Binder Support for Detox | Podcast #230
Our environment, the food we eat, and everyday activities may create toxins inside us. Most people want to detoxify by using binders. But what are binders and how can it help someone who is detoxifying? Find out more!
Today’s episode talks about toxins in our body, how to get rid of them through detoxifying, and of course, binders which can support it. Listen to Dr. J and Evan Brand as they discuss the important things to address the issues in a natural and functional medicine perspective. Stay tuned!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:21 Detoxifying
00:50 Get to Know Binders
06:52 Environment Effects
20:46 Step-by-Step
22:28 Smart Ways
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani, hope you are having a phenomenal morning. Let’s dive in. I got Evan brand here in the house. We are going to do a podcast on detox support and specific binders to help improve your health and rid toxins and stress from your body. So Evan how we do it today man?
Evan Brand: Hey man I’m doing just fine and I’m excited to talk about binders because I’ve been going full force into these things and I feel like this is something. It’s very hard to find good information on the internet about this because most people say binders like charcoal or clay, yep, take them and that’s all. People really say any article you see it could be something corny like, 7 Top Ways to Detox and then they’ll have bentonite clay and charcoal on there which are two binders that are very effective but there’s no real good advice on those, so I’m hoping that we can give people good advice and then talk about why would you even need to use binders, how long do you use binders, what about some of the risk where people talk about you depleting your minerals and throwing off your electrolyte balance because the binders are pulling out top toxins but also pulling out minerals, so let’s dive into it. Maybe we should first talk about how do you even know that you need binders. I mean, some could argue everyone is a good candidate for binders but you and I have specific cases where we use these.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so a couple of different things I would say that we’d talk about is we’ll use binders sometimes when we’re doing detoxification programs I should say got clearing GI clearing programs. So if we’re working on dysbiosis or SIBO or parasitic infection and we’re killing off crud that could be in the gut tract, well our body has to do something with that. Our body has to stop up that dead debris and escort it out and if we kill too much, too fast, that can overwhelm our detoxification system, our lymphatic system and our immune system so putting a straightjacket on it whether we’re using activated charcoal, can help bind some of these things up, or bentonite clay can help bind some of these things up it does it via electrical it’s an adsorbent quality where it attracts it to it like a magnet similar to activated charcoal and it helps escort it out of the body so it’s not reabsorbed stimulating the immune system over in the body, so this is helpful and we’re clearing stuff out in the guts that eventually could make its way back reabsorbed into the body.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so let’s, let’s go through maybe a couple examples
Evan Brand: (Cross talking.) Yeah.
Evan Brand: Like, when we would bring this on board so actually I believe a couple of the supplements you and I manufacture not only have antimicrobial herbs but actually have clay in it so there’s one that you and I use. Mine is my microbiome support one. It’s got clay but then it also has berberine and Oregon grapefruit, a bunch of other things in it so there’s kind of an binder quality built into it but really when you and I are working on gut bugs, we noticed that these people have this, I guess, gut feeling that when you show up with a parasite they just say give me everything they want to throw everything at it and just kill kill kill too hard, yeah, but a lot of times people don’t have the, the strong enough constitution, so maybe we can talk about would you use binders in a more sensitive person would you use them regardless of a gut protocol. Like, how do you gauge that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I think off the ‘bout the big thing is most people when they find out they have some kind of a gut issue, their main focus shifts to I want to go kill this thing” that’s the first thing they think about in focus. I think it’s a big mistake because a lot of times, the first focus needs to be on bringing inflammation down, bringing nutrition up and supporting our energizing systems around it because we’re gonna have a drop in energy. We may have more information, we may tax our nutritional needs to run other metabolic pathways in the body so it’s really important that we’re getting more nutrition in or reducing the inflammation and then we give more time for energy systems to come up because we may come backwards a little bit, it’s like hey we only get this big expense coming in one or two months. Let’s start a savings account where we start infusing more money into it so that in a month or two when this debt starts coming do you have that extra bit of money to throw at it, does that make sense?
Evan Brand: It does, yeah. This is important for people to listen. This is why we try to educate people that come to us because if we have uneducated clients it’s nothing against them but they’re not as motivated for the long haul if somebody just finds us on a random blog, a random video, but they don’t listen to us when they get a series of lab tests back. That we run on they may see four or five six different infections and Justin or I may say, hey look you know we’ve really got to take month one or month two to work on addressing your adrenal function calming down the inflammation as you mentioned because we may see high occult blood where they’ve got microscopic bleeding because their guts in such bad shape or we may see that the calprotectin is really high if we go straight into killing they may feel worse, and then they, of course leave the program so you know if you’re seeking out functional medicine, you want to make sure you, you and your mind are, you have your own agenda but listen to the practitioners agenda too, because if you’ve gone through this a thousand times, we can tell you straight up hey look if you’ve got way too much inflammation, I know you want to get rid of the bugs so do we but you may feel like crap if we do it too soon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, so we want to build everything up so we have that foundation ready to go. Number two, a lot of people there’s two ways to take a binder. So number one is you know you’re eating a questionable food or drink and you want it’s a B in your system – binary potential crud with that up, that’s where you would take that with food with that food. Number two, you’re in the middle of a detoxification program and it’s a longer-term thing. We probably don’t want you taking that binder every single day with regular healthy food so we would have you do it typically an hour before meal and or two to three hours after a meal to avoid binding up those minerals and nutrients. We would try to time it up on an empty stomach. Now sometimes it’s easier to do it midday between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner or some people will do it when they get up and then when they go to bed and just leave an hour before, you know, half hour forty-five minutes before breakfast in the morning and then at least two hours after dinner at night there was a really good prime times and of course a holiday weekend you can always take activated charcoal with any of your questionable foods and drink, that’s super helpful.
Evan Brand: Yeah and don’t sing wise, most of the time when you find activated charcoal, it’s gonna be in about a 250 milligram to 500 milligram dose and so I think there’s a range that people can do now. I will say I just kind of come to this realization over the weekend so I’m sharing this with Justin for the first time. ou know I’ve been battling dizziness and sort of this disequilibrium for probably like six months or so. OF not more actually, no, it was since last July so we’re talking almost a year and what I just kind of made the connection detoxification and binding you have to mobilize a lot of your toxins but you have to detox them at the same time so it’s kind of this seesaw where if I do too much glutathione which is another detoxification strategy we’ll mention but if I don’t do enough binders with it I feel worse but if I don’t do enough glutathione or enough binder, then I still feel bad, I still feel dizzy, so when I feel like my best and I’m not recirculating toxins. It’s the perfect dose of glutathione which for me is about 200 milligrams of acetyl glutathione with NAC one gram and then 500 milligrams of charcoal so glutathione would come first in the morning, let’s say 7:00 a.m. I would try to wait an hour do binders or in reverse order, you could do binders first thing like 7 a.m. binders glutathione it 8 and then breakfast right after so, so that’s kind of the hard part too is you know somebody pointed out in the comments that it’s confusing between the meals time because we’re often told to take our herbs they thought they would bind the herbs – yeah, that’s the hard part is I think the hardest part about binders it’s so simple and effective, but the hardest part is the timing, remembering to take them, and remembering to take them away from your medication your other supplements and herbs.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, and really important, we want to make sure we’re supporting the lymph right, so drinking enough water help support the lymph right. The solution to pollution is dilution I’d say that 4 times fast we want to make sure we’re providing hydration so the lymph can move. Ginger tea is awesome. I use this with a lot of my patients because ginger is anti-inflammatory. It’s essentially an anticoagulant. It keeps things moving. It’s also a biofilm buster so if we have biofilm which of these protective shields used by critters it will definitely help with that and take those shields out of their hand and allow the anti microbials to be more effective so that’s for sure. Now a couple other gentle lymphatic supports that we’ll do is we’ll do red route which is going to be a powerful anticoagulant. We’ll do things like slippery out/ We’ll do dandelion, we’ll do milk thistle, skullcap, rhubarb, rosehips, is shown to be incredibly effective at mobilizing toxins and just kind of gently nudging it out of the body so these are all very very powerful strategies that we can utilize to keep things moving and right, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yes, let’s move on. Let’s talk about other reasons when and why you’d use binders we talked about gut protocols rights of supporting people during parasite infections bacterial overgrowth. We talked about setting the foundation. First reducing inflammation, supporting adrenals before you even go into the killing so during the killing phase you can use binders to mitigate die-off because people talk about, well am I gonna feel bad, am I gonna have a herxheimer reaction on this protocol, well you shouldn’t. Now we don’t always see every piece to the puzzle right away so if we just see gut infection, well we don’t know that you have a major mold problem we may start to use glutathione to help you replace glutathione if we saw your organic acid tested low but now that glutathione could be mobilizing things like heavy metals, it could be mobilizing mold into this right interro hepatic recirculation, so now we have to do more binders right. So this is why we have to get a good work up on somebody if we just do a stool test lab and we try to make a protocol and throw in binders on, that it’s not very accurate so this is why we try to look at urine for mold, we do the organic acids, we can look at chemicals, we can look at stool, we can look at hormones and once you have all the puzzle pieces yeah you’re gonna spend some money up front to get all this data but it’s gonna save you more hassle in the long run because if someone does just stole in urine and let’s say you look at organic acids in stool we make a protocol and then they say, Hey Dr. J or hey Evan you know I’m not feeling good or I had a headache or I had extra joint pain, we’re gonna say well we’re missing something, we need to figure out what’s going on because this protocol here is great however something’s missing so now let’s go back and fix or fill in the labs that we didn’t run in the beginning. It actually cost you less money to get all the data in the beginning rather than waiting till the end because we’ll have people that’ll come on a budget which is fine, right, they’ll say I’m just gonna do stool tests but then we only see one thing, like let’s say we see blastocyst as hominis so it’s like, well do we use binders in that case. I mean, they could be helpful but we don’t know what else going on what if they have chemicals and molds and other things where they do need binders so that was percent, so what I was gonna, what I was gonna lead into was that my mycotoxin report I should be able to share my screen so let me see if I can because I wanted to show you when and why I started using binders and it was because of my mycotoxin report.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s another big one. right we talked about using binders to help with clearing herbs but we may see people that have mold exposure, they may be, they may be in a moldy house or we may see that they are urinating out a lot of mold maybe from previous exposure they have a hard time getting the mold out of their body and that’s a great time to use specific binders especially modified citrus pectin or zeolite can be excellent and then you know we even we can even talk about it as well that we even utilize some air filters that have binders in it like activated charcoal and zeolite to pull potential mold out of the air as well so we can even use it in our air as well.
Evan Brand: Yep yep, so I’ve got my report pulled up if people are listening on audio, obviously you’re missing out you can go on Justin’s YouTube channel and look up this podcast and you’ll find this video screen, share but what we’re looking at here is my Hawker toxin levels in my urine which the reference range anything above four is elevated and anything above 20 is very high and I was at 196. Now the key component here is having people do glutathione for five to seven days before you actually collect urine because that’s going to give us a more accurate result. We find that the, the tip of the iceberg shows up if you don’t do glutathione, so that’s fine right like if you see just a tiny bit of mycotoxin you know that you have an issue but I would like to just flush it out as much as we can and then report it so this level may have not been as high if I didn’t have glutathione on my system-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But still some people say you shouldn’t do that but taking glutathione isn’t just you know put mold in your body and that molds already there. It’s just mobilize better so it’s we’re getting in a window and what’s actually there, which i think is more important. We want to know what’s actually there versus what’s stocking tissues and our body can’t get out right.
Evan Brand: Right I mean it’s the same, it’s the same thing as doing a profit for heavy metal testing right, I don’t know why people would be against using glutathione to look at mycotoxins if everyone supports the idea of using a key later or even a natural key later like chlorella for heavy metals collection before you collect urine or other samples for, for heavy metal so to me it’s a no-brainer and look at my levels, I mean it’s very, very high and then you see there’s different types of mycotoxins and some are more damaging than others so ochratoxin, it actually affects the cerebellum. Now I’ve learned this, I didn’t know this but that’s why you see balance and disorientation and dizziness with ochratoxin more than other mycotoxins because it does affect the cerebellum, so that’s why I notice if we go down here, you see, I just had some other stuff too. So treinen, this is another mycotoxin, I can’t even pronounce this one and ___[14:07] and B.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was the upper toxin, where specifically did you get exposed to that problem is that just for water damage or-
Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s just that’s airborne so that comes from Aspergillus, you know I remember as a kid so that’s the report, so I’ll stop sharing, so you can go back to me but I remember as a kid my grandmother’s basement flooded and they had carpet in the basement and I remember them putting box fans down there and it took weeks to dry out and after you and I’ve spoken with Jeff and JW some of the mold experts, they’ve told us that after 48 hours you have mold growth if you have a moist material so you know, I remember being down there like playing games and doing puzzles as a kid while the box fans ran, which now I know was just blowing the spores everywhere so I think I probably had this toxic build up many, many, many years before I got symptomatic.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anyone that has any family members that live in a basement, get your basement tested and get a whole house dehumidifier for your basement. There’s specific ones that are for the basement. Get that moisture percentage down to at least the low 40s. It’s really important that will prevent mold grow significantly especially if there’s no water damage plus you have natural heat exchange between foundation and the earth on the other side so you may get moisture occurring through that foundation to the heat exchange so because of that we really have to make sure we’re taking that water out of the air and it’s not accumulating.
Evan Brand: Yeah I check my humidifiers all the time and I have a bonus room upstairs above the garage that were converting into a playroom and that doesn’t have ductwork up there so the dehumidifier won’t work up there so I had a little humidity monitor over the weekend and it was at 62% which is way too high so I got a GE portable 70 pint dehumidifier and it has a little hose on it, so once I get all the plumbing done I’ll be able to hook that hose up to the plumbing to where it just constantly drains but for right now I’ve got the bucket so once a day or so I just drain the bucket until the plumbing’s done and I’ve already got it down on 20% now we’re at 42% humidity.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s where you want to be. So like my house right now, I’m in like the low 40s 41 42 from my first floor in second floor my office basement I’m in like the upper 50s low 60s so I already got an HVAC guy coming this week, we’re gonna go with the April air whole house basement dehumidifier. We’re gonna tap it in to the water line so we don’t have to worry about I just rather have it just draining all the time and not have to think about it because I know you can get a lot of water pulled out of the air for sure.
Evan Brand: Oh it’s amazing yeah, and so you know why binders came into the picture for me as well one of the best ways to give no to ___[16:37] talks in his binders so if you talk with any of the laboratories that do this testing for mycotoxins, they’ll tell you that you can use antioxidants like vitamin C to mitigate the damage but to really get the stuff out which is the goal number one is make sure you’re in a clean environment so that’s why Justin and I hit so much upon the home environment using high quality HEPA filters to take the mycotoxins out of the air, so you’re not breathing them in but even in that might not be good enough, right. An air filter won’t fix the bad environment, the air filters like the bonus after the environments already been fixed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Although I have found patience though where there’s no active leak issues, I have found patients knocked down they’re a mold test pre and post significantly with just a good enter filter.
Evan Brand: Oh, I believe it, yeah, I think it’s a good catcher’s mitt for sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, if it’s a humidity issue you probably have a greater chance if there’s actual water damage, it’s probably a little bit tougher and that’s where we have to bring in the fogging solution. But you know, my thing is get a really good air filter, I mean head over to evanbrand.com or justinhealth, click on our shop link .look at our recommended products and there we’ll put links down below and that’s what we personally use there’s a couple different filters that we use like for instance I’m gonna be getting the Austin air filter for my basement office because that has zeolite and activated charcoal just because basements are more prone to mold. I’ll be using that specific filter but upstairs I have is the Air Doctor and the molecule upstairs and areas that are less prone so you know I’m kind of strategic and what filters I use and why and then also, um, you know testing and getting the whole house dehumidifier is huge so you just want to be on top of these things so you can create a really good home environment is part of Evans issues where this chronic accumulation, and now we want to be using binders in specific gentle mobilizers or I call it the lymphatic support or drainage support to kind of keep things moving in the right direction.
Evan Brand: Yep so the Austin Air’s great. I think you’ll love it. I have my grandmother over and she sprayed hairspray which just destroys me. The smell of it just tears me up. I told her don’t wear hair spray soon as she wears it and so of course she fills up the whole living room with the smell of the hairspray. I’ve got the Austin air right there all I did is crank it on high by the time she left, ten minutes later the air smelt like a fresh spring, I mean, that thing is amazing for smells and VOCs and so anybody that has allergies chemical sensitivities it’s, it’s incredible so reach out to Justin or me if you want to get an Austin air we are professional dealers for those and I mean it’s worth its weight in gold just from that one experience.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, now what’s your experience, Evan using like sulphur based amino acids like Metheny and cysteine NAC. I know some of these things are biofilm Buster’s so they may be very helpful in dealing with SIBO especially with knack or NAC but then there’s also glutathione, so just my school of thought, is that people have significant chronic stress will tend to go more with lower dose glutathione, because the sulphur aminos have to get converted and if there’s any methylation issues or we’re missing certain nutrients that, that conversion may be a little bit halted, so I’ll tend to go more close, I own but sometimes we’ll do both which strategy and how do you incorporate glutathione versus two sulfur amino acids and the, and some of these herbs we talked about.
Evan Brand: Yeah, so the blend right now as acetylated glutathione, it’s a hundred milligram per capsule and 500 milligrams of NAC, so if I do two caps a day, that’s 1000 milligram Knack, 200 milligrams glutathione. To me that is like the perfect combination, I think there’s a little b6 added in there too but that’s the perfect combo for me, I noticed if I add any because-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s probably helping with the methylation.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it does make sense, yeah, I’ve got some methylation defects/ I’m not like a double, and double, what do you call it-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: (Cross talking.) The homozygous one.
Evan Brand: The homozygous one yeah, yeah I’m hetero, so I’ve got the one snip of methylation issue, so I have some methylation probably not yeah so for me I tried this experiment where I did the 200 milligram glutathione a thousand milligrams AK, and then I added an extra 400 milligram of a liposomal glutathione in a teaspoon, I took a teaspoon of that and I had the worst headache of my life. That was like, the last last weekend or two. I called you, I’m like, yo I screwed up, you’re like, oh what’d you do, like I took glutathione and then I took extra liposomal glutathione on top of it, I’ve got the worst headache of my life and it lasted for man, I mean, hours six to eight hours probably, so I learned my lesson. Now maybe everybody else is fine but for my particular issue that mobilized way too many toxins, I mean it’s almost like I just opened the floodgates and my system just couldn’t handle it so, yeah, yeah, I know I take action yeah, so I did tons of water, we talked about doing some extra charcoal, you’re like, hey try some binders, then maybe if you mobilize too much why don’t you take some more binders so I went took a capsule with charcoal and then drank some vitamin C, took some electrolytes and then finally, finally I did some CBD oil as well that calmed it down so for me I’m a huge fan of what you said which is go more for the neck and the precursors rather than just hard-hitting glutathione because it is very effective but you can do too much there is there is such thing as too much of a good thing and, and I definitely found that that spot for me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s excellent very, very good feedback so in general here, we got to figure out the goal, is what’s your reason for using these type of things are we doing it because it’s a holiday weekend and we’re gonna take some binders because we’re gonna have some food and drink. That’s questionable, that’s great by the way couple people on the questions that I drank some cheap alcohol and got headaches, I did the same thing this weekend on Friday night I added in some vitamin C with some additional vitamin C, like ester minerals like potassium, magnesium, zinc, chloride and I added the vitamin C with it and that way and with magnesium and that was really good that killed my headache, added some liposomal glutathione were good no problem, there so that was a huge help also improving the quality of my alcohol so last night we had some celebrations at my house, so I did some high-quality clean vodka Tito’s vodka. We did some half-line squeezed organic limes, and then we did some kombucha to mix it in, so we got additional B vitamins, additional good crap beneficial probiotics, we kept the sugar down extra minerals EGCG just beneficial antioxidants in there along with antioxidants and vitamin C from the lime juice, as well so that’s super helpful so if you are gonna drink, try to choose alcohol that’s not gonna add more toxic burden to you and then of course you can always, you could always take activated charcoal with that or if it’s cleaner alcohol you may want to wait and just take it before bed with a couple of shots of glutathione which is what I typically do if I have alcohol to a couple because usually I’m still eating a very nutritious dinner right, so I’m eating pretty good most of the time if I’m having some alcohol, so I’ll do activated charcoal before bed, couple of squirts of glutathione, some vitamin C and some additional minerals and it’s like boom, I got everything in case there’s any dehydration I’m drinking my toe but she goes in between drinks to maximize minerals and hydration as well.
Evan Brand: Good, good, good, that’s all great strategies. I like you’re focusing on quality because see, people think alcohol and you say that it’s like, well there’s a huge range of quality you could go for some really garbage stuff that’s got tons of sulfites and pesticides etc, or you can go really high quality like you’re talking about with your alcohol, so I think being smart if you’re going to consume it, be smart about what you’re using and then what I will say about the other binder my favorite or one of my favorites is zeolite I’ve noticed with zeolite it’s actually a better toxin capsulation process than charcoal, so charcoal as you mentioned it has this property like a magnet where it kind of drags the toxins out through the intestinal tract but if you have a leaky gut situation going on, if you have gut infections you most likely have a permeable gut barrier some of those toxins will get reabsorbed as you’re dragging them through the intestinal tract and pooping them out with the charcoal, so you can actually do too much charcoal and feel like crap I’ve done it now zeolite though I’ve noticed I can bump up my zeolite quite significantly and I don’t feel anything bad from it so I’m not an expert on the you know molecular level of how zeolite is working, but I believe it’s more of a complete encapsulation of the toxin charcoals more of an adze orbit, I believe zeolites more of a encapsulator of the toxin because if I bump on, bump up and keep raising Xilai I never have a reaction where I feel like I’m doing too much, I do get really, really thirsty on it but I don’t ever notice a bad symptom like I do if I do too much charcoal for example.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is the gold still the same is it – in capsule a, an escort out of the digestive tract in general.
Evan Brand: Yeah, exactly. Same thing pull things out and zeolites great because it can help with not only ochratoxin and other micro toxins but it can help with the alcohol molecule, I’m sure and then heavy metals pesticides etc, there’s some cool research on even like BPA and phthalates and other man-made chemicals that zeolite can remove
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you have a good brand of zeolite you recommend?
Evan Brand: So there’s there’s a couple different ones I believe it’s called results RNA-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah I think is that Gordon’s lab or Gordon’s company
Evan Brand: I don’t know, I just, it’s got a gold label on it and it’s a spray and it’s, it’s just purified water and then co light so that one’s really good I did carry the vitality detox drops for a while these little small bottles and it’s just a little dropper you just squeeze it onto the tongue however it does have citric acid and I think it even had a preservative in it, so I was just trying to go more clean, so that’s why I went with the results brand and you’ll get really thirsty on zeolite but to me that’s a good sign, that you’re starting to pull stuff out so just stay hydrated extra minerals extra water, you know ,I’ll kind of rotate in like some VG every once in a while or I’ll do like this Icelandic like glacial spring water, which yeah, it’s in plastic, but you know the water inside of it’s good, so I’ll kind of rotate and play with a couple different things. The Fiji is helpful because of the silica content so I would consider Fiji as part of a detox protocol too. Yhere was some guy out there on a member, his name some doctor who did an experiment where he had his patients drink nothing but Fiji water for like a month and they’ve reduced their aluminum content in their body with the help of the silica by like 60%
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great, yeah, they said, look does a good natural detox it’s also a good it’s you know one of the main building blocks of your teeth too, so it’s really powerful for building up healthy and animal
Evan Brand: Yep, so I would just say long story short with people, is get your testing done you know work with a practitioner, if it’s Justin, if it’s me, we don’t care who you work with just as long as you get help and you get the proper data right, cuz you could go to Whole Foods and go buy charcoal and take it, you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know why you’re doing it, what’s the purpose, how long do you need, to do buy undersea work, we’re getting a clinical piece of data and we see okay, look Evans got a ton of ochratox and we’re gonna do these specific binders, plus sauna, plus mitigating the environment, making sure everything’s clean, plus helping the liver, plus making sure the gut bugs are clear, I looked at my stool as well and then you retest did it work do we still need to do binders right so I think this is in the category of stuff that that can definitely help you and it’s not gonna hurt you ,however I just don’t recommend doing it without a plan it’s much smarter to have a plan
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, and then with your experience with zeolite, is it more selective and not binding up nutrition and minerals like activate it, well, is it is it like more indiscriminate like activated charcoal based on your experience or is it more selective at avoiding the binding of nutrition and more encapsulating the mold?
Evan Brand: Mmm, hard to say. I would have no idea how to prove if I was preserving my mineral content, I would just say I get really thirsty, so to me it sounds like it may be pulling out minerals as well I just don’t know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So zeolite more encapsulates where the charcoal or the clays adsorbent and kind of electrically-charged that toxin nearby, that’s what it feels like pulls other things into.
Evan Brand: That’s what it feels, like there’s a couple articles on this, I don’t have anything bookmarked right now, but I had read something about zeolite being better at keeping the toxin away from the bloodstream away from reabsorption compared to charcoal, being more of just it’s dragging the body through the house and leaving a blood trail, I sting versus the zeolites more hiding it in the bag and taking it out but like I said this is all just stuff I’ve, I’ve read and I’ve felt personally not bad from doing high dose zeolite where if I go high dose charcoal, I do feel bad so this is kind of just what I’ve read plus some personal and clinical.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So use the creepy analogy right, pardon, is analogy we’re dragging the body versus pulling out the neat body bag and then putting it, putting it in there, picking it up without, right-
Evan Brand: (Cross talking.) It makes it makes perfect sense-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It does. I get sure okay that’s cool and then one more thing we talked about a couple of other binders a couple of people who chimed in on here, we already mentioned modified citrus pectin and citrus pectin is kind of in that plant base of fiber community, which is very helpful at binding up metals like lead and Mercury, and also molds as well so we like the modified citrus pectins, as well and let’s not forget chlorella, chlorella is gonna be really good as any more selective at binding up, mercury tend to be mercury in the gut, so chlorella could be really good if you’re going out and getting sushi, definitely want to bring some chlorella with you and take it with the meal, that way it’s binding with a lot of the mercury that may be in your gut and then you can also do activated charcoal for that but chlorella is really, really good at that so there’s a couple other strategies that we can incorporate as well
Evan Brand: Yep, so you could play with all this on your own if you’d like and you’re probably not gonna hurt anything unless you’re got a really important medication that you’re taking and you’re taking binders with your pharmaceutical medication, and now your heart doesn’t work the way it should right, like, don’t take this stuff with medication at the same time separated by at least an hour but really get the data you know if you have symptoms there’s probably a reason for your symptoms there’s a root cause for something, so if you feel fatigued, there’s a reason for that, if you feel dizzy there’s probably a reason for that, if you feel joint pain there’s probably a reason for that, so investigate, investigate, investigate, get the data first, get the puzzle pieces laid out on the table, you’re not gonna, you know, draw that be like you’re a character caricature artist, you know, out of an art fair and the person is turn the other way and now you’ve got to draw what their face looks like and they’re in there, not they’ve got their back towards you like you just can’t do it, it doesn’t make sense so for you to go and buy zeolite and buy charcoal, and I’m gonna play with all these binders, you don’t even know what you’re up against, that’s silly, so you know, find a good practitioner that you want to work with, if it’s us, great, we know we love helping people across the world, if you’ve got somebody else helping you, great, just make sure you get the data, don’t just have them put you on a bunch of chlorella for no reason.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, head over at evandrand.com, you can reach out to Evan, justinhealth.com, you can reach out to me as well, I’ll also be doing a live YouTube Q&A within a few minutes after this podcast here, I see a bunch of questions in the queue that are more patient oriented so I’ll be there for a nice little live Q&A action so if you guys want to hang out for 5 or 10 more minutes I will be back. Evan ,today was phenomenal, great information, great back and forth, we put this together last minute just the nice thing about it is, you know, we have so much patient experience every week so we can look at, hey what are some of the questions or issues or challenges our patients are having and then we can say, let’s create a podcast, and a lot of times our podcast or patient inspired and more importantly they’re designed to help the general public, as well as patients, so if you guys are patients and already listening to this, make sure you’re subscribed and you utilize as much of this information to support the program you are already on. Anything else you want to add, Evan?
Evan Brand: Oh, that’s it. I would just say take good care and I will be back next week for some more fun so if you have suggestions, topic suggestions, you know write those in the comment or if Justin’s doing a Q&A, bring up those topics to him and we’ll jot it down and we’ll make sure we bring it up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful. All right man, you have a phenomenal day, enjoy your family and I’ll be back in a few take it everywhere, bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
Austin Air Health Mate Junior Plus
https://justinhealth.com/water-pitcher
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/binder-support-for-detox-podcast-230
Detoxification 101: How To Enhance Your Body’s Detoxification – Podcast #27
Are you having skin issues, allergies or gut problems? Do you feel tired or sluggish? Or maybe are you struggling with weight loss? Perhaps a good detox program is what your body needs. But what exactly does detox or cleanse mean? How does it work and can anyone do it?
In this podcast, Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Dr. Baris Harvey discuss the phases of detoxification, the role of amino acids for these processes to work, consuming proper nutrients and supplementations in achieving good elimination as well as correcting gut issues to prepare one for a good detoxification program that really works.
In this episode we cover:
03:47 Detox: Phase 1 and 2
11:15 Detox Testing: Organic Acid Test
13:40 Methylation function
40:23 Detox: Do we really need it?
48:08 Food, supplement and herbs
Podcast: Play in New Window|Download
Baris Harvey: Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Beyond Wellness Radio. In today’s show, we are going to talk about detoxification. Before we go there, I want to let you guys know that you guys should go to beyond wellness radio.com and hop on the newsletter. By doing this you guys can be the first to get all the email updates and then know about all of our new features. Also go to justinhealth.com and hop on the newsletter there. Dr. Justin has a thyroid video series which allows you to breakdown and if you want to learn more about your thyroid. Also, if you guys are interested in learning more or have other issues and you want to meet with a doctor just know straightaway, he does work virtually. So you can get a free consultation. Just you know asking some questions, make sure you are on the right track and he can definitely help you out there. Same thing goes here, you can go to reallyhealthynow.com and subscribe there. You can also contact me if you have any questions. And we love hearing questions and getting them in and being able to help you guys out. We also have a questions thing on beyondwellnessradio.com if you guys want to hear your questions just being answered. If you feel other people might have the same situation because often times they do and then we get that and make it an entire episode on these questions that you guys have. So if you guys have questions you guys can leave them down there and it provides a way for us to feed you guys more, right? Feed you guys more knowledge. So go to beyondwellnessradio.com and hop on the list and you guys will be the first to get these episodes in your inbox. So, how is it going today, Dr. Justin?
Justin Marchegiani: Baris, it is all pretty darn good. I actually just got married two weeks ago and just got back from my honeymoon. So I am feeling pretty refreshed and the holidays are almost here. So, pretty darn good. How about yourself?
Baris Harvey: I am feeling well. First of all I want to say congratulations. So now I do not have to say your fiancée, you wife now. You are all settled in Austin, Texas.
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Baris Harvey: Because I know some months ago it is just like back and forth flying, back and forth. So now you are settled in and almost getting your location together. So, the people in Austin if they want to see you face to face will soon be able to do that.
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I see a couple of patients that come to my house as well. I got two patients that are coming over today. But, yes, lots of virtual patients from all over the world. So it is pretty exciting and I am pretty darn busy.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. So, listeners out there let us make him even more busy and ask him a bunch of questions, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Baris Harvey: In today’s podcast we are going to breakdown detoxification. If you are on our email list you will be able to hear it right away, and you will hear it right before the holidays. If not you are probably hearing this on ITunes. Maybe you are hearing this on January first and you want to hit those goals, right? And the New Year’s resolution kind of thing. So you want to start things off right. So a lot of people go through this detox as in cleanse. So I think one of the first things to understand is like what is detox or what is a cleanse? Maybe there are different ideas and perspectives around them but let us just go to the basics like what is a detox?
Justin Marchegiani: Detoxification is happening all the time, right? Like the whole idea that someone says, “Oh, let us run you through a detox.” And I do not want to be super critical but we are always detoxifying, right? So to keep it simple, I mean we can go more esoteric and more deep but to keep it simple just so people can get actionable take off information, we have phase 1 and phase 2 detoxifications. Now listeners may say, “Well, there is phase 3, there is phase 4.” Just to keep it simple there is phase 1 and phase 2. And what is happening is we are up regulating this specific enzyme called cytochrome P450 enzymes. And these enzymes, in phase 1 they are taking toxins that are maybe fat soluble and then they are turning them into water soluble toxins. Now water soluble toxins now can be excreted. So it is important. Phase 1 is up regulating toxins and the fat and turns them into water soluble. Then phase 2 is excreting water soluble toxins. The analogy I give my patients is imagine you got a whole bunch of let us say apple cores or like banana peels or orange, the skin on the orange, right. You stuff it in the garbage disposal. Phase 1 is starting on the garbage disposal, right? It starts grinding it up and then phase 2 is like you keep it grinding, you keep it going and then you turn the water on and then it flushes it right out and eventually you hear the garbage disposal kind of quiet down. So phase 1 is the garbage disposal grinding all that solid mass up into a liquid mass. Phase 2 is that liquid mass being flushed out. Kind of like with our detoxification pathways. Any questions on that, Baris?
Baris Harvey: Yes. That makes sense. Like you said, there are two halves, Phase 1 and Phase 2 almost like you can split the liver in half and then you might see like in the anatomy class. Like see the liver like there is this little cut section. And so one side is where, like you just mentioned, you are grinding all of those toxins and you are crud forming them. And then, the other side you are kind of taking them out. And you are sending them into your gallbladder and your kidneys and you are letting it do its job and removing it, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Exactly. So, like in Phase 1 for instance, we have toxins we are getting exposed to. Well, it could be drugs. It could be chemicals. It could be pesticides. It could be stuff from your hygienic products like your moisturizer, your deodorant. I cannot tell you how many women, especially because they tend to use more of those products, they are rubbing toxins literally on their bodies. So our liver up regulates Phase 1 and just to give you some simple concepts maybe a little more technical names. But a couple of the reactions that happen in Phase 1 are going to be oxidation production. Hydrolysis, hydration, dehalogenation. These are just the technical terms. The key take homes are we are taking fat soluble toxins and we are turning them into water soluble toxins.
Baris Harvey: Yes. So, we are having more of the oxidation and reduction hydrolysis. What else? The dehalogenation and having some of the process there and on the second phase we really have kind of like the methylation and amino acid conjugation kind of things going on.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So, our Phase 2 really requires a lot of sulphur-based amino acids. That is why people that you know tell me, “Oh, well I am going on this juice fast and it is going to help detoxify me.” And I just said, “That is a nice thought.” But if you know how your detoxification systems work, they actually need a lot of sulphur amino acids to work. So, it does not quite make sense that by starving the body giving it a lack of nutrients, so to speak, that you are actually going to up regulate the detox pathways. Now, I do not disregard the fact that people feel better on those types of cleanses, I do not. I think that there a stuff happening. I think you are up regulating cellular autophagy where your body is recycling proteins. I think there is a great benefit there. I also think your body is now no longer being exposed to maybe food allergens that maybe have been creating inflammation. So, with decreased inflammation from food allergens, we give our gut a chance to rest. Let us say you have low stomach acid and maybe some gut inflammation. It is a stress to digest food. So if you stop putting food into your system that takes the stress off the tummy. It allows cellular autophagy to kick in and it decreases exposure to food allergens. So, I think a lot of people do get good benefit. Well, I personally believe if you are not really doing the detoxification stuff but you are doing like a medical grade detox program but they still benefit there.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Because you do need a lot of the amino acids and B vitamins and a lot of B vitamin rich foods, it is more of the fat soluble things maybe some antioxidants, vitamin E and vitamin C. Or even like essential fatty acids in order to have a lot of these processes work, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Yes, so like with Phase 1 we need a lot more B vitamins. We need some glutathione, we need some amino acids in Phase 1. So we talked about like glutathione being the major, major antioxidant of the body. How is glutathione made? It is made from glycine, glutamine and cysteine. These are all amino acids. And if you study nutrition you will know that a lot of the vegetarian diets are lower in sulphur-based amino acids. Now rice protein you actually get a decent bit of amino acids. But rice protein you still are low in methionine. And methionine is a very important sulphur-based amino acids. So vegetarians tend to have lower amounts of sulphur-based amino acids. That is where I am concerned because then you get, you know frankly, you may not be able to up regulate some of these pathways well. But nutrients wise, we have some B vitamins, we have some glutathione, we have some flavonoids and we also have some antioxidants too. Because when we actually up regulate Phase 1 and we take fat soluble toxins and we make them water soluble, if we are not flushing them out there could be a lot of oxidative damage. So having things like vitamin C and vitamin E and various antioxidants that tonify the liver can be helpful. Things like artichoke root or silymarin or milk thistle. These are very helpful because this can tonify and buffer a lot of the stress that maybe happening in the liver when we transition fat to water soluble toxins.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Okay. Cool. Sounds good. Alright, so I know there are a lot of people out there that wanted to get in depth into things because sometimes we just hear that thing very often and you can maybe go and look some of these things up. But people want to know and agree sometimes and they want to make sure that, “Okay, what is really going on here?” If it is cool with you Dr. Justin let us go into phase 2. What is happening in phase 2. I know there are a couple of different pathways like we mentioned before but like for instance glutathione conjugation, what is happening there?
Justin Marchegiani: So our bodies are taking a lot of these amino acids and it is helping to run a lot of our detoxification pathways. So, when I look at detoxification one of my favorite test to do to actually look at the function of what is happening is an organic acid test.
Baris Harvey: Uh-humm.
Justin Marchegiani: So, in an organic acid test we run various markers that are going to give us the great indication. So for instance, one of them is p‑Hydroxyphenylacetate, an 8-Hydroxy-2’-deoxyguanosine. These are like, really like super long words but they are really helpful. Those are like some oxidative detox markers. There is glucarate, there is 2-mehtylhippurate, there is 4 to 8-hydroxybuterate, pyroglutamate, and sulfate. These are all organic acids that are a marker of detoxification to help us know what pathways are working or are not. And they correlate to various nutrients. So, if we are low in our sulfate pathways, our sulfate organic acid pathways that is going to mean that you are going to need more sulphur-based amino acids. If we are low in glucarate pathways well that means maybe lower in glutathione and glycine. If we are lower in our orotate organic acid we may need more magnesium or aspartic acid or arginine. So, it is really specific. So when I want to look at someone’s detoxification pathways, one of the best actionable test, because they are tests that are out there like I get lots of people with 23andMe and MTHFR testing and all of these various things and it is like, “Alright, great!” And it is like, “Now what?” Because we get all these information but what is the actionable item, right? How can we change things in their diet? How can we change things in their supplement program to allow them to have that benefit? That is the question.
Baris Harvey: Yes. So I know like one thing that is really popular right now and I have seen over the whole health space that a lot of people are talking about, methylation, right? Like, “Oh, for example like the methylation. How does it work?” You can probably make a whole episode on that itself. But just talking about the detoxification pathway when you run that organic acid test you can kind of see maybe the marker and that kind of identify if you need a certain kind of, you know, vitamin B12 or 6 or if your body is not doing a good job removing estrogens or estrogen metabolites for what not.
Justin Marchegiani: Right. When we look at methylation that has an influence on: One, methylation has a huge influence on activating genetics, right? Methylation has a huge influence on mitochondria function. It has a huge influence on gut because their influence is histidine breakdown on the gut. It has a huge influence on creating energy because we need B12 and folate and B6 to create healthy red blood cells if not we will have a megaloblastic anemia.
Baris Harvey: Yes.
Justin Marchegiani: And then we are not going to be able to carry on any nutrition properly, right?
Baris Harvey: Not properly.
Justin Marchegiani: So, it is going to influence mitochondrial function, energy production, how our red blood cells carry oxygen and nutrition. It influences Phase 2 detoxification. So it really touches almost every part of our body. Now I am seeing a lot of people with these MTHFR test, whether they are heterozygous or homozygous, it gets really complicated. But I have looked at just two major genes that are being tested in our typical test. It is typically the one that begins with a C; that is the C678 and then the A678. I just keep it really simple. The one that begins in a C is the one that begins in an A. Those are the real ones that I am seeing on your conventional lab testing. Now, 23andMe runs about 6 or 7 of them. But those are the two main ones that are really supported by the literature. If I see any of my patients comeback with one or two of those defects, it is really simple. I just make sure in their nutrient program that we are making sure that we are giving them activated folate or giving them MTHFR tetramethylhydrofolate reductase. Ideally we are giving it to them in the L-isomer form.
Baris Harvey: Uh-humm.
Justin Marchegiani: L-isomer means it is just any organic chemistry perspective. The isomer is in a left rotating shape versus an R shape. So, it just helps with the metabolism. People that have this MTHFR defect they are not able to metabolize folate properly. So if we give them folic acid they are not going to be able to metabolize it properly. And that can cause stress in the liver. They do much better with calcium folinate. They do much better with like a natural folate blend or you know the Merck patent which is like a Metafolin which is an L-isomer MTHFR. And from my perspective, the multis that I recommend on my patients they are already doing the MTHFR in all of them. Because I just make the assumption, “Hey, if everyone has this defect in my eyes then no one is going to be left out.” If I give someone the right activated folate it is not going to cause a problem if they do not need it.
Baris Harvey: Exactly. I was actually going to say the exact the same thing. If you are working with a good practitioner or you know one of us, your multi that you might get is already going to be in the natural by MTHFR form. Because I mean like folic acid is probably is not even really good of a supplement generally, right?
Justin Marchegiani: Yes, exactly.
Baris Harvey: So, one that I really recommend is AM/PM Thorne FX and they automatically have the natural folate in comparison to folic acid.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: Thorne does a good job. I know that you use Thorne products and some other products as well.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Thorne, Designs for Health, Pure Encapsulations. These are some really good ones. But my job as a functional medicine doctor is I want to do the most with the least, right? If we can avoid expensive lab testing let us avoid it. Some people, it is nice to have…
Baris Harvey: Just to know.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes, with their red blood cell markers off. They may have elevated MCV or MCH or MCHC or abnormal hematocrit or RBC or hemoglobin. These are just markers for how big the hemoglobin is, how big or small it is. And how big or small the red blood cells are. So, typically when we have B12 and folate issues we start seeing red blood cells go on the higher side. They start getting bigger, more goofy if you will because we need folate and B12 to actually shrink down the red blood cells. Red blood cells start out big and they actually get smaller as they get more mature. So the exact opposite, we start out really small and we get bigger as we get more matured. They start out the opposite. So we need these nutrients. And then people think that is just folate typically we need B12 as well. If we do not get B12 along with the folate there is a phenomenon known as methyl trapping that can occur when the body would not utilize B12 as well if we just give the folate just by itself. So, I try to keep it really simple and give a minimum of B12 and folate, activated folate together and potentially even B6 as well.
Baris Harvey: Definitely. And for listeners out there that do not know, usually you know we have this in America bigger is better type thing but just think about, if something was a lot bigger in your arteries or veins and you are going have, you know, the viscosity is going to change and it might not flow as well. And that is not a good thing either. So bigger is not always better. So you want to make sure that it is regulated and then your body is doing a good job transporting oxygen, transporting nutrients. So that is like, you know, when you get down to the nitty-gritty that is what really energizes your body. When your oxygen gets to your mitochondria and creates ATP when you get down to like the nitty-gritty.
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And one big concern, because heart disease is the number one or two killer in the country and cancer then go back and forth, is that we do not have good quality methylation compounds meaning folate and B12 and potentially even B6. We are not going to be able to metabolize homocysteine properly, right? So we got to metabolize homocysteine to methionine and if we cannot metabolize that properly homocysteine is very inflammatory on the arteries. And I think it was Kilmer McCully at the Harvard, who was basically ostracized out of Harvard, saying, “Hey, these homocysteine are really big indicator of inflammation or heart disease. So, what he kind of followed was if we are not methylating properly because the inadequate nutrients like folate, B12 and B6, well our homocysteine will be higher. And that will be causing more inflammation and arterial damage. So, making sure the activated folate is there as well as the B12 and B6 is going to be huge at decreasing arterial inflammation.
Baris Harvey: Yes, sounds great. Another one that we might want to talk about or actually we have talked about is kind of like the amino conjugation and how it needs specific amino acids to neutralize some of these toxins like lysine and taurine. You may like glutamine as well and that is why we mentioned earlier you want to make sure that you are having an adequate protein intake and balance also. People might need some more protein especially if you are a vegetarian or vegan out there so make sure that you are keeping that in check. Or if you are having some skin issues all of a sudden popping out then you might want to reconsider the way that you are eating. So we talked about the methylation. We talked about amino acid conjugation. I think we talked a little bit about glutathione issue, did we not?
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. I want to touch it based on a couple of things. So if most people go to their conventional medical doctor and they get like their typical CBC done or their CMP. It is like a complete blood count or comprehensive metabolic profile. One of the common test that you are going to get in there are two or three tests and your doctor is looking at your liver function based upon ALT or alanine aminotransferase, AST or aspartate aminotransferase and/or GGT which is like gamma-glutamyl transferase. Basically, ALT and AST are looking at the liver primarily. There are different isoenzymes that can be differentiated for muscle or for heart. But to keep it simple ALT, AST are more liver and GGT is more gallbladder. So most conventional doctors are looking at these enzymes as a marker of liver function. Now it takes a lot of damage for those enzymes to be chronically out of balance. Yes, you are going to see GGT or maybe AST or ALT go out of balance if you know you had a big night of drinking, especially GGT. But to be chronically elevated there has to be significant amount of damage there. So the problem with that is if you want markers or testing that is more sensitive picking up imbalances and liver function before they are a problem, we do not want to rely on convention lab testing to do that. Conventional lab testing is good for pathology and dysfunction. And they can be beneficial if you look at it from a functional range, right? Typically these enzymes ALT and AST if they go about your typical lab work test about, right around 40 are considered high. So if we start seeing them about 20 to 30 that could be a sign of some liver stress. But an organic acid test tends to have a little more function because then you can say, “Oh, well, this organic acid in that whole spectrum of detox is out of balance.” This means you need more sulphur-based amino acids. “Oh, there is oxidative stress we got to add some vitamin C or some vitamin E or maybe even some tonifying herbs like silymarin or milk thistles.” So getting that perspective gives you more of an actionable item to kind of move forward. With the blood testing it is kind of like, alright, it came back low which is typically it does with most people then it came back high and your doctor will pretty much just ask you are an alcoholic and make sure you curtail your drinking. You know, that is kind of the typical scenario in the conventional medicine world. So we want to have actionable items. We want to be able to look at things in a functional way. Hey, are you starting to step on the line, what can we do right now? Is that helpful, Baris?
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Really in depth. So we kind of talked about the liver. We talked about a lot of the in depth processes. Now, let us back it up a little bit. We have talked about the liver. We talk about some other ways that your body has detox mechanisms. We are talking about our body’s own natural detox mechanisms. How it does on a daily basis? A couple of other things that we know that we have is our skin, our colon, our kidney our bladder even our lungs. Because when we breathe we are breathing out a certain amount of carbon dioxide.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: And not to get it confused because some people think like oh we always want the alkaline. We want to get rid of this…
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: If you ever see those people hyperventilating and they put a brown bag over their mouth in order to breathe in some more carbon dioxide and balance out the pressure.
Justin Marchegiani: It is because it is too alkaline, right?
Baris Harvey: Yes. Exactly. So there cannot be a problem with that. So let us not get it confused here.
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Baris Harvey: With that being said, carbon dioxide is not that all evil. So there is always a fine line. So, let us start off with like the skin and how that can be a really good indicator whether you might have some problems with your detoxification.
Justin Marchegiani: So the skin is actually one of the, it is the largest organ of the body. That is considered to be the integumentary system. And the skin will use and push things through it as a means of detoxification. So if you see a rash or you see a, you know, pimples or cysts, right? You know typically when I see skin stuff I am automatically thinking impaired detox. I am automatically thinking dysbiosis and impaired gut. So the skin, I listened to Paul Chek I think in a lecture maybe five to ten years ago. He said something like, “Your skin is the mirror of your gut.” So if you have bad skin I always think, “Man, if it does not look good on the outside, imagine what it looks like on the inside.”
Baris Harvey: Yes. Your skin and your gut kind of do similar things. We think about, you know, you have something covering you on the outside but then there is something like a wet mucosa version on the inside covering your, it is almost like that is your internal skin because you can just breath things in, inhale and there are things coming into your body that way as well. That is also a border to the environment.
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And if you want to get an idea of how gross some people are on the inside just ask, you know, ask them what their stools smell like. Does it smell kind of like earthy? Or does it smell like someone died in there, right?
Baris Harvey: (Laughs)
Justin Marchegiani: It should not smell like someone died in there. Unless you have like an acute day and you consumed too much sugar and that the critters in your tummy had gone crazy. It should smell somewhat earthy. It should not be like, “Wow! Someone died.”
Baris Harvey: Yes. When you flush the toilet like people should not really know if you would pee or poop that often?
Justin Marchegiani: It should not be that bad.
Baris Harvey: I always think it is funny that kind of like that Friday or next Friday joke that you know people always seem to come up with this thing that you know you might want to wait 35 to 45 minutes before you go in there.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Exactly.
Baris Harvey: If that is happening, that is not a good sign.
Justin Marchegiani: Not good. Exactly. And also I am going to get a little bit, you know, little TMI but I am going to go there. The show is kind of off limits. So, one of the things, if you are wiping with 3 to 5 times, you got a problem. You got a problem. At the most 5 wipes, ideally 3 wipes. And again it is because the stool is just in a consistency where lots of bad stuff is coming out and the gut is not doing too well. When your gut is healthier it is easier to do your wipes. It should not be more than 3 or 5.
Baris Harvey: Yes.
Justin Marchegiani: So anyone, you know, next time you go, take a look at your stool. Is it kind of, you know, it should not smell great, it should not smell like perfume or anything but it should smell kind of earthy and but it should not be like, it should not clear your room out.
Baris Harvey: Yes. You know it is funny that you mentioned that because I always feel my best when, (Laughs) this is going to sound really weird but when I go to wipe and there is nothing on the toilet paper and I am like, “Yes! Complete elimination.” So, that is how you know like health…
Justin Marchegiani: Oh yes.
Baris Harvey: And I am like, “Oh yes, I know that I did not really pinch anything off and it just all came out.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: And I am good to go.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: Versus like and I know if I ate some like… Usually when I go out to eat I am eating something good. But if I just go and eat at Domino’s Pizza or something cheap like that, I guess for an example, and I am in the bathroom and I am trying to hurry up and get out of there because usually people cannot tell if I went in number 1 or number 2. But if I am in there for a while like wiping them like, “Oh, man!” What if I have to come back in a few minutes to go again? Like I hate that.
Justin Marchegiani: Or you get patients. I get patients where they literally have to wipe so much they start bleeding in the rectum. I see that a lot.
Baris Harvey: Yes.
Justin Marchegiani: And that is the common site of parasites just because the rectum gets so itchy. It is almost like when you are wiping out there you are kind of like scratching an itch so to speak. And then you can literally drop blood. I see that in a lot of patients. That is a common sign of parasites. Like itchy butt to the point when you are wiping it you are seeing a little bit of blood. That happens. I see that a lot. But I know I am having a good day. Like when I have a good bowel movement and I get like 3 wipes in there and I walk out and I cannot even smell it, I am like, “Yeah! I am on track for a good day.”
Baris Harvey: I am fresh.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: You know need, like if you want wet wipes that is cool. It is perfectly fine.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: That means you are really clean. But if it is like an absolutely desire need that is not a good thing. I bet you guys you did not think you are going to hear that today. But you know we over deliver over here in Beyond Wellness Radio.
Justin Marchegiani: We try, yes. I promise I am going to deliver. And also half of your stool has got bacteria, right? So, this still plays into our topic of the day, being detox. Half of that stool got bacteria so having good ample size stools, passing about 12 inches per day either 3/4 in strain or 2/6 in strain or just a 1 large 12-inch strain. That is good because we are getting a lot of bacterial toxins. This is important because when we have dysbiosis of the gut, dysbiosis can actually make the removal of these toxins harder. So let me go into the depth. So when we have imbalance of bad bacteria these bacteria can produce this enzyme called beta‑glucuronidase, right? And beta‑glucuronidase what it does is it can unconjugate. So what happens is bile will come in there to conjugate. It will bind to a toxin and to a compound and then hopefully excrete it via the stool. But when beta‑glucuronidase hits that conjugate bile it can actually unbind it. It can de-conjugate it and then now that compound is free. It can go and could be re-absorbed and there could be a process known as auto-intoxication where it can be re-absorbed and create more toxicity in the body. So, when gut bacteria is out of balance it can affect how the body detoxifies because it can go around and uncleave all these bile that may be attached to toxins. Now this goes on to my further point where if you are going to do like a really good medical grade functional medicine detox program always make sure that the gut is really supported first. Make sure you have..
Baris Harvey: Yes. I was going to go to that point and give you a tossup and you can knock this one out of the park and say if the client comes to you and they have really bad constipation and poop once every three days. Now, is it a good idea for them to try to cleanse or kind of go on a super detox that time or make sure they get this fixed first?
Justin Marchegiani: Definitely get their thing moving first. Again the hepatobiliary system- that is a fancy medical language for gallbladder and liver, right? They are incredibly important at dumping out toxins that are in the bile. That bile then goes, gets squirted out to gallbladder into the intestinal tract. And if that bacteria is out of balance it is going to wreak havoc. Or let us say you are just not having bowel movements and that bacteria cannot come out fast enough, well that is going to screw things up, too. And then I will just put a little pre-cursor out there, conventional medicine knows that your conventional medicine textbooks look at detoxification of metals. Well 50% of metals are going to be detoxified via the hepatobiliary system. And children’s hepatobiliary systems do not form to age 1 to 2. So again, think about that from the perspective of kids getting all these vaccines and only a few of them have mercury today but a lot of them still have aluminum and aluminum is a metal and it is going to need to be excreted out via the hepatobiliary system. So not smart if you are giving kids compounds that are going to need to be excreted out of pathways that are not developed yet. Now that is for another topic.
Baris Harvey: Yes.
Justin Marchegiani: But I just put that in there because metals and detox and the hepatobiliary system are all tied together and need to be working. That is why any person that I see that has gotten into trouble with metal the heavy metal detox, they got in there because they started out with it. They did not support inflammation. They did not support gut yet and they are reabsorbing all of these toxins and kind of like what I said before, right? Phase 1, if we do not bring Phase 1 through Phase 2, we can actually create more problems because now we have all these toxins in Phase 1 that are now water soluble and if we cannot get them out of the system it is going to make a whole host of problems. It is like lining up all of like the apple cores and like the orange peels, it has browned up, it cannot come down. We start putting the water down, it is clogged and it starts coming up and filling up our sink. That is kind of like what is happening in our bodies. And now we have the sink full, like ground up mush it is no longer functional. And we cannot wash our hands or do our dishes anymore.
Baris Harvey: It is funny that you mentioned that because my garbage disposal is a little bogged down right now. But I was even thinking, you know, so you are throwing away your junk now, right? You want to make it easier to toss, you do not want your information on it, maybe you throw it into the paper shredder, right? Maybe that is the liver where you are breaking it down to make it easier to dump. And then you dump it into your garbage. But if you are backed up right, or maybe the garbage man does not come, right? Because you are constipated and it does not ship it away, you are not pooping it out, so you just keep piling up garbage. Right? And hopefully, you know, it is just paper, it is just recycling. But what if you are doing away like all kinds of junk food? You just have all that piling up. So maybe eventually you have to bring some of the garbage back inside the house. So that is what is happening with your body if you are not getting that full removal. So your detoxification pathways let us not forget you know and that is the easiest way to be like, “Oh yes, detox everyday, we go pee and poop.”
Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Baris Harvey: Right? And pooping is a big way to eliminate a lot of toxins fast.
Justin Marchegiani: So if you are one of those people and you are like, “How well, you know, I am taking at a detox program?” Well, the first thing is make sure you are drinking enough water. Half your body weight, alright? Make sure you are eating organic food? Make sure you are moving and sweating a little bit? Like those are just super simple things where if you have not even done that yet do not even waste your money doing the detox program. It is not even worth it.
Baris Harvey: Right.
Justin Marchegiani: Now let us say you are one of these people and you are pretty darn healthy, you have good poops and good skin and you are feeling pretty good and your hormones are rocking it, well now is maybe a good time to do a detox program. There are just good general ones that you can do that you may not even need a test. But then at some point, you know, once you are at a level of health, you just do not want to pull out the shock on the grenade, you want to pull out a sniper rifle and really make sure you are targeting specific pathways.
Baris Harvey: Yes. And or sometimes it could be the people that are already doing a lot of right things, exercising often you know, two or three times a week, eating organic foods maybe even taking some supplementations. But maybe they are doing all the right things, sleeping right, but just might have some skin issues and you are wondering why you are still getting acne and you are 26 years old. Or why you wake up exhausted every day but you get 9 to 10 hours of sleep. But you might also be in a case where, “Okay maybe I need some testing. Maybe I need a pinpoint because I am doing a lot of the right things. I just got to figure out what area in my body is kind of like, you know, slipping, where am I…
Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So for people right now make sure you got the diet and lifestyle stuff dialed in. If you do not, reach out to Baris, reach out to me. We can help get you on a right start with that. If you are at a good level and you want to get to the next level, running an organic acid test will be helpful. They can look at dysbiosis. They can look at nutrient deficiencies. They can look at all your detox pathways and can be very, very helpful. The only caveat with organic acid testing is if you are having digestive issues where you are not absorbing stuff like you are low in protein. Or if you are a vegetarian, vegan and you are not consuming enough protein. Organic acids are derived from amino acids. So if you are not getting enough amino acids in the system, it can definitely throw off the testing. So I always make sure that people are consuming and digesting and breaking down at least enough proteins so I feel confident that we are not going to get false negatives on the organic acid test. And that is one thing a lot of people do not really touch upon and I want to make sure everyone is aware of it here.
Baris Harvey: Yes, that is always a little bit harder when you have someone testing who maybe, I used to get like maybe the really older women or petite women or someone who is a vegetarian who might not eat enough. But sometimes you got to say like, “Hey, you need like, tonight you are going to have a steak,” or something like that. Or before you run this test like make sure you eat a nice piece of chicken because I want to see if it breaks down.
Justin Marchegiani: Yes. You want to look at nutrients in a person that maybe has compromised gut issues, compromised proteins, not enough protein and fat. A better test to look at those nutrients is if they are already low on protein will be more like a SpectraCell or an intracellular nutrient test like Metagenics are going to be good ones. That will be a better one if you are going to be low on protein. But again organic acid test will do a really good job as long as the diet of protein is up. I typically, if I see someone with protein issues or digestion stuff I tend to wait a couple of months before we do an organic acid test just to make sure the diet is dialed in and their breaking down the food and they are on the right track.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. You talked a lot about what detox is and our body’s own detox mechanisms. We talked about the liver, we talked about the skin, the colon and even the lungs a little bit. So one thing that people might ask is, well if we have all of these mechanisms in our body already. And we talked about how it might misfire. But they might still question why do we need to run a specific detox program? Why would I need to detox? Then you are going to knock this one out of the park. You know, there are all these toxins and all these stuff in our environment, so why would we need it if our body is doing its job already?
Justin Marchegiani: Well, our body does its job and you know the healthier you are and the better quality food, water and sleep, you know you are going to be better. But I mean let us face it, there are about 60 different thousand compounds that are out there that really have not even been tested. It is about 1 to 2 billion pounds of production of pesticides per year. Not to mention the GMOs that has made us more dependent upon the roundup. Roundup thing is a chemical chelator that kills the weeds by pulling away and stripping away their nutrients, right? So when that strips away nutrients from plants so there will be a nutritional deficiencies in our food. They have done studies where they looked at areas untouched by humans like the Antarctica, note that the various glaciers tested chemically and they found chemicals and crap in there. So it is like, “Man!” You can be hundreds of miles away from industry, humans, and still get exposed to these crap. The Environmental Wellness Group or Environmental Working Group, I think it is, tested I think 30 or 40 babies. They tested the umbilical cord fluid and they found 130 chemicals. Now again, you are going to have some people that are going to be fine, right? They produce lots of glutathione. They have good gallbladder and good gut function where they can just flush these things out. And then you have kids that produce low glutathione. You have kids that are more sensitive. These are the kids that are going to come down with a lot of these, frankly. They will have a hard time removing various toxins, right? On to some study ten years ago were on babies’ hair. And they looked at babies’ hair and said, “Hey, look! It is interesting we found the least amount of mercury in the autistic kids’ hair. The kids that did not have autism had a higher amount of mercury in the hair.” They were actually removing it. The kids that had more autism had less mercury in the hair. So people looked at it and said, “Hey! Mercury is even a problem. Just look. These autistic kids do not even have much mercury in the hair.” But they did not look at them from the perspective of, note hair is a means of detoxifying, pushing things out. They could not push it out. It was stuck in their tissues.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Yes it is almost like when people start to do these, you know sometimes could be important but sometimes could throw you off, these urine test the pH. The pH in your blood is regulating your body and does not want to throw that off.
Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Baris Harvey: And you would say like, “Oh, you want to balance the pH, if it is acid it is bad but if it is alkaline then it is good. Well, that is your body’s way to regulate it; it is to pee off the extra stuff it does not need. The same way if we are taking a boat load of B vitamin, yes it is going to look like Gatorade or it is going to be neon colored. It is like your body takes it and needs it and then uses it to the urine as a detoxification mechanism to excrete stuff. So the same way with the mercury as an example that you said and speaking of that, I mean you can find so many documentaries on these kind of things but if we look at a lot of these petrochemical companies or these fracking companies or these companies that you know blow up mountains in order to get the stored carbon from super deep fossil fuels. A lot of the times you find a community that is near those places. A lot of the children or the schools have a really imbalanced amount or really highly odd number of kids that do have autism or has neurological problems. But it is like, okay maybe generally there might be a couple of autistic kids in a school, maybe one or two. But if you go around these locations where they are fracking or they had petrochemical companies, it is like the number is crazy. There is like two whole classrooms or maybe doing classes with different autistic kids inside. Wait, maybe there is a sign here. If you have a lot of money from those, you know…
Justin Marchegiani: Getting exposed to more chemicals, right? Let us say you have genetic methylation defects and you are taking your folic acid, multivitamin, you got some gut issues, right? So, are not conjugating all of the crud that your liver and gallbladder are spitting out. You got a lot of dysbiosis. You are constipated. And you are being exposed to all these environmental crap; you are going to be at risk, right? And especially if you give birth, you are going to probably pass on those same predispositions to your children and they are going to be at risk for, you know, autism. And I always look at autistic kids as the canary in the coal mines for the environment, right? Yes, I think what is the expression now? Genetics loads the gun but the environment pulls the trigger. So, we got to be careful. I mean a lot of these detoxification programs may not have been appropriate 50, 60, 80 years ago. Food, good food, good clean environment may have been enough. But in today’s world, I really believe it is very important. You know, just starting out, yes. Just work on stopping the flood of chemicals into your body, right? Detoxification is more like letting the toxins that are already in there out easier in a safe way. But the lifestyle and the diet stuff is running the massive amount getting in there in the first place. So work on that first.
Baris Harvey: Exactly. So, like we mentioned earlier, if you guys are doing a lot of the right things. You guys are eating the right food, exercising. Maybe true that you are preventing a lot of the toxins from coming in first. But you are still finding that you are having problems removing that many years off your skins. Not where you want it to be. Maybe your weight, you are wondering why you cannot lose like this extra 10 pounds and you are doing everything right. Or maybe you just have chronic fatigue or some brain inflammation, maybe I do.
Justin Marchegiani: (Laughs)
Baris Harvey: But with that being said, go to beyondwellnessradio.com. You know, make sure you get in contact with us. Let us know if you have these issues. You can set up a conversation so that way you know we can take that next step.
Justin Marchegiani: Take the next step and really do a comprehensive nutrient replacement detox program. The best next step would be to run a really good quality comprehensive organic acid test. And again, you can reach out to us. You can find the lab testing in my store at justinhealth.com/shop. Click on the lab test tab and you will find the comprehensive Genova organic acid test and that can be the next right thing to order for you. I just did mine two days ago. I run mine twice a year every six months. Just ran my wife’s as well. So that is something that I believe in and I do twice a year. And got to dial in my supplements and detox program accordingly.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Now, I know we went kind of in depth and we kept it on the lifestyle and stuff like that. And we gave an opportunity for people to come in and kind of find themselves. And I know there are going to be some people wondering and just like, “What are the really strong or special foods that I can take? Or any supplements? Like maybe I am doing fine. Maybe they are, you know, an active person and they just want that next little edge. Maybe they drink some lemon water, some milk thistle.
Justin Marchegiani: Excellent source of glutathione precursor is going to be grass-fed whey protein. Grass-feed whey protein is great. If you are vegan vegetarian, if you can get the grass-fed whey protein then that will be awesome. If not, about 2 grams of NAC. You just got to be careful though if you got some detox issues you may feel worse and have a die-off from Herxheimer reaction because of it. So again like I said, you want to make sure the gut is working well. If not, you can juice up some cruciferous vegetables. Good old cruciferous vegetable juice is great. Just be careful with doing too much fruit because that can create more dysbiosis and more fungal stuff because of all the critters in there. So you just got to be careful. And go a little bit of small amount of pineapple, a small amount of green apple or carrots. But a little bit then to maybe add a little taste to it. That can be a really good thing to start. So if you are a vegetarian, it is a good quality juice, green juice and ideally these grass-fed whey protein are some great places to start.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Any special herbs? I know if you like to cook make sure you are using different herbs. I got some easy way to put in like turmeric or black pepper there you get some extra antioxidants and some anti‑inflammation stuff. So if you are cooking, use a lot of different spices and herbs not only because it will make your food taste better but it is good for you as well.
Justin Marchegiani: It is not going to be a full on program but Yogi makes a good detox tea. This nice detox tea by Yogi that is very good. I use a really simple thing; it is just silymarin, artichoke and turmeric. I use a liposomal formula that is more for tonification and antioxidant support. That is always very helpful. And if you have gallbladder stuff, and you know you are not breaking down fat well. You may have had a history of gallbladder issues. You may get that little bit of tenderness under the right side of the rib cage. You know some extra French tree or artichoke that can be very helpful at loosening up bile flow. Maybe adding a little bit of beets into your diet as well. Also get one thing, just take some beets. Do a transit time test. Make sure you are eliminating your stool within 20 to 24 hours.
Baris Harvey: Yes.
Justin Marchegiani: 20 to 24 at the most. 20 ideally. So make sure that is happening. If you are getting your stool out 20-24 hours then you probably are an okay candidate for a detox program. That is also not good because you are not going to be absorbing, so your problems will not be solved anyway. You could be nutrient deficient because what is happening there is your body is kind of holding crap literally and this whole bunch of toxicity in my colon. Well, what happens is this toxicity once you dilute it so the body just sucks all this water into the colon; it dilutes a lot of the toxins. Why? Because the solution to pollution is dilution. Say that ten times fast. So it dilutes a lot of toxins in the colon then flushes it out, right?
Baris Harvey: Right. Yes, definitely. I am thinking some of these fatty acids are probably beneficial and maybe like the coconut oil with the Caprylic acid that is, you know also in butter and stuff like that.
Justin Marchegiani: If we take in more fat, high quality fat, it kind of is like that solution to pollution is dilution. Like we are diluting a lot of the fats that are toxic. And our body has some fats to remove or to help bind into it so it makes it less concentrated, if you will. So good quality fats are going to help with fat soluble toxin detox. Do not be one of those people that go low fat. It is not going to be good for your detoxification system.
Baris Harvey: Yes. Definitely. Well, that sounds awesome. A lot of great key points, a lot of great things that people could take action on today. With that being said, you guys again we really appreciate it when you guys ask us questions and give us more ways to help you guys out. If you go to beyondwellnessradio.com, there is link out there that you can click on to write a review. This helps us get the show out to more people and get this message heard. I wish I would have heard this stuff when I was…
Justin Marchegiani: (Laughs) I wish I was 11 years old. We want to provide you guys with awesome information. So let us know what you like and let us know what you do not like. We want good feedback. We want to improve this show for you. Let us know some great topics. We have a new app up there. You can speak your question and we will play it live on the show and we just want to give you guys better information to help you guys get healthier. So let us know what we can do to be better.