How to Deal with Stress and Feeling Overwhelmed – Functional Medicine Approach | Podcast #380

Let’s get real: there are times when you’re going to feel overwhelmed. Whether with work, school, social obligations or just life, we all feel anxious, overwhelmed, or stressed at some point. In this podcast, Dr. J and Evan discuss that giving yourself grace and patience when you have these feelings is essential as well as your gut health.

Different coping mechanisms work for each person. The following suggestions can help. If one doesn’t work for you, consider trying a different one. The most important thing is to check your diet since what you eat can significantly affect your overall function.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:00 – Introduction
2:28 – Foundational Physiology
12:51 – Mold and Fight and Flight Response
28:35 – Takeaways

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. I’m with Evan Brand today. We are so excited to be back at you with a live podcast. We’re going to be chatting about stress and overwhelm, and how to deal with it. What’s the functional medicine approach? Evan what’s cooking, man? How have you been? 

Evan Brand: Oh, really good man. The first thing. Let me make sure my camera looks good. The first thing is like people run to alcohol in modern society, it’s socially acceptable to run to the liquor store, even as a soccer mom, and go buy enough alcohol to just kill your whole family and nobody bats an eye. And that’s like our.Coping mechanism not just as Americans, but other societies too. So I’m hoping today everything people have been through. Overwhelm is huge, man. A lot of people are burned out. A lot of people are frazzled. The stress response is broken. Their fuses are short. They’re nervous systems are stuck in fight or flight. So I was like, man, let’s hit this as a topic because, let me tell you, the pharmaceutical route is nasty too. It’s Gabba like products, but it’s Xanax and lorazepam and all these benzos, which are benzos terrible. They’re addicting. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That could be hard to get off. You start at a, you know, 0.25 to 0.5 milligram dose, and then you keep on ratcheting up and then it’s hard to come off it once you start getting really high. 

Evan Brand: Now if you saw a VAT of adaptogenic herbs that you and I have consumed in the last decade between us it would be a large VAT of adaptogenic herbs, but that’s what allows us to work hard with sick people and raise children and keep up with animals and wives and houses and all of that. And so for me, that’s my first thing for someone. If I could take someone as a conventional American on the street going to drink alcohol tonight because they’re stressed or overwhelmed. I’m gonna say, hey, instead of reaching for that bottle, reach for the bottle of water or maybe some herbal tea like chamomile if you want. But then let’s hit some adaptogens. Let’s go for maybe some Relora. Let’s hit the passion flower. Let’s hit Rhodiola, let’s hit something that we can do to change the stress response. There’s tons of studies but today’s more free flowing conversation. But if you type in Rhodiola stress, there’s many, many studies done on this and how it literally alleviates the feeling of stress meaning, you and I can’t magically make the stress and overwhelm disappear from someone’s plate. But what we can do is provide their body nutrients so that their brain, their nervous system, doesn’t think that plate is as full as it really is. And that’s the cool thing about these. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. So when I look at any type of stress, I always look at the foundational Physiology because if you take someone’s Physiology and you throw it off kilter like for instance the easiest stressor to put someone under acute is acutely is just don’t sleep for a night and then let me just kind of, you know, see you in the morning and list out all my problems and complaints and stressors that you have to then deal with. Well, you’re gonna have problems being able to take that information in and be able to execute. So we have to look at the foundational Physiology. So the first thing is sleep means if you can just get 8 to 10, eight hours of sleep and get to bed on the other side at midnight. That sets your Physiology up in regards to recycling your neurotransmitters having a good healthy cortisol awakening response. That circadian rhythm or cortisol is higher in the morning and lower at night. So then you have this inverse melatonin-Cortisol ratio. Where your cortisol drops at night, your melatonin goes up and then of course, you know, making sure the food is nutrient dense, good proteins as fascinate meal and we’re not overdoing the carbs, what our body needs and it’s anti-inflammatory and we’re stabilizing that blood sugar because people forget one of the biggest stressors on our hormones is that blood sugar fluctuation throughout the day the more this glycemia we have, the more our blood sugar goes up and down, like a roller coaster. We have to make stress hormones to bring it up and then insulin to bring it down, which then causes us to be in a fat storing mode. And so if we can manage your blood sugar, prevent these disc glycemic swings, we can make sure we have good proteins and fats. Stay away from the junkie process, fats, and we manage that blood sugar reading every maybe five hours or so and getting to bed on time. That sets the foundational Physiology and then we can come in there and biohack and add other nutrients and stuff as well. 

Evan Brand: Meaning if you’re a vegan, living on date bars and drinking yourself to sleep with wine. Yeah, you gotta stop. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, like with alcohol, like every now and then is having a little bit of alcohol to kind of distress. Is it OK? Sure. Choose clean organic alcohol, do it after a meal, maybe have some activated charcoal or or some NAC. But that’s like at the end you really want to have the foundational food, the foundational nutrients. Again, if supplementally, the easiest things I’m going to add and I like to stick to nutrients first, so I’m gonna do magnesium. That’s a very kind of sedating, calming, supporting herb. I mean nutrients and minerals. It’s going to have 300 enzymatic roles in the body, anywhere from blood sugar to relaxation, to relaxation in the heart, to vasodilation, to sleep. Very anti-inflammatory in the brain so I love magnesium. You can even do it with a magnesium salt Epsom salt foot bath which is great too. If you have gut issues that help with the absorption you could be doing theanine which is an amino acid that helps upregulate and support healthy GABA levels you can even add-in pharma GABA, maybe a sublingual GABA tablet, that’s excellent as well. So a magnesium, GABA theanine, these are excellent things out of the gate from a nutrient standpoint. Anything else nutritionally you want to highlight? 

Evan Brand: Well, I told you, I was texting you over the weekend. I got hit with something luckily I’m back in action. But my resting heart rate was pretty fast, so my nervous system was just kind of boom, boom, pumping, responding to whatever type of sickness I had. And so that kept me up. So I took some motherwort as you know, motherwort is one of my favorite herbs, because it’s great for the heart. We use it for A-fib, we use it for atrial flutter or any kind of heart palpitation type symptoms. It’s amazing, it’s calming that, but it’s great it’s calming emotional stress too. So if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re frazzled, if you’re even getting to the point where you’re like.I’m going to have a mental breakdown. I’m gonna have a panic attack. Somebody put me on some kind of drug. A lot of times psychiatrists will prescribe antipsychotic medications, which are not the answer. They’re not the root cause at all, but motherwort can really calm you. So it’s an emotional support and it’s a heart nervous system support and it’s great if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t get back to sleep. Take a little squirt, go lay back down. It’s amazing. Doesn’t taste great, but it works amazing. So I would rate that as more potent than something like theanine. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. And then also um ashwagandha I find to be very helpful as well. I’ll take that before bed if I need to, I’ll typically do a magnesium before bed. Ashwagandha can be really good, especially if you’re stressed because that’s going to help modulate the high cortisol, but also can help bring up any of the low cortisol as well, so ashwagandha is excellent. You can easily combine that with the Rhodiola. Two things like ginseng tend to be a little more stimulating so things like ashwagandha are going to be great and even phosphorylated serine. Serine can be very common. What serine does? It sensitizes the receptor sites on the hypothalamus to cortisol. So there’s this natural feedback loop of cortisol circulating in the body. It binds to receptor sites in the brain and the brain is like, whoa, this is a little bit high, let, let’s kind of calm down that cortisol secretion so it helps regulate that cortisol from getting too high, so phosphorylated serines are excellent. PhosphatidylSerine is kind of 1 electron. It’s one step in the enzymatic process backwards. So phosphorylated it’s better because it’s a little bit more activated and activated state. So that’s excellent.

Evan Brand: Man, I’ve been looking at some papers on mold toxicity and melatonin. So mold actually does a couple things. That’s crazy. If you type in mycotoxins, dopamine, you can find papers saying that mycotoxins damage the part of the brain that makes dopamine, so then you’re less likely to have energy and focus and concentration. So I’m sure that brain fog increases your stress and overwhelms you because you feel like you’re less capable of being a parent, being a boss, whatever you got to do at work. So, that’s one impact of mycotoxins and then also it’s reducing melatonin. So, I know when I was out of my house, we were staying in a hotel for like six weeks with the kids. It was crazy, but I didn’t sleep. I mean, it took me 3 different hotel rooms to find one where I could sleep and I just, I’m assuming now it was a mycotoxin issue, screwing up my sleep. I’m sure I was stressed from being out of my house. I mean that was years ago now. But I look back at that time and I go, Oh my God, anytime I’m exposed to mold, like in a hotel, I just don’t sleep. And then the research proves that. So my advice is if someone is dependent upon medication and herbs, a supplement for sleeping. If you are sleep deprived, the first thing you mentioned is the foundation. If you are sleep deprived and that’s creating stress, well, what’s your environment look like? Do you have good air purification? Do you have dehumidifiers? Do you have a mold problem? Do you have water leaks? Are you living in a moldy apt, a condo or townhome? It has water damage because if so even the most perfect supplement protocol can’t counteract us, so you may need to take steps to investigate your air quality, like some Petri dishes. And maybe there’s something there. Maybe when you get out of there, you sleep better. That’s a good clue that you’re onto something.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The problem is most people, they have issues and they take action, but they’re still kind of anxious about what’s going on. So it’s really important. Action should help with the anxiety. Like the reason why anxiety is there from an evolutionary standpoint is to get you to take action to avoid, I don’t know if there’s someone gotten that woods. Last month they got eaten by a bear. Well, yeah, when you get near that woods you should be anxious because your body’s hardwired and make you more alert so you don’t get eaten by that bear. So you have to understand where the anxiety is coming from and as long as you’re taking actions. And you’re closing the loop, so to speak, on what that anxiety is coming from. You should feel better about it. And so I always say whatever the anxieties are, just try to have one or two solutions for each one of those. Then your brain knows, hey, I’m doing something about it, I can turn down that stress response because action are already being taken. So think about that as well. And then also like you mentioned, hey, if I have, if I’m uncertain about my environment, let’s get that mole test. If the mold test is positive, let’s do at least one thing to make sure that the environment gets better. Are there active leaks? Do I see water stains on the ceiling? Is there a chronic high level of humidity? Let’s work on that.If not, we can always just get in some good air filtration. We can work on fog in that area, make sure there’s no active leaks coming in. Then we’re, you know, getting a dehumidifier in there. We’re taking active steps. So you shouldn’t feel as anxious about that environment because you’re starting to make it healthier. 

Evan Brand: And people say, what the heck are they talking about molds for on a podcast about stress and overwhelm? Well, here’s the mechanism. Your immune system responds to the mold as a threat, and it is a subconscious threat, meaning you Evan, or you Justin sitting here, you might think, OK, I’m not very stressed right now, like, I’m having a good time, this is great. But your nervous system subconsciously is running all these programs that are saying, hey, look, there’s actually a toxin in this room I’m responding to. And so you’re amygdala, your fighter flight system, part of your limbic system sends out an alert. Danger, danger, danger. And you may not even know it. So you could be sitting here on your couch, anxious for no reason. And it’s your limbic system. And many, many people report when they improve their air quality. They can settle down. So that’s the mechanism. I want people to understand when you think overwhelm you think just emotions in your head. But no, these external factors, these external toxins and variables can impact you. I mean, what about a bad neighbor? What about every time you see your neighbor’s car pull up, you’re like, Oh my God, there’s John again. And John stresses you out every time he pulls in the driveway because you guys got in an argument, so, you have to.Integrate some four of, I would say trauma release into all of this too. So you and I are big fans of tapping. So I would say if you’re catching yourself in these loops, you mentioned closing, closing the loop, which I think is smart but if you’re stuck in a loop well maybe you could integrate some tapping to pull you out of that. So tapping is basically acupuncture, but without the needles. You tap these points and then you say an affirmation. You know, I’ve done that many, many times here. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it’s very good. Kind of helps calm down the nervous system response. There’s different programs out there. I’ll put some links down below like there’s DNRS or the Gupta program. These are excellent programs that involve visualization, maybe some aspects of NLP. You really work on controlling the thoughts and the images in your brain, whether you do tapping or eye movement like EM DRI movement, desensitization, response techniques, these things help calm down that fight or flight response and then you kind of allow you to be using more of your frontal brain because the data is when you’re in this chronic stressed out state, the amygdala right that. That forebrain or that hindbrain is kind of more active, that’s the prehistoric brain that is involved in fight flight and that fear response. And so most people are all working from this reptilian brain versus that frontal cortex that involves thinking and looking at your options and coming up with solutions and problem solving and predicting outcomes based on where you’re at, right. We need that frontal brain. But if we’re using our reptilian brain right, then that’s gonna be activated with a lot of these stressors. And so one study right here, I’m looking at, I’ll pull it up here and we can talk about it. I think that kind of supports what you’re saying regarding mold and this fight or flight response, being a big deal. So this one study here was looking at mold inhalation causes an innate immune activation, neural cognitive and emotional dysfunction. And they were talking about intranasally administering different, you know, this is black mold Stachybotrys. And they were looking at, you know, innate immune activation, toxic mold and how it affects your emotions. And of course it’s going to impact inflammation. It’s going to cause joint pain. It’s gonna cause sleep issues. You mentioned earlier, it also has a major effect on dopamine. Can you highlight that again? 

Evan Brand: Yeah. Dual control F is dopamine in that paper. It might be a different paper. See if you can find it. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, here you go. So exposing drosophila to 0.5 mil part per million of this chemical causes significant loss of dopamine neurons. So decreased dopamine levels and initiated onset of Parkinson’s, suggesting that exposure to mold produces the chemical that may be another environmental risk factor for Parkinson’s disease. So dopamine is really important for feeling good, for focusing, for dealing with stress. It’s that neurotransmitter that gives you that kind of connection that makes you feel loved, so really, really important and it talks about long term inflammation following mold exposure and autoimmune changes in the brain. So that’s that’s powerful. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, this is huge. Uh, trying to get Dale Bredesen on the podcast, he wrote a book called the End of Alzheimer’s. And now he’s really hitting the mold angle as an Alzheimer’s link. I think it’s a huge piece of the puzzle. That and heavy metals but many people may hear this and they may just glaze over what we’re seeing. We’re literally saying that your environment could be contributing to a neurodegenerative disease where your neurologist is not going to have a clue. They’re not going to be testing you for this stuff. They’re not going to ask you about your water leak under your kitchen sink. They’re not going to be running mycotoxins in the urine, they’re not gonna look at the Great Plains or organic acids test. So in terms of. We’ll talk about testing in a second, but I think we should describe to people, how do you know if you’re in a state of overwhelm? Because many people are so used to living in fight or flight that they don’t really know how to downshift. So maybe we should go through symptoms, I will say inability to make decisions or analysis paralysis, like, if you’re struggling just to decide what to make for dinner, or you’re struggling just to decide what to do tomorrow, that’s that’s a huge problem. You can’t comprehend simple decision making, I would say loss of libido, loss of energy, motivation, sleep disturbance, maybe some sugar cravings, brain fog, anxiety, I would say distractibility or escapism, meaning you’re always jumping from like social media app to social media app. Like you just don’t want to live in your reality because you’re in a state of overwhelmed, that’s like escapism. What else would you add to the list? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like, well, I would say it just depends where someone’s at, right? If someones going into an acute exposure or an acute stressor and they have a good foundation. That’s a good, that’s good because a good foundation you know allows you to deal with and adapt to stress. So I always look at it’s always good to model healthy people. So you work on the water, you work on the food, the blood sugar, the good fats, the good proteins, the sleep before midnight, getting enough movement so you feel energized but not tired. That’s a foundation. And then if the stressor comes into your world like mold, right? In this study, they talk about not just mold, but pesticide exposure, smoking. Right. So basically I’m looking at air and living quality. So the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to just cross things off my list. I’m gonna get a mold test from my house, whether it’s a plate test or an army test. I’m going to make sure I have good quality air filtration because even at my home there is no mold. You’re going to still have some off gassing of some furniture or paint or carpet or hardwoods or professional grade vinyl. There’s something in your air that’s gonna be more stressful and so you want to make sure you have a good quality air filter. Whether it’s an Austin air or an air doctor, you’re going to want to make sure your water is filtered and clean, and then you want to make sure if you’re in a human environment, you know, get a dehumidifier for your home and keep the humidity below 50%. I think that’s really key out of the gate. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. What other symptoms do you think somebody would experience if they were in a state of overwhelm? Well, it depends. I mean, chronic overwhelm can just happen by having a lot of open loops on someone’s plate, a lot of stressors that are in your environment, emotional stressors, and you’re not taking action on them and now you have 2, 3, 4, 5. And so your body is going to cause you to get really anxious, really stressed and really overwhelmed because you’re not closing the loops. And so I just look at what are the top three things that are stressing you out from an emotional stress thing you haven’t taken action on. Just pull out your phone or paper and just write down what they are and write down A&B options for each one. And then say OK, good, I got them down and I’m gonna execute it when the time’s right, but I can at least put that to bed. And so that’s a really important thing. It’s kind of like that. Just trying to think of one situation. We had a, you know, mold issue in my home and it was like, OK, took action on it, got the remediation person out, got the air filtration, did it the right way, did in a negative air containment. Make sure we test it like.I just, I took action. But, you know, when I knew this problem, this environmental stressor was there, it was stressing me out because of all the unknown, right? And so I just said, I’m going to take action. I’m going to handle it the best way possible. I’m going to make sure we test, I’m going to make sure we clean it out. And I felt a lot better about it. But the more you leave these things open, it just kind of gnaws at you quite a bit. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, this applies to the debt too, right? A bill here, a medical debt here, a debt here on the car and then the car is going back like, so those things, you got to try to chip away at those too, I mean, this is in the financial podcast, but I would tell people try to knock out your smallest debts. Because if you’ve got like this bill and this card and that card and that debt, like that really weighs you down emotionally. And I see it all the time with people. It’s a huge piece of the stress. So like if you’ve got a credit card. Let’s say you’ve got an Amazon or Target credit card with 500 bucks. Like knock that one out first and then go to your $5000. One, like you have to chip away at these things. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, I think biggest thing out of the gate, I mean you can look at some of the Dave Ramsey stuff on that, but if you use a credit card or not, like I use credit cards because they get 2% back on everything, right? So it’s like, OK, I’m gonna get paid 2% for using it. Sure, I’ll use it. The difference is I pay my credit card off every day. And the reason why I do that is running a business and doing all these things. There’s lots of expenses and one if I have hundreds of transactions at the end of the week.What if there’s fraud? What if there’s issues? At least I can see it every day and then I can also monitor it. I can have my pulse on what’s where money’s going in and out. And so it makes me feel on top of it. And I would say just from a stress standpoint, financially, you know, three to six months of living expenses, I think is a good one to have in savings at all times. So if any issues happen, you have that to lean back on too many people. I think you don’t have that three to six month buffer. I think that can be a big stressful thing. That’s just kind of in the background for sure.

Evan Brand: Yeah so even some of I think it was Shaq or someone I saw it’s been some, I think it was Shaq or someone I saw recently an interview, some extremely high level millionaire was saying that every day they still look at the numbers, they still check their numbers, the bills, where the moneys going, where the credit is, where the debt is, they still look at it even though they could buy anything in the world, they still take a look. So if you’re just out of the loop on, that’s a big problem. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And with phone apps, you know you can jump on it and you can finalize it and look at it in about one or two minutes. The more you kind of have your pulse on things, the better. I think it’s really good and then you know you could talk about all the inflation that’s happening. That’s a whole different strategy in regards to investment and such like that that you know we do a lot of things on the investing side as well. But I think the biggest thing is to have about three to six months and just be on top of income coming in and expenses going out. So you have your pulse on it.That allows you to pivot and make changes. 

Evan Brand: Yep. So that’s the financial piece, to try to get that buffer. The environmental piece, try to have a good clean Oasis where you can properly sleep, your nervous system can calm down. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think a couple of good air filters. Couple of good air filters. Get your home tested. Even if you just get a couple of the plates and you just wait five or seven days and count the spores and make sure the spores are under five or so, that’s fine. You can avoid setting it to the lab that is more than five, then we definitely want to send it to the lab. Um, you know, take a look at your ceilings. Go walk around, make sure you don’t see any spots on your ceiling. You know, go hire someone to come out once a year and just do a roof inspection. Just make sure your roof looks good. Go take a peek in your attic right, get a moisture meter and just kind of test the walls out a little bit and make sure everything looks good there. You know, those are all good simple things you can do out of the gates. 

Evan Brand: Keep the exhaust fan on if you’re gonna take a hot shower. I’ve seen many, many people have issues with that just because of that hot steam of 2020 minutes or however long the shower you’re taking, all that steams.Gotta go somewhere. So if you’re not sucking it out with an exhaust vent, it’s gonna have to soak into that drywall so that paper backing on that drywall can get real moist. We see that as a huge problem area. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. Or even just get a dehumidifier for your bath or even just a portable one. That’s a big one. If you don’t have an exhaust fan and you get a portable dehumidifier and just keep it on to at least pull that moisture out of the air and think that’s important. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, absolutely. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then I would say, I would say message. Get body work done, whether it’s chiropractic, that very coming on your nervous system, having your spine adjusted, that’s where your central nervous system flows from your brain down the spine, making sure your spine and your vertebrae are moving. Make sure soft tissue is doing well, those good pliability in that soft tissue. Making sure that fascia is being manipulated. Myofascial release different things to help that fashion that connective tissue stay soft and supple like a tenderloin versus harden and flame like beef jerky. Chiropractic, I think it’s powerful as well just to make sure all the joints in your hips are moving your upper cervical spine. Really important that that’s all kind of dialed in as well. All these are all really important things that can calm down that nervous system and inhibit the IML, the intermedial, I think it’s the intermedial cell column that kind of stimulates that fight or flight nervous system. 

Evan Brand: Turn your screen share off. That way I can see your figure. Yeah, the message is huge. I went to get a massage a couple weeks ago and the ladies like, yeah, we’re all fragrance free. And I went in there and my God, I left smelling like a dryer sheet. Like my wife is ready to kick me out of the car on the way home. She’s like, you reek. And so I guess they’re, they’re sheets at the massage studio just had driver seats on them or something. So that was a stressor for me because here I am going to do something good like call my system and then I leave smelling like a dryer sheet. So double check the head. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The best thing you can do, and I told you about it too, the best thing you can do is the cheapest thing is to get washed soda, which is basically baking soda for your washing machine. And then what you do is you do your wash and then you put like a 30 minute soak on there. Or one hour or soak you could do 30 minutes, right? Put a cup of the wash soda in there so you know it’ll sit for 30 minutes. The baking soda absorbs any smell, any stink. I had a little lemon shirt that was moldy. It was so bad because it got washed and then it sat there for a couple of days and it got moldy and the washer, I couldn’t get it out. I washed it like a dozen times. My mom comes into town, she’s like, oh, here, it’s just, it’s an Italian trick here and she will put the arm and hammer in there, do an hour soak, and it literally kills it. It felt brand new and I had washed it dozens of times wiith all these essential oils and anti mold uh, shampoos couldn’t touch the smell. So wash soda, especially if you’re sensitive. Use that to suck all the smell out of what’s in your detergent or anything else. And I’ll use just like the free and clear, no sense. I’m like Evan. I’m very, very sensitive to smell. Just really. It’s really ready to shop there for me, man. 

Evan Brand: It was my skin though. My skin ripped. I had to take like 2-3 showers. I still smell. Maybe I should, like, scrub myself with baking soda. It was nice. It was like impregnated into my skin, man. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t know what it is, but there’s like a I think it’s like I’m not sure if it’s younger woman today, but it’s like it’s like my parents generation that group wore at least the females a lot of perfume. Like you could literally be 15 feet away from someone and you could smell their perfume, it’s definitely changed. Like my wife’s generation, right, women in their 30s and 40s, there’s a less perfume smell. I think people are using more essential oils and natural things, but it’s funny how generations change how much perfume to last more and but I’m super sensitive to perfumes. We try to keep zero in our home and if we do anything, it’s like an essential oil or like a lavender or like a little bit of cedar or kind of rose. Those kinds of things keep it simple. 

Evan Brand: We could hit the smells for a minute too. That is a stress to the system. It’s a big stressor, yeah, especially if you’re burning it. So, like candles, throw them away. If they’re not essential oil based, it’s just garbage. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dryer sheets. Throw dryer sheets away. If you want to get the benefit of dryer sheets, you can get one of those static balls. Just put it in there.It’s like a little ball that knocks the static down. That’s the purpose of dryer sheets mostly, right? But then you don’t have all that scent and smell, so that’s a good way to kind of mitigate the stress from that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, we hit the blood sugar, the sleep, the environment, the smells, the finances, I mean, those are a lot of pieces of overwhelm, really. What else are we missing? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, close those loops. Look at what’s on your plate for stressors, what’s bugging you out, what pops into your head. Be on top of that. Also monitor that self talk. Most people, if you look at how you talk to yourself, that inner voice. right? Behind your head that you hear. Most people would not be friends with a person that spoke the same way as their inner voice. So make sure you really upgrade the quality of your inner voice. Having that inner voice really gives you guidance, intuition. But also don’t beat yourself up. I think it’s super important. There was no Anthony Robbins quote that was really important as well. It’s like, you’re going to do so many things right in the day, so many things you’re gonna do right and well. And you gotta give yourself a pat on the back. Because if you’re not watching yourself succeeding and then giving yourself that congratulations to that PAT in the back and you’re looking for your kids or your spouse or your friend to do it all the time, they’re not going to see enough of it. So really make sure you’re catching yourself doing a lot of the good things and pat yourself on the back for it. And you know, take your wins whenever you can take your wins.

Evan Brand: Yeah, no, that’s great advice. The rumination, right this negative self-talk, ruminating about your problems, thinking about your past, the things you did wrong, living with regret. Those are big problems. So someone told me years ago, 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I want to hit that. It’s really important. So the rumination, I find serotonin and acetylcysteine plays major major role that sulfur and serotonin for me I used to be a little more OCD and ruminating and getting my NAC up and getting my serotonin levels up five HTP and B6 really help rumination. It allowed me to kind of like OK that that’s the issue and then allowed me to disconnect from it and and then just kind of focus on what the next thing is and not have to be playing the loop on repeat all the time, which is very stressful. 

Evan Brand: Oh yeah, it’s huge. So people don’t understand that. They think once again negative self-talk, they think rumination they think .We’re talking about these emotional things, but no, we’re actually talking biochemistry. We’re talking neurotransmitters also. So what I was going to say is someone told me years ago, if you want to get out of your head to get into your body. So that’s what I do a lot of. If the weather is decent enough, I’m out there on the mountain bike, I’m out in the woods, I’m hiking, I’m biking and moving among the water. I’m doing something to get out of the head by getting in my body. So do that, and then the testing. Let’s talk about that, because you brought up serotonin and then overwhelmed. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, go. Go ahead, go ahead. Hit that part. One more thing that you brought up, I wanna hit it too. 

Evan Brand: OK, don’t forget. So if you’re overwhelmed, I would say do the following. Get the urine test, urine done at home. You can order it through our office. If you need help, reach out to Doctor J at justinhealth.com or Evan Brand on evanbrand.com. Let us help you order these at home from the Functional Medicine Lab so we can investigate the cause of this overwhelmed because there could be internal toxins. There could be pesticides, mycotoxins, bacterial overgrowth, parasites, worms, H. pylori, gut inflammation, brain inflammation, low neurotransmitters, nutrient deficiencies, all combining to create these emotional issues. So get the oh, we may want to look at stool, we may want to look at chemicals. But reach out and then we can help you develop a plan to figure this out. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Really important one last thing I wanted to highlight too is appreciation. Because most of the time when you’re overwhelmed, you’re thinking about what’s missing in your life or you’re thinking about this problem that you have to address and you’re like, I don’t know what, do I have time to do this? So you’re thinking about this expense that you’re thinking about things that you’re you’re missing or things that you have to expand or you have to lose, but when you appreciate your focusing on all the things that you have and you’re really trying to create context for that and really feeling that sense of gratitude and appreciation and appreciate essentially like if your finances appreciated, if your investments appreciate, they get greater, they get bigger. So you’re taking everything in your life and you’re feeling that sense of gratitude, making everything bigger in your life in regards to how you feel about it and how appreciative you are and having a perspective of, you know, if you live in the United States like you’re, you’re a one percenter just living in the United States, right? I mean I think it’s if you make $19,000 a year, right, which is poverty in this country. You’re 1% in the world. It’s like, whoa. That’s like, that’s perspective, right? Perspective also gives you appreciation.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, I can have dark humor with my grandparents. Like my grandma called me the other day. Apparently my grandpa hit a curb and busted a tire. They were without their car, then the tires on backorder. Nobody has that size in stock. And I was like, well, it’s better than being dead and she’s like, you’re right, you’re right. I’m gonna enjoy this. This is fun. We’re gonna get a rental car. It’s no problem. And so I just tell her all the time, you know, if there’s a complaint, like, at least you’re not dead because, you know, her relatives have disappeared. And you know, she’s one of the last women standing elf, that generation, you know, from the 40s. So I’m like grandma, like, enjoy it, you’re alive. This is amazing. And usually it kind of snaps her out of the funk. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, appreciation is important, right? Because usually you’re just focused on all the things that are going wrong and you’re just flipping that switch. And if you look at NLP and kind of the work of Richard Bandler, he is a really interesting guy, but he would always take a look at successful people and he talked to them. He’d want to know what’s the image in your head when you’re in this peak state and you’re succeeding and you’re doing well, what are the images in your brain look like at the time? Meaning like, what are you thinking of? What’s the picture real in your brain look like when you’re achieving and doing these things? And almost always it’s in the positive, almost always it’s showing in visualizing the outcome and you’re already seeing it happen multiple times already before you actually do it. And versus it’s the negative, it’s the worst case scenario. So really be aware of the picture screen on your brain almost like go within, pretend like you’re in a movie theater and you’re literally seeing the picture screen, which is what you’re seeing through your eyes. And then you’re really changing that screen. Like you’re the director directing that movie screen while you’re seeing it in the movie theater through your eyes. Does that make sense? 

Evan Brand: It does. It does to me because I do it all the time. I’m always trying to visualize the outcome. This has already happened. The person I want to say yes, already said yes. What I needed? It’s already here. Even though I don’t have it yet, I’ve already got it. And that goes a long way. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then also pretend like if you’re there in that movie theater inside your brain, remember you have control over that. If it’s in a bad space and you’re just all negative and you’re just looking at everything the wrong way, you can just put a new movie in, right? You’re not a victim, you’re not sitting there chained down like Clockwork Orange, right where they peeled the guys eyes open, right? It’s like you have control over what you’re watching, so put a different film in there. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, the last thing I would say is just take a nap. Like if you’re just so overwhelmed the middle of the day hits, you’ve got fatigue that can also be overwhelming because you’re so tired. You have so many obligations you’re trying to do, but you’re so fatigued. Number one, get the labs run so we could figure out why you’re so damn tired on paper will, 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your adrenals looked at, yeah. See how stressed out there do you have that chronic low DHEA? Are your neurotransmitters VMA, HVA, 5-hydroxy, indoleacetic? Are they all depleted and down? Because this could take a while to get this thing repleted. 

Evan Brand: Yeah. So if you’re feeling that, get the data then. If you gotta close your eyes for a minute, close your eyes, lay there and take a nap. If you can do it, if your lifestyle allows you to take a nap, escape from the kids, whatever you gotta do, do it. And hopefully you’ll come back a little more refreshed, a little more in control when you’re not so exhausted. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And when your neurochemistry is depleted, it’s really hard to willpower out, willpower that. And so sometimes, yeah, they get the food and the supplements on track and then it’s like then the willpower and then the energy and then the ability to now start doing the things you need to do is start to become easier, there’s less resistant to get this downhill kind of momentum, so that’s very important. And again, looking at the adrenals, looking at the neurotransmitters, looking at your DHEA sulfate, looking at your circadian rhythm, right, that circadian rhythm should should go up in the morning and down at night, and the more dysregulated that is if it’s reversed or flat, that tells me that stress feedback loop is disrupted and you’re probably using that amygdala in that brain stem. You’re operating more from that fight or flight state all the time. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, that makes sense if you need help, reach out. You can reach Doctor J at justinhealth.com worldwide consult meaning labs can be sent to your door. Wherever you are. You get the results. Look at them, make a protocol, get yourself better. So justinhealth.com for Doctor J and myself Evan at evanbrand.com. We look forward to helping you guys, and hopefully this content was helpful. Share it with your friends, your family. If we can get somebody else out of the whole, that’s what we love. I mean, it just takes one person that could totally transform your life. This is your husband you’re trying to get out of, overwhelm your wife. Have them listen to this so we can help lift them up because it’s gonna make your life way better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, just pick one thing. If you’re overwhelmed already and you’re like, crap, he just said 15 things, just pick one, like what’s the easiest thing that you can do? And then once you get some momentum, then we’re gonna go to two and then we’re gonna go to three. So just start kind of stacking and get that momentum and then you get that downward momentum going. Then it starts to be easier to add new modalities to the mix.

Evan Brand: Yep, Amen. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Alright man, great chatting with you Evan and hope everyone listening enjoyed it. Feel free to share with friends or family. We’ll put a link down below where you can review us. We really appreciate a review on both our iTunes channels. Super helpful. It’s the word out there and you guys have a phenomenal day.Take care of y’all.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/how-to-deal-with-stress-and-feeling-overwhelmed-functional-medicine-approach-podcast-380

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Hair Loss Restoration, Improve Testosterone, Inflamm-aging & Inflammation – Jay Campbell Podcast #373

Having a lush and full head of hair is a treasure we all want to enjoy. Having thick hair is seen as a sign of being youthful and having vitality — even being sexy. Millions of people find that they’re suffering from thinning hair or hair loss, called “alopecia” in medical terms. It’s a common problem that affects both men and women. Medical hair restoration is the only way back from thinning hair for many people. For a select number, though, their thinning hair is due to inflammation.

Dr J and Jay Campbell discuss that the good news is you can help your body control the amount of inflammation you’re experiencing by making simple changes in your diet and managing your stress levels. You can take a proactive approach to your hair restoration by eating a diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods. Try anti-inflammatory beverages and foods. While hair restoration is not an overnight process, making these small changes in your diet can support your body’s efforts to heal itself.

Reducing your inflammation can give your hair a chance to regrow. Be sure to reduce your intake of foods that promote inflammation and approach your doctor for a professional and safe course of action.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:00  – Introduction
3:35   – Hormones
49:27 – Insulin Resistance
55:17  – Peptides

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani in the house with Jay Campbell. Really excited for today’s podcast. We’re gonna be talking about a whole host of things from hair loss to improving testosterone, inflammation versus inflammation as well as just increasing consciousness. Jay, welcome to the podcast, man. How you doing? 

Jay Campbell: Doc, man, it’s an honor to be here always when I got a chance to speak with people in our profession who are knowledgeable. I’m privileged and humbled to be here. So, man, let’s make this amazing.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Very good. Well, in the functional medicine community kind of where I work, there’s a lot of people that complain about hair loss especially kind of people coming post-Covid, right? We’re doing a lot of nutritional things, diet things, improving digestion, absorption, trying to get inflammation down. But I kind of found you because you have a couple of products out there that I’ve heard some really good things about that kind of improve hair loss, improve hair restoration, outside of like you know your typical like Propecia, Rogaine, Minoxidil type of medications. I want to talk a little bit more about that just kind of out of the gates. Go ahead. 

Jay Campbell: Yeah. So, it’s, uh, again, thanks for being here. It’s an honor to be here with you today. I’m very excited always whenever I get the opportunity or the chance to talk about hair loss, um, when I speak about hair loss, I usually, for people that aren’t really up to speed, um, I kind of like dropped the hammer because as you know from reading my articles but you’re one of the few that actually wants to drill down to that rabbit hole because you know that article that was on ben greenfield’s website last summer that was three parts is over 10 000 words right? So, most people today don’t read in that depth but there’s a lot of science now out there that teaches us the real definition and cause of hair loss and drum roll please. Hair loss is caused by blood flow restriction to the scalp. There’s nothing else that causes hair loss but blood flow restriction to the scalp and blood flow restriction to the scalp is actually caused by a myriad, you know, number of things. I mean, there’s probably, I could give you a hundred answers as to what causes hair loss and you know that obviously is covered, uh, that is micro irritants that is you know heavy lead poisoning that is overexposure to the sun, that is stress, that is lack of sleep, that is hormonal related hair loss, right? So, DHT inhibition, uh, you know, women that have autoimmune disorders lack of sleep again causing cortisol spikes and you know over increases of prolactin, I mean, again, there’s so many different answers IGF-1, you know, insufficiencies and overproduction, so there’s  so many different things that can cause hair loss but we definitely at least now know that if we can control for the loss or the blood flow restriction to the scalp and do things to increase blood to the scalp, we can actually regrow hair and Justin what’s so cool is you know my product um you know without being a show or sounding like a shill. If you are suffering from a genetic predisposition which is you know androgenic alopecia or androgenic alloresia, there’s other ones you can actually minimize that by doing again the things that you need to remove inflammation from the scalp and increase what you would call angiogenesis to the scalp which is again increasing red blood cells and at some point, you know, as we get deeper into this you know, I’m happy to give people a lot of different things you can do, I have like a really cool meme that I can send you and you can post you know after the fact of like my and my business partner obviously nick  with our company but like our inner circle hacks of what you can do to massively increase hair loss as your hair regrowth as you age.   

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and I saw this article, I had it up here on the screen as we were kind of chatting. This was a phenomenal article I saw earlier in the year because it talked about DHT, we kind of know DHT is this like testosterone metabolite and so, as you get older, essentially you have these hairs that are naturally prone to be DHT sensitive and we know there’s different medications are out there to block that so just kind of for the average person you have your finasteride medications, you could do oral or topical thing that kind of block that which can be helpful for some people but then you kind of and I always intuitively knew there was an inflammation component because I’ve worked that many patients over the last decade where we improved their diet, we got their gut working better, we modulated cortisol, we did things to help kind of the immune response, glutathione, NAC, things to help with the oxidative stress around the scalp and I saw hair improvements significantly so I know there had to be something more than just DHT in and of itself and then you kind of posted a couple of articles talking about that so just to kind of you know we have like one major track in conventional medicine which is like you finasterides which are you’re like 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors, then you have like Rogaine minoxidil which are your vasodilators. Those are your two major paths but then you kind of come in so just kind of talk about how you took the two major paths and how you kind of had this little side detour that you find to be better. 

Jay Campbell: Man, I’m so glad to talk to you today man because I haven’t had a chance to go this deep but this is you know really what we have been attempting to expound and obviously we did a pretty good job myself Nick and Ben and we did Ben’s podcast and you know again, the article was three parts and Ben did a lot of stuff into this but to your questions. Let’s go really big pictures. So, the conventional medicine route was always about inhibiting DHT. But anyone who’s ever inhibited DHT whether it was from the script which is you’ve already mentioned Propecia finasteride or dutasteride, yep, you know topically they realized that those, you know, medications actually attached to the follicular root in the scalp somewhat I always say someone and again you know read the articles that we’ve written if you want to understand the true science but they will prevent further miniaturization but here’s the big gotcha, the big gotcha is that 90% of people who use any of those products to again further miniature or reduce miniaturization. If you stop, all the hair falls out, because they have attached to those follicles in the scalp blocking that conversion so once you stop the you know the actual taking of again the drug or the vasodilator because this also applies to minoxidil and Rogaine, uh, the hair falls out and again anyone who’s used these things has experienced this the other big issue is that there’s a very large percentage. There’s really no number, uh, of men and women sadly because don’t report this like men do but who suffer all sorts of dysfunction. Sexual dysfunction, brain dysfunction, uh, bone mineral density dysfunction from these drugs and again as you know because you’ve read them and you just brought them up but you know we wrote an article about DHT inhibition causing cellular dysfunction over time and the problem and again, I don’t want to worry people and this is a big rabbit hole but again you know happy to point people and you will obviously and you’re doing it now to the articles on our site that provides the science on this but over time DHT, inhibiting DHT, which is again a natural biological pathway causes cellular damage and this can be seen if you do genetic testing, if you do methylated genetic testing, if you go to trudiagnostic.com it’s T-R-U , you know it’s Ryan Smith’s company or if you use the Glycan age test. Any of these people now that are doing this kind of DNA at the cellular level tests can see people who have been using DHT inhibitors and by the way this also extends into testosterone optimization. If you’re using an AI an aromatase inhibitor medication because again, you’re blocking from an x. Yes. Exactly. You’re blocking very powerful and profound biological pathways that should never be inhibited. Now, remember most of DHT medications and AI medications were originally created for people that we’re suffering from cancer, right? And then these medications were extrapolated and one of my good friends in medicine always like says extrapolation does not correlate to causation, right, you know, they’re putting them over into these other fields like hair replacement or hair restoration and of course suppressing estrogen and people using therapeutic hormones, uh, it was bad thing all together and now we have you know five seven 10 15 years of observation and we can see the harm that it’s causing but Justin, a lot of people will come out, you know, who and they’ll listen to this podcast and they’ll say but J I’ve been using a DHT inhibitor, it’s stopped my hair loss, I get my blood work done twice a year, I have absolutely no issues right. Like, I’m low body fat. I’m low inflammation, I take care of myself, I have clean diet and I will say that’s absolutely true but what do your telomeres look like. And so, this is a whole big thing and I would say that like over the next three to five years as more and more people start doing these DNA based tests and they can really look at the end caps and they can see what these DHT inhibitors and AI drugs or medications are doing. It’s gonna be a major reveal and I will just one throw one other thing I there just to like drop the hammer. The majority of men who have died in the last three years, uh, you know pro-body-builders physique athletes, performance athletes, competitors, even strong men of quote unquote heart attacks or sudden death because again, they’re using God knows, what you know in the kitchen sink, those guys actually died of what are called micro fissures in their vascular networks from using AIs. The AI’s literally are causing fissures.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh wow! That’s the reason why, huh? Yeah, I know, they’re doing a whole bunch of medications. 

Jay Campbell: I have. I’m the only guy that’s brave enough to come out and say this. And again, there’s nobody doing autopsies on these people and I’m not gonna mention names. I am very connected to people who worked with these guys or work with these guys, previous to them dying and we know what they’re using and

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re not hearing this from the heart, the heart issues, the heart hypertrophy due to the steroids. Is there any component in that too?

Jay Campbell: Absolutely. Dude, there isn’t a single bit of research in the entire world that shows that testosterone causes anything. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I imagine these guys probably aren’t just on bioidenticals, they’re probably. 

Jay Campbell: Exactly, kind of, I mean. Exactly, so we’re talking about that’s exactly right. So, we’re talking about when you’re taking super physiologic levels of all sorts of things, right? And all sorts of things are going wrong and all sorts of harm is being caused but what we definitely do know is it’s the Ais that are causing the blockage in the vascular network and look let me explain the science behind this because this needs to get out there more. You never inhibit estrogen, ever. Most doctors out there today still do not understand that there’s no such thing as estrogen or high estrogen symptoms or side effects. These side effects that are being caused are due to inflammation. People have too much visceral body fat. They’re on, you know, therapeutic hormones. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a man or woman and the exogenous hormones are causing an inflammatory response. Their inflammasomes being released from the visceral fat, normally that causes the quote unquote side effects of like you know water retention or you know irritability or mood disablement. All these people literally extrapolate that to high estrogen symptoms it’s completely a falsehood. All the science and evidence shows that you need healthy levels of estrogen to confer protection to biological systems so whenever you use testosterone whether you’re a man or woman you should never block estrogen, you know, again, through aromatization because that is what is going to convert protection to the vascular network to the brain to bone mineral I mean all of these things need estrogen and I dude, I go on Instagram yesterday. And I’m looking at, I won’t name names because they’ll name names but very very well-respected people with massive audiences way bigger than me who do not understand this still who are still recommending to their patients about preventing or miniaturizing or blocking aromatization. I know, we rabbit whole from hair loos but all of this stuff relates yeah and I’ll take it back very simplistically, you cannot block a God-created or biologically-created system in the body and not think that you’re gonna have if you’re, basically, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, right? They’re going to have downstream issues and effects that are going to show up within time, you know my business partner Nick love to call you know he’s a dork. Third order effects, right? But, like, the reality is you’re going to see nasty things happen when you do this and unfortunately medicine, conventional, not you and me, conventional loves to use these drugs to screw around with the biological cascade that was again created, you know in these perfect bodies that we have, not realizing that doing that is going to have long-term damage.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. So, what about using natural compounds because you’re talking about like you know the Aromatase inhibitors, right? You’re talking about some of the pharmaceuticals but just by keeping inflammation down by avoiding processed grains and excess omega-6 oils. That may also have an improvement on things just selenium and zinc and nutrients may have some mild DHT, estrogen metabolizing effects. Eating cruciferous vegetables and some of the sulfur-rich compounds may help with some of that too. So, we kind of draw a line between natural things that may have a more modulating effect versus drugs that may kidn of be in discretionary and kind of go too over the top too high or low on that. 

Jay Campbell: So, yeah. So, it’s a great question, so like I get this question a lot all the time, you know, people will ask me well what about natural stuff you know, like doctor, I got one, a question like to days ago Dr. Berg recommends, you know natural, you know using things to naturally suppress estrogen. Okay, so again, let’s go back. We do not want to suppress estrogen. What we do want and you already said it is, we want less inflammation. How we suppress inflammation is not being fat and obviously one of the talking points that we have on this call is what is the greatest strategy for a human being to minimize disease as they age. The greatest strategy and by the way, if you ask a hundred doctors that question one will get it right, the greatest strategy to minimize disease as we age is building muscle because muscle is the greatest deterrent to the disease of aging because muscle is the most metabolically active tissue and muscle does not allow for inflammation. Now, I’m not talking about becoming a huge body builder but I’m talking about being functionally lean as we age when you build muscle you have less fat, the more muscle you have, the less chance you have, the disease, again the less inflammation, the more bone mineral density you have, the more functional strength you have on and on it goes so I mean like the reality is all those things you said are great adjuvants you know cruciferous vegetables, uh, you know minimizing seed oil consumption, living insulin control, I love talking about this kind of stuff but at the end of the day, you have to build muscle and you know, I’m not one of those guys that says oh, you shouldn’t do cardio and you only build muscle, you have to have a holistic viewpoint. You know, if you’re a man, I mean I just got into this yesterday with a very, very big influencer, I won’t name her name, she’s very, very well, now we talk all the time and she’s like not doing cardio and she’s almost 50 and I’m like what, you know, I’m starting to get belly fat, I won’t do cardio, well then that belly fat’s gonna keep coming like there’s no amount of growth hormone or testosterone or peptides or anything that you’re gonna take, if you don’t increase movement patterning, right? So, I mean, at the end of the day, all those things are amazing but build muscle, be functionally strong, you know, we can talk mindfulness and yoga and meditation and doing all that stuff and being pliable but you got to build muscle because the more sick you get it’s not okay. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let me kind of go rapid fire, you hit a bunch of avenues I want to go down, so from a movement, um, muscle building standpoint are we just talking about functional movements, push pull band, squat kind of lunge type of patterns. Anything more like super slow, certain periodization bands, cables, I mean, kind of what does your routine look like, just you know, what would be that they, if you look at your routine kind of from a thousand-yard view, what would be the key core things you’d want to distill to other people that they can apply to theirs? 

Jay Campbell: Dude, man, I love your questions dude. You’re the best. You’re the best interviewer I’ve been on in a long time. Very, very knowledgeable man, so great credit to you. Um, that’s a very open-ended question, and I would say that, the answer is I’ll definitely give my, you know, regimen, my wife and its regiment and I’m 51 you know and I look literally a lot better than most people look at 20. Okay, and obviously grow. Everything but the kitchen sink at my body, you know, I use therapeutic testosterone, I use therapeutic growth hormone, uh, when I’m not using therapeutic growth hormone, I use peptides, uh, I take all sorts of insulin suppressing medications and supplements. I use metformin, I use you know, dihydro berberine. I mean, like I said man, I throw the kitchen sink in my body but I’m also very you know scientifically efficient, I use very precise dosages, I go by the research and of course the research for me is empirical, right? I got 30 years of doing this. I mean, I’ve been treating my body like a raprap for 30 years but to answer your question specifically because it is important, it’s an amazing question is, it’s gonna be relevant to the person’s age. A 25-year-old man or woman can train much more intensely and recover much better than a guy at 51 can, right? No matter, how well I take care of myself and how injury-proofed I am and all the shit that I take to recover and how good my sleep is, I still do not have the synovial fluid in my joint capsules as that 25-year-old does, right, so I have to modulate the intensity and the recovery from that age to a 50-year-old but you know to answer your question I think the answer is yes. You know, I would say all of the above, you know, weight training obvious bone bearing resistance training, you know, a lot of people that don’t have access to a gym with all the bullshit that’s happened in the last two and a half years then yeah, you got to do push-pull, push-ups, you know free standing squats, uh, you know if you have a pull-up bar hopefully if you have bands, I mean again, everything is good. My personal pet belief is it’s really not a belief it’s more of a knowing because I’ve been doing it for so long is, as you age rep range is more important that it when you’re in your 20s in your, let’s say like your early 30s because it’s all about taking the muscle to positive muscle failure, right, not eccentric, not negative but to a place where literally, your fibers cannot do another rep so like I have a formulation of training again I’ve created myself and I call it positive muscle fiber training. It’s PMF training. It’s a system that I sell it’s a video and I’m not here to sell my course or anything like that but I don’t even know about that wow, yeah, I mean I’ll do, I’ll send it to you after this and you can go through it. It’s pretty epic. I got a lot of people on it but and honestly I’m stepping on the shoulders of giants because you know I learned from Charles Poliquin, I learned from Jim Brown, you know, I learned from genius guys but the end of the day, the older you are the more you have to push your body’s ligament you know ligaments tendons and muscle fibers to a place where they reach exhaustion pretty quickly and so for me a couple of warm-up sets, two work sets each work set goes to positive muscle failure, again, I’m not doing eccentrics, I don’t have somebody spotting me and then I move, right and I train my body over usually six weeks, uh, you know, periodized, uh, rotations and it’s either full body Monday Wednesday Friday or it’s um kind of a push-pull split. It’s basically a split, you know, chest, back, leg, biceps and then delts, triceps, always finishing with core depending on where I’m at in the year, you know, I always foam roll before and after yeah. Sometimes, I do some pretty static stretching.    

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How long is your workout typically?

Jay Campbell: Uh, my wife and I train together and my 14 years old daughter trains with us because she’s like a Mary Lou from Mary Lou Retton and Jim Freeze. So if  it’s al three of us probably 50 minutes but today my, she’s actually a cheer camp at woodward academy up in central California so my wife and I trained together this morning and we were like 36 minutes I think.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nice, nice and in regards to the cardio aspect are you kind of doing more of a tabata interval sprint stuff. There’s a lot og stuff on my twitter feed about people really more into like the zone two type of thing getting your heart rate around 120 for like 30 minutes and just kind of holding a steady state. What’s your thought process on both of those. What do you like? 

Jay Campbell: Amazing question, so I’m probably gonna be a little bit different here and you know take it a different direction and you know my background from a research standpoint is low-carb ketogenic dieting 20-plus years ago so I have a lot of experience with energy systems at one time, one time I worked with Lyle Mcdonald, I was kind of his research assistant before he wrote the first book on ketogenic dieting and exercise so you know all the science but at the end of the day a person’s cardio training should be relevant to their diet and the reason I say that is if you’re a faster okay or a very low carbohydrate person and that might be what paleo that could be carnivore keto, you have to use your training, you’re not your lifting but your cardio training should be relevant to your energy demand, right? So, if you’re somebody like me and by way I have a program that I’ve been following since 2010, it’s you know, one of the programs in my book which is called the metabolic blowtorch diet but it’s an every alternate day fasting. So, I fast on the non-lifting days and I eat on my lifting days, right? So, I eat, I train, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, normally and those are the days I eat and then Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, I fast and my fastening intervals are anywhere from 18 sometimes just full 24 hours, wake up early the next day and you know glycogen load before I train and that’s how I do it but in truth your cardio or the people watching this shows cardio should again be relevant to the energy that they have while they’re doing the cardio so that zone one, zone two is it’s great advice, I mean I normally I’m doing my cardio, fasted I’m normally in steady state and my heart rate is somewhere between 150 and 135, okay? Now, if I wanted to do a Fartlek, Tabata interval session, I would do it on my lifting day because I have glycogen and I would do 30, yeah, it depends 25 to 35 minutes of some form of an interval right and I would do that because I know that I have glycogen to fuel and not I’m in a place where I have, you know glycolytic deprivation and I could burn my muscles so here’s the big mistake, the big mistake that people make is they’re fasting and they do intervals and you don’t want to do that especially if you just fasted for 16 hours because your body is very prone tapping, uh, you know through what is it the enzyme muscle creatine kinase, yeah, muscle protein and any more catabolism. Yeah, exactly as soon as you do that, you’re now breaking down muscle tissue and fueling your body’s energy demand from the protein and so I always tell people like you just got to be cognizant where you are from an energy system so you know again if you’re a hardcore carnivore keto person then you should never be beyond zone two it should be always be steady state moderate intensity and let’s not forget depending on your age, low impact, do you know how many people who are 40, who like you know, take up crossfitting and go right into this like high impact ballistic shit and destroy themselves, I always used to I always used to make jokes I was like man if I was an Orthopade, I would put all my centers next to crossfit gyms. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean for my whole cardio approach, like doing rowing because just because most cardio things, you’re in flexion state. 

Jay Campbell: Rowing’s amazing. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s the only thing that opens you up and puts you in that extension. 

Jay Campbell: Rowing and swimming. Same thing. If you can do broad smoke swimming but I mean how many people have a lot, have access to a lap pool but dude, rowing is amazing. If you have one of those in your house, that’s the best form of cardio. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so, you recommend most people. Do you like it empty stomach doing your cardio, keep it more zoned too for most.

Jay Campbell: Yes. Yeah. So, like I mean again, it depends because there’s days when I train, I mean again, um, everything is relevant to what that person’s goal is right so like if you’re a 45-year-old person. Yeah. Exactly like you don’t give a shit about being ripped or you’re not in a you know a triathlete or some sort of like crazy weekend competition. It’s how do I look better with my shirt off, you know, how do I have good self-confidence in my job, you know, and then ultimately like as I age like can I bend over and I pick up my grandkids or my children’s kids you know what I’m saying without suffering without pulling something in my spine, um, you know, my wife and I are like really into looking good like we enjoy traveling, you know to exotic vacations so there’s like, you know, usually like three months out of the year sometimes four, we want to look amazing in a bathing suit, you know, I mean, to be an empty nester you know, so it’s like  I want to like travel the world with my shirt off and be like, yeah. I feel good about the way I look, right? It’s always about as you know Doc, functional strength as we age and the self confidence to that comes from being lean. I mean you know you look better in cloths you know, you don’t have to worry about like throwing your cloths away, you know, because you’re going down and up and all that stuff so again, inflammation will stay ay bay by maintaining strength, maintaining leanness and obviously you know preparing, you know, again, depending on your diet, the form of training. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. I think it was Charles Paulken, that said that most people’s health goals just revolve around wanting to look good naked right? That’s pretty 

Jay Campbell: much honestly, that’s probably the best way you could say it and you know there’s another thing though to do that too is like

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: At a functional aspect

Jay Campbell: Look for the opposite, most people don’t even give a shit not your watchers or mine but most people don’t give a shit about their health until they don’t have their health.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s true.

Jay Campbell: And then they throw everything, you know, including the kitchen sink at it and it’s like dude, you took 35, 45 years to get to this poor level. You think it’s gonna be fixed in a six week or nine-week program or boot camp. No. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Right. So, I want to crystallize. It so your workout, you’re working out for 30 to 45 minutes. What are you picking six to eight movement patterns your foam rollies are working on soft tissue quality and pliability, you know probably during the workout and so is that kind of you want to add a little more detail to that. Does that ring a bell. 

Jay Campbell: Absolutely. Let me add more detail I mean I just came from the chiropractor before I got on your show, okay so I mean I see my chiropractor at least once a week. You know my wife and I usually go together, he’s pretty advanced dude, uh, once a month I see my deep tissue lady who does cranial sacral and I did a five and a half hour session on Saturday and you know she clears out all the negative juju. Yeah and then I also have a body worker that I see every other week on Tuesdays which I will be seeing him tomorrow and you know he does the cupping and you know ART and you know just literally just realigning me and stuff so I mean we’re very hardcore, I would say you now most, more than most people and really like making sure that we maintain these physical avatar bodies as we age and as you know dude, it gets it doesn’t get easier, that’s all you can say. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I can imagine so your cardio routine, what does that look like now, give me that

Jay Campbell: That’s another great question, um, so I’m a big biker, I have, I don’t have a Peloton, I have a really nice life cycle. It’s literally, right over to the right of me in my studio. We also have in my house, we have the newest, the latest and greatest, uh, what is it, um, shit, the treadmill that goes up to 40-degree incline. I can’t even think of what it’s called. It’s insane. Like, if you, so we’re going to Peru at the end of July, I’m filming a television series there and it’s my second trip to Peru but I mean, you know, there’s 18-19,000 feet, uh peeks in Peru you know mount humane day is like 19,500 feet. So, you know, I wanna be ready and I mean I’m pretty good I you know, cardiovascular but I’m like, no, I’m gonna buy this. It’s a NordicTrack. I couldn’t think of this, the x32i. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve seen that.

Jay Campbell: The x32i, it’s like the, you know, the bee’s knees and we just got it like two months ago and it’s amazing, dude. Like, I mean, it’s the most amazing treadmill I’ve ever got, I mean there you have to be an absolute freak to walk for 30minutes at 40-degree incline at like 2.5 miles an hour. I mean, it’ll burn. I’m not exaggerating. It’ll burn 1500 calories in 30 minutes, that’s how insane. But it’s uh, it’s you know, we got it for that purpose but I normally do bike because I like to breed on my bike, okay, and my masseuse, my cranial sacral lady told me on Saturday, she’s like dude you got over patterning in your right, you know, lower quadrant, uh, you know, inside where your, uh, you know, your connective tissue is, uh, your psoas and all this stuff, you just got over patterning, you’ve been biking for so long and doing it so consistently I want you to move to the treadmill and she’s like don’t walk fast, you know, she’s like walk at a wide pace, so I mean I moved to that to do that but normally I’m a biker man, I mean, I should get an ergometer, you know, when you said that you’re like here’s another guy telling me that’s I got to get that in my house but uh, my wife is a treadmill walker on an incline and I’m mostly a bike guy but I mean again, you know, back to the heart rate stuff, I usually ride, at 15 intensity on my life cycle and my heart rate goes from you know, anywhere from at the highest like 142. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How are you measuring your heart rate? Do you have a wearable?

Jay Campbell: I do have, uh, the amazon, uh, whatever the 60 little amazon thing is because that thing actually works with that new treadmill too. So, I got that like two months ago but besides that I mean my life cycle is you know just a hand meter, but it’s pretty accurate, you know, I’ve been using it for like six years now, I need to get a new bike by the way too because it’s just worn down but, uh 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, you’re lifting three to four times a week, three to four times a week you’re lifting, cardio three to four as well?   

Jay Campbell: So, lifting three times, cardio is really just dependent on how much time I have in the day and how lean I want to be like, if I want to be absolutely shredded, I will probably do a second session of cardio on Tuesdays and Thursdays but again it’s just depending on whether I’m at if I’m home if I have access to cardio equipment if I’m on the road and I’m traveling, I’ll never do two sessions usually because you just don’t have access

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Alright. I gotta, I gotta bunch of questions. I’m gonna go rapid fire at you so I’m really interested, I know you’ve done a lot of stuff on testosterone bioidentical supplementation. I want to know how you dose it, I see lots of patients that come into me that are using creams that are using extended release formulas typically if I recommend testosterone supplementation. I’m trying to keep my patients in that top 25% of the reference range. I’ve seen too many patients come way outside of the reference range then you get this receptor site down regulation, I like to keep the injections you know between two or four days, I feel like you can keep the dose more steady on that versus doing every seven days or ten days, I feel like you get this big kind of like you know have the steady levels.  

Jay Campbell: You got it right. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanna know your, you know, what’s your best dosing gels, injectables frequency? Where do you like people to be in the reference range? Go ahead.

Jay Campbell: Okay. All great questions. Let’s start off with what you can’t do. Okay, and again, this is sad because there’s still so many endocrinologists and urologists that have no idea what they’re doing, giving patients this but you cannot give a bolus of testosterone at 7 or 10 or even 14-day interval and expect it to work because as you know Justin and they don’t and they should know because they went to school for this. The way the half life works of these medications, you cannot put it into somebody’s system, shut down their endogenous, again, with this exogenous supply and then understanding the bio or the half cycle life of that bioidentical hormone thinking that you’re gonna have any kind of efficacy after six days, I mean you’re not. I mean in fact you’re gonna have to crash and you’re gonna have all sorts of again you know perturbations of estrogen going sideways, testosterone crashing, I mean, there’s, it’s just a horrible situation, so two delivery systems that work. What you said is accurate. Now, what we want to understand and again for the people watching the show are not familiar with my work, I mean, this is like you know, my quote-unquote claim to fame and like

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll put links below for everything so people can see

Jay Campbell: Yeah. So, from the internet standpoint like you know I wrote a book in 2015 called the definitive TRT manual, it became the number one selling book of all time on testosterone, four years later, I wrote a book called the testosterone optimization therapy bible and it is the number one selling book of all time on testosterone so I work with the top docs, the top researchers, the top endos, the top epidemiologists, like all the people that really are the who’s who in this industry is the people that I work with in this so just to give you guys that clarification and that justification but at the end of the day what we wanna do when we use therapeutic hormones and this goes for by the way women or men is we want to mimic the body’s endogenous postal tool release as closely as we can. Now, you’re going to do that based on using a delivery system that is not spasmodic, right. It’s not a giant bolus, there’s a lot of testosterone delivery systems out there that are absolutely worthless. The only value that they provide is lining the pocket of the doctor who gives it to the patient, okay. I don’t have to mention some of those but at the end of the day you know I have doctors that will argue with me and they’ll be like, that may be true J but some testosterone is better than not been better than none and I can’t dispute that but I definitely argue that you know some delivery systems cause way more side effects than others and should be avoided but back to what you were saying, the best way to imitate or mimic the body’s natural pulsatile and usually diurnal release of testosterone is through every other day or daily uh, delivery systems so if it’s injections, uh, you know, it would be really nice if you were injecting with an insulin needle early in the morning with a bolus of like 25 to 35 milligrams or 15 to 20 milligrams again if you’re going daily and if you’re every other day then you’re looking at again depending on that person, uh, you know I’m mostly speaking about men for right now but you know somewhere between 40 and 60 milligrams every other day.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. What place in the reference range do you like people to be, I mean, it’s are you gonna recommend testosterone if they’re in the bottom 25% and then is there a goal that you want to fall within the range?

Jay Campbell: Okay. So, this is you know very unique stuff here. I’m not a physician. Okay, right? So, I’m not prescribing to men and I’m not also you know governed by state medical licensing. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re speaking from your personal experience and people reporting back to you, where they feel about. 

Jay Campbell: Well, look, I understand your business very well okay. I’ve not been in the business but I could easily be in the business if I choose to be in business. I’m not in the business but I also with obviously literally hundreds of doctors, I understand this I’ve sat there and listened to the top teachers in the world and you know what happens to guys that are attempting to prescribe and you know again what can happen negatively if you know people are at one low end of the range and they prescribe and then they get audited and blah blah blah so this is what we know again from like a general universal conduct, the only thing that matters when you’re optimizing two people any person’s hormones males or females is if they’re asymptomatic and they feel good. Now, levels are again just a measurement, a qualifier so to speak of you know again various lab corp companies, right? So, what we have to understand Justin and this is big picture for people watching this is that whoever is behind the lab companies have been suppressing the standard mean deviations, right? So, the top and the low are pushing and being compressed and I think you know this. Five years ago, the high end of the range for both companies was between 1240 and 1400s and now between lab corp and quest and you know fact check me if you guys have to on this because they’re lowering them all the time now, 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 800 to 1000 typically 

Jay Campbell: Dude, it’s insane. It’s so much lower and if you ask people in the endocrine society or whatever the urology you know uh deal is, they’ll say oh well it’s not conspiracy theory J, it’s fat people are getting fatter and we’re just deviating for the compression of like lower testosterone due to metabolic disorder and dysregulation and blah blah blah but again if you ask the smart people who go to the endocrine society meetings every year and I know somebody who just went and you asked the smart people there like Abraham Morgan Tower who I love and has done more testosterone optimization than anyone he’ll tell you that is doesn’t make sense so in my opinion if you know we want to go full blown put tin foil hats on conspiratorial, they are making men fatter softer, weaker, I mean this is where, this is going, right, so it’s like to answer your question in a long convoluted way I would personally like to see men that have free testosterone levels and again depending on the measuring criteria of somewhere between 35 and 50, okay? and they feel good like they’re energetic, they have dopamine signaling, you know, increased cognition, there’s no brain fog, they’re obviously really goof sexually and have you know, erection, thick you know, firmer erections, morning wood, all that stuff that’s where you want to be from a free standard uh measurement you know is there a total number that’s great? No, but if you talk to the best docs, they’re going to tell you that like depending on when you test them, you know, at the peak or the nadir, you know, you want to see them somewhere between a thousand and 1500 now that’s not to say that somebody who’s at 2000 for you know an hour who’s now gonna function probably between 750 and a thousand during the week is bad. So, it really just comes down to like are they not having symptoms and do they feel good and that’s a shitty answer for you because like you know you want to like be like, okay well when they get tested I want them to be here or here or here but it’s kind of hard to say that because ultimately it depends on when you test them what the delivery system is now let me just also answer that there’s two forms of delivery system that are best okay. Now, I know there’s now oral products on the market and we can go deep down that rabbit hole if you want and talk about that in a second, I feel that they do have promise but they’re not there yet but the other one is trans-scrotal, right? So, a transdermal obviously is on the skin but what we now know scientifically is that the membrane of the base of the scrotum is eight times more permeable than any other skin location so if you’re gonna prescribe transdermal for a man and by the way this goes for women too trans labia right so right in the area of the clitoris and the vaginal lips is where you want to put testosterone cream and obviously with women that’s a little bit more complex you know you might have progesterone cream in there with them too whatever it’s a hold of the thing but at the end of the day the places where they can get the best absorption for the trans nerves is the best and so uh I’ve now been on testosterone therapeutic testosterone for almost 22 years, I was on injectable for close to 17 and a half and since then I’ve been on trans-scrotal and Justin I will never go back to injectable for a couple of reasons. Well, I travel the world a lot and I don’t like carrying needles in my hygiene bag because you never know when you’re going to run into some asshole at international airport who says what the hell is this, right? But then the other person reason is it’s just a lot easier to carry a transdermal cream you know in your hygiene bag as you travel around the word and obviously on the side of it you know it has your script and your doctor’s information and the codes and stuff like that versus like you know you’re going through a what you call it you know a screen point and they pull it out they see needles and they’re like ah I mean you know you’ve heard of stories of like you know just alone and all these guys getting pulled over but at the end of the day that’s why I changed you know there is some biological reasons uh cream on the scrotum increases DHT uh a little bit higher from a standpoint and obviously as you know DHT is the primary anabolic cascade so men will have better uh erections uh you know and but as far as anything else it’s equal, you’re not gonna have better energy or better muscle growth or better stamina or cognition or any of those things. They’re equal. But those are the only two delivery systems in my opinion that are worth the shit uh you know I know that the number one delivery system is pellets and I’ve done videos about pellets. I’ve brought on the best experts in the world about pellets this is what I’ll say about pellets because  people need to hear this. This is how you know pellets are worthless delivery system and I know I’m gonna offend people. There has never been a single scientific study on testosterone ever done using pellets. Now, if you knew that why in the hell would you ever consider using pellets for therapy and look I know there are thousands of people in north America right now using pellets especially women and they get great results and the doctors that use them and prescribe them and it might be you if you prescribe them you know, they’ll say hey dude some of these people are in the military and they’re in active duty and they’re in the field and they don’t have an option, they can’t inject you know, they’re being scrutinized they’re you know blah blah they can only get this like every six or eight weeks I get it.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. That makes sense. 

Jay Campbell: That’s, most cases that’s cool but pellets are bad news from a delivery system because of the way they cleave as an ester in people’s body. Everybody’s biochemically unique Justin. We’re all end of one and a lot of people are hyper excretors and you can put in a pellet that’s supposed to be an eight week life cycle and they have four weeks 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they’re the last half I always see them just drop out a ton. 

Jay Campbell: It’s horrible, dude. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Frequently. 

Jay Campbell: It’s horrible. But again, I’m not against it if it’s the only most efficacious path and it’s that person’s only option because again some is better than none. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Now, when do you recommend doing testosterone because my philosophy naturally is all right someone comes in they’re overweight, they’re tired, they’re fatigue, my first thing is get the inflammation down, let’s improve your nutrient density, get your cortisol and insulin resistance in check. Let’s get you moving some cardio some resistance training. Let’s get everything fixed metabolically and then just kind of see where you fit and if you continue to improve excellent we can use some herbs maybe some Tribulus, different you know horny goat weed Epimedium, there’s different herbs you can use kind of when do you transition from herbal diets to going a hormone route and then do you ever use like things like hCG in between. How does that progression look for you? 

Jay Campbell: All amazing questions, uh, these are not easy answers and obviously I’m injecting a lot of my opinion on this, um, I’ve done a lot of research on herbs, testosterone boosters. Well, let me just first talk about testosterone boosters and by the way for the people that are new to me that watch this, this is live right? And then you gotta be on your youtube channel, okay, so the people that are new to me are watching this right now and I’m gonna be a chill but I highly recommend you go to my youtube channel and you watch the video that was part one last week with Dr. Keith Nichols and part two today in about two and a half hours and they are I’m telling you guys right now this is the state of the science on hormonal optimization for not just men but for women too today’s video is about 90 mins last week’s was like 48 minutes but I broke up the whole conversation 82 because I was like I want people to digest this we talk about prostate cancer we talk about vascular illness, I mean it is the state of the science, Keith is going to be, Dr. Keith Nichols, who’s interviewed with me, he’s going to probably at some point be the guy that replaces Dr. Neil Roger who’s the number one trainer on the planet for testosterone optimization or just hormone optimization in general and it’s just brilliant. I mean anyone can learn what he is talking about in there but you know to those questions there isn’t a single testosterone boosting herb or supplement on the planet that’s proven to work now as you know because we’re going to talk about consciousness at some point, the placebo effect is very real if a human being takes something and puts their energy and their intention into it that it’s going to work, they probably will create that reality, it’s absolutely possible but from a scientific standpoint if you analyze all of these different supplements and these again Tongkat Ali and  Horny goat weed and mocha these things, they don’t do jack shit. Okay? So, are the gonna work if the person believes in them, yes. But if that person that you’re working with and you said all the things decides that they want to stop being fat and stop being inflamed and exercise and eat better and control for insulin that’s gonna do just as much as any of those other things. Now, I’m not saying that adding those things in as you know additional adjuncts won’t help but I would say that you know before you go and we’ll get there a second but before you go the therapeutic adjuvant route like you just said do what you just said. Do what you just said, lower inflammation, lower belly fat, get them exercising blah blah blah but here’s where you know the really smart people in this industry will come in and say that’s great J. And Justin, but how are you gonna get a 50-year-old guy who’s got 30 pounds or 20 to 30 pounds of belly fat and a 135 total testosterone level with no free testosterone. How are you gonna get them the energy to do any of that shit without concomitantly optimizing their testosterone? So, for those people that I’m like well you know what dude like you’re probably gonna have to put them on a mild dose hoping and again this is where you as a physician really has to have discernment to decide whether this person’s committed because like if I’m you and again I’m not you but if I’m you, I’m not putting a fat person who comes in my office who’s a lazy pile of no way on testosterone because it’s not gonna do shitboard. If anything it’s gonna cause inflammation and again look man I want to say this because I’ve never had a chance to say this and someone so educated is you show uh I see a lot of fat guys and when I see fat guys, I mean they got big bellies, right? They got beer drinking bellies and they go on testosterone and it doesn’t work you know quote-unquote and it doesn’t work because they’re inflamed and they’re injecting testosterone into their fat visceral body in their stomach and that out of center adiposity right there and they get supreme inflammatory responses. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s probably aromatizing as well. 

Jay Campbell: Well. Okay. It’s aromatizing that’s what you think it’s doing. What’s happening is just okay so let’s go to that because I want to address that so when we inject testosterone and it doesn’t matter the testosterone delivery system. Let’s just say for now when we’re injecting it. We want the estrogen to fall to the level that the testosterone is going to allow it to aromatize so yes we want to aromatize but the aromatization is not bad. The aromatization is providing the benefits. We want healthy levels of estrogen to provide protection to vascular networks to the brain networks to the bone mineral density into the skin. There’s a lot of all these amazing things so the problem is not in the aromatization, the problem is in the visceral fat which is causing inflammation so the inflammatory cascade which is happening for these people that have too much fat is absolutely causing the side effects but 90% of physicians and I’m not saying it’s you. They miss this and they think it’s high estrogen symptoms and side effects. It has nothing to do with high estrogen. It has everything to do with inflammation and the cascade of inflammation and so I’m telling you I’ve seen tons of men who literally quit because they’re like I can’t handle the side effects and their doctors tells them it’s high estrogen side effects. You know, water retention, itchy nipples, I could go on, no, it’s inflammation that you have systemically that the testosterone is adding to because the testosterone is an exogenous chemical that the body is like saying oh great another one. Top of the beer and the pizza, and the cheese and all the peanut butter and ice cream that you’re pounding in, I mean that’s causing the inflammation so ultimately it’s tough dude the people in America today because as you know we have what I mean saw a stat two days ago that says that is insane by the way. Seventy percent of men and women over the age of 40 in the united states are obese. 70%!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s insane!

Jay Campbell: 70% over the age of 40. I don’t want you know people to get confused that but that’s I mean dude we don’t have to worry about like the v or the c I mean that’s diabetes and you know what comes after diabetes I mean right, so I mean at the end of the day man if you’re a fat person and you know this is for you for a physician, if a really fat person comes in man, you got to do a psychological analysis like dude, are you sick and tired of being sick and tired like. Are you truly gonna change like are you gonna fight through this because I’m not giving a really fat person testosterone bro if I don’t think they’re gonna actually do the work because testosterone is just a it’s not a magic bullet as you know, its imagined.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. 100%. It makes sense. Very good. Yeah. I wouldn’t argue I would just say things like insulin resistance are primarily gonna be driven through inflammation and internal resistance would it’s kind of all connected right. Excess carbohydrates, grains process, it’s all connected. 

Jay Campbell: So, you know, what, I’m glad you said that because I screwed up and missed that. So, all, so high estrogen symptoms is insulin resistance. That’s 100% the answer and again most people miss this so if you are again fat and inflamed it’s 98.9% likely that you have severe insulin resistance. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think that’s great and you mentioned a bunch of things that you were doing for that obviously all the exercise things, you mentioned the berberine right you might think you mentioned metformin as well I imagine you’re probably doing some B12 with that because they know that. 

Jay Campbell: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I take a very, a very, very complex uh I take uh B right from Gyro formulas. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, let’s talk about bounce. So, yeah, let’s talk about that so if you’re gonna go on therapeutic hormones, what we now know and this is very cutting edge tip of the spear stuff is you cannot optimize the endocrine system without also optimizing the thyroid, the pancreas and the pituitary. Now, you already know these because you’re a functional medicine freak and you know all these things but the average guy prescribing this shit doesn’t know this especially for women. I mean do you have any idea how many people go on, you know, again, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, you know depending on age, you know, perimenopausal, post-menopausal whatever and they’re not optimizing the thyroid. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah. Especially on the hair loss side for sure. 

Jay Campbell: Dude. It’s crazy. Though how often you see this so you know I like to say this it’s a triune, if you’re gonna go on hormonal optimization and again for me if you’re 45 and you’re in America with this and we haven’t talked about this before, you know we end the show but at the end of the day we are being bombarded bro. I mean you can’t from the blue light from the plastic in the water I mean this is the best water on the planet it’s still in a plastic bottle I mean I could pour it in metal if I wanted to right but it just will work but I mean we have to be so overly proactive in type a to you know intervene if not avoid this horrific biochemical onslaught to us so at the end of the day if you’re going to look to hormonal optimization in my opinion you have to at 40 to 45 again depending on your level of leanness and your inflammation uh I’m saying the way it’s done right is again depending on your woman or man age it’s looking at free testosterone to see if you’re eligible to start you know obviously therapeutic route it’s supplementing with uh desiccated slash porcine thyroid again relative to your you know relative to your metabolic issues and insulin resistance and then of course you have to control for insulin and you know again I obviously I’m the biggest metformin homer in the world I’ve written an article that’s you know cited on the Harvard education review you know it’s ten thousand words I met Mormon but I am a big metformin advocate because of all the things it doesn’t do outside of the great stuff. It does for insulin suppression right it’s can stop tumor formation and increases aqua Mancy I mean it does so many amazing things but at the end of the day if you don’t want to get metformin you’re afraid of metformin you know you’ve read all the bullshit on the internet about metformin then at least use dihydro berberine because again you’ve got to control for insulin and I know there’s new drugs you know there’s what is semaglutide and literally there’s a new one and they’re coming out all the time now all these things that suppress blood glucose and that’s cool but you know metformin is a plant and dihydro berberine is a supplement so you know I’m all about natural adjuvants but you know between desiccated uh you know therapeutic testosterone maybe some progesterone maybe a little of estrogen depending on your if you’re a woman or a man you know in your age uh and then uh suppressing and controlling for insulin I mean that’s the holy triune for me that’s the three long you know deal you if you do one or two without the other you’re eventually going to throw the balance of the other one off.    

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. That makes sense, you said metformin is natural yes from the French lilac flower so for sure a lot of good natural things there I love it. I just want to pivot here one sec before we kind of wrap things up. I want you to kind of five a little bit into the genesis of your hair formulation. We talked about well I’m going to kind of go through a couple of the ingredients, I just kind of want to pick your brain and kind of have you walk us through your thinking of why you put those in there so obviously you chose the grapeseed oil, I’ve heard some really good benefits of grape seed oil blends really well um what why is it you chose that fat I’m just curious 

Jay Campbell: Yeah I know  so great questions and I’m happy to go through and break them all down you know as much for whatever relative time we have left um so the grape seed so so version one of Auxana was MCT oil and again you know we’re just going and learning as we go and MCT oil as a carrier molecule uh pretty much the same but messy thicker constitution so we changed the grapeseed oil and we then put it in a spray bottle, we originally had a dropper but then all those bottles broke and that’s you know the story that we gave on Ben’s podcast last year but at the end of the day uh grapeseed oil is very texturized, it’s a very thin constituent and so as the carrier oil for you know the primary uh active ingredient which is carbon 60 uh it just settles in the hair as a spray and you can massage into the scalp a lot easier uh obviously grapeseed oil is very inert and there is you know some data in the world as you know kind of it’s like an essential fatty acid that it also helps neutral, it helps from a nutrient density standpoint in scalp but we’re really just using it as a carrier oil for carbon 60.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Got it. Excellent. I put on screen here just so you can see as well all the ingredients there and then can you talk about a couple other you know more keystone ingredients. How about the peptides you chose?

Jay Campbell: Yeah. Let’s talk about the product. So, the product for everybody is called Auxana Grow uh and by the way you have an affiliate code in that so just make sure you put it in here but um and if you don’t um I think your assistant has it but if not just email me and I’ll give it to you but uh so Auxana Grow is developed or created for people um who do not want to use DHT inhibitor medications, you know, ever or if they’re on it now like how to wean yourself off I just did which is a very long time coming a video on how to wean yourself off of a DHT inhibitor medication while utilizing the natural uh peptide based product of us but so it’s two phase of Zara product, there’s um B and A okay um formula a or formula b. Formula a is the peptide uh copper peptide GHK-Cu, copperpeptide GHK-Cu is what we call the shamwow of peptides. It has so many uh you know modalities to help skin hair um the primary effectiveness of that peptide is that increases angiogenesis which is again uh the simulation or the stimulation of red blood cell formation so when you put it in the scalp and you massage it into the scalp it will increase again angiogenesis so it will bring more red blood flow blood cells to the scalp now as I told you off air I’m not allowed to talk about invasive procedures but if you are a smart person and you ask does microneedling or does uh derma rolling help, well do the math. Right. So,   

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Got it. 

Jay Campbell: What would be, you put serum a on first massage it into your scalp and if you want to then add red light, okay, if you have a red light technology in your home 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: LED laser on top. Yeah.

Jay Campbell: Absolutely, uh, infrared and LED together for three to five minutes and then you would put serum b which is the carbon 60 and just let me explain the serum b so obviously you already talked about um the grapeseed oil extract but the carbon 60 does two things. Carbon 60 is a very powerful antioxidant okay but for our purposes it acts as a molecular sponge and it actually will attempt to pull in the serum a which again is the copper peptide but it also as a molecular sponge or as a superoxidative dismutase it’s going to help remove all of the micro inflammatory agents in your scalp so it’s like a two full process so the way it works just is two sprays of serum a, massage it if you want to do something you know quote-unquote with an INV to you know in uh and you know further stimulate you know absorption do that then hit it with red light then put serum b on you know 30 to 40 seconds and by the way for everyday less is more is not better for our product. Less is more because again this is not about spraying it into your hair especially if you’re a woman and you have a long hair. It’s about getting it into your scalp and then massaging it into your scalp and again scalp massage can be 30 seconds it could be three minutes. It’s totally up to you. Scout massage has proven scientifically without formulation without essential fatty acids or you know minerals you can just massage your scalp every day and you increase red blood cell formation it’s a fact right? So, obviously if you wanna massage your scalp after you apply the products it’s a good thing but uh for people that have aggressive hair loss and by the way you mentioned it earlier and this is important that we talked about this uh autoimmune dysregulation and you know hair loss cause which again this the big c causes hair loss we now know that people have c hair. This product dramatically improves covalent related hair loss I shouldn’t have said cova but I apologize but it definitely it definitely improves it again because this is as you said um you know oxidative related hair loss this is caused by you know whatever the big c is and your putting this into your scalp especially for women because a lot of women are reporting you know c-related hair loss more than men it dramatically will improve that hair loss and again we have you know hundreds of reviews on our website from women that have had that issue and they’re like oh my God it’s a miracle you know there’s a doctor you might know her in uh Pennsylvania um Dr. Amy Horman, she’s like the thyroid fixer. She’s got literally thousands of women you know using Auxana now because it’s the only thing that we found that actually will work against autoimmune disorder or dysregulated hair loss.   

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. I imagine also too with the oxidative stress that also is what causes the hair to lose. The melanin and become premature gray. 

Jay Campbell: So, you know, so the fact that you say that I wasn’t gonna say that but a lot of women and men report that a natural positive side effect of using it is the darkening of the hair and by the way I mean. That’s me too. Okay. Because like I would be and I’m not using Auxana aggressively as I normally would because it is true even though this is crazy when I say this, you can get to a level with regrowth that you don’t need to keep using it although uh a very big influencer and I just did a podcast about this because he’s like hey man I stopped using it for a year and my hair is coming out again. I’m like well yeah, dude, you’re 47. So, at the end of the day age-related hair loss. There really is nothing that can you know completely stop it. Even a great lifestyle even our product uh you’re still gonna have to deal with that so you know the reality is it’s like you know use it every now and then we are going to be coming out with a maintenance product Justin because again so many people are asking for it you know kind of like a uh you know Jay Paul Mitchell pump the sponsor put in your hair when you get out of the shower at night you know go to bed with it or whatever but uh most people who get results and again this is not gonna work for everybody. Some people have really bad genetic hair loss. Some people are stressed you know some people have really severe trauma and inflammation that they just cant overcome but I’d say somewhere between 68 and 75% of men or women who live a clean healthy lifestyle as our uh as a person that runs our influence or marketing likes to say people who are serious about their health you know are going to get really positive results I mean anybody who knows me can just go back two years uh before this product came into the marketplace and I was nearly bold in fact I actually did the Vantis Procedure on top of my scalp which is like a henna tattoo you know to keep me with like the five o’clock shadow hair and you know people see me now in public yesterday I was out and saw hadn’t seen a guy in three years, he’s like bro do you have a hair transplant. I’m like no dude this is my product. So, you know people can regrow their hair with this product you were asking about is it a maintenance product because you have a lot of hair right now it absolutely is for someone like you, you know you would spray it into your scalp like once or twice a week massage it in and it’s an absolutely amazing. Yeah. It’s a very really strong maintenance product. You can also use it on beards we are gonna eventually have a beard problem really probably oh yeah. You can absolutely use on beard. It’s amazing on beard so the serum a is uh you know a water-based formulation so you can absolutely massage it into your scalp, you’re not gonna have any residue it’s gonna grow it’s gonna feel amazing but the serum b again with the grapeseed oil extract, it is slightly oily. It’s not oily oily but it definitely feels noticeable.   

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is it better at night to do it so it can absorb? 

Jay Campbell: Uh, I mean it depends on I think you know the length of your hair like if you were you know something not you but somewhat balding man with patches you’re not gonna notice it. But for a longer hair person like you or a woman and you spray a couple of sprays and you don’t get into the scalp and some of it sits in the hair you will definitely probably notice a little bit of residual. A lot of our patients slash patients a lot of our customers report back that they like it as a texturizer and they don’t have to use quote-unquote product to mess their hair or mousse their hair or anything like that so it doesn’t 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Probably get that benefit going from MCT to the grapeseed I imagine right now

Jay Campbell: Now, yeah 100% on that and that’s why Nick actually did that um the other thing I would say is um the beard product is that’s coming will be similar to serum a now because you’ll see it because it’s harder to use unless you got a big long you know beard which I know a lot of guys have that now the neckbeard people. It’s harder to get to the base because remember again it is a health of the skin product. It’s copper peptides so the longer your beard it’s going to be harder but when we have um the product for beards it’ll be more of like a balm roll on versus the spray now which is for the scalp so but you can definitely use it in the beard now we have tons of people have been using it in their beard for over a year and they’re like it’s the best product to have. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, serum a first and then if you do any laser stuff and then serum b will be the last component. 

Jay Campbell: Yeah and you know it goes to mention because I know you have a lot of different patients I mean our skin products which is royal blue serum and sky blue cream are the best on earth. In fact again don’t leave the guy who’s the hype man for the company. Go read the reviews you know we have women who are very well to do affluent sophisticated ladies that use Lemur and Rhode island fields and all the high-end shit and they’re like we threw it all in the trash and we buy the bundle of your guys product every month. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, is the hallmark ingredient in the um royal blue is that gonna be at the peptide as well? 

Jay Campbell: Same thing, so GHK-Cu is the shamwow of peptides. It’s the number one skin peptide uh and by the way just so you know so people understand this you can absolutely buy GHK-Cu and inject it in your scalp, I mean if you’re insane enough to inject it into the skin on the top of your hair you know which is gonna hurt like shit but it works I mean I have hundreds of people you know who have messaged me about that and saying man I use your product as like the base and then I inject GHK but yeah it regrows your hair better than anything man 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So how long to get results because like the data on like Medoxomil or um uh with Rogaine or Minoxidil or Propecia usually nine to twelve months, right?   

Jay Campbell: You see results, okay so let me temper my enthusiasm. It depends on the cellular health of the end user right so someone like me who’s no inflammation you’re gonna see results in literally three to five weeks. Okay, we have women that see results in 10 days. Women that have covid-related hair loss start regrowth their hair back immediately. Now, as far as like when is the dosing of this we’d never tell anyone to dose more than twice a day and personally and again this is my opinion I already said less is more uh it’s more important that you massage it into your scalp than it is spraying it in twice a day because again so many people think that if I spray two sprays and I get great results then three spray it’s gonna be better it’s not that way it doesn’t work that way so when we sell the bottle we say up to a 90-day supply because it is expensive it’s not cheap to manufacture the stuff. It’s really really high-level  GHK-Cu product it’s not coming from China. It’s all USA made It’s expensive um we do not tell people to over apply it and I swear to God Justin it doesn’t matter, you know, we live in a super size. More is better economy. They always  want to put more in but like if you’re a guy and you’re hair you’re watching this in the rerun or now or whatever and you have hair like mine literally just do it once a day for a month, see what happens. It’s gonna still last you for three months. I mean, my hair, two bottles which is one order is gonna last 90 days but if you have longer hair and you don’t like you know it’s harder I mean let’s be honest it’s harder to massage in the scalp with longer hair so 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Maybe after a shower when your hair is a little bit wet and you make it more visible

Jay Campbell: Yeah. I mean yes and no I mean it really depends right if you’re a woman and you have a mop on your head like my wife’s got long curly hair you know, it’s still not gonna get into the scalp like it would for somebody like me.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, right. 

Jay Campbell: It’s just gonna get absorbed by the hair so no matter how good you are massaging into the scalp it’s still gonna be more difficult but that’s why we say up to 90 days because longer hair people are not gonna get so much out of the two bottles as a short hair person is. It’s just not gonna happen. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, and one other question too I’ve noticed this with a couple of patients where they have DHT patterns of hair loss. Yet we, they’re we working on all the core foundational things. Their DHT levels look really good on the blood test, right? Can you have DHT issues at the scalp level but have it not show systemically in the blood. 

Jay Campbell: So, I’m gonna blow your mind with this, if you prescribe this is where it really gets crazy about DHT. If you prescribe them a DHT cream they will grow their hair back on their scalp like a wolf  man. So, DHT in that article as we said, is secondary and most likely tertiary effector and causal agent of hair loss. It’s not anything to do with dihydrotestosterone and again that’s how we know that in the article that if you write somebody a script for a DHT cream, and they put it all over their scalp, their hair grows back now the only thing to answer that question though that’s important is um you cannot put our product on a bald patch that does not have active hair follicles. You know, that’s and again we’ve been very transparent from the very beginning that where our formulation is now and you know I’ll shed some light on this in a second it won’t work that way. You know, but as my the genius formulator brainiac Nick Andrews, my partner Nasir says he goes oh eventually I’ll be able to grow hair on a cue ball. And that’s where it’s coming so that’s where we’ll eventually go I’d say we’re integrating stem cells and such exactly we’re that exactly right we’re like two  phases away so we’re in V2, V3 is coming and V3 will be a one phase liposomal system so it will literally be bottled squirt it into your hand massage it the oil based carbon 60 will be in a nanomolecule you know incased in the water-based formula and it’ll break open when you massage it into the skin and then version three four will have what you just said it’ll have all sorts of other peptides like micro agents and abrasions and it’ll be like uh it’ll essentially be a derma roller uh you know uh what do you call it uh invasive product just by yourself. Yeah, that’s excellent. yeah awesome. It’s coming. The technology’s amazing but you know we’re not there yet. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:I love it. Well, it was amazing you have a new on today’s podcast. I really appreciate all the significant knowledge. Any last points you want to make before we end the show. 

Jay Campbell: No man. I mean I want you to come on my podcast because I know It’ll be just as awesome um you know for anybody that wants to connect with me uh I actually have a link I always do for everyone I go on podcast you can go to Jay C middle initial jaycampbell.com/freebooks and you can download should I think maybe all my books are free now but I know there’s at least three books up there, the testosterone bible is up there for free uh my book on the fasting the blowtorch diet is up there for free and then I have a book on consciousness which the next time you and I talk we’ll go deeper on that. The only other thing, it’ll say is that uh this week, I finally acquired my domain and jaycampbell.com is gonna be my website so I’ve had a guy cyber squad for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny story, he asked me for a lot of money and I usually delete him and ignore him and I finally wrote him back and I said you know what man this would be the last time I ever responded to you. I will offer you blank and it was a lot less than what he was asking for and if you don’t say yes off and I’ll you’ll never here from me again and I can assure you no one will ever offer you that amount of money again for jaycampbell.com so you actually said yes so anyway I will be on yeah I will be on jaycampbell.com effectively Thursday of this week the transmission or the domain transfer is starting on Wednesday so it’s totally cool for me because whatever I tell people go to jaycampbell.com they’re like jaycampbell or they do j-a-y and then put campbell I mean it’s just a nightmare man so I’m like really grateful that that’s going away but uh no man I mean I’m so blessed to be here today you got me going a million miles an hour because you asked the most amazing questions I wish people could ask questions at the level you could man because then I can actually like talk about things in greater depth but uh I can’t wait for you to have you to come on my podcast  brother I appreciate it man, we’ll work that out I really appreciate it. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m gonna put all the links down below people can get access to my favorite articles some of the products you mentioned as well as the uh the free books to look. Thank you so much Jay for everything. Look forward to connecting with you real soon man. 

Jay Campbell: Yeah for sure Justin. Just uh you know let them know it’s you know if they buy it you know if with your affiliate link or uh code, you’ll have a link and a code. It’s 15% off so. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, that’s great. That’s awesome. Well thank you so much man. It was great chatting with you we’ll talk again soon. 

Jay Campbell: For sure my brother. Thank you.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care. Bye. 

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://drjockers.com/

Recommended Products:

GHK-Cu Sky Blue Cream & Royal Blue Serum Bundle

Auxano Grow V2 Hair Growth Formula

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/hair-loss-restoration-improve-testosterone-inflamm-aging-inflammation-jay-campbell-podcast-373

Why You Can’t Put On Muscle – Functional Medicine Solutions to Avoid Being Flabby | Podcast #357

For most people, Dr. J and Evan state that most of the end goal is to build muscle and tone up. While you may have done your research and watched plenty of workout videos online, many still make a variety of common mistakes that can lead to hampering gains and slowing down their progress.

It would help if you also had protein which contains amino acids, the compounds that help build and repair muscle tissue. While cardio is essential, too much of it can also harm you and possible lack of sleep. Moreover, Dr. J and Evan emphasize that monitoring your diet or food template is vital in the entire process.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:00 – Introduction

1:53 – The role of protein and diet in building muscles

5:31 – Helpful exercises to stimulate muscle building

12:12 – The gut connection of a flabby body

18:04 – The effect of too much sugar and carbohydrates in muscle growth

30:56 – Helpful strategies and lifestyle modifications to boost muscle growth

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Today, we’re gonna be talking about putting on muscle mass, how to avoid being flabby. We’re gonna be talk about digestion, exercise, being able to absorb and break down protein, also you can work on helping to be, you know, strong, functionally strong, lean, etc. we’re really excited to dive into today’s topic here. Evan, how you doing man?

Evan Brand: Yeah, doing really well and you guys asked for this. We didn’t just come up with this how not to be flabby topic. You guys said this during many so much consultation that Dr. J and I had done personally with people that’s what women say. So, were gonna address that. They say, “I’m flabby and I don’t want to be and what do I do about it?” And if you were to ask like a conventional weight trainer, bodybuilder type person, they’re gonna tell you to probably eat more calories and just work out more harder. And most of the people that have come to us, they’ve already been down that rabbit hole and they’re far more symptomatic and sicker than at the level of where they can just try to hit the gym harder and that’s really to me not the answer because I’m lean. I stay lean. Now, granted I’m not a 50- to 60-year-old woman that has this particular issue, but I don’t have any sort of issue to where I feel like I need to eat less. I don’t count. I don’t measure. I don’t think any of the women and men even listening or watching this, I don’t think you need to count, or measure or weigh. I mean this food obsession. Our ancestors didn’t do this. They’re not out in the past year in, you know, native American times looking at the bison and saying, “oh no, that’s my two ounces of beef, I gotta stop” or “my bison, I can’t go beyond that four-ounce portion that’s too much”. There’s deeper root causes like estrogenic compounds in the environment and mycotoxins that effect your leptin receptors and create this fat storage mode so there is some more modern toxin issues that hopefully we can dive into today.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So, first thing out of the gates, we need to make sure we’re consuming enough protein. That’s really important. So, protein is essentially the building blocks to help out put on muscle and to keep our body strong and so what’s kind of the general sliding scale. Again, it depends upon how much you’re wanting to exercise, what your goals are right. So, as a female, you’re not gonna just be able to hit some lifting and then get overly bulky, it’s just not gonna happen. But, kind of general scale is about half a gram to one gram per pound of body weight is a pretty good rule of thumb so if you’re a guy like I’m six to 215 pounds, I would probably if I wanna really get bigger, I need to be doing at least 200, 230, you know, grams of protein per day, right? Typically, I’m at about .6 to like three quarters a gram per pound of body weight, so like maybe around 150 grams. I’m usually about 5 – 6 ounces of proteins per meal and so that’s kind of where I need to beat at one protein is very satiating, I’m making sure, I’m consuming fat with it, so, then it’s stabilizing blood sugar. It’s providing a lot of amino acids which are, you know, important for brain chemistry, blood sugar stability, mood. Also, adding fat with it which one fat tends to have good high-quality cholesterol from animal products, so, that provide building blocks for hormones, fat soluble vitamins, really good nutrients. And from there, your carbs are going to be dialed in based on your activity levels, that’s where more starch, if you’re more active, if you are pretty lean, you could probably handle more starch. If you’re carrying extra weight, you want to mitigate the starch, go lower on the starch and focus more on non-starchy vegetables, maybe a little bit of low sugar fruit and kind of time that up. The next thing is stimulus. You’re gonna need to more your muscles ideally and it’s not have to be a crazy amount. It depends on your goals are. If you’re just a woman then you wanna have your muscles just feel solid, that could be something like Pelatis, where you’re doing body weight or cable movements, you know, typically finding a movement where you could do about 12 to 15, as a female, reps, um, with maybe 1 – 2 reps the tank. And I like, 1 – 2 reps in the tank, just because it makes it so you’re probably gonna hurt yourself. The more skilled you are, the more you can go right to failure, that’s better. The less skilled you are with the movement, if you don’t have a good trainer watching you, you know, probably leaving one to two reps in the tank will help prevent you getting injured. But, just recommend starting with push-ups with good full-range push-ups. I like having a borrowed push-up because I can go deeper which is great, my face won’t hit the ground, right, so I can go deeper, go all the way down and then go all the way up, so full range. Here, you can get a TRX which is a suspension trainer, put it in the door jam, I have one over here in my gym and you can do a full range pull so you’re working in the push, pull, and of course you can also do, uh, Lat pulldowns like this, or hands facing to you, so pull up, chin ups in the face, do more of the Lats, yeah, chin ups, more Lats, pull up is gonna be more biceps. So, you’re working, trying to work every single range that comes at you and ideally with the pull up you could get some elastic bands that hook around your bar and that go around your knee that gives you that little extra push. So, the key is just to find simple movements that you can do to failure plus or minus 1 or 2 reps in the tank. That’s a really good stimulus out of the gates and the next thing is really dialing in the protein, so we talked about amounts there and then we can go other things like digestion and other gut issues that could be impairing that protein absorption later on. 

Evan Brand: So, I can hear a woman saying, “you’re nuts, I’m not gonna do a pull-up, there’s no way I can do a push up, I’m not anywhere close to that fitness level”. And I would say, if you’re not, if you do have access to a gym, if you’re into a gym, I’m not anymore, I used to have a gym membership, I don’t need it anymore, I’ve got a good setup at home, so I feel like I’m great without it. But if you were to have access to a gym even for 10 bucks a month. There’s a lot of good ones like planet fitness that are out there now to where you can do some of these assisted like, uh, type exercises where they have assisted pull-ups or they have like assisted, uh, dips where you have weight that literally pushes you. It like, if you weigh 200 you add 50 pounds that it’ll make you feel like you weigh 150 and you can start there. So, you’re really starting with like a negative weight of your true weight. So those machines are available if you could feel like you’re just so out of shape, you can’t even do one push-up or one pull. And you can just go on your knees too, I mean you could start out push-ups on your knees as needed. You gotta find people, where they’re at. So, if you’re like, ‘man I’m too discouraged, I can’t do a freaking pull-up, I give up, I’m not doing anything’, you don’t have that attitude about it and if you could have one piece of equipment, I mean, I gotta say I love the row machine, I’m glad you got one too. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The roller is lovely machine.   

Evan Brand: It works your legs, it works your arms, it works your backs, works your arms, your traps. I mean if I could take one thing to an island, some are gonna argue with kettlebell, which probably is more functional, but in terms of enjoyment, I gotta say, I really enjoy and love the rower and I still think, there’s a place for kettlebells and dumbbells, I mean those are awesome, universal things. But for women, that and, and I just know this based on personal experience. Maybe younger females are not gonna be turned away. But I can tell you, if I try to take a kettlebell to a 70-year-old woman, she’s not gonna be interested in swinging that thing around. She’s gonna be worried about hurting her back or swinging the wrong way and it’s a lot more intimidating than sitting down and just simply rowing. So, this is hard to give one universal prescription because there’s different people listening, but I would say rower is very easy, low impact on your joints and not intimidating at all.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and then what’s the name of the rower that we have? 

Evan Brand: It’s called a concept 2. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Concept 2. Yeah. I think I have the D. You have the D as well? 

Evan Brand: Yeah. I think, yeah. I think the D is, there’s a little different but yeah concept 2-D, it’s a rower. It’s vey very sturdy. You get what you paid for. So, it’s around a thousand bucks but it’s worth it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s worth it, you could stand it up, so it saves a lot of space too. Yeah, I like that more for my interval stuff, so I’ll do a 30 sec on, 20 sec off, I’ll do eight sets of that. That’s gonna be more of like high intensity, just really good cardio interval stuff. I like that, just for keeping metabolism up, keeping the body a little bit leaner and more functional. I like the fact that you’re doing something that’s on the cardio side that’s putting you more into extension like this and you’re using your hamstrings to pull yourself as you slide right back and forward, you’re using a lot of your hamstrings and then a lot of the back where a lot of cardio stuff like, you know, whether it’s a bike or you’re on Peloton or you’re on elliptical, you kind of hunched over in this flexion position. I love the fact that you’re opening things up and extension. So, I like that. That’s good. That’s definitely on the cardio side. Now, like Evan talked about earlier like, easiest thing out of the gates a TRX suspension trainer is great because you can just change the angle in which you’re at so like, if here’s the suspension trainer hanging, and if I’m like at this position, this is going to be, meaning I’m flat with the ground, I’m like a 90 degrees angle from that suspension trainer, that’s gonna be the hardest. So, you can always just change it so you’re at 45 degrees or less. It’s like the equivalent of like kneeling or doing a wall push up, right, the angle is less, um, less perpendicular, therefore you’re gonna have less force, so you can always just do a TRX trainer and just change the angle so that push up or pull up is gonna be less and then in between you can also even do cables, whether you have cables at a gym or you can get some flexible bands that either wrap around like, um, like let’s say, I have a big, um, squat bar, so I’d wrap it around that and so it would be behind me like this and I would do pushes like this where I could do pulls like that, that’s great. Just, if you’re wearing, if you’re doing cables, if it’s not fully secure, I do recommend wearing safety class. People have gotten those things that have snapped and hit you in the eye, you can get some safety ones that like have like a little protective, I wanna say, like a wrapper around the cable. So, if it does break, the wrapper prevents it from whacking you in the eye. Does that make sense? So protective band or really kind of a safety-based cable that’s not gonna break, um, if it does it won’t whack you. So those are good options for you out of the gates for stimulus, because you need to have the stimulus, right? Push, pull, right, pull in the vertical motion, you can even do a row in that motion, uh, you can do hip extension movement which is the easiest thing there is gonna be like a kettlebell swing, that’s gonna be easy or some type of a deadlift, right, it’s gonna be really an easy one there out of the gates. Anything else you wanna say about just the lifting? I recommend just, kind of, keep it simple. Do primal movements that are just gonna one put resistance in that plane of motion and just work within that, plus or minus, you know, 1 – 2 reps of failure. So, you’re not gonna hurt yourself but you also feel a little bit fatigued the next day. 

Evan Brand: Well, just simply moving throughout the day, I mean a lot of people are listening right now, they’re sitting at an office chair, they’re sitting in their car, you and I are both standing up, right now and we both do stand and sit. Sometimes, I’ll put my desk on the very lowest setting to where I’ll just literally be on one knee, like proposing and I will work on one knee for a little while. So, you and I are doing something very unnatural and many people are listening, we’re looking at screens and we’re, um, in a box working on a computer and so that’s very unnatural. So, I try to counteract that as best as I can by trying to either do the row machine on my lunch break and go from sitting to standing to kneeling and just try to do these positions. So, people listening, I’m not saying you gotta stand all day, I did that for a while, they hurt my back, so I think too much of one thing is not good either and if you’re a woman you’re in an office and you’ve got high heels shoes on, you’re trying to do it, obviously take your shoes off, try to go barefoot, you can get a really good like silicone, like rubber mat that they use for like washing dishes at the same time. Yeah, like an anti-fatigue mat, I mean, I would do something like that. These are the simple strategies. Now, would it be more optimal to be out in the sunshine all day, mostly skin exposed grounded, walking the beach 2miles a day and eating grass-fed meat all day and you know having, you know, handsome men, like wave banana leaves and keep you cool. That’d be awesome but people still have to work so I think you’ve got to work in some of these functional strategies with your normal real life. And then let’s go into the more, I guess you would call it nuance but really more of the deeper root causes because I’ve had people lose 50 to 75 pounds by changing nothing in regards to diet and nothing in regards to fitness. These were people that were relatively active. These were people that already had their diet dialed in, they were mostly animal based good quality meats, doing fine on the protein and the fats but they had these other root cause issues and I’d say that the first place would be to go is the gut and you and I have talked about this in other aspects but in other podcasts too but the gut can really be a big place where you gonna become flabby and this is really due to the recirculation of toxins, when you have bacterial growth in your gut, which is an extremely common thing, this is not rare. When you have a bacterial overgrowth, in general, that can create an elevation of what’s called Beta-glucuronidase, which is an enzyme that’s gonna cause you to recirculate hormones and so, you have this personal trainer beating you up and you’re not making progress. If you don’t look at this marker and you don’t fix the gut, you’re likely not gonna have many results and the personal trainer is gonna take it personal. They’re gonna try to hit you harder, they’re gonna try to kill you and I’ve heard this before when women are literally dropping out of fitness classes because the instructor’s just beating, beating, beating and it’s like that’s the definition of insanity. So, you got to get this root causes. If you’ve got this recirculation of these hormones and or toxins like mycotoxins, I don’t care how hard you hit the CrossFit, you’re not gonna get the results that you want. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And also, just if the fats over that muscle, you’re gonna feel a little bit flabby even though the muscle underneath is getting a little bit stronger. So, you know, I always recommend getting your micronutrients dialed in, getting your carbohydrates in check so you’re not overdoing it, uh, because the more carbohydrates you make, the more insulin, the more you’re gonna be storing your fuel as fat. And again, the more your metabolism is higher, you’re more ectomorphic, you’re leaner naturally, you can handle more carbohydrates, right? The goal is that we individualize things for each person because, you know, we talk about low carb or keto, some people don’t need to do that and some people can be keto and much higher levels of carbohydrates. Some people can be ketogenic at 100 grams, for 200 grams of carbohydrates a day based on their activity and their metabolism. Some needs to be like minus 20 or 30 net. So, everyone’s a little bit different, I think that’s the important. There’s some individuality there. I would say the next thing is we, um, if you’re a female, it’s really important, menopause can really throw women’s metabolism off. If there’s low thyroid or Hashimoto’s that can really throw metabolism off. So, if you’re struggling, you’re having a hard time, we have to look at your thyroid function, look at your T3, your thyroid levels, look at antibodies, make sure that’s under control. If progesterone and estrogen is very low especially estriol and progesterone that can affect muscle building. Progesterone is really important for collagen and elasticity formation. It’s part of the reason why women get a lot of varicose veins is low progesterone, which has a major effect on the elasticity of the veins. So very important there. And then I would also say, um, toxin exposure, right? If you have lots of estrogen, if your estrogen dominant from birth control pills or estrogen from meats or milks or soy, that can put you in more of a fat storing mode because these hormones produce more fat and then guess what your fat also has an exocrine function in regards to producing estrogen. The fatter you get then the more fat you get and the more estrogen your fat cells produce. It’s just like downward spiral that just kind of, is a positive feedback loops that gets worse and worse as you go along. So, you really have to look at toxins in meat, pesticides which are all hormone-based, drugs that are gonna have estrogens in it, birth control pills, etc., milks, plastics, eating your foods out of plastic especially plastics that you’re warming things up on or you’re letting UV light hit, definitely not a good thing out of the gates.   

Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said on the thyroid too and your personal trainer is likely not testing your thyroid, so obviously, that’s were gonna be doing. And then also you know, we have a lot of experience with fitness. So, we try to educate people and give fitness plans and advice where we can there. And, I think the big people are skipping the foundational pieces. I mean, it’s fine if you just want to sign up for a class and try to get active but really, I would say, get some of these labs run first. Get your gut looked at so we can see what type of bacterial overgrowth you have, as I mentioned this is an epidemic problem. This is not a rare situation and the gut can be one of the big wrenches in your gears. That’s not allowing you to lose the weight properly and like I said, have people literally lose 75 pounds, just by fixing some of these strategies like fixing digestion. Now, for some people it could go to the other way. Some of these issues with females, it’ll cause weight loss and they’re having issues with getting muscle back, you know, building it back. And so, it depends on where you’re at. Some, they lose muscle and they still have body fat but they’re thin they’re like a skinny fat, they call it, you know, you could have a woman who’s five foot two and she’s 140lbs. And then all of a sudden, she gets sick, loses weight, now she’s 120 but she still looks flabby. That could just be because she lost that muscle due to malabsorption due to these infections like H. pylori. You and I’ve talked about the story of me where I lost 25 pounds without trying, I didn’t really have much weight to lose, but I got super skinny due to my gut infections and so it took me literally several years to build the muscle back but the first step to building back was to get rid of the gut infections and then still working on detox. I had a ton of mold toxin issues and that really screwed up my metabolism to where I was very hungry like 2 – 3 hours, I’d have to eat and no matter if it was a grass-fed steak or what. And now, I could literally go from 7am to 1pm without food and I feel like perfectly fine. I feel satiated, my brain works better, I have more mental clarity, so a lot of it’s the as you mentioned. It’s the blood sugar involvement too so you have to fix that.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110% So like the big checklist out of the gates is don’t do too much carbohydrates. Too much carbohydrate, too much sugar will make you a little bit flabby whether it’s through cortisol, whether it’s through inflammation, oxidative stress. Of course, if you’re eating a lot more carbs, right, you’re not really getting enough protein typically, right? Unless, you are someone who’s higher metabolism and really making sure proteins and carbs are dialed in and you’re doing a lot of activity. Most people, they do too much carbs too much sugar, they tend to not be getting enough protein. So, half of your body weight in grams is usually pretty decent out of the gates and then you can go up to one gram per pound of body weight depending on how active you are. So, some are gonna be good, most women are gonna be good, somewhere between a half to maybe two-thirds to three-quarters. And a lot of male people that wanna get really big, they may want to be one gram per pound of body weight. That’s kind of a good sliding scale. 

Evan Brand: Now, in the beginning, I was saying I don’t think people need to count, measure, weigh and then now you’re giving numbers so I just want to clarify kind of where I am with it. I think you can and should, to get a ballpark of where you’re at based on your meals but you should not be obsessing about it. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so I keep it really simple, right? And so, what is, um, what is about four ounces of protein is gonna be about 25 – 30 grams of protein, right?  And so, for most women, that’s gonna be about a palm to a fist size. And so, when you looking at, picking up, you know, you’re serving yourself a meal, it’s very simple, you know, there’s no weighing or measuring, you’re just kind of like what is about a palm to a fist size in regards to my hand, in regards to that serving of protein on the plate and you just scoop yourself up that amount anyway and that’s your amount. So, there’s no real crazy amount of weighing or measuring, it’s just kind of eyeballing kind of your own anatomy comparatively to what’s on the plate, and that’s usually a pretty good rule of thumb. And you know you did pretty, pretty good it’s because you’re gonna feel satiated after that meal, you’re going to eat about 10 minutes after you finished eating. The goal is we want to feel satiated enough where we can go 4 – 5 hours to the next meal. So, that’s kind of give you enough. We’re not pulling on a scale. We’re not having to measure but you got to know that like in the end, if you’re eating enough, well, what does that really mean? You ate some size amount. What is that size? It’s probably gonna be between 3 and 5 ounces of protein on average and then you can just use your hand as a good frame of reference when you’re serving yourself up. Keep it simple. 

Evan Brand: Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that because I said a lot of people, they’re just so brainwashed from conventional dieting and stuff and they get freaked out about food. They have like a PTSD of food portioning and all that and they think they have to do that. And you don’t and once you get clued in with your satiety signals. It’s so easy, you don’t need to think about it and. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s a good frame of reference, right? Because in the end, you’ve gotta serve yourself up something. How do you know to serve yourself up this much versus this much, right? You know, usually, you know, 3 – 6 ounces, 3 – 5 ounces would be pretty good. So, like for a guy, right, I’m 6 – 10-ish, right? I have bigger hands to like I may serve protein amounts the size of my hound. So, go between a palm to a palm, to a fist to a full hand is usually that frame of reference. The more active you are, the more stressed you are, the more act, you know, the more you’re doing exercise, move to a protein amount the size of your full hand. The less active you are, you can go to that palm size. And if you just starting out like you’re coming on board like being like a vegan vegetarian where there’s not a lot of protein. Start with a quarter palm then kind of work your way up. And again, if you have problems with your protein, it typically means you have low hydrochloric acid, low enzymes and you have to really work with a good functional medicine person to get your HCl and enzymes up and you may have H. pylori and SIBO and other bacterial imbalances that are impending your digestion so you have to look deeper if those symptoms come up. It’s not the protein, it’s the fact that your digestive system is weaker and cannot tolerate the protein. 

Evan Brand: Yeah. Well said. A lot of people blame the meat, ‘oh, I feel bad when I eat meat, so I’m not gonna eat meat’. It’s like, no. That’s, you’re supposed to be doing that. Like, I have a client the other day that was in South Dakota, super strict vegan. And I’m like, ‘okey how dedicated are you to being vegan?’. Like, well, they’re totally like, ‘I’m total dedicated’. Like, okay, so if let’s just role play, I was like, ‘okay, if there were no planes, no trains, no buses, no semi-tracks and it’s the middle of February and there’s a foot of snow on the ground in South Dakota, are you gonna be able to stick to your diet?’ The answer is ‘no way’. I’m like, ‘what would you be eating that’s in the landscape?’ Animals. So, we don’t have to turn into that podcast but I just want people to know, how important these things are. They really do help stabilize blood sugar. Could you make vegetarian vegan diets work? Maybe, if you try really, really hard. But that’s a whole other podcast. Let’s go back to the mycotoxin piece for a minute because something we’re seeing is something called Zearalenone, which is highly, highly estrogenic mycotoxin and it comes from a mold Fusarium which grows in water damaged buildings. Now, you will get exposed to some of this from moldy contaminated grains but I would say that vast majority, 90% of it, I would estimate is probably from buildings meaning whether your mother had mold and passed it in utero and if you are breastfed, if you went to moldy daycare as a kid, moldy elementary, middle, high school, moldy homeschool, moldy college, moldy dorm, moldy office building. I mean this is an epidemic problem. I see it literally every single day, all day and Zearalenone really screws up your estrogen, actually far more than soy. It’s way more estrogenic than soy. So, we do talk about, you know, the pitfalls of doing like soy protein and that kind of thing. But man, Zearalenone will screw you up way more than soy protein. And this is something you have to use binders to pull it out of the system. So, if you’re struggling with weight loss, you are having these estrogen dominant symptoms. Maybe, you’ve worked on the hormone piece, but you’re still struggling. Maybe you’ve implemented something like calcium D-Glucarate to work on that glucuronidation pathway but you’re still suffering, you may need to look into this and we measure this via urine. So, this is where, like you mentioned, a good work-up comes in handy. We’re gonna do urine, we’re gonna do stool as needed. We can look into these different body systems and find the dysfunction but this is the real root cause, functional medicine strategy to have lean muscle mass and lose body fat. And unfortunately, this is a very, very not talked about discussion. You and I talked before we hit record, there’s a lot of talking heads on the internet. People that will say this study says that and this study says that but none of them are actually doing the clinical work and we wouldn’t be able to do what we do if we didn’t get results. And we get results because we’re running the right labs, we’re doing the right root cause strategy which is getting these toxins out of the system. And I’ve seen it in children as young as five, I’ve seen it in two, three, four-year-old. I’ve seen it in my own kids, we tested their urine and see mycotoxins. So, this is a problem that it does affect kids. Now, you know, obesity in children usually there is diet issues but I have seen in some cases, I have a lady in New York, her 8-year-old was basically eating paleo but she was obese and she had extremely high levels of Zearalenone. Luckily for this little girl, we were able to do binders, she was able to swallow pills which was great because it made it easier and boom this kid lost weight, she didn’t change anything with diet. She just detoxed. So, honestly with so much toxins that we’re up against, I would say detox support for life is really how I approach the conversational people. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So, if you’re in a moldy home, you know definitely get your home tested. If you have a lot of mold toxins out of the gate, you know, it depends on kind of where you’re at. If there’s an active mold stress in the environment, I typically recommend work on getting your digestion, your diet, your inflammation dialed in. If there’s no active mold in your environment and then work on dealing with mold detoxification once you have more stability with all your other organ systems and immune function. So, it just depends upon where you’re coming from. If you have like active mold in your environment, that’s the easiest way to detoxify out of the gates is to get the environment kind of more dialed in and we have a podcast on that topic that we can put in the links down below. Evan, anything else you want to highlight for the listeners? So, I mean digestion is really important, HCl, enzymes, bacterial overgrowth, poor digestion, we talked about getting enough protein and again we thought you kind of talked about measuring not measuring but just kind of using your own anatomy as frame of reference because you have to serve yourself anyway in regards to what you’re eating. So, it just gives you a good frame of reference that you know how much to give and then ideally enough so you feel full and that you’ll last about 4 to 5 hours. Now, if you’re working with trainers out of the gates, do enough where you feel sore not overly sore, the next day or two make sure you walk out of the gym feeling more energized than when you started. Make sure you can emotionally repeat what you are doing, you’re not emotionally exasperated and then also that next day or that later on that day. If it’s a morning workout, make sure you don’t feel run over by a bus, make sure you’re doing just enough where your body can adapt to. It’s all about adaptation, can you adapt to it, from it, can you feel better then afterwards. And again, if you’re doing a brand-new movement, you may feel a little bit sore and it’s a new movement so just, you know, try to keep that in the back of your head too.  

Evan Brand: And, if you can’t recover then there’s probably some level of mitochondrial dysfunction. We’re also gonna look at that, if we look at chemical profile testing, there’s a marker there. If we look at organic acids, we can look at mitochondria there. So, for me, after I got exposed to mold, I would tell you, my performance and my recovery was terrible. I mean, I used to recover in like a day or two. It was like 3 days, I was still sore, I was like, man, this is not right. Once I got the mitochondria working better, retested, look at it, I confirmed, hey, that was directly correlated. And we’ve talked about this I think briefly before but the issue of bacterial overgrowth and that producing high levels of lactic acid so you could have a high baseline level of lactic acid which creates this soreness even just from the overgrowth in your gut. So, we’ll have a woman that’ll say, ‘oh my God. I’m sore and I haven’t done anything, all I done was go in the garden, why am I so damn sore’. Their bucket was already so full due to the gut infection. So, fix that, test it, and fix it. The last thing I was gonna say was on the environment, which is that you can’t get well in a sick environment. So, whether that’s bad lighting, LED lighting, try to use incandescent bulbs, like half natural lights, like I’m surrounded by a bunch of windows. Getting that bright light exposure to help regulate your cortisol rhythm, making sure you’re using twilight or some other app at night on your phone, if you’re doing blue light at night, because we know that blue light can make you fat through various mechanisms affecting glucose and cortisol making sure your detoxing making sure you’re not wearing synthetic fragrance, I mean there’s so many people we asked this on the intake form. Do you use scented products? I will tell you, I’m very surprised how many people are seeking out natural functional medicine and they still use scented laundry detergent, dryer sheets. All these synthetic fragrances, they can affect your hormones and they’re not good. They are bad toxins. They’re endocrine disruptors. So, go free and clear. It’s not expensive, every mainstream brand has a free and clear unscented version. So, implement that easily. You don’t want to be wearing endocrine disruptors on your clothes all day, you’re already exposed to those. If you go out, even to Chipotle, which I think is one of the best places you could go if you have to eat out. Even their bowls have those non-stick chemicals in there. So, you’re getting exposed to toxins even if you’re not trying, the last thing you want to do is wear those and put your husband or your kids in those clothes. So, go fragrance free please. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also, by the way, you know, if you show up to the store like my wife got Thai the other day. I went and picked it up for and they like scooped it and put it in like, like this hot coconut, you know, curry in a plastic container. So, I recommend, if you can, you know, keep a Pyrex container in your car, so if you go out to these places, literally bring your own glass Pyrex. Hey, can you please put it in this. 

Evan Brand: They might. They might comply. Yeah. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve done it before. I’ve done it with Thai a lot of times because it’s so hot so I’ll just bring it but like hey can you please have the cook put it in this place. 

Evan Brand: That’s awesome. I travel with my own. We travel with our own, you know water bottles, we’ll bring our own stainless-steel cups everywhere we go. So, we’re not drinking water that’s gonna be contaminated with small amounts of pesticide and herbicide and pharmaceutical drugs. You can look up the environmental working group. For people listening, type in, EWG water report. You can put in your zip code. Here in Kentucky, where I am, we have certain chemicals in the water hundreds of times higher than the safe levels that are all highly carcinogenic and endocrine disruptors. So, this is not just, we’re being picky, no, the water in tap water is toxic. So, you need to travel with filtered water and you’re saving your gut. We know that parts per billion of glyphosate damages good bacteria which creates bacterial overgrowth. So, unfortunately it has become more complicated to become healthy. Have you seen those memes, I’m sure you have of like a bunch of skinny people at the beach in the 1960s and all the obese people in the 2020s at the beach and it’s like ‘what happened? ‘. And there was a lot less of that toxic exposure back then than now.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, there was also carbohydrates too, I mean there was no trans fat back then. If you look at carbohydrates, if you look at, like, the macronutrients per decade, proteins relatively flat, you’ll see fat drop and you’ll see carb increase. So really, it’s a lot more carbs, a lot less good fat. So, of course, good healthy saturated fats, I mean up until 1988, McDonalds have beef tallow, up until the uh, I think it’s the CSPA whatever one of these vegan groups came in and wanted soybean oil which just disastrous, I mean if you had reasonably non-GMO free, um, potatoes in some beef tallow that’s amazing, that’s actually not even that bad. Um, but they changed it to soy in ’88 so you have a lot more processed vegetable oils, omega-6 that just really damaged, uh, that gets into your cell membrane and really toxifies your cell membrane, and it takes years to come out. So, make sure, you’re consuming really good high quality animal saturated fats and if you’re doing, you know, monounsaturated to keep it like avocado, keep it to high quality cold pressed olive oil and try to get at least half of your fats from high quality saturated fats. That’s important. 

Evan Brand: Yeah. The oils are, men, we can do, let’s do a whole like oil special but in general the seed oils and all that are no good. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If you guys enjoyed today’s podcast, let us know. Put it in the notes. Put it in the description, please give us a share with your friends or family, also give us a like and a thumbs up that helps the search algorithm. And if you wanna reach out to Evan, head over to evanbrand.com. There’ll be a link where you can click and work with Evan. Head over to my site, justinhealth.com. I’m Dr. J, we’ll put links down below. If you’re gonna work with us, we are available worldwide. We work with a wide variety of patients from the young, from the old, females, men, etc. A lot of hormone issues, a lot of gut issues, a lot of toxicity issues that’s our specialty. We’re here to help you out and if you want to support us, we’ll put down the links below to different products that we recommend in regards to today’s podcast. Evan, anything else?

Evan Brand: Yeah. Last thing I would say, so many people have already tried everything and been to everybody and seen many, many people before they come to us, so I’m not bragging about that but it just happens to be that you and I are the people who are working with people generally somewhere close to the end of their rope and that puts a lot of pressure on us clinically to make sure that we get good results and we come through with that and you can read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of 5 star of our clinic reviews, not just the podcast reviews but the clinic reviews too. So, I encourage people that if you’re like, ‘oh God could these guys really help, I don’t know I’ve already seen this person and that person. I’ve seen a lot of people do what was called functional and was not functional like, ‘oh I went to this integrative doctor’ and she ran one blood test for the hormones and that was it, like that’s not a functional protocol. I’m sorry. You didn’t get anywhere close to the functional workup that they’re claiming. So, functional is becoming this marketing term but there’s so many people that are not truly doing that. And I want to just encourage you and give you inspiration that we’re doing the real deal here. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% Really appreciate it. All right guys, if you enjoy it, thumbs up comments below. We’re here to help. Have a good one you all. We will be back again. Take care. 

Evan Brand: See you. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye-bye 

Evan Brand: Bye. 

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Recommended Products:

TruePaleo Protein Chocolate

TuePaleo Protein Vanilla

TruePea Protein

Genova NutrEval FMV

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/why-you-cant-put-on-muscle-functional-medicine-solutions-to-avoid-being-flabby-podcast-357

Dr Bernd Friedlander – Immune Support, Extend Life Span, Best Supplement, Perfect Diet- Podcast #353

In this video, Dr. J and Dr Bernd Friedlander talk about immune system in general. Immune system is the natural defense and it’s an complex network of cells, tissues, and organs that band together to defend your body against invaders. Those invaders can include viruses, bacteria, parasites, even fungus, all with the potential to make us sick. They are everywhere – in our offices, homes, and backyards. A good immune system protects us by first creating a barrier that stops those invaders, or antigens, from entering the body.

The immune system can acknowledge millions of contrasting antigens. And it can make what it needs to eliminate nearly all of them. This detailed defense system can keep health problems ranging from cancer to the common cold at bay when it’s working correctly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

0:00 – Introduction
2:20 – The issue behind immune stress
6:25 – Things to know about natural light
17:04 – Who are good candidate for extra glucose?
26:37 – How and when does adding sugar good?
46:46 – The important role of full spectrum light

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Dr. Bernd Friedlander. Dr. Bernd Friedlander has been around, uh, the health space for I’d say more than 50 years. He’s been a health consultant to many professional sports teams and he’s a, let’s just say a quite a figure in the health expansion national health community in the Silicon Valley area for many many decades. Bernd, how are you doing? Welcome to today’s show.  

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Thank you. I appreciate it. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, tell us a little bit more about yourself. You’ve been around the block, I mean professional sports, natural health kind of life extension community for quite a long time. How long has it been and how did you get into the space?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Um, I’ve been sort of like when I graduated from college, I got into physical therapy and I was an assistant physical therapist for about ’72 – ‘78 and I worked with, you know, clients with structural injuries and back problems, neck problems, and physical therapy and rehab and recovery from ‘72-‘78. And then I went back to chiropractic school in ’78 and graduated in ’81 and I started working out at UCLA and I was asked by a number of coaches and athletes to work with them since they found out that I was, my background was physical therapy nutrition, which I picked up in 1972 and my other background was chiropractic. So, it, you know, marriage was perfect and I was also a track and field runner in college and I also played, um, semi-professional soccer. So, I had a very good foundation and tool and so, because of that, I started working with UCLA athletes and then later on, they asked me to come in and start working with the Olympic team and develop them for the ’80 – ’84 and ’88 Olympics and we have people from all over the world coming to us at UCLA to work out with us and to perform with us and to learn about that we have and nutrition and all that.    

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Very cool. So, you’ve been even in this space for 40 – 50 plus years. That’s amazing. Let’s kind of dive in, we have a couple of topics that we chatted about ahead of time that we really wanna dive into. So, immune stress is a big issue that we have today. A lot of immune stressors from our environment from food to different infections, etc. You know, one of the top things you are doing to help improve your immune system, like you know, let’s forget about hydration obviously getting some sunlight, you know, good whole food diet, you know, just kind of all the foundational things. What things that people talk about, um, that you want to add here, people that haven’t, different things, people haven’t talked about enough that you wanna add in that really would help improve people’s immune function and stress?  

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. Well, the first thing I look at is quality of life they have, how do they sleep at night, how do they get up in the morning, how much indoor activity are they getting in front of a computer, a cellphone, all these EMF is affecting our own system, our immune system. It’s, um, not able to function as well as we want to so I just tell them to get out in the sun in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening, go for walks, just be in outdoor not indoor. You know, we were trained to be outdoor most of our lives. Our ancestors are outdoor. We developed from, uh, from the sun and from nature and from the ocean. And that’s why we got here. And by ruining us by being indoor, we’ve changed the attitude of our DNA and RNA and how it functions and that’s why we’re seeing a lot of people getting sick today. It’s not getting out in the sunshine, not developing natural vitamin D. So, I have to tell them to take additional vitamin D everyday and some vitamin A and E and I always include aspirin at night because that promotes many anti-inflammatory mechanisms and it has a tremendous benefit in our blood, in our circulation, in our mitochondria. And first thing I do, because of my background, I wanted to know who we were, how we did get to this stage, where we are today as humans, how did our brain develop and that’s important and it was all related to four billion years ago. Our mitochondria, an organelle bacterial mitochondrion that created everything and started the living systems life in on the planet earth and plants. Everything is developed through these mitochondria and so I went into it and I wanted to research it so much as I can become a sponge for this one organelle, how it works and how important it is. And there’s a fellow named Douglas Wallace, who wrote many articles and is like the father of mitochondria. So, by researching him and reading about him and also about repeating his work in mitochondria, I started learning that everything is based on this one organelle, how do we improve that organelle that mitochondria efficient energy that’s what gives us energy to every cell in our body. And I wanted to learn everything I can about what makes these mitochondria efficiently. An immune system functions on mitochondria, stem cells function on mitochondria repair, regeneration and all disease and aging is a factor due to this efficient mitochondrial function. And cancer cells also are involved because of the mitochondria, how effective is the mitochondria is producing energy, it’s oxidative metabolism and that’s the foundation.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Okay. So, you get put a couple of things out there, I want to just break them up one by one. Some people maybe listening to this saying, “hey I can’t get outside that many times a day, what can I do to improve, uh, healthier monitors, low blue light, low flicker light, full of spectrum lightning”. What can people do to kind of change their office and their house where they’re out all day to improve light, um, um, uh, light activation via says, um, say like I have full light spectrum on now? What can people do inside their home to improve light, if they can’t get outside as much? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Good question, Justin. I see a lot of patients, uh, there are in cubicles, you know, in dark rooms working. The first thing, I tell them is get close to a window or get enough natural from the sun by being exposed to, uh, somewhere that has windows or in condensing lights that are natural lights, you know. We want to bring back the natural state of light closes to the sun, so we can bring. All these LED lights are not natural.  We’re not getting the natural lightning and like you said blue light is dangerous and that’s where the computers and cellphones and nighttime television and nighttime to, you know, working on texting or using cellphones for, you know, um, you know, being on it too much is creating problems and neurological problems as well and that’s why people can’t sleep well because they’re bombarded by blue light which is dangerous to our brain. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There are some good monitors out there that are eye care monitors that are low flicker, low blue light monitors. Those are great, I have three big ones in front of me that will help decrease the flicker and the blue light, the lighting I have here are full spectrum, so you can look at investing some full spectrum light bulbs to plug into those sources where you have lighting in your office. That helps a lot. Anything else that you personally, um, apply or do in your home or office? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, I also to get them out for several minutes at a time. So, if they’re indoors, just go outside for about 5 – 10 minutes, at least expose yourself to some light and then you can go back to work. Don’t stay indoors all day long without exposing yourself to natural light. Because that what creates mitochondrial function, that’s what creates, um, all that natural biochemical process that we need to perform better. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. That’s great. Let’s talk about the mitochondria. You kind of already hit it right? The mitochondria are essentially the powerhouse of our cells. They generate ATP, which is like the cellular currency of our body. Vitamin D or I should say sunlight helps charge it. What about diet? There’s a lot of, I should say, a lot of, um, conflicting ideas about it right? I’ve seen many places where the mitochondria runs off of glucose and creates dirty fuel that we really wanna be using the carnitine shuttle and using fatty acids and being a little bit more ketogenic to run the mitochondria and not fueling up with too much carbs. I know guys like Ray Peat talk about more using orange juice and more refined juices. What’s your take on that? I know you’re a little bit more controversial on some of the carb stuff but go ahead. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Um, well, I’ve been, you know, I’ve been following Ray Peat but I’ve also had a chance to meet and work with, um, Linus Pauling and he was a big advocate of orange juice and he explained to me the importance of orange juice with the flavonoids, the vitamin C is natural in orange juice. And the flavonoids, like Apigenin, Arginine and Naringin and Fisetin. These are very important compounds that increase the electron flow into the mitochondria so there’s efficient ATP production and CO2 is the byproduct of efficient ATP. Lactic acid is inflammatory. It becomes an inflammatory nature, and that’s how cancer cells derived themselves by lactic acid. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is lactic acid a powerful stimulator for growth hormone too? Don’t we make that when we exercise as well. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Um, we do but lactic acid causes inflammation in our body and we get cramps and deterioration and joint problems and we break down cartilage and ligaments and tendons. And just simply I used to do with my athletes, I used to give them baking soda, a quarter of a teaspoon to a teaspoon every day, twice a day to help them recover from lactic acid so they have more energy and their recovery is much faster and they don’t break down as fast and then I started adding the collagen bases, the vitamin D, the calcium, and the vitamin C from orange juice. That all helped. So, what I wanted to look at is how do we increase the oxidative metabolism and reduce the reduction state. So, you have oxidation and you have reduction state. And the reduction state is the byproduct of ATP burning in our body for fuel and energy and we wanna be able to bring back the oxidative state so we have the electron flow that breaks the food that we eat into energy which is glucose and that glucose is the metabolism of the gasoline of our body that fuels us and allows us to produce and function and be able to repair ourselves.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, what kind of glucose sources are we talking in, um, from fruit which is gonna be mostly fructose but some glucose or starch which will be more glucose. I mean we’re not advocating lots of refined sugar or processed grains right. What kind of sources and then would this still be a good idea if someone’s maybe more sedentary and insulin resistant? Are these people from who are more flexible, metabolically flexible and more active, how do you make that prescription?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, myself in working with many patients, many athletes, I found that one of the best things I did in the morning for my athletes to perform better and I work with the Rams, Raiders, Lakers, uh, you know, all these, um, Kansas City Chiefs as you can sees in the background, I have Howie Long back there, who was one of my patients, is I found that if I can increase uncoupling protein, increase mitochondria, what increases mitochondria, it’s what we eat and the supplements we take like anything that we, uh, if we have coffee. We did a study and we found out that coffee with sugar and cream, actually the athletes perform better and we saw an increase in mitochondrial function. And if we, did it with tea, we found that if we put sugar and cream of milk, we found the same result. So, it’s that, process of in the morning, have the orange juice, have your coffee with sugar and cream and the same thing with tea, we need sugar to operate on glucose metabolism. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is these for every person, I mean obviously you’re a lean kind of more ectomorphic kind of body type, you’re active. So, for you, is that makes sense but that makes sense if you’re overweight though as well? And you’re more insulin resistant, would that be a good recommendation for them or should we allow some of these people to go off of gluconeogenesis to help convert maybe glucose in their body via protein, which is more time released? How do you make that more specific?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Working with, you know, going back to this ‘80s, ’81, ’82, I wanted to study on performance and recovery. That was my job at UCLA. That was what given a job and I worked n caloric restriction diet, I worked on you know mitochondria performance, uh, with the university. And what I found is that, since we start consuming too much carbs, you know pastas and breads and flours and iron rich foods, we have caused more obesity and diabetes and heart attacks. When the oils came into play, all the seed oils from canola to sunflowers, pollock, cotton, all those, we had an increase in heart disease and diabetes and cancer. So, the two things we saw was, when we start producing grains and pastas and breads and flowers, this is a new part of our diet, you know, it wasn’t in a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago, we were a gatherer and a hunter and we ate from the roots and we ate fruits. So, when we changed our diet, we saw a difference in disease stages increasing. And so, people who are, uh, overweight, it has nothing to do with sugar. Its people are not getting enough calcium and vitamin D in their diet, they’re consuming too much phosphorus and there’s a gene called Klotho, k-l-o-t-h-o, and that gene regulates kidney function, biologically all our function is controlled by that one gene, uh, upregulating calcium into our bone. Osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease, cancer, if we have too much phosphorus, we’re removing calcium out from the bone, and we’re generating as an inflammatory condition in the body and that’s why we have osteoporosis, arthritis, and cancer and heart disease. But if have more calcium in our diet from dairy products, from eggs, from cheeses and predominantly those kinds of foods and they’re higher in amino acids utilization foods. You know, we found that eggs and milk are the two highest in AAU, amino acids utilization, in our body and by consuming those kinds of foods, we found that people are healthier. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, what about, so, you’re talking about, um, calcium is good, we need more of that. What about magnesium? Where does magnesium sits on that hierarchy?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It is essential. There’s no doubt because of cardiovascular disease and also it helps calcium absorption into the cells, into the bones, into our bone marrow. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And other patients that you would say, you shouldn’t be doing these orange juice, you shouldn’t be doing the extra sugar, who are these people? You’re dealing with a lot of athletes, someone who’s 30, 40, 50 pounds overweight and more insulin resistant, would you say hey maybe be careful on that stuff? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I’ve taken on a lot of patients, uh, since I retired from chiropractic and I have a group of people that I work with and I have a friend at Ohio State University food and science department and he and his mother have diabetes. They’re not active, you gotta understand, so when I started giving them more sugar fructose or sucrose in their diet, I was able to completely reverse their diabetic problems.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, I would, I’d wanna know what was their diet before. Are you reducing the amount of glucose because, we know diabetes has to do with high amounts of, um, glucose in the bloodstream, so there tends to be a resistance to the insulin right and so we have glucose accumulating, so how does giving more of that actually lower your glucose level? Physiologically that doesn’t make sense to me.

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Okay. I had a chance, there was a fellow at UCSF and he and I spoke about two years ago right before the COVID came on, we met at, uh, we met and he was doing stem cells for, uh, the pancreas, how to improve, uh, insulin function again, how we repair the body back to natural state where we don’t have to give them diabetes medication and I had, uh, I asked them one thing, would you do me a favor when you do a stem cells, would you do me a favor, increase the sugar intake in the patient. He reported back to me that he double the effects of the stem cells in diabetic patients and we came into conclusion that glucose and fructose improve the mitochondrial function and produces insulin more efficiently. And he was, he didn’t even thought about that, he didn’t even think that glucose was that essential and  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s in the presence of stem cells, right? What if you don’t have stem cells because I mean we know that, we know that, um, type 2 diabetes over 20,30 years, we know beta cell function of the pancreas and insulin production actually drop and they become insulin dependent over a long period of time. So, if that theory were to make sense, why are people becoming insulin dependent over decades later. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I want you to go back and study a guy named Peori and Bronk, B-r-o-n-k and Peori is another fellow. One from France and one from England. Ray Peat has it in his newsletters, I reviewed their studies. They gave 16 ounces of sugar to diabetic patients and they give a collagen type of diet with, you know, oxtail soup or a lamb shank, things that were high in collagen. They completely reverse all diabetic patients. I have taken retired athletes, you know, had diabetes and heart issues, okay. I studied their diet, I looked at them and these guys are not like active anymore. They’re not like football players or athletes that they were when they were young. They had all these issues with, uh, diabetes and heart disease and I look at their diet and I stopped them having them have breakfast with just toast and peanut butter or oatmeal or you know, without protein. I asked them to start using orange juice, apple juice, grape juice and sugar in their coffee and tea. I monitored them. I was able to get them off any diabetic medication completely and these about 30 to 40 people I monitored and I have so many people that are, uh, one person came to me, um, that was, uh, a fellow who started, was involved in a company that got the solar technology going especially in one of the ballparks that the 49ers played and he was a retired football player as well and he had diabetic problems and he was gonna be put on insulin and he asked me if I would work with him and I said, absolutely. He trusted me enough because of other people in the family that use, uh, were, you know, using me for nutritional consultation all recovered and one of them was a lung cancer patient who recovered 100 percent. And I put them on this higher sugar diet meaning fruits, orange juice, coffee and sugar and all that and his doctor in San Jose says, a month later, two months he came back and he says all your blood report came back perfect. He’s never seen anybody recover that fast. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, it’s interesting because I have, I have hundreds of, you know, observations the opposite right? Restricting a lot of those sugars and allowing the body to start burning more fat and then the cells become more sensitive. I guess, the question I would ask is, what was their diet like ahead of time because if someone’s diet’s worse and even though you’re adding all this sugar it could be less sugar and then three would be, how much activity are they getting? Are they burning it all up with their muscles and mitochondria right after they consuming it? Are they sitting all day doing an office job and still, um, maintaining insulin sensitivity while being sedentary? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. No, I got it. I understand, you, uh, nutrition and diet is very important. What I look at, I look at things that causes oxidative damage to the thyroid and to the mitochondria. What are they? High phosphorus foods, unsaturated fats, okay, those and, and overload with iron. Too much iron, causes damage to our blood cells okay.  And so, I’m looking at increasing cytochrome oxidase enzymes by increasing copper, by increasing NAD output, so that’s your B3 niacinamide, your B1, B2. All of these are important. Vitamin D and vitamin A and breaking, and having them eat more of high protein, high cholesterol diet. In my study, I did a lot of research in longevity, and the people that I’ve study and I just lost one patient, three months four months ago, it was on national television. She was 114 years old. Her diet was very high in dairy. That’s how I had her on since ’92 and she was eating that before. Her diet was basically milk, cheeses and a piece of bread. That was her diet pretty much and her coffee and sugar and that’s it. And so, I’ve been looking that for a long time, is studying people that live the longest like in Bolivia, in the area of Georgia and Turkey, and what do they consume is they consume mostly dairy products and they consume things that are natural. They don’t eat much of the pastas and breads and grains and oat meals because that’s not their diet. So, I look at their diet, I wanna make sure if I can raise the NAD+ levels, you know, the oxidative metabolism, that’s the secret. How did I do that? I studies with Douglas, uh, I studied with so many of the great minds out their in mitochondrial research and Klotho research, and I found out that glucose metabolism is a secret, how do we increase that and how do we bring down unsaturated fats, increase saturated fats because high cholesterol actually increases longevity and most of my..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s an antioxidant

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yep. It’s an antioxidant. It helps with brain development. It helps with libido and hormones. And I put everybody at not to worry about high cholesterol, I put them in a diet that’s rich in cholesterol, saturated fats, steric acid, all these things that we need to develop with. And I found by doing all of these with my patients and increasing the glucose metabolism and giving them sugar because most of my patients are very fatigued, they’re tired, they’re depressed, they have anxiety issues, and by just changing them, increases some sugar in their body, I’ve been able to see a difference in all of them. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I would imagine though, these people that are already sick though, probably have a lot of sugar in their body already. They’re probably eating lots of processed grains and flowers and sodas. So, my chole rationale on this whole thing, how does adding more of what’s already there, how does that fix anything because they’re already eating a lot of processed grains and processed sugars, how does adding that in a different form fix it? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Okay. You set the magic work. We’re eating too much grains, pastas breads, what is, those are very high of what? Phosphorus foods.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But they’re also going to break down the sugar in the body, they still break down the sugar. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes. They break it down differently than if I eat a fruit, okay. If I eat a fruit. What is around that fruit? Minerals.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Potato fiber. Fiber as well. Some vitamin C and bioflavonoids. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes. So, If I’m eating that, I have sugar from a natural source that is not converted, doesn’t have anything to do with phosphorus. Phosphorus is one of the leading causes of diseases today and I’ve studies the Klotho gene from universities, from Stanford, from UCSF, from UCLA and I’ve learned that most of the grains and pastas and breads and processed foods are very rich and high in phosphorus and we’re losing vitamin K, we’re losing calcium in our body and it’s affecting vitamin D levels. And that’s why I agree with you, these processed foods are not our, uh, the foods that we should be eating and they’re not nature, you know, they’re not coming from nature.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Isn’t there a natural ratio too with calcium, phosphorus. So, is it the fact that phosphorus is a problem or is it more that we’re not getting enough calcium to combat the phosphorus?   

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Both. You hit it both.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, if you’re getting phosphor, because you’re going to get phosphorus in animal products too, right? You’ll be getting in meat so, we’re not saying meat ‘s bad, you’re just saying make sure you get enough calcium to balance it off is that what you’re saying?   

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I don’t eat much meat anymore. Okay. I’m learning..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How much meat are you consuming but you’re still doing a lot of collagens though, right? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I do collagen but my predominant diet is now shellfish

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. So, you’re still doing animal protein, you’re just choosing on the crustacean side. You’ve got it. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I’m using more copper rich foods in my diet because cytochrome oxidase enzyme, a complex for, is essential for mitochondrial function and we’re not getting enough copper rich foods anymore. We’re getting too much iron, we’re getting too much phosphorus, we’re not getting enough copper in our diet. So, I’m choosing foods that are higher in copper and less in iron and less in phosphorus and I see a difference in myself. You know.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I know for a long time, you were a big fan of grass-fed meat. Are you still a fan of grass-fed meat? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No. I think, grass-fed beef, if you’re gonna go for meat, grass-fed is the only one because, it is higher in vitamin E and less in unsaturated fats than the hormone or the estrogenic meats that we’re seeing today because of the hormones and they [inaudible] 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The hormones. And then also you’re getting a lot of goof fatty acids because these grass-fed cows, they’re essentially bioaccumulating the GLA fats from the grass, correct? So, you’re getting a really good high quality, um, uh, I think saturated fat from a lot the, um, fats that are concentrated from the grass. Is that correct?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Exactly!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, you talked about these polyunsaturated. Why are these fats so bad, obviously, the processing of a lot of these fats whether it’s canola or soy, etc., damages a lot of them, right? And so, once they’re damaged and oxidized, they essentially create our building blocks for our membrane. So now, we have a really crappy cell membrane it’s depleting our antioxidant reserves. So, it’s depleting vitamin E, vitamin C. Is that correct? And these fats stay in our cells for a long time. Can you talk more about that? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Okay. In lipid chemistry at Stanford. I had a chance to meet several people there and at the Back institute. And I was asking them questions about cell membrane and mitochondria, and Linus Pauling Institute. They told me in their research that if it’s not saturated fats, if it’s not mono or medium chain triglycerides, anything that is high in unsaturated fats causes cell membrane oxidative damage to the mitochondria, uh, lipids okay, and they become oxidize and become damage, the RNA and DNA of the mitochondria gets damaged. And so, all unsaturated fats will do that to the, um, mitochondrial lipids, okay? And, um, I read several, major published articles on it and also not only does it damage our mitochondria. It also damages our cells in all other parts of the body and parts of the brain as well. And it causes oxidative damage to the thyroid. The thyroid is so important. It’s the organ that controls metabolic function, hormonal function, metabolism, everything. Polyunsaturated oils damage the T4 – T3 conversion. Okay?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Yeah. Make sense. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: And so, every..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Probably effects the autoimmunity, right? Because most thyroid issues have autoimmune component. So, if you drive these polyunsaturated that are damaged, you’re probably just driving more inflammation, right, and you’re depleting a lor of these antioxidants which are anti-inflammatory as well. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You’re absolutely right, Justin, that we’re seeing an increase in inflammation due to these fats. In nature, we weren’t using oils from seeds. That’s something else. Seeds were made to grow things. They weren’t made to eat and..

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or if we ate them, we soaked them. There was a way that we try to deactivate a lot of these anti-nutrients and lectins via certain methods. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yes. You mean sprouting?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. Exactly. Yep. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: So, that’s the other problem with the, um, with the unsaturated fats and there was a lot of, uh, Gilbert Ling showed that it was causing a lot of, uh, cell membrane issues to and, um, the other thing also not only that but it can, it raises estrogen in our body and estrogen is a promoter of growth of cancer and it’s also an inflammatory marker and lowers oxidative metabolism in the mitochondria. Vernon Stevens at Ohio State university and Cleveland, um, cancer clinic showed that estrogen is a predominant marker of all cancer cells. It’s in the cell membrane of all cancer cells and he showed that in his studies that estrogen leads to all these processes and by reducing unsaturated fats, therefore reduce some of the estrogen. By increasing progesterone and DHEA in our diet, we also lower estrogen. And estrogen can cause many oxidative damages, inflammation and raises serotonin and histamine and we have autoimmune disease from that as well. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Makes sense. Now, with estrogens, are you also worried about aromatase in men for instance high levels of insulin primarily driven by too much sugar. Are you worried about aromatase causing that high level of estrogen and thus increasing cancer risk n men for instance?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Can we put a hole for a second? I have the people here. Hold on.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sure, no problem, we’ll pause it really quick here. Or actually, I’ll just, I’ll keep chatting here while you, uh, jump over. So, it’s a couple of things that we want to highlight here, mitochondria, very important, I mean, I guess some of the things that Dr. Bernd and I may disagree on is about how much glucose a person needs. I would say out of the gates, um, glucose you can get away with more processed glucose and more refined sugars, the more active you are and the more genetically you ten to be more towards an ectomorph, right. Look at Michael Phelps back and I think it was maybe, two Olympics ago, they showed his breakfast or what he ate during the day. It was like pancakes and junk. I’m just saying, it was 10,000 calories, I was thinking, I’m like man, if that guy actually ate 10,000 calories of food that was more nutrient dense imagine how much better he performed. But again, when someone’s that active, they can deal with all the refined carbohydrates and sugars and they can handle it. Now, again, if someone has a gluten sensitivity and, uh, other food allergens such as dairy and cheeses that maybe problematic and that may cause IBS and other types of issues. So, I would say carbohydrate loads should really be dependent upon on how active someone is, um, their genetic predisposition to be able to handle that high level of carbohydrate and also with their what their activity level is. Some people they consume a bunch of carbohydrates bunch of pasta. They are prone to getting tired. Some eat a bunch of glucose and pasta and they actually get more active. Now, I would say also better to do things that are more starchy, squash, sweet potato, an anti-inflammatory because gluten sensitivity is a big deal, uh, the more gluten that you’re consuming and the more sensitive you are to it, the more that may drive inflammation, uh, create gut permeability issues and also, um, increase chance of autoimmunity and so we want to choose safe starches that are gonna be anti-inflammatory, nutrient dense and low toxin. All right, he’s back. I was just chatting with everyone here as we go. So, let’s just kind of dive into the mitochondria, you mentioned aspirin. Now, are you worried about any of the side effects of the acetylsalicylic acid which is essentially is aspirin and then could people also do white willow bark as well if they wanted to avoid the actual pharmaceutical maybe due to the actual bark it said? And are you worried about those side effects?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Not at all. I’ve been using aspirin for I’ve got 40 years for now. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For listeners, aspirin is derived from white willow bark. So, if you want to try it, you can also get the actual whole herb, the whole bark, can do it that way too. Go ahead. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander:  So, about 1984, when I was working with, uh, Olympic athletes then I became, uh, I worked with the Raiders and Rams that year and then Lakers, the following year. I studied from a cell physiologist at UCLA. How to improve, you know, mitochondria, uncoupling protein, energy into the, uh, individual performance. And there was a study that somebody showed me that, um, aspirin helps with coffee in raising uncoupling proteins. So, when I gave people aspirin with coffee, with sugar and cream, they doubled their performance level. It was almost like a steroid they said. It was so much they couldn’t believe it. Not only that, we saw, uh, less injuries in our athletes. Our injuries levels were going down dramatically. So, we knew it had to be what the aspirin as well because weren’t getting the strains and strains of calves and ankles, that you know, in athletes that were performing. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, hold on. One second, what does that mean uncoupling proteins. Can you kind of break that down what that means?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: That means your improving the electron flow into the mitochondria. You’re getting more, new, uh, ability to take electrons and oxygen and there’s a chemical reaction in the mitochondria, there’s a spin there that goes on. The ATP spin, you know, that gives us that spin to make energy in the mitochondria. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what’s the mechanism is that from aspirin decreasing inflammation and improving just the flow, it’s improving the blood flow of these nutrients? What’s the mechanism? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: It has to be the combination of the coffee, the caffeine, 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The alkaloids 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: the high magnesium and the anti-inflammatory mechanism of the coffee and the aspirin that increased that electron flow through the cell membrane and it created a faster spin, so you’re getting more efficient ATP production. And you know, aspirin is also can lower fatty acid sequences which is a major factor in all cancer cells. It’s Otto Warburg says, if you don’t have sufficient oxygen to, uh, as a respiratory function in a cell, then you’re not gonna have efficient energy and cancer cells don’t have efficient energy. They break down to lactic acid and that’s the problem. Well. Aspirin protects us from the lactic acid production, that’s another factor and helps with raising CO2, carbon dioxide, which is the byproduct of energy and why we train in high altitude is because we want more CO2 which helps us in energy and metabolism and this improvement and quality of endurance because of steel too and so we found that aspirin also helps with raising CO2 levels which is essential form more energy and recovery from injuries and all that.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Well, anything else you want to leave the listeners with? And by the way would you recommend just any day generic baby aspirin or do you have any brands that have less fillers or dyes or preservatives in there? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I go and I want you to have. I just get Walgreens brand. Their brand, it’s aspirin Walgreens or any brand that’s not, you know, like bears it’s I see less recipients. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. And if people wanna still get that benefit, they could still try to find some White Willow bark which is what aspirin is made from. So that’s another option natural alternative. If someone wants it to be a little bit more natural in their approach that’s a good option as well. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: About 13 years ago, I was lecturing at an anti-aging conference in Las Vegas and San Jose, and one of the cardiologists, who was also lecturing, we started talking about the importance, there was a lecture on aspirin at the same conference by one of the scientists at Bayer. He showed that aspirin increases a gene called Foxo, f-o-x-o, which is a longevity gene that’s found in longevity people. And aspirin increases this function of Foxo gene to be more efficient and to keep it from burning down or help to over express it. So, we found that it works phenomenally well.  And we went to that conference and we saw all the values of aspirin. It helps with bone growth and bone development and cartilage repair and lowers inflammation, increases CO2 levels. The cardiologists, I asked them, how does this work in your sense of understanding of the heart and the blood flow. He says that aspirin protects us, if we take it every night, from developing a clot, from developing a stroke, from platelets aggregating each other, from oxidative damage.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But, what would you recommend other things like systemic enzymes or higher dose fish oil, would you recommend other natural things or curcumin or ginger first or do you really think aspirin is just as good or if not better than those natural compounds too? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I have studied every herb out there with Elizabeth Mazzeo. She’s the world leading expert in inflammatory plants. Aspirin was by was far, the only plant, the only natural thing that has prostaglandin 1, prostaglandin 2, which is COX1 and 2 inhibitors. There’s not a compound out there that inhibits both prostaglandins 1 and 2 and many do 1, many do 2, but nothing comes close to doing 1 and 2. Boswellia was the second most powerful under aspirin, Boswellia. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Boswellia, okay, which is essentially Frankincense. And were not putting things like Ibuprofen or NSAIDs in the same category that increased chance of ulcers and liver damage, right? I mean those kill about 20 thousand people taking a year. Taking correctly, they work great but they have some side effects. You wouldn’t put aspirin in that same camp, right?  

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: No, aspirin by far so much better because it doesn’t cost liver damage and the other, you said something very interesting, all these other ones, they have a problem, they cause a hypometabolic function. They don’t improve mitochondrial function. That was the second thing that we did a study with. In lipid chemistry is what increases mitochondrial function and aspirin seems to be the only one besides Fisetin, which is gonna be the next future, that increases electron flow into the mitochondria. And that’s what we’re seeing and I take 325 milligrams every night before I go to bed. That’s what the cardiologist told me that protects us against strokes, blood clots by, uh, you know, anything that causes platelet damage or anything like that, 325. 81 did not do much at all in that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Okay. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: And then, I have many athletes still that I work with, I haven’t taken aspirin in the morning as a protective mechanism against injury, inflammation and at night and they seem to do better when they’re doing that then their recovery is better, the less injuries. And again, anything that I can raise the oxidative function of our metabolism, our mitochondria is what I consume in foods and also what I do with nutrients like B1, B2 and niacinamide and vitamin D and vitamin K. All the quinones are very powerful that’s what William Coker came up with his cancer treatment. How to increase quinones in our body and it was basically oxidative metabolism improvement.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what was the dose of aspirin again? Was it 350 milligrams?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: I take 325. I’ll share with you, there’s a doctor in San Diego who called me up 15 – 20 years ago. I did an article, I did a lecture podcast on Methylene blue, which also helps with increasing oxidative metabolism and increases mitochondria. I got a call from this doctor, he’s very well known in San Diego, very alternative of thinking, you know, he’s not your conservative doctor, but he thinks above the outside the box. And he wanted, he had a patient that had Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. I forgot, I think, it was Alzheimer’s and he saw my, uh, video on podcast from Silicon Valley, and he asked me about methylene blue dosage. He wants to try it on his patient and I told him what to do, how much milligrams per day and all that. Then he asked me, I got a question for you, my father has stomach cancer. So, he asked me what can he do. So, I gave him a hope program and everything and I told him to do a thousand milligrams of aspirin to 2,000 because I saw the research that aspirin and vitamin D3 can reverse cancer. Okay. So, I told him about the D3 and I told him about the aspirin. Six months later, he calls me up wants to know about Parkinson’s and methylene blue and then I realized I was, I realized who he was, I said how’s your father with the cancer? He said, he’s completely cured. I said, “how long did it take him”. “Six months”. “Wow. What did you do with him, I said, “What did I tell you because I forgot it was six-seven months ago”? Yeah. He took a thousand milligrams of aspirin every day, 3 aspirins, morning, afternoon, evening with vitamin K and also baking soda, so he didn’t have an upset stomach. He’s one of the third people that I talked to with colon or stomach cancer that reversed it just by using aspirin. I was amazed, you know, that it just took aspirin to do that.   

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow. That’s great. 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Many reports and I went to PubMed and Medline and PLOS and I read of Ray Peat’s articles. Aspirin is a wonder drug and I didn’t realize until that study that we went to the anti-aging conference in Las Vegas, where the fellow from Bayer spoke about the importance of aspirin, not only inflammation but prolonging longevity and other factors that are necessary. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Very cool. I mean, I think anyone listening here, if they’re on the fence that’s an option. They can also jump on the herb, I think also keeping inflammation down be your diet’s probably, you know, probably the best thing out of the gates like you mentioned like vitamin D. Anything else you want to leave the listeners with here, Bernd, that you we didn’t have enough time to get but you wanna highlight it before we go here?

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Well, again, like I said, I think the most important is reduce the indoor, you know, climate, uh, get more sunlight, get natural lighting like you said in condensing, full spectrum lighting is important.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct, full spectrum, that makes sense

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: You know, and make sure the most important thing here is what I found in people with weight problems and anybody. I try to get them to have a good breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal. If you’re gonna have it at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, it is the most important meal and it should be 50 grams, 25 to 50 grams of protein. Don’t have a starch, don’t have a croissant, don’t have a peanut butter sandwich, don’t have an oat meal. Worst thing to do in the morning, you wanna build that thyroid function and you wanna increase mitochondrial function. So, good protein, I love pasteurized, uh, pasture eggs, I love cheeses like Manchego, anybody know or Feta cheese or goat cheese and cottage cheese and I have my orange juice and my coffee every single day. Never have any problems with weight problems or tiredness or fatigue and I sleep like a log every day.  

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good. Excellent. Well, I appreciate the really good feedback here, Bernd, I mean your wealth of knowledge. You’ve been in this field for nearly 50 years, so I appreciate it the clinical information. Hopefully listeners can take one thing out of this here. I think it’s great, um, again, Bernd website, is it berndfriedlander.com? 

Dr. Bernd Friedlander: Yeah. berndfriedlander.com

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: berndfriedlander.com. We’ll put the link down below here for you all. Bernd is a great friend and a wealthy of knowledge. Bernd, thanks for everything. Thanks for chatting here today.   

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.drberndfriedlander.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/dr-bernd-friedlander-immune-support-extend-life-span-best-supplement-perfect-diet-podcast-353

Recommended products:

Immuno Supreme

Thyro Replete

Iodine Synergy

Natural Strategies to Detoxify Glyphosate or Round Up | Podcast #345

Several studies demonstrate that exposure to glyphosate to humans (and mammals) can cause serious chronic health problems. Also, exposure to glyphosate usually manifests slowly over time and results in apparent dysfunctions in biological systems.

According to Dr. J and Evan, several recent studies claim that glyphosate accumulates in the bones, intestine, spleen, liver, muscle, and kidney. And because glyphosate is so prevalent, it will be essential to incorporate foods into your diet that help your body detoxify. It may entail making lifestyle choices that you can and are willing to do daily for the long term.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:43:   Roundups

6:04:  What does glyphosate do?

10:37: The benefits of organic foods, air filters, and water filters

15:17:  Glutathione and Collagen

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are Live! It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re gonna be chatting about natural strategies to help detoxify round ups or glyphosate. Really excited to be chatting with Evan today. Evan, how are you doing today man?

Evan Brand: Doing really well! This is a super important topic.You sea many many lawsuit around the country happen and bayer who bought monsato. They’re really trying to get out of it. I’ve seen several, I’m no law expert but I’ve seen several stories how basically they’re trying to just, throw one lump sum out there for all the cases, as there are thousand and thousand of cases coming at them, because of different cancers like non-hodgkin’s lymphoma that people are claiming that has been linked to their glyphosate exposure. Whether it was like the school grounds worker who was a famous story  or other people. They’re really coming at them hard and they’re really really trying to weasel this way out of it and then I saw news just uh, last week actually, that glyphosate is actually going to be phased. I don’t know if you saw this but it said it’s going to be phased out by 2023. So I sent this new article over to Stephanie Synep who I’ve interviewed several times about glyphosate, and she goes “yeah, I saw this. They’re probably just going to come out with another slightly different molecule that’s just as toxic”. So she didn’t think it was that exciting news.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting! Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s kind of like a lot of the medication they have many me’s for it right. Something they can re-patent, um, almost the same molecular structure so they know it’s going to work based on the previous medication or compound but they don’t really have to do too much RND on it because, it’s so close to where it was. So yeah, I get that maybe, probably, the same toxicity profile too. So that makes sense, hopefully that’s not going to be the case but either way, we have a lot of toxins in our environment and roundup’s just one that we have a lot of other pesticides, herbicides, or genocides that are out there. Obviously, a lot of potential chemicals in the water, air, and so roundup or we can kind of put roundup of pesticides – all in the same category, I think that’s pretty fair . So you know first thing is, try to mitigate the use of them on your property, I mean, I use a little bit of pesticides in a spot treating, man. Are we trying to avoid anything blanketed or anything just, you know, blanketed across the board, and you know, we don’t really play out in the grass that much, I mean so if your kids are rolling around out in the grass definitely pay extra money and have those weeds picked up by hand. I think that’s a better way to do it but every now and then, there may be a necessity to spot treat stuff but do your best to avoid that especially if your kids are playing near glass like that, or just have a grass in your yard that you know, this is the play area this where the kids go. We put a nice little rock pit in our backyard just because we know that the rock pit’s going to be perfect right? Put some like, soft help you know, small pebbles in there, um, that are you, um, still fun to play in and they have a digger pit and all that so just try to do your best if you have kids that are young that are playing; mitigate any playing on areas that have any pesticides at all; try to mitigate the use of them, 100 percent and try to have safe, safe spaces in your yard that, you know are perfectly clean.

Evan Brand: There is an alternative to roundup. I’m trying to figure out what it was the moms across America did and article on it-I’m trying to fin it here-it was like a non-toxic weed control. I don’t care about weeds; my grass looks cool and it’s got clover. We’ve got many other different species of plants besides just grass. I mean, I think it’s a myth and it’s dumb you have all these neighborhoods where they think you got to have the grass looking perfect, and grass is just like another version of monoculture. It’s like if you go and walk through my yard, you’re going to see so many different types of plants so I just don’t care. I think people have been brainwashed by the mainstream industry. Even our neighbor we’ve seen you know just out in flip-flops, spraying the glyphosate on their weeds. It’s like who said dandelions are bad? Like, that’s the first food for bee so for me, I’d rather see the field full of dandelions. I guess it’s personal preference but I kind of like it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It just depends. You know, the biggest problem with weeds in relationship to grass as they grow like, three times the speed, so if you haven’t cut your lawn for a week your grass in this long and your weeds are this long, right? So you missed the nice homogeneous, kind of, clean lawn. I’m a big long guy, I like a nice, clean, homogeneous lawn so I’ll walk out there, you know, halfway through the week if I see any weeds popping up; it’s easy because they grow twice the speed, it’s grass, and I’ll just go and take five minutes, and I’ll just pull my hand. You know, I’m like I  like a really nice pretty front lawn. So I’ll go there spend 5-10 minutes a week walking around, pulling by hand, just to mitigate the chemical usage but. First thing is, decrease the chemical usage, decrease the chemical dependency out of the gates. I guess that’s the easiest first step.

Evan Brand: So here’s one. So it’s called, there’s one called Dr. Kirchner natural grass and weed killer. I’m gonna to try to look it up, see what the ingredients. There’s another one, another competitor to it called, Green Gobler. And that’s a 20% vinegar weeding grass killer. And this thing’s got crazy high reviews of it. This Dr. Kirchner k-I-r-c-h-n-e-r natural weed killer . This is just, so it’s four percent sodium chloride, interesting. And they say this ocean water-based product is made for non-selective control of broad-leaf weeds and wheat grasses results in hours. So there you go, I mean it sounds like they’re just using like, concentrated ocean water, they’ve got thousands of five-star reviews on people, people on Amazon are posting their reviews of them in their garden after spraying this stuff and it literally kills it all. This lady said here that it’s magical and safe. So there you go!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we’ll have to put some links down below. So you have what, so what are those two products? Those ones that was an apple cider vinegar-based, what else?

Evan Brand: Yeah, and then you got this other one that’s salt water, it’s literally like, four percent ocean water concentrate, and then you have another one called, Natural Armor which is a 30 percent vinegar concentrate.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

Evan Brand: My wife even saw one at Target recently. She saw like an organic herbicide. I had a picture of it, I don’t know if I could find it on my phone or not but, she sent me a picture the other day. She said there’s no excuse for people using glyphosate; I said I know, I know, and then she sent me that picture-let me see if I can find it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good. That’s good. I mean glyphosate, what is does is, it it basically is a chelator, it pulls away all the minerals from the soil, and so it decreases the minerals getting up into the plant which then kill it. And so, if you’re using it even worse on food you’re eating, It’s it’s way worse. Because now you’re destroying the quality of the topsoil, you’re destroying the minerals in that soil, and we know that soil requires minerals so that plant can, um, let’s just say express it you know, express it’s full nutritional potential if you will. So if we have nutritionally deficient soil, like manganese for instance, you know, vegetables are going to have less vitamin C in it, right? So we know the minerals have a major role  and they and the quality of that soil, plays a major role in the kind of nutrientsthat plants will produce. So you’re gonna have less nutrition in soil where there’s a bunch of roundup that’s chelated out a lot of those minerals.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I was gonna say, let’s hit on the mechanism . So that’s definitely a big important one, and then the other one that you and I test for in the gut is, we’re seeing the glyphosates damaging the beneficial bacteria in the gut. And this is happening at even PBB – parts per billion levels. So once you kill off the beneficial bacteria in the gut, now you see the overgrowth of clostridium, and there’s a famous chart-I know you’ve seen it before and hopefully others have seen it. But you could just look it up, type in glyphosate autism chart, and you can see the correlation where glyphosate skyrockets along with autism rates, and I’ve seen many many autistic children and we test their glyphosate levels and they’re always high. So, this is not saying causation, but this is in correlation; and William Shaw, Bill Shaw-he’s a guy at great plains lab that we, that we use for these toxic chemical tests. You know, he wrote a great paper on this. He had a paper published about the mechanism . Essentially, it was like an order of operations. It was the glyphosate, as you mentioned, will cause nutrient deficiencies but then damages good bacteria. Bad bacteria like clostridium overgrowth. Now you’ve got these organic acids that go high which mess up an enzyme that breaks down dopamine, now you’ve got excessive dopamine, now you’ve got brain toxicity and the you damage the mitochondria. So it’s a long, a long route there but, this is directly damaging mitochondria which is certainly linked to chronic fatigue and other issues so, when we’re looking at someone’s picture of health, and we see they’ve got a major overload of pesticides, and they’re fatigued, we’re not gonna say, “Hey! This is you number one smoking gun of fatigue” but, it’s certainly a big peace of the puzzle; and I can tell you personally but also clinically when we use nutrients which we’ll get into to detox these pesticides-we see that energy levels go up; and you mentioned exposure, so also, you got to consider where you live too. So even if you’re having Joe Bob next door spray, that might not be as big of a deal as more agricultural areas which is you know, partially where I am which I don’t like. There’s a corn and soybean around here. This is just part of the country where I, where this happens and there’s papers on even one mile of pesticide drift. So the question is…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Far more worried about you because, just the load, you know, if you look at the, just the load coming through.

Evan Brand: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh, and your area is just got to be, you know, orders of magnitude. 10, 100x more than just a general uh, you know, residential person that’s just trying to knock down weeds a little bit.

Evan Brand: Totally. Which, which we’re aware of. We’re working on it and we’ve got, we’ve got an exit, so we’re working on it but, yeah. Luckily, we’ve been doing a lot of things. Are you ready to talk about some of the solutions? Obviously, avoidance, external exposure, trying to stay away from it, watching out for like, playgrounds. You know, a lot of playgrounds, they’re too lazy to pull the weeds so they’re just going to spray it so you’ll see often signs at playgrounds like, “watch out!”, and you can tell that they’ve sprayed on the mulch where the kids are playing, and then you may say, “Well, oh! We’ll just go to a rubber playground”, where you have all those chopped up tires but, those are really toxic too. We mentioned those rubber chemicals on the chemical profile for children too. I had a child, a young child actually, was a client who was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, and we looked at the levels of 1-3 butadiene and maybe some other chemicals; and these are all from synthetic rubber, and this kid was like a stup, a superstar soccer player. He was playing indoors, like 24/7. This kid was these fake rubber mats and his levels were like a hundred x higher than 95th percentile and that was a known carcinogen so we can’t say the rubber caused it but, man, it was certainly a big smoking gun in this case.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What’s the chemical name?

Evan Brand: It’s so, it’s 1-3 butadiene. It’s on the great plains chemical report. It just says using the production. Yeah, just as used in the production of synthetic rubber.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So it’s definitely possible, right? So, I mean, out of the gates, the first thing is, we look at our food. Right? First this is make sure you food’s organic because you’re going to have major exposure if you’re taking things in, internally. Right? Things on the outside of the world like yeah, if you’re touching it, right? That’s going to be a problem so one try not to use it at your property or if you do you know, like you know, we try to use it more like glyphosate but kind of more natural version in the front yard spot treated. But in the backyard or in the play any area where we know that kids actually play. Like that’s just going to be off-limits. We try to make sure it’s super clean and good there; and then number two is um, you know, air is going to move all this stuff around. So even if you know you yard’s clean, your neighbors may not be clean. So you got to make sure air filtration in your home is dialed in so you can mitigate it potentially being in the home and breathing it in constantly. So air filters in the home, water filer because there’s also the worry about it getting off into the water table, and if we have a well or anything else, very concerning so you want to make sure good quality water filtration and then like I mentioned earlier-organic food and try to mitigate it’s usage around your property, or try to choose natural sources.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned the water too because that’s important. Believe it or not, even glyphosate’s being found in rain water which is crazy. It’s literally raining down glyohosate because it’s evaporating from various farms and agricultural than it’s moving through the wind currents and then getting rained down on people, and you may say, “Oh well, that’s got to be such a trace amount it doesn’t matter. Well that’s the thing, we’re finding that these, these compounds are active against the beneficial bacteria in your gut at these per billion levels. So you really can’t brush it off. People will try to brush it off but, it’s the small levels, and it’s the synergistic effects, right? So you’ve got a little bot of that and then you’ve got it from your diet. Plus you’ve got it from your water supply, plus you’re getting rained on in your organic garden. This adds up overtime and you and I see bacterial overgrowth everyday, all day; and we know that this is certainly linked to the disruption of the gut-these chemicals. So it’s too important to ignore the air filters is a tough one. I asked Stephanie Synep about that I said, “Hey! What is the actual size of glyphosate? I can’t find it. I’m trying to figure out because you’ll see air purifiers talk about a one micron or a three micron filtration, and she said “Oh, no. There’s no way you’ll be able to filter it. It’s too small so that’s what she said bit, I can’t find anything about the size of it. I’ve asked a couple of companies about is and they say, “Oh, yeah. NO problem. Our air filter will take care of it”, and another company said, “Oh, yeah. Our air filter should destroy the molecule” but, I don’t know how you would yest that. You’d have to like, I don’t know; Have somebody spray a bottle of glyphosate into a room and then run the purifier and see what happens but, it’s removed so many other things that it’s a non-negotiable us, and I know you do the same like, air purifier…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It’s moving a lot. I mean, you know, we like the Austin Air just because they have the 30 pounds of activated charcoal and zeolite, and those binders, you know, would have a positive effects, binding up these things and so it’s definitely going to decrease the load for sure. If it’s blowing through a hepa filter and also  through the 30 pounds of zeolite and activated charcoal. It’s going to have mitigating effects. It’s going to be better off, you know, on when it’s out than, than before, right? So I think it’s still a good thing to have to what degree, um, I don’t know but, in general, it’s good to have, of course the water is a big one. So I try to have all my water that I drink personally-reverse osmosis, so we have a whole house filter that’s carbon-based that filter a lot, and then I have a under the counter filter where I drink my water, and like you know, make smoothies from, or make my coffee from, or use for cooking like that’s all RO. And so we have a little mineral support supplement that will add minerals back in. Because the biggest problem with RO water is the depletion of minerals but, um, I’d rather always have the water cleaner and then add minerals back. It’s always easier to add minerals back than take toxins out.

Evan Brand: Right. Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Always easier.

Evan Brand: For sure, for sure. I mean, yeah…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So like, Oh my God! The minerals In the water. There’s no minerals. Like yeah, but there’s no toxins are way less, so now I’m okay with way less toxins and just being able to add a good trace mineral support back into the water.

Evan Brand: Yep! Yeah, and people…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And you can do like, a redmond. You can do like a redmon’s real salt, you could trace mineral support with some extra potassium and magnesium-all that’s fine.

Evan Brand:  I’ll do some of the sea water too. Like some of the sea water like, quinton and there’s a couple other professional brands we use of sea water, that stuff. I tell you, I was kind of skeptical. I’m like how is adding like, basically salt water going to help me bit, it sure did. I mean, it definitely is like a thirst quencher. So it’s pretty remarkable the difference.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, yourself, your cells need uh, they run on a sodium-potassium pump. There’s this gradient of minerals on wither side of the cell. I think it’s what sodium, sodium is on the outside, potassium’s in. It does a little switcheroo. Sodium goes in, potassium goes out, and you need that gradient to happen for the cells to communicate properly. So it you’re low in sodium or potassium, that sodium potassium pump is not going to work optimally.

Evan Brand: you can feel it. I’m telling you. It’s, it’s significant. All right. Let’s hit on some of like, the detox strategies if you’re ready. I think the easy one…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the first thing is all the lifestyle stuff. That’s foundationthat we stack up. So easiest thing out of the gate is going to be glutathione. So glutathione, whether it’s s acetyl, lyposomal, reduce, whether we do, whether we’re making it with all the precursors like, NAC, ALA, glycine, collagen, right? All these things are going to be really important to help make your master antioxidant out of the gates-that’s probably the big one first.

Evan Brand: Yeah, glycine’s huge, and there’s actually some papers just on glycine by itself in isolation helping with glyphosate which is awesome. So I actually take glycine before bed. It really helps sleep too. So that’s another cool benefit but…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you can mix collagen, peptides, like I use my TrueCollagen with a little bit of magnesium powder before bed. That knocks it right out and glycine’s helpful with other toxins like strippers like xylene and things like that. It will, it will detoxify xylene-thses kind of chemicals too. So glycine is excellent, and then of course um, you know, roundup’s very destructive on the gut and so if you’re doing glycine, it’s very helpful to kind of heal the enterocytes and repair those too.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I would say probiotics are somewhere on the list now. I don’t know in terms of priority and the mechanism is the same as it is for mycotoxins. There’s some cool research coming out about probiotics actually being able to convert toxins into less toxic forms, and then that makes them more water-soluble, and able to excreted from the body. So there’s some cool mechanism involved with probiotics and of course, if you’re working with a practitioner like us, we’re going to coach you through when and how, and what we’re going to use. But that another cool piece of the puzzle. I’d say my next one is going to be micronized chlorella. There’s a couple professional that we use of it, and this is better than the broken cell wall chlorella because, it’s smaller molecules, and then that’s going to allow better transfer across the blood-brain barrier to get some of these heavy metals out. So we’ll actually use some products that are basically designed for heavy metals but, we’ll use them off-label for like mold and chemical detox.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and so like I have a heavy meal clear product that has some of the, some of the chlorella in there. It also has some of the sodium alginate, and then also some of the modified citrus pectin. These are really good binders that will help with metals and they’ll also help with uh, pesticides too which are great, and then, um, some of the research you’re talking about probiotics actually converting some of the mole toxins and also, they also have an effect binding them too. It’s that what you’re saying too?

Evan Brand: Yeah. I know it’s a conversion. I don’t know if it’s actually binding but, there’s a lot of like great planes they’re doing a lot of work on like promoting the idea of probiotics being like the universal mold detoxifier now – even better higher rated that charcoal for example, which is crazy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s why we always talk about dealing with the gut and working on the gut before we push any crazy detox because we know, the gut’s so important. It’s like a lot of these functional medicine principles are like you know, they’ve tried and true but, if you look at the science, like you find more little nitty-gritty within the science of what’s happening, why that is the case like we just kind of know clinically, you get better results doing it so we kind of go that way, and then we just see more data kind of just supporting that hypothesis.

Evan Brand: It’s cool. Yeah, it’s fun because you and I have been basically using the methods we use for years, and then new stuff comes out that’s like, “Oh, cool!” Well, we were doing that already; now we know that it was actually doing other things that we needed it to do for. It’s like get rid of toxins. So that’s, so that’s awesome. How about sauna too? I mean, sweating has been proven to help excrete so many things. I’ll tell you, you know, I had a lady that was in her 70s. We ran a chemical profile test on her. This lady’s test was so clean, I was almost in disbelief because I’ve seen 5, 6 year-old children that are just off the charts with chemicals, and then we have this lady in her 70’s who you think just lived through all sort of different eras of toxicity. Man, I tell you, her chemical tests were as clean as a whistle. I said, “What are you doing?’, and she was in a sauna three to four times a week for half an hour. I said “Wow!”, I said, ”You are living proof that the sauna works and that sweating is an incredible detox pathway.”

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see a lot of women, too. Like “Oh, man! I’m pregnant.Like, what’s the best way to detoxify when I’m pregnant?” I’m like, well number one, we don’t want to really push any detoxification. The only thing I may gently recommend is maybe a little bit of a, kind of a natural fiber, eating organic, drinking lots of water, and maybe a little bit of an infrared sauna. But you have to shower right afterwards just because you don’t want to move toxins to the skin, and then have them reabsorb back in. So you want to make sure you use a good 10 sulfur soap, break up that film of toxin on your skin so it flushes off your skin. So would you agree that you know, potentially doing a little bit of sauna therapy as long as you’re not depleting yourself, dehydrated, is probably a safe, probably one of the more safer, gentle ways to detoxify if you are pregnant?

Evan Brand: I guess it depends on temperature. Like I’m not going to put a lady in like, a hundred and eighty, like a hot rock one.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Evan Brand: I think an Infrared one…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It can be infrared were it’s lower temperature.

Evan Brand: Yeah. I think if you’re probably at like a 125 degrees or something. That’s somewhat natural that you could experience on the planet. I think would be no problem; the chlorella should be no problem, too. You know, we’ve actually…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Stays in the gut. It stays in the gut. You’re probably okay, I mean, chlorella, some kind of a gentle, more food-based binder is probably okay. I mean, if you’re gonna do some kind of a sauna and you’re pregnant, one, make sure you’re hydrated, make sure you have minerals. Start with like, three or four, or five minutes, and just kind of add like a minute of two every time so you don’t overdue. I always rather know you go at a lower level where you’re confident- you can handle it, and gently nudge it up, and just make sure you shower right afterwards. It’s probably the only detoxification means that I would really push outside of a gentle binder. Uh, that’s food-based for my pregnant females. Back on that, would you agree?

Evan Brand: I would say, I, I don’t see a problem with charcoal and chlorella during pregnancy because, you have to kind of weigh the pros and the cons, right? And we know that for example, these toxins go through the placenta. We know they go through breast milk, so here you are, willingly letting this toxins go through the unborn baby, when you could simply  use a gentle binder to try to mitigate some of that or even detox; that there’s actually been crazy stuff being done behind the scenes. I won’t go into too much details because I don’t think it’s published yet but, showing that these micronized chlorella molecules can literally detox the baby before the baby’s even born. So you can actually have a baby come out cleaner than it would’ve been, chemical wise, by being detoxed throughout the pregnancy by the transfer of the chlorella from mom to baby; and then of course, once the baby’s born, through the breast milk, also there is some transfer of chlorella. So there’s some crazy, crazy stuff coming out on that but, too soon to say exactly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. I like that. So, yeah. We have our binders, we like the binders, and again, talk to your, your OB if you’re a person that wants to look into that. When you’re pregnant, just be careful. I always recommend do all this stuff before but, if you waited and you have issues, and you got to do it now, talk to your OB, talk to your functional medicine doc before you ever do that. We typically don’t push any hard detoxification when uh, patients are pregnant just because we’re mobilizing a lot of toxins unless, we do it very very gentle-way like we mentioned before. Uh, outside of that, I would say we talked about all the big binders of water filtration. We’ll put some links down below with some of the RO and whole house activated charcoal, carbon-based filters that I personally use and Evan uses. We’ll put some recommended links that you guys have that. That’s going to be really important. I’d say air, water, organic food-those are going to be big, and then we can set them in on top of that. So uh, in my line I use heavy metal clear, my detox aminos that have calcium gluconate, and all the sulfur aminos, and reduced glutathione. Evan has some similar glutathione, and sulfur, and mineral-based products that are mineral, that are like our binders, like fulvic minerals or things that help bind up some of this things, too. So we’ll put some links down below if you want some recommended products that we personally use, and we’re kind of gave you some of the big mechanism, right? One’s binding, right? You’re binding some of it up, and the other one is you’re working on enhancing your own detoxification pathways, so they can excrete them. And then of course, low-hanging fruit, right? The solution to pollution dilution. You take any toxins, you hydrate well enough, good clean water and minerals, the more you hydrate that mineral, that toxin becomes less potent, the more it’s diluted. So that’s, it’s low hanging fruit. It’s easy to forget but, solution to pollution is dilution.

Evan Brand: Cheers! Yeah, and this is real stuff. I mean, we’ve seen many, many, I mean, hundreds of this point; before and after case studies of measuring these chemicals. It’s absolutely remarkable what can be done. So if you’re just like, “Oh, toxins are bad.”, and that’s all you get from this podcast, no. Remember that goes deeper than this. We’re talking the way you perform in terms of your mitochondreal function, your energy levels, the health of your gut. Whether you have bacterial overgrowth which then leads to bloating, and burping, and gas, and issues with your joints and potential autoimmune issues because now you’ve got chlostridium overgrowth. So if you hear this, all you think is” toxins are bad, I need to detox.”, no. Remember, this goes into every body system. This goes into adrenals, mitochondria, liver, gallbladder; I mean, the whole system is involved so don’t just blow this thing off. I still see people-I won’t name her but, there was a lady I knew from my, my town. Now she’s super big and she’s got a supplement company that’s like all these vitamin shop stores and everywhere, and she did a Q&A, and I mean this lady is a multi-millionaire, and people asked her, “Do you eat organic?”, and she said “No. I think it’s a waste of time.” It’s like you’re just, you’re just, uh, what’s the word? Not dumb, that’s the rude word. Uh…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ignorant.

Evan Brand: Ignorant. She’s ignorant. Yeah, that’s the word. She doesn’t know what that means. Like how important that truly is and how that’s changing everything from her offspring, and the health of her babies to her own health. So to people out there, if you’ve got the means to do it, which hopefully everyone can, I can see people have that brand new iphones but then they say they don’t have the extra dollar to buy the organic strawberries. You got to make thins thing a priority or you’ll see a brand new Mercedes SUV in the McDonald’s parking lot, like you’ve got to make organic a priority.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Absolutely. So you git to make it a priority. It’s shift that for sure, and again, people’s say organic’s a fad. Well, again, before 1950, everything was organic, right? That’s where the pesticide kind of fertilizer industry came kind of post-World War II, and so, everything was organic before that point. And again, like first thing I recommend in the order of priorities is, make sure your meat are organic and pasture fed first, okay that’s the first order of, um, let’s just say investment. The second thing is, eat from the clean 15-these are pesticides that have, these are foods that have a pesticide load; and then, avoid the dirty dozen. That’s kind of environmental working group thing. So we’ll put a link for the clean and the dirty dozen; and then from there, you can start getting organic vegetables that are frozen; that’s cheaper. And then of course, start to buy them, you know, more fresh and organic across the board but, that’s kind of the progression. So just try to at least start with the meats because the meats hold the most toxins, and so fats are in the toxins. So you want to start with meats first, and then you can work on going to clean 15, avoid dirty dozen, frozen organic, and then full fresh on organic. That’s kind of the algorithm there. Anything you want to say about that Evan?

Evan Brand: Yeah, local too. I mean, if you can get local beef too, where it hadn’t traveled thousands of miles from Brazil, and they didn’t cut down the rain forest to get that grass fed beef, then I would totally do that. I get my meat from 15 minutes down the road. It’s just hundreds, and hundreds of acres of beautiful chemical-free pastures. So I feel really good about it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great! I love it. Well, very good. So out of the gates here also, one last thing, if you don’t have good gallbladder function, or good digestion, right? You’re constipated, you’re not pooping everyday, you’re having a hard time digesting food, not breaking fat down or protein adequately, your stools are floating, excessive skid marks streaks-those kind of things that means you’re not breaking down fat, you’re not breaking down protein adequately, you’re not moving toxins through your bowels adequately, you’re gonna be reabsorbing that, you’re gonna, you’re not gonna have good gallbladder flow to push that out in the stool. So you’re potentially reabsorbing or not eliminating toxins via your digestive tract. And so if we have digestive issues, we got to have some stool testing, we got to fix whatever is going on from a microbial imbalance or gut infection in the intestines. That’s really important. Got to work on live, gallbladder, and making sure enzymes and acids are adequate to break everything down.

Evan Brand: Yep! Good call. And if you need help, you want to get some of this testing done, investigate your gut, look into your chemical toxicity, you can reach out to Dr. J or myself. This website is justinhealth.com if you need to reach out, it worked worldwide (facetime, phone, skype) any way you need to connect there. So justinhealth.com, and for me Evan, it’s evanbrand.com. We look forward to helping you. Also reach out. We offer intro calls too! You can chat with us and figure out exactly what’s going on, symptom wise, we’ll see if you’re good fit for care, and look forward to helping you out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We’re here for you all, guys. Awesome! And if you enjoyed it, thumbs up, comments down below, and um, we’re here! Justinhealth.com, evanbrand.com, and write us a review too! We appreciate it.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-strategies-to-detoxify-glyphosate-or-round-up-podcast-345

Recommended products:

Natural Armor Weed and Grass Killer All-Natural Concentrated Formula

Austin Air Health Mate Plus

Air Doctor Air Purifier

Whole House Water Filter

Clearly Filtered

TruKeto Collagen

TRUCOLLAGEN (Grassfed)

Magnesium Supreme

Heavy Metal Clear

Heavy Metal Test

Detox Aminos

Organic Grassfed Meat

Natural Way to Increase Blood Flow And Decrease Inflammation | Podcast #343

For starters, blood flow is why your body can get what nutrients it needs and how it can eliminate what it doesn’t. If you have reduced blood flow, your body will take longer to heal and recover. Reduced blood flow can often result in inflammation, pain, muscle cramps, fatigue, numbness or coldness in the hands and feet, digestive issues, and slower recovery time.

According to Dr. J and Evan, there are three primary concerns to address when looking at improving circulation by reducing inflammation, blood viscosity (blood’s stickiness or thickness), and supporting healthy arterial function (ensure the arteries can contract or dilate needed).

So, how can food help us to do that? While the healthy foods we eat can benefit our blood flow and circulation, some foods are to be aware of as part of a healthy diet. Often, the additives we add to our food through sugars, trans fats, and salt can be tasty but with a few adverse side effects.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:57:     Inflammation and ways to reduce it

4:46:     Signs and symptoms of hypercoagulability

11:07:   Natural Herbs to improve blood circulation

16:47:   Tips to improve blood circulation and reduce inflammation

20:06:   Food template, tests, and supplements

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are are live! It’s Dr. Justine Marchegiani here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we’re going to chat about blood flow. How do we increase blood flow, decrease coagulation, decrease inflammation. All the natural strategies to get to the root cause. Blood flow is really important. We need blood flow to carry oxygen. We need to carry nutrition to our organs and our body systems. And if we have stress in our body, whether it’s infection, inflammation, diet issues, lifestyle issues, hormonal imbalances that affect circulation, that’s to impair our body’s ability to generate energy, generate heat; right healthy metabolism, feel good, feel energized. And we’re going to dive in on that topic today. Evan, how are we doing today man?

Evan Brand: Doing really well. You know, I had a few friends actually suggest that I had a hyper coagulation problem due to batonella and babesia, and mold toxin, and some other crap I’ve dealt with. And so I ran a coagulation panel. There’s some of these coagulation panels online that you can order and I went and run the blood on myself and my, my panels turned out perfectly. Even according to some of the functional ranges. Now, I don’t have a baseline. You know, several years ago, when I first got exposed to mold to compare to. But I will tell you just in terms of symptoms; my great coagulation blood work results correlates with my symptoms. Meaning, my hands and feet are perfectly warm these days. I told you years ago, my arms and feet are chronically cold . I mean, as long as I can even remember, even as a child, I remember my feet being freezing and having to use a little electric space heater in my grandma’s basement to keep my feet war. I remember that from years ago. So I’m just really happy that the blood showed fine and some of the strategies which we’re going to dive into today that those worked and those actually helped me because, on paper I look great and symptomatically doing much much better in the blood flow department.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Yeah, I love that. Makes a lot of sense. So of course, one of the first things that we look at when we’re trying to improve blood flow is reducing inflammation. So when you have lots of cytokines or in interleukines or inflammatory messengers, right? They’re there to kind of say, “hey we have inflammation”. And what is inflammation? Let’s define that. Everyone talks about it but, what is it? So, inflammation is essentially we have this increase in cytokines, interleukines, due to the fact that our body is breaking down faster than it is repairing, okay. There’s natural inflammation that is good. Like think of having a good workout, right? You naturally get a little sore afterwards and then a day or two later, you get stringer and your muscles get more, I don’t know, adaptable. And then you develop more strength, more tensile strength, more power, more output; because your muscles adapted to that inflammation. So there’s a little bit of inflammation but in the end, your body adapted to it and it built up just a little bit more than it broke down on average, right? That’s healthy inflammation. And so, inflammation that we’re talking about is inflammation out of balance. Were let’s say you work out a little bit too hard. And now that soreness is prolonging days later, and now you’re almost a little bit weaker than when you started because the breakdown is now greater than the build up. And so healthy inflammation is the build up is a little bit greater than the breakdown that’s healthy inflammation. Unhealthy inflammation is the breakdown’s a little bit higher than the build up, and that’s what we’re talking about today. And so, of course, too much exercise, too much inflammatory foods, especially in the way of foods that are nutrient poor, foods that are too high in refined vegetable oils, good healthy fats; they become your cell membranes. Every cell has a lipid bilayer in the body. The brain’s you know, 70 fat and cholesterol. So if you are eating junky fats, that’s going to cause your cell membranes to turn over to being very unhealthy. It’s also going to cause your brain to turn over to be very unhealthy and there’s some data showing that you’re going to have those cell membranes hung up to six years with the junky fats that you’re eating. So you’re really want to look at the fat. So, vegetable oil fats not good because they have to be processed in a way that damages those fats in the extraction process. And so you have a lot of oxidation happening, a lot of hydrogenated oils due to either oxidation or the trans fat process that occur. And again, you, why are fats made in the trans fats because they have a longer shelf life, right? And so, we want fats if they’re on the plant side, they’re not going to be denatured, so avocado oil may be okay, olive oil of cold press, and extra virgin and good quality and good brand’s okay. Of course our saturated fats are the best because they’re the most heat stable. So coconut animal fats, maybe some palm, of course like any of your tallows are really good, especially if the animals are healthy and pastured raised. These are going to be your best fat, so at least 50 percent of our trans fats, we want to be saturated, high quality, because it guarantees them not being oxidized and we’re acidified.

Evan Brand: Yep! Well said. And so when you define hypercoagulability, this is a term that’s thrown around a lot now, or you could just call it increased coagulation. What they’re really talking about is some sort of a build up. Like, you know, you mentioned whether it’s inflammatory cytokines, or what’s cal fibrin things that are affecting the capillaries which as far as my research goes, it’s pretty interesting stuff. Capillaries, they’re so small but the red blood cells have to go in single file line to get to get through the capillaries. So if you have a build up of fibrin from some sort of inflammatory reaction, whether it’s to a mold, a virus, or some other pathogen that can affect those capillaries, which then creates some of the cold hands, cold feet. So let me just riff on symptoms for a minute and then we can go there. So, uh, symptoms wise, let’s say cold hands, cold feet, let’s say cold nose, I would say erectile dysfunction, could be a big one too for men. A lot of coagulation issues with men you see, uh, reduced blood flow and of course, side effects-erection. I would say brain fog would be big too. You mentioned, you got to have blood flow to get to the brain. So I would say, brain fog, maybe memory issues, fatigue, I would say muscle fatigue as well. So if you’re noticing that you’re having trouble lifting  weights or you’re having a lot of post-exertional malaise, it could be mitochondrial related. We’ve talked about that before but, I think the coagulation could be part be part of it too. So I’m a big fan of lumbrokinase which I think is one of the big remedies that’s really helped me. Lumrokinase is way stronger that nattokinase which is which is commonly sold. Lumbrokinase is like the big daddy, the big brother above natto. And I tell you, it’s been an absolute game changer. If I take that, not only does my brain work better but my hands and feet are warm. So just in terms of like, solutions, you know, you could run a coagulation panel, and I think it’s easiest, rather than trying to run through all the markers, like d-dimers and all that. Instead of running through all that. I think it’d be easier. We could just like, put a link in the show notes for like a coagulation panel app, like you could run through lab corp request, and if people want to dive into it, they can but, I think those…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So on some of those markers, what would some of the markers that you’d look at on the coagulation side?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I wish I had my lab in front of me. I could pull it up.

Dr. Justin Machegiani: I’ll give you c couple that. I give you a couple that. So we talked about inflammation; we talked about interleukinesand cytokines. Why does that matter? Because the more inflammation you have in your bloodstream, the more sticky cells get, okay. Cause think about it, right? From inflammation standpoint, why would your cells get more sticky from an inflammation standpoint, right. Let’s kind of look at what’s, you know. What are the, um, the intentional, like what’s the intention of our creator and making us and why would that happen, right? Because we have to look at the fact there’s an innate intelligence as to why our body does things. It doesn’t do it by accident. And I would say that most of our stress that we experience as we evolve as a species is through a cut, and injury, a fall, something very acute. So our body is trying to stick things, glue things back together, prevent us from bleeding out, right? Allow scar tissue to form to help heal and recover, whatever that damage area is, right? That kind of make sense now. The problem is, we have less acute damage like, falls, crashes, and these things. But we have this chronic, degenerative inflammation that’s happening. So, yeah. Starting to create many bits of scar tissue which again, that is going to be making cells, stick together, so you’re looking at things such as fibrin, increased platelet aggregation. Meaning, platelets are the little cells that flow through your bloodstream that help you create clots, right? Platelets then create fibrin so it creates these clots . And so then you’re having deceased blood flow because of clots, because cells are more sticky because of inflammation. And that’s there to help, help your body do better when it comes to stress or something acute; but we’re having this chronic degenerative stress and of course, high levels of blood sugar, high levels of insulin are going to make your cells more sticky, right? This is why we see in diabetes, right, when Evan talks about a lot of the capillaries when they go a single file, we see that a lot in the eyes, and so we see a lot of eye aneurysm stuff, a lot of eye issues in diabetics, a lot of limb issues because really poor blood flow in the capillaries going on to the finger and the hands. And so high levels of insulin from high levels of blood sugar that also creates the advanced glycation end products which are essentially the sugar coated proteins that are oxidized because the high blood sugar, and that oxidation depletes things like vitamin C and vitamin A, and vitamin E, And so we have less of these nutrients to help our eyes, to help our skin, to help our collagen, to help wound healing, and then you start to have very poor blood flow, decrease immune cells. Getting to the extremities, the hands, and feet; and then you develop a gangrenous lesion on your foot with all this inflammation and poor blood flow, and then you have have it chopped off because it starts to create and infection. So you can see how all these things start to spiral out of control and of course, blood sugar inflammation, um is kind of the hallmark of how all this starts. We’ll go more into things  that you can do. So Evan mentioned like the lumbrokinase. Excellent! Seropeptidase, the enzyme from that silkworm, excellent. Right? These are systemic enzymes taken away from food. Those enzymes come in kind of like a rato-rooter or a liquid plumber would for like, a clogged hair in your drain, in your toilet, right? So it breaks it down, okay? Now we have to make sure that we’re getting to the root cause but, in general, that’s helpful because it’s not going to be as inflammatory, it’ll break down scar tissue; it has a lot of anti-cancer immune benefits because when it hits all these cytokines, it kind of dissolves them and breaks them down so it does help reduce inflammation which is great.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you made a great point too about diabetics suffering from this issue quite a lot in the blood sugar component. That’s huge! And then, also, one thing to note too when you do start to dissolve some of the fibrin, you may, if it’s due to the infection, you may have some sort of a die off or like herxheimer reaction. So just keep that in mind, and obviously if you’re working with one of us, we’re going to coach you through that process but, if you have a practitioner that’s maybe not aware of that, then they may not know why your symptoms are flaring up if you start to dissolve some of this fibrin. So for example, when I first started ramping up lumbrokinase, I was also doing some biofilm busting nutrients, and some may argue that you’re busting biofilm with things like this and so I had a reaction. You know, I got some headaches, I got some anxiety, I had some heart palpitations and some other symptoms, indicating I was probably releasing something that was hiding within that fibrin. And so, if you have a reaction, you feel worse on something like the, uh, like you said, seropeptidase or maybe, nattokinase, or lumbrokinase. You could be on to something, and as you mentioned too, you don’t want to just live on this enzymes and not get to the root cause. So for me, I really do think babesia has been a big one for me because, when I’m taking herbs to address babesia, I find that the circulation is much better. For some people, it could be bartonella. They call it small vessel disease. If you look into pubmed, you could look up small vessel disease bartonella. This is an infection that can come from ticks but it can very very easily come from cats. Many many cats, like 90 percent of cats have bartonella and if they scratch you, you can get bartonella from your cat, you can get it from fleas, so there are other vectors that can transmit this. So some people say like, “ oh I never had a tick bite”, doesn’t matter. I’ve seen many many people with bertonella and likely from their cats. And so, you may want to come in with herbs and knock out bartonella while you’re working on the fibrin. And I know you and I use a product that’s a mixture serapeptadase, and ginger and boswella, and turmeric. So we kind of working on the inflammation piece and the fiber piece at the same time, and it’s a great one-two punch.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, any of my patients listening know that I’m always using ginger tea, right? I’ve kind of taken the ginger tea recipe which Is I think it’s pretty famous in the gaps protocol and I’ve used that, and I’ve added in a lot of the, um. Manuka honey because it’s very soothing on the gut, and it has some mild antibacterial properties and anti-inflammatory for the gut. So I do that with a lot of my patients because it sues the tummy, it is an anti-biofilm, so it allows any of the herbs that I’m using with my patients to knock any bugs down. It helps make the herbs stronger, and it’s anti-inflammatory, um, which me, and it’s also an anticoagulant. So the anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, just allows one better blood flow, better flow allows those herbs to kind of work better and be transported throughout the body, and then it also prevents the lymph from being congested. So it just allows things to be kind of move around and excreted from the body. So you have to move things through the liver, through the kidneys, to the guts. So we need to have that good movement to allow things to work appropriately. So that’s, that’s really really important out of the gates; and also on working with a lot of lyme patients or co-infections; all that plays a major role. I would say other herbs you can use are things like bacopa, uh, gingko is also amazing, you can do things that have, um, uh, nitric oxide support in there like beetroot. These are all beets are excellent You can get beetroot powder, that’s very helpful at supporting blood flow. Things like resveretrol are also very good, right; antimicrobial but also really help with good blood flow, so um, that’s excellent as well. Uh, cat’s claw can be really good as well, because anytime it has antimicrobial, antioxidants, and then it reduces inflammation. That naturally tends to improve blood flow. So better blood flow is good. So we can one have good circulation to the hands and feet, we’re carrying nutrition better.; we’re carrying more of the herbs to help whatever the microbial imbalance is, and then we’re supporting lymphatic flow of all the dead debris out. Has to move out to the body, get circulated to the lymph, go back to the kidneys, and the, and the digestive tract to be excreted out. So those are some really good herbs that we’ll also use, skull caps also really good as well. Um, you mentioned turmeric  which is really good, and then outside of that, adaptogens can be really powerful too. Because, if we have lots of cortesol from inflammation and stress, cortisol is also going to cause things to not move as well because, it’s there; it’s responding to inflammation but it’s also going to slow down a lot of blood flow. So if we can, and this is kind of more in a chronic um, scenario, right, not talking acute, talking more chronic. Because acute, there is acute blood flow to an injury, because that’s how the body is trying to heal stuff. Let’s try to drive level that’s why when you bump your elbow, it gets swollen right, there’s increased blood flow. We’re talking about more cortisol chronically, and so we’ll use things like adaptogens, whether it’s thodiola or ashwagandha to really calm down that chronic stress response and really get it kind of modulated to help improve cortisol which then helps with blood flow long term.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you made a great point like the bacopa, the gingko. I mean, there’s a reason all all these herbs that we’re talking about are inside of brain formulas. Look at any professional companies, whether it’s ours or any other companies that are using nutrients to support the brain health, guess what? Gingko is always in there so it’s cool because it helps systemically and that of course, improves the brain function. There’s a lot of cool studies about gingko with micro-circulation in the brain. I love gingko. I take it, I take phosphatidylserine, I do choline, acetylcholine, I do acetol cermitine, I do like a blend of all these things and I tell you, it really makes a difference. Do you want to hit on a couple more of the foods you mentioned? The beets…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, that’s important.

Evan Brand: Okay. I love beats. Like, I’ll do beet powder and I mix it with my vitamin C powder. It’s so delicious that combo, and I’m not joking like, 10 minutes after I drink a scoop of beet powder with vitamin C, my hands are so warm, like they’re alsmost flushed because there’s so much blood flow there. I mean, I feel it instantly. And then, that really helps in the sauna too. So if you’re having issues with sweating, that could be due to poor blood flow, poor nitrate oxide. So my personal advice because I’m historically not a good sweater, I will do beet powder and then do a few minutes of a rebounder, and then  I’ll jump the rebounder most folks know what that is kind like a mini trampoline. I’ll jump into the sauna after that, and with the beet powder rebounder combo, I sweat like 50 % faster.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Very cool. Yeah, yeah, I like that. I mean, I’d say like from a foundation of people listening like, we’re throwing a lot of stuff out there, right? So what’s the order of operations and how you try things. So the first thing is, get your diet under control. So the first thing is, control dysglycemia, control blood sugar swings, high levels of blood sugar, high levels of insulin are going to cause things to get really sticky when they flow. The second thing is really improve the nutrient density; lot of good antioxidants, so a lot of good green vegetables, uh cutting out food allergens from dairy and from gluten and of course, refined sugar and inflammatory junk foods, really improve the nutrient density in the vegetables if you’re going to choose fruit, choose nutrient-dense fruits are not overly high for what you can handle metabolically of course, really good healthy fats; remember omega-3 fatty acids are natural blood thinner. Quite before surgery, they’ll say like you know, no fish oil or systemic enzymes taken away from you know, taken within the couple of days of surgery because, they don’t want you to bleed out, right. So especially high quality, god healthy, you know, local like maybe while the last guy kind of frozens you know, salmon or a really good clean tuna, just try to choose wild farm type of fish; these are going to have excellent omega-3 fatty acids, and then of course, choosing grass-fed meat, excellent. Because you’re going to get a lot of GLA fat, you’re going to get a lot of good clean fats from the cow eating grass which is super helpful. So fats are really important, they’re natural anticoagulants and then they help make a good healthy cell membrane so your cells can communicate and function optimally.

Evan Brand: Let me make one note about the lumbrokinse because, you see that warning label and you and I kind of heed that warning but, I saw a podcast interview that Dr. Jill Carnahan did with a lady named Dr. Ann Courson. She’s been kind of the bog voice about coagulation and talking about lumbrokines. She said it’s really non-issue and while she still may, and this not verbatim but, while she may pull these things out temporarily, she’s had people that like went into emergency on high-dose fish oil and high-dose lumbrokinase and they had no bleeding issues at all. So this is not heparin or crazy intense blood thinners from pharmaceutical industry. These natural blood thinners even though they may be potent, she said, she’s never seen a single case of anyone bleeding out so that there’s probably too much warning and too much fear about the fish-oil and these enzymes thinning the blood. She’s never seen it cause any major problem.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, heparin, warfarin, they have anew one the plavix one, right? These are different blood thinners that are  out there. Yeah, I mean you definitely want to talk to your anesthesiologist last surgeon follow their instructions on these things. I think it’s safe just to be off it, uh, during a procedure and let your doctor know about it.

Evan Brand: And I’m saying just, and by the way, I’m saying just the natural stuff, the drugs, I have no clue about them, I’m not a pharmacist, but like fish oil. Should you take a few days off? Yeah. You probably should but, just foe anybody’s fearing but for anybody that’s afraid like oh my God, I had to go to ER and I had to get this emergency surgery, am I going to bleed to death because I’m on fish oil, the answer looking at her perspective was no, not at all.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, yeah. Probably not. I mean, I am far more worried about someone going into surgery being totally inflamed and developing clots, um, or having a polmunary embolism or a stroke or something like that. The bleeing out, right? You know but, in general, don’t be on high doses of blood thinners that we’re talking about. The natural ones, if you know you have a plan surgery just in general. In general, I mean, consuming fish, eating fish, I don’t see a problem with a lot of these things. And outside of that you know, what other markers we can look at. So of course, we mentioned, um, fibrin or fibrinogen which is a marker. So fibrinogen is the inactive form of fibrin, and so high levels of fibrinogen mean you have a lot of clotting building blocks. Higher levels of platelets could be something to look at. I would say, elevations and inflammatory compounds like homocysteine, ESR-Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate. CRP C-Rective Protein. These are all inflammatory markers that tell us, okay, inflammation is present, the more chances their inflammation is up, cells are going to stick together, the more cells stick together, it’s like trying to walk out double doors, three or four people side by side. It’s just gonna clog up the flow, right? And so that’s gonna help give you an indication that some things are not flowing well, and then you can try different strategies, the ones we’re talking about go back and retest those markers, and that’s helpful. I would say the one marker that’s a little bit different, the homocycteine, that’s going to happen typically due to inactive or not enough high quality methylated B vitamins. Usually folate, usually B6,  B12 – these are important vitamins. If you don’t get them, in methylated or more active forms, this metabolite of homocysteine can accumulate and these B vitamins decrease homocysteine. So how it works is, it goes methionine, a dental homocysteine, homocysteine, to cycteine. This is kind of metabolism, a breakdown of methionine into cysteine, and cysteine goes into glutathione. This healthy metabolism requires these B vitamins, right? Folate, methylated B12, right? Um, B6, right. These are important nutrients need to be there so we can take that homocysteine and brign it through all the way down to cysteine and metabolize optimally. If not, it can be inflammatory and affect the arteries and the area where the blood’s flowing and create inflammation and plaquing.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And just to take it a step further just so people are like what the heck is he saying? So when you’re looking at this one blood, you’re saying when you see the elevated homocysteine, or we can even look at some of these metabolism markers on the organics acids. When you see this elevated, you know that there’s usually a B vitamin deficiency, correct? That’s what you’re saying, elevated homocysteine on the blood.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, D vitamin deficiency or you’re just getting a lot of crappy B vitamins right? You’re getting a lot of folic acid, you’re getting a lot of B12 that you may not be methylated. You’re getting a lot of B6 that may not be activated. So we want to make sure you’re getting lots of activated B vitamins, high quality. In my line we use one called B vitamin synergy, we’ll put the link for that below. Of course like your best natural source for these type of vitamins are going to be green leafy vegetables, and high quality grass-fed organic meats right? So sometimes people have an mthfr issue and they need more of those B vitamins and so that’s want to make sure the supplements are great. And if you’re consuming a lot of like processed crappy orange juices and grains, you may get a lot of folic acid and crappy B vitamins there. That’s the case you want to cut those out. You want to get lots of good natural B vitamins from the source I just mentioned. And you want to take a really goof clean B vitamin supplement that’s going to have those in methylated activated forms, and if we’re doing testing on like a um, mthfr blood test. We would look at those phenotypes and see what’s present but organic acids are wonderful too because, we can look at markers like kind of urinate, xantharinate to look at B6. We can look at markers like fig glue or four amino glutamate to look at folate. We can look at markers like methylmalonic acid to look at B12. So there’s different markers. We can look at betahydroxy isovalerate, right? These are all good markers for B vitamins to look at. So we can see if these things are, if we have metabolic demand issues, we can go and tweak those accordingly.

Evan Brand: And most people are depleted and have issues. I mean, obviously we’re a little bit biased because we’re working with  people that don’t feel well but, we know that even the people that work with us, they’re doing a hell of a lot better than the average American in terms of diet and lifestyle, and stress, and sleep, and hopefully all of those factors. And so if we see they’re deficient the way we see often, then we know the average American’s deficient too because, you’re burning up these bees when you’re stressed. That’s a whole other  podcast but, you did a great job on, on hitting on the markers. There’s a couple more like new ones. Like ther was like anti-thrombin that was on this panel.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. That’s another one. That’s kind of like fibrin. It’s another type of clothing factor.

Evan Brand: You had the d-dimer which is really tough to get a doctor to actually run d-dimer. That’s why you and I luckily, we run our own blood work but, if you just went to your regular doctor and said I want a d-dimer. Unless they think you’ve got an active blood clot, they’re probably not going to run this for investigative purposes. I don’t know why but even vitamin D, some clients have to beg just get vitamin D so…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. With d-dimer, that’s typically run if someone’s on a blood thinner. I don’t think plavix requires it now but, if you’re on like, one of the older blood thinners that requires you to make sure d-dime are stable. They’ll run that because they’re worried about like, oh my god you eat more green vegetables that is vitamin K, vitamin k increases clotting factors. They’ll want you to want to adjust your d-dimer accordingly. Or they want to adjust your dosage of your medication according to the dimer. So my whole thing is if you’re not eating a whole bunch of green vegetables because, your doctor is worried about it, well I would just say eat some green vegetables, tell them you want to have good, green vegetables but then have them run a d-dimer and adjust your clotting, your medication according to you eating a good, healthy diet. I see people that are scared of green vegetables because their doctors are too lazy to re-test their d-dimer and adjust their medications.

Evan Brand: Oh wow. Yeah. I understand that but yeah. That was most of it, that was most of the stuff there. So you did a good job hitting on it and like you mentioned a lot. We’re throwing a lot at you here supplements and foods, and beets, and talked about nitric oxide. I mean, really I think you’ve hit the messages. Getting the inflammation out of the diet and then looking into the testing because, some of the functional medicine testing we run outside of blood work can provide data on what’s going on. And then obviously, mycotoxins are huge. So for me, when I get exposed to mold, if I stay in the moldy hotel for a weekend, guess what? My hands and feet go cold. I mean it’s almost a direct impact. So I’m not saying that’s everyone’s smoking gun but, it’s a big factor that’s not really talked about.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, right. So I always try to boil things down to a process, right? What’s the concept, what’s the process? A process is something we can consistently repeat. It’s kind of like in fourth grade, you learn pemdas, right? Remember pemdas? It’s the way you do a math problem. That there’s addition, subtraction, division, all these different things in one line. What’s the process, pemdas right? Well today, what’s the process here? The first thing is one, make sure the food you eat is anti-inflammatory nutrient dense low toxin. That’s the first thing. Second thing is get your blood sugar under control because yes, you can eat really good foods but, your glycemia, your blood sugar can be out of control and that can increase insulin, coagulation, clotting, right? So first thing is nutrient density anti-inflammatory diet. Second thing is get your macronutrients under control. Third thing is get lifestyle strategies under control. Don’t exercise too much. Exercise enough, start making sure sleep is under control. Sight? Start making sure you’re drinking good clean, filtered water with extra minerals. Make sure there’s enough minerals in there. If you can add in different strategies like, rebounding or whole body vibration, or sauna therapy, excellent. Then maybe at that next level, we can start going into, um, supplements, right? What are the easiest supplements to add in? Well, good healthy fats, good healthy fish oils. Maybe some some extra ginger, maybe some systemic enzymes right? You don’t have to start with everything. There’s a lot of things we put out there. It’s like a poople platter. We don’t got to do it all. Just try to start with one or two things but, start with that order of operations. Follow the process; don’t get overwhelmed by everything; just follow the process. And the next thing after that is you know, if you have inflammatory conditions, autoimmune issues, thyroid issues, crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, colitis, uh, lime, co-infections, autoimmune issues, and you have chronic inflammation chronically cold hands, cold feet blood flow issues, you have to look at thyroid, you have to look at your hormones, you have to look at the gut; and this is where it’s good to bring on a good functional medicine practitioner like us. So if you want to reach out to Evan, evanbrand.com or myself, Dr. J – justinehealth.com. That’s kind of where your next step to kind of go a little bit deeper, to kind of you know, hire that trail guys that’s been to the top of mount Everest hundreds of times. So you can have the confidence that we’re going the right way and not taking a shortcut off a cliff so to speak.

Evan Brand: Yeah. It’s great. Well said. It’s just so great to be able to reverse some of these stuff. I mean, I just assumed that was me. I just had cold hands, cold feet, and I thought, okay. That’s just me for some reason, I just don’t have good blood flow here, and I just kind of like owned it, and I think a lot of people are listening. They own these symptoms and they get used to their way of life, and like nope that’s just the way I am. I’m just a depressed person. It’s like no, there’s a reason for that. I do believe that we truly have a baseline of being healthy and optimal, and good blood flow, and good brain function, and good sex drive, and good sleep. If you look at like tribal societies, they don’t have these type of issues. They don’t have these chronic issues with blood pressure and mood issues. Some of these like ancestral people, they don’t even have a word for depression. It’s not even in their language. So I just encourage you if you’re listening, and you’re just owning your symptoms, and you’re like that’s just me, don’t own it anymore. Just know that that’s okay that something’s wrong, there’s a dysfunction going on. There’s likely a cause of it and we’re investigators at heart. I mean, we love this stuff so like you mentioned, if you want to reach out, justinhealth.com for Dr. J, evanbrand.com for me. We’d love to help you, and help you get to the next level of health. It’s totally possible.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I would say don’t own it form the perspective of like, hey this is just me, this is how it it is but, own the process. Like you know, one of the root things that I can be working on to get these things under wraps. I think that’s a really important kind of uh, step to be looking at, okay? Anything else guys, feel free and let us know, comments down below. We’re really happy to help you and kind of get to the next step with you all. Feel free, evanbrand.com, justinhealth.com and we’re happy to help. Anything else you want to add Evan?

Evan Brand: No, that’s it. Just keep moving forward. That’s the goal. There’s not a finish line so just keep, getting to the next level, you know, It’s not like, my life’s going to be perfect when I get cold hands and cold feet resolved. No, you could do that and still be miserable. So you gotta just chipping away, okay? Don’t give up.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: yeah. And then also, kind of one thing. People in the comments asking about couple different questions here. Um, just want everyone to know in our climate today, there’s some off-limit topics that you know, we’re not touching, and people kind of read between the lines on this, and we’ve made a decision that there’s a lot of other information that is so important to um, put out there to everyone. So we’re staying away from some health topics not for the goal of censorship but because, we want to be able to put other health topics like we’re talking about today out there so everyone can take action. So just know uh, you know we’re making kind of a strategic decision to really put more focus on functional medicine. Areas and nutrition people can take action on versus other things that are out in the zeitgeist to the world today.

Evan Brand: I think there’s a time and a place for it and there may be a better place for it. But a lot of those places right now are super dicey in terms of service and stuff. I mean, who knows what can happen to you. So yeah, we’re we’re investigating options though.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So anyone listening, we’re putting really our focus on all of the functional medicine; all the things that people can take form an actionable standpoint. And so, just that’s kind of the direction because we feel like we can help more at that area. And um, that’s kind of it on that. Any comments, feel free to let us know below and we’re here to help you all.

Evan Brand: Alright. Take it easy.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care, guys! Bye now.

Evan Brand: Bye-bye.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-way-to-increase-blood-flow-and-decrease-inflammation-podcast-343

Recommended products:

Organic Grass Fed Meat

B-Vitamin Synergy

Antioxidant Supreme

Genova Organix® Comprehensive Profile

Genova NutrEval® FMV

The Top 5 Common Digestive Supplement Mistake – HCL, Enzymes and Bile Support | Podcast #338

As a functional medicine practitioner, Dr. J and Evan Brand see many clients who take dietary supplements regularly. But, as simple as it sounds, supplementing can confuse—and people often make mistakes. Do you think you’re taking all the proper nutrients and that you’re taking them the appropriate way? Let’s learn some common errors people make:

Dr. J highly recommends that you avoid having the symptoms cured rather than the source. Don’t just accept your signs and symptoms as usual; consult your doctor and express your concerns. Your doctor may advise you to do diet modifications and have yourself tested to find out the root cause and fix it. Also, watch out for over stressing. Stress can affect your decision-making and as well as your gut health. Another reason can be chewing your food too quickly that makes your digestive system suffer, inadequate water intake, or very few fibers in your diet.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this podcast, we cover:

0:36    Common Mistakes in Using Digestive Support

12:03   Healing Gut Lining

15:39   Sex Drive and Libido Effects

17:59   Bile Support

21:48   Higher Fat Diets

25:09   Cooking our Food

31:04   Food Quality

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We are live, it’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today, we are going to be talking about the top five common mistakes. When using digestive support. Again, we’re in the trenches with patients every week from all over the world. And this is a common issue that we see is people are not using digestive support correctly. And if we don’t break down our food, if we don’t emulsify it, break it down, utilize it absorb it, we’re not going to get the nutrients from that meal. So it’s not a given that we’re eating good food, we have to go through good digestive processes to get those nutrients and to decrease stress in our gut. So I’m really excited to dive in today’s topic on that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, me too. So I mean, I was doing digestive enzymes when I still had gut infections. So I know we put together a list here, and I’m gonna just go straight to the one that was a little lower down the list, which was, I think, possibly one of the big smoking guns for a lot of people is, and I technically should have written in our notes, not testing. My note was not addressing infections and how not addressing your gut infections leads to digestive problems, because if you’re someone who’s taking supplemental acids and enzymes, but you haven’t tested or treated yourself for parasites or worms, or H pylori, bacterial overgrowth, fungal overgrowth, mold colonization, you’re gonna have very limited results with your enzyme, enzymes and acids. So for me, I did that mistake. I just had high quality enzymes. I was taking those but yet I still had diarrhea and other gi issues years ago, because I had parasites, and I hadn’t tested or treated those. So that’s to me, I think the big one because people will go to Whole Foods or wherever, hopefully, they’ll buy from us because it’s professional quality, but they’ll buy enzymes take it and then they still have gi issues. They’re like, well, what the heck, I thought the enzymes were supposed to fix it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and I see that we see that all the time. Now the question is, why is that happening? So let’s go over some of the bugs and some of the reasons why that may happen. So first off, h pylori is a super common one h pylori is a bacteria that resides primarily in the stomach, you can also go a little bit into the small intestine, and H. pylori is going to produce an enzyme called urease. And urease is going to take protein from you know, which is the protein metabolite urea and it’s going to convert it into ammonia and co2. And so on a positive H. pylori breath test, we’re gonna see elevations in co2 after you swallow the urea from the breath test, and you’re also going to see a lot of ammonia. Now ammonia has got a pH of 11. And so that’s more on the alkaline side, so your guts only a two or three on the pH. So that can start to alkalize the gut and maybe throw off the digestive capacity because we need that nice that nice low pH helps activate enzymes and acids. Well, it actually activates more of the enzymes that can be pepsin, various proteolytic enzymes, and it sets the table for the pancreas and the gallbladder to produce more enzymes, lipase bile, when we get into the small intestine, so the acidity in the pH sets the deck it sets the domino rally, so digestion works downstream and so, infections like H. pylori can cause problems infections like cebo can also cause problems. SIBO is notorious for making it harder for that esophageal sphincter to close and so that esophageal sphincter can’t close is prone, you have proneness to having that acid rise up and burn your esophagus, right? Those are all potential problems. Also, any stressor or infection, whether it’s H. pylori SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or it could even be something like a parasite, these infections are going to create sympathetic nervous system stress. And so the more your nervous system is over stressed that sympathetic nervous system that fight or flight tone is being stimulated. What’s going to happen is that fight or flight is going to take digestive enzymes and acids, it’s going to reduce them, it’s gonna start shunting. A lot of the digestive secretions and the blood flow away from the blood away from the stomach and the core and to the hands and the feet to run, fight and flee because our body is trying to move blood and move resources to the areas that are most metabolically high and expenditure. And in a fight or flight circumstance, that’s going to be the extremities fighting, fleeing, running, and our bodies prehistorically driven that way, because you don’t want to be hungry. When you’re running. You don’t want to think about digestion, you want to be focused on getting away or fighting. And that blood has to carry oxygen so these muscles can work. And so that blood moves away from the intestines. And that’s part of the reason why these infections can really throw off your body, they can really increase that sympathetic nervous system and take away from that vagal tone vagas nerve, parasympathetic nervous system response.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I can totally relate. I mean, when I had infections, I was anxious, but I had nausea and I had no appetite. So I would sit down. I remember like yesterday when I was down in Austin, I would sit down at the dinner table. I just cooked an amazing bison steak and maybe I had some veggies with it. I remember looking at the plate and going Ah, I just can’t do it. And some of that was the infections But some of it was the stress from the infections. And some people, they’ll kind of demonize meats and say, Well, I don’t feel good. Like I just can’t do the meat. It’s not the meat in general. That’s the problem. It’s the infections, damaging the parietal cells, reducing the stomach acid, it’s turning that digestive fire back on, that’s really going to help you feel good with those meats. So I, it’s sad because people get scared away from the meat. But in reality, it’s some of these root causes that we’re talking about. And then you hit on this kind of primal response. This is totally normal, by the way, but it’s not normal in our chronic stress lifestyle. So occasionally, if we were stressed, it’d be great. Like you said, turn off the digestive system. So we can run. But the problem is, we’re are we’re always stressed. Now. We’ve never as humans, we’ve never experienced this level of chronic, ongoing stress. I mean, I pull my audience all the time, I’ll do a little polls on my Instagram page and ask people like how you’re feeling. Everybody’s stressed. Everybody’s overworked, everybody’s burned out. So this is an epidemic problem. This is not like a one off thing. This is everywhere. And I think we could transition now if you’re ready. And we could talk about how too much or too little HCl when you’re trying to get this digestive fire back on, there is kind of a sweet spot, and it’s going to depend on the people, it’s going to depend on gut inflammation, maybe diet, infections, and then let me just bring up before I forget, these infections are very contagious. So if you do have h pylori, it’s very probable that your spouse is infected as well. So if you’re someone working on your gut, and you’re not working on your significant others gut, you probably need to whether you’re running testing, or maybe you’re guessing and checking, which is not as wise, but we’ll see a husband or a wife come in to work with us clinically, they have good results and then two to three months later they go backwards. That’s often because the the infection came back due to the significant other and this could even be from children as well or even dogs. Like if you got a dog with h pylori, you’re playing with a slobbery toy, you’re throwing the slobbery toy there Nope, you pick your nose, you bite your nails, whatever boom, you could get, you know, exposed to the vectors that way too.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% So with the too much and too little HCl, some people their gut lining is so inflamed, they have atrophic gastritis, meaning that gut lining has gotten really thin. And they may not be able to handle much HCl, even though they need HCl, they may not be able to handle it and that becomes dicey. So it’s all about helping people where they’re at, even though they need something, if they can’t receive it, then we need a backup plan. And so you got to know what people are at. And so some people, their digestive system, or symptoms actually get better. With more HCl, even though their gut has a lot of problems, they have a lot of inflammation. Some people their gut lining integrity can still deal with the HCl when you start adding HCl. And it’s like they start getting better and you’re like, but your guts so inflamed, how were you able to receive it, but then patient a over here couldn’t receive it. So everyone’s a little bit different. And so if we’re going to try HCl, I mean, ideally, don’t try it. If you know there’s any alterations, coughing up blood in the stool. I had one person though cut people who had alterations, though, did it and they’re like, it helped my issues, I felt so much better, and actually my ulcer stopped. Now, that may be the exception. I’m just kind of highlighting if you are that person, tread lightly work with a practitioner. And of course, all reactions are dose dependent. So if you’re going to test it, try the very smallest dose you possibly can maybe even a little bit of lemon juice, or apple cider vinegar and some water, dilute it down and then test it. And if you overdo it, you can always try a little bit of baking soda in water to kind of calm it down if you irritated it. But ideally, don’t do it unless you’re working with someone that’s helping you on the functional medicine side. And if you do it, make sure it’s dose dependent on that side.

Evan Brand: Yeah, good call. So just we’ll give a couple numbers. I think numbers are helpful. So if you’re working in HCl, I know you and I we have some professional manufacturers we work with we make our own line of digestive products. We go pretty conservative, like 200 milligrams of butane per capsule. So we could dose that as low as one cap 200 milligram, we could go up to 3 4 5 6. So you could go I’d say 200 on the low end up to I personally don’t see a need much beyond maybe a couple of grams, 2000 milligrams, and even that, to me is sometimes too high for certain people. I just don’t like to push it. I know you and I’ve talked about that test where people will take a ton of HCl until they get burning and then back down from that dose but I prefer not to poke the beehives I personally don’t do that with people.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I will do that within five or six capsules. It depends if someone has a lot of digestive distress. You know, we’re typically not going to go that high, but usually within five or six capsules, that tends to be okay. And Dr. Jonathan Wright’s book, why you do stomach acid, he talks about, you know, being able to go up to four to five grams of HCl. And again, I typically wouldn’t do that if someone’s having any alterations or any incredible gastritis issues. Usually we’re going to test at a much smaller level than that and even with them, we’re still starting at maybe one capsule and we’re gently going up and up. For taking the digestive support in the middle of the meal, because if your guts Ron and flame just enough of that acid leaning on that gut lining directly isn’t to be a problem, at least if there’s some food down, then think of the Oreo cookie, right, you get the cream that you get the the frosting in the middle of the HCl is in the middle of all the food, and therefore the body tends to mix it up. And then when it starts moving throughout the intestinal tract with the throat, the stomach, it’s not going to be as intense at the tissue area. And so that tends to be very helpful. And I’ll typically, you know, try it within four or five capsules, see if we have an improvement. Some people do, I hear doctors doing that up to 1020 capsules. And that’s I think you’re just messing with trouble, you mess up a fire there because your body has to use bicarbonate and from the pancreas, to start to neutralize the acid from the stomach. So like that Domino rally of digestion, you have all this kind mixed up in your stomach, that kind is all the food with the acids and the enzymes that has to get released from the stomach down into the small intestine. And so it’s nice low pH once that goes into the small intestine, right the dwad, then we start making a whole bunch of bicarbonate to neutralize that. Now bile acid will also be produced bile acids still an acid it’s still a pH of around five or so. So it’s still on the acidic side. People have written in o bile acids. Well, it’s a it’s a p it’s a pH neutral. Well, you know, we’re talking bile acids. bile is made up of bile acids, cholesterol, a lot of different substances. So the bile acids are in their very nature by their name on the acidic side. So typically, your body’s trying to take that pH and bring it up to a neutral pH and the more you stress it with tons and tons of HCl, there’s a greater chance that your bicarbonate system may not be able to handle it from your pancreas. And you could develop a peptic ulcer. So we got to be careful with that. Try to use HCl within a reasonable range. And if you’re going to test it, you know, just be careful with it. Just be careful. Make sure you’re taking a look at your gut and making sure you’re you’re you’re knowing what your calprotectin levels are and you’re in you’re taking it the right way.

Evan Brand: That is like the pinnacle of edutainment right there that was so entertaining to listen to. I’m picturing all this going on in the system, I’m learning at the same time. This is why I love what we do. This is so fun. All right, let’s go to let’s go to number two here on our list, which is supporting or healing the gut lining and how that’s very important to do possibly even before you get to the digestive support. So you and I are seeing tons of people that usually have been to previous practitioners or doctors or naturopaths or whoever before us. And so maybe they have healed their gut somewhat already. Or maybe they’ve been wrecked because other practitioners did too much. Or they did too hardcore things. I had one lady who she got put on really high biofilm busting support right in the beginning, she got put on the interface plus from Claire labs, which we can and do you sometimes but man it wrecked her gut, her stomach was so wrong. We had to do almost six weeks of gut healing support before we could even bring it any other support. And and that’s kind of a reverse order thing. Because you and I talked about this idea of healing the gut after you treat the infections, but man, in her case, we couldn’t do that. So I’ve seen firsthand what can happen if you do too much biofilm support, you’re aggravating an aggravated system, it’s just not good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And that’s why if we’re having someone with an inflamed gut, one of the first things we’re going to be doing is trying to really dial in digestive nutrients to heal the gut lining. So we may be adding in things like dgl, licorice, aloe, slippery elm, sometimes we’re going to do a lot of zinc or zinc carnosine. A lot of studies on zinc, helping to decrease gut permeability, which is really important, decreasing gut inflammation, there’s studies on zinc showing the decreased calprotectin in the intestinal tract. So that’s wonderful, of course, l glutamine. If you’re very histamine sensitive or very inflamed, sometimes I’ll clue to me can go downstream to glutamic acid and glutamate, and you may have negative symptoms there. Again, typically, I don’t see that and so we don’t see that. I say 95% of the time, there’s no problem with that. But we want to be able to use other nutrients to calm down the gut, vitamin u, which is vitamin oltre. You see that in like a lot of okra, things like that. cabbage juice, I would say Allah we already mentioned. And then of course, there’s just good old fashioned bone broth, and collagen peptides which are very, very high in glycine. And glycine is very important building block for the entire sites that make up the gut lining the entire sites or little cells that that make up the tight junctions and the gut lining in the intestinal tract. And so they love, love, love glycine, and of course, that the same cells that are helping to build the intestinal tract, they also help with detoxification. glycine is a very important compound and toxification. So if you have a lot of gut inflammation, your body’s going to be using a lot of that glycine for healing, inflamed tissue and maybe not running the toxification. So that’s part of the reason why you can have detoxification problems, because your guts chronically inflamed, it’s sucking a lot of the resources Is that it may be using for detox.

Evan Brand: Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing. So there’s a lot of talk Stephanie sent off. And I know some others have talked about using glycine to help glyphosate detox. Yep. So that’s pretty interesting mechanism there, you’re saying that the system can’t focus on the detox. If it’s so focused on the gut damage.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The body is always tending to deal with what the more acute matters. And if your guts Ron inflamed, it’s probably going to prioritize that over detoxification. And again, we don’t have like a test that to say that, we just kind of have common sense functional medicine, healing philosophy, the body’s always prioritizing stuff. And whatever the top stress is, the more apparent stresses, that’s where your body’s typically allocating resources.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and I don’t want to get too in the weeds on this, but I’ll just bring up an example of that, for example, sex drive and libido. When we see people that are chronically stressed and depleted, usually sex drive is going to go down or become non existent. I asked that question on my intake form is your libido adequate, and all the sick people know their libido is not adequate. And my interpretation of that is libido is really, a it’s a luxury to be able to do that. You’ve got to have some optimal things that happen. Obviously, there’s other mechanisms at play, but just at a simple basic level. You know, sex is a luxury when you’re running from a bear, you’re not going to, you know, be aroused if you’re running from a bear. And that bear could be your boss, or your spouse or your kids if they’re driving you crazy. And libido is like that, whatever. So that makes sense. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you just look at how the the nervous system allocates sexual energy, so typically foreplay, or just, you know, that intimacy that you’re going to have before ejaculation, or before an orgasm, that’s all parasympathetic. And so you need parasympathetic nervous system stimulation for, you know, the foreplay aspect of intimacy. And if the parasympathetic isn’t there, that’s where you see premature ejaculation, right? Because ejaculation or orgasm is sympathetic. And foreplay is parasympathetic. And so if you don’t have parasympathetic stimulation happening, because you’re so stressed or so inflamed, it, you know, that’s where premature ejaculation or just not even being able to rise to the occasion, if you catch my drift, because that parasympathetic nervous system response is so squashed.

Evan Brand: Yeah, this is a huge problem. I mean, I’ve seen 20 year old guys that are jumping on Coke, the little blue pill, and you’ve got all these websites now that are promoting like off the market Viagra. It’s like, what the heck, like we have like teenagers and 20 year olds now like carrying around that that you know, used to be like, when you know, high school is kind of the cool joke thing to have. But you got a condom in your wallet. Now, it’s like you have a condom and you have Viagra as a teenager?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, that’s why you typically need a couple hours of stress free conversation and, and connection before before that kind of nervous system stimulation can happen. You can’t just go it’s harder to go into a stressful day, switch the switch. And then there you go. It’s just tough. That’s because of the nervous system. So we just got, we got to know that. 

Evan Brand: Give us your comments. Do you want a functional medicine, optimization of libido podcast? If so, let us know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll chat about that’s great. All right, I would say next thing we can kind of we talked about the gut lining support, let’s talk about bile support. So bile is really important for fat digestion. A lot of women are going to be affected by bile issues, because it’s very common women, when they’re 40s, they tend to get their gallbladder removed. It’s a common procedure, you have any upper right quadrant pain issues, boom, they’re taking out your gallbladder right away. And your gallbladder is part of what concentrates bile, your liver will make it and then it stores it in the gallbladder. And then it gets released. It very specific times via coli cystic keinen cck stimulation, and cck is going to be stimulated when you have a whole bunch of fat and protein going getting released from your stomach into the small intestine so that we get to release it. It happens at a very specific time. And it’s concentrated 15 to 20 times more than just what your liver would drip it in. Because when you don’t have a gallbladder just chatter dripping. And when it drips, you can you can have bile acid diarrhea. And so that’s where you have to use bile acid sequestering agents to kind of calm it down. And we got to put our bile in at the right time. And so we may have to take supplemental bile definitely for life that we don’t have a gallbladder. If we have biliary insufficiency, we’re going to have to be taken bio as well maybe extra lipase, which is a fat enzyme from the pancreas. But if we don’t break down that fat, you know, we’re gonna see our stool start to flow, we’re going to start to see, you know, St Mark’s skin marks on the toilet, see, because the fat is, is streaking, it’s not well absorbed. And then you’re also going to see a lot more excessive wipes when you go to the bathroom when you clean yourself because it’s just the fat is streaky, right, it’s it makes a big mess. And so we got to break down that fat adequately and then we may have to add extra bile into digestive support may have to add extra label lytic enzymes as well. Also, if you’re a female or even a male, high levels of estrogen is going to make your bile flow more stagnant. So if your bile flow is more stagnant, you’re not going to have good biliary output. And I would say last but not least, if if you’re one of those people that got thrown into a low fat diet Well, when you go low fat your gallbladder is not emptying because it’s the trigger for gallbladder emptying is coli cystic keinen from fat consumption. If your gallbladder is an empty, empty, what happens all that bile, it can start to form bile crystals. And those crystals are sharp. And when you finally do eat a little bit of fat, it’s like giving a hug to a porcupine. All right, it’s gonna be quite painful. And so imagine your gallbladder contracting on it’s like giving that porcupine a big hug and you’re going to inflame that gallbladder. And so chronic low fat diets with a punctuated higher fat meal, and also coming in there with estrogen dominance, a lot of detoxification issues, not clear handling estrogen, well, maybe having a lot of estrogen in your meats in your pesticides in your plastics goes for guys, too, that could definitely screw up your gallbladder and cause biliary and fissures not enough bile flow to that gallbladder.

Evan Brand: Wow. Okay, so let me just clarify, because this is interesting stuff here, because people online, including us were really big proponents of good quality, pastured animal products, and high quality fats were a big proponent of that. But you’re saying that when a person comes in, let’s say they came from the brainwashing of the even 2000s, I mean, part of me want to say 1980s 90s, and 2000s. But it’s still, there’s still the low fat dogma still there, that’s still like one of the labels on a product low in fat that’s still marketed today. So this is still a trend. You’re seeing someone coming from that with gallbladder issues with infections with low stomach acid, then they try to go keto, carnivore, meat based paleo, whatever, they end up with problems. If they have like a gallbladder issue or a gallbladder attack, the doctor is going to blame maybe the fats and just cut the gallbladder out. But you’re saying there’s kind of a few steps, if you will, that have to be a prerequisite to handle a higher fat diet properly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, why don’t we just have the propaganda of the 80s and 90s. And just the fact that calories in calories out, right, oh, you’re worried about how many calories you consume? Well, we know one gram of fat got nine calories in it, compared to four in the protein and four on the carbs. So of course, fat gets to be looked at more deeply on that side, because of the caloric intake. And then also, if you’re, you know, a lot of the studies on fat causing heart disease, which we know are all nonsense, we know that the meta analyses in the last 10 years show there’s no correlation with that, with fat and animal cholesterol, a lot of the studies in the 60s and 70s, they did not differentiate saturated fat with trans fats. And so they had a whole bunch of trans fats mixed in with a lot of these experiments. And you didn’t really get good data because they had the trans fats, which we know hydrogenated vegetable oils are terrible and bad for our health, we know that. So you got to pull out those confounding variables to really get good data. And so we know that in the last 10 15 years, that is not the case. And that cholesterol and fat is going to be fine. It’s really going to be the sugar of the trans fats, and maybe an argument for a lot of the refined processed vegetable oils, these vegetable oils during the processing of them, they get damaged. Because your polyunsaturated fats, omega six, they get damaged, and they create a lot of oxidative stress, and they get stored in your cell membranes for a long time.

Evan Brand: Yeah, these are these are super bad oils, and they’re everywhere. I mean, even at Whole Foods. If you go and look at organic potato chips, you’re still sometimes gonna see cottonseed oil, you’re gonna see sunflower oil, you’re gonna see canola oil. I mean, I get frustrated because Whole Foods kind of markets themselves as healthy. But if you go to like their I don’t know, if you call the buffet, but their hotbar, if you will, every single food item they have, there’s canola oil and everything.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s just cheap. And then there’s also a lot of stuff on the olive oil being fake, right? So you got to look at that too. But that’s why at least half your fat should be high quality animal saturated fats, because one, those fats are just really stable, they’re going to be really temperature stable. And if you’re getting organic, decent fat, there’s no processing of that that’s going to damage the fat like you may have with a vegetable oil. But ideally, try to get cold pressed, try to get organic, try to get reputable brands that you know, aren’t going to be a blend of other canola oil mixed in which is terrible.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, let’s hit another point, which is important is the fact that the bile has some antimicrobial properties and all these estrogen dominance issues you’re hitting on you’re hitting on the low fat you’re hitting on maybe the the no gallbladder. Yeah, it makes sense why we see so many women, for example, that have had their gallbladders removed, they have massive, massive gut infections.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep, correct. And so bile is antimicrobial. And so it’s gonna make it harder for bugs to grow in the small intestinal tract. And so just having good biliary output, it’s going to act like anti microbials and make it harder for these bugs and dysbiosis to grow. So having good fats in there, going to stimulate good bile stimulation and flow in that bile flow is going to help you emulsify and break down the fat and it’s also going to make the environment harder for bugs to grow. So it’s definitely a win win on both sides of the front there.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you and I don’t have any published studies to say hey, we had 278 patients and, you know, 275 had their gallbladders removed and all 275 had SIBO we don’t have it like published like that. But I know that you would agree clinically what we’ve seen, you know, combined over the last 10 plus years is that We see tons of SIBO SIFO issues and a lot of those people have gallbladder issues or they don’t have a gall bladder period. So it’s definitely, definitely correlated.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. 100%. And it’s good to look at that. No, I would say next thing we can kind of switch into is cooking our foods. I mean, sometimes fermentable carbohydrates, sometimes just the fiber in those foods, the rawness of the foods, the anti nutrients, lectins salicylates, females, can really be irritating to someone’s got if it’s already wrong. So sometimes just one cooking those foods can be wonderful. Sometimes even switching to a carnivore diet, as long as we can handle the fats and proteins can be great, because you’re decreasing all those anti nutrients, sometimes just really making sure everything’s really cooked and steamed and sauteed. Or maybe using an instapot, or some kind of a method really helped break it down. And then of course, low hanging fruit, like just chewing your food up really well to like almost like an oatmeal like liquid consistency, making sure you’re not overly hydrating with your meal, maybe just a couple ounces of water to get some pills down. But that’s it you’re hydrating, 1015 minutes before two hours after because water’s got a pH of seven, right? And your stomach’s a pH of two, two and a half and you add a whole bunch of seven, there’s a bunch of two and a half, you start raising the pH plus you’re diluting all your enzymes and ask for the potencies drops. So all those things matter.

Evan Brand: Yeah, here’s an interesting thing. I looked at some of the videos. And I interviewed him on my podcast too super cool guy, Paul Saladino, who wrote a carnivore book and he talks a lot about carnivore diets. He visited the Hodza tribe. And something interesting is he thinks that we’re really like over hydrating, like, if you watch these people, these tribal people, obviously they don’t have water bottles, and they don’t have really access to water the way we do. But he would notice they would eat an entire meal with no liquid. And then here we are in America, you go to the restaurant, and they’re like, what do you like to drink, sir. And if you’re like water, they bring you a frickin huge cup. I mean, it’s probably 1620 ounces of ice water. It’s cold, which I don’t know, people may debate me on this. I don’t know if ice water is necessarily good around meals either. I just feel like no, from an energetic-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Your stomach longer sits in your stomach longer because your stomach’s not going to release your internal body temperature is around 99 98 degrees, and you drink a whole bunch of 50 degree water, your body’s gonna hold that water in the stomach until it gets up to body temperature and then release it. I mean, very simple. Just drink a whole bunch of cold water and you’ll feel it sloshing around drink room temperature water and you’ll feel it move through your body way faster. When you move around. 510 minutes later, you won’t feel the sloshing.

Evan Brand: Ah, you know, see just intuitively I just keep I just drink room temperature water now they’re on a really hot day. Yeah, like some ice water. But just like normally, during the office hours, you know, I’m just drinking room temperature water and I feel so much better with it. But yeah, so sorry, I got on a little tangent. But I would-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal. If you do that and drink wine, drink cold water, just be careful of drinking really cold water right before a meal. Because it will take longer to move through. So at least if you’re going to do cold water, make sure it’s not 10 minutes before meal.

Evan Brand: Okay, Okay, understood. But anyway, the idea was like he saw these tribal people and how they’re how they’re eating and drinking. And, you know, they didn’t really do meal combining, there’s a lot of like, when you go to a restaurant, there’s this feeling that you got to have your meat and then your vegetable and then your potato. And obviously this is different. I’m not saying we all need to live like tribal people. But what I’m saying is I find it very interesting that their life is more what our DNA expects, meaning if they’re walking along and they stop upon a bush, they might just gorge on these berries. Or if they stop and find this bail Bob tree with a particular type of honey in it, they’ll cut open the tree, find the beehive they’ll eat just a meal of honey and then they get the kill and they eat just the meat so I personally have experimented with that like just meat, just berries just starch and just try to play around with it as opposed to doing the steak with the broccoli with the sweet potato and I personally do feel better on just those single items so I’ve I’ve definitely been leaning more that direction I feel significantly better.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think you know a couple of things one I think most of their meals are probably going to have more protein in it because if you kill an animal that that meat last way longer and if you look at a lot of the the fruit they were to have back then I’ve looked at a lot of these studies that they’re a lot more tart a lot more bitter they aren’t like overly sweet like we’ve due to hybridization and genetic selection we’ve kind of chose the sweetest berries the sweetest this so a lot of the fruits way sweeter than what you would have typically found in nature on average and things like honey would have been a rarity it wouldn’t have been something that you’re you’re have access to every single day and so we have access to it every day so you know if it’s something that’s every now and then it’s probably not a big deal but if they were doing honey like that every single day and they weren’t as active right because they have to be really active to hunt and kill and do all their stuff there may be metabolic issues.

Evan Brand: Oh yeah, I think I read he was just trying to keep up with the tribe. I want to say they were doing something like 10 miles a day walking I mean there’s an insane amount of steps.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, anytime one your stress is decent right because you know most of their life was just focused on the next meal right killing having their next meal obviously making sure shelter stable but once shelter is good Then really most of your focus is on food as a food and safety for the tribe. That’s it. You know, you’re not having to go pay a big mortgage down or worried about your kids private school, right? Yeah, that’s a different priorities right?

Evan Brand: Have you seen the organic strawberries lately? My god, they’re freaking huge. They’re like small apples, man.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I had a couple over the weekend. They were like almost the size of my hand. I was like, Holy smokes!

Evan Brand: Because I kind of thought that organic was and I guess I thought wrong. This is me being dumb, I guess. But I thought that organic had a little bit of separation from the conventional practices meaning the hybridization process, but my god, you look at some of these apples now to their like softballs.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah, I mean, just farmers naturally over hundreds of years, they’re going to just start selecting seeds and, and crops that are going to be more tasty, just just natural selection of what sells. And so that tends to shift over time, where if things are just growing in Mother Nature, you know, we don’t quite have that ability to select it as much. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I go, you know, I’ll be out in the woods and I’ll find some wild strawberries. They’re tiny. They’re like the size of your pinky fingernail.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Real. Yeah. Yeah, no, totally. So yeah, but most important thing is the food quality. And, of course, if you have insulin resistance in your inflamed, you know, leaning to less sugar is always better. Just because your body doesn’t have you know, if you’re the hunza, right, and you’re walking 10 miles a day hiking and doing all these things, you have the ability to burn all that stuff up. No problem. It’s not a problem, but you have don’t have the ability to burn it up, what’s your body going to do with it, then it gets stored in the liver, and it’s stored in the muscles, and then when that’s tapped, it’s gonna get converted to fat. And you’ll get insulin resistance. We got probably that’s I’ve got to be careful that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and the main last point, there was just adjusting how your food is cooked based on what’s going on with your gut. So if you’ve got infections, like for me, I’ve rarely ever do leafy green salads. Raw just doesn’t agree with my gut. And so I don’t do it. And I could, I’m sure I could work it in, but to me, I feel I feel good. My gut feels good. I feel good. So I’m okay with cooked veggies. And those work for me. So.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, worst case, just take your veggies laid out in the frying pan and put a really good saturated fat down and some sea salt, you know, and, and boil it, you know, for 20 minutes at 400 nice roasted vegetables are pretty good. As long as you’re using the good healthy fat on It’s wonderful.

Evan Brand: Yeah, would you recommend something like ghee, because if you go too hot with butter, you might get some smoke, right? So would you say ghee or what do you like?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You could do ghee or any Talos you could do a little bit of avocado oil. Avocado oil is pretty heat stable use got to make sure you’re looking at what the heat is. You don’t overdo based on the smoke point. Okay, that’d be cool. Anything else you want to hit on? I just think people that are listening here. If you’re struggling and you’re having a hard time, you know, feel free to reach out to someone like Evan and I would be happy to help you out. And you can see Evan at EvanBrand.com and feel free you can schedule with him worldwide, as well as myself, Dr. J at JustInHealth.com. Happy to help you guys out. also put your comments down below, let us know your thoughts on the topic. Let us know what you’ve done. What’s helped you in the past. You know, we learn a lot through our patients. Because you know, when you only have yourself that’s that’s only one person. But when you have 1000s of people that you can learn from you just see what works. You don’t need a scientific study to tell you because you see it, it’s real. And then we apply it to help our patients. And we really appreciate y’all sharing your stories here as well. And reach out links below for everything guys, and then make sure you share with family and friends that they could benefit. Please put it in their inbox or share it on social media. We really appreciate it.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah, well, awesome job. And yeah, once again, JustinHealth.com. Or EvanBrand.com, please reach out we’d love to help you. And you know, we didn’t talk about it too much today, because it’s more focused on other things. But testing is part of this protocol. So figuring out exactly what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, when we’re doing it, why we’re doing it, it is based on testing, we’re not just using you as a guinea pig, we are truly looking at calprotectin and stouter crit and Alaska as there’s, there’s so many biomarkers that we didn’t even discuss that we’re working into that. So I just want you to know that we’re not coming in blind here. We have data that we’re using, which helps us to guide these protocols. And that’s really where the magic happens is once you get to the get the data. So test, don’t guess, reach out if you need help. And we’ll be in touch next week.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, just to highlight that. On the digestive side, we’re looking at markers likes the adequate, which if that’s high, that’s a lot of mal digested fat. If we have a lot of calprotectin or lactoferrin, or increased immune response like IGA that means there’s stuff going on in the gut. And so it’s good to know that ahead of time so we can really quantify what’s happening, or maybe even gut permeability like Sanyo, and that can all be very helpful. So I’m glad you touched upon that. We’ll put links below guys for everything that you guys need to take next steps and you guys have a phenomenal week.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-5-common-digestive-supplement-mistake-hcl-enzymes-and-bile-support-podcast-338

Recommended products:

Genova Organix®

Dysbiosis Profile

Genova NutrEval® FMV

Genova ION Profile

Genova SIBO Breath Test

DUTCH Adrenal Test

Organic Grass Fed Meat

Betaine HCL Supreme

Multi Nutrient Supreme

Digest Synergy

Liver Supreme

Enzyme Synergy

TRUCOLLAGEN (Grassfed)

The Top 5 Nutrients to Improve Brain Function | Podcast #333

For your brain to work efficiently, it needs specific nutrients, making the food we eat vital to brain function. What types of nutrients do we need to help our brains work? 

Some foods, such as fruits, vegetables, coffee, and tea, have antioxidants that help safeguard your brain from harm. Others, such as eggs and nuts, have nutrients that support memory and brain development. You can help keep your brain healthy and boost your alertness, memory, and mood by strategically including these foods in your diet. 

Nutrition is essential for healthy brain function! To learn more about refining your brain process in memory, attention, focus, and sleep while also eliminating symptoms of anxiety and depression, don’t skip the full podcast, check out other videos, and don’t forget to hit like, subscribe button, and the notification bell!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:43  Inflammation in the Brain

3:50  Improving Brain Function

7:41  How Food Affects Brain Function

11:24 Insulin Resistance on the Brain

24:11 Improving Blood Flow in the Brain

27:16 Glutamate Issues

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys, it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here with Evan Brand in the house. Today, we’re going to be talking about the top five nutrients to improve your brain function. Really excited to dive into this topic today, it should be a good one, Evan, what’s happening, man?

Evan Brand: Oh, not too much been reading about some of these herbs. And these are something that we do personally. And clinically, I just want to point that out from the beginning. The difference between you and I and conventional practitioners is they’re not taking the drugs, they’re not experimenting with the stuff they’re prescribing. They’re not putting people on the depression drugs and the beta blockers and all of that, and the Adderall and vyvanse. And all the cognitive enhancing drugs, they’re not doing that themselves. So the cool thing about us is that we believe in what we do, and we want to try these things and see how they perform on us. And what if we mix it with that nutrient? How does that combine with this diet approach? And how does that combine with good sleep and good sunshine. So I think it’s fun, because you and I have personal insight into these things. And not just the clinical insight. And that really, I think makes you a better practitioner, but it makes you make a better protocol, because you know, how you feel. And then you can then tweak the nutrients based on that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 110%. So I mean, I think, based on our clinical performance, I mean, just kind of, we always start with the low hanging fruit. So like if people are coming into the show when they you know, want a lot of the nuance, more granular stuff, right stuff. And that was we’ll talk about that too. But we also have to make sure people that are coming in, that don’t have a good foundation, we have to assume that foundation is not there. So of course, getting inflammation in the body down in the gut makes a huge difference, because inflammation in the gut will create inflammation in the brain. And inflammation in the brain will activate certain immune cells in the brain, right. So you have these astrocytes, which are like that make up the blood brain barrier, which prevent things on the inside going into the brain right outside going in. So if you can have good blood brain barrier, that’s important. And then once you get things going into the blood brain barrier into the brain that’s going to activate these cells, these immune cells called micro glial cells, and these are basically part of the brains immune system that go in there and clean up inflammation and gunk. And the when those brain cells or immune cells are activated, those microglial cells are activated, that’s actually going to create cognitive issues, brain fog, and things like that mood issues. A lot of the new wave of antidepressants and mood medications that are coming out are actually working on brain inflammation. So we know inflammation plays a massive role. And the hallmark of inflammation is going to be cytokines interleukins, c reactive protein, maybe other inflammatory metabolites, nuclear factor Kappa beta, of course, um, you know, part of the inflammation is going to be in activation of the immune system on one side, and usually their cells that are going to be broken down to the faster rate than they’re building up, whether it’s inflammation from bad foods, excess omega six junky fats, trans fats, hydrogenated oils, pesticides, mold, toxins could be bacterial toxins, mycotoxins from fungus and yeast, acid aldehyde, from alcohol and yeast by products. So all of our gut, bacteria, yeast, parasites, all of these things are going to create endotoxins, or internal toxins, endogenous toxins in the body. And then of course, we have exogenous toxins in the environment, like our mold, heavy metals, pesticides, chemicals like that plastics, xeno, estrogens, all of these things are going to be in the environment, of course, all the foods we put into our body. And then of course, the more nutrient poor our food are, right? The more nutrient poor our food is, the more crap in the more junk, the less nutrients you have to run those metabolic pathways to run optimally.

Evan Brand: Yeah, great job laying the groundwork, as people coming in are gonna say, Well, why why do we need a whole podcast dedicated to improving brain function? And the answer is because we’re up against so much. So you did a great job kind of highlighting that it’s the food, it’s the air, it’s the water, it’s the heavy metals, it could be the silver amalgam fillings in your mouth. I mean, there’s a lot of things that are in our environment now that are neurotoxic. They’re not just highly estrogenic and endocrine disrupting, but they’re also neurotoxins. And we’re breathing them in every day. And you and I’ve measured hundreds, if not 1000s, at this point of clients around the world. And I’ve seen children as young as two and three years old with massive toxicity from gasoline additives to thau, late to xylene, to nail polish chemicals and hairspray chemicals, and to 4D and glyphosate. I mean, it’s amazing just how toxic people are. I would tell you just based on looking at this clinically, the most toxic people on the planet right now according to me running all these labs would be children less than age 10. And I think it’s due to just the toxicity of the planet that’s increased, but also this maternal transfer through breast milk and through the placenta. All the women that grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s and now 2000s that are having children, that multi generational toxicity really built up, whereas someone like my grandparents, and you know, growing up in the 1940s, glyphosate wasn’t even around for the First 30 plus years of their life. So yeah, there was a lag, basically. And yeah, the lag has caught up.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And there’s a lot of environmentalists out there that are, you know, talking about co2 and things like that. Well, co2 is plant food. I mean, I really wish the conversation about the environment really switched to pesticides, and xeno estrogenic compounds, I think these one they’re affecting us, they’re getting into our groundwater, they’re getting into our food, they’re affecting our kids, you know, much more than like, let’s say co2, wood, right? Because I mean, you can just grow more plants and more plants around you to, to take in and basically, you know, use that co2 for photosynthesis to make glucose and, and for plant fuel, essentially, but things like toxins, right? I mean, you need to actually there’s nothing in nature, that’s going to be buffering that, like, I know, plants buffer co2, right, I’m not aware of it. And so we have to use special filtration, whether it’s air filtration, like for instance, and Evans situation, Evans, very sensitive to fumes, incense, so he has a really good high quality Austin air filter with activated charcoal with zeolite and impregnated potassium iodide to filter a lot of those volatile organic compounds out or if we’re using something on the waterside, we’re using a really high quality carbon or reverse osmosis filter to filter out pesticides and chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs that are actually in our water. So we actually have to go through extra modalities and methods to filter these things out, I’m just far more concerned about these things, then, you know, more natural forming things. So I hope that conversation can shift because it plays a big role on our mood, and our energy and our brain performance. And so kind of switching things back to our brain function, getting inflammation dialed in. And of course, I talked about nutrient density. Why is nutrient density important? Well, B vitamins are the low hanging fruit for brain function. Okay, and B vitamins are going to be the highest and high quality animal products, especially animal meat. And then of course, our high quality vegetables. So that’s to be in my opinion, the foundation of our diet is kind of this really good paleo template that focuses on lots of good healthy plants, and lots of good healthy fats and animal products. And ideally getting more of our fats from healthy animals, saturated fats and plant fats because animal fats are much more stable due to their saturated nature, right? plant fats tend to be a lot more unsaturated monounsaturated, and they can be more heat unstable, right? So the best plant fats that are out there are going to be your extra virgin olive oil, your avocado, your palm oils. And of course, the the hallmark of plant fats are going to be your coconut oil because it’s saturated, which makes it a lot more heat stable. And then of course, our if we can tolerate high quality grass fed butter, high quality, ghee, or duck tallow or beef tallow, good, high quality saturated fats on the animal side are going to be great too.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean, hate to call them out specifically, but we’ve seen it clinically, the vegetarian vegan people, they have a harder time with brain function, not only brain function, but mood issues, you and I’ve done podcasts on depression, we’ve done podcast on anxiety, due to the lack of the good fats in general, unless they’re trying really hard, we’re going to see this issue with poor cognitive function much, much worse and vegetarian vegan clients. And we’ve actually had some clients that have went back on meats and good quality fish and eggs, because their brain function was so poor, they were literally failing at work. And I had a couple people who were at potential job loss because their cognitive function was so bad after getting off of good meats and fats, and just going with just plant foods, they literally had to for their brain function, I was of course, very happy to see them perform better will make out those good fats back in.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. And of course, they just kind of a little crash course and organic chemistry, saturated fats, they there’s the bond in between the carbons, so you have a carbon, and then the other carbon that’s connected to this a single bond, right, so it goes carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon. And so for instance, like medium chain triglycerides are fats that are between six and 12 carbons, right. And like butyric acid butter, I think, is around four carbons. So imagine, you know, six or 12 carbons, they’re all going to be connected with single bonds in between, which means the outer edges are going to have three hydrogens or the inner part of the bonds are going to have two hydrogens attached to it. Again, all you have to know is the difference in the bonds. So saturated fats have single bonds, which make it more flexible and ability to withstand higher heats. poly unsaturated fats, right, omega threes or omega sixes, right? The omega refers to how many double bonds there are in in the fatty acid chain. So omega threes have three double bonds, omega sixes have six double bonds, and when you have double bonds, they’re they makes the fat more inflexible, and makes it more a lower smoke point, meaning it can oxidize and it can go bad. And so just no saturated fats don’t have the double bonds, and it’s going to make it a lot more stable. And why is that important? Because our brains like 70%, fat and cholesterol. So if you’re not eating the right ratio, and the end the good raw material building blocks for your brain, you’re gonna have a problem. And every cell in our body has a what’s called a lipid by layer. So you have this little fatty lipid layer on the outer part of the cell. And if you start making or Start using junky fats to build that layer of backup is going to stress out your antioxidant reserves. And you’re going to build really inflexible, non healthy non-communicative cells with very inflexible cell membranes.

Evan Brand: Yeah. And how does that manifest? Well, that’s where some of the memory issues pop up, you freak and your best friend’s name, you go into the pantry, you don’t know why you’re there, you figure you forget which way you’re supposed to turn. When you get off the highway off the exit, do I go left? Do I go right? Even though you’ve been that way before, maybe you slip up on someone’s name, maybe at work, you’re slipping up in a presentation, you completely get sidetracked and you just can’t get yourself back on track. Maybe you’re unable to read, maybe you’re unable to retain the information you read, you have to read things multiple times. Maybe you hear someone like Hi, nice to meet you, john, and you immediately forget his name, that kind of stuff. Those are things that we see. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Alzheimers or dementia level to be considered a cognitive problems. So when we say cognitive problem, like everything else, there’s there’s a spectrum, you have the far end, which is going to be your clinical diagnosis of dementia and Alzheimer’s and whatever else Parkinson’s, and then maybe you have like your brain fog, forgetfulness, memory issues. And I’m not saying that those people with those mild brain issues are all going to end up demented. But it’s important to recognize those things now. So that we can do what we can, like you said to reduce inflammation to try to preserve the neurotransmitters in the brain. So let’s go into the nutrients if you’re ready.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, let me just hit one more things. We’re talking about diet, right. And one of the big things when people have chronic health issues, what tends to happen is we have insulin resistance, okay, where the cells become numb to insulin, insulin basically helps glucose get into the cell, it also helps protein get into the cell. And when insulin becomes resistant, it’s going to start taking a lot of the glucose and converting it and storing it as fat. Now that’s kind of in the body. Now what’s happening in the brain, insulin resistance will manifest in the brain through our brain not being able to use glucose for fuel. So it’s like you can have a lot of glucose in the bloodstream, but the brain is not going to be able to use it. So it’s like the brain starving nutritionally, to be able to use glucose for fuel. And so you start to form inflammation in the brain and a lot of plaquing in the brain. Now, the same enzyme that helps break down insulin is called insulin degrading enzyme. That enzyme when there’s lots of insulin around gets wasted away dealing with insulin. The problem is that insulin degrading enzyme has dual purposes, it can go in and clean up plaque in the brain. So it cleans up the brain, it’s the vacuum cleaner for your brain keeps the brain free of plaque. We know plaque has a negative impact on cognitive function and performance. And also when you become more insulin resistant in the brain, it’s hard to use glucose. So starting to decrease insulin allows the brain to also switch hit and start using ketones for fuel. And ketones are very people that have brain issues. That’s part of the reason why they’re reversing Alzheimer’s with ketones. So the first thing we do is we we don’t add ketones in our body, we switch our body’s insulin levels by restricting excess carbohydrates or our body can make ketones and start utilizing ketones for fuel. That’s just kind of first step out of the gates though, because if we have this physiology there, where we’re insulin resistant, and I’m recommending extra B vitamins, or extra gingko, or extra bacopa, man, I mean, you’re not fixing any issues, right? You’re not you know, you’re not fixing anything, you’re not getting to the root underlying problem.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said and then I guess that would also give people a false sense of hope. And then they would come back to you and they’d be disappointed because they’re insulin resistant, but yet you’re giving them all these good brain nutrients and maybe they only had 5% improvement.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So you have to make sure the brain is able to utilize the fuel in the body already. And we have to switch out you know, the insulin resistance so the the parts of the brain that are utilizing insulin and breaking down insulin can actually go in and clean up the brain instead. That’s very important.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said I mean, that’s the important fat you know, foundation framework, whatever you want to call it, because it’s impossible to circumnavigate that issue by just supplementing like you said bacopa. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, exactly. So a couple of my favorite things out of the gates like I mentioned, are going to be high quality methylated B vitamins you know B one, B two B three which are going to be thiamine riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxal, five phosphate, right which is B six pens authentic acid, which is B five, I think B7 is bioten. Right and then B nine is going to be folate and then your B 12. Make sure it’s either methylated hydroxylated or, or Adenosyl B12, which are excellent sources of B vitamins. So those are going to be great out of the gates. Outside of that things that support acetylcholine are going to be excellent. So either taking acetylcholine or using an herb called huperzine huperzine. A is is excellent at supporting that thing here. A couple of the things that um, acetylcholine really is very it’s, it really improves the colon ergic neurotransmission, which it basically helps with cognition, decreases the decline of cognition. Anything else you want to say on acetylcholine or huperzine out of the gates?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve played with acetylcholine a lot. It’s kind of the Forgotten neurotransmitter, I think you and I’ve done a great job of kind of highlighting this. You know, we’ve hit on dopamine, we’ve hit on serotonin, we’ve hit on GABA, but man, you rarely have people talking about acetylcholine. So it’s, it’s probably easier to work in this mechanism, which is the huperzine is inhibiting the brain time from breaking down-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the acetylcholinase, acetylcholine, acetylcholine esterase, which is going to be you know, it’s an enzyme because the ASC that what breaks down acetylcholine, so it’s slowing down the breakdown. And again, [inaudible] something we find in liver, egg yolk, so it’s really important in like high quality animal products, and we’re basically slowing the breakdown.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so you can do both right, you can come in with the good foods and good fats, and then you can try to slow the breakdown of that gland. It’s pretty cool. So there are a couple papers on this huperzine. Specifically, they talk about it, modifying the beta amyloid peptide processing, reducing oxidative stress. Also, they talk about helping with the secretion of NGF, which is nerve growth factor. So that’s really cool. And then it says here, finally, this is the research paper. Finally, huperzine a can significantly improve cognitive function in patients with mild to moderate vascular dementia. So that’s pretty impressive. And I personally just take this on going, I’m not necessarily fearful, but I just want my brain to function the best. So I do supplement on and off with some of these brain nutrients we’re talking about.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. And it also helps improve mitochondrial function in the brain. So we have mitochondria in every cell, I think except red blood cells, right. And basically, the mitochondria is the powerhouse where it generates ATP. And that’s really important fuel source. And so, one, it’s neuroprotective. So if you have chemicals or not so good compounds floating around the brain, mycotoxins whatever, it’s kind of protected from being damaged. And it’s also going to help the mitochondria the brain to generate ATP. So that’s important, too.

Evan Brand: Let’s talk about the next one on our list here, the EGCG, which is going to be the poly phenol coming from green tea, because this is really cool. The study here talks about the enhanced transport of huperzine is possible with the egcg. So they found that when they were able to stack these two nutrients together, you get even more bang for your buck, which is what we find a lot with nutrients. When you and I are working on gut infections, right, we’ll find that the individual parts are not as valuable as the sum when you combine this herb with that herb and that with that, you get a much more synergistic, I would guess you would call it an exponential beneficial effect. Right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.

Evan Brand: We got wild blueberry next on the list. Let’s talk about wild blueberries. So there are some cool antioxidant benefits here. But there are some papers-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I wanted to highlight one thing on the egcg, right, it also helps reduce the beta beta amyloid plaque accumulation. So we talked about that, right? Because insulin resistance plays a big role because that insulin degrading enzyme, which is depleted when you have insulin resistance, that’s there to help decrease beta amyloid plaque. And we know that the beta amyloid plaque is going to be reduced when we’re taking egcg is due to its anti inflammatory and antioxidant effects.

Evan Brand: That’s awesome. All right, let’s go back to the wild blueberry. This one’s cool, too, some cool papers on this in regards to being a potent antioxidant. They have done some animal studies on this to help increase the capacity of neurons to maintain proper functioning through the aging process as also reduces some of the beta amyloid plaque aggregation. It also talks about how of course the mitochondrial function is disrupted, and the wild blueberry extract helps to protect against that. And then also, guess what, this is cool. It also leads to higher production of glutathione. So that’s a pretty interesting little mechanism.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, very interesting. I mean, a lot of those compound gluta phones are really powerful antioxidant. So again, they’re gonna still have like a good anti inflammatory kind of benefit. And again, you can get some of these benefits by just eating a handful or two of organic blueberries a day, which is going to be really helpful by drinking a little bit of green tea. So you don’t have to supplement these things all the time. You can also try to get them in Whole Foods sources. And again, it helps with mitochondrial function, it’s going to help in decreasing a pop ptosis and cells kind of dying on their own. And like you mentioned, natural acetylcholine esterase inhibitor. So it helps acetylcholine increase and like you mentioned on codifier on so I like that a lot. I wanted to bring one other thing in here is Lion’s Mane. Lion’s Mane is a medicinal mushroom. But it’s well it’s well established to be super helpful. It was so as Reishi as well Ganoderma lucidum. That’s Reishi. Lion’s Mane as well as very helpful on cognitive funk function. So it’s going to help with a lot of different things. It helps with antioxidant, it’s what’s known to be helpful in improving cognitive performance. It’s known to be helpful at repairing brain cells. And again, just 20 or 30 years ago in medical school, they would have taught their medical students that the brain can not repair When you damage a cell, that’s it, it’s done. And we know today that cells can actually recover and improve. So one of these mushrooms is going to be a great thing out of the gate. So big, big fan of lion’s mane, it’s shown to be protective against dementia as well, which is awesome. It stimulates brain cell growth, which is awesome. It’s also has some really improved and excellent benefits regarding depression and anxiety and mood. It helps with injury recovery. So it has some anti inflammatory kind of benefits as well. Couple of studies where they did damage to, I think it was rats or mice, spinal cords. And then they looked at the growth and the recovery on it. And they saw that when they gave these little rats Lion’s Mane mushroom that reduced recovery time 20 to 40%. And they saw that Lion’s Mane extract may also help reduce the severity of brain damage after a stroke. And in one study, the lion’s mane extract was given to rats immediately after a stroke helped decrease inflammation and reduce the size of the stroke related brain injury by 44%. So big, big fan of lion’s mane and medicinal mushrooms, for sure.

Evan Brand: And can you believe that’s not happening in standard practice right now in the medical facilities? I mean, if you have a stroke today, you’re going to go into the hospital, and then they’re going to give you peanut butter crackers for lunch right after.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, they should be doing hyperbaric oxygen, they should be doing Lion’s Mane they should be doing maybe progesterone therapy, which is helpful. They should be doing like a lot of the antioxidants and glutathione and nutrients that we just talked about, right? They’re not and it’s just, it’s frustrating, because all these things are in the scientific literature, but you know, conventional medicine unless they can patent it or make a drug out of it. You know, they’re not really interested. Yet everyone thinks that, hey, they’re giving you the most cutting edge care possible? Probably not. We know this is all in the literature. And so it’s out there, it’s just you know, we all have our biases, and we’re all about utilizing all the options that are there. And there’s so many natural options that have been around for so long, like medicinal mushrooms are used in oriental communities for for very long periods of time. Rishi courtice apps, my talkie, very good immune boosting immune enhancing benefits. So I like that.

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve been taking Lion’s Mane for several months, it’s been a big help. I actually had a female client who she had a chronic tongue burning issue. This was one of those guests in Czech type things, and it actually works. So she had some sort of a dental procedure. I don’t remember exactly what but we believe that was some nerve damage. And so she had literally chronic burning of her tongue 24 seven, she was just absolutely miserable. We got her on lion’s mane. And within two months, she had 75% reduction in the burning tone. So that was one of those random guesses and checks and it happened to work. So we’re luckily we’re keeping her on it. And she’s maintaining her benefits.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, can modulate the immune system, it can also help decrease inflammation. Also, there’s studies on Lion’s Mane helping with diabetes, and we know diabetes. And that insulin degrading enzyme helps to remove plaque in the brain. So we know that the blood sugar component of lion’s mane, maybe part of the reason why it’s helping cognitive function.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and there’s a lot of anti cancer benefits to a lot of these medicinal mushrooms you’re talking about too. So we’re both huge fans, we love them, we take them. And you probably should, too, if you’re listening. And these are supplements that are not super expensive. I mean, you’re talking maybe 50 bucks for a really, really high quality version.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then also a lot of these met the the big mechanism you’re going to see across the board is you’re going to see an acetylcholine mechanism, you’re going to see an antioxidant mechanism, right. And so usually when you see the ability to reduce oxidative stress, you also see that the ability to reduce inflammation because when you reduce inflammation, inflammation drives oxidation. So oxidation is when you lose electrons. And so a lot of these compounds like lion’s mane, they have antioxidants in them. Usually they have a clue to fire and supporting effect. And then that helps buffer the oxidative stress because antioxidants come in they freely donate their electrons. So when electron pair is removed, that can create oxidation. And these guys come in there and they donate electrons freely and stabilize those cells. And that reduces oxidation. And that reduces inflammation. So that’s pretty powerful, and so very helpful with inflammation and oxidative stress in the brain.

Evan Brand: Let’s hit on another mechanism. It’s about improving the blood flow in the brain. We know that gaesco which is amazing. Gingko has some what they call like microcirculation in the brain improvements. I love gingko I’ve played with a lot of gingko and used it and they’re amazing, beautiful trees. If you’ve seen the Leafs of them, they’re very, very cool actually found my old property actually found a rock that was like a fossil with well preserved gingko leaves in the rock. It was super cool. So gingko is like one of the oldest trees it’s been around hundreds of millions of years. But on that same vein of cerebral blood flow, you’ve got the vinpocetine which comes from Periwinkle flower. And that’s really cool because it’ll actually cross the blood brain barrier. You know, there’s, there’s a lot we talked about, and but the truth is you got to get the nutrients across that barrier if you really want the benefit. So there’s a lot have different studies on dementia related issues and vinpocetine, quote, producing a significantly more improvement with memory problems than placebo on global cognitive test regarding attention, concentration and memory, it talks about increasing the cell membrane flexibility and stroke pay since it talks about decreasing platelet and red blood cell aggregation. It talks about protecting neurons from toxicity of glutamate. So this is a very cool nutrient.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And you mentioned the bacopa. And they’ve been post a teen, they all have blood flow enhancing effects. And we know inflammation causes increase aggravation of red blood cells and platelets. And that can decrease blood flow and blood flow is going to carry oxygen and it’s going to carry nutrients, right. And so the more we can decrease inflammation and get nutrients up to the brain, you’re going to feel better, and you’re going to do better, right. And then you mentioned a lot of the big benefits are going to come from antioxidants, effects, they’re also going to come from the protection of neurons. So if we have any type of inflammatory or toxin around it, is going to help those neurons and prevent them from dying, right, which is really important. And then also just to highlight, there’s a lot of studies on gluten actually decreasing blood flow to the brain. And we know blood flow is a really important component. And there was, I think, one study on migraines and they found that you know, the garden hose is the carotid arteries that go up the side of the neck here brings blood up to the brain. And in patients that were consuming gluten, they found that there was a decrease in blood flow. And then this one group, I think they restricted gluten and they saw 90% of them nine out of 10 and your migraines went to zero, and they saw an improved blood flow up to the brain. So we cannot you know, underestimate the the effects of kodagu ability meaning reducing coagul ability clotting and increasing blood flow, better blood flow, better nutrition and that can have major effects on the brain. And we know things like gluten and anything more on the inflammatory side will impact that on a negative side on the on the negative fashion.

Evan Brand: That’s amazing. It’s like you should go to the restaurant and they’re going to give you the gonna give you the bread or give you the bun. Yeah, here we’re going to reduce your cerebral blood flow. Are you ready for this? Oh, sure. I would love to reduce my examination to my brain.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. And you mentioned like a lot of the glutamate issues and how that’s going to be part of that inflammatory cascade. And we know glutamate is shown to be an excitotoxin so it really overstimulate cells to the point they die. And so of course, decreasing that gluten exposure and decreasing that glutamate and that and MDA, which is going to be stimulated by that glutamate, which is going to overstimulate ourselves and cause them to die. That’s a problem. And so we know a lot of these compounds, right? [inaudible] bacopa, are a neuroprotective and they’re also going to help with blood flow. So that’s a good component out of the gates. And I would say next would be one of my favorites, serotonin and dopamine support. So I have a product called brain deplete that has dopamine or tyrosine. And it’s also gonna have five HTP and some of those key B vitamins out of the gates. I think those are kind of low hanging fruit because those amino acids serotonin and dopamine, which are going to be building blocks of tryptophan and five HTP, and Tyrosine and phenylalanine, they’re really important for serotonin and dopamine, which have a lot to do with sleep and recovery. And serotonin is a powerful precursor to melatonin, which is a powerful antioxidant. And then of course, dopamine is a powerful focus and brain enhancing kind of effects. Right? Don’t means focus and feel good. I love you that good feeling of satisfaction and helps with really focusing and studying and learning. So dopamine and serotonin and have major important benefits on brain health.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and we’re in a very chronically low neurotransmitter population. And I mean, Doug, look at the way society performs. Look at our everyone’s addicted to everything addictions come from low dopamine. So you’re constantly refreshing your Instagram, you’re going to this social media, then that one, I mean, that’s kind of a low dopamine state. And you and I have the data to prove this is not just theory, you and I’ve looked at 1000s at this point of organic acids test, and I will say probably seven out of 10 people I’m looking at, they have sub clinical, I guess you would call it it’s not like a pathological level. It’s not like a, you know, Parkinson’s type level, but they’re going to be on the low dopamine side, and we can boost this back up. So the fun part is helping people to reverse this stuff. So I want to just, you know, wrap this thing up and tell people that you can reverse a lot of your cognitive problems, and most people don’t even know how brain fog they are until they truly get better. So clearing out the garden infections, cleaning up the diet, reducing inflammation in the gut getting rid of Candida that’s producing the aldehyde you talked about getting rid of the lightbulb polysaccharide production, getting rid of any kind of toxin that’s internally pooping in you essentially getting rid of those toxins, plus dialing in the diet plus the nutrients while you can improve brain function 300%. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, it’s totally possible 100% and the only other X Factor should be if we have to work on detoxification of mold or heavy metals. There are special compounds that we would use, whether it’s glutathione or various binders, beet root extract activated charcoal zeolite fulvic minerals. Maybe if we’re doing heavy metal, we may use things like dmps or HLA or cloudify on so it depends when it comes to a lot of these more intense detoxification programs you want to make sure you’re healthy enough you want to work with the practitioner to make sure that you’re in a stable place to be able to handle that it wouldn’t be something that would say hey, you want to improve your brain function just knock these things down right away because you may actually feel worse. You want to work on the foundational things the low hanging fruit and the maybe some of the more I don’t know more general support that would be helpful like B vitamins or Lion’s Mane or some of those herbs that aren’t going to have a over a detoxifying effect if you will.

Evan Brand: Yeah, good call. I mean there is a point where you need a practitioner the line brain the mold, brain bartonella brain I mean some of these bigger complex 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Chronic infections, infections for sure. 

Evan Brand: They get intense so if you do need help, please reach out you can reach Dr. J at JustinHealth.com and you can reach me at EvanBrand.com and we would love to talk with you about this figure out what’s going on with you and see if we can help.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely, if you guys enjoyed it, give us a thumbs up click down below our links where you can give us a review. EvanBrand.com/iTunes, JustinHealth.com/iTunes for that review, put your comment down below. I’d love to know your experience and kind of you know, applying some of the things we’re talking about and to give us some feedback on things that you’re already applying in what you’re seeing improvements in your health. We really appreciate it. It gets us excited.

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-5-nutrients-to-improve-brain-function-podcast-333

Recommended products:

Brain replete

Serotonin replete

Dopa replete

Antioxidant Supreme

TruKeto Collagen

TRUCOLLAGEN

Organic Grass Fed Meat

What are the Natural Anti-Inflammatory Agents for Pain Relief

In general, we have our COX pathways. Now, Arachidonic acid can feed those pathways. A lot of excess, junky, refined Omega-6 from animal products can definitely feed those pathways. That sets the table like gas in the kitchen where a little spark can take it off.

Click here to consult with a functional medicine doctor for recommendations on natural pain relievers.

Where to find anti-inflammatory agents:

1. Natural herbs like ginger can help with COX-1.

   

2. Fish oil is excellent for COX-2 at high doses. 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. It’s got more double bonds in it. Omega-3 means three double bonds. The more double bonds that are they are, the more unstable the fatty acid is to heat things like that and the more, let’s say it can be oxidized. So, having extra vitamin C or extra vitamin D 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.

   

3. There is also curcumin but liposomal curcumin is better due to the absorption or something with black pepper in it helps with absorption, too.

   

4. Frankincense or Boswellia.

   

5. White willow bark which is kind of how aspirin is naturally made though aspirin works more on COX-1. So, aspirin can be your other natural source and you can do white willow bark which is the natural form of aspirin.

   

6. There are things like Tylenol but Tylenol works more on the central nervous system perception. So, it decreases the nervous systems’ perception of pain. Note: We have to be careful of Tylenol as it can actually chronically reduce glutathione. So, if you’re taking Tylenol longer-term, you definitely want to take it with NAC and/or some glutathione, just to be on the safe side.

   

7. At the extreme example, we have opiates which block pain receptors in the brain, the opiate perception of the brain. It’s not the best thing because you’re just decreasing perception of pain. Obviously, the opiates are way more addictive.

   

8. We can block some of these natural pain perceptions with CBD oil. So, CBD is another great way to reduce the perception of pain.

   

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.

If you have osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, sports injury, or you’re just trying to heal maybe postoperation, these things may be something to implement and then obviously work in all the other root causes, too. 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 or 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.

If you need to reach out to talk about your pain and inflammation issues, click this link to schedule a chat with me!

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

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

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

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

How do you take collagen?

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

Where can you get collagen from?

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

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