ideally fresh should be the staple of your diet. Buying things in bulk help reduce the price and buying vegetables frozen can be very helpful as well. It’s very important you make your health a priority and this is the first place to start.

2. Get a good water filter

Please see my partner page for excellent recommendations on some of the best filters out there. You can easily start with an affordable car top filter they can pull out pharmaceutical drugs, pesticides, bacteria, and heavy metals. This really does a lot to help decrease your toxic burden. Look here for an easy solution…

3. Indoor air tends to be very toxic

Getting high quality air filter can also help reduce your toxic burden. Look here for an easy solution.

4. Movement

Starting an exercise routine can be a great start. I recommend making a commitment that you know you can stick to such as working out three times a week for 30 to 45 minutes versus being overly ambitious and trying to work out every day for an hour. People that are very overly ambitious and can’t stick to their plan, tend to fold and stop altogether. You’re much better off setting a very easily achievable goal and once you’ve maintained it for a month then gradually increase your commitment.

If you are ready to get your health back this year, then click here to take the next step!

Intermittent Fasting Pros and Cons

Intermittent Fasting Pros And Cons

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Intermittent Fasting

What’s the deal with intermittent fasting?  Intermittent fasting is a very cool modality that involves avoiding calorie intake for about an 18 to 20 hour period. The best times to do intermittent fasting would be after you finish your dinner the day before, let’s say around 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. When you wake up the next day, you would skip breakfast, and you would continue going without food until somewhere between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. This would give you a solid 18 to 20 hours of fasting.

Intermittent fasting has many great benefits. One of these benefits is cellular autophagy. Cellular autophagy is a process by which your body recycles protein. Some of the benefits of intermittent fasting include longevity, increased insulin sensitivity, neuroprotection, improved mental clarity, and an increase in anabolic hormones (hormones that help rebuild your body).

The nice thing is that when you’re fasting, your body is increasing its production of ketones. Ketones are the breakdown products of fat, which your body uses for energy. They can also help suppress your appetite during fasting. Many people think they may be starving during an intermittent fast, but with the ketone production, your body’s hunger pangs are kept in check.

intermittent fasting

The Problems with Intermittent Fasting

Glutens Problems And Diagnosis

Many people shouldn’t be intermittent fasting, especially if they have problems with blood-sugar stabilization. I see many individuals, especially female patients, who are hypoglycemic. Certain people may have a very difficult time stabilizing blood sugar, to the point where their blood sugar actually drops very low, to the point where they feel jittery, shaky, and anxious.

Your adrenal glands have to stabilize your blood sugar during periods of fasting. If your adrenal glands are not working properly, you end up throwing your body into a more stressful situation where your adrenals have to produce extra secretions of adrenaline to keep your blood sugar in a normal range.

Click here to know if you can benefit from intermittent fasting.

Gluconeogenesis and Blood Sugar

There is a process called gluconeogenesis, which is where your body converts amino acids from protein to glucose.  The hormone that facilitates this process is cortisol.  If your cortisol function is imbalanced due to adrenal fatigue, your ability to use gluconeogenesis as a means of blood-sugar stabilization is decreased.  The only way you can bring the physiology back into balance is by going on an adrenal-healing diet and addressing lifestyle stressors, like sleep and emotions, as well as any hidden infections.  Going on an adrenal program that uses specific supplements that support the adrenals helps decrease the recovery time significantly.  I find healing someone’s adrenal fatigue is 50% managing physical, chemical, and emotional stress and 50% following a customized adrenal-support program (1).

Glucogenesis And Blood Sugar

As long as you have enough protein in your diet, (my minimum recommendation is 0.5 grams per pound of lean body weight), you will be able to keep your muscle mass when you go into a gluconeogenic state.

My recommendations for intermittent fasting have always been that you need healthy adrenal and thyroid function to truly benefit, without causing extra collateral damage. Research has shown that low-calorie diets decrease thyroid-hormone production. So if you already have low thyroid-hormone production, throwing your body into a fasting state will decrease your thyroid-hormone production even more.

Thyroid Lab Testing and Intermittent Fasting

Thyroid Lab Testing And intermittent Fasting

Before you take advantage of intermittent fasting, get your adrenal glands assessed via a salivary cortisol rhythm and also run a complete thyroid-hormone panel, including TSH, free T3, total T3, total T4, free T4, T3 uptake, and thyroid antibodies. One of the biggest stressors put on your endocrine system is to stabilize your blood sugar, so before you add more stress to your body, make sure you can handle it first.

Intermittent fasting 1 to 2 days a week can be a great start! I recommend choosing days that aren’t very stressful. Your adrenals are always doing their best to handle everyday stress; the more stress they are under, the less ability they have to multitask in regards to managing inflammation, producing sex hormone, and stabilizing blood sugar. Choose a nice Saturday or Sunday that is low-key where you can kick back and relax, go for a walk, watch a movie, or do any other non stressful social activities.

Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting

Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting

I am a big fan of Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting. Using a high-quality coffee source, such as Bulletproof coffee (that doesn’t contain mycotoxins), with grass-fed butter and MCT oil can be a great way to give your body an extra supply of healthy fats, which will allow your body to produce more ketones for fuel (these fats are also anti-inflammatory).   Using bulletproof intermittent fasting will allow your body to operate with a higher level of energy, providing your body with more ketones to burn, while at the same time stimulating cellular autophagy and its other healthy antiaging benefits.

Click here to know more about Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting

To learn how to make Bulleproof Coffee, feel free to watch the video below!

References:

1. Cortisol increases gluconeogenesis in humans: its role in the metabolic syndrome.


The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Justin Marchegiani unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked. The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Justin and his community. Dr. Justin encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified healthcare professional. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Marchegiani’s products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using any products.