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.
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.
Natural Herbs and Foods to Help Fight Stress
When you’re stressed, what are the important things? Blood sugar stability is really important because most people get on a roller coaster when they get stressed, meaning they’re overly gravitating towards alcohol and towards refined sugar. Their blood sugar goes up and then it crashes down, and then it creates more nervous system stimulation via adrenaline, epinephrine, and cortisol being stimulated to bring the blood sugar back up.
So, I find just keeping it really simple and really easy with your meals. You may be more nauseous when you’re overly stressed because stress hormone does cause you to feel nauseous. So, this is where you may want to do a soup or a simple smoothie, something really easy where there’s not a lot of digestion but you’re still getting some proteins and fat in there, whether it’s some collagen and some coconut milk or just sipping on some bone broth. Something like that’s going to have some good fat and good protein, and it won’t be hard to digest. So, if you feel nauseous, just still know you should probably be eating but just try to make it something very easy on your tummy.
Then think what are some of the nutrients your nervous system is going to need when you’re more stressed. So, the low hanging fruit, B vitamins. B complex is going to be very essential. Magnesium is going to be excellent. GABA and L-theanine are good things that are going to help you relax and wind down. Valerian root or passionflower, which are all connected to GABA and that inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps you just relax a little bit. It kind of puts the clutching gear and disengages the gearbox, so you can downshift so to speak.
I always go to nutrients first and then I go to my favorite adaptogenic herbs second. So, Ashwagandha is one of my favorites. Rhodiola is excellent and there’s holy basil, which are my favorite very relaxing and tonifying herbs.
If you want to learn more about herbs for stress relief, click this link to schedule a chat with me!
Nutrients to Help Make Serotonin to Help Improve Mood and Sleep
In today’s blog, I am going to share with you the natural ways to boost your serotonin levels and other alternatives. Let’s talk about nutrients to help support serotonin levels.
Serotonin is a really important neurotransmitter. Its building block comes from protein and amino acids, particularly 5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) but serotonin has a lot of important roles in regards to mood, well-being, sleep, stress reduction, and happiness. So, all these things play a major major role in helping you feel good. If we have inadequate serotonin levels, that’s going to create a whole bunch of things. Once you start having sleep issues, mood issues, or stress issues then stress starts to hitch a little more. You don’t quite sleep as well. You don’t adapt to or deal with stress, not quite as resilient as well, and then a lot of times you’re just not going to heal and recover well either because serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. Melatonin helps you sleep and it’s also a very powerful antioxidant. So, a lot of good benefits there.
Serotonin is made from tryptophan and/or 5-HTP which is 5-hydroxytryptophan. Now, I personally like using 5-HTP better because there is an enzyme that’s kind of a governor on tryptophan converting downstream into serotonin. The 5-HTP bypasses that enzyme, so you can therapeutically bump up serotonin a little bit better with 5-HTP. So, we use 5-HTP and B6 that can really significantly improve serotonin levels. Anywhere between 100 to 600 mg per day can be very helpful. There are important cofactors that will also add. B6 is an essential B vitamin that helps with the synthesis. You may also want to throw in B12 or methylcobalamin, ideally methylated because these neurotransmitters need to be methylated. B12 makes a huge difference.
In the podcast, we talk about a study where they used antidepressants, not that I’m a huge fan of those, but they found that an antidepressant plus a methylated B12 improves depression symptoms by 20%. So, we know B12 and that methylation process is very important for your neurotransmitters. Also, we can throw folate in there because folate works a lot like brother and sister with B12. So, B6, B12, and folate (or B9 for short for folate) are really important. Those are your key methyl groups in regards to your B vitamins. They have a lot to do with methylation.
Of course, vitamin C can be very important because the adrenals play a major role in serotonin and stress. In that sympathetic fight or flight nervous system response, the adrenals play a big role in making cortisol and/or adrenaline to help manage or deal with or adapt to that response. So, for chronically firing our adrenals, whether it’s cortisol and/or adrenaline, and we start have HPA access issues meaning brain-adrenal communication feedback issues, that can make it hard for us to kind of calm down from stress and/or even ramp up to deal with stress. So, it’s kind of like it being really cold out, you put your heater on and you can’t quite mount the heater or mount enough of a response to create heat and warm your house up or vice versa if it’s cold. You need to be able to adapt and modulate to our environment. So, we need healthy adrenal function. A lot of times, I’ll add in things like various adaptogens like Rhodiola, Ginseng, Ashwagandha, and Eleuthero. These are great adaptogenic herbs to help us modulate and deal with stress better.
And then, of course, a good healthy diet is essential because inflammatory foods, food allergens, processed junk, grains, and refined foods are going to stress out our body. The problem with refined processed foods like grains and sugar is they can, in the short run, increase our serotonin and allow us to feel good. So, people say, “Oh, I’m an emotional eater.” What are you doing? You are essentially trying to artificially boost your brain chemicals up with junk food. It’s like whipping a tired horse to perform better. It’s like trying to drink coffee at midnight to get work done. It’s going to just throw off your sleep and you’re going to be tired the next day.
So, of course, there are always what I call constructive vehicles versus destructive vehicles. Destructive vehicles provide a short-term gain and long-term destruction if they are habitual. Constructive vehicles are not quite as an impactful short-term gain but long-term restoration, long-term healing, and long-term performance enhancement. So, that’s good digestion, eating protein, balanced blood sugar, and we can utilize amino acids like 5-HTP, B6, folate, B12, vitamin C, and adaptogenic herbs. These are very helpful in modulating our stress response. They also modulate how we perceive stress. The more you can perceive stress better, you don’t mount as much of a cortisol or adrenaline response because your perception of it is much better.
Things like magnesium can also be very helpful as magnesium kinda plays into GABA. GABA has a major role in the inhibitory neurotransmitter. It’s the downshift or it helps hit the brake, so things like GABA by itself and things like L-theanine are excellent. Adaptogenic herbs like passionflower or Valerian can be very calming. Even things like Kava or CBD could also have a very calming effect. So, there’s a couple of different things that we can throw in there.
When I’m working with the patients, I’m always saying to myself, “What’s the root cause?” Let’s set the foundation and make sure the root cause is supported. Let’s make sure able to break down and digest and absorb all the nutrients and make sure there are no underlying bottlenecks in regards to low enzyme, low acid, and gut infections. Let’s make sure we’re managing our lifestyle stressors and we’re doing our best to sleep good. Food is good, food quality is good, and hydration is good. I make sure those foundations are solid and then we can kind of get in there with other supplements and nutrients to help support those pathways.
If we wanted testing for neurotransmitters, I’ll do things like organic acid-based tests. Then we’ll look at a lot of the metabolites for these neurotransmitters, whether it’s serotonin where we will use 5-hydroxyindoleacetate (5HIAA) or we will use Vanilmandelate which is a marker for adrenaline or Homovanillate which is a marker for dopamine. Again, dopamine is a precursor to adrenaline, so it’s phenylalanine, tyrosine, dopamine, L-dopa, and then it can go down to epinephrine/norepinephrine or adrenaline/noradrenaline. It’s the same thing. So, these are catecholamines and they can convert a lot of these upstream neurotransmitters down. There’s some overlap in dopamine and serotonin symptoms. A lot of people that think they have serotonin problems may actually have a dopamine problem. So, it’s good to get tested as well. It’s good to look at the symptoms, make sure the foundation is set, and then you can dive in deeper to look at a lot of these nutrients.
Now, in my supplement line, we use things like Brain Replete which has an excellent 10:1 ratio of tyrosine or dopamine to serotonin. That’s a good combo product. It has all the precursor nutrients, too. Also, I use a product called Serotonin Replete which is excellent with 5-HTP with B6. I have a product called Dopa Replete which is just a tyrosine product that is nice for lower dopamine issues and for higher dopamine, there is a product called Dopa Replete Plus and that helps bump up dopamine more. It has got Macuna pruriens in there plus a couple of other compounds that are very helpful. It has L-dopa, tyrosine, EGCG, and of course, B6.
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.
WHERE CAN WE FIND ESTROGENS?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Top 5 Warning Signs of Hormonal Imbalance
Let’s talk about hormones. I’m going to dive into a couple of clinical pearls that I see in my practice from working with hundreds of female patients and male patients which have a major effect on modulating and supporting hormonal balance.
These are my top 5 hormonal balancing strategies:
- One of the first things in regards to hormones that’s very important, and this may be common sense but I try to give a lot of knowledge guided by experience, is nutritional building blocks for your hormones. Healthy cholesterol from animal products are very essential. Fat soluble vitamins like A, D, K are very important. Lots of good protein are also very important. We have steroid-based hormones that are going to be more cholesterol-based and we have peptide-based hormones that will also be protein-based. So, a lot of these protein, fat-soluble vitamins, and cholesterol especially healthy animal cholesterol are very helpful for hormonal building blocks. If you have a vegan-vegetarian diet or if it’s very nutritionally poor or there’s a lot of processed food, that may set you up with a deficit out of the gates for just hormonal issues. Remember: Make sure the food is nutritionally dense, anti-inflammatory, and low in toxins. That’s vital.
- Now, if you’re having a lot of good nutrition in there, the next thing is we have to make sure we’re able to digest it and break it down. So, if we have a lot of chronic acid reflux, poor digestion, constipation, or bloating, we know we’re not quite breaking down our food and our nutritional building blocks. That could tell us that we may have hormonal issues because we’re not breaking that down. Therefore, those nutrients can’t get into our body or get in our bloodstream and be taken throughout the body to be used as building blocks. So, if we have a bottleneck in the nutritional side, that could be a big factor.
- Stress, whether it’s emotional or chemical stress. If we’re eating foods that are inflammatory or we’re nutritionally deficient and we have a lot of emotional stress, what tends to happen is our hormones kind of go on two sides. We have an anabolic side which are the growth hormones — testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone — that kind of help deal with growing. Then we have anti-inflammatory hormones which would be cortisol and are catabolic. I always put progesterone in that category because progesterone can be used to make more cortisol. So, we have our anti-inflammatory and then our anabolic. In some, they kind of cross over. Insulin, growth hormones, and testosterone are anabolic. The more inflamed we get, we could have high amounts of testosterone because of PCOS and because of inflammation. So, some of these hormones kind of interact and cross over. With men for instance, the more inflamed men get and the more stressed they get, that can actually cause an upregulation of aromatase and could increase their estrogen. So, see how these things kind of cross react. Your hormones are going to be either pro-building or anti-inflammatory to reduce stress. So, for chronically and stressed out state, cortisol is going to rip up your protein and kind of decrease your muscle mass. As a woman, you’ll see your progesterone level start to drop and that will start putting you into an estrogen-dominant state because if we normally got 20 to 25 times estrogen than progesterone, that ratio starts to drop. Even if you still have more progesterone than estrogen, that ratios is going to throw you off and that can create breast tenderness, cramping, mood issues, excessive bleeding/menorrhagia, infertility, a lot of mood issues, back pain, and fluid retention. All those are possible situations.
- Xenoestrogens from the environment and foreign estrogens. They can come from plastic components, pesticides, herbicides or rodenticides, mold toxins, and heavy metals. They are going to disrupt our hormones. The easiest thing is eat organic, avoid plastics, and avoid a lot of the chemicals in the water because a lot of times you can get pesticide runoff or hormone runoff in the water. So, clean water and clean food, and then make sure it’s organic avoid the plastics as well. That’s a big, big thing. Plastics are probably okay if they are in a refrigerator or in a cold environment but ideally if you’re heating stuff up or it’s going to get exposed to light, you want some kind of a Pyrex or a glass container. It’s much better and really important.
- Last but not the least would be just making sure our detoxification pathways are running well. So, if we have good hormonal balance but we can’t detoxify it, then a lot of times we can reabsorb it. So, if we don’t have good sulfur, good glutathione precursors, good B vitamins, good methylation, N-acetylation and glucuronidation, we may have a hard time eliminating. Hence, we are re-absorbing a lot of our hormones. So, being able to break down your proteins, break down your amino acid and your B vitamins is going to help with your body’s ability to eliminate a lot of these toxins.
Summary:
Blood sugar, digestion, stress, xenoestrogens, and toxicity are really big. Those are the big 5 across the board. Try to apply at least one of these things.
Methods To Encourage Good Bowel Movement
You see women on Instagram. They’re all done up with their hair and makeup, and they’re marketing #ad #detox #tea. They have these ridiculous products that they’re remarketing and they’re not talking about poop. The best way to detox is getting poop out. I’m not going to buy detox tea. I’ll get a bit of dandelion or some milk thistle blended in and that’s part of it but unfortunately, detox is co-opted by the marketing industry. Most people don’t even focus on that. They’ll poop once a week but then they take a detox tea and they think they’re doing it correctly.
My whole take on detoxification out of the gates is very simple.
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- Get enough good clean water in your system.
- Make sure you’re digesting your amino acids and all your nutrients well.
Remember: Sulfur-based amino acids run the majority of your detoxification pathways, along with B vitamins. We need good B vitamins, good antioxidants, and good sulfur amino acids. For breaking down those nutrients well, there’s not a bottleneck with ACL levels or enzyme levels. We’re getting enough to clean water. - Not overly stressing our sympathetic nervous system.
Remember: The more we overly stress the adrenals, the sympathetic nervous system decreases that migrating motor complex which are the wavelike contractions that move stool through your intestinal tract, just like you roll up the toothpaste roll at night to get that toothpaste moving through to get your toothpaste out to brush your teeth. Your intestines are the same things.
If you can do those top three things right, you’re on the right track. There may be extra things where we need extra sulfur or extra antioxidants or compounds or binders to help with mold or heavy metal. That’s true and that would be addressed down the road but a lot of detoxification happens hepatobiliary, liver, gallbladder, back into the intestines, and then out the intestinal tract. So, we need to have really good motility and really good absorption of nutrients, and a lot of good clean water to help fuel.
Supplement Suggestion:Use one for liver support that has some gallbladder nutrients built into it. That can be really helpful because with sluggish bowels because a lot of times there’s also sluggish bile production. So, just helping thin the bile whether it’s using supplemental ox bile or methionine, taurine, B powder, whatever else we can do to increase bile flow. That’s going to be helping.
Detox and Diet
This is a low-hanging fruit that your average American is still really, really blowing it on which is just the fact that they’re not doing enough good meats, good fats, and good veggies. Your average American might wake up and do a piece of toast and maybe in 2020 or 2021, it’s an avocado toast but still that’s not the optimal thing for good poop.
Inflammation in the diet can easily mess up the intestinal tract and can easily create inflammation in the gut. That could either move the body more to diarrhea or more to constipation. If we start moving more to constipation, that’s not good. Of course, these foods can stress out the intestinal tract and then when we start creating inflammation in the intestinal tract, then we already have indigestion meaning we don’t have adequate enzymes and acids. So, we’re burping a lot after our meals, food sits longer in our tummy, and a lot of gases are produced because the foods are not being broken down properly. That’s a problem.
We’ve got to really make sure we’re masticating and chewing our food very, very, very well. We’ve got to make sure to increase the surface area for enzymes and acids to work. We also have to make sure not overly hydrating with our meals. So, hydrate 10 minutes or more before meal, and then if you’re consuming a little bit of liquid with a meal, just do it to help with swallowing pills. Don’t do it for hydration purposes. Because water has a pH of 7 and your intestinal tract has a pH of 1.5 to 2. So, if you start adding a whole bunch of pH 7 to up to a pH of 2, you’re going to move that pH more in the alkaline direction away from the acid direction. We need good acidity to help activate her enzymes in our acid levels. That’s very important.
If you have any issues with detoxification, please reach out to a functional medicine doctor.
Remember:
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- Chew your food up well.
- Make sure you’re not overly hydrating with the food. Do all your hydration 2 minutes before.
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Hack Your Alcohol Consumption and Avoid Hangovers | Podcast #300
Whether it’s a few glasses of wine with friends, beer over sports, or a fun night out, there’s ways you can enjoy drinking yet mitigate the health consequences and skip the hangover. What are some of the consequences of drinking too much alcohol? Gut damage, issues with blood sugar levels and gut permeability, candida overgrowth, adrenal stress, and more. The big stressors of a hangover is the acetaldehyde made from the alcohol and getting the body to process it into acetic acid. The enzyme responsible for this conversion is glutathione-based, so glutathione can help clear alcohol out of your system faster, think: N-acetylcysteine (NaC), liposomal glutathione, vitamin C, milk thistle. Since these help the catalase enzyme to clear the alcohol out of your body faster, it’ll also be better for your liver. These are the kind of tips and tricks Dr. J is dishing out (and more!) today and we’re pretty sure you’ll be using them to help avoid future hangovers. Drink responsibly and be safe!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
1:46 What is alcohol?
6:03 Alcohol Metabolism
15:18 Alcohol Poisoning
21:33 Blue Zones, Good and Bad choices for Alcohol
35:06 Alcohol Cravings
41:03 Different Types of Alcohol
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Today we’re going to be talking about how to hack your alcohol consumption. Again, people are out there, they’re gonna want to have a little bit of alcohol now and then maybe at the end of the week, maybe to kind of signify like, Hey, you know, the weeks over whatever it is, you’re relaxing, it’s summer, it’s fall, how can we do it in a way that’s one not gonna damage your body. But two, we can also hack the hangover, so we can do it responsibly and mitigate some of the health consequences. All right, Evan, what’s going on man? How are we doing?
Evan Brand: All doing really well excited to dive into this thing with you read a quick article from USA today that said that since all the shutdown stuff happened, that alcohol sales, does that contribute to consumption as well? I’m sure it does. It didn’t say alcohol. Yeah. So said alcohol sales are up 27%. And this was since June. So that’s a big bump in alcohol sales and people are stressed out and I mean, you and I are working with clients. Everyday, all day people that have been laid off or furloughed or lost jobs or kids can’t go back to school or whatever else is going on with them. And so what are people going to do when they’re stressed? Well, hopefully they go meditate and go to the park, but they’re probably going to have extra alcohol too. And so we don’t want people to make themselves sick. We don’t want hangovers. We don’t want gut damage. We don’t want increased issues with blood sugar. We don’t want increased issues with gut permeability. We don’t want candida overgrowth, we don’t want all those things to happen. We don’t want adrenal stress and sleep issues that then affect energy and motivation and, and productivity. So, you know, alcohol can affect all of the body systems because of the impact on potentially blood sugar and adrenals and gut and all of it and so I think there is a way to do it smartly, which is what we’re going to dive into today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So, everyone talks about alcohol being a toxin, right? Well, alcohol essentially, is ethyl alcohol, and your liver has to metabolize that and break it down. So the metabolism goes like this. Alcohol, ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol, that’s like a toxin, right? ethyl alcohol is the alcohol that we consume. That gets converted into acid aldehyde. And this enzyme here, right, this whole enzyme, it goes alcohol to acid aldehyde. And this is what alcohol dehydrogenase two right here, from alcohol to acid, aldehyde. And an acid aldehyde gets converted to a C to gas, which is basically apple cider vinegar. Okay, now acid aldehyde is the same compound that fungus or Candida actually produces. And that’s why Candida can actually make you feel a little bit drunk. Really, the big stressor. The big hangover stressor, is this acid aldehyde. Usually the body’s pretty efficient at taking alcohol and clearing it to acid out behind. It’s the acid aldehyde process that really has to go from acid aldehyde to Apple, the acetyl acetic acid right here, and we talked about this earlier. I think it was Asian descent right. Asian descent has a very, they they’re really efficient at taking alcohol and going to acid aldehyde. But they have a hard time of going acid aldehyde acetic acid. So this acid aldehyde increases, increases. And this acid aldehyde has a, let’s say histamine like effect. So high amounts of acid aldehyde can really increase that flushing kind of feeling. And so, a lot of people use the medication called Pepcid AC, which is that which is an h2 blocker. h2 blockers are an anti histamine. And what that does is anti histamines take the alcohol to acid out the high conversion they slow it down. So Asians they’re so fast at it, they increase their acid aldehyde like this acid aldehyde goes up. And so what they’re doing is they’re taking a h2 blocker to slow down the alcohol to acid aldehyde conversion again, it may help with the facial flushing and the histamine but not good on the liver because it’s creating more more that more of the alcohol is summer is basically surrounded That liver so your liver has to deal with the alcohol longer. It’s like you’re clogging up the coffee filter and it’s taking way longer to filter that out. Yep, you’re saying acid aldehyde. I think how you pronounce I think how you pronounce it is a sido. Allah cetyl alcohol. Yeah, I’ve always pronounced that as an aldehyde. I think someone where I learned about 10 years ago, they said it that way. I’ve heard it both ways. But yeah, a cetyl alcohol acetal aldehyde. So that’s going to be how it’s spelled.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s a big word. And you mentioned the issue with fungal overgrowth. And we’ve seen that a lot with people. Now when we’re talking about brain fog you and I’ve done so many podcasts on cognitive function issues, brain fog, anxiety, depression, those kinds of things. So if you’re somebody who has a Candida problem, maybe we should briefly go into this. This is you if you have a Candida problem. You’re probably not a good candidate for it. Now, could you get away with a little bit here and there, maybe so but if I have clients where we see that they’ve got major brands, Fogg, they have cognitive problems, they have memory problems, they go into a room and they forget why they’re in there, they lose their keys all the time, that kind of thing. And they show up with Candida on their labs, I’m going to tell them, hey, best case scenario, the question always comes up. And what about alcohol? I say, based on what’s going on, probably wise to stay away from it for a month or two while we get your gutter under control. And then let’s add it back in later, and you know, at a small amount and see how you do so I think there are some cases where you know, you and I work with quite a lot of people that are that are quite sick, and they don’t feel very well. So in those cases, we may try to say, hey, you can hack it like we’re going to talk about today. Or maybe just stay away, let’s let’s get your gut in better shape, let’s get your liver in better shape, especially if there’s a big mold problem. I’m gonna say, Man, your liver already needs help and, or if we test their chemical profile, we see they got a ton of pesticide herbicide. It’s like, ah, I really don’t want to add any more toxins to the bucket. So I personally try to stray people away from it, but at a certain point, you know that people want to live their life and have fun and that’s one of the ways people live. in society have fun. So then we go into the hex.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So just kind of talking about the alcohol metabolism one more time, right? We have ethanol, that’s our alcohol that goes to a seal out acetaldehyde acid aldehyde. Right? This the enzyme that’s responsible for that conversion, guess what it is? It’s catalysts. And catalyst is a glutathione dependent enzyme. So having good glue ion function helps you go alcohol ethanol, to acetyl aldehyde. That’s glue to fire independent as catalysts and then acetyl aldehyde to acetic acid or acetate, right? That’s going to be your apple cider vinegar. This is alcohol dehydrogenase to ALDH2. Okay, and so this is the enzyme A lot of people have a hard time with the Asians, they have a hard time clearing that and so the acid aldehyde goes up really high. So big things I want to highlight here, we’ll talk about it in the strategy standpoint. glutathione is good because glutathione clears the alcohol out of your system fast. So things like n acetylcysteine liposomal glutathione s acetyl glutathione, vitamin C, milk thistle, things that help increase catalyze clear the alcohol out of your body faster, that’s less stress on the liver. But then now we have this acetal aldehyde thing that has to happen next. And so typically, I’m going to I’m going to guarantee that a ldh is going to be supported and boosted via glutathione. And a lot of those nutrients some way shape or form. So I’ll try to pull that up here as well on the enzyme standpoint. Any comments on that?
Evan Brand: Yeah, I think milk thistle is something that’s pretty cool too. I don’t have any papers that are just specifically milk those by itself. But we know milk thistle is very, very beneficial for protecting the liver. So I think if you were to take which you and I have several of our own, like a liver complex or maybe you’ve got Got some and AC milk thistle which the active ingredient is silymarin. And that helps to act as an antioxidant and an anti inflammatory in right paddock cells. And here we go, I’ve actually got something right here that the milk thistle is going to help metabolize toxic compounds lowering the damage to the liver cells in the process. So there’s a guy here Dr. Weston child who was talking about silymarin. And he said, although it’s helpful, he said it’s not a cure all. And it doesn’t reduce all the damage from drinking in excess. However, it can help heal the process once the person has stopped drinking. Bla bla bla bla bla, so a parent Apparently, the in German, Germans in Germany, apparently they’re recommending milk thistle to treat liver toxicity. So yeah, so long story short, I mean, any of the stuff we’re typically doing clinically to help the liver is is going to be beneficial and protective. Now here’s one funny thing. So the wine industry You know, it’s all about resveratrol, right? It’s like resveratrol, resveratrol wine. But, you know, according to just looking at some of these labels and the actual amount of milligrams of resveratrol, you’re getting in red wine, you would literally have to drink like 100 bottles to get the amount of resveratrol that you would get in a single pill supplement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. Yeah. So a little bit. Yeah, it’s a little off there. I mean, there’s a lot of Blue Zones. These are very healthy parts of the world that live a very long time into the hundreds, you know, over 100, and they do consume some alcohol. So I don’t think alcohol should be looked at like it’s this unbelievable toxin on the body. I mean, I think there may be a mild stress to it, right? But exercise is a stress, right? So I think there’s have been a little bit of stress on the body does help with adaptation. The key is, is allowing your body to receive that stress and allow you to be able to adapt to it as efficiently as possible. Instead of it being the stressor you put in your bucket that causes your bucket to overflow. Now it’s going to be the stressor. helps make your body a little bit stronger. By just getting back here briefly, I found one article here talking about acetyl aldehyde. And it talks about the fact that cysteine and glycine again, which are the two major backbones to making gluten, what’s clewd a file and it’s a tri peptide, right? tri meaning three, glutamine, glycine. cysteine are the three amino acids in glutathione. So it talks about Long live sulfur containing bio molecules, including cysteine and glycine that incorporate acetyl aldehyde might affect cysteine, including ion homeostasis and also plays a protective role in reducing circulating acetyl aldehyde levels. Okay, this is one article called binding of acetyl aldehyde to a glutathione metabolite, so glutathione does bind up acetyl aldehyde. So we talked about an acetyl cysteine. We talked about glycine and bone broth, we are now glutamine. We also talked about things like Milk Thistle are silymarin, which are actually a glutathione recycler, so is cortisol that helps maintain the recycling of glutathione. And then of course, taking lipids, omo glutathione, itself. And then also things like charcoal, I think also have a positive effect at binding up a pseudo aldehyde as well. So look at acetyl aldehyde and charcoal, you can take binders that help you right here, a study of acetyl aldehyde absorption on activated carbons, right, which essentially activated carbons is going to be what you see with activated charcoal. We’ll talk about that in a second.
Evan Brand: I saw that one. So here’s what you’re saying. You’re basically saying you should make a Grass Fed Whey Protein Shake that’s going to be loaded with cysteine and all that make you a grass fed protein smoothie with a shot of vodka added to it. You’re going to have a good time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you want to do it. Right. I think that’s there’s there’s definitely a couple of options right? So when I look at alcohol consumption, right, the first part is choosing healthier versions of alcohol. We’ll talk about that in a second. The second is how do you detoxify? So there’s a couple of mitigating effects. Alcohol is a diuretic. Some of the effects that you have on alcohol is the fact that you are decreasing ADH antidiuretic hormone from the post here pituitary. Okay. So, I hate when they do double negatives. Remember double negatives equal a positive. All right, so anti diuretic so diuretic means it’s your diuretic means it makes you pee. So it’s the anti. It’s the anti pee hormone, if you will. So essentially, it’s the anti p anti anti p hormone. So in other words, it makes you pee. It allows what’s in your body from a hydration standpoint to be released out. So that means you’re going to lose a lot of water. You’re going to lose a lot of minerals. So part of the mitigating effect of hangovers is Yeah, you have the seat. Allow the high but you’re also going to be low in minerals and low in hydration. So if you’re going to be drinking more having a Pellegrino or having a nice mineral water at your table or at your home and having a glass of mineral water in between each drink is going to be huge from a hydration standpoint and a mineral standpoint, that’s number one. Number two, you may do a binder during the drink to kind of help mitigate and bind up some of the the acid aldehyde to help bind that up. And then number two, you can add in some things that are can be protecting the liver whether it’s clear to thiam you can do NAC you can do some vitamin C, you can do some you can do some milk thistle. Those are all good options. Now I keep it very simple. I’ll do n acetylcysteine, vitamin C and activated charcoal. And then when I come home, I’ll typically do some liposomal lumify and once I get home, all right and then I’ll also really make sure the minerals are good. I’ll typically sip on something like a tub of cheese Go in between the keep my minerals up. That’s a kind of a really good way to look at it. So alcohol is a diuretic.
Evan Brand: They need to sponsor you Topo Chico, you know, many times you flashed that Topo Chico bottle over the hundreds of episodes we’ve done they need to send you a free case or two or three.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, exactly. No, I totally I totally agree, man. I got to reach out to him for sure.
Evan Brand: I found I found one paper wanted to tell you this real quick. So maybe this is a study that maybe it’s been done on humans, and I just didn’t find it in PubMed, but when I found quickly was the effect of activated charcoal on ethanol blood levels in dogs. And apparently, they gave the dogs different amounts of ethanol and then they measured their blood after a dosing of charcoal. And it of course, duh. It just said that blood ethanol concentrations were significantly inhibited by activated charcoal during the first hour after administration and then blood ethanol levels are significantly lower throughout the study in the activated charcoal group. So this is what they do supposedly, this is what they do in poisoning emergencies in the hospital. Like if you go into the hospital with alcohol poisoning, supposedly they pump your stomach full of charcoal. Is that still standard practice? I’m not sure if you-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I can tell you personally not that I was ever affected but my college roommate freshman year, yeah, I had alcohol poisoning. I had to take him to the hospital. And we went to the ER. And I watched the whole process happening. They gave me a huge glass of activated charcoal. He was just drunk off his gorge. And he was just they had him sit him up at an angle and he was just out of it. And they were just kind of feeding him. The activated charcoal right down his mouth.
Unknown Speaker: I witnessed it myself. And then they also had them hooked up to an IV which is good, right? Because then you get the minerals in. Right and then you get the activated charcoal. Now is that worth $1,000 ER bill don’t know, I mean, you’re probably getting a $1 if of activated charcoal and then maybe a $5 IV, right? It’s quite the markup on there. So in other words, folks, if you’re listening, get your $20 bottle of activated charcoal, bring five or six capsules with you take them throughout the night, and then just get your little mineral water, right little Topo Chico sponsor right there. And then sip that throughout the night. And then this is your IV, okay, and then you get your activated charcoal, that’s going to kind of be your little binder. And I have one study right here, I’ll just kind of read the conclusion. And again, it’s amazing how researchers just do not know how to write in a way that connects with the average person. Let me read it and then I’ll translate talks about it talks about right here. This is due to the contribution of hydrogen bonding to the dispersive interaction of hydrocarbon moiety with the act of carbon pore walls after oxidation for the carbons with unaltered decreased surface area The esoteric heat of the acid aldehyde absorption is decreased. Alright, right here. This is it basically activated charcoals, which are these hydrocarbons, bind up acid aldehyde and decrease its absorption. So there’s less acid aldehyde or acetyl aldehyde in your body to be absorbed, because it’s being bound up by the activated charcoal.
Evan Brand: Let me point out what you’re saying. Because there’s people that are, you know, 17 minutes into this and they’re going yeah, but I don’t drink alcohol. Alcohol is stupid. It’s poison. I haven’t touched alcohol in years. I’m 20 years sober. Hey, he just said acetyl aldehyde. So if you have dealt with gut issues, and you’ve got a Candida overgrowth, that’s why we use binders for people. We’re not giving someone a binder and saying, oh, by the way, this is going to help with your Friday night drink. No, we’re using binders clinically, because it helps with the toxins that Candida and bacteria and parasites and all these gut infections that we talked about. That’s very beneficial for that, but it just so happens to be helpful with the alcohol piece too. So for those people like oh, Alcohol is the devil, which I joke around and say that many times. If I see my dad drinking, I’ll say, you know, I’ll call the devil right? And he’ll laugh. But anyway, for those people that don’t drink Look, the charcoal is still beneficial. Now, here’s one like side tangent, but I think it’s important to mention because it’s a sad reality is that up, women suppose you know, majority are going to go out to if they go out. I mean, whenever everything’s back to normal, they go out to a bar, and date raping still happens. I had a friend from high school who I saw at the gym years ago, and she apparently got dosed with gh B, you know, she was drinking water, and ended up getting date raped, and here she is not even drinking alcohol. I guess someone slipped ghp into her water and you know, next thing she knows that’s what happened. And so, the good news is there’s a study from European Journal of pharmacology, what’s it say here Pharmaceutical Sciences. Long story short, activated charcoal has clinically relevant ghp binding capacity. There you go. So if you have kids that are 2125 30, whatever they’re in college, you’re worried about them. Just make sure no matter what that if they go to a party or they go to a bar or whatever, that they take the charcoal because it’s going to help with the alcohol. But hey, if somebody tries to potentially date rape them, Look, now you’ve got that absorption as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I imagine that you’d also see glutathione as being a big one because fluidify on helps run those cytochrome p 450. oxidase pathway. Yeah, and right here ghp is naturally occurring compound and glutathione peroxidase, which is one of the major enzymes made by Luna found does help deactivate that. So yeah, these are all really good things. I mean, the goal of this podcast isn’t to tell people to drink it’s just the fact that hey, we know people are going to drink and there are people out there that still may drink and be very healthy, healthy minded. I like to consume a little bit of alcohol a couple glasses a week a lot of my patients do you know they want to have a social life not that you have to be drink alcohol to be social but they enjoy making that a part of their life and how can they do it in a way where they enjoy the the spirits and the the the levity that they get from their alcohol drinks, but at the same time, still maintain good health, cognitive benefit, good decisions, you know, and really still having a good social life without having the hangover and or having any negative health consequences. And so these are good strategies to do it. And we’ll talk about alcohol in a minute. But just to kind of reiterate, we had talked about the enzyme conversion glutathione is very important. We talked about the acid aldehyde is where a lot of the negative consequences happen. glutathione and activated charcoal can help with that as well. We talked about some of the liver tonifying herbs, such as milk thistle or silymarin. Things like dandelion or artichoke, things that support liver and gallbladder function can be helpful too. We talked about some of the nutrients like vitamin C and selenium, selenium is a glutathione precursor as well. And then we talked about the three amino acids and acetylcysteine is a core one and glutamine glycine, are really good amino acids. And Evan mentioned whey protein, which is really high in those amino acids as well can be really good supports to help with that alcohol, to acetyl aldehyde, acetyl aldehyde to acidic acid or apple cider vinegar, that’s the conversion process. And we’re just trying to help one either bind up some of that nonsense or help your body converted optimally. So you don’t deal with the deleterious consequences.
Evan Brand: Let’s talk about the, you know, kind of the good, not so good, bad choices for alcohol. But first, I want to comment back on the Blue Zone thing you mentioned, because that’s interesting. You’re talking about the Blue Zones and how so many cultures around the world where you’re seeing a massive amount of centenarians, people that are living to 100 years or greater. These people, a lot of them do consume alcohol. I remember that story of that guy down in Austin. He passed away a few years ago, but it was that that African American guy, he lived like 113 or something, and he was like, he was like a world war two veteran, he was super famous. There’s a street named after him in Austin now, but this guy, don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure this guy was drinking whiskey and smoking cigars every day. Wow. But here’s the funny thing about him and all these Blue Zones. Alcohol is just the lubricant for the social life. All these people in these Blue Zones, these are people who they have multiple generations of family living with them. They’re gardening, they’re there, they’re getting exercise, they’re getting sunshine, they’re barefoot in the dirt all day, they’re possibly eating food that’s not sprayed with chemicals. And they have much, much more of a social life than like your typical nine to five or so I think that when you look at those things, it’s hard to say, hey, the alcohol helped them live to 100 because they were relaxed. Part of its that too. Maybe they got a little bit relaxed, so they weren’t as stressed. And maybe they took let life less serious. Maybe they laughed a little more. But then also those people were super social with all their friends and family and data. So maybe that’s contributed to the longevity because we’ve seen all those papers on like social isolation being compared to smoking cigarettes and how toxic being isolated is so it’s kind of like the alcohol is there at the party, but the main benefit was the party in the people at the party.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and I just kind of want to highlight here, because there are many people that are listening to this and they’re saying, you know, they may have a history of alcohol abuse or being an alcoholic. Of course, this isn’t for you. But one of the things I want to highlight of why alcohol can be a problem and some people, some people that really have chronic alcohol abuse, the B six vitamin is incredibly affected by alcohol. And B six is really important for synthesis of neurotransmitters in the brain, serotonin, dopamine, it’s very, very important and B six is important for methylation for detoxification for full A and B 12 absorption. So basics really One article right here it’s called vitamin B six metabolism in chronic alcohol abuse to talk about individuals with chronic alcohol abuse frequently exhibit lower plasma levels of pyridoxal five phosphate, that’s B six, because the liver is the primary source of this coenzyme in plasma. Basically, it talks about that liver. toxicity of ethanol can impair hepatic peroxyl five phosphate metabolism. Now this is a rat study, but they’ve seen the same thing in humans. And basics. He talked about ethanol is diminished in the in the rate of release of pyridoxal phosphate phosphate perfused by the livers. The effects of ethanol in vitro were abolished by four methyl piracetol, an inhibitor of alcohol dehydrogenase, so they found that the alcohol dehydrogenase drug actually increased B six, so something to do with that alcohol metabolism really do ranges that be sick. So what does that mean? What’s the Reader’s Digest version means maybe getting a little bit of extra benefit. Complex on board there couldn’t hurt either way so if you have a history of alcohol in your family maybe you don’t but you want to provide extra support for yourself taking a B complex while you consume alcohol could still be a good thing for you. People that are more at a preventative side not saying if you have it still avoided if you have alcohol issues, but if you want to be extra preventative be complex could be something that you may want to add in on top of that.
Evan Brand: Cool. Yeah, I’m like a one shot a year guy historically, I remember I took like maybe two shots on my bachelor party for my for my wedding and then I we were out playing pool with my dad and my friends, my best man and all that and I just got to the point where I just felt stupid. I was like, God, even after this small amount of alcohol, I couldn’t comprehend simple things. And obviously, my brain likes to run. And so I was like, No, this is slowing me down too much. And so that’s that’s what kind of got me away from it. But But I may try it and see you know, I think there there are some Good, maybe stress reduction benefits. I’d like to see something on alcohol and cortisol. I wonder if there’s anything on that like seeing if salivary cortisol drops, like, let’s say you’re super stressed. I mean, think about like the TV show where you see the guy get pulled over by the cops. First thing he does is whips out a cigarette and starts smoking to take the edge off. I wonder if you took like salivary cortisol, you know, took a shot of vodka, took salivary cortisol. 30 minutes later, you think you’d see it drop?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see a modulation of serotonin and dopamine, I know nicotine does stimulate dopamine. So you’re gonna see some kind of acute input, some type of acute synthesis of those compounds. Now it’s all about the dosage right? chronicity of it, you’ll actually deplete it more, right? It’s kind of like doing a stimulant, you’re going to get a little bit more dopamine. But if you do it chronically, well, now you’re going to deplete that dopamine and you’re going to need more stimulant to get the same result. But just to kind of highlight that last article. I wanted to read the last sentence that said, the data supports the previous findings that acetal aldehyde is the responsible agent for which acts by accelerating the degradation of intercellular b six. So what does that mean? The more acid aldehyde The more we decrease our B six. So the more we can help metabolize acid aldehyde or cetyl aldehyde with charcoal and glutathione and binders, then we’re going to degrade less B six and then if you really want to support and on top of that, you can do extra B six on top of that extra B vitamins and you’ll be good. Now I consume maybe if I go out I consume alcohol maybe only on a Friday or Saturday. That’s it. I do not do any alcohol during the week. It’s just kind of my personal thing. I like to have that at the end of the week, my hard week done, and I’ll typically do one to two glasses of high quality like a clean dry champagne. I like that I like the bubbles in it. For me bubbles are like my best friend to Chico lots of bubbles. There’s been some studies that the bubble and the carbonation and alcohol actually increases the ability eruption of alcohol into your bloodstream. So what does that mean? bubbles mean you have you need less alcohol to get that alcohol in your bloodstream. So I like that they’ve it’s actually studies on that. Imagine the college study where you sit down and you get one group that’s taking shots of vodka. The other group take shots of vodka with carbonated water and they test your blood alcohol content, yet they’ve done studies like that. I’ve seen them. And so you need less alcohol with the bubbles, which is kind of cool. And then you can do a lot of the strategies that we talked about afterwards. So that’s kind of my strategy. Maybe I’ll drink three. It was my kids birthday this weekend. So I had maybe three glasses of you know, I like a nice, nice champagne. Or I’ll do my Dr. J’s Moscow Mule, which is another great recipe. So we’ll do a high quality Tito’s vodka from Austin and get the potato vodka. It’s filtered as well really clean. I’ll do some Tito’s vodka and I’ll mix that in a nice ginger kombucha and I’ll do a half a wine squeezed and that’s a wonderful drink because you get B vitamins in the kombucha. You get a lot of antioxidants in the kombucha and then you have the the line which provides some extra vitamin C, which does can particularly the thigh own. So it kind of gives you a lot of nutrients that actually help with any acid aldehyde metabolism, which is cool.
Evan Brand: That’s very cool. Okay, so I want to talk real quick about neurotransmitters and bits and you kind of got into it and then we’ll go into maybe the good worse bad kind of choices. So I sent you a in the chat there, I put you a link to this big long paper about neurotransmitters and alcohol. And so we know this but it’s always good to see it in in paper form that both metabolites of serotonin which is they probably were measuring five aiaa, just like we see on the organic acids test, I’m guessing but it talks about here how in humans the levels of serotonin metabolites in the urine and the blood increase after a single drinking session indicating increased serotonin release in the nervous system. And so, you know, if you and I both love, Julia Ross, I’ll speak for you and talk talk about You love her because I love her. I’ve had her on the podcast several times. She’s done amazing work on amino acids. And you know, when she talks about serotonin being low, the deficiency symptoms of serotonin, this these are the things that drive people to drink in some cases. So these are like negativity, depression, worry, anxiety, low self esteem, and then you notice how those people who were kind of anxious and kind of closed in and introverted. Guess what, what happens when they drink, they become extroverted, they’re talking louder, they’re more bubbly, they’re, they’re more happy, they’re more, they’re less anxious, they’re less worried, and that’s because you get that quick boost of serotonin. Now, here’s the problem. And I haven’t read into the paper to confirm this. But I’ve read other papers on this and everybody knows this. If you’ve been in society, what happens at the end of the night when the guy goes home with the wrong girl or the girl goes home with the wrong guy at the end of the night? That’s because you have this temporary boost initially of serotonin and then guess what happens the serotonin crashes and when you have not Not enough serotonin, your decision making goes down, your prefrontal cortex just shuts down and you make bad decisions and you do things that you shouldn’t do. So you have this initial spike, because of the five htt receptors being hit by the alcohol, and then boom, rapidly declines after that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think also alcohol just naturally decreases frontal cortex activation anyway. And so frontal cortex is the part of the brain right here, the neocortex that makes us human beings, it basically allows you it’s impulse control. So I don’t know you get in a fight with someone you’re like, oh, man, I really want to whack that person. But then your frontal cortex is like, Oh, no, don’t do that. That’s not good, right? You’ll go to jail. So your frontal cortex kind of like, Can like take a decision, that may be a bad one that you’re thinking impulsively, and it can shut that down. It also can, it can predict outcome of actions. And so when your frontal cortex is closed down, now you don’t have impulse control. So you just start saying whatever comes to your brain, and then you also don’t think about the consequences of your actions hence bad decisions. Yep. And then also in this paper it goes into how serotonin and not only just serotonin but GABA, you know alcohol is going to have an effect on gab as well. So, you know, people are familiar with GABA, it’s kind of the brakes of the brain, I call it and so when people are doing benzodiazepines, like Valium, and Xanax and those kind of things that’s working on the GABA receptors to calm anxiety. You and I prefer to use things like naturally fermented pharma gabbeh. We like to use things like elfy to help boost GABA, but you know, from a toxin perspective, the Gabba Gabba nergic pathway that’s also affected by alcohol too. So that would probably contribute to the relaxation a bit. Yeah, it’s interesting how the date rape drug which is gamma hydroxybutyrate ghp is actually a GABA metabolite. But it’s amazing that that can have the mind altering effects of memory loss. So obviously it must be a dose dependent type of thing.
Evan Brand: It is Yeah, I was actually Looking at the GH B page, like a data page on it, it was talking about how at a low dose you get like a little bit of euphoria. But then when you go moderate high dose, yeah, you’re unconscious, you got no memory, it’s bad stuff.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s funny when my wife and I go out to eat, I have my little stomach case. And I have enzymes and HCl on one side, and then I have activated charcoal, NAC or vitamin C on the other. And so when we go out, it’s funny, I just pull it out. And I kind of just set up my little supplements as a as I’m going like trying to always hack things, right. And then I’ll do glutathione later at home, because number one, it tastes really bad. anyone that knows liposomal glutathione. I don’t want it to affect the taste of my meal. But then I do those amino acids while there and so that’s just kind of how I hack it. And I’m guessing too. One thing you could do on top of that is people that are trying to whip their serotonin or dopamine levels up, you can just use amino acids as well, to bump up your brain chemicals, right, so we’ll do tyrosine or l dopa. When appearing is to really help improve dopamine or adrenaline levels. And dopamine is a precursor to adrenaline. So part of the way we support healthy dopamine levels is we fix the underlying stressors that are causing your dopamine to go to adrenaline. And then of course, five HTP with B six and B six is very important because it helps with the conversion of your neurotransmitters. And we talked about the article showing a cetyl aldehyde decreases B six levels. So you can see the interplay here, so you can you know, if you’re smart, right, and you have issues to begin with, just avoid alcohol. But if you don’t, and you want to engage in it and have a couple of drinks per week, and you want to do it safe and effectively and hack it so you feel great doing it don’t have a deleterious effects, B six is one, okay. And then we can even do the amino acids five HTP and tyrosine with B six right, I talked about that. And then we have your binder, we have your glutathione precursor and then we have your minerals or your hydration which could just be a nice bottle of Pellegrino dropped off at the table with some limes and you can get some vitamin C in the lime juice and then you’re set.
Evan Brand: Let me mention this. The people that have alcohol cravings, so you’re like hey, workweeks done great week let’s chill out a little bit that’s not you craving it that’s you just going to it because you’re enjoying it now the people that have to go to it the people like oh my god, I got to have a drink. Those people need more functional medicine help. So you know, Julia Ross talks about this a lot people that are having cravings for alcohol. You know, these are people that may need something like glutamine to help with the the brain to help the brain feel stable and calm. The people that are low in serotonin, they may crave alcohol as well. So like you said, that’s where the five HTP comes in. If someone’s burned out their catecholamines, they may have alcohol cravings, and some people it manifests as dark chocolate cravings, and some people it manifests as sweet cravings and some people it’s alcohol or it’s cannabis craving so you can have different vices tied into the same neurotransmitter. Same thing with Gabba. If you’re real low in GABA, you’re going to be someone who it’s hard for you to relax your real tightly wound. And you may crave sweets or starches, but you also may crave alcohol. So when you get the alcohol, oh my god, you loosen your shoulders a little bit, that’s a sign that you need help and the GABA department and then reach out to somebody like Dr. J. And let’s help you boost your natural levels and some of its genetics. Some people are just genetically going to be lower, they’re more anxious, maybe family history, childhood, whatever. And some people it’s the stress of toxicity and gut bugs or whatever else. It’s affected neurotransmitters like you and I see when people have gut infections, we’ll look at their serotonin and serotonin is often low. And my theory is that, hey, you’ve got a lot of gut bugs, you’re probably not able to manufacture enough serotonin in the gut, and therefore that’s why you’re anxious and depressed. And that’s why you have to have your alcohol to be happy or to do whatever you have to do but if you fix the gut, we retest the organic acid, boom, serotonin. goes back up to normal, which is really cool to see on paper.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Yep, totally. And again, alcohol isn’t there is some genetics to it. You’ll see it in a lot of people of Irish descent. Supposedly there’s some issues with with B vitamin or thymine deficiency, which is B one. And alcohol consumption actually further depletes that. So you see it in the Irish population. You also saw in the Native American population, a lot of alcoholism there. So thigh means a big role. That’s kind of why I was saying that. A good B complex would be one and B six can be very helpful as a preventative for people that may not be alcoholics but may have it in their family as a good preventative. Number two, if you are an alcoholic, you really want to look at supporting the adrenals you want to really look at supporting blood sugar, blood sugar is really important. You want to look at treating Candida because of the acid aldehyde in your gut from Candida can still mimic that. You want to look at supporting B vitamins and digestion and absorption. And one of the best things you can do when when you go out to eat is have Some protein and fat with your meal, it’s very helpful. One of the things I’ll do when I consume alcohol is I love oysters. And oysters are very high in zinc. And I’m pretty sure oysters are also very high in B vitamins too, I have to look at that real quick. Yet oysters are very high in B 12. And they’re also very high. And they do have some smaller amounts of timing nice and in full eight. And so that’s really good. So really, if you can go out and actually consume really nutrient dense foods, foie gras, liver, high quality grass fed steaks, you know, good seafood consumption, you’re going to have a lot of extra B vitamins there that will help fill in the gap nutritionally as well.
Evan Brand: Yep. So let’s get into the good, worse, bad choice if you want to now. So you mentioned vodka already, which is good, because you mentioned it’s going to be distilled. It’s going to be ultra purified. So if you’re looking for just the pure stuff, it’s going to be that and then a golf a would probably be up at the top of the top of the list. Do you mean Yeah, tequila made from a GAVI. So-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One thing to add though the volca I’m a big fan of titos I’m pretty sure it’s potato bass and I think it’s also a filter like seven or eight times and isn’t it also isn’t also go to a charcoal filter.
Evan Brand: Supposedly that’s what we read. I haven’t confirmed it but yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so very clean. So if you want to consume that, and then I’ll do the Vodka with a high quality kombucha to really help improve the self improve the B vitamin nutrient levels too.
Evan Brand: Yep, so so tequila are coming from a GABE that’s gonna be generally really, really clean and then you get into the brown stuff. So you’re going to get into the whiskies. And then of course, you got bourbon which bourbon just means that it was made in Kentucky where I live Nice, huh? Same thing, whiskey and bourbon, same thing like Bourbons made in Kentucky and that’s what that’s what allows it to be called bourbon. So, but that’s but that’s made from grains. And generally grains are going to be genetically modified. They’re going to be sprayed with a lot of chemicals. So if you get a quote, really high grade High School Last whiskey bourbon, guess what, it’s not going to be certified organic and it’s not going to be, you know, GMO glyphosate free. So I would argue that the tequila and vodka choices would probably be far better. Now there’s also one. It’s like a Hawaiian company that makes an organic vodka. I’m gonna see if I can pull it up. It had like a blue bottle. It was like a, it’s called ocean. It’s organic vodka. And it was by a company called ocean. So and they make it from organic sugarcane. So that’s kind of cool. I like that it comes from an 80 acre farm and distillery in Maui and they use solar panels to power the distillery and blah, blah, blah. So it’s organic sugar cane, blended with deep ocean mineral water. So that’s kind of cool. So I think if you could get organic, and that would be smart. Now people that have allergies with corn. There’s another brand called frankly, who makes organic vodka but it’s made from organic corn. So when cause any issues if you had a corn allergy, I don’t know, maybe go for the sugar cane stuff instead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Usually it’s filtered enough, it’s gonna have lot of its proteins. Proteins are a lot bigger so usually those are gonna get filtered out. Vodka’s gonna be the cleanest, there are antioxidants and some of those compounds. So you mentioned Gin, which is made of Juniper Berries which are very powerful antioxidants. Also things like Whiskey for instance, which is made from grains but typically the distillation process filtered it out, and it has different antioxidants in there, so it’s allagic acid which is a powerful antioxidant. And there are some decent compounds in there so your hard alcohols are gonna be good. Vodka’s my favorite because it mixes really well and you can get a high quality one that’s really clean. And we have like a nice dry apple cider, it’s really good, just try to get the one without sugar added. There’s a good brand in whole foods in Austin called Anthem, it’s a pretty good one. Another one is Magner which is pretty good too. Then of course you have your dry wines right so you have like a champagne which is basically a bubbly wine where the grapes come from one province in France right, but then you have like versions of prosecco which is a champagne version in Italy you have cava which is a champagne version in Spain and so I’ll tend to lean to some of the sparkling wines or really clean dry apple cider or really clean like my Dr. J’s Moscow Mule which i have a blog post on how to make and that’s the vodka, the ginger kombucha, half a lime squeeze and that’s phenomenal stuff. And then of course you have the regular white wine, drier version you have the redder wines, which could have some other types of gluten in there because of the uh the granules of flour that may line some of the bottles, the like the big bins the big like barrels of of actual wine there could be some cross contamination there, and then you have like your flavored liqueurs, and then you have your beer, your lager, and then of course your not so good mix drink with lots of high sugar that’s kind of the spectrum.
Evan Brand: Yeah you notice like we barely even give any credit to the existence of those garbage ones like your Smirnoff blue dye colored sugary corn syrup cane sugar mixture with alcohol, I mean the stuff like if you go out to like an american restaurant you get a margarita i mean it’s going to be a disgusting combination of artificial colors and dyes and sugar. It’s probably more sugar than there is alcohol in most of those things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah I mean I can tell you, market demand though a lot more higher quality healthier alcohol drinks. I’m seeing a lot of sparkling water with a little bit of vodka, and some even just sweetened with a little bit of stevia, I think it’s like the white claw one and there’s another one out there, so there’s a couple of decent ones that are out there that are made from mass consumption. They kind of are dialed in with a little bit of vodka, a little sparkling, maybe even a tiny bit of Stevia and so not as bad.
Evan Brand: Cool. I’ve heard of the white claw. I haven’t looked it up yet. I’m going to try to see what are the ingredients here. I’ve got an ingredient label here- black cherry-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s another one it’s like fawn and something vaughn and forget.
Evan Brand: So apparently, it’s carbonated water alcohol which I’m not sure what kind of alcohol it is. It just says it’s a gluten-free alcohol base natural flavor cane sugar citric acid. So yeah I mean I guess I would argue that’s not terrible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You have to look at some some are low it’s another one bon and vive are one that i’ve seen before that just on the shelf that like pretty low sugar, like for me, i would probably just make my own with kombucha, because i feel like i can i can add more nutrients to it, and have that natural sweetness there. But so just kind of giving you guys an idea of kind of how we think about it, Evan doesn’t drink at all i drink a tiny bit on the weekend, not during the week, so just kind of how we approach it. One, how do we choose the healthiest version possible. Two, how do we mitigate the side effects with some of the supplements that we recommend during.
Evan Brand: I’m not opposed to it. I know I would go for it if it’s something clean i would probably go for it. I was just staying away because after my mold exposure you know i developed some histamine issues and when you look into alcohol and dao the enzyme that breaks down histamine the idea is that alcohol down regulates the dao enzyme and then it increases histamine because of that whole acetyl-aldehyde path that we talked about earlier. So people with histamine issues, uh people with gut issues those are probably people that should proceed with caution, but you know, once I feel like i’m on steady ground with the histamine thing i’ll probably try some. Let’s see what happens, maybe i’ll — but here’s here’s the funny thing. I’ve always been so social uh such an extrovert, so outgoing, that anytime i were at a party if i were driving friends around or whatever, i was always more social than the people there and like people would think i was buzzed or think i was drunk because of how social i was and so people have to drink to get on my level of sociability which has always been pretty funny.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I get that. That makes sense. So just kind of recapping for everyone right, choose the highest quality alcohol you possibly can based on that scale that we gave. Vodka, tequila, to whiskey, to gin, to your dryer kind of bubbly champagne, to your dryer red and white wines, to your beers lagers and kind of sugary drinks at the end. So choose kind of the best on that spectrum. Metabolism of alcohol right, ethyl alcohol, acid alcohol, two acetaldehyde acetaldehyde to acetic acid right so catalase enzyme here in that first step glutathione helps with that, and then from the uh acetaldehyde to acetic acid- that’s the alcohol dehydrogenase II, activated charcoal and different sulfur amino acids help decrease that as well. So use those. Be very mindful of alcohol, especially hard alcohol can actually decrease your blood sugar. So what happens is your liver does help with blood sugar stability, gluconeogenesis, when you lean up a whole bunch of ethyl alcohol against it, guess what happens? Your liver stops helping with blood sugar and so you when you take in alcohol. You can actually lower your blood sugar because there’s no sugar when you take in vodka for instance. So you’re actually decreasing your blood sugar, now what happens? When this happens it can create cravings, so when you go to a bar or restaurant they want to give you alcohol first a lot of times that’s going to decrease your blood sugar, because what your body can’t help maintain blood sugar stability. So the harder it is you have a lower blood sugar level. What does that do? More cravings, more appetite, more eating sugary and crappy carbohydrates and that can create a blood sugar roller coaster. So have good proteins good fats first before you eat so you can have better blood sugar control, and then use a lot of the supplementation that we talked about activated charcoal, vitamin c, milk thistle, nac, glutathione, and then make sure you hydrate in between to maintain your mineral levels.
Evan Brand: Yeah. The restaurants know that if they can get you drinking you’re more likely to order that brownie with vanilla ice cream on top.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo. 100%. So I always want to put myself in a position where my cravings are not driving the bus, so to speak. I’m able to make decisions based on what I want versus what my cravings want.
Evan Brand: Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. If you want to reach out, you can check out Dr Justin at JustinHealth.com. He does consults worldwide- phone, facetime, skype, whatever we have to do to connect. That’s what you do. We send lab tests to your door, we help you with a wide range of health issues, you can view more on that website and if you want to reach out to me, Evan Brand that’s the website- EvanBrand.com. Same thing available worldwide. We’re blessed, we love being able to help people, we love being able to help hack things where people can still feel like a normal human. You know sometimes when you’re in this functional medicine health world, you feel like things are restricted. You’ve got these dietary restrictions, and now you can’t do this and now you can’t go eat the birthday cake and da da da da da so the good news is you can hack things like we’ve talked about today and you can still feel like a quote normal human. I really don’t want to feel like a normal human because most normal humans are super unhealthy and sick and overweight and whatever. So I’d rather feel the way we feel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% agreed. I can’t believe this is one of our longest podcasts in a while, but I guess there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to uh alcohol consumption and how to do it the right way. So hopefully um the listeners enjoy the extra in depth and the biochemistry and some of the mechanism stuff and uh just you know walk away and apply a couple of components here to make your alcohol consumption healthier. If you feel the need to engage so far.
Evan Brand: Yep or share the content so sharing is caring. Please do and I would love if you’d write a review for us on iTunes because wherever you’re listening on your podcast app you should just be able to click write a review. So do it, I know we’re like we’re real people we’re not just like the annoying pop-up where the app’s like please rate me and you’re like maybe later or you’re like no thanks, don’t do that to us. Actually give it to us, we need it, we appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We appreciate it. We wanted to get uh in front of more people so they can take control of their health and that makes the world a better place so we appreciate that. Evan excellent chat today really appreciate it. We will be back next week you guys, have a phenomenal week. Take care y’all. Bye now.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/hack-your-alcohol-consumption-and-avoid-hangovers-podcast-300
The Top 5 Causes of Chronic Headaches
Today we are going to be talking about the top underlying reasons why you may be having a chronic headache. I had a patient come in today who had headaches for 25 years, monthly and chronically, and we were able to get to the root cause and there are many different root causes for every person. Let me lay out the common ones that I find to be a major vector of my patients.
So we have headaches and head pain or migraines where you kind of have that aura and sound sensitivity. There are a couple of different major reasons why headaches may happen.
1. Food Allergens
Most common food allergy is gluten and dairy. There are some studies on gluten affecting blood flow up to the brain. We have these garden hoses on the side of our neck called our carotid arteries. When we have inflammation especially caused by gluten that can decrease blood flow and blood profusion to the frontal cortex, and when you have less blood, you’re going to have decreased performance of the brain. You can see that manifesting in a headache. People don’t know but headaches are actually an issue with vasodilation in the brain. Caffeine can help as caffeine actually causes constriction and brain’s typical headache signal is caused by vasodilation.
2. Food Additives.
These could be things like MSG, aspartame, Splenda or various artificial colors and dyes.
3. Blood Sugar Fluctuation.
We want to have healthy proteins and healthy fats with every meal. If we skip meals or we eat foods that are too high in carbohydrates and refined “crapohydrates” and sugar, and not enough fats and proteins, our blood sugar can go up and then drop. This is called reactive hypoglycemia. We react by putting a whole bunch of sugar in our bloodstream because all of these carbohydrate sources break down into sugar — processed sugar, grains, flours and acellular carbohydrates. These type of flours and refined processed carbs get converted to glucose in our bloodstream. When glucose goes up, our pancreas goes, “Holy smokes! We got a lot of glucose there. We got to pull it into the cell.” It spits out a whole bunch of insulin and pulls that glucose right down, and we have his blood sugar going up with a lot of insulin driving that blood sugar back down. When that blood sugar goes back down, this is where we have cravings. This is where we have addictions, mood issues, energy issues, jitteriness, and cognitive issues. Our body makes adrenaline and cortisol to bring that blood sugar back up. Most people literally live on this high insulin where they are making fat, storing fat and engaging in lipogenesis which makes us tired. Then blood sugar crashes which makes people jittery, anxious, and moody. Most people live on this reactive hypoglycemia rollercoaster and that can drive headaches.
4. Gut Infections.
Patients with a lot of gut inflammation, gut permeability, and infections whether it’s H. pylori, SIBO (small intestinal, bacterial overgrowth) or fungal overgrowth have gut stressors can create inflammation in the gut. When we have inflammation in the gut, we have gut permeability. So our tight junctions in our intestines start to open up and undigested bacteria, lipopolysaccharides, food particles can slip through and create an immune response. You can see histamine along with that immune response and histamine can create headache issues.
5. Hormonal Issue.
A woman’s cycle is about 28 days and in the middle is ovulation. Some women have it during ovulation and most have it right at the end just before they menstruate. This is called premenstrual syndrome that is right before menstruation. A lot of women may also have it during menstruation, too. What happens is progesterone can drop out early and that drop in progesterone can actually cause headache manifestations and also the aberrations in estrogen can also cause headaches as well. We may also see it with excessive bleeding too. So if you’re bleeding a lot or too much, what may happen is you may lose iron and that low iron may cause oxygenation issues. That low level of oxygen may also cause some headache issues as well. Because if you can’t carry oxygen, that is going to be a stressed-out situation for your mitochondria and your metabolism. For menopausal women who have chronically low hormones and they’re not in an optimal place, that can create issues. Progesterone and estrogen can be very anti-inflammatory. So if there is inflammation in the brain, progesterone is a powerful anti-inflammatory and that can really help a lot of inflammation in the brain.
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.
How To Treat Toenail Fungus or Discoloration
Let’s go into like the most common things that you would see or hear of with complaints regarding nails. The biggest one is going to be toe fungus under the nail bed where it’s going to be a yellow or just a fungal-infected toenail.
Why Should We Address Gut Issues?
If it’s on the toenail, there’s definitely implications that it could be in the gut. The problem is you can address the gut a lot of times but that’s not going to be enough to address the toenails well. Just because the time you put herbs into the gut or whatever time it gets into the bloodstream, makes its way all the way down to your toe. Unless it’s a very minor fungal infection, most of the time you’re gonna need to hit it topically because your immune system and all these antifungals take a long time to get to the outer periphery of where this fungus is located. So in general, we should address the gut and then we should also address it topically on the nail. So we’ve got to hit it from both ends, inside and outside, to kind of put that fungus between a rock in a hard place.
How Fungus is Treated Conventionally
Let’s just say you go to your foot doctor or your podiatrist and you say, “Hey, I’ve got a fungal infection on my toe.” They’re going to end up giving you Lamisil or some other type of a prescription or over-the-counter antifungal. But to me, I think that’s a shortsighted approach because that toenail is not having that infection for no reason.
How Fungus is Treated Functionally
If it’s really bad, you definitely want to be addressing your diet because a lot of the fungus or yeast, which is primarily that yellow-discolored nail is going to be fungus in that area.
- You got to stop what’s feeding it. Look at the diet and stop feeding it all the refined carbohydrates.
- You want to address the gut issues to begin with. The Candida, which is a kind of yeast or fungus, whether it’s Microsporidia Rhodotorula. You want to address and knock down some of these yeasts. More than likely we’re going to topically hit it as well.
- Some of the Lamisil or the other medications that are antifungals are very hard on the liver. So if you’re going to go that way, definitely take some herbs like milk thistle and take some extra glutathione to help support and tonify the liver if you’re going to go that way.
Alternative Treatments for Toe Fungus
- Topically, we can use things like Melaleuca or tea tree and/or oil of oregano and topically rub it on the nail.
- We can also do a fungal soak as well. The fungal soaks work phenomenal. There’s a herbal concoction that you mix it with apple cider vinegar which works amazing. You can do that and then topically rub something on after you soak your feet for 5 or 10 minutes. Some people they’ll just do the topical nail as well. I like doing the whole foot. That way if there’s any fungus between the toes or in the heel or wherever in the skin, you kind of get all of it versus just some of it. So nail fungal soak with also topically hitting the nail as well.
Anything that we can do to reduce that process of AGEing — the advanced glycation enzyme process — is also going to be one of the critical steps to this. The less stress in your body, the better. Nail fungus is really unique because once you fix a lot of the root cause stuff, that may not go away. So you gotta really topically hit it as well.