Collagen & Inflammation Reduction, Sunlight, Epigenetic & Anti-aging Strategies – Dr. Bernd Friedlander | Podcast #377
Collagen supplements are associated with several health benefits and very few known risks. It may increase muscle mass, prevent bone loss, relieve joint pain, and improve skin health by reducing wrinkles and dryness. And since your body naturally produces collagen from amino acids, you can support collagen production by ensuring that you’re eating adequate amounts of protein from foods like animals, poultry, fish, beans, and eggs.
Lastly, Dr. J and Dr. Bernd share that collagen promotes gut healing in inflammatory digestive conditions, such as irritable bowel disease (IBD). By taking collagen, you would help correct a deficiency and potential injury.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:00 – Introduction
5:13 – Diet Modifications
12:10 – Collagen and mTOR
37:35 – Protein
1:00:37 – Take aways
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys! Doctor Justin Marchegiani here. Really excited we got a guest back on the show. High demand doctor Bernd Friedlander, a great guy, known him for many years. He is a fountain of knowledge on many different health topics. We’re going to dive in, let’s see what we hit. I know we’re going to be coming out of the gate.Talking about collagen, reducing inflammation, sunlight, 5G, epigenetics. We’ll dive in and see where the conversation goes. Doctor Bernd, how we doing, man? What’s cooking?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: How are you, Justin? I’m doing great. You’re wonderful. Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good, excellent. So let’s start off. We were talking kind of pre show, let’s kind of take that here. You were a chiropractor for the 1984 I think was it the the summer or Winter Olympics?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It was. No, it’s the Summer Olympics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was in LA, right?.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In LA. Yeah. And matter of fact, I got selected for the 1980 Olympics, but there was a boycott in Russia, so we never went there. So what we did is we took over from 80 and get and training the athletes from 78 to 80 while I was going through chiropractic school and I also had a degree in physical therapy and exercise physiologies in a strong nutritional bracket background. So that helped me with uh, you know, working with athletes and now it myself played professional soccer. I ran track in college, I swam in college, so I did a lot of sports. I was into the sports arena quite a bit. And having six, eight years of physical therapy training from 72 to 78, that seemed to have helped me the most, you know, in preparing myself for training and rehab and nutrition and getting into Chiropractic work, all of that help and so in 19.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you had to have had a connection to get picked for the beat of the Doctor of the 1980 and 84 Olympic Games. So how did that happen?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Boy, it’s karma. What happened was I was finishing up my degree in.Glendale getting my LACC chiropractic license. And I was, I didn’t like. I wanted to be closer to the ocean, to the beach, because I grew up there and I moved down to Santa Monica. And had bought a house down there and I was going to UCLA and working out every day, and then I devote relationships with coaches and athletes there.They started realizing that I had some knowledge about training and rehab and and also injuries because of my physical therapy and they found out I was going through chiropractic school and I was getting my degree there.One of the coaches, Bob Bush, they named the stadium after him at UCLA. He asked me to work with him and many of his athletes. He and they were training for the 84 Olympics because the 80 got boycotted and we were working for the 80 at that time with Bob Bush, but we got, you know, cancelled. So we started the program again at UCLA and then I get, I gravitated to Patrick Connolly, who was training Evelyn Ashford, the fastest 102 hundred meter women athlete in the world at that time? And then I was working with Bob Kersee, who was, who took over for Bob Buesch as the head of the UCLA track and field coach. And he started using me for all of his athletes and training them and rehabbing them and giving them exercise programs and then work on nutrition as an alternative to steroids because that was my background there at UCLA, was working on alternative steroid programs for the athletes, and then I started to gravitate with him and all these athletes were coming down to train at the 84. Olympics at UCLA. So many countries came, you know, England, Russia, Germany, East Germany, all these countries came down to train with us. And then I became very good friends with John Wooden and the president of UCLA, and he saw what I was doing and he came up to me and I treated him on a couple injuries that he had and he says you, you know, I couldn’t even walk the other day. Now I’m walking today. You know it’s amazing. So he asked me to come in and he gave me a position, Durham and honorary molecular biology degree that he gave me and he asked me to head up the Sports Medicine Research Center at UCLA. And that’s how I got involved with everything. And then the coaches that I was working with, they asked the US Olympic to have me on the team and that’s how I got involved with it. And I also had my own athletes that was trained.The 84 Olympics, like Ron Brown and I was working with Carl Lewis and other people like that. So I had quite a few people. Bob Kersee had all the female athletes that I was training with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when you look at a lot of the athletes that you’ve had insight to how deal with their diets back then when they pretty crappy and they just were relying on good trading in genetics or were they dialed in back then?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, Twinkies was their popular dish. Can you believe it? Peanut butter. Yeah. Peanut butter. Reeses cups. That’s what they ate. And that’s why they were always inflamed and injured. And then when I worked in 85, 86 with the Raiders and Rams and Lakers, their diet was mostly pasta and bread and carbs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean you know you’re you’re exercising so much so from a caloric standpoint an insulin wise you’re going to be able to burn that off but your fatty acid profiles so inflamed. So you’re if you get injured, it’s gonna be hard to heal, plus you don’t have any connective tissue building blocks coming in. So as you get injured, the pliability of that tissues and then we just, uh, you get less pliable tissue, less ability to absorb force over time with injuries, it’s crazy.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Absolutely. So what we did was we worked on nutrition with them protein, eggs, fish, you know meat and cut down the carbs like pasta and breads and less, uh, rice and potatoes. So we increase almost like a carnivore diet with these people. And
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You do healthy. I mean, obviously they’re burning a lot of carbs. Could you do starches like sweet potato and squash or even white potato? Would you?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Oh yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you consider those still more anti-inflammatory type of starches?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you were trying to grain and gluten back then, the out in the early 80s too.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, we knew it was leading to a lot of information. I was very fortunate at UCLA that I was involved with so many great minds, you know. One of my patients was Roy Walford, who was the father of caloric restriction diet. So I learned everything about restriction diet and what it contributes to and how it works on the body and he took it too fa into it. I did not. I kind of realized that we can’t do a strict diet like that because we need calories or we’re gonna have oxidative damage and stress and the athletes need to eat. They need 6-7 meals a day. OK. And they needed small protein and they needed the route, right? Amount of carbs from vegetables they have to be cooked and potatoes, they have to be mashed potatoes or rice, they have to be white and they have to be. And we added butter with it. Not Gee at that time because we didn’t have Gee, but it was mostly butter that we used. We use butter for all our training sessions with the athletes. And then fortunately I got a mini companies donating uh research to us, you know, like supplements like Co-Q10 came from Japan, didn’t know anything about Co-Q 10, we started using it, so amazing results. We started using pycnogenol from France. And started giving that to the athletes and saw an increase in oxygen levels. It was amazing. And then knocks gelatin came over and supplementing us with Knox gelatin powder, which then that’s how I got into the collagen. Before I I didn’t know anything about it. And I started talking to the Knox gelatin chemist at that time and they, they were explaining to me how important, you know, it was in rebuilding and rehabbing, you know. It was more for rebuilding, regenerating and and and helping with injuries, recovering it faster and that’s what we use at that time. We use a packet of Knox gelatin with vitamin C at three times a day. And the increased results were amazing with that, wow. And that’s when
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll talk about the amino acid difference with gelatin or collagen, obviously collagen peptides are probably even better because those long chain peptides are broken down, so they’re better absorbed, would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Gelatin is a great product, but it has to still be broken down by the stomach. OK, you need hydrochloric acid, you need pepsin, and you need B6. Collagen is already broken down into peptides. I just knew how to do it even faster and better by eliminating uh by doing a certain enzymatic process to make collagen which made it into a signaling peptide. So you have what’s known as signaling peptide collagen in your product. And that’s what
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With that. So, so what’s the signaling peptide? What does that mean?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, what it does, it actually turns, it turns on the signaling effects of the peptides in the collagen. That’s what it does. So you’re going to get better utilization from it, that’s all you know, uh, you know, I started it in an 84 collagen. I was probably the only person out there that knew a little bit about it and was trying to find researchers.Out there, and there weren’t that many companies making collagen. There was only a few companies. And then I started in the 90s, I started meeting a guy, Bob Buesch, I mean Bob Buescher from Great lakes. He was the only other fellow that I knew was into gelatin and collagen at that time. He was more into gelatin, so Great Lakes was more of a gelatin thing. And then as I, you know, got into it, I realized that you as a chiropractor, your patients coming in are all cartilage damage, are ligaments, tendons, muscles and bone. And so I realized one of the most important foods we can supplement people with is collagen, and that’s how I got into the collagen business in the late in the Twenties, 2000s, you know, because at that time I was just using whatever I could from anybody, you know, it wasn’t abundant at that time. Today, everybody’s using it, you know, I got David Asprey bulletproof involved with it. He didn’t know anything about it. I got vital proteins involved with when they came to my lecture at Expo West in Anaheim and they were listening to my lecture and that’s how everybody got involved. They realized the importance of collagen and one of the key importance of collagen is, it’s devoid of three amino amino acids. It’s the only protein on the planet that’s devoid of these three amino methionine, yes, and they’re leaders of mtor, which are inflammatory compounds. They cause oxidative damage, they can lead to thyroid oxidation, thyroid damage. So it affects mitochondrial function. And that’s the molecule that we all live on. It’s mitochondria. That’s the key. That’s what I studied over 30 years ago, was how athletes train and why do they train differently in different countries. And what makes a good athlete versus a bad why I sold the Kenyans and Jamaicans and all these other athletes being so good at, in track and field, it’s because sunlight and mitochondria was the predominant thing in the 80s that I didn’t even realize then yet that I discovered later on was the key to everything and the type of food stage, which was very gelatinous foods, you know, collagen derived foods. That’s where we ate you know many hundreds of years ago and maybe 30-60 years ago, 1000 years ago we were more gelatinous people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to dive a little bit deeper in there. We can go then we can move on. But collagen is so important for me because, one like you said, we eat a lot more muscle meat which is going to be more methionine, Cysteine rich right, not necessarily a bad thing, but we’re missing the connective tissue because we always talk about old foods don’t cause new disease, one of the biggest, oldest foods they’re there was, was, was soups and bone broths putting the bones in, in the pressure cooker or in the pot and really extracting those amino acids. So collagen is really high in hydroxyproline, proline, glycine, both of those. One are really high and connective tissue, glycine so important for gut health that’s I think part of the the guts diet is a lot of these bone broths which really what’s that healing property, it’s that glycine to help with those enterocytes. So you have connective tissue you have gut health, right. And they’re also good precursors, especially glycine. That’s a backbone for glutathione too, because you comment a little more on that.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, well, we know collagen is a perfect food, almost. You know, as you get older. What did they give you in the hospital? Gello, right? Yeah. Besides the other things. Yeah. But you’re getting a sort of a good protein that helps with recovery and rebuilding. One of the things is we’re eating a very inflammatory diet today you know we’re eating fried foods. The worst foods on the planet Earth for the last 30-40-50 years has been fried foods. Anything that is seed oil made with canola or even Avocado oil, olive oil, any of these oils, they’re very lipid, oxidative. They cause mitochondrial damage and thyroid damage, and causes
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Isn’t avocado a little bit higher smoke point though, I know it’s you.You always want to use a saturated fat. It’s better your tallow your coconut oil, but isn’t it a little bit higher of a smoked point than the other ones though?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, but in the body the oxidative chain of the these fats, fatty acid composition are very long. And so they’re more exposed to oxidative damage. And the smaller the chain is, the less oxidative power damage we’re gonna have, you know, and that’s the key. I mean that’s, yeah, that’s why get everything from ghee and butter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they did it, beef tile. They had a beef tile up to 89 and then went to soybean oil. So yeah, having it low or some kind of saturated fat that that has the doesn’t have all the double bonds between the carbons. They’re going to be a lot less prone for oxidation.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. So you want less of these little acids, Omega 6, which is the most conducive problems we have today to every disease we know of. An aging is number one. You know, my background was at UCLA was studying aging you know, and athletic performance and and so I got into everything what causes aging, it’s a pathway that we take. And we take the right pathway and don’t make the wrong turns. We live longer and and also we survive longer and we feel better and healthier if we take the wrong pathways and eat fried foods and starches and carbs and you know, in and out burgers, everything out there is conducive to medical medication, that’s what they want. They want the medications, you know, and the more you get.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if we choose good fatty acids, ideally we want to be choosing more saturated fats, probably more animal fats, or exactly and if we choose. Probably on the more dressing side, avocado oil may be addressing olive oil. Olive oil may be more of a dressing. And then obviously you probably like cooking with ghee over butter just because it has that lactose and casein kind of more pulled out, right? Would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I love ghee. Ghee is my predominant, uh, butter that I use right now for everything. It has a higher point. It’s very high in the antioxidant vitamin E, and it’s very high in Gerald Pollack’s book on 4th phase of water. You know, and how to keep, you know, we gotta maintain that water in the cells. That cells and gels the engine of life. And I was very fortunate to meet the Gilbert Ling on the phone and Gilbert is probably the greatest scientist of our time who discovered how cells function and how energy works in the in the cells in the cytoplasm of the mitochondria and the MRI device was developed by Raymond Amanian, who we just lost recently, and so sad, he was a genius and it was because of the water structure and the protein of the cells, that was the basis for the foundation of how cells work and that’s how the MRI came up to play because of Gilbert Ling work and that’s how Gerald Pollack discovered the cells and gels the engine of life and then the fourth phase of water, it all came around, it accumulated because of the knowledge of all these great minds we have today and going back to college, and one of the key things I think is that collagen is on the nitrogen utilization. Uh, you know, chart. Egg is maybe number one and collagens #2 and then meat. So, also the other thing with collagen does it, it protects us from mtor pathways, inflammatory pathways, oxidative pathways. It the nutrients in the peptides and proteins in the collagen balances us from getting
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What mTOR is? Just so people have a little background.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: mTOR is a, it’s a wrap on myosin compound which helps to what it does when we’re young, OK, like we’re growing up in that early, uh two to five, 10,18 years old, we are growing. We need muscles, we need the growth and repair, and we need cell growth. mTOR is part of that pathway. So that’s what helps in helping cells replicate faster. So we get bones, we get muscles, we get organs we get. But as we get to about 30 years old, these things can lead to damaging uh cells like senescence, they can lead to cancer cells, they can lead to diabetes, heart disease. They can overdo too much and we don’t want that extra growth at that period of time, we already fully develop. We don’t need it, so we need to keep it down. And it’s the same thing with the deuterium, the water deuterium is the same thing. We need it when we’re young.The deuterium is a heavy hydrogen nuclear um, you know, that’s found in all the water and foods all over the world. We need it when we’re young. As we get older, it can disrupt the mitochondria from functioning and making ATP correctly so it can damage it. There’s a spin in the ATP process of the cytochrome 5 which makes all the electrons takes the electron, protons and protons. Protons from our foot. With oxygen and sunlight to make every single component of energy that’s made in the ATP chain, and if we have too much deuterium in there, it slows down the spin cycle so the batteries are not working as well, so the body has
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break a couple things down. You’re saying a lot of good things. I just want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. So First off on the collagen because you really went into that right now talk about collagen and mTOR is it because it’s missing some of those big free amino acids it keeps you need low. So essentially mTOR good when you’re younger, anabolic protein bone, but at some point having it too high as you get older it can cause this cancer growth so. Collagen amino acids are in a profile that is gonna limit mTOR. What else is? Is that correct? And then what else can we do to also limit mTOR?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It’s cutting down, well collagen has the best safety factors because it’s so it has zero, um, of these three amino acids. So if you have a certain level of these amino acids, let’s say leucine is a mTOR pathway. It’s in a branch chain amino acid, right? But leucine has to be over 2000 grams of, 2000 grams of leucine a day. If you keep it under 2000 grams like 1000, you’re not going to get into our pathway because there’s not enough of those amino acids to switch it to it. And that’s why collagen doesn’t have these tryp thing, methionine, cysteine foods. So it’s not going to promote it, but certain foods in nature like you know organ meats and meats in general can do that. You know, if you’re eating a lot of it, it will produce mTOR pathways and this research the only known true research today is that was a extension of lifespan by 40% was by the reduction of mTOR. By lowering methionine and tryptophan, specially methionine in the diet. Low methionine diet. Richard Miller, MD, PhD published this work and now it’s well known out there in publication that you know, Life extension is really by lowering methionine and then cysteine and tryptophan.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what else you mentioned the Omega-6 especially the processed Omega-6is it’s really the Omega-6 that’s gonna be from processing that’s going to get oxidized and damaged and rancidity we have that, does that affect mTOR, what about carbs, what about insulin resistance, what else on your diet and lifestyle can Jack up mTOR?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Anything that is rich foods that are in tryptophan, methionine, those cysteine. So if you have a lot of high cysteine foods, high methionine foods, like you know you will, I mean if you over process too much of these type of foods and a lot of fruits and a lot of vegetables have high methionine and tryptophan.Think of this yogurt. OK, yogurt whey protein is very high in tryptophan and methionine, especially methionine. So any of the whey protein that people are using today that are above 25 years old, 28 years old, 30 years old. There’s so many people using it in their milkshakes, in their athletic performing drinks. Whey protein has the highest form, methionine, so it you keep constantly taking that you will get a mTOR and I have seen that with professional lifters, they got increased heart disease, enlarged heart, they had cardiovascular damage, they had kidney failures. So I seen it that these athletes, so if you’re going to have yogurt, have Greek yogurt because the way protein is totally removed from that. So you’re not getting any of the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A lot of these amino acids like cysteine for instance, a lot of studies on and N-acetylcysteine with all kinds of different things from lung health to glutathione levels to to helping with virus stuff and and viral replication and immune function, a lot of data on that being beneficial, how does that, how does that connect? Because we see a lot of data on some of these things being beneficial, also tryptophan, you know, that could be really helpful for serotonin, sleep and all that. How do those connect?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK glutathione is a very controversial thing. I never use it, never have, never will. I’ve been doing Cancer Research for almost 40 years, 50 years now, and one thing I learned from the Germans, they were the best in this field. In the 80s when they were visiting me. In the 90s when I went to Mexico and worked with clinics. Glutathione is an antioxidant that protects cancer cells from chemoradiation surgery. They know how to protect themselves, they know how to build the defense systems, and glutathione is one of the key defense systems that cancer cells use to protect themselves from oxidative damage, from death, or whatever. There’s another thing that we need to know is oxidation reduction. OK. Oxidation is how everything is electron flow into the chamber to make energy. In the end of all this is the reduction state. All the electrons are received and they need to be converted back to donation instead of receiving, only if we only receive electrons and don’t know how to donate back. That’s how we end up dying, and that’s how we end up being sick. And that’s how we start aging. It’s called oxidation reduction NAD NADH. And there’s one other thing that people don’t understand is called glutathione, oxidative glutathione and reduction glutathione and everybody today is in that reductive state of glutathione which is only grabbing electrons but is not converting it back to energy. And that’s what we need to do as a living system. We need to have those things functioning. Oxidative reduction states low. NAD High, NADH low. Then we have the glutathione stage, the oxidative stage and the reductive state and oxidative.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna break some of it down for the listeners to make sure we’re on the same page, so when you’re talking reduction, reduction is nothing more than a gain of electrons. You have an extra electron and we’re talking oxidation, we’ve lost an electron. And so the goal with a lot of antioxidants, they’re trying to come in there when they’re in an oxidized state, they’re trying to give off that electron to bring that electron back up to a stable place, is that correct?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Right. But then a lot of that, yeah, a lot of the antioxidants are in the reduced state. Think of vitamin C. What does vitamin C? Vitamin C is an antioxidant, but in the cell, It’s ,uh, we oxidative state. In the normal chemistry of this cell or vitamin C supplements, they’re in the reduced state, so they need to be converted inside the cell to dehydroxy C ascorbic acid, which is a oxidative state of vitamin C. Vitamin E is one of the few other ones that really is a very strong antioxidant that can be used as an anti-inflammatory, as an oxidative state. Umm, vitamin and not too many. You know a lot of your polyphenolic, so you know all your fruits and vegetables, especially your juices. They have a lot of flavonoids. And flavonoids are very important in reducing inflammation. But also, they’re also reducing oxidative stress. And promoting electron flow in the electron chamber because they can produce an increase electrons in oxygen and that’s what we need.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How does sodium potassium pump come into play because we know sodium potassium really important and we know a lot of these vegetables have a lot of potassium. Many large percent of the population deficient potassium. Where do those electrolytes come into play here?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: OK, that’s Gilbert Ling has shown that these cells do not have sodium potassium pumps. They don’t work that way. That’s Gilbert Ling. Read cells the engine life. Ray Peat is one of the best in the field in understanding sodium pumps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We need these potassium and we need these electrolytes though, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, we don’t really need it. We get enough of those in the cell. It, uh, here’s what it is. If you studied the electron mitochondria. Douglas Wallace, he’s the father of mitochondria by far, you know, and there’s many others. Every disease, 99% of all disease is based on what we call mitochondria decay. OK. And it’s the damaging effects of mitochondria, OK. And that’s all the diseases out there, you know and can. So what we’re seeing is that in nature, there is no, energy is required by the cytoplasm of the cell, and that’s where the mitochondrion takes electrons and makes energy ATP, and that’s how the cell survives. And water is key in structuring the cells, the gels of the cells and so is protein and that’s why it looks like a jello and having that, that’s the key to everything out there. And so if you read the book Cells and Gels, you read Gilbert Ling work, you leave Tom. Do you know Thomas Cohen? The MD. Yeah, he is very controversial because he was against the vaccine and all that and the virus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He was up in San Francisco, right?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: He was in San Francisco and he’s in New York now. And he has now. Yeah, yeah, he’s doing consultation and he’s 100% right about the cells and gels of how the cells exist today. They don’t have any sodium-Potassium, you need sodium and you need potassium as an electrolyte for nerve function, for electricity to occur in the body because we’re a DC current, we’re not an AC we’re DC current. That’s Robert Becker’s book on body electric, and I had a chance to work with him when I was at UCLA and the guy was a brilliant scientist. And that we’re all a DC electrical system. Everything works on that. And it’s all on low frequencies and low, uh, hertz. And everything is low gas. We’re a very extreme low gas human being and when we’re under a lot of high gas, we get damage. And so, uh it if you have a chance, read the Cells and gels by Gerald Pollack, Read Gilbert Ling book, Ray Peat. He’s got millions of articles on sodium pump and then Thomas Cohen’s work and Jack Cruz on who’s a neurosurgeon on biohacking the mitochondria with sunlight. They all know about the cells now they understand, and that’s how they know how to work with the cells and fix it again. And that’s what I’m doing today, is understanding chemistry and how it started 303 billion years ago, how it all came into play.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright, so we put a lot of things out here, but in regards to it like the average person listening, they’re like OK, like what am I gonna do? What’s the action item? So give him one or two things that they can do to help improve the cells and gels, the mitochondria, I mean outside of we already talked about a couple of things with processed food, we already talked about sunlight, collagen, you know, having the mTOR, the Omega-6, what else can be done kind of low hanging fruit wise?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, I think, I think going back to how we were created OK and who we are OK and what chemistry of life created us? 600 Billion, uhh, million years ago, sunlight was starting to develop and just going back to little history so you understand who we are. The sunlight was developing and was maturing and chlorophyll was present 600 millions years ago. But it was needed by plants. And then 500 million years ago, the Sun developed even stronger and UV light, A, B and C was the foundation of the sunlight. That’s the strength of the sunlight. And it was maturing 500 million years ago. And guess what, that’s what helped to create the hemoglobin, which was the iron part of the blood, not the magnesium is part of the plant. But then the mitochondria was developing because at that period of time, the UV came through the ozone layer and tripled the lay amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and that’s what created life. All of us. So that’s what helped with us was the sunlight. And the sunlight and the mitochondria was perfect. The oxygen levels was perfect. Thermodynamic temp, Temperatures of the ocean and the land was perfect. And that’s why things started developing humans and everything. So going back today, we live in an indoor world. OK. All the food we can eat today, it doesn’t make a difference because what we need is the function of the mitochondria and that is stimulated by the whole spectrum of the sun’s, not just the portion of the spectrum. The ATP cycles this cell electron transport C1,C2,C3,C4 and C5 requires photosynthesis to occur in order to make energy in the food. So we need to be exposed in the sun more early in the morning. So we get our circadian going, our pineal gland and thyroid going. That’s how we get a stimuli. Then at lunchtime, we need to expose ourselves 30 to 60 minutes of with no shirt to get vitamin D and unique cholesterol to make vitamin D so you cannot deprive yourself of the cholesterol foods. That’s how you’re going to get sick. And then again, you need that they are reduction of blue light at night, so you need to escape blue light and that’s where you try to get some sunlight in the evening because a different spectrum of light, so we’re exposed to blue light damage, artificial lighting, and it was all discovered by a guy named Kessler. We need to develop the AC current. Remember that? And what did they operate in the 1800s? Kerosene in the street. So we were using artificial lighting then, and that’s what started the decay of the human population since then. And then the other thing is realized, we need good food. We need to get good water, Not fluoride, fluoride, you know fluoride is a damaging effect in water. We need to get non fluoridated water. We need to ,Um, We need to eat a higher amount of protein and less, Uh, starches and carbs and not. So we don’t, you know, vegetables are good, but they’re not because they can cause a lot of oxalates and oxidative damage to the thyroids. Yeah, there’s a lot of estrogenic foods in nature.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So can you get protein from animal products? Can can you be making vegetarian in your mind and be healthy and get your protein from animal products strictly?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You have to be from animal products only. That’s how we do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And why though? Why?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well. Did I lose you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I’m here.You’re going. Alright. Well you’re well you’re kind of getting your stuff here. I’ll kind of riff on a little bit. I mean the reason why I think Dr Bernd may be a big fan of animal protein and they I am as well obviously is going to be just the amino acid profile you’re going to get essential all your top eight or nine essential amino acids with a lot of vegetarian proteins. You gotta combine them, and when you combine them, usually you’re missing either methionine or lysine or protein. You get to combine them. The problem is when you combine them, you get a lot of extra carbohydrates. You know when you typically combine animal or or vegetarian proteins? Rice, beans, whatever, quinoa. Usually it’s about a 60 to 70% starch.To your 15 or 20 grams of protein. So you end up getting a lot of carbohydrate. So people attend to do OK on the vegetarian, vegan type, they tend to be more ectomorphs, tend to be people that do well on high carb foods if you’re more prone to insulin resistance like I am, or most of the population.You you’re gonna get too much carbohydrates for you and for your activity level and so you really gotta choose good animal proteins where you get the proteins, you get the fats obviously. You’re also getting less Omega 6 less to the inflammatory foods that are going to be in those vegetarian protein, so it’s good to get it from animal sources that are pasture fed, um, naturally raised, grass fed, whether it’s eggs, chickens eating bugs, whether it’s whether it’s beef and grass and cows and grass, whether it’s chickens, whether it’s Lamb pasture fed diets going to shift that fatty acid profile and that fatty acid is more in the natural state, it’s in any more anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense and you’re going to get a lot more nutrition in in the animal product. So we lost Dr Bernd here. So I’m going to just keep on riffing unless he can jump back on here and just try to provide a lot of value for y’all and if you want to kind of chum it, come in here in the chat guys and just put some questions in. Feel free and rip off some of that. So just summarize, collagen, really helpful, really good building blocks, connective tissue for your joints, ligaments, tendons, you’re not going to get that animal protein. So, love collagen, again, I worked out to Dr. Bernd to kind of formulate my own collagen that has the the peptide form. We’ll put links down below where you guys can get it. Um, the problem with a lot of collagen on the market, they’re made with sulfuric acid, so when you blend it in coffees and teas, you taste it. It’s got this really not so good after taste. So when you use proteolytic enzymes, it’s gonna blend better, it’s not gonna have the after taste and then you get these signaling, uh proteins in there which are which are really important. So if you have joint issues, especially as you get older and you started to see your gaps and your X-ray start to drop a little bit. That the hip or the knee and you started to go bone on, bone in knee, the connective tissue building blocks to build back up that joint base. Very important. If you don’t bring the raw material in, you’re gonna have a problem. Next big thing, you should need the Omega. You know, good quality fatty acids, more from animal. If you’re gonna do more of the vegetable, make sure it’s keeping on the the low temperature side. Very important. I’m a big fan. Doctor Bernd, is more of a carb guy, but you can see him. He’s a leaner, he’s a leaner kind of wiry guy, right. He’s going to do really good with more carbohydrates, those kind of things. You gotta adjust your carbohydrates for your body type. So if you’re kind of a an ectomorph, think of that as the the dancer, the basketball player, leaner, taller person, then you need to adjust. You could probably handle more carbs, if you’re the mesomorph, that’s the in between. I’m kind of the mesomorph. I’m kind of like the, the linebacker, right. You can be lean, but you can also get big too. And then then you have the endomorph. That’s the the lineman, right? That’s the the person that’s more prone to just to be big. And gain weight with carbohydrate, yet to figure out where you sit. And then you also have to look at your activity level. If you’re walking ten, 15,000 steps today, doing a little bit of lifting, you can always get away with more carbs. The more active you are, the less active you are, you got to adjust that.Well, get that to Dr. Bernd back on here. Let’s see if I can plug them back in. Alright. Bernd. We were just kind of riffing that. I was riffing a little bit here on collagen and fatty acids and we had a little collagen. Yeah, no big deal, we’re just kind of roll with it. Can you go back and just talk about joint issues? Umm, have you seen a lot of case studies your experience people with bone on bone or serious joint issues. Have you found they’ve been able to build that joint back up with collagen?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know what, in combination with your, uh, the work that we do and using red light in infrared light. Heat lamps. I think the combination we definitely need collagen for the recovery, I found an interesting study
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Have you seen clinically though, you can build that joint back up when it’s already worn down, when you’re like, hey, I may need a knee or hip replacement in a couple of years. Can you avoid that? Can you build it back?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: If you still have cartilage left, OK. And I think, you know, most of us do.If we use a certain, I found that if we go from 60 grams to 100 grams of collagen.There’s a greater chance of recovery and rebuilding and restructuring the cells, yes, if we get you know. Umm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We lost some folks. I’m gonna keep riffing here. So yeah, Bernd’s talking about bringing that collagen up to 100 grams or so. Again, usually you get about 10 to 15 grams per scoop. I do about 20 or 30 grams a day. I put it in my coffee. My collagen, it blends well, it just acts like a Creamer. It just thickens it up and then I’ll throw a little bit of butter and MCT oil and blend it up. I try to get good fats cause you gotta think of eating good healthy fats. That’s support for your cell membranes, right? Cell membrane health is so important because that’s how your cells communicate. And the more you consume fatty acids that are going to be more on the oxidized side, that’s going to create oxidative stress that’s going to deplete your antioxidant reserves. It’s also going to make your cell membrane stiff and inflexible. We’re just talking about cell membrane stiffness with all the excess fatty acids here, but go ahead with the collagen and the joy of recovery.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So I feel if we, uh, use a combination of.Vitamin D calcium and a good gym diet and keep the collagen up about 45 to 60 grams a day, which is, you know, and I’ve had 100 grams a day with many of my athletes. I seen faster results from college and you know, I’ve seen better results with the higher level of you know collagen in the grams, adding calcium, vitamin D and light therapy and as much as he, If we can generate into that area. So we can get
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: better more articulation over like chicken or fish multi collagen, is there a reason why you like the beef better versus the other?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: The reason I like better and I you know I’ve used it only if pretty much in my whole career going back to the 80s, maybe a little pork at that time because of Jello. Gelatin.Yeah. Um, At least I today I know I’m getting quality I would would beef. I know I can get grass fed beef. Chicken. There’s no way of getting grass fed chicken. They’re mostly using, uh, soy and corn, right? And so you’re getting hormones in there, you’re getting estrogen. And then in the no control of the environment that then because there’s so much contamination today in the water. And what they’re feeding them. So I don’t really use that either. It’s all because of the process of how they’re made. If I can get collagen and I get beef that’s grass fed 100% all the way to the end, I know I’m getting quality and I’m getting, you know, consistent results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense. So that’s very good And how does, how does the? What? What the animal eats? Whether it’s cows eating grass or chickens eating bugs, how does that affect the amino acids? Do you notice like collagen from let’s say factory farm chickens or factory farm carbs? Does the amino acid spectrum in that collagen change? Which shifts?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: In collagen, you know, the only thing I notice is the quality of the collagen comes from a good source of grass fed cows, OK? Umm. So I can tell the difference with my clients and patients for years, their response, their results are better. I’m getting you know, yeah and I’m not getting any of the inflammatory conditions and I don’t have to worry about any of the hormonal factors that may be found in residues and really low residues in these things. You know and then the vitamin E level and collagen is a little bit higher in grass fed animals than and they’re lowering in you know the polyunsaturated fats. So I’m getting almost none of that in my grass fed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s good. So someone else listening here, we talked about sunlight, that’s easy. Obviously we don’t want to get a sunburn. We talked about mTOR and insulin and fasting and fatty acids. What else can someone do to kind of help put their kind of start signaling those healthy anti-aging Epigenetics, right, the genetics are just kind of what’s there that’s that’s the hardware that’s already written. We’re talking about the epigenetics which is the software to help maximize that hardware use. What else can we do to optimize our epigenetics to be in that anti aging, healthy aging kind of path?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know, eating a good meal, right? Having the right proteins, almost reducing the levels of polyunsaturated oils from seed oils. Umm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Any other thing, is anything else more nuance and anything that yeah, my life reducing, they got anything else that’s more nuanced that they may not have heard before?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Reducing stress. Go for walks, get in the sun more often. Eliminate the amount of exposure indoors with blue light technology, you know, uh, put, if you’re going to bed here is the most important thing you can do at a certain time in the evening, do not look at your video or cell phone after 5,6,7 in the evening, OK? Get your body and mind ready for sleep and regeneration and anabolic steroids and all the stem cells that comes at night.That grows back. Get rid of all the Wi-Fi. Turn it off. Do not have your cell phone in the bedroom. Put it on airport mode or.I turned the whole phone off and I never have my Wi-Fi on during the days. Most of the days I’m inside and I’m very rarely inside and so I try to keep my bedroom free of any EMF electrical magnetic or radiation and I have a meter and I use that meter to give me sort of an idea what’s going on and I like, I like to try feel that’s the one I use because, Yeah, and that’s one I use every day for everything. You know, I go in the people’s home and I see what’s going on and I can say here’s your EMF levels, you need to reduce that and the only way to do that is unplug most of the electrical keep your refrigerator yeah and you know certain things on but you can pretty much turn everything off and if you can the, best thing is get a Ley line you know i know we’re out of it people don’t even know there’s Ley lines anymore. But you know we don’t lay line is where you you plugged in everything you know
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: a landline.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. I’m sorry, landline. I meant landline. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Some of my patients that they’re. It you, you can also just try killing your breaker box to your house. Just kill the power for the night. Again, may not work. Yes, yes, yes, yeah, fridge come. But you can at least kill your room if you want. Again, it just depends upon how chronically sick you are too. You know the more sick you’re right, the more you can decrease that electromagnetic stress if you’re pretty healthy you could probably. That’s probably something you can adapt to. How do you manage the 5G stuff? Because that’s kind of everywhere now and these things are harder to avoid.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I go in the sun pretty much every morning, every afternoon I’m 2-3 hours in the sun. If I’m exercising, I’m exercising outdoors totally. I’m walking. I’m grounding myself. I walk in concrete. Or the best ideal place to walk is is in the beach. You know, being by the beach is ideal. That means there’s no 5G’s there and you’re grounding your body and you know, uh, getting back to nature, that’s really who we are. And try to limit the out indoor as much as you can unless, you know, get John Ott’s lamaran or any of those full spectrum lightings. Start using natural lighting back in the inside you know no LED’s and you know try to avoid that and get more of a full spectrum light. Where the it almost gives you the same resonance of a sunlight you know and that’s what you want to do and eliminate as much as you can 5G just don’t be near it and the like I said don’t be on the phone, don’t be on a video and avoid it. And I wear blue light glasses for last 10 15 years anyway at night, so if I’m exposing myself to anything I always wear my blue lights. And I have it all over my house now, blue light lamps. You know where they produce red lamps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Dr. Bernd, very good. Well, anything else you want to highlight and leave with the listeners? I think you kind of put some really good information out there, fatty acids, collagen, the right types of collagen. We talked about sleep, we talked about light. Obviously with light you don’t want to get burned.Right. You want that minimal erythemal dose, morning hours, yeah, 8-9 or so. Later on. But just don’t get burned, would you agree?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, here’s how you do it. Your body is exposed. The uh, you know, exposing yourself to UV light is how life started. OK, that’s the creation of every living system in our planet, OK, and UV is part of the importance of the mitochondria and building the mitochondria and all that. So what I’m thinking and what we need to do is, you know, don’t if you expose yourself slowly every day a little bit to sunlight.you’re not going to get burned OK. Burn only happens when you have a bad diet. If you eat a lot of polyunsaturated.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: mornings exposure, you haven’t acclimated your skin to it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes, I have no problems because I’m in the sun all the time, so if you go out in the sun. And you expose yourself, uh, 30 minutes, 15, 20 minutes in the morning. You’re protecting yourself already by doing that. Then at lunchtime 12 to 3, where UV is the highest, you’re not going to be damaged by it so much because you’re already developed a defense mechanism against that through the early sunlight, right? And if you’re worried about it, take an aspirin. And if you take an aspirin before you go out in the sun, you won’t get burned. And this was a study done in Israel, in Australia, about 1990s, that sunlight, taking an aspirin before going out on the sun doesn’t cost any inflammation or sunburn. And that was one of the two studies that they’ve done in Australia, the papers I read. It was phenomenal. So I take aspirin every day, especially at night, to protect myself against clotting mechanisms and strokes and cardiovascular things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So why you choose an aspirin over ginger or some kind of something a little bit more natural? Because there’s an aspirin have other type of potential side effects though. Gastrointestinal upset or maybe a liver stress?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: when I attended.The anti aging conference in Las Vegas. One of the people I met at the one of the speakers was the head of Bayer aspirin researcher. Yeah, and his whole speaking assignment that day was on Fox 2 Gene. It’s an anti aging gene that’s seen to be found in certain animals like you know worms and mice and now it’s shown to be in humans, aspirin actually extended the Fox 2 gene. So you’re not going to get diseases and aging and aspirin has probably more clinical studies than any other nutrient on the planet today. For anti-inflammatory condition for it’s mitochondria function I used to give my athletes coffee and aspirin to increase uncoupling mechanism which increases mitochondria function in the cells. So it has so many potentials, you know it, it is a truly, instead of causing reduction state in the cells, which we were talking about how oxidative states is the key and keeping electron flow going into the mitochondria and keeping our Redox cycling function going. So we’re donating electrons back to the energy chamber. Aspirin does that and and when you take with coffee in the morning, it doubles the uncoupling mechanism. So our athletes is so much like a steroid for them they can see a difference. And I’ve had people say this is worse than a steroid. I’ve never seen anything so good as aspirin and coffee and if you take it at night, it lowers the inflammatory condition. And one thing I learned from a cardiologist at Harvard was that it protects us from ever getting a stroke. When we get up in the morning, our cortisol levels are high.The potential for a blood clot to occur is greater at 4, 5, 6, 7 in the morning then any other time of the day. It’s because we’re just getting up and the blood is getting very stagnated and there’s a clotting mechanism and aspirin protects that. It prevents the platelet aggregation so it doesn’t happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What about curcumin though? I’ve seen a lot of drug companies kind of focusing on the research of curcumin with anti cancer. It’s everywhere plus we know curcumin is really good for that platelet aggregation reduction that blood thinning effects. What about using that too, what do you think about other natural compounds?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, it’s interesting. Um, I work with Elizabeth Dimarzio, University of Florida AMM. OK. She’s the leading world expert in inflammatory compounds from herbs from all over the world, OK? And I’ve been involved with her for over 10 years now, and I’m on her board. And curcumin was not even close to being the highest in the anti-inflammatory or anti tumor cancer things, there were so many other compounds like Boswellia. If you’re gonna take anything Boswellia would be my second choice from aspirin because it has a Cox 1 and Cox 2 inhibitor. Yeah. And so there are many other herbs she found that a lot of the Chinese 1000 year old herbs, 2000 euro have tremendous medicinal benefits in anti-inflammatory and antitumor and frankincense is one of the big ones and Boswellia and ashwagandha.Those yeah, ashwagandha is very good. I would pick those over curcumin and turmeric would be on my second choice. My down the line 10th, 11th, 12th, because turmeric is the whole plant and has much more medicinal purposes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if you had to choose like whether a drug like aspirin or ibuprofen, you would choose the aspirin any day?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Every day because it also has a key molecule in there that we discovered in one of the research at Ohio State University Medical Center and at the Florida AM. It promotes ATP production, Mitochondria. Ibuprofen, Tylenol has a reductive state. Aspirin is an oxidizing state.It helps with oxidation. So that’s why I would choose that, because of the oxidative state. The oxidation of aspirin is very high, so it helps with mitochondria uncoupling. So we’re getting more ATP production, where Tylenol and all the other ones do not have that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aspirin profound effects on mitochondria is it uncouples mitochondria oxidation and induces mitochondrial permeability transition. Interesting. That’s cool. Yeah. Take a look at that.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I have hundreds of papers on aspirin, so we can move on that anytime. Absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s very good. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that, Doctor Bernd, very cool. OK, anything else you want to leave the listeners with, drberndfriedlander.com We’ll put links down below and we’ll put some reference links to the collagen that we’re talking about and they’ll be show notes.Up with everything. Kind of transcribed for y’all. So you wanna go through. They actually read the transcription. That may be easier for you all. Anything else you wanna leave, listen with Dr. Bernd?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, starting out the day. Get some sunlight, have a good breakfast. Don’t skip on protein. Protein is just so crucial. That again in the, uh, utilization of nitrogen.There was no plant protein on the top list. This is scientific studies that were done. And so you wanna stay on a good protein diet. You wanna make sure you get plenty of sunlight, you do the right exercise. Don’t overdo it. Don’t get into oxidative stress. Um, you know, casually. Uh. Be careful with fasting too, because fasting is a stressor. The body goes under stress, so you don’t want to go on too much. People are doing too much. Uh, fasting and not getting enough protein. And so the quality of repair, regeneration is reducing itself. So we’re seeing more injuries, we’re seeing more carless from like you probably have everybody’s talking to me in the gym say, well, you know I gotta get knee replacement this replacement that replacement because you know they’re stressing the joints out and not eating the right foods and like you said, collagen is necessary in keeping our cartilage up and ligaments and tendons and muscles up, but it lowers the inflammatory mechanism that is produced by majority of all the foods we eat today. And that’s all the fried foods and all the carbs and starches and wheats and grains. And we got Roundup in all our foods anyway. So that’s another problem. We haven’t even talked about Roundup, you know, and how it’s damaging mitochondria. It’s literally damaging the mitochondria. It’s costing ATP damage. And that’s another study
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have a question I wanted to hit you with. So we talked about kind of cardiovascular exercise, right? There’s a lot of different types of cardio you can do. There’s some data on just kind of that long term steady state type of exercise being harder on your adrenals, more catabolic, but there’s data out there on Tabata, our interval type training is also I think it’s couple of people out there. Peter Attia kind of brought it to light the zone two type of cardio. Uh, where you’re keeping your heart rate and that you know mid to low one hundreds, you’re, you’re, you’re you’re still able to talk while you’re doing some exercise, whether it’s rolling or an elliptical. What’s your take on different types of cardio and their application, whether it’s an interval, Tabata, zone two? What do you like? What do you recommend for the average people?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, being an athlete specialist, exercise physiologist, I have changed my attitude to a lot of these things from the beginning, when we were excessively training people. I’ve learned more in the last 20 years about how to preserve the mitochondria. How not to damage it. OK, so if I do anything, I like walking. I don’t wanna stress my body out anymore, OK? I’ve done. I’ve been an Olympic athlete. I’ve been a professional athlete and I’ve seen the injuries that come with that, I’m very fortunate that I never had an injury in my young life, you know, until about 60 when I had to replace my hip because of the excessive wear and tear of my body as an Olympic athlete.Training five different professional teams. Coaching 3 Olympic teams, you know, 80, 84 and 88, it was too much. So I find that it is best to do some walking and some concentric workout. What’s a concentric workout? Short centric shortening the muscle, but on your way back down you still wanna show use resistance so you’re using resistance in both direction like slow push up 10 second push-ups, where you only count to 10 seconds going up, going down, 10 seconds holding in
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Holding it the whole way. That’s a long contraction.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: That was our studies in the 80s at UCLA, was concentric and short 10 second uh, workout so when you’re doing a curl. You take uh, I’m trying to show you it’s the curl is goes. You going like the bicep and you code down. Slow, slow, slow. Yeah. And you do 10 seconds up
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 10 seconds.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, same thing. You get a better workout in the shorter reps than you need. You don’t need that many reps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, I’m a big fan of slower eccentric because the problem is that prevents you from lifting too heavy weights and it’s lifting too heavy with crappy form that bounced the weight or that hurt their back and the deadlift or squat. So when you have that slow eccentric, it’s really hard to hurt yourself on the end. Also, I just, I was thinking about this here. You got guys like Tom Brady who are just playing forever, is he consuming collagen? What do you think he’s doing? Obviously we got the book. He’s kind of autoimmune paleo guy. What’s he doing then to kind of keep himself longevity wise with his joints and everything else. You have any inside game on that?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, you know when I was in a starting to work with a lot of the athletes we were introducing.Uh, hyperbaric chambers. We were introducing infrared saunas in the 80s. You know, nobody knew about it. Today, most of your athletes are using, you know, some many different forms. They’re using infrared saunas.They’re using red Infrared light therapy, they’re using heat. They’re using vibrational things, Shockwave. A lot of them are getting PRP. They’re getting uh, ozone therapy. I can tell you a lot of these are professional athletes and are becoming more aware of what’s going on. I used, I knew Tom Brady. I played basketball with him when he was in high school in Sierra High.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is he in San Mateo, because you’re, you want right down the street from him at San Mateo.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, I gave him a couple adjustments, you know, quietly at the gym. I knew he was a very bright individual and you have to be very bright. Like Howie Long was my favorite athlete overall. OK, here’s my really first really favorite athlete that I work with at the Raiders. And at that period of time he was very bright. He understood diet and he understood, you needed to do a lot of flexibility, like Pilates, yoga or stretching. Jerry Rice is like that. Jerry was very much into stretching. Tom is much more into that as well because
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pliability work. He talks about it.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah, it doesn’t do a lot of weight training. And when Howie Long started working out with Lyle Alzado, his, you know. He started getting disc herniation and hamstring and calf damage and that’s How I Met him. And I think was you don’t want to do too much weight training. You do just enough. But you gotta do flexibility and if you don’t do that, your career is not gonna be long.You need to elongate the body, you need to do it alright. And I think people becoming smarter, you know, and I think nutrition is very important. I can only tell you the athletes I work with. I cut down their carbs, I increased their proteins and fruits and et cetera so that they have a better quality of health. As they’re working out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Doctor Byrne. Well, let’s put a book in on this. Let’s bring this conversation back up. I’ll get you back on in a few months. We can continue the dialogue. I appreciate it. We’ll put links to find you. drberndfriedlander.com. Anything else you want to leave the listeners, Doc?
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, just enjoy life. Don’t get into everything you know. Stay away. Medicine really is your, you know, eating right, getting sunlight.Little exercise. That’s the medicine. That’s all you need. You don’t need anything else. You can live without taking any blood pressure medication or other medications because nature was there. That’s where we started. That’s what we need to get back to is live outside, eat, right and get plenty of natural lighting and enjoyment in your life. Just let food be your nature, but now your sunlight too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dr. Bernd, I Appreciate it. You’re the man. Great chatting with you. We’ll talk soon. You take care.
Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Alright. Thanks. Bye. Talk to you then.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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The Benefits of Collagen and Glycine on Your Health | Podcast #322
Collagen is rich in numbers in our bodies. It is an essential part of connective tissues that make up our tendons, cartilages, and muscles. Also, it functions to give fair skin structure, smooth hair, healthy nails, and bone strength.
On the other hand, glycine is an amino acid that your body utilizes to create proteins. It is also responsible for maintaining the connective tissues and making other substances, such as hormones and enzymes.
Dr. J and Evan Brand emphasized that glycine and collagen provide outstanding health benefits. Our body needs glycine to make essential compounds such as glutathione, creatine, and collagen. Also, collagen helps promote muscle mass, relieve joint pain, and reduces wrinkles and skin dryness.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
0:44 Glycine Benefits
5:16 Collagen
7:20 Fixing Root Causes
10:40 Natural Supplements from Food
17:36 Detoxification
20:05 Vegetarians
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Evan, how are we doing today man? What’s going on?
Evan Brand: I’m doing good. I’m feeling better. I don’t think I even told you about this off the air. But I had a bat house on the side of my house.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A bat house?
Evan Brand: Yeah, bat house. Yeah, to try to get to try to get some bats to basically, you know, take take residents there. So they would eat all of our mosquitoes. And they never came. And I was up on the ladder. I don’t know, this may be two months ago now. And I was up on the ladder. And I was unscrewing the bat house from the house. And as soon as I did that, I noticed it was a wasp nest in there. And as soon as the, as soon as I saw that, a wasp landed on my hand. And last time I got stung, it hurts super bad. And so I wasn’t thinking straight, I thought, okay, there’s a wasp on my hand, I’m gonna get stung, it’s gonna hurt, I might shake my hand and fall backwards off the ladder, this is really bad. So I just turned around and just jumped. And it was probably not crazy high, but maybe eight feet up. And I just jumped and just tried to like, you know, cushion my fall as much as I could and kind of roll after I landed on the grass. But ever since then, man, I’ve had a little bit of some cervical, I probably need to see a chiropractor. I haven’t yet but I’ve had like some cervical tightness. And if I sleep the wrong way, it like flares up the cervical tightness. And so I’ve been using some herbal anti inflammatories and nutrients that we can dive into to help me. But I wanted to tell you that and see if you had any other suggestions of things I should be doing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s really great. Yeah, so we’re going to be talking all about inflammation. And we’ll be talking about natural herbal support to kind of help her natural functional medicine support to help kind of reduce that inflammation. Now, structurally, in your situation, there’s probably some level of inflammation directly to that area. So some level of soft tissue, whether it’s active release technique, or myofascial just to kind of help with that tissue. Because when it gets strained or damaged or inflamed like that, it can get a little bit fibrotic, you can get some scar tissue, it can maybe lose some blood supply and oxygenation. So getting some good movement in that tissue to kind of help with oxygenation, make it more pliable, helps making sure those joints are moving well. So really good chiropractic adjustments through there to make sure everything is moving well, alignments, good. So those are the first things out of the gates that I’d be pursuing. Outside of, you know, just some good soft tissue support in your own like a good massage guns helpful just kind of day in day out. And then seeing good massage therapists, maybe some red light to kind of reduce inflammation, too. I think that’s great out of the gates. And of course, you know, we can kind of go into all of the different natural anti inflammatory, inflammatory support that we use typically in practice, and we’ll talk about what what you’re using already as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I appreciate it. I need to get back in touch with my myofascial lady. I just haven’t reached out to her yet. But I think she left town for a while. So she’s still around. I should probably try. I just got fearful I thought, Oh, god, what did I do to my spine? Am I screwed forever? You know, you hear about these people having like car wrecks. And you know, my wife used to work in a chiropractor’s office, and she would see people that were injured from 20 years ago. And I’m like, ah, why, like, surely it doesn’t have to be that way. And I think we have some good strategies that can definitely shorten the recovery timeline. Let me just talk about the topical aspect first. This one thing’s been very beneficial. It is a company called Ned. Hello, Ned is their company. And they actually just send it to me like a year ago, just as like a free Hey, we want you to sell our products. Here’s some free stuff to try out kind of thing. But I loved it so much. I bought more of it, but it’s called a body butter. And it’s just loaded with CBD oil and frankincense and a bunch of other essential oils. It has Arnica in there. So this is just a topical body butter. And I tell you, if I put that stuff on, it’s a significantly reduced pain. And my range of motion is almost 100% if I’m using that topically, so CBD Arnica frankincense, you know, something like that a good blend, or if you like by that body butter, that might be a good option topically.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like that. That makes a lot of sense. So out of the gates, what’s the first thing so more than likely you get some kind of a mini whiplash? I’m guessing you kind of fell more into flexion. Right?
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you probably had a little whiplash because you probably went forward and then your body had to like kind of seize up to kind of stuff that forward flexion and so it probably just strained you probably had a little spray sprain strain in those back ligaments in the neck. And so getting some good soft tissue out back there will help making sure that joints are moving appropriately will help the problem with like ligamentous tissue, it’s more a vascular, right, you don’t get great blood supply. Or like if you strain your muscle like a muscle belly issue, right, it’s going to heal a lot faster because that tissue is just more vascular, it’s got a lot more blood flow. So anytime you have a vascular tissue, you really need good soft tissue support to really help break down and break down fiber optic tissue, scar tissue and then help that will improve oxygenation and that will improve blood flow. And of course, you know, soft tissue and or red light therapy are all going to be amazing things to really work on the on the blood flow and the inflammation reduction aspects. So that’s good out of the gates. And of course like my good thing in my line, we use something called curcumin supreme. Which is a liposomal curcumin, I like that. I think that’s excellent because it has natural anti inflammatory pathway. So like the big inflammatory pathways that you’re going to see a lot of the medication use are going to be the Cox pathways right cyclo oxygenase pathways. And so like cyclooxygenase, two and cyclooxygenase one are going to be some of the big ones right? Now we can do natural herbs to kind of help produce Cox one and Cox two. So Cox one typically will be reduced by things like aspirin or n sets the problem with these things that can be a little bit more irritating to the liver into the gut. So maybe acutely, it’s okay, but chronically not the best, right? And then we have Cox two as well which these were like the old fashioned, like Vioxx drugs, remember, those, like 15 years ago, caused a lot of stroke and heart issues. Those are like our Cox two pathways. So Cox one and Cox two are some pretty good ones, that major pathways. And of course, we have like our prostaglandin e two, which is an inflammatory pathway as well. And prostaglandin e two is what drives constriction. And it’s what causes more platelets and more stickiness to happen. And so we want to work on reducing some of those pathway. So we want to knock down prostaglandin e two, what’s the best way to do that? Well, high dose fish oil or fish oil in general, of course up a really good whole food, pasture fed kind of paleo templates, it’d be great. And you’re going to reduce a lot of inflammation coming from conventional meats. Again, healthy grass fed pasture fed meats better, right? Less arachidonic acid, which feeds that PG net prostaglandin to pathway, of course, keeping the insulin and the grains and the refined sugar, all that crap in check, all of that inflammation feeds these Cox two and Cox one. pathways, right. And so we want to inhibit those pathways, we want to block them. So more Cox one, Cox two, the more inflammation is going down those pathways. So all the dietary crap sets the table, like my analogy is, imagine you walk into a kitchen and the gas is on the burner. Okay, let’s say it’s been on for a couple hours you smell it? Well, let’s say you pull out your lighter, right? Just a little spark, boom, how’s it gonna explode? Okay, but if you did it without the gas there, no explosion? Well, it’s the same thing. If you have the gasoline going, that’s a systemic inflammation from all of these things we chatted about, that allows the little spark of an injury like that, to set off this whole inflammatory cascade, that’s going to be a lot more, let’s just say amplified in the wrong direction, if you will.
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great analogy. So let’s kind of spotlight some of the the key ingredients that we use here. Now some of these we can provide to our clients and to me personally in blends, and then some of them we can do in isolation. So I think the the best one or kind of the best combo for me is really some of the enzymes and then plus tumeric and the boswellia I think that’s been kind of my game changer because I noticed that when I added some extra serapeptodase into my system, I have a blend, I’m using the has some in there, but when I added extra serapeptodase, and also some lambro kinase, my issues, definitely, I would say I felt definitely more mobile, like I have more blood flow. And then of course, my hands and feet were warming up too. So I just know from like a circulation standpoint, that that’s also helping and then we know that tumeric has like an anti coagulating ability. So whether it’s like a tumeric tea or like you mentioned a life was almost a product or even just like a standardized curcuminoid product, something like that is going to be awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I like it. So if we kind of break things down by Cox one, Cox two, there’s also the locks pathway that’s like the the leuco trying pathway or the light bo oxygenase pathway. Alright, so lipo oxygenase versus cyclo oxygenase. These are both going to be inflammatory pathways. So if we start with like the Cox, one pathways, things like ginger are also going to be very helpful in that. So ginger is really good. Excellent. You can also do things like you mentioned lumberg kinase, or serrapeptase, that’s gonna just sit in your bloodstream, you’re taking it away from food, it’s not like a digestive enzyme. And that’s going to help hit all these inflammatory chemicals that are in the bloodstream, it’s going to start breaking them down and digesting them. And we already talked about the fact that we have a lot of platelet aggregation. So what that means is over time, those platelets are going to increase scar tissue and in decreased blood flow. So what are the enzymes are going to do is they’re going to break up those platelets isn’t help improve blood flow, improve oxygenation and improve nutrition. So and it’s also going to decrease scar tissue formation. So part of the enzymes are helping blood flow. They’re reducing. They’re increasing oxygenation, and they’re reducing scar tissue so then it helps a lot of the other nutrients also work better. So we already talked about like, some of the Cox one stuff is going to be ginger. We talked about that already. Some of the Cox two things are going to be things like curcumin, lipids, omo curcumin, and my line I have one called Curcumin Supreme, which is a really good one. And then you already mentioned a couple things earlier like Frankincense or boswellia. That’s also going to be another cyclo oxygenase ACE inhibitor and the thing I like about boswellia or frankincense, it’s the same thing. By the way, guys, frankincense is the essential oil version of that frankincense, you can kind of put topically on it. And then you can also take boswellia internally, so you can kind of hit it from both ends, which is really good.
Evan Brand: Yeah, also omegas, I am boosting up my omegas, I’m doing about five grams per day of pure omega, that’s my formula. It’s a triglyceride form of omega as it works amazing. And then also, I’m doing extra course attend, just to really help you know, I’ve had some histamine issues after getting exposed to mold. So for me, I do course attend with an enzyme, there’s a special enzyme we use, it’s a course it’s an enzyme blend that I love. And I actually may start manufacturing it soon. But for now, I’m just mixing these. And the course attend for me is a mast cell stabilizer. Now I don’t know about like trauma, necessarily physical trauma, aggravating mast cells and creating a histamine release. But it would make sense if there’s a stress response from the body, you may be pulling out more histamine, I’m thinking of like a, I don’t know, a car crash or some sort of immediate trauma, you’re probably going to have some histamine to really help increase inflammation, but overall, you don’t want that long term.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Yep, that makes a lot of sense. So there’s other pathways you mentioned, right? So the course attend, like you mentioned earlier, that’s going to help with the TNF alpha pathway. So TNF alpha is another inflammatory cytokine. So think of a lot of these cytokines are like inflammatory chemical messengers, we have cytokines, we have interleukins, we have nuclear factor, Kappa beta, we have TNF alpha, these are all these chemicals, signalers. And so when we have inflammation happen, these type of chemical messengers can amplify inflammation, the effects of inflammation, systemically. And the problem with inflammation is it’s helpful in the short run, because it helps drive blood flow and helps the healing repair process. The problem is, is when it hangs around too long, right? So for like an acute injury, it’s probably good. I think part of the reason why that pain and inflammation is there is to keep you on your butt, so you’re not continuing to damage that area. So I think part of it is, it’s Hey, you hurt yourself, let’s kind of like rest a little bit right part of its that it’s also going to aggregate a lot of immune cells to help heal the injury, preventing infection, it’s also there to help with healing the body up, right, because the body is not about performance when it’s injured, it’s about band aiding the crap out of that area. So the problem with that is the body doesn’t care if it laid down a whole bunch of scar tissue. And that area is now going to be less flex, less flexible, and less mobile. It just wants the body to heal. So now you have to say, Well, I’m also interested in performance too, right? So then you have to look at the fact that like, Okay, I’m going to reduce inflammation, I probably should still be more mobile, I’m sorry, less mobile moving less, because my body wants me to move around less. I’m reducing the inflammation, pain naturally. But I still have to make sure I don’t overdo it. So you have to make sure if you reduce the inflammation, you still don’t overdo it because your body’s creating that pain to keep you from not moving as much. You probably want some movement, but not as much to hurt yourself. And then number two, you really want to remodel that inflammatory scar tissue. And that’s where you know, massage, soft tissue work, adjusting, maybe some some rolling, some foam rolling, gentle things like that to kind of help realign that soft tissue. So it’s more functional and structurally stable. That’s better in the long run.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. Good point. I forgot to mention that. It’s not called the Theracane but it’s similar. I’ve got this wooden like cane from like a physical therapy office like it’s a, it’s a wooden cane basically, and it’s got the wheels on it. I’ve been kind of digging that into my upper mid back area kind of work in my traps. I’ve been just doing some light stretches. I’ve been doing some lateral pull downs, I love lat pull downs, I’ve been doing some seated rows. I’ve been doing my roll machine. So just gently trying to work the area. And I do that after I take these enzymes. And I do notice that it definitely warms up the area and I do feel more loose. So I’m trying to think of you like you and I always talk about you have this stacking effect, right you’ve got the anti inflammatory diet as the foundation, you’ve got the omegas coming in to hopefully help lubricate reduce inflammation. We’ve got the anti histamine anti mast cell course attend. We’ve got the ginger working on the Cox pathway, you’ve got the tumeric you’ve got the boswellia. I mean, that’s just really the synergistic thing here. And I’m not I haven’t taken a single aspirin. So I’m not actually in pain anymore. But like I said, if I sleep wrong, it might kind of flare me up. So I don’t think I’m fully out of the woods yet, but I think I’m 95% there.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. That’s good. So in general, we kind of have our Cox pathways right. Now, arachidonic acid can feed those pathways. So a lot of excess omega six junkie, refined omega six excess junkie animal products can definitely feed those pathways that sets the table like I mentioned gas in the kitchen right below spark and can take it off. And then we have our natural herbals like like ginger can help with Cox one. Fish Oil is actually For Cox two at high doses now if you do high doses of fish oil, you can increase what’s called lipid peroxidation. Because fish oil is a polyunsaturated fatty acid, it’s more unstable, right? It’s got a lot of these. It’s got more double bonds in it, right? omega three means three double bonds, the more double bonds that are there, the more unstable the fatty acid is to heat and things like that, the more let’s say it can be oxidized. So having extra vitamin C, or extra vitamin E on board when you’re taking extra fish oil, just to make sure you don’t have oxidation is great. And we already talked about things like systemic enzymes talked about, like, you know, curcumin, liposomal curcumin is better due to the absorption, or something with black pepper in it helps with absorption to already talked about things like Frankincense or boswellia is great, you could always do some white willow bark, which is kind of how aspirin is naturally made, right? aspirin works more on Cox one. So aspirin is going to be your other natural source. And you can do white willow bark, which is the natural form of aspirin, which is great. There are things like Tylenol, but Tylenol works more on the central nervous system perception, right? So it decreases the nervous systems, perception of pain. And then of course, at the extreme example, we have opiates, which block the pain receptors in the brain, the the opiate receptors in the brain, not the best thing because you’re just decreasing perception of pain. Obviously, the opiates are way more addictive, right. But we can block some of these natural pain perceptions with CBD oil. So CBD is another great way to reduce perception of pain. But we got to be careful of, you know, Tylenol, or things like opiates, you know, opiates due to their addictive qualities. And Tylenol actually chronically can reduce gluta file and you can just type in Tylenol and low glutathione level. So if you’re taking Tylenol longer term, you definitely want to take it with NAC and or some cloudify and just to be on the safe side. But in general, we want you to try to do more of the herbals and more of the natural stuff out of the gates because that really, really, really can help reduce inflammation.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. Yeah, and the acetaminophen glutathione yeah, it’s a big problem. So that’s why I stayed away. So people listening, if you’re didn’t jump off a ladder like me, and you’ve got osteo arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, or sports injury, or you’re just trying to heal up maybe post operation, these things we talked about today may be something to implement. And then obviously, working on all the other root causes too, because you are not just what you eat, you are what you digest from what you eat. So if you’re doing all these good nutrients, but you’ve got some type of malabsorption issue in the gut, you’ve got ridges on your fingernails, you’ve got thinning hair falling out here, you may need to look deeper at the gut and try to find some of these more root cause issues that led you to that amount of inflammation or slow recovery in the first place. So if you need to reach out, please do so. Our websites are JustinHealth.com. That’s for Dr. J. He works worldwide via phone, FaceTime, Skype, zoom, whatever. And then me Evan Brand, EvanBrand.com. So JustinHealth.com, EvanBrand.com please reach out if you need help. We love helping you guys. This is just a wonderful situation that we’re in to be able to help people across the globe get solutions to their health issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And one last thing to comment is people talk about what we know about cortisone and prednisone injections, right for chronic pain, right? This is a common thing. Well, what’s our natural cortisone? What’s our natural anti inflammatory? Well, our adrenals. So if you have weaker adrenal is going into this stuff, you may not be able to make good amounts of our natural kind of anti inflammatory hormones like cortisol or cortisone, right? This is important. Now I had a family friend come up to me recently, they had chronic pain issues. And it was asking me some questions about things. And they were telling me Oh, I just got a cortisone injection. It’s doing really great right now I said, Well, number one, that’s that’s a really big mistake. I said, you can do a cortisone injection only, only one if it’s really debilitating, and you need that to buy you time to fix the underlying issue. The problem with any injections of steroids is they start breaking down the tissue and the cartilage and the ligaments and the bone in the joint. And actually, over time, they’ll stop giving you cortisone injections in an area after two or three injections sometimes, so then now what now you’re kind of stuck. So the only way ever support a cortisone injection, is if that’s buying you time to do all the other stuff and the pain is so debilitating, you’re just doing that to buy you time because if you’re not figuring out and doing all the other stuff, while that quarter zones working, you’re just going to just repeat its pattern over again three to six months later. And that’s not a good situation. So ideally, you maximize the low hanging fruit, hopefully you won’t have to go to that. And then if you have to go to it, you at least use that time to do more of the right things regarding soft tissue chiropractic work anti inflammatory, there’s another device we we use here we’ll put a link below for the newbie device which is a bio electric device that I have and I use that helps reduce inflammation with special bio electric wavelengths. Electricity wise that reduce inflammation, improve blood flow, help improve the muscle integrity in that area. So the muscles take over the stress the joints and the ligaments and that’s cartilage would normally absorb right we want our we want our shocks to absorb The force not the sensitive material in the in the vehicle so to speak, right we have shocks for a reason. Think of shocks in your body as like muscles. Think of the sensitive tissue as ligaments and cartilage, right? Those are going to be more a vascular right poor blood flow the muscles more vascular. So what’s good let the vascular shocks absorb most of that issue most of the inflammation and for so I’ll put the link down below for that too. So you guys have that for references. Anything else, man?
Evan Brand: Yeah, the sauna. The sauna has been helping me too. I love sitting in there. Yeah, that obviously warms me up to so I have the infrared heaters in the front and then the ceramic around the edges. So I do try to rotate make sure that the infrared does hit my back and it does help me quite a bit. So that’s also another beneficial thing. Epsom salt baths are very helpful potentially using a floatation tank, a float tank with just tons of Epsom salt and their magnesium and that’s that’s also another great strategy. So hope this helps people and take care yourself. Like I said, if you need to reach out please do JustinHealth.com or EvanBrand.com look forward to helping you soon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll be right over recommended products down below so you guys can see that and take advantage of the things that we use clinically for our family, ourselves and our patients worldwide.
References:
Audio Podcast:
https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-benefits-of-collagen-and-glycine-on-your-health-podcast-322
Recommended Products:
Ariella Nail Fungus Treatment for Toenail and Fingernail
The Best Bone Broth for Gut Health
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Bone broth seems to be all the rage these days, but what exactly is it about this bone juice that has everyone obsessed? Bone broth is so much more than a trendy drink: it has the power to aid in healing many modern issues, from leaky gut to wrinkles!
The Power of Bone Broth
What is Bone Broth?
Bone broth is made from animal bones, tendons, ligaments, marrow, skin, and other flexible connective tissues. In modern times these parts are usually discarded as they aren’t easily eaten on their own. However, when simmered in water for long periods of time, animal bones and tissues make a healing nutrient-dense elixir. The best bone broths are made from the parts of organic, grass-fed animals. To pack even more nutrient density, you can also add organic vegetables to turn bone broth into a flavor-packed sipping broth or use it as the base for a soup.
Bone Broth’s Secret Weapons: Collagen and Gelatin
The protein providing strength to animals’ (including humans!) bones, cartilage, and tendons is called collagen. When cooked, collagen turns into gelatin, a jello-like substance.
The best bone broths contain collagen and gelatin which provide your body with a host of immune-boosting properties, amino acids, and gut lining support to aid and heal many modern ailments.
Healing Benefits:
Bone broth is easily digested, unlike many other foods which can be hard to break down. But the real power of bone broth is that it is actually healing to the digestive system. It has been found to aid in cases of leaky gut, IBS, food allergies and sensitivities, and much more.
Collagen is a protein that forms the GI tract lining. Consuming the collagen and gelatin in bone broth helps heal the walls of the gut lining, preventing food and toxins from escaping and causing inflammation and other damage outside of the tract. This is major good news for those suffering from poor digestion and gut-related health issues (leaky gut, IBS, Crohn’s).
The collagen and gelatin from bone broth are also great for anti-aging effects. They keep the skin youthful by reducing wrinkles and improving elasticity, aid the growth of hair and nails, and strengthen your bones! Collagen also helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite over time.
Essential nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, and silica are all electrolytes in bone broth which keep you hydrated, help with bone health, and can reduce brain fog and fatigue.
The amino acids found in bone broth include glutamine, arginine, glycine, and cysteine, and proline. Together these amino acids offer a wide range of benefits, including:
- Skin elasticity
- Build up the walls of the intestines
- Aid in proper bile and stomach acid production
- Enhance the immune system
- Anti-inflammatory, reducing oxidative stress and autoimmunity
- Promote human growth hormone
- Liver detoxification support
- Generate glutathione
Where to Find Bone Broth
You can make bone broth yourself, at home! Below is my favorite recipe for cooking up a big batch of anti-aging bone broth. If you are someone who would prefer to purchase bone broth, or are looking for something easy to take on-the-go, I recommend Kettle & Fire bone broth. Kettle & Fire is the best bone broth I have found, and they use premium ingredients like 100% grass-fed bones, organic produce, and apple cider vinegar to create a delicious and nutritious product that is easy to heat up and sip, or use as a base for soups and other recipes! Bonus: it’s also paleo and keto friendly! You can check out Kettle & Fire bone broth here.
Takeaway
Bone broth is incredibly simple to make, especially when looking at the benefits reaped from consuming this healthy elixir. The collagen, gelatin, amino acids and minerals in collagen make bone broth an incredibly simple and powerful solution to create healthier joints, skin, bones, and gut. If you’re looking to try my favorite bone broth for both flavor and health benefits, click here.
Sources:
https://blog.kettleandfire.com/4-amazing-ways-collagen-bone-broth-heal-your-gut/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949208
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358810/
Scaldaferri F1, Pizzoferrato M, Gerardi V, Lopetuso L, Gasbarrini A. The gut barrier: new acquisitions and therapeutic approaches. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2012 Oct;46 Suppl:S12-7.
Nutrition is Science-Backed Medicine
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Nutrient: “a substance that provides nourishment
essential for growth and the maintenance of life.”
You Are What You Eat
Why do people change their diet? While popular answers are to lose weight (fat), or to get in better shape (adding muscle), good nutrition is in fact about so much more than changing your physical appearance. Proper nutrition–diet and supplementation–is a science-backed way to improve your health. “You are what you eat,” and everyday you have the power to decide how the foods you consume will serve you. Let food be thy medicine: heal your gut, balance your hormones, improve your mood, boost your energy, and more.
Nutrition as Medicine
As kids, many of us were told to eat our vegetables–why? ”Because they’re good for you.”
As adults, we are told to eat our vegetables–why? “To shed some weight.”
Neither of these answers demonstrates the true healing nature of what we put in our bodies, so, without further ado, here are some of the most powerful science-backed healing properties of a healthy diet!
Click here for a personalized health plan from a functional medicine doctor!
Physical Appearance
We all know that changing our diet can help us lose weight, but did you know that a healthy diet can improve the appearance of your skin and hair too? B-vitamins, like biotin, have been shown to improve the appearance of skin and nails. Collagen also supports healthy hair, skin, and joints!
Increased Energy
A poor diet lacking in healthy macro and micronutrients–paired with a diet high in sugar, alcohol, and processed foods–can lead to headaches, brain fog, and fatigue. On the other hand, eating grass fed meat, healthy fats, and lots of fresh vegetables will give your body the fuel it needs to function optimally.
The Standard American Diet (“SAD” – a fitting acronym) is full of inflammatory processed foods and refined carbs & sugar which deplete the immune system, increase the rate of cancer, and increase the risk of developing autoimmune disease.
Inflammation is the root cause of most diseases: but a diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods is the best gift you can give yourself to feel and function at your best!
Better Sleep
Poor sleep–whether you’re lacking hours, or your sleep quality is not that good– can increase your risk of diabetes, decrease your immune system, and accelerate aging.
Alcohol and caffeine both impair sleep quality. Caffeine has a half-life of around 6 hours, so ideally you want to have your last cup by 2pm. Alcohol robs you of restorative REM sleep, which in addition to its dehydrating effects, lead to the next day’s dreaded hangover.
Food that positively affect sleep include veggies, grass-fed beef, chia seeds, sweet potato, wild-caught salmon, and those rich in magnesium. On the other hand, simple carbs and sugar negatively affect blood sugar and sleep–especially if consumed in the evening.
Balanced Hormones
Your body *needs* fat! Fat is required for your body to produce various hormones and keep inflammation low. Carbs, especially simple carbs, can actually increase inflammation and disrupt the delicate balance of your hormones.
If you suffer from leaky gut or other gut issues, you may be deficient in gut bacteria. Probiotics, like those from fermented foods–like sauerkraut, kimchi, and kombucha– provide your gut with beneficial bacteria which can help keep your hormones in balance.
Improved Mood
Did you know that dairy, sugar, and gluten are linked to depression? While the Mediterranean diet, rich in saturated fat, fish, and vegetables is associated with both decreased rates of depression *and* a longer lifespan!
Ready to Take Charge?
By now, you should have all the motivation you need to make a change for the healthier. Here are some resources to help you get started:
- The JustInHealth Eating Plan
- How to Eat, What to Eat, and the Healthy Meal Matrix
- Nutrient Support
- If you or your diet is deficient in certain nutrients, supplementing with high quality supplements shouldn’t be overlooked!
- Iron Supreme: Hypothyroidism, anemia, and iron deficiency are all linked. Many women are iron-deficient, which can be remedied by eating red meat and supplementing with a high-quality iron supplement, like Iron Supreme.
- Magnesium Supreme: Magnesium is essential for proper function of over 300 enzymatic reactions and for the performance of many vital physiological functions. A magnesium deficiency can lead to osteoporosis, blood sugar problems, poor sleep, muscle cramps, and more.
- Multi-Nutrient Supreme: Your daily all-in-one for general nutrient support! Vitamins A, B, C, D, E and so much more!
- If you or your diet is deficient in certain nutrients, supplementing with high quality supplements shouldn’t be overlooked!
Questions? Click here if you are ready for help learning how to take your health back into your own hands!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24939238
Jun S Lai, Sarah Hiles, Alessandra Bisquera, Alexis J Hure, Mark McEvoy, John Attia; A systematic review and meta-analysis of dietary patterns and depression in community-dwelling adults, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2014;99(1):181–197
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5532289/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/
Eating Your Way to Youthful Skin
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Whether you dread wrinkles as a sign of aging or wear them proudly as a product of years of life and laughter, we can all agree that healthy, glowing skin is desirable. Your skin is the first thing people notice when they meet you and can tell a person a lot about your health and lifestyle.
While we all get older, the rate at which we show typical signs of aging is totally subjective. Our diet and lifestyle all affect our quality and rate of aging. Today we are going to dive into various foods and nutrients that support glowing, supple, youthful skin.
What is Skin Made Of?
Skin is our largest organ; it protects us from germs, helps regulate body temperature, and perceives and transmits sensory information. Our skin is composed of three layers:
- Epidermis: the outermost layer of skin, composed largely of fats and proteins.
- Dermis: beneath the epidermis, this layer contains connective tissue, collagen, and elastin—proteins that give our skin support and elasticity.
- Hypodermis: this is the innermost layer of subcutaneous tissue, composed of fat and connective tissue.
You may notice a common theme: our skin is largely composed of fats, proteins, and collagen. So guess what types of foods do the most for our skin? That’s right—fats, proteins, and collagen—as well as vitamins that we will get to later.
Click here to learn how to improve your skin!
Eating Fat and Cholesterol for Healthy Skin
There are various anti-aging foods with powerful anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, including collagen protein, saturated fats, and vitamins A and E.
A low-fat diet actually ages you by depriving your skin of the lipids it needs for optimal health. Saturated fats are the ones our skin craves: we are animals and we need animal fat. Butter, egg yolks, salmon, goat cheese… Fat not only feeds your skin, but it also helps balance your hormones, another anti-aging feature of delicious saturated goodness!
We’re taught to avoid cholesterol, but guess what: 50% of cell membranes are made of cholesterol, both cholesterol that our body produces, as well as cholesterol from our diet. It is crucial for building healthy cells, healthy skin, and more. Cholesterol also helps us make bile to digest the saturated fats that we should be eating, and aids in vitamin extraction.
Important Nutrients for Healthy Skin
- Vitamin A may be the most important fat-soluble vitamin for healthy, youthful skin. The epidermis needs vitamin A to stay soft and firm, while a deficiency leads to ‘cornification,’ or rough, scaly skin, and even acne. Vitamin A also triggers collagen production, which is an essential component of skin.
You can find the precursor to vitamin A, called beta carotene, in leafy greens. This must be converted to the active form of vitamin A, called retinol.
For the full anti-aging effects of vitamin A, try Cod liver oil, butter, salmon, goat cheese, and egg yolks. You’ll also be getting in a ton of healthy saturated fats!
- Vitamin E protects against aging, oxidization, and sunburns. It also prevents wrinkles, is anti-scarring, and supports the pituitary. This is especially important for women during menopause when hormones are changing and the pituitary starts producing fewer hormones.
- Collagen: Collagen is the most abundant fibrous protein in the human body. Collagen is made by specialized cells in the skin, ligaments, bones, and cartilage and is the glue that holds the body together. Between 25% and 35% of all protein in the body is made up of collagen and up to 70% of the proteins in the connective tissues are composed of collagen. Along with elastin, collagen is an essential component of skin.
You can get collagen when you consume things like bone broth. Or, you can use a collagen powder and add it to your coffee or smoothies. I recommend TruKeto Collagen, which is enzymatically broken down to a very low molecular weight that is easily assimilated and absorbed.
Foods that Cause Aging
We’ve gone over what foods you should be adding to your diet, so let’s now take a look at what we should be avoiding.
- Smoking: Tobacco smoke causes premature aging on all fronts. There are more than 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, many of which are damaging to the skin. Even being around second-hand smoke can take its toll on collagen and elastin, the building blocks that give skin its strength and elasticity.
- Stress: When you’re stressed, your body is pumping out more cortisol. This signals to your glands to produce more oil. Stress and cortisol surges can aggravate acne, psoriasis, rosacea, and eczema.
- Sugar and Refined Carbohydrates: Sugar, refined carbs, and processed foods can all create excessive inflammation, accelerate signs of aging, and lead to acne at any age. Sugar, in particular, can accelerate signs of aging by leading to cross-linking of collagen fibers.
- Alcohol: Alcohol deprives the skin of vital vitamins and nutrients, causes inflammation, and is dehydrating—leading to rough, dry skin—and ultimately more wrinkles.
Takeaway
The skin is oftentimes the first sign of internal health issues. Eating for your skin is eating for your whole body. The Just In Health Eating Plan emphasizes organic vegetables, meats, and is a cross between a paleo and keto diet. A healthy keto-paleo diet is a way to go. Throw intermittent fasting into the mix, and you are also reaping the benefits of autophagy, which repairs, recycles, and disposes of unhealthy cells.
It is important to know the foods you are sensitive to, as these can cause skin issues (dry skin, acne, wrinkles) as well as more serious internal health problems. The best way to know for sure if you are sensitive to something is to do an elimination diet or a food sensitivity test.
Check out The Just In Health Eating Plan for FREE!
Click here for a personalized anti-aging plan!
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17951030
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1292432
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4106357/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20467395
How to Use Collagen to Improve Your Health | Podcast #190
Welcome to today’s live podcast with Evan Brand! In this podcast, the functional duo educates people about what Collagen is, why is it important and where it originates. Watch as they also explain how one loses Collagen and what affects it. Also, listen as they enumerate the different types of Collagen and other related things like gut health, deficiencies, etc.
Stay tuned for more, and don’t forget to share!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
01:28 Decreasing Collagen Exposure
04:36 Tryptophan Absence, Skin Health, and Collagen Matrix
15:50 Gut Health Affecting Joint Health
16:30 Cortisol: The “Anti-Bone Broth”
19:00 The Evolution of the Human Brain
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, it’s Dr. J here in the house. How are we doing, man? How’s your Monday?
Evan Brand: happy Monday to you, man. I’m back on the grind. I took last week off. I told you it was crazy like working so hard and then just coming to a— uh— a standstill. It was difficult for me. Now, once I got to the end of the week, I started to relax. But, man, I tell you,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, when you have jobs like we do, where you really, really enjoy. It’s uh— It’s fun to be living on purpose and helping people.
Evan Brand: Yup. Agreed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: Well, you came up with a great topic idea, which is all about Collagen. And— I mean, I can’t tell you how many women, when I’m asking them about their supplements— Like, random women, that may or may not know anything about health or functional medicine— somehow they discovered Collagen, and they’re taking it as a supplement. But, before we get
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So, Collagen’s important. One of my favorite a— amino acid that I love to supplement at least once, even twice a day. I typically do it, in the morning, in my coffee and I do it at night in— with some Magnesium citrate powder. I love it. We typically get exposure to Collagen, Collagen amino acids, in the environment through connective tissue support, so like bone broths, where we can get the full bone and the Collagen and— and the ligament, its tendon, and the high to the skin of the animal. So, most of the time, we’re just not getting that exposure these days ‘cause we’re just eating muscle meat, and most of the time, it’s even skinless. And we’re not doing it any broth form. We’re not doing any soup. So, we’re not getting a lot of the marrow, the ligaments, the tendon, the cartilage, amino acids. So, we’re getting
Evan Brand: That’s amazing! So, I’m just reading a little bit about hydrolyzed Collagen, which is what you have in your product. And— uh— Hydrolyzed Collagen contains 19 amino acids. And so, these are things like Glycine, Proline, Glutamic acid, Arginine, Alanine, and other essential amino acids and some non-essential amino acids. Maybe, before we get in to like deficiencies and Cortisol and stuff like that, maybe let’s just chat about amino acids and how important they for manufacturing neurotransmitters. I mean, you’ve got so many people with uh— mood issues, depression being number one leading cause of disability, I believe Anxiety. Actually, I just saw a report about that. I don’t know if you saw it. Anxiety is actually topping depression now as the leading cause of disability in the world by the Center
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you looked at the top ten essential amino acids, these are amino acids that your body cannot make. Arginine, Histidine, Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, which is a precursor to Tyrosine. Uh— Threonine, Tryptophan, which is a precursor to 5-HTP, which is Serotonin, and then,
Evan Brand: Yeah. The interesting about Collagen, the only amino acid that’s essential that it does not contain is Tryptophan. And we use Tryptophan a lot supplementally and specially 5-Hydroxytryptophan, 5-HTP. Really, really helpful for people with mood issues, so anxiety and depression and all that, it makes sense. Why? I’ve had clients that say, “ Oh! I’ve been supplementing Collagen but I still have these mood issues.” So, you can still replenish other neurotransmitters but you’re not getting Tryptophan from Collagen, and— and interestingly a lot. So, if you do have mood issues, you may need Collagen plus 5-HTP. And you brought up the Vitamin C so I’ll take that a little bit further. In terms of testing, between Justin and I, both, we’ve probably looked at— I don’t know, maybe 3,000 or 4,000, who knows how many Organic acids test. This is a urine sample that we run on every new client. And you can actually measure Vitamin C on this urine sample. And I would say— and Justin tell me if your statistics are different— but I would say 80%, if not more, people have a deficiency or even no Vitamin C, works completely bottomed out. And as you just mentioned, you have to have Vitamin C as a cofactor to build Collagen. So if your skin looks like crap and your Vitamin C’s burned out, you’ve got some explanation on the— on the data.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, Oxidation is important. Oxidation is when you lose electrons. So, if you put a rusty nail outside and it gets rusty, that’s Oxidation. The— The steel or the metal that makes up that nail losses electrons hence the rusting, or if you cut an apple in your house and you let the apple brown, that is Oxidation. Now, you can get some lemon juice, put it on it. The lemon juice is very high in Vitamin C, which then prevents the apple from browning. Why? Because it’s an antioxidant. It’s giving up electrons to stabilize the loss of electrons from the oxidation process. So that’s what we like. Vitamin C’s are really good adrenal support because a lot of adrenal stress creates Oxidation. Obviously, your adrenals use Vitamin C as a— is a kind of a cofactor for adrenal support to make some of the adrenal hormones from a nutritional perspective, kind of like the thyroid uses
Evan Brand: Yep. Well said. So there’s the answer. If you’ve been wondering all these years why when you look at a smoker, their skin looks so terrible and they look 20 years older than everybody around them
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hundred percent. One hundred percent. Now, regarding, you know, what the next steps are, right? You also talked about the gut. Now, I mentioned Glycine, which is one of the main amino acids in Collagen. It’s gonna be used for Glutathione, which is a powerful detoxifying antioxidant
Evan Brand: That’s amazing. So, you’re literally healing from the inside-out?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct.
Evan Brand: It doesn’t get [inaudible]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A hundred percent.
Evan Brand: Of course, we’re not doing just that. Like a leaky gut protocol, we’ve got several different custom formulations that we’re using, but it sounds like, based on what you’re saying here, we would definitely want to have Collagen in as a post-infection protocol for best results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. And there’s about— I mean, if you go look, there’s a lot of different like Collagen types. The most common ones are the I and III. Those are the ones that I use in my TruCollagen. The difference with my TruCollagen compared to most molt— most used Sulfuric acid is a
Evan Brand: That’s right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then again, we’re using the Type I and Type III. type I is skin, tendon, vasculature, organ, bone, and it makes up the major organic part of the bone. And then we have Type III, which is basically
Evan Brand: Yeah. [crosstalk] I’ve had an impulse in that one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: It tastes pretty good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. I mean, the thing with Neocell, uh— a lot of it becomes from Tyson Poultry Farm chickens.
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] That sucks. So, I figured it wasn’t quality because— Put it this way, if it were quality like pastured animals, they would advertise it. “
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. So, it— it comes from the— the Neocell tends to come more from the Tyson Farm chickens, and number two, doesn’t blend as well. I mean, if you put it in your coffee or tea, is a noticeable flavor f— for me that disrupts the enjoyment of my coffee or tea. Uh— Where, if you use a really good proteolytic Collagen, it almost— it has no flavor at all and almost acts like a creamer. So, I love it ‘cause, one, that’s my creamer. And then, number two, it provides the extra amino acids. So, if I have someone who’s just not hungry at all, that doesn’t want to really eat much in the morning but they love their coffee or tea, well, we can at least put a scoop of Collagen in there. Get 12 to 15 grams of Collagen, and they at least get some good amino acids nutrients in their— in their gut. And also, it prov— provides support for the gut lining too, which is great.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And most people aren’t— they aren’t getting exposed. Even people that are Paleo, unless they’re doing bone broth, right— or doing bone marrow…
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …they’re just not getting exposed to it.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Well, when you were talking about that, I thought, “Man, this would be a perfect intervention if we were trying to get someone from a Vegan or a vegetarian template and try to get them over to
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I have a lot of Vegans and vegetarians that— that I at least coerced them to
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Actually, I coerced them at doing at least a little bit of egg yolk if tolerated, and potentially, even a little bit of fish. So I may be able to kind of push them in that direction. But yeah, I mean, a lot of the Vegetarian protein sources, they aren’t rich in Sulfur amino acids and they tend to have a whole bunch of anti-nutrients bound up to them. So if
Evan Brand: Yup. I’m trying to think of those anything else
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: …which is…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …a cofactor for Collagen synthesis, but Cortisol in itself is gonna be catabolic. So, Cortisol can cause leaky gut issues…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: …because it can break down that gut barrier. But then let’s talk about that a bit more. You know, Cortisol can be affecting your skin, your gut lining. I mean, it’s pretty much the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One hundred percent. I think we made some valid points. And again, if you’re seeing hair loss, part of, I think, the mechanism for hair loss with a lot of these infections is number one you’re uh— you’re
Evan Brand: Well, what if Anemia is too? I mean that would be a whole nother podcast but Ferritin is a common thing we’ll see that’s low.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: B vitamins, B12 for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So there are Anemias and there are gut infections too. I mean, you know, with the— you mentioned, the thyroid Hashimoto’s— I mean, that could be a gut— a gut issue. That’s like H. pylori
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And I love Collagen because it provides the— the mechanism for skin, the cosmetic aesthetic asset. It also provides support on the gut aspect, and then it also provides support on the detox aspects. So, many, many sides of it. Think of Collagen as the scaffolding and all of the various osteobl— osteoblasts and fibroblasts that are growing around it. That’s the scaffolding that keeps it in place, right? Just like, you need scaffolding around the building so the builders can maneuver their way up the building to put all the rods and steel and glass and cement in place. Think of the Collagen as that scaffolding that provides that strong foundation for your— for the— for your other building block cells to do what they need to do.
Evan Brand: Makes you wonder, I mean, how often and how much Collagen our ancestors were getting. I mean, many people joke at us as humans eating muscle meat, and say that our ancestors— that was like the last thing that they went for. Have you heard talks about that? Like, the muscle meat was basically the— the least important part of the animal when they killed it?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s a Nova Documentary out there, and they talked about kind of the evolution of the human brain. And, basically, they have this kind of divergence of Homo
Evan Brand: I think they said it doubled in that timeframe.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. And that’s kind of, you know, why we are where we’re at today. And that’s part of the reason why human species— like a lot of humans or not— a lot of other species, right— animal species. They developed super fast, right? They’re walking. They’re moving right away, right out of the gates. Humans don’t because all that energy is actually going
Evan Brand: [laughs] Exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because all the energy is going to brain growth, and that’s kind of where we’re at…
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …for the last couple of hundred thousand years.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Bison too. I think Bison literally like run with their moms on the first day of being born.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. It’s because they don’t have uh— a frontal cortex that has taken hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, in nutrients to get to where they’re at.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and people like, “Okay. what do I do now? Start eating bone marrow?” You could, but you could also just start doing these
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool.
Evan Brand: And you’re gonna get the marrow from the— from the bones. I know Kettle & Fire, which is the company that— they sponsored my podcast for a while. I know they used all the bones and the marrow. People can actually get 20% off. I believe my link…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: I’ll do— I’ll double check it. I’ll just do a little plug here. I’ll make like two (2) dollars if you buy this broth using my discount, but you’ll save more than two dollars. Yeah. So, it’s evanbrand.com/broth, and if you use that link, you will get 20% off of bone broth. So, that’s pretty good. I drink it almost weekly. I don’t actually drink it by itself though, to be honest. I just mix it in with soups and recipes and stuff. If I’m doing like a stew…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I know that it’s much higher quality.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You get a lot more lunging Collagen peptides. Totally. That makes a lot of sense. [crosstalk] It’s great.
Evan Brand: Ann Louise Gittleman when I interviewed her for the Candida summit, she said that she had her team. I guess she has a team, kind of like Mercola, that goes and investigate stuff for her.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: And they tested a bunch of different uh— commercial, like organic bone broth companies. And she said also that Kettle & Fire was the only one that passed in terms of not being contaminated with heavy metals because, apparently, depending on where these animals are grazing, if the soil has heavy metals, and then obviously that’s uptake into the bone, like Lead. And then you make broth out of it, then you drink the broth, you could be giving yourself Lead. But she said that’s the only one that actually drinks. So, that was cool to hear.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Excellent. Anything else you wanted to answer or address here before
Evan Brand: I think we covered it all. I don’t have the questions pulled up so I didn’t know if there were any there that you want to hit or not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think we’re good. I’ll just one li—
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] Make sure you put the link too. Make sure you put that link in this video for people. They’ll look it out. So, justinhealth.com/candida. Go register there for the event. I mean, we’ve literally already got 30,000 people registered and it’s not even until next month. So…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Evan Brand: …if you— Imagine missing out on 30 of our podcasts together, that’s what it’s like if you miss out on this event.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, man. Anything else you want to add today?
Evan Brand: Not today. Take care. Reach out justinhealth.com for Justin if you want to consult. Evanbrand.com for me. We love to help you out. Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, Evan. Have a go, man.
Evan Brand: Sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You take care.
Evan Brand: Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
——————————————————————————————————
REFERENCES:
evanbrand.com/broth
Ann Louise Gittleman in a Candida Summit interview
http://www.justinhealth.com/candida
Dr. Bernd Friedlander – Using collagen to promote optimal health – Podcast #126
Join Dr. Justin Marchegiani as he welcomes his special guest, Dr. Bernd Friedlander in this week’s episode all about collagen. Obtain a lot of valuable information as Dr. Bernd shares his success and expertise in his field of practice when it comes to nutrition and supplement recommendation of collagen in the athletes he trained.
Pick up on some helpful information regarding the different benefits and uses of collagen in issues like wounds, 
In this episode, we cover:
3:57 Collagen: types, benefits, dosage recommendation
14:21 Systemic enzymes for inflammation
21:09 Glycine and Leaky
24:40 Caloric Restriction diet
30:58 Mitochondria
41:03 Carbohydrate and Glucose Consumption
48:33 Cholesterol and Fat Consumption
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome back to Beyond Wellness Radio. Today we have a great guest
Dr. Bernd: Dr. Justin, how are you? I appreciate you having me on your show. I look forward to talking to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, thank you. I know you’re one of the most foremost experts out there on collagen. And I love collagen for all the great benefits. It helps with hair, skin, nails, joints, and it’s such a really excellent amino acid. Would you mind – I know we were – We have
Dr. Bernd: Yes. You know, uh – I got into collagen actually accidentally when I was working with the Los Angeles Raiders. I was working with
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-huh.
Dr. Bernd: And I was introduced to an Orthopedic doctor back in the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: They developed that formula for me – that I was able to use with my athletes. So the Orthopedic doctor was telling me that he reverse his own serious uh –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: So
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: from sports by healing himself. So he started using Knox Gelatine collagen at that time, which was not
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: Uh – it was more in the gelatin form.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: But he started taking 3-4 packets a day with vitamin D, vitamin C, and calcium. Within six months, the pain was gone. Within one year, he never needed surgery. So
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!
Dr. Bernd: And we got the experts in the field and discovered that 99% of the spinal cord is made up collagen. It was the primary protein that developed the spinal cord.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!
Dr. Bernd: And then the nerve, myelin sheath, etc. developed from that. And I started realizing that collagen has many properties: anti-inflammatory, uh – repairing, regenerating, cartilage repair. It also repairs tendons and ligaments. It’s the only protein that does that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. And then regarding the collagen types that you like, you’re a big well – The main collagen that
Dr. Bernd:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I and III.
Dr. Bernd: Uh – yeah. I and III
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: And that’s usually from chicken cartilage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: Uh – the palm wine never got into chicken cartilage because most of the uh – producers of chicken cartilage are not naturally-fed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: They use soy in corn. And that disturbs the hormonal balance uh – of the chicken, as well as the thyroid – disrupts thyroid function. So I stayed away from chicken cartilage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. That is very good. So I and III
Dr. Bernd: Well you know – uh going back to the days that I would work with Knox Gelatine, I – we were discussing this with the R&D Department. And R&D Department put on a show – uh that’s an entirely uh – advance in the field of collagen peptides. They’re not willing to make this kind of collagen. It was too extensive and too high, pricey. So they sort of connected me in how I need to achieve that kind of peptide. Once I started reviewing the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Dr. Bernd: -with 5 to 10 minutes, without any digestive enzymes requiring. As you know, every amino acid protein out there, you have to break it down to hydrochloric acid and pepsin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: And through the stomach.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: And the uh – pancreas, through the pancreatic enzyme, trypsin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: Collagen doesn’t require any form of enzymes or B6 to be broken down. It’s immediately delivered in the blood to the area that it needs to repair, regenerate, or work with.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love that. So that just really increase the absorption. And with the True Collagen, I play it around to make the neo cell chicken cartilage, that you mentioned. And you can just pour some of it in there. And you can see it literally become emulsify kinda right before your very eyes.
Dr. Bernd: Right. And the other thing about your collagen that you have is, it is the most molecular weight collagen on – on the planet right now so far – very low. And the other thing that
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love that. And I know we talked in the past about dose. And the typical recommendations I have for my patients currently 10-20 g a day maintenance, and after 40 to 60 grams if you’re trying to get aesthetic benefits, or if you’re trying to rehab joint issues or disc issues, would you say those recommendations are correct?
Dr. Bernd: I would say for maintenance for skin – We did a study with animals back in Japan.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Bernd: In
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now what did you notice with your chiropractic patients clinically in practice. What were you seeing with their disc issues? Let’s say before using collagen to after. What were you noticing in their recovery time? How much has it improved?
Dr. Bernd: Well, very important, uh – going towards my latter part of my years with the athletes, I notice the athletes dramatically improved and recovered much faster when I started them on collagen, especially with the Raiders and the Rams, and some of the other athletes. And then when I started introducing it to my patients, I’ve noticed that I was able to facilitate their healing dramatically. So I – I didn’t need to treat them as long – as much as I used to. And
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now are there any herbs that you find with really synergistically help reduce the inflammation. Maybe Boswellia or Curcumin? Anything you’ve done clinically?
Dr. Bernd: We’ve done a lot of research and I’m on the board of the AMM University College of Pharmacy and at the Ohio State University, College of Medicine and then working with the UC Davis, UCLA. Uhm – we found that there’s many
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: We found Boswellia by far number one. Ginger, rosemary, uh – actually turmeric and curcumin
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hm.
Dr. Bernd: It wasn’t extremely as powerful as some of these other herbs but Boswellia, definitely number one in every situation we did research. And then we found ginger rosemary close. All the other
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So regarding the aspirin, would it be just as good or better to do the white willow bark instead? Just to avoid some of the gut or liver side-effects?
Dr. Bernd: No. There’s really not that much that – the problem with people with aspirin is that they already __and vitamin E reduces ulcers dramatically. Uhm – if they take baking soda with aspirin, they can actually buffer the aspirin. So they can take 6 – I have people take 6 to 10 aspirins a day with baking soda. And they have no problem. And that affects uh – one of the side-effects that
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And aspirin, doesn’t it have the side-effects of like – Ibuprofen or the NSAID family?
Dr. Bernd: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The
Dr. Bernd: It doesn’t cause any liver discomfort or uh – those of the detoxification system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Bernd: And it has so many – it also reduces fatty acid synthesis, which is
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhh.
Dr. Bernd: When you – if you take aspirin and collagen and coffee in the morning, it doubles the uncoupling mechanism of the mitochondrial proteins. It enhances the mitochondrial to achieve ATP more efficiently.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. And I think aspirin was created from the
Dr. Bernd: Uh-hmm. Yeah. And you can
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very interesting. What’s your take on systemic enzymes for inflammation?
Dr. Bernd: Uhm, you know, for inflammation, I find – I’ve always use Remylin, number one, for that purpose, and Parsitan. Remilyn-Parsitan works for me the most effectively. Uhm – and the research that I look at, it’s always well known in athletic performance. That Remilyn was always number one. Uhm – chymotrypsin, trypsin – all these things
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Prostaglandins, right. Interesting. And what about
Dr.Bernd: Well the one you have, the True Collagen, that you uh –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Bernd: It’s like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: – on their skin. And I’ve heard incredible stories. I myself take it orally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: And I’ve noticed just orally, everybody says I’m 68 and I’m out on the sun
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I was – I saw Dave Asprey maybe a year or two ago at the Paleo conference and he was getting all these compliments on his hair growing out, and his skin is vibrant. And he’s just really up to collagen – so 60g a day. I think that mirrors your protocol. The 30 and 30.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And he was crediting a lot of his skin and hair benefits from the higher dose collagen as well.
Dr. Bernd: You know, interesting
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow!
Dr. Bernd: Oprah Winfrey is very close to this guy named Alexis. Alexis is a Bulgarian Powerlifter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Bernd: He had a gym called – in Chicago and he was telling me that, he was taking my collagen – that collagen peptide that you have. And he’s – he has
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Dr. Bernd: And you don’t have to be on it all the time. You don’t have to be on it – I read from a leading article way back in the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. That makes so much sense. And are there any topical products out there on the market are you aware of that you can take in conjunction with the collagen, but topically to put on in any cuts or wounds or things like that to help improve healing and recovery there – reduce scarring?
Dr. Bernd: You know, Yeah. You know – I mean if you ever have a problem with any situation, hydrogen peroxide works so easily and so fast in wound healing. And also somehow, basal cell carcinoma you may see it disappear. Uhm – vitamin E and vitamin C are my two
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: Because vitamin C and vitamin E and hyaluronic acid together, and it is one of the best because you know – Vitamin C and collagen are so
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, they are.
Dr. Bernd: They work – work synergistically together and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great.
Dr. Bernd: And if you get – yeah. If you above 10% of the solution, then you gonna see results.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that a 3% hydrogen peroxide? Or is that a food grade?
Dr. Bernd: Uhm – Yes, I’ve used even food grade where I mix it a little bit so I get it down to about 10, 15%. And I myself has a couple of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sunspots.
Dr. Bernd: And I put it on there, and it goes away – it’s gone. If I have, with a Q-tip, I use it topically, and it stings. You want to get it to the level where you have a sting out of it. For about three minutes, it stings and then you just let it go, and the next day, add another one. And then in a few days, it’s gone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. That’s great. Excellent tips.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then let’s talk about some of the gut healings. I know you mentioned just bone broth a few minutes ago, and I know Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, the person who created the GAPS diet to help people with gut issues, the gut and psychology syndrome diet. She talks about bone broth and bone broth is really high in glycine. That’s one of the major benefits of glycine. And we know glycine is also really, really, really high in collagen along with hydroxyproline and.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Can you talk about how glycine really helps to work to heal the gut?
Dr. Bernd: Well collagen and glycine – you know that some – the wall – the lining of the wall is pretty – even in the arteries. People don’t understand that Linus Pauling told me this many years ago, that the lining of the walls of the arteries, of the gut, is predominantly the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: – is made from collagen. That’s why he was a big promoter of lycine, and proline, and vitamin C in his program. It’s because he wanted to increase the – the Teflon, the smoothness, elasticity of the lining of the wall. The cell membrane where uh – nutrients go in and out, water retention in sodium potassium – It’s all controlled by collagen proteins such as glycine. And it helps to heal the gut by sealing the leaky gut syndrome. The gut junctions which get inflamed. And they start you know – proliferating with uh – holes because of the inflammatory mechanisms. And collagen seems to seal that. So if people start taking collagen with their meals, they don’t have the symptoms of leaky gut or Crohn’s or IBS or colitis. They don’t get that kind of symptoms because collagen helps to reduce the inflammatory mechanisms by suppressing MMP-9, which is a major inflammatory component. And – and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: Collagen is one of the few that reduces the MMP-9
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah, I see that. That’s the matrix metalloproteinase nine.
Dr. Bernd: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And there’s a couple of studies I’m looking at – one here, right now on Pubmed in the Journal of Development. They’re talking about that being really – being modulated by collagen matrix formula. That makes sense. So it’s really helping to modulate the MMP-9, thus helping to reduce inflammation and improve joint inflammation recovery.
Dr. Bernd: Yes. Yes. We got many benefits from collagen. It’s not only just repair and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: And it wasn’t about 20 years later after working with Roy Walford.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And I uh – I started realizing what is
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: to Lopez to Aschinger and others is that –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Autophagy.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. By increasing autophagy –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And by reducing inflammation and iron, and reducing polyunsaturated oils, which are the major contributors of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: But here’s what I started, if you reduce certain inflammatory proteins like, methionine, cysteine, and tryptophan, which are devoid in collagen. Now I understood why collagen is such an important protein because it’s devoid of three major amino acids that contribute to basically oxidative stress.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: Glycation, thyroid dysfunction – all proven by these low caloric restriction diets that they saw the markers of what they are looking work for. The stresses on the body, the epigenetic genes that are – are expressed by reducing uh – caloric restriction. It all comes back to these amino acids. There was a link to all these three researchers Richard – Miller –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: work on this, who’s a
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: And the others like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: It showed that collagen devoid of this, is the only protein out there that is safe to consume on a daily basis, that have the caloric restriction benefits.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But you don’t see any problems with – I get that. So maybe we can apply some intermittent fasting in such –
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: – to our weekly regimen. That makes sense. I get
Dr. Bernd: Eventually the serotonin issue raises estrogen and with my cancer patients – I’ve treated over 14,000 patients, and estrogen and serotonin is very high in almost all of them. And they’re contributing to uh – reducing thyroid function, number one. They also increase nitric oxide and histamine, which is a contributing factor to endotoxins, leaky gut syndrome, and brain function. So what I’ve also discovered, if you compliment collagen with uh – these type of foods-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: That
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: The damaging effect of-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: of tryptophan, methionine
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And working with Chris Cyborg who’s number one in the world.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ohh.
Dr. Bernd: undefeated. When she was on whey protein, she had a lot of distention and bloating, and gut issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: When we added collagen
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Bren: So it was – So that’s why she realized that how important was collagen to her supplement because it reduced the inflammation, the gut, the bloating, the distention, and the fatigue that she developed from having that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So you think maybe there was a good parity with the collagen adding the extra glycine hydroxyproline-proline with some of the higher amounts
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. And one of the – you gotta be careful with glutathione and sulfur groups,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: Oxidation of glucose. It’s how everything works and then you have the reduction stage as the byproduct of energy. Okay, you get the reduced state. You don’t wanna convert to reduced state the NADH back to NAD+
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: That’s where all the sciences go on. So maintaining a highly NAD+
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very interesting.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. And that’s why –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Go ahead. Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: That’s why a lot of the stem cell clinics – are the Ahvie Herskowitz in San Francisco uses my collagen to prep the body to make more stem cells. So when he does stem cells from either the fatty tissue or the – you know from the bone, using bone marrow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: He’ll prep the patient up with collagen because it doubles the stem cell function and improves the stem cells.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love that. And you’re just referring a lot of the various pathways that are involved in the Kreb’s cycle which has to do with the mitochondrial function. I wanna talk about that in just a bit. And you were talking a lot about these reducing agents. And just for the listeners at home, all our reduction agent is a –takes on an electron. Oxidation is a loss of electrons; reduction is a gain of electrons. So you have the NAD, plus the H, that’s the electron UVF ADH, too, which add the extra electron. And these electrons, these hydrogen compounds are then brought into the electron transport chain to generate more ATP. So Bernd, can you switch gears and talk about the mitochondria? Just kinda give your Reader’s Digest version of what it is, and what people can do to help improve the mitochondrial function?
Dr. Bernd: Yes. You know, going back to billions of year ago, the molecule that gave life to every living system was a bacteria, called an organelle, called the mitochondria.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: And when the mitochondria establish an envelope around itself, they created that – these organelles for energy. Every plant, every animal, every living system has – and this is what the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And if you can increase the NAD+, you main – well we’re born – we’re born with a 500:1 ratio of NAD+ to NADH.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: As we get older, this level starts declining to 200:1 to uh – 100:1 and then it shifts. That’s how
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: Immune system functions by the mitochondria by producing energy and the byproduct of CO2, carbon dioxide.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah
Dr. Bernd: And carbon dioxide is a chemical necessary. It’s very valuable in producing energy as well, but it’s an antioxidant. It reduces free radical damage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: – by producing CO2 and people don’t realize that’s why high altitude – athletes train in high altitude to enhance performance and recovery. We did a study with cancer patients by putting them at high altitude; they were able to recover from their cancer. Because the more CO2 you have, the great ability to recover and to increase NAD+. And
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Bernd: If you switch that – Yeah. If you switch that and reduce fatty acid into synthesis – synthesis uh – reduced
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: -works the best for increasing –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: B vitamins – B2
Dr. Bernd: NAD
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: B1, B2, you’re absolutely right
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I just wanna make sure I’m hearing correctly. You talked about oxidative stress
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How do we have both of those things that kinda seem like their almost in- in- in conflict?
Dr. Bernd: Well again and at a certain age, we can reduce the levels of iron. We need at –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Bernd: – the age of 40 as much. So by reducing – never take iron with vitamin C. That’s the problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: And iron and polyunsaturated oils are another
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct.
Dr. Bernd: So in that sense that’s – that’s okay. That’s what we have to do. But by making sure that we shift our body to a high NAD+ state with CO2, as uh – you know from drinking –that’s we get from baking soda. You increase CO2 levels, you get it from drinking mineral water
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: These are the good sources of natural CO2 and that keeps your body at that level.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Bernd: So – so the thing is you always want to keep an oxidative of – oxidation of glucose is the major function of the mitochondria. Once it’s efficiently high and that oxidative state of glucose by breaking down glucose more efficiently, that’s how we get energy. And that’s just basically regulated by our thyroid and reducing estrogen in our body. Estrogen and nitric oxide and histamine are the major – major
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally understand it. Regarding the iron, too. That recommendation may be different with females to males, as women do
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: – late 40s or late 50s. So they’re shedding some of that iron every month in their menstruation. Would you recommend therapeutic phlebotomy or just giving blood, maybe once a quarter or a couple times a year to help reduce some of that iron load as well?
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. And it’s also to produce more red blood cells and it’s like stem cells. You – you’re stimulating the body to make more red blood cells and you wanna do that. It – one of the best things to do
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Now regarding some of the oxidation/reduction. So you mention the oxidation agents are like NAD or FADH minus the H2. So, we’re missing that extra hydrogen. So basically what I’m trying to understand and kind of boil down for the patients is that we’re trying to take
Dr. Bernd: Yes, it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Dr. Bernd: Uhm, you know, I had
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, yup.
Dr. Bernd: He was on Charlie Rose and about five years ago, four years ago – five years ago, he said on national television, we’re losing the war on cancer and Charlie says, “why?” He says, “we’re not looking at the Krebs cycle, we’re not looking at the oxidative uh – uh effects of glucose – oxidation of glucose in the – in the in the mitochondria.” He says if we start looking at that, and shipped back to understanding how the Krebs cycle, we can win the war on cancer. He said it on national television and he’s actually right. He says that we can increase the NAD+ levels in our body, we should be able to repair anything that’s damaged and reverse conditions that are – you know uh – created by these deficiencies. And so he said the right words and it’s all based on all the Otto Warburg-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: He said that and got two Nobel Prize. Uh, Gombert said the same thing in his works. Solley did the same thing
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. George. Yeah
Dr. Bernd: So did uh – William Code. They’re all – all five people and minus point agreed with all five of them that this is such an important thing about the oxidation of glucose that goes totally in a deficient or breaks down in the mitochondria due to these elements of free radical damage. And that’s why autophagy, recycling the damage and using it for energy is why you have intermittent fasting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Bernd: -or exercise or you know –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, so this is interesting. So we have a
Dr. Bernd: Okay, very interesting. You and I,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm. Wow.
Dr. Bernd: And we’re looking at brain chemistry. Raymond Damadian is the genius. So we’re looking at cerebrospinal fluid and Raymond is actually the founder of MRI and he founded the Fonar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: And he says that chiropractors are the greatest people to work with because they know how to treat the cerebrospinal fluid which contributes to every neurological disease known to man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: Okay. Concussion syndromes found uh –like the worst one was Jim McMahon
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And I’ll share this – really important why. Jim McMahon had the worst concussion syndrome of any athlete in the football.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just for the listeners, he was the quarterback for the Chicago Bears 86; he won the Super Bowl with them as well.
Dr. Bernd: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: And the whole story is on his website and then finally the family uh – sent Raymond uh – send Jim McMahon to Raymond Damadian in New York for a – for his Fonar. The Fonar the only true MRI that you can stand up, not recline, you get the correct posture, the correct flow of the brain, cerebrospinal fluid so you can see what is actually wrong with the body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm.
Dr. Bernd: And it takes 30 seconds and it is not a claustrophobia effect and it costs almost nothing to do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmm.
Dr. Bernd: In concussion syndrome, it is the ventricles –the cerebrospinal fluid is supposed to flow from the brain to the spinal cord.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Bernd: -32 quarts a day. 32 quarts
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Bernd: and half the quarts produced by the ventricles every day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Bernd: And lay – and the concussion syndromes like Jim McMahon and many others and MS patients, they’re only producing 12 quarts or less. And when he had
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: They corrected Jim McMahon in two treatments where his function is back to normal; his dementia is completely gone; he’s functioning full – at
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what are the best chiropractic techniques-
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: -to help with that? I know
Dr. Bernd: Uhm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Upledger as well. You mention some of the upper
Dr. Bernd: Well, you know, I ask that with Raymond. He believes that chiropractic
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Bernd: So going back to this glycation, misfolding protein.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: One of the things we found with Raymond and others,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: – in our diet that are the major contributors to misfolding aggregation glycation
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Bernd: And we found – and it sugar – going back to my 18 uh – 1800,1867, there was two William MDs followed by name of Budd (B-U-D-D).
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: – from England and another Priori (P-R-I-O-R-I). Both of them
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhh
Dr. Bernd: They added extra sugar from glucose, fructose such as honey and bone broth or chicken broth and they were able to reverse diabetes. There was uh – recently there was another animal study on diabetes. They gave animals a
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: – in the pancreas was totally repaired and regenerated. They repaired and regenerated a new uh – function in that island of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Bernd: – and statin drugs. And glycation
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. And now on a Paleo – go ahead, yup.
Dr. Bernd: No, go.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: On a Paleo template diet, you know, one of the things we’re doing is we’re really focusing on – again more high-quality saturated fats, whether it’s coconut oil, grass-fed, omega 3’s from salmon. You know, the good healthy fats are gonna be more stable and less and less lipid peroxidation
Dr. Bernd: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We see that re-established. So, is it because we’re changing the polyunsaturated fats in the fats? And that’s why we’re getting these results? Coz how are we – How can we get both results, you know, doing two different things? So what’s the difference? What’s the common variable?
Dr. Bernd: Uh – number one, I will tell you this – talking to these numerous Cell Physiologists at various universities such as Oregon, uh – working with Linus Pauling Institute over at Oregon State with the Tory Hagen and Joseph Bachman and all that. There’s no doubt and – and Bruce German out of UC Davis, and our Richard Beach out of NIH.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. Robert.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. And Robert Ward of Utah. They all agree that we need to go back and increase our creams and
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: – and saturated fats.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Dr. Bernd: That is the most protective mechanism we have today against
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: – progesterone, testosterone, and DHEA.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: The major hormones that we need on a daily basis that have the greatest brain protection and protection against cardiovascular disease and cancer,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct.
Dr. Bernd: And they – when you extract oil out of the fish, you give it uh- human.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Bernd: that has a 98.6 temperature, you’re actually creating oxidative damage –free radical damage, and that’s what happens. And so by reducing the – by increasing the saturated fats, the monounsaturated fats, like olive oil-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Avocado, yeah.
Dr. Bernd: you’re protecting the body. You’re protecting the body against oxidative damage. And that is the major contributing factor. And then second, yes, your carbohydrates,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Makes sense. There’s probably also an inflammatory component there, too. Because a lot of the refined sugar is – again, the refined sugar’s a little bit different and also a lot of refined grains, too, can have an inflammatory component as well, correct?
Dr. Bernd: There was
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So do you suggest having any nuts at all? Or do you say, no nuts?
Dr. Bernd: No. No nuts
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: And GLO 2 is a major
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Dr. Bernd: Uhm- the higher the phosphorus versus calcium, that is what you wanna uh – you know, look at. Any foods that have a high phosphorus coz that
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we wanna have nuts that have lower phosphorus, higher calcium.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s gonna be your cashews and macadamia nuts. Is that correct?
Dr. Bernd: Those are the two. I remember working with Robert Atkins.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And Robert, you know, started the Atkin diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Well, while we’re on that topic, what’s your typical – what’s your typical diet like in a day? Just give me a quick little day in the light. What’s breakfast, lunch
Dr. Bernd: Okay. You’re talking to the wrong person since I was part of the caloric restriction diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh.
Dr. Bernd: You know, I had to do that. But what I –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: In general, though.
Dr. Bernd: In general, I – we started taking a natural
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: Because I started realizing how important the thyroid really is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: As you get older, you need to optimize your thyroid. For 30 minutes, I don’t eat anything, then I have an over easy soft boil of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nice.
Dr. Bernd: That’s my breakfast. Then I have 30 grams of collagen with magnesium, calcium and vitamin D and I put
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great.
Dr. Bernd: Learn how to do balancing with my body. So that’s basically my program I eat very little throughout the day. Uh – once I take collagen in the morning, my appetite diminishes quite a bit. I kinda get a little protein and fruit in the afternoon. And in the evening, I’ll have a light soup with vegetables. I love chicken wings, I like
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd: All the foods that are very high in collagen are – chicken wings are number one,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nutrients- yeah.
Dr. Bernd: – nutrients and absorption.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: People forget that.
Dr. Bernd: So – yup. And salad’s enough a good thing because we did a study and found that salads contribute to fermentation and gut inflammatory mechanisms and growth of bacteria because of the – anything that is like a green and it’s not cooked like kale and chard and chart, you have to boil 30 to 40 minutes in order to reduce the oxalic acid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: The phosphorus level and increase the nutrients of vitamin K.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally makes sense. Now I don’t see a lot of excess of carbohydrate in your diet, number one.
Dr. Bernd: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Number two, are you also adding an MCT oil, too?
Dr. Bernd: I usually take a low MCT with coffee, but not always. I’m more of a __guy. I like to increase my butter consumption in the morning. That’s how I trained my – yeah. I trained the 84 Olympic
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. How bad are these athletes diets before you get in there? I mean you work with Howie Long, LA Raider guys- what was their diet like, typically? And how did you change it?
Dr. Bernd: Uh – Howie Long is actually an exceptional guy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: He’s one of the smartest
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Bernd: So his diet was not so bad. He was a big
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: So he made a lot of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: And he came to me because he’s always injured. He would have ice cream and uh – those Peanut Reese’s cups. That was his main diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, man.
Dr. Bren: And he was wondering why he was always injured. Uh – a guy named Robert Devans, uh – four hundred hurler, who won against Edward Moses. Uh – we changed their diet into more of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Bernd: Because of the change of the diet. Yeah. And the key
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: Because that’s where you increase your metabolism and your thyroid. And if you don’t start the morning with protein, your body’s metabolism doesn’t work. It slows down and therefore, you increase your – you reduce the fat burning mechanism so your body starts storing more fat in the belly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Yeah. My recommendation is always 30 grams of protein in the first 30 minutes of waking up. That makes a lot of sense. And it’s amazing how this big disconnect with sports and athletes, that they just cannot think of food as calories to run the engine. They don’t think of it as building blocks to also help repair the bodies. So you get guys that are making tendons and ligaments out of basic crap on their diet.
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. And they don’t understand – athletes, they are you know extremely high-intense performers and they’re working out with
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it.
Dr. Bernd: So when you start increasing the massive amounts of training, you are increasing muscle, but you’re pulling on the ligaments and tendons.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Bernd: And you’re damaging the cartilage. That’s why collagen is the only protein that helps with tendons and ligaments repair. It’s the only food that we know that has that ability to repair tendons and ligaments.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when those tissues get damaged coz they’re severely avascular, meaning they don’t
Dr. Bernd: Yeah. As a chiropractor, your gonna – uh, we started using infrared lights heat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Dr. Bernd: Infrared- uh for infrared, uh – mats, anything to restore circulation to that area. You know LED dial. So any kind of uh- you know, ultrasound. Whatever we can do to increase the circulation. That’s the problem.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, awesome. That’s great. Today has been an awesome show. Lot’s of uh- brain candy here, today. Is there any other information that you wanna address for the listeners, today?
Dr. Bernd: Well again, like what you said, it’s uh – you know, it’s maintaining a good diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Bernd: You know, red- especially proteins an increasing your collagen consumption
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Bernd: And you know – and look at epigenetic, how genes get turned on and off, and we now know that uh – the amino acids found in collagen, the zinc, the magnesium
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Dr. Bernd:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love that. That makes so much sense. Now, Dr. Bernd, I ask this question for everyone. If you’re stuck on a desert island and you only can bring one supplement, herb or compound with you, what would it be?
Dr. Bernd: Oh, God. Definitely – being on collagen, I would have to say collagen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I knew it.
Dr. Bernd: Because – And I would have to say Niacinamide would be my second most important one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And that’s B3. Excellent. Well, very good, Doc.
Dr. Bernd: Uh you can So it’s David – Robert Boy – period – Friedlander F-R-I-E-D-L-A-N-D-E-R one zero @ gmail.com
Now understand, I’m not really in practice anymore, I’m more in consultation, research end. And working with doctors like yourself.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally makes sense. You’ve been doing this for 40+ years. So good for you. You got a –
Dr. Bernd: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks a lot, Dr. Bernd. Great having you on the show. Look forward to having you back soon. You have a great day.
Dr. Bernd: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thank you.
References:
The Truth About Collagen
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Today’s video is going to be on collagen. Collagen is a very important compound. About 70% of the protein in your body is made from collagen. We’re going to talk about the benefits, the pros, the cons and what you can do to increase your collagen level naturally.
What is Collagen?
Collagen is a typical amino acid protein. We have gelatin, which is collagen before it’s broken down. People know gelatin is like you can make Jello out of it and such, and that’s a really good component. Again, you have a lot of long chain amino acids built up and that’s why if you add water to it, it gets very gelatinous, hence, the word gelatin.
Now what we’ve done with collagen is we’ve hydrolyzed it. We broke it down via water and various blending techniques so those amino acids are shorter if they’re broken down and they’re easier to absorb and when you put it in water, you know collagen is hydrolyzed because it won’t create this gelatinous type of feeling in there. So you can use it supplementally to add it to your water, to your protein drinks as a great benefit, and we’re going to go over why.
Benefits of Collagen
Gut health
So collagen is great for gut health or GI health. Collagen, again, is an amino acid spectrum, so it has a lot of different aminos in it. One of the best ones for gut health is going to be an amino acid called glycine. Glycine is actually found in bone broth as well. So if you heard of the GAPS diet, it is one of the big proponents to helping to heal a leaky gut. It is very high in glutamine which is very healing on the gut lining. The same glutamine is what’s really high in bone broth. That is what the healing benefit comes from. It’s also very high in glutamic acid or glutamine which can be very helpful to healing the gut lining, the enterocytes in the GI tract.
Again, when the gut is inflamed, we get this thing called a leaky gut or gastrointestinal permeability. What happens is the tight junctions open up, kind of like a zipper unzipping your jacket, and undigested food particles and things known as LPS or lipopolysaccharides from bad bacteria can get in your bloodstream. This will create an immune response which is not good.
Detox
Glycine’s a really big precursor to glutathione. Anyone that has run an organic acid test will see glycine is really important for that phase 2 detoxification. It really involves a lot of the sulfur amino acids and collagen. And collagen is very high in alanine as well as glycine on the amino acid spectrum, lower in methionine but higher in glycine.
Stronger Bones
About 50% of your bones are made from protein. People forget that. People think, “Oh well, calcium’s bones.” Well, actually, to make up your bones—if you cut your bones in half, half of it is minerals, the other half is protein. The majority of that protein is going to come from collagen. Half of the minerals are going to come from about 12 to 13 different minerals, calcium being the most but there’s a spectrum of minerals there. It’s not just calcium. So when you think bone health, I rather have you gravitate towards collagen than gravitate towards calcium.
Get the real deal on collagen by contacting a functional medicine doctor HERE!
Sleep
Glycine is really important in helping to modulate cortisol at night and help promote healthy relaxation. When your cortisol levels are high, it’s going to prevent you from getting to sleep because you’ll be too ramped up. Things like light can do that. Like Netflix series, maybe watching too much Walking Dead before bed, that may keep you up. So glycine can really help buffer that cortisol at night and promote relaxation and restful melatonin levels.
Skin health
Because collagen is that foundational matrix to the skin, we get very good skin integrity with higher levels of collagen. It is hypothesized that once you pass the age 30, you lose about 1%-2% of collagen per year in the skin in the tissues, hence, elderly people have the aging and the wrinkles, so we can work on promoting that by having good healthy protein and fats in our diet but we can also supplement with bone broth and also collagen supplementation to help provide those extra amino acids.
One of the best things about a good collagen that is hydrolyzed, it is in its peptide form, is that even if you have poor digestion—let’s say you have a hydrochloric acid issue, you have a gut infection or SIBO, or low enzyme levels, the collagen being already pre-broken down— it is still allowed to go into your bloodstream with very minimal effort on the digestive side. So if you have digestive issue, it’s a great insurance policy.
Joint Health
I talked about 50% of the joint is or the bone part is protein and collagen being the majority of that. We can’t forget tendons and ligaments and also the disc right there, intervertebral discs are all made from collagen as well. So if you have any joint pain, if you have any back pain, any disc herniations or bulges, it’s going to be really important that you provide the building block. The first thing is get out the inflammatory foods that are causing digestive inhibitions and then get the good nutrients on board so a good Paleo template is great to start and then adding in the extra bone broths and/or collagen supplementation is a great place to start.
Like I mentioned, if we don’t have good collagen levels, we’re going to have joint issues and seeing a lot of patients on the musculoskeletal side for many years. One of our main go-to was adding good high quality protein and collagen supplementation to help provide the building blocks. Because if we’re moving, getting those joints to function better, we have to provide the raw material so it can heal.
Gut Health
We talked about leaky gut. If we have low glycine and low amino acid levels, it will make it harder for us to heal our guts. Again wrinkles, forget the internal health issues, just people want to look and feel healthy on the outside as well. So having the good internal collagen is great. You’ll see a lot of hyaluronic acid and you’ll see a lot of collagen in topical form which is okay. But frankly, you’re not going to be able to get enough collagen topically to really be able to help your skin at a therapeutic level. We want to take it internal.
Recommendation
I typically mix my collagen in with either a beef protein, a pea or a whey protein. Now here’s actually the collagen that I formulated myself. I was tired of trying to find good collagen products in the market because there aren’t as many. So I was able to source one from Argentina that was grass-fed and we had even hydrolyzed it. We had broken it down enzymatically in a way so you can break it down if you have poor digestion.
I have a lot of patients who have compromised gut issues and they need to be able to break down their nutrients. So we make diet changes. We make lifestyle changes. Also, we give digestive support like enzymes and acids and bile salts. We cut out the bad foods and remove the infections.
But during that timeframe, we need to make it easy so the body can access amino acids. Because if not, we’ll be in a catabolic state where we’re breaking down faster than we’re building up. That will cause us to have a difficult time having good bones, good cartilage, good ligaments, good tendons and good muscle structure.
So having good quality collagen is a great place to start. So I’ll put this on screen so you can access it if you like. It’s the one that I’m using currently with all of my patients as well. Typically I formulate products for myself first because I’m saying, “Alright, what’s the best product I can make for me?” And then if I like it and I use it, then other people and my patients will definitely be able to benefit from it.
Collagen Dosage
I typically recommend between 20 to 60 grams of collagen per day for my patients. So we’ll do it in a scoop as we can get a very high amount. Some people have like capsules. I did the math. You got to take about 30 to 40 capsules to really get there therapeutically. So I’ll do two scoops and my brand is about 30 grams of collagen which is a pretty high amount. Typically, 2 scoops is 30. We will do between 4 and 5 scoops a day, if we’re trying to get at a therapeutic level. I typically do 2-3 scoops maintenance.
This morning, I used my beef protein and I combined it with my collagen. There where I got about 40 grams of protein and about 20-30 of that was collagen. About 20 of that or so was the good, high quality grass-fed beef protein. So, a great place to start.
Collagen + Whey Protein
If my patients are autoimmune, I typically recommend starting with a good collagen and/or a pea or collagen and/or beef. Depending on where they’re at, my pea protein has no artificial flavors or junk in it at all. So I tend to lean towards that because even maybe a sugar alcohol, or a Stevia even if it’s clean, someone with a gut issue may be sensitive. So I like going collagen and pea. These are really good sources to combine. I love doing whey as well. The problem with whey is a tiny bit of lactose in there and a tiny bit of casein. Again, if you’re in good health, it’s not a problem. If you have gut issues right now, or you have an autoimmune condition you’re trying to get under control, you probably want to stay away from the whey protein until you get more stabilized. So typically pea is a good starting point. If you’re better, then you can have beef and you can combine that with collagen interchangeably.
Collagen + Coffee
The nice thing about collagen is it’s pretty flavourless, which is great. So you can take maybe a tablespoon or so, add it to your coffee if you want; and you can make a really nice Bulletproof coffee with the collagen in there so you get the good fats and you get the good proteins. And the nice thing about it is that you’re building up the raw material for your tendons and for your ligaments and for your joints. So as you get older, if you’re having any pain issues, we don’t want to be reaching for the Ibuprofens on a day-in and day-out basis. This isbecause of their negative effects with the gut and liver. We are much better off reaching towards anti-inflammatory herbs and anti-inflammatory nutrients to help build our body up strong.
Summary
So take home, if you have gut issues, collagen is a great product to add in to help soothe and help heal the gut lining. Don’t forget though if we have something like SIBO or gut infection like a parasite, we want to remove the actual underlying cause. Adding in healing and suited nutrients is great. We just got to make sure we’re getting to the root cause. If I have a splinter in my arm and I just put some healing salve around it so it heals well. If I don’t pull the splinter out, all that is going to be for naught. So make sure we’re digging in deep and we’re looking at the root cause of why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling.
Collagen is a great first step because there are not really any side effects; only side benefits to help support a lot of issues, not treat.
So any questions, click on screen if you want to get access to the one collagen product I just formulated called TRUCOLLAGEN. Any questions, please feel free and let me know. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to more great videos like this coming your way.
The top 5 supplements to enhance your work out – Podcast #83
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand talk about workout supplements including workout timing then they really dig into what they themselves use specifically pre and post workout. Find out more about these supplements that you can use to improve your workouts. Basically you have to remember to get diet and sleep dialed in before adding in any workout supplements.
Discover the different types of protein powders, collagen, and creatine that can be used for energy performance. Learn about the various adaptogens you can also use before, during, and after your workouts as well as what they can do for your body. Get to know more about branched chain amino acids and mitochondrial support or Kreb cycle nutrients when you listen to this podcast.
In this episode, topics include:
2:06 Supplements to improve workouts
3:20 Protein powders, collagen and creatine
7:53 Adaptogens
12:07 Branched chain amino acids
15:05 What to do for people with adrenal issues
17:31 Why do you exercise?
20:10 Mitochondrial support/Kreb cycle nutrients
Evan Brand: Dr. J, hello, welcome!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, it’s great to be here. How’s your day going?
Evan Brand: Hey, it’s great man! It’s Friday. I think our house is gonna blow down. We’re having extreme winds due to the temperature warning but besides that everything’s peachy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. I’m in an exceptionally good mood this Friday. It’s middle of February and it’s gorgeous here in Austin, Texas.
Evan Brand: Good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How is it with you over in Louisville?
Evan Brand: We’re in the mid-60s which is seasonably–unseasonably warm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It is.
Evan Brand: And I’m not complaining, blue skies, so I’m in an equally good mood, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Evan Brand: Hey, so yesterday I had a guy that commented on my YouTube channel and he said, “Hey, I’m really lovin’ the podcast with you and Dr. Justin. Can you guys do a show on workout supplements?” And this something I don’t think we’ve covered. Maybe I’ve kind of alluded to it before, but I figured this is a perfect time and opportunity for us to really geek out and talk about how the things that we talk about all the time, how those can be specifically used for workouts. And so for me, I, you know, I guess a backstory before I got into the kind of space where I’m at now. I was the guy taking the pre-workouts that had the amino acids in it. That was great. The intro workout BCAAs and things like that, but that also had caffeine added to it. It has sucralose. It had artificial colors. Just the generic body building stuff that was like 2009 era when body building was really cool and bodybuilding.com supplements were what everybody was taking.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: I’m sure you remember those days and–and then that died out and now companies are trying to promote more like Paleo-inspired workout supplements which I’m down with as long as it’s not bunk. So now I’ve transitioned into a different supplement protocol and I don’t really–I don’t really take them that much for workouts but we can at least talk about them. So what about you? I mean, what’s your history in terms of your fitness? Did you use to talk that type of silly stuff and then you transitioned into not silly stuff, or tell me about it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so when it comes to supplements pre or post workout I was a personal trainer for many years. So I’ve used some of these things on, you know, with my training clients back in the day before I was a doctor and then today I’m kind of more on the functional medicine side but a lot of these things we use in functional medicine practice, but I still use them myself personally with my patients to help improve workouts. So there’s a lot of different things from protein powders that can be helpful, which is low hanging fruit like diet and good multivitamins and fish oils to anti-inflammatory herbs for workouts that are more inflammatory based where you had, you know, that really extra sore muscle tissue after the workout, to creatine and branch chain amino acids to different things afterwards to help you recover. So there’s a lot of cool things that we can do. We just wanna make sure we have the foundation right and that is sleep and diet first because if we don’t do that, we’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic if you will.
Evan Brand: Totally, yeah, so as always, we’ve probably talked about this before. But if you’re listening to this, we’re assuming that you already have the sleep dialed in, you already have the nutrition dialed in, now you’re ready to spend the extra money on some of the supplements to supplement the great things that you have in place. So you mentioned the protein. That was also something that I also switched around to. I was doing just the Optimum Nutrition garbage whey protein quality I’m sure back in the day, now using just a different blend. Sometimes collagen protein, sometimes colla-gelatin protein, sometimes grass-fed whey, sometimes I’m actually just getting into the beef. I know you love the beef protein.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like beef, too, yeah.
Evan Brand: So I’m gonna just kind of switch over and–and integrate that as well, and then what else am I doing lately? I’ve-I’ve done creatine and I–I just, I know you get the water whey, I know, I mean, I know you get the–the increased strength and things why you’re on it, but as soon as I come off of creatine, I feel so depleted so it almost makes me not want to go back on it ever again. What about you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so off the bat, a real simple thing is once the diet’s there and a good multi and a good fish oil is there as kind of foundation, good protein powder can be helpful, especially if you’re doing a morning workout. So a lot of people will go and they’ll work out on an empty stomach, where if you’re doing maybe a–a 10, 15, maybe a 20-minute workout in the morning, a quick a circuit or Tabata or interval kind of hit type of training, that may be okay. That may be fine as long as you come back and have a good shake or eat your breakfast, that may be fine. Again, in the morning time when you wake up, our cortisol rhythm is at its peak, so cortisol’s the highest and if we’re doing a workout and our body’s reaching for amino acids and nothing’s in the bloodstream outside of access to our muscle tissue, guess what’s gonna be used up?
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s your muscle tissue. I’m a–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Muscle.
Evan Brand: It happened to me. I shrunk. I mean, I’m pretty strong and I’ve got a good shape to me now but I mean, I lost 20-25 lbs over a year just a cortisol bomb from excess stress, man. It wasn’t worth it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, well, you’re–you’re jacked up again, so that’s good.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m really happy to see that and I got your on Skype video today so–
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I can actually be a testimonial to that.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so–so you didn’t answer the question yet. Did you–did you have experience with creatine? Do you use it? Did you use it previously?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So regarding with creatine, creatine I have used it. There’s a couple of different types of creatine. There’s phosphocreatine and this Kre-Alkalyn creatine. Again creatine works by giving your muscle that extra few seconds of instantaneous fuel which is great for like powerlifting or having a really powerful movement pattern for those first 3 to 10 seconds. And I do have experience with it and I do find it to be very helpful. There’s some research showing that it can increase growth hormone as well. It just depends on what your goal is. If you’re trying to get into the gym and maximize your lifts and continue to increase in weight, will it provide a little benefit, a little growth hormone boost? Yes. Do I use it every day? No. My staples are gonna be–I’ll just start off from one, would be protein powder. I like that in the morning because I can just mix it with water and/or collagen, whether it’s whey protein, grass-fed whey, whether it’s branched chain aminos with it, whether it’s collagen or beef or pea, I’ll typically choose one or two. I’ll mix collagen in it and I’ll do that first thing in the morning, which is water, so then I have amino acids flowing in my bloodstream, so when I work out my body can access that and it will grab that over the muscle because it’s–it’s already there. It’s–it’s low hanging fruit if you will.
Evan Brand: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I’ve actually–I’ve, I’ve ran across a study the other day that was talking about Kre-Alkalyn and how it’s no superior benefit over the regular creatine. So I use, I think it’s the German one, the Creapure–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: The type of monohydrate, I just–I get so damn thirsty while I’m on creatine that it’s just–it’s exhausting. I mean, you’re drinking so much more water for me at least to stay hydrated. Even I throw in more electrolytes and everything, it’s just I’m chasing the dragon and that’s why I’ve kind of not taken it very often anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I think everyone here should kind of look and see where they’re at, assess what they’re goals are. If your goal–again, most people frankly their goal regarding health and exercise is just to look good naked.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s–but pretty much it. We wanna go a little bit deeper and be healthy and have energy, but that’s it. Now outside of that, if you’re trying to perform better, whether it’s in your CrossFit, at an exercise or sport, these extra performance things may be worth it for you. So we’re gonna go through a couple of things here. Try them, see how it looks and feels, see if you get an extra benefit and then if you do, then you just gotta weigh it out, is it worth it for you? So we got the superficial side, looking good, and then we have the energy performance side and just trying to kick more butt. If you’re one of these people that it makes your month by having a PR and a certain lift, these supplements may help get you there outside of all the foundational stuff we already mentioned.
Evan Brand: Totally, so I would–I would say I guess we’ll talk level 2, for me, which I guarantee this is where you would eventually go to is–is to the adaptogens. So rhodiola is really awesome for endurance. So I talked about it before when I used to work at the park and I was hiking miles and miles per day, and I was exhausted at the end of the day. As soon as I started adding in about a 500mg of rhodiola per day, my exhaustion was gone. My mood was better. I felt so damn good by the end of the work day, I was like, “Wow, I can hike another 8 hours.” And it’s really a staple supplement for me in terms of performance, and then mushrooms are something that I’ll get to, but I wanted to see if there’s any herbs that you wanted to add to–to the picture here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, I’m a big fan of adaptogens just to help buffer cortisol, to help with mood, also some adaptogenic herbs like eleuthero have been used for many, many decades. There’s a protocol called the Russian Protocol where eleuthero has been used to improve sex hormones like DHEA and testosterone which can be helpful for workout recovery. So that’s a really great adaptogen for overall performance enhancement in the gym. Also Tribulus is one that improves LH which women can help with–or FSH in women, which could help with estrogen balance and in men, it’s LH, which helps with testosterone. So it can be very good to give yourself that anabolic boost in your workouts.
Evan Brand: Yes, some people, I don’t know why some companies, they’ll–if people are looking and you don’t see eleuthero, sometimes you’ll see it called Siberian ginseng. I don’t know why they call it that and not eleuthero but in case you’re looking on a label, that’s–that’s what you’re looking for, it’s the Siberian. I know the Panax ginseng. They have the American ginseng out there, too, but specifically for performance, to me I felt best on the Siberian, the eleuthero, and then combine that cordyceps which is my favorite performance-enhancing mushroom.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: I think you and I have talked about that before for other uses.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And cordyceps is great for modulating the immune system, but it also improves DHEA, so I think it’s having that DHEA benefit and regarding ginsengs, a lot of these adaptogenic herbs are in the family known as ginseng. So you have like maca is Peruvian ginseng, ashwagandha is Indian ginseng, red root or I think–I think it’s–let me see here, the Panax angustifolia, that’s I think American ginseng. And there’s a couple other; Siberian ginseng’s eleuthero, and there’s a handful of others going around there. But they add ginseng to it, so they may get confused with the same names, people think they’re the same herbs, so just kind of keep that mind.
Evan Brand: Yeah, there’s like a Korean ginseng I know. The–the reason that–that I like eleuthero is because most of the time when I read research on it, they consider it the least stimulating of ginsengs where you’re not pushing people into like anxiety, but we’re still kinda giving a good adaptogenic effect behind the scenes, and so combining the Siberian ginseng with the cordyceps, with the rhodiola, I mean, that’s an incredible stack just for daily life, but if you are trying to stay up on your game, because here’s the thing, I–I worry about maybe we could digress from the supplements a little bit, is that I worry that a lot of people–well, it’s not that I worry, I see it–a lot of people they don’t have a protocol in place and so they keep working out harder and harder, and they like they keep wanting to get gains, but then they hit this plateau or they push themselves into adrenal issues. I know you and I have spoken about CrossFit a dozen times, and it’s like you don’t have to–you don’t have to beat yourself down like that because then you’ll run into a bunch of other problems and then you’re taking other supplements to try to rebound your health that you screwed up in the first place from a workout that was too frequent, you didn’t have enough rest time in between, didn’t have these amino acids you’ve talked about, didn’t have, you know, too intense or too long in duration, things like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I agree. So if we summarize, protein powder’s great, pre-workout just to get in your system. It’s also great post-workout. Now again people are thinking, “Well, why don’t we just eat protein?” Well, it just takes a few hours to get into that amino acid form, right? An hour to pass the stomach, another hour to to the small intestine, getting into the bloodstream. It may take a couple of hours, so the protein powder gets in your system, in your body in 20 minutes. So that’s why we like that.
Evan Brand: And I know you’ve talked about using freeform amino acid, so when you’re working out, like currently with your plan, are you doing BCAAs in like a powder or are you doing capsules? What’s your kind of preferred method and–and are you taking BCAAs?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so BCAAs are great. These are branched chain amino acid– leucine, valine and isoleucine–no, I think it’s–
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that correct?
Evan Brand: That’s it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, those are the major ones. Now the benefit of those branched chain aminos is our muscles can take those amino acids up for fuel right away. Typically when our body uses amino acids for fuel, it has to go through a process known as gluconeogenesis. I know if Jimmy Moore, he’d love that. That’s my impression of him. So gluco- means glucose, neo means new, genesis means forming. So it’s the formation of new glucose through protein and it’s a cortisol-dependent step, that’s why, you know, sometimes going too low carb can be stressful on your adrenals, but your body takes that glucose or takes that protein, brings it into glucose, and then uses the glucose for fuel. So it’s a very roundabout way of generating energy. The branched chain aminos are great because it’s just, Boom! It’s right there. We’re just using those aminos for fuel right away. It’s just more direct. So it’s great if you’re doing more intense workouts that could be catabolic and breaking down tissue because you can put that in, you can sip 20 grams of it, according to Charles Poliquin, it’s a pretty good place to be at. During the workout you can do it 10 pre, 10 post. I’ll just have a little cup with me and just sip it during. There’s one that I–I created BCAA synergy on my site that is branched chain amino acids sweetened with Stevia. The majority is sweetened with aspartame and sucralose or Splenda which are bad. So I have that one that I’ve formulated and I use that. It works great. And I like that during the workout. So my favorite off the bat supports are gonna be protein powder, adaptogens like your mentioned–cordyceps, medicinal mushrooms which I consider an adaptogen–and some of the BCAAs as well. Any thoughts?
Evan Brand: Yeah. No, that’s–that’s a pretty good summary and a lot of people they’ll go towards the caffeine, they’ll go towards the stimulants. You really don’t need that. It’s you don’t have to be so jacked up during your workouts. Your goal is to break down the muscle tissue by using more reps and more weight than you did last time and that’s the goal. It’s to break down the muscle tissue, have these little micro tears in there so that you can rebuild it. The goal is not to destroy yourself and if you’re feeling just awful after your workout and even an hour or 2 hours after you just feel dead, you’re pushing it too hard. It doesn’t have to be that hard. A lot of the stuff that I do and I maintain a 6-pack year-round, and I maintain a–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: (whistles)
Evan Brand: Which, you know, I–I’m–I’m an ectomorph. I’m naturally skinnier anyway.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Evan Brand: So–so I’m able to. People are, “Oh, that doesn’t count. You’re just skinnier.” But it’s strength, too, from the core and I don’t ever really put myself into an extreme state where I’m on the ground exhausted. I’m covered in sweat. I see people all the time. They take pictures of themselves on social media like, “Oh, I’m so dead from my workout.” It’s like, I don’t ever want to feel like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Evan Brand: That’s garbage.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then the 3 rules I give all my patients with adrenal issues or adrenal dysfunction, adrenal fatigue is number one, make sure your workout’s energizing. Number two, make sure you can emotionally repeat the workout. Like in your head, you’re like, “Alright 10 minutes, can I do it again?” If you’re like, “Whoa, no way!” Then you’re probably doing too much. You wanna feel like you can kinda get your arms around like, “Yeah, I can do that again. That’s no problem.” And then number three, how do you feel later on that day if it’s a morning workout or that next morning if it’s an afternoon or nighttime workout? Do you feel hit by a bus? You know, factoring in you slept good and you ate good. Or do you feel pretty good the next day? So if you answer positively to those questions then you’re okay. If you answer negatively where it’s fatigue, yeah, you emotionally can’t do it or hit by a bus the next morning, you probably wanna curtail your exercise, either do shorter workouts and/or more rest time in between, or decrease the intensity a bit, too, if that’s needed.
Evan Brand: Totally, yeah. I would say most people are on one end of the spectrum. One spectrum being they’re not getting exercise at all and they need more and then the other spectrum for some reason, I–I don’t know about you but I don’t have many clients that are in that middle ground. It’s either they aren’t doing anything and they wanna start or they’re training for a triathlon or some goofy mudrunner event, some 48-hour endurance event. I told you about last week with one guy and it’s like we just have to just find a happy medium. You don’t have to be so crazy. Exercise is something that was built into our ancestors’ lifestyle. This is just something we did. If we had our hunter-gatherer ancestors around to watch us and our CrossFit box doing X amount of intensity stuff, they would literally laugh at us because the goal back then was to only use and expend what energy was necessary. And even Dave Asprey talks about this. His main goal is to do the–the least amount possible and still maintain, you know, healthy muscle mass. And I have a similar goal. I could say maybe I’m a little bit step above that, but I wanna do pretty much what I have to do to maintain muscle and feel good and feel strong. I’d be able to sprint as fast as I need to and beyond that, I don’t really care. I don’t really care about numbers. I don’t really care about personal records and it’s not to say that I’m tooting my horn, but this is something, a more realistic approach to people I think than always carrying around like the little journal with the pen and like, “Oh, I went down 5 lbs–”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: “In my bench this week.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: It’s like, who cares, man?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, right, I agree. You know, why do you exercise? And I typically exercise to put force and demand on my muscle and bone structure so it grows and stays strong, and then number two, to alter my hormones in a way that keeps me healthy and youthful, right? We know part of the stimulation to the brain comes through movement, so I’m also working out for my brain. I think if that’s hard to get people’s head to wrap around that, pun intended, because exercise has a lot to do with your brain. You’re stimulating the–the motor cortex, the sensory cortex in the brain, which keeps it stimulated, which keeps it growing, because if you don’t use it, you lose it. And that plasticity that the brain typically creating more neural connection is gonna be based on stimulation. So keep the brain moving and Socrates even knew this, too. The–the famous philosopher, he had a lot of his scholars and students in the philosophy schools training with the Olympic athletes of that day because he knew thinking, real thinking, was dependent upon movement and he had them training with the top athletes of that–of that era.
Evan Brand: That’s so cool. Yeah. I–I know for a fact, you know, anecdotally and just when I go out, and I go for a hike or I’m actually in the gym, I just–when I’m done, I’m just like, “Oh, my mental clarity is enhanced so much,” and I mean, it’s such a great feeling. Maybe we can say that’s due to a little spike in cortisol that we’re causing from the exercise. It’s hard to say, but I know the BDNF that we could geek out on, that goes up, too. So it’s–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: Hard to say, but it’s–it’s a real tangible feeling and people out there listening that you may be struggling with motivation and you’re like, “Oh, I just–I need to get motivated to work out.” You know, look at the lifestyle and we talked about the foundations, like sometimes if you need the motivation, the best way is just to do it. You might not, if like if you wait around for inspiration or you wait around to feel motivated to go to the gym, you may never do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, right.
Evan Brand: Sometimes you just have to act and then maybe that will start the–the snowball.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 80% of life is just showing up. It’s very rare to show up to the gym and not work out. So if you can just like say, “You know what, I’m feeling like crap today, I’m just gonna show up and then if I leave in 2 minutes or 5 minutes, fine. If I just do a 4-minute Tabata and I’m out, fine.” If you can kind of just get your, you know, have that conversation with yourself to get yourself cajoled to the gym and just do even 4 minutes’ worth or just do a set of biceps or set of squats and leave, fine. But a lot of times momentum starts to grow and you start having a better workout.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I guess maybe we should–I think we have covered everything, but I would say we should talk about what we haven’t recommended for supplementation?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Actually there’s one more thing I wanna touch upon that–that I would like.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So there’s a mitochondrial support product, MitoSynergy that I’ve formulated but I’m gonna just breakdown some of the nutrients in it that I like. So in this product we have the L-carnitine which I like because L-carnitine’s important with bringing fat into the mitochondria. That can be very helpful especially people that have protein issues, you need methionine and lysine to make carnitine in your body. So if you have protein issues, carnitine can be super helpful. Also curcumin, it’s an anti-inflammatory herb. Again some of the inflammation after the workout can be, you know, you can help reduce some of that which is great, so less soreness. So I like curcumin as well. Also ribose. Ribose is an awesome nutrient that’s great for the Kreb cycle and for generating ATP, that’s great as well. And then B vitamins. It’s an amazing what simple activated, methylated B vitamins can do for energy. So I put these all in one bottle but you–anyone listening can look for those things individually and think about it and try to make sure you have those in your workout. We’ll put some links in the show notes as well, but those are some great things. And even Kreb cycle nutrients such as malic acid and succinic acid and fumaric acid. These are Kreb cycle nutrients that our Kreb cycle which generates ATP which is like the currency of energy in our cells, those are some Kreb cycles nutrients that can be used to generate more ATP as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I forgot about taurine. Taurine’s another good one that I’ve used isolated and had–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: Great results with it–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so just–
Evan Brand: For the heart.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, just to summarize that MitoSynergy product, those key ingredients you wanna look for is the ribose, the carnitine, and then on that vein, CoQ10 also fits there well–it fits there as well–the B vitamins and the curcumin or the anti-inflammatory turmeric to help buffer inflammation post-workout.
Evan Brand: Nice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like those. Anything you wanna add about that?
Evan Brand: No, I think that’s good. I mean, the mitochondrial support is good, too, so the–the PQQ is helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: I haven’t used it specifically for workouts, but that’s another one and just combi–I mean, there is–there is a synergy without a doubt with all these ingredients together. So kind of mixing and blending, and just kind of taking your time with everything. You know, just do your research and be smart about it, but generally adding things together really amplifies the effect.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’m at a place where I’m just trying to formulate things for me that I’m using myself. I know you’re doing the same thing with some of the adaptogens that you’re creating and some of the things that I’m doing. So we’re just like at the place in our health careers where we’re like, “Alright, let’s just start creating–creating what we want for ourselves and then we can just share it with people and if they’re interested, that’s great.” But we can at least break down what about the constituents are so good so that people can apply this information to other things that are out there. So so far I think we have our good, clean protein powders and collagens. We have adaptogenic herbs and medicinal mushrooms. We have branched chain amino acids. We have creatine. We have Kreb cycle nutrients and B vitamins, CoQ10, and ribose and anti-inflammatory curcumin.
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything you wanna add to that?
Evan Brand: Yes, I do. One last thing, something that’s been really helpful for some–a few of my older female clients that are avid bike riders and they’re avid powerlifters and things like that, they’re kinda go-getters, we’ve used the ArthoSoothe gel from Designs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, yes. Yes.
Evan Brand: Because it has the menthol in there. It’s–I believe it’s got maybe peppermint or eucalyptus oil in there as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s got some enzymes, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah and I–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Boswellia, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I think boswellia. Aloe maybe even?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: I can’t remember. But I’ve used that with great success and they kind of rub it on their joints, their elbows, their knees, whatever–from a topical perspective, too. And I would–I would consider that a good like post-workout thing, I mean, internally is huge getting the nutrients in. But externally we can do some stuff, too, and that’s definitely superior than some of the creams and stuff you’ll at a generic Walgreen’s or something that are gonna be loaded with methylparabens and all these other preservatives and stuff that you really don’t want in your body or on your skin.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great and also one last little thing that can be a gem because a lot of this is post-workout timing, but getting a little bit of extra carbohydrate, maybe 30 or 40 grams, 20 to 40 grams depending on how healthy you are post-workout can make a big difference in increasing insulin and people may think, “Well, insulin’s bad.” But insulin’s also a growth hormone so to speak. It helps bring things into cells. Now most people are having too much insulin. They’re bringing carbohydrate into their cells and converting it to fat, but we can use insulin and spike it by having a little bit of carbs and then putting a whole bunch of protein along with it and that will bring those amino acids into the cells, i.e., our muscles to help our muscles grow but that insulin bump can also help blunt the effects of cortisol post-workout. So higher insulin can actually drop cortisol and again a lot of body builders at a higher level use insulin from an injection standpoint which I would not recommend because you could go hypoglycemic, you can go into a coma or–or shock. So you don’t wanna do that supplementally, but you can use diet to artificially boost up insulin, blunt cortisol, and shuttle more nutrients and amino acids into the muscle for repair.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so not chocolate milk, but maybe a sweet potato with some butter and cinnamon instead.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dude, that is my workout–that is my post-carb meal right there, or a little bit of plantains, too. Those are good or some of the yuca rolls. Those can be amazing.
Evan Brand: I’ve never had that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, they got that in Whole Foods now. If you go to like a Estancia, it’s in Austin, or if you go to like a–a big chain is Fogo de Chao.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They have some of these yuca rolls which can be really nice or yuca fries can be great.
Evan Brand: Yummy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like those. Are there any other closing thoughts here, Evan?
Evan Brand: That’s it. I think we wrapped it up and you know, the one thing I kind of hit on early that I didn’t complete the sentence of is just watch out for the garbage pre-workout stuff. There’s lot of these like–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: Fat burners and thermogenics and all of these stiumulants and too much Guarana and–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: 3–400mg of caffeine. You’ve got artificial blue colors. You’ve got–oh, God, there’s so much garbage workout supplements out there. Be smart, I mean, support the body system. You don’t have to have this like super trendy sounding workout, pre-workout thing to get you going. Support the body. Use the mushrooms, use the herbs, use the vitamins, use the proteins, use the real food, use the sleep, the stress reduction, etc. and you’re not gonna need any of that garbage and you’re gonna save your money and your health.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I find sometimes it’s good having a little bit of supplement that can give you that little bit of boost or energy because sometimes for me it’s like I just need that little bit of energy kick to get me motivated, so using some, whether it’s the herbs that are adaptogenic or using some of the Kreb cycle nutrients like the B vitamins or the L-carnitine or ribose, for me it can give me that just a little bit of energy kick which allows me to feel more motivated to get up and go to the gym.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I–I’ll do matcha occasionally as well–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Matcha.
Evan Brand: Just kinda pre-workout, yeah, we’re all get–you know, 40, maybe 50mg of caffeine with a little bit of theanine in there, some kinda calm and clear and–and that’s my pre-workout caffeine boost if any.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great, and then what about workout timing? Do you like to do it before 6 or 7pm at night? These are a time threshold for you?
Evan Brand: Oh yeah, yeah, totally. I–and I–I’m sure you would say the same to your patients is I don’t recommend the super late workouts because then people can’t sleep good because you’re bumping that cortisol up too much and pumping out adrenalin and stuff like that, so I try to get a midday workout in and I know maybe everybody doesn’t have the luxury, but I feel best in-between my 10am and 1pm if I can get a workout in between, you know, after breakfast but before lunch, I feel the best. And then lunch is just so delicious, like I worked out legs real hard the other day–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And I came home and I made some elk burgers and I had tons of butter with some purple potatoes and some pink salt–
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Purple, huh?
Evan Brand: Oh, I felt so good. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. Yeah, I think at least a 3-hour buffer before bed. Anyone that has HPA axis dysfunction–hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal issues, adrenal fatigue is the slang–you oughta be careful because it’s easy to get those sympathetics, the sympathetic nervous system, that fight or flight nervous system ramped up and then once it’s on, it’s hard to–to turn off and that can really disrupt your sleep if you work out too late.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and–and what would you say? I’d say 99 out of 100 people listening have some level of HPA dysfunction, so pretty much everybody. Don’t work out late at night.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you do, well, hit up some of the adaptogens, hit up some magnesium powder, maybe some Phenibut after your workout. Do some things to help calm you down and bring you down. That could be a good strategy if you do.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool, Evan. Anything else?
Evan Brand: No, that’s it, man. That was fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anyone listening here that enjoys the podcast, give us a review over on iTunes, click below, so it gets more information and to help kind of keep sharing the word and feel free and write to us because we’ve been doing podcast on viewer’s topics the last few weeks. So we wanna provide everyone listening more great info, so feel free and reach out the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, the YouTube channel’s a good place, too. You could check the videos out there that we have and then there’s–the comments are there for a reason. So it’s not that we don’t have stuff that we wanna talk about, but we obviously want to prioritize which you are interested in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it. Awesome, Evan. You have a great Friday!
Evan Brand: Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
Bone Broth Soup
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Here is a great recipe for bone broth soup that is very high in collagen. Collagen contains high amounts of how hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid has anti-aging qualities especially helping with skin health, skin elasticity, wrinkles and overall joint health. Collagen is also very helpful to prevent stretch marks and to help maintain overall skin health. By cooking these bones from healthy organic grass fed cows over a period of time collagen begins to seep out into the broth to make a real yummy nutrient dense snack!
Ingredients
3 large carrots, diced
1 head celery, diced
1 large yellow onion or 2 large leeks, diced
4-8 large cow bones with marrow (ideally grass fed/finished)
1 tsp. cardamom spice
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. pepper
1 tsp. turmeric
truffle oil or truffle sea salt
Put all ingredients in a large soup pot, fill about 4 inches from top with filtered water simmer for 4-5 hours stirring occasionally.
Scoop 2-4 servings into blender. Blend at high speed until smooth. Add 2 drops of truffle oil to each serving and/or sprinkle with truffle sea salt.
Serve and enjoy!