10 Enzyme-Rich Foods to Add to Your Diet for Better Digestion and Health
10 Enzyme-Rich Foods to Add to Your Diet for Better Digestion and Health
Enzymes play a crucial role in breaking down food and making nutrients available for absorption, which can help reduce symptoms like bloating gas and indigestion. Adding enzyme-rich foods to your meals and snacks ensures your body has the tools to properly digest and absorb nutrients.
Incorporating these enzyme-rich foods into your diet supports healthy digestion, better nutrient absorption, and increased energy levels. So why not try them and see how they can benefit your health and well-being?
What Are Enzymes And Why Are They Essential For Digestion And Overall Health?
Enzymes are particular proteins that act as catalysts for bodily biochemical reactions. Essentially, they speed up the rate of chemical reactions without being consumed or changed. Enzymes involve various physiological processes, including digestion, metabolism, and cellular function.
One of the most well-known functions of enzymes is in the digestive process. They help to break down the food we eat into smaller, more readily absorbable molecules. For example, enzymes in the mouth and small intestine help break down carbohydrates, proteins, and fats into their components. The body may then absorb these smaller molecules and utilize them for energy, growth, and repair.
Enzymes are also crucial for overall health and wellness. So it is because they play a role in many different physiological processes, including:
Metabolism: Enzymes help to convert nutrients into energy and support the body’s natural detoxification processes.
Immune function: Some enzymes, such as lysozyme, are involved in the body’s natural defense mechanisms against pathogens.
Inflammation: Enzymes such as cyclooxygenase (COX) and lipoxygenase (LOX) are involved in the body’s inflammatory response.
There are many different types of enzymes, each with a specific function in the body. Some enzymes are produced by the body, while others are obtained through diet or supplementation.
10 Enzyme-Rich Foods You Can Easily Add To Your Diet
Incorporating these enzyme-rich foods into your diet can be a simple and delicious way to support healthy digestion and overall health. There are many options, whether you prefer to snack on pineapple and avocado or enjoy fermented foods like kimchi and kefir. Sprouted grains and raw honey can also make a great addition to meals or snacks.
Pineapple: Pineapple contains bromelain, a mixture of enzymes that can aid in protein digestion and help to reduce inflammation in the body. Bromelain has also been studied for its potential anti-cancer properties.
Papaya: Papaya contains papain, another enzyme that can aid in protein digestion and has been studied for its anti-inflammatory properties.
Kimchi: Kimchi is a fermented vegetable dish that contains a variety of enzymes, including amylase, protease, and lipase. These enzymes can aid in digestion and help to support the growth of beneficial gut bacteria.
Sauerkraut: Like kimchi, sauerkraut is a fermented vegetable dish containing enzymes and probiotics. It can aid in digestion and support a healthy gut microbiome.
Kefir: Kefir is a fermented milk drink that contains a variety of enzymes and probiotics. It can help in digestion and support the immune system.
Sprouted Grains: Sprouted grains are high in enzymes, particularly amylase, and protease. These enzymes can aid digestion and make the nutrients in the grains more available to the body.
Ginger: Ginger contains several enzymes that can aid digestion and help reduce inflammation. It has been studied for its potential anti-cancer and anti-diabetic properties as well.
Avocado: Avocado contains the enzyme lipase, which can aid in the digestion of fats. It is also high in fiber and other nutrients that support overall health.
Raw Honey: Raw honey contains a variety of enzymes, including amylase and invertase. These enzymes can aid in digestion and support a healthy gut microbiome. Raw honey also contains antioxidants and other nutrients that support overall health.
Natto: Natto is a fermented soybean dish that contains the enzyme nattokinase. This enzyme has been studied for its potential benefits for heart health and blood clot prevention.
Remember that these foods should be part of a balanced and varied diet, alongside plenty of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats.
By adding these enzyme-rich foods to your meals and snacks, you may be able to support healthy digestion, nutrient absorption, and overall health. Give them a try and see how they can benefit you!
How To Incorporate Enzyme-Rich Foods Into Your Diet
Enzyme-rich foods in your diet are important because enzymes are essential for healthy digestion and nutrient absorption. Here’s a more detailed explanation of the steps to add more enzyme-rich foods to your diet:
Start your day with a fruit salad.
Fruits like pineapple, papaya, mango, and kiwi are all excellent sources of digestive enzymes. Pineapple, for example, contains bromelain, a mixture of enzymes that can aid in protein digestion and help to reduce inflammation in the body. Papaya contains papain, another enzyme that can aid in protein digestion and has been studied for its anti-inflammatory properties.
Mango and kiwi contain actinidin, an enzyme that can aid in the digestion of proteins. By starting your day with a fruit salad, you’ll provide your body with various enzymes that can help support healthy digestion and provide essential nutrients.
Add fermented foods to your meals.
Fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickles are excellent sources of enzymes and probiotics that help support healthy digestion. Fermentation can increase the availability of nutrients in food and make them easier for the body to absorb.
For example, kimchi is a fermented vegetable dish containing various enzymes, including amylase, protease, and lipase. These enzymes can aid in digestion and help to support the growth of beneficial gut bacteria. Sauerkraut is another great option that can aid digestion and support a healthy gut microbiome. You can experiment with adding a spoonful of kimchi to a rice bowl or serving sauerkraut alongside grilled meat or fish.
Use sprouted grains and legumes in your meals.
Sprouted grains and legumes are another great way to increase enzyme availability in your diet. When grains like quinoa, buckwheat, and millet are sprouted, they undergo a process that breaks down anti-nutrients and makes more nutrients like protein and fiber available. This process also increases enzyme activity, making it simpler for the body to digest and absorb the nutrients in the grains. For added nutrients and enzymes, you can use sprouted grains in salads, stir-fries, or grain bowls.
Add digestive herbs to your meals.
Digestive herbs like ginger, fennel, and peppermint can also support healthy digestion. Ginger, for example, contains several different enzymes that can aid in digestion and help to reduce inflammation in the body.
Fennel has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic effects on the digestive system, while peppermint can help to soothe digestive discomfort. You can blend fresh herbs with plain yogurt or avocado for a flavorful and nutrient-rich dip that can support digestion.
Consider taking an enzyme supplement.
If you need more enzymes in your diet, consider taking a high-quality enzyme supplement containing various enzymes. Enzyme supplements can help to support healthy digestion and nutrient absorption. However, it’s important to note that supplements should not replace a healthy and balanced diet.
Enzyme-rich foods can benefit greatly, including improved digestion, nutrient absorption, and overall health. By following these methods and experimenting with different foods, you can create a diet rich in enzymes that supports your body’s natural digestive processes.
The Benefits Of A Diet Rich In Enzymes
Enzymes are necessary for the breakdown of food and the absorption of nutrients. Inadequate enzyme levels can lead to unpleasant symptoms like bloating, gas, and indigestion. Adding more enzyme-rich foods to your diet can help support healthy digestion and alleviate these symptoms.
For example, enzyme-rich fruits like pineapple, papaya, mango, and kiwi are great nutrient-packed breakfast fruit salad options. In addition, fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickles are rich in probiotics and enzymes and can easily be incorporated into meals.
Adequately broken down food is easier for the body to absorb and utilize, which is especially important for those with conditions that affect nutrient absorption, like celiac disease or inflammatory bowel disease. Allowing enzyme-rich foods into your diet can support your body’s nutrient absorption and improve overall health. Sprouted grains and legumes are also great additions to meals, as sprouting can break down anti-nutrients and increase nutrient availability.
Digestion requires a lot of energy, so when the body puts more effort into processing food, it can cause weariness and lack of focus. Enzyme-rich foods can help support healthy digestion and increase energy levels.
Additionally, enzymes like bromelain and papain have anti-inflammatory properties that could help reduce the risk of chronic conditions like heart disease and cancer. Therefore, incorporating more enzyme-rich foods into your diet can support overall health and prevent chronic disease.
Other Ways To Support Healthy Enzyme Levels In The Body
Chronic stress is one factor that can negatively impact enzyme production in the body. When you experience stress, your body’s resources are diverted from the digestive system, resulting in decreased enzyme production and reduced nutrient absorption. Finding ways to manage stress to support healthy enzyme levels, such as meditation or deep breathing exercises, is important.
Another factor that can impact enzyme levels is sleep. When you’re sleep-deprived, your body may produce fewer enzymes, making it harder to break down and absorb nutrients from food. Sleeping 7-9 hours each night can help promote healthy enzyme levels.
Overeating can also harm digestive health and enzyme production. Consuming more than your body needs can make it harder for the digestive system to break down and absorb nutrients from food, leading to reduced enzyme production. Eating smaller, more frequent meals daily helps support healthy enzyme levels.
Regular exercise is also essential for healthy enzyme production and digestion. Exercise increases the production of digestive enzymes, so go for at least 30 minutes of moderate to intense exercises most days of the week.
Lastly, it’s important to be cautious with medication use as certain medications like antibiotics or proton pump inhibitors can negatively impact digestive health and reduce the body’s production of enzymes. If you need to take medication regularly, click here to schedule a consult about ways to support healthy digestion and enzyme production. Integrating these practices into your daily routine can help support healthy enzyme levels and optimize your digestive health.
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https://justinhealth.com/products/enzyme-synergy/
References:
“10 Enzyme-Rich Foods to Add to Your Diet for Better Digestion” from Healthline (https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/enzyme-rich-foods)
“The Best Fermented Foods for Gut Health” from Eat This, Not That! (https://www.eatthis.com/best-fermented-foods-for-gut-health/)
“Enzymes in Food: 10 Foods High in Digestive Enzymes” by Dr. Axe: https://draxe.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-digestive-enzymes/
“The role of digestive enzymes in nutrition and health” by Nutrition Reviews: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/70/5/274/1919088
“Gut microbiota, probiotics, and digestive health” by the World Gastroenterology Organisation: https://www.worldgastroenterology.org/guidelines/global-guidelines/probiotics-and-prebiotics/probiotics-and-prebiotics-english
Enzyme Therapy and Cancer – Getting To The Root Cause of Cancer – Dr. Linda Isaacs | Podcast #383
In this video, Dr. Justin and Dr. Linda discuss an educational and informative discussion about enzyme therapy and its relationship to cancer. In addition, she highlights her close connection to the late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, a former doctor in New York City and a follower of Dr. William Donald Kelly’s work.
The podcast covers various essential topics related to cancer and alternative therapies. Dr. Isaacs delves into metabolic types and how different individuals may require other treatment approaches. She also touches upon the impact of processed sugar, processed foods, pesticides, and xenoestrogens on cancer growth. Dr. Isaacs emphasizes the need to treat cancer holistically and believes that these environmental elements might substantially impact the development of cancer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
04:08 – Views on Carbs and Fats Leading to Cancer
08:32 – Type of Enzymes for Cancer Treatment
14:02 – Potential Root Causes for Cancer
19:51 – When to check if it is a Gut Problem
22:52 – Preventing the Side Effects of Chemotherapy
33:11 – Chemotherapy Standard Care and Managing Side Effects
39:15 – Antioxidants Support
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani, excited for today’s podcast. I have Dr. Linda Isaacs here, really excited to chat with her today. She’s from Austin as well, and we’re going to be diving into the topic of cancer and enzyme therapy. Dr. Linda, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I’m doing good! Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really glad to be here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent! Very nice to have you! So, I know your background is you specialize in cancer, natural cancer therapies. I know you can be connected for, I think, at least 10 or 20 years with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, the former late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, in the New York City area. I know he passed, what 2017? It’s been that long ago?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: 2015 actually.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: ‘15? It was a heart issue wasn’t it?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, we don’t really know what happened, but he’s, he did a full day’s, day of work and then went home and passed away suddenly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my gosh!
Dr. Linda Isaacs: But it’s not really clear what exactly happened. But yes, he and I worked together for many years. In fact, I met him when I was in medical school when I was a third-year medical student. I was assigned to an internal medicine team for my clinical rotation and he was the intern. And he was actually engaged in doing research at the same time. Just goes to show how devoted he was because most people aren’t trying to do research when they’re medical intern.
But he was looking into the work of William Donald Kelly our predecessor, with this type of treatment.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wasn’t he a dentist as well, Kelly?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, Dr. Kelly was a dentist, an orthodontist by training and he had kind of an academic interest in nutrition. In other words, he thought about it, read about it, didn’t do it, until he himself got sick. And then, he put together a treatment protocol for himself and when he got better people started coming to him, to not to get their teeth straightened but to get their cancer straightened out.
And so he wound up, in effect, turning into an alternative cancer practitioner and then Nick went, and went through his files and found a lot of amazing cases told me about it that’s how I wound up getting into this line of work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow and then were you working with Dr. Gonzalez’s last day?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I’m sorry?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You said he was working that day and then he went home and he passed away. Were you able to work with him that last day he was there too?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I was not physically in the office that day because I had just moved into a new apartment but the last communication I had with him was actually him congratulating me about an article that I got published and you know it, I obviously treasured that email. But it was totally sudden you know, he was at work that day, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow yeah, the first, I think, at first I came across Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, was in a Gary Knoll documentary in the in the early 2000s. He was talking about enzyme therapy there and I think he was also interviewed in Suzanne Summer’s book Knockout, which was really interesting and that’s where kind of the enzyme therapies were really brought to my forefront.
Also, I think he was connected, I think Dr William Kelly may have gotten him into the metabolic-typing diet and he was doing a lot of metabolic typing on patients as well. Does that ring a bell?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Oh, absolutely! That’s a big part of the work that we do as well. I still use that general concept, so yes. Dr. Kelly had, you know, through clinical observation, noticed that not all of his patients needed the same thing, and that’s something that I continue to use as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so with metabolic typing, you kind of have your slow oxidizer, your mix, and your fast oxidizer, right? Essentially, a protein-type in between, kind of like, zone-type and like more of a carb-type, right?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: That’s correct, I tend to use more about autonomic physiology and oxidizing concept, but yes, that’s the general idea that different people need different things, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you find more of the cancer patients tend to be more like protein types, where there are, maybe too much carbohydrate, maybe the glucose is converting and maybe as a fuel source for cancer? Do you see that more in today’s society? Not enough protein and good fats?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I certainly think fats, you know, good fats are important for a lot of people. You know, there’s been this whole craze for the last 30 to 40 years of using all kinds of junk fats, which is not good for anybody. But most types of cancers actually go more on the vegetarian side, and the carcinomas, which would fit into, you know, breast cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic, prostate, the major cancers.
The ones that we feel are more carnivorous are the blood disorders like Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma those types. Those are the ones that I’m more likely to put on a meat diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, interesting, because you see a lot of the pet scans, right? The visual imagery where you’re giving radioactive glucose, so it seems like, even conventional medicine kind of has an idea that, “Hey, we’re going to give this radioactive solution and we’re going to see where it goes.” And so, if you were to look at the big foods today, I mean do you feel like processed sugar is an issue? Do you feel like pesticides and a lot of the GMO in the foods are also driving cancer growth? What other aspects in the food do you think are factors?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I certainly think that processed sugar and processed foods in general are not good for anybody. And pesticides, you all of those xenoestrogens as they’re called, the molecules in the environment that function like estrogens, all of those things are not at all good for us. I think they can cause one type of problem in one person in a different type of problem in another, but they’re not good for anybody.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, if I have someone like, on a diet, they’re eating like let’s say some grass-fed meat and they’re eating some good healthy fat within the meat, maybe coconut oil, things like that, good health and they’re avoiding the excess omega-6. How important is that little bit of extra carbohydrate for some like, could they do some squash or sweet potato? Or for some cancers, is that even too much and could set them over the edge? How strict do you have to be with some of these recommendations if their overall diet is really clean?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, see the the issue for me is that, I don’t think that sugar or natural sugars are going to be, or natural starches, are going to be the make a root issue for cancer. You know, again, it just sort of depends on how metabolically unhealthy somebody is but I personally believe that the real root issue is a lack of pancreatic enzymes and so that’s where I give people a lot of enzymes.
You know I have people that are alive and well and doing great years out who were eating natural sugars and natural carbs and drinking carrot juice and you know all of the things that somebody that’s a real advocate of the ketogenic diet would say is not a good idea. And so, it’s just not really my focus. I don’t put anybody on a diet that’s restrictive. It starts to get really difficult to know what what to eat, especially if you’re talking about somebody that shouldn’t be on a lot of protein. Well then, if they’re not going to eat protein and they’re not going to eat carbs, well then, what are they going to eat?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, that’s, in fact right.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: A buttered avocado? You know, I just don’t see
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right! Exactly!
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Not feasible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I remember an interview that Dr. Gonzalez did, I think it was in 2010, with Dr. Mercola, and it was right after the passing of Steve Jobs. And I remember vaguely he was making the connection because I think Jobs was a known fruititarian. He was in the in the 80s, it was very culty at Apple where like, “If you weren’t a fruititarian, you weren’t accepted!”, right?
And so, he was kind of making the connection of, “Hey, the beta cells of the pancreas are really important for making insulin”, but I think is it the out, no? I think, it’s the, that’s also could wear down potentially the exocrine function of the pancreas, making enzymes as well. Any connection with the excess insulin from the carbs could impact negatively the exocrine pancreatic enzyme output?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: I don’t know, maybe, it’s not something I’ve really thought about. I suppose that could be possible. You know, I do believe that something happens for some people that they’re not making enough of the pancreatic enzymes whether that’s just getting older or whether that’s, you know, some of the like a byproduct of all the metabolic consequences that come with being overweight and Insulin resistant. Not really sure, it’s a good question.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, let’s dive into some of the enzymes. So, I mean, obviously, there’s different kinds that are out there. We have, you know, your proteolytic, your amylase, your carbohydrate base, your lipase. Obviously, there’s some that are enteric coated, you have like your lumbrokinase, your sera peptidase. What type of enzymes do you like, and what levels?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: The enzymes that I use with cancer patients are actually just bottom line freeze-dried pancreas in a capsule. They’re not and there is a little bit of an activation process that’s done but there’s some debate as to whether the truly active thing with cancer is the proteolytic, that means, protein dissolving, proteolytic enzymes or whether it’s actually the precursor form for those proteolytic enzymes.
Because when the enzymes are sitting there in the pancreas, they’re actually what are called pro-enzymes they’re not quite active because if they were active they would chew up the pancreas and that’s no good. That’s actually very bad if that happens. And so, they come as this packaged form, a precursor form, but there are some scientific studies that would suggest that that’s actually what’s active against cancer and not the truly activated enzymes. So, by just using freeze-dried pancreas, we’re getting quite a lot of the enzymes that are available actually in the precursor form, that’s what we did.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, so you do like a pancreatic, like a proto morphogen type of thing? Like a glandular extract?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: No, it’s just freeze-dried meat in effect. It’s with everything intact, fat and everything. You know, there’s some reasons to believe that the fat may actually stabilize the enzymes. Those proto morphogens, I must admit, I’m not completely familiar with exactly how they’re processed, but I believe that it’s a salt precipitate, which means that they mince up the organ and then they mix it into a salt solution and then see what settles out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s it.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: …removed some of the fats, yeah. This, what we’re using is a lot simpler, and it’s, you know, everything in the organ is, in effect, in the glandular.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great, so you’re getting like a full ancestral type of support, and is there a certain supplement company do you like for the glandular, specifically? I know Dr Gonzalez, I think has mentioned Standard Process, there’s other ones out there.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: The product that I use, the closest thing that’s commercially available is made by Allergy Research Group, which also sells under the label Nutricology. And it’s called Pancreas, so that’s, there’s a small company that only sells to my patients that I mainly use by the Allergy Research Group product is available commercially.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great and then what kind of doses are you using? Are you spreading it throughout the day and does it matter if it’s empty stomach when you dose it specifically?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, well, I mean to some extent I don’t really like to get into a lot of details because I don’t think it would be very responsible of me to encourage people to try to treat themselves with something as serious as cancer. You know, and also, the doses vary depending on the person, depending on the type of cancer, but it’s very important that it be away from food. These are digestive enzymes and the goal with what I’m trying to do is give them to people to get into their system and work systemically, not just to thoroughly digest whatever they had for lunch.
So, I do recommend a few enzymes with meals, and for that matter, I recommend that for anybody. But for patients that are fighting a cancer, or have a strong family history, you know, whatever the concern might be. That would be when you would take them away from food.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it and so obviously, you’re going to be working with the patient, you’re going to be looking at their overall health, how aggressive the cancer is, maybe there’s some objective and subjective markers you’re looking at. So then, you’re going to work with that patient and then dial it in specifically for their needs. Is that correct?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: That’s right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you ever plug in, like you hear these other enzymes are out in the markets. I use them, you know, for blood flow or even you can see them, you use for like breaking down fibroid tissue things, like that, like Serapeptidase or Lumbrokinase or Nattokinase. Do you have any opinion on those or any therapeutic rationale to use those in your practice?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I use a few plant-based enzymes as a digestive aid. So, for example, the Standard Process product “Multizyme”, I use some of that as just as a digestive aid. And, there’s some reason to believe that amylase, specifically, one of the other enzymes that breaks down starches and that’s in a lot of both plant-based enzymes, a word in the pancreatic enzymes for that matter.
But there’s reason to believe that a little extra of that can help with some of the waste materials that can form as the enzymes do their thing. So, I use some enzymes for that otherwise it would be more about specific circumstances. So, you just mentioned some of the things that, some of those other enzymes are good for, and I might well, use them for that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, yeah. When you work up a patient, how do you like, when you look at there’s obviously a lot of potential root causes for cancer, right? There’s different therapies that you’re adding in I mean, I talk to patients, they’re like, “Well, when’s there going to be a cure for cancer?” And my general take is, well there’s a lot of different potential causes.
You could have low vitamin D, you can have insulin resistance, you can have exposure to different toxins in the environment, chemicals Plastics, pesticides, beyond hormonal compounds that are driving. There’s a lot of different root causes. So, when you’re looking at a patient, you one, do you obscribe to that similar belief? And then, two, are you working patients up and looking at all of the potential root causes and trying to address those while you’re doing these other therapies at the same time? How do you frame that out? How do you assess that ?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, that’s an interesting question. I think, you know, on the one hand I could certainly say that, you know, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of different things that can contribute to somebody developing a cancer. On the other hand, on a practical level, I find that, you know, whether somebody’s cancer developed, primarily because of toxic exposures, or whether it didn’t, I’m still going to be focusing a lot on detoxification because, for one thing, we live in a polluted world, for another, the process of getting rid of the cancer, you know, you got to think, “Where does it go?”
You know, it’s, in other words, you kill it, but you’ve still got to get rid of the pieces. Something’s got to be removed. And so, they’re all going to need to address detoxification no matter whether, the cause of their cancer or, per se, was toxins or not. And the same thing would go for vitamin D, you know? Even if vitamin D deficiency wasn’t the fundamental cause, they still need to have their vitamin D optimized. So, in a way, some of the “Why” questions, from my point, of view kind of come out in the wash, in the sense that, I’m going to be doing or trying to address the same considerations whether that was the bottom line issue or not.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, that makes sense. Makes sense. And so, when you’re working with a patient, you’re working them up, are there any specific lab markers that you’d like to look at? I mean, are you running, imagine you’re probably running vitamin D, you can tell me, are you looking at things like C-reactive protein? Are you looking at fasting insulin? Do you run any like cancer-antigen markers? Like, what are your favorite kind of go-to’s to kind of get a assess the playing field, so to speak?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Right. Yeah, I may, well, wind up expanding that at some point but you know, to a large extent we learned what we did. Dr. Gonzalez and I, from Dr. William Donald Kelly. And a lot of the tests were not available in his area. And for that matter, you know, I started doing this work in the early 90s and a lot of these tests were only barely becoming into existence at that point. So, I’ve really learned to do a lot just with my clinical impression of situations.
And a lot of the standard markers, or the markers that you just mentioned, can actually be very confusing. For example, C-reactive protein, that might go up before it goes down. Why? Because, breaking up cancer is an inflammatory situation. The white cells and the macrophages and things that chew up and get rid of stuff require inflammation to do their thing. So, just like, it would be, I would think counterproductive if somebody had pneumonia to completely try to squelch their inflammation because that inflammation is fighting the pathogen that’s causing the problem.
So, I don’t necessarily want to squelch inflammation altogether. And so, it makes me a little wary because, you know, people kind of have this mindset, “Oh! Inflammation! That’s bad!”, “Inflammation causes cancer.” Well, and chronic inflammation can cause cancer but to get rid of it, you may need an inflammatory process for a while. So, it’s complicated, bottom line.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, your body has to, basically, start to break down these cancer cells and that can be a little bit inflammatory. Just like exercising can be a little bit inflammatory. But it’s enough where your body can be on top of it. And you’re keeping your detoxification pathways open to be able to process all that as well.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Exactly, right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And typically, your body does apoptosis, right? That’s like programmed cell death. Like, if you look at the average person, what do you think the big barrier to the body starting to not be able to keep track of this apoptosis and not be able to continue to monitor cells so they don’t overgrow? What’s the first thing that goes wrong?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Gosh, I don’t know. I think I might be able to win a Nobel Prize if I answered that one. But I, you know, again, our, the underlying theme in our work is pancreatic enzymes. You know, a shortage of the proteolytic enzymes, and you know, bear in mind that in the regular medical literature, the idea that proteolytic enzymes did more than digest food, is relatively new.
We’re just talking about, you know, the last 15, 20 years that there’s been more and more research about what proteolytic enzymes do systemically, as opposed to just like digesting food. So yeah, I, there’s an 80-page article about proteases that I referenced into something I recently wrote up about pancreatic enzymes, and you know, among the things that’s talked about is the immune system, and you know, some of the autophagy and etc.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting! And where does the microbiome plug-in? Because obviously, we have to have good digestion. Now you mentioned, protease for breaking down cancer and then protease for just being able to break down protein and fat. Where does looking at the microbiome and seeing, you know, “Hey, I have an infection I may have some bacterial overgrowth. I may have some bugs that can be creating some stress with me absorbing my nutrition. Maybe I have some bugs and some food allergens kind of creating some gut permeability, some leaky gut. Maybe that’s stressing out my immune system.” Where does looking at the gut kind of come in here?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well again, if somebody is short on pancreatic enzymes then they’re digestion, you know, whether they’re having symptoms or not, their digestion is going to be a bit of a mess. Simply because, you know, if you think about it what’s more important to the body on an immediate sense, certain cancer surveillance or digestion? Digestion, of course. That’s the thing you need to do first. And so, if somebody isn’t making enough enzymes to keep cancer cells under control, then they’re surely not making enough for digestion. So that can that can lead to various microbiome issues that, I think, can certainly play a role, sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, what else do you think is important? The average person that comes into you? The average listener right now? Okay, so we have these enzymes, we’re going to use these. This is going to be a very important palliative kind of root cause tool to get these, get that cancer low down, what do you think the next big thing? Is it working on the drainage and the detoxification? What’s the next big step here?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I typically, will address multiple things at once. My patients frequently look like they’ve been run over by a truck by the time I finish my recommendations, although I do try to warn them before we start, you know, “This is going to be a lot.” And the things that I have them address, first of all, they are taking a lot of enzymes, they’re also taking other supplements that just help give the body what it needs for repair and then, they need to clean up their diet for sure.
You know, you can’t keep eating the way that got you into trouble. In order to get out of trouble, you’ve really got to clean it up. And then, there’s also detoxification, that’s a huge part of it because if people faithfully take all of their enzymes but don’t do the detoxification, and they’ll wind up feeling like they’ve got the flu. So the detox part is extremely important.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And where does conventional therapy come in? I mean, obviously the big concern with conventional therapy is, number one, you don’t really get to the root cause, and two, yeah you can knock down the cancer load but then you’ve beaten up the immune system, so then now, this cancer can grow back because your immune system isn’t able to keep the cancer cells in check.
So, when is the conventional modality for cancer good and acceptable and then how do you work with that if someone’s doing cancer? Do you say “No, we got to do this. Do your programs first this second.” What’s the order of operations and how do you prevent the side effects of chemo from devastating the immune system in general?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, okay, well before I take on a case, I ask people to send in some information about their situation and I do that partly because there are some situations where orthodox therapy is the way to go, or the way to go initially. And so, I will let people know that. I myself do not work with people that are getting chemotherapy at the same time, and there’s plenty of other practitioners that do that kind of work but I, that’s not what I choose to do.
You know, I think that in situations where surgery is possible and makes sense, in other words, the cancer hasn’t spread elsewhere, I would argue that people should go ahead and do it. So that’s, you know, one consideration. And there are times that people will send me information about a cancer.
You know, like just the other day, I got an application from somebody with a particular type of lymphoma, and that type of lymphoma, chemotherapy actually works for. So, you know, it would be irresponsible of me to tell him to do something else when chemotherapy can actually work now. I also, you know, I wind up seeing people that got the chemo and then come to me afterwards, to kind of get get their system working better. You know, I’m certainly open to doing that but I I don’t see people that are simultaneously getting chemo.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct. I think it’s the big three, it’s the lymphoma, leukemia, and testicular cancer. I think those are the big ones that chemo and conventional care tend to work well with, right?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, there’s a few others but that’s, those are the big ones
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Do you remember the other ones?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Oh gosh
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s off top of your head
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, I’m totally blanking out on that one. I know there are a few but I don’t remember.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll ask you the opposite. Are there any cancers out of the gate, that chemo just does not do well with, or conventional care doesn’t do well with?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, pancreatic cancer is probably the biggest one, and that’s been the thorn in the side of the medical community for many, many years. You know, there’s a few people that can be cured by surgery, but even when the surgeon walks out and says, “I got it all.” 75% of them will recur within five years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, yeah. And aren’t there, how many types of pancreatic cancer are there? And isn’t there one more than another that’s more serious, or are they all equally the same?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, the pancreas is almost like two organs in one. You’ve got the cells that make enzymes and when you develop a cancer in those cells, that’s the nasty type of pancreatic cancer. The other type, it develops in the beta cells, are called and that’s a group of cells that mainly make hormones like insulin or glucagon or gastrin. You know, there’s a different enzymes at those cell us make. And those cancers, when when a cancer develops there, it is typically slower growing, and so it’s not as immediate, a threat to life.
Although the ones that make hormones, if the hormone is causing trouble, well, that can get can be pretty touchy. But Steve Jobs, for example, he had the neuroendocrine, that’s another word for that. He had the slower growing type, as opposed to the exocrine pancreas, that’s the ones for the end, will make the enzymes, and that’s the truly nasty one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, exactly. So the exocrine one, is the one from the insulin side?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: No, exocrine is the one that makes the enzymes that digest food.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Enzymes, got it. Exocrine is the enzymes and the beta cell one, that’s the insulin one, correct?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, got it.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, kind of confusing because there’s many different words to describe the same thing. So, you know, exocrine is talking about enzyme secretes and endocrine is another word for the beta cells that secrete hormones into the blood.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, and then if you have a pancreatic adenocarcinoma, is that going to be a exocrine one?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Strictly speaking, adenocarcinoma is the label you would apply to either type
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, okay.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, but most of the time if somebody says pancreatic adenocarcinoma, that’s usually referring to the exocrine, the nasty one. There’s other labels, I know this is confusing, but you know, it’s just the way it is. Adenocarcinoma is actually a label that can be applied to some types of lung cancer, to stomach cancer, to colon cancer, to breast cancer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, in other words, we have this adenocarcinoma is kind of the umbrella, and then we have the exocrine, which is more the enzyme side, that’s the nasty one, and then we have the endocrine, which is the insulin part. and that’s the lesser one. And you said Jobs had the lesser one.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah. He had the lesser one. Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, good okay. I try to boil everything down and make it as simple as possible. I want to be able to tell it to my five-year-old son, we can get it, good.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I hope your five-year-old son is not interested, you know?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, right right, no, I get it. Okay, so that’s cool, so we have these different types, and then, so what are the types of chemo that just, or types of cancer that just are not helpful at all? So we hit the pancreas, what else? Are there any brain parts, I think the medulloblastoma is another one. Any other takes on other types of cancer besides just the pancreas?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, there’s a there’s a number of other situations where chemotherapy may be helpful for a short period of time, but it’s not going to fix, you know, not going to be a permanent solution. So, just about any of the metastatic cancers, meaning that it’s spread outside the original location, you know, chemotherapy may shrink tumors, it might prolong life, but it’s not going to be a cure.
And this, you know, is where people, you know, the terminology that’s frequently used in oncology, can be very confusing like for instance, people will hear a response you know the chemotherapy will give a response, and you know, 75 percent of patients, and they think, “Oh great! That means cure!” It doesn’t mean cure. it means tumor shrinkage. You know, so you have to kind of ask what words mean if you really want to know what orthodox therapy can do for you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good, and so obviously, if someone has cancer it’s always good to put someone like you, in their corner no matter what, whether they’re going to go the conventional route or the natural route or both. If someone’s going to their oncologist, I find a lot of conventional oncologists, they’re totally clueless when it comes to nutrition.
Like it’s just unbelievable, why the patients with brain cancer, they’ve asked their oncologist, “What kind of, you know, diet nutrition I should be on?” They said, “Diet has nothing to do with the cancer.” And I’m just like, “Wow!” You know, Harvard-trained physicians, it’s unbelievable. If someone’s going to see their oncologist, what are the top two or three questions that they should ask to see if they’re a good fit? Or just to run by their oncologist?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Okay, well, I mean, first of all, I think the oncology world is starting to change a little bit. There have been a few studies recently where, it was shown that diet and exercise did make a difference, and so, I think that bit by bit, the oncologists will start to, at least, not be quite so dismissive, or say things like “Diet doesn’t matter.” So I’m hoping that will be the case.
I personally think it’s kind of a waste of time, though, to try to talk to an oncologist about diet because most of them really don’t know that much. You know, in terms of talking to an oncologist about the treatments they’re offering, some of the things you have to think about, you know, is listen to the way they explain things.
So, for instance, you know, this “X treatment” is going to reduce your risk by, you know, and they’ll say some big number, and you say, “Okay, if 100 people like me came in and got this treatment, how many of them would it help?” You know, you have to ask questions in questions like that because, for instance, supposing that you had, you know, a five out of ten people like you were going to have a recurrence, and the chemotherapy could reduce it to two and a half, well that sounds pretty good.
But what if a thousand people were going to have a recur, I mean, there was out of a thousand people, two of them were going to have a recurrence, and the treatment could reduce it to one in a thousand. That’s still a fifty percent reduction. Do you see what I’m saying? You have to you know because, unfortunately, the statistics are expressed in whatever way makes them sound the best.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Essentially, they’re gonna create a fog over relative risk versus absolute risk. Relative is the percentage, two out of a thousand to one out of a thousand, “Oh, it’s a 50% reduction!” But in the end, you know, is it really, you know, I get it. I understand it. Yeah, the relative versus the absolute. Also too, how they kind of, do a little pivoting when it comes to cures, right?
Because usually, a cure is talked about within a five-year time frame. If you had a cancer and you survived five years, they kind of lump you into a cure rate, yet you could die in year six and technically, you’re cured from that cancer. Maybe this is a new thing. So there’s also some fog around that too.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah there can definitely be some fog around things so you just have to ask questions.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also too, it seems like the wheels have changed when it comes to chemotherapy. It takes a while once you have a standard of care, it’s hard to get a new standard of care above that and then, you have to look at the side effects. I mean, the standard care for pancreatic cancer as you know, it tends to be really powerful chemo that has terrible side effects. I mean, can you talk about like the standard of care treatment on the chemo side and what that looks like from a side effects standpoint?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, your typical side effects of any chemotherapy or things like fatigue and nausea and, you know, the potential for infections, neuropathies. A lot of these different things can happen certainly, yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and then the nausea and all that is just terrible from a quality of life standpoint. I mean, I think it’s really important anyone that if you know anyone that has pancreatic cancer or has themselves it’s really important whether you go conventional or not, you want someone like Dr Linda in your quarter, that’s powerful.
You talked about detoxification. So, that’s kind of a big buzzword, right? Because there’s a lot of things that help enhance detoxification. When you say that, is that including water, sauna therapy? I know, you have the Gerson Institute that will do coffee enemas. There’s also things like glutathione and vitamin C and herbs like milk thistle. Which one do you kind of plug into your corner, or you like?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: The day-to-day detoxification routine that I recommend for everybody is coffee enemas. And that’s something Dr. Kelly used. It turns out, you know, coffee enemas go back in the literature for easily 150 years. The oldest reference I think I found for them was in a book, that was Google books, it has a lot of really old medical textbooks, so it’s a great place to look around, and I found something from the 1850s or 1860s, it actually described coffee enemas as if it was something everybody knew about.
You know, so they’ve obviously been around for a long, long time. They were used for poisoning or, you know, people that were really sick with infections, they would use it. They were also routinely used in post-operative care. And it’s one of those things that kind of got lost in the shuffle as pharmaceuticals came into wide use.
But you know, I think they’re very effective. Most of my patients absolutely love them. Nobody believes that when they first hear it. I didn’t believe it myself. But most of the patients love them. They feel better with them, and they are rapidly sold on the benefits.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, the mechanism essentially, you’re getting, you know, lukewarm or, I should say, room temperature or, I should say, body temperature type of coffee, right in regards to the temperature you’re using, do you use the Gerson, I think, is it a medium dark roast or medium roast for the type of coffee?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, I don’t think it makes all that much difference what the roast you use.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Organic, though, right?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yeah, it should be organic. And yeah, so it’s a coffee solution. It’s weaker than your typical drinking coffee. There’s a lot of different variants on how strong to make it out there, but you know, it’s introduced into the rectum, held for 10 minutes, I tell people, and expelled. And like I said, most of the patients really come to love it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now, what’s the mechanism? I’ve seen that it’s going to go up, to the gallbladder, and to the liver, and it’s going to increase glutathiones, that this is 600% – 800%, I’ve seen that. I’ve seen this also an expelling of toxins from the liver and gallbladder back into the coffee, so then when you go and jump on the toilet afterward, you’re going to release a lot of toxins plus stimulate the liver to make more glutathione. Are those the big mechanisms or is there more?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, unfortunately, I can’t claim that this has been thoroughly researched. The coffee enemas definitely moved bile from the liver and gallbladder. And there was actually some folks in Korea that did an experiment, to document this. They were looking to, they were they had patients that were getting what’s called “capsule endoscopy” which is where you swallow a little camera and what would happen is that, people would swallow this little capsule and that would stimulate bile flow and then the bile would be in the area where the camera was and so you couldn’t see anything because it was all clogged, clouded up.
So what they had people do was to do a coffee enema right before they swallowed the capsule and there was no bile to be released so they in effect showed that the coffee enemas stimulate bile flow. I wrote a whole article a couple of years ago about coffee enemas and it turns out that whole thing about glutathione, I traced back you know, this to the source that comment about the explosion of glutathione.
And it’s unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a valid. It doesn’t mean the coffee enemas, they might be working that way, but the thing, the paper that’s quoted as proof for that, doesn’t prove that. So I don’t throw around the concept that it’s stimulating glutathione but I can tell you, it’s making people feel better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you feel like, the bile is, kind of like, wringing that sponge out, getting all that bile in there and there’s probably some kind of toxins in the bile that you’re able to pull out?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Right, that’s what I think. Bile is where the liver gets rid of waste material so it makes sense and you know, I on a practical level, it’s not that easy to prove it though because nobody really wants to be doing laboratory tests on stool, to see if there’s toxins in there, they just you know, it’s not good. So, it’s not that easy to figure out how to prove it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right, that makes sense but clinically there’s data there. I mean, from your practice of empirical data that you see patients getting better, feeling better, that’s excellent. And then, we talked about glutathione within the coffee enema, right? That’s kind of a controversial aspect of it but are you working on increasing patience glutathione? Are you giving amino acids to make it? Do you give extra exogenous antioxidant support or give the amino acids to make it? Where does that plug in or does it?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I use like an acetylcysteine, alkylic acid. I definitely think those are helpful, and that’s one of the standard things that I give people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Now, if you talk to like conventional oncologists, I see this a lot, where they’re afraid to give antioxidants during killing therapy or during chemotherapy? It’s just as they, the chemo is going to create a level of oxidative stress that will go after the cancer and if you’re giving antioxidants that it may neutralize the ability of the chemo to kill cancer. And that was kind of a thing that people were told to not be on supplements. Maybe eat a super healthy antioxidant-rich diet of leafy green vegetables, whatever. Where do you sit on that? Is that kind of old thinking? Or are they thinking these nutrients would still be helpful? Or should you still avoid a lot of these antioxidants if you’re going that conventional route?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: What I’d say there is that, I don’t do this kind of work myself. I’m not treating people that are simultaneously getting chemotherapy, so that question would be better directed towards somebody that is doing that. I’ve read conflicting information on that and so I don’t really have an opinion on that one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, see, some of the studies I’ve seen, it seems to be like survey data and they look at like patient outcomes like after the fact, which you know, that’s probably not the best. They probably should put people in a medical lab and monitor it as they go. So yeah, I kind of feel the same. And so, when you see patients, do you prefer to see them after chemo?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Yes, if somebody’s in the middle of chemo I prefer that they’ve finished that before I would consider taking them on, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, excellent. We’re going to put your links here to get a hold of Dr. Linda, doctorlindai.com, doctorlindai.com, we’ll put your coordinates down below. Anywhere else, potential patients or listeners could find out more about you?
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, that’s really the best place is my website and I would also encourage them to sign up for my email list and what they’ll get if they do that is a little introductory series and then just a little email once every couple of weeks. I won’t drown them in information but I try to you know, break it up so it’s a little more manageable. There’s a lot of information on my website, so I’d say that’s the place to start. so that’s d-r-l-i-n-d-a-i.com.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the link down below if anyone’s driving they can go check it out. I’m gonna subscribe right now. All right, look at that. So outside of that, anything else you want to leave the listeners with so? I think we hit a lot of like conceptions, myths, you know, how to approach this naturally root cause. Any other questions that I didn’t ask that would be powerful to review briefly.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Well, I think you did a great job of covering all the bases, really. So I can’t think of anything to add.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I really appreciate you doc, taking Dr. Gonzalez’s torch and keeping it going for decades to come. it’s great that patients have natural options out there that have an integrative approach using the enzymes, diet, all the different tools so I love it. I think it’s great. I’m going to definitely use you as a resource for a lot of patients that I see that have cancer or need additional support above and beyond. So thank you for doing what you do. I appreciate it Dr. Linda.
Dr. Linda Isaacs: Okay, well thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Thank you. Take care.
References:
Coffee Enemas: A Narrative Review
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bY6AvGT4cNVvBx1CypSee-PD4m9Jo462/view?usp=sharing
Audio Podcast:
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.
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Natural Solutions for Food Poisoning | Podcast #231
Food poisoning, also referred to as foodborne illness, is illness caused by consuming contaminated food. Infectious organisms — as well as bacteria, viruses, and parasites — or their toxins are the foremost common causes of food poisoning.
In our new episode with Evan Brand, Dr. Justin shared his recent food poisoning experience. He detailed what he did, what medicines he took, and how he overcame with it. He also shared some tips on what medicines to bring when traveling.
Enjoy! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
00:15 Dr. J Food Poisoning Experience
02:36 Food Poisoning Treatment and Remedies
08:23 Gut Issues for Kids
16:26 Enzymes Available
25:14 Candida Diagnosis
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey guys it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome back to the podcast. Evan, how we are doing today man?
Evan Brand: I’m doing great, good morning to you. We’re ready to talk about food poisoning. You got food poisoning. What was it, a week ago now that we are talking?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so I was in Boston for a wedding last weekend and I got sick. I was in the north and I did pretty good. I did like a ribeye steak with this broccoli and I was okay, but something didn’t feel right with that kinda mixture. I did go afterwards, and I do this once a year. I did have a cannoli with gluten and dairy in it. So, I did get that. That’s like my one thing cause it’s just like so great. But the previous two years as well, so I’m like, is it really dairy and gluten thing? So there’re just two different light levers here. Alright, you got like food poisoning where it’s like bacteria kinda thing like an e.coli kinda thing. It could be food poisoning AKA an infection like a parasite or bigger bug, or number three, it could be inflammation from the food. Both kinda similar. First thing I did was, I was alright, enzymes, charcoal, ginger, you know, anti-inflammatory southing support that kinda calm things down. And the big thing was I was so noxious. The ginger really helped but it couldn’t keep it down all the way, so that was number one. I’m like, alright. And then I was doing a lot of L glutamine so I’m like, I don’t think this an inflammation thing. It’s lasting a little bit too long. I started to hit a little bit of oil of oregano, didn’t move in a ton, so I was doing my GI clear five oil of oregano, wasn’t moving a ton then I started hitting, when I got back home, my GI clear four and I knocked it right away. So there was some kind of I think a bigger bug in there so I don’t think inflammation that I caught but within a day, within two doses of my GI 4 which has the Berberine the Goldenseal the Burdock the Black Walnut, my nausea went right away. So I’m still on it now I’m gonna take actually one of it as we speak.
Evan Brand: So, were you throwing up or you were just noxious?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I didn’t have any diarrhea or any you know throwing up. It was just like just incredible amount of nausea like whoa!
Evan Brand: Like a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is the worst nausea ever, where were you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was probably like an 8
Evan Brand: Oh, that’s pretty bad…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like I didn’t wanna move like I thought very uncomfortable moving at all.
Evan Brand: and you were flying back home…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah, I mean what really helped those, those GT Dave’s kombucha, the ginger really really helped. I mean I was doing that…
Evan Brand: You were saying
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I was doing the Kettle & Fire bone broth which is very soothing as well. So I was just doing bone broth, kettle & fire, to the ginger kombucha, and I was hitting probiotics, hitting activated charcoal, and then I was nailing the oil of oregano the last day. The oil of oregano didn’t touch it as much, but the GI Clear 4 really knocked it up. Typically I tell my patients and you travel, go with the GI Clear 4 and 5 when you travel, just to ensure that you don’t have any food poisoning issues or you get an infection. So my generalized stack if you’re traveling is one dose of probiotics, in my line like a probiotic 4, the lactobacillus kinda Hindus lactobacillus bifidobacteria species, I GI Clear 5 which is a higher dose oil of oregano, and then my GI Clear 4 which is a broader spectrum, bigger parasite kinda killer, and then activated charcoal.
Evan Brand: Yep.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Like my big four and then like a little bit of enzymes and HCL too so actually five. That’s my stack for traveling.
Evan Brand: You must have probably picked something up then because that sounds more than just… I mean maybe it was food poisoning. But if it took you to throw in berberine and a lot of these anti-microbial herbs, it sound like to me, I mean I’ll just make up something out of thin air, maybe picked up Clostridia, or some other bacterial pathogen that took you over.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean the oil of oregano didn’t move it as much, but when I got the GI Clear 4, it was like holy smokes. It went away in about 3 hours.
Evan Brand: I was gonna say it was a coincidence that it just got out of your immune system and your immune system mounted the attack or you think it was the herbs that really knocked it out?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was the herbs. I mean I was doing my GI Clear 5 the day before. I did 12 capsules, so I was hitting it hard. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s still important to do that.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I will just do it centergisticly. I did really good success with the 5 at other types of food poisoning, so it does work very legitimate. I had a parasite in Mexico years back, and that was very helpful but the 4 really did it, so my stack for traveling is GI Clear 4 and 5. But the 4 is like the most important, 5 is kinda secondary, and then the probiotics too are super helpful and I recommend enzyme. You’re eating any questionable foods. Activated charcoal and enzymes and HCL is great. Just to ensure your digesting and breaking everything down.
Evan Brand: I was speaking of enzymes. I was talking to my wife yesterday about how when I went over to your house, you cooked a nice steak for me, and you had your little caddy on your table full of like three different brands of enzymes on your dinner table, I loved that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yep.
Evan Brand: Your wife and your mother-in-law, all of us we had just a whole handful of enzymes we were able to take right there. See I’ve got them in the pantry or in the cabinet in the kitchen, but then you sit down in the table and you forget so you gotta run into the kitchen and grab your enzymes. So I think I’m gonna adopt your roll thereon having enzymes right on the table so you don’t forget ‘em.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I put them right with the salt and pepper like keep it really simple, really easy, I mean I think the low hanging fruit and functional medicine world is be able to digest your food well. If we spending a lot of money on good quality organic food we wanna make sure we can digest it and break it down especially when you’re eating when you’re stress, because that fight-or-flight nervous system response really keeps the enzymes and hydrochloric acid levels lower so maybe you’re not making as much, so I think that’s really important.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I’m back on enzymes so, we could talk about this for a minute, you know. A lot of people have the… they’ve got a question of well if I’m taking enzymes, am I making my body lazy? And the answer’s no. it’s not like melatonin where if you take melatonin you can down-regulate your production. With enzymes, you’re really just adding to the fire. You’re not replacing it and that becomes more important as you get older too. But for us, you know we’ve got a baby now and so she’s 4-weeks-old, maybe she’s five weeks, I don’t know. Time’s already flying. But if we’ve got the baby, I’m tryna hold her, mom’s tryna hold her or keep her happy while we’re eating dinner. we’re not optimally digesting, we’re not in parasympathetic tryna keep two kids happy at mealtime. So we’re back on enzymes now just the insurance policy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. And I think it’s great when you’re eating when you’re stress. If you’re doing great and your diet’s really good and you’re feeling stable with everything and you can actually sit down and relax fine. Then I think it’s totally cool that you don’t necessarily need it, as long as digestion overall is good. But if you’re definitely more on the stress side, and you’re eating a meal a little bit faster then I think it’s good to always have them as an insurance policy. I just keep them right there so if I fill the need to have it, I’m right ready to go.
Evan Brand: One thing you didn’t mention, which I think we should mention for you know…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah
Evan Brand: Just general… yeah… getting hit with something like that would aloe. You know, there’s a couple different aloe extracts that we used. I’ve got one, do you have your own aloe as well?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: In my GI restore, I have a 4ml that has aloe TJ and glutamine, so I do like that for gut soothing and gut healing support. And then one thing when I was traveling, I went to whole foods and I bought some aloe juice. So I did get some aloe juice, I would sip in on that. I do find it very soothing and it was very palliative, wasn’t fixing the underlying issue does mean you shouldn’t put it in there. Cause even if you have infection there’s gonna be some level inflammation present so it’s gonna help calm it down.
Evan Brand: True, true. I see so many kids with gut issues. I feel like it’s probably more common than even the adults that I see. I don’t know if it’s just that you know the kids are finding the answers from the pediatrician, so they end up reaching out to us or what but when I’m looking at stool test lately, I’m finding kids’ gut are so much inflamed. I mean I’m seeing 7 or 8 hundred 9 hundred on the calprotectin. It’s like, my Lord.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s a very high level I mean that basically in like irritable vowel disease kinda category. You know that you’d see the crones and also the fled, that’s really high. And I think a lot of it is you see have more crap food out there for kids today. I mean my God, it’s very rare to see kids eating whole foods. It’s very rare to see kids even just drink water like my son, he drinks sparkling mineral water, he drinks water and he drinks unsweetened crane juice like with kale, broccoli, spinach, like no added fruit, no added sugar at all outside on what on those green vegetables. And then he has meet sole for breakfast, still have half of an avocado today, a piece and half of bacon, and then maybe a couple of blackberries and some coconut unsweetened vanilla yogurt. Like that’s it, that’s his breakfast and for lunch, it’s tough with kiddos so I try to always recommend with parents, whole cuts tend to work really well on kids just choose a higher quality one. Like at the Applegate or the Wellshire Farm works at least at step two, so you at least getting a pretty good quality, or if we do the hotdogs, we get the Wholefood step 4 so they’re at least grass-fed and organic in pastrofed hotdog so at least the meat quality is high so those are good.
Evan Brand: Another uncured as well so…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep
Evan Brand: You’re not having bunch of night trades or other sodium into rebates added, you don’t want those.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s overblown kinda thing, especially it’s coming from celery powder. But either way,the more important thing is the food quality is there. And if we can’t get the vegetables in, we at least do the green juice. He’ll pound 8 to 10 ounces of high-quality green vegetable juice a day. That’s helpful.
Evan Brand: I gotta tell you about something. I just found today and we ate it this morning, it was absolutely so delicious so my wife wanted to do waffles for a long time so we were looking at all these different grain-free waffle recipes, but we went to Wholefoods and there’s this brand called Swapples. Do you know Swapples?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I don’t know Swapple.
Evan Brand: Oh my God, alright so I’ll send you the link here. But they’re grain-free like this is an autoimmune approved. I got the cinnamon one, I’ll send you the link here. This thing was so good, I thought this can’t be real how good this is. So it’s yucca, let’s see let me tell you the ingredients here. Yucca, coconut oil, organic coconut palm sugar, 2 grams of sugar, I think per waffle, cinnamon, sea salt, vanilla extract.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Swapples, okay I’ll put some links in the description below. That’s awesome. Are they premade already?
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s premade. You just throw it in the oven for like 10 minutes at 375 and its ready.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That is awesome dude. That’s really cool, Swapples. Okay cool.
Evan Brand: I think you told me when you were in Austin that you say you goy yucca, yucca pancakes that you got?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well I picnicked, yeah anyone that knows picnic is awesome for their autoimmune gluten-free, grain-free type of foods they have great yucca-based waffle and pancakes. So I would do like blueberry pancake.
Evan Brand: That’s delicious. So they have other ones too that people can use like as a bread replacement. Still gonna be you know, carbohydrates. If you trying to stay in ketosis or something, this is not gonna work for you. But they got like a tomato basil one which is the yucca, however you say it, coconut oil, tomato, sea salt, spice, and garlic. So if you’re like one of those people who just can’t leave without bread, and it’s like pulling teeth for you, for us to get you to an autoimmune template, you may be able to do something like this instead and get you off of the grains, I mean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I like that.
Evan Brand: I love the stuff like this exist.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s awesome. Yeah, have a recipe in my website basically it pretty simple it’s a half cup of coconut milk, 2 and half cup of coconut flour, to four eggs. That’s it. And it’s blended up and then we use a waffle maker and we just put it in there, it’s done. So that’s another good option too if you wanna make it, coconut flour, coconut milk, and eggs. But this is not a great option, it’s always nice to have them pre-made so if you’re in a rush you just can heat them up fast and be done with it.
Evan Brand: Yep, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great.
Evan Brand: I wanna share that cause like people are always like looking for things cause they wanna get off their diet, you know they’re like “oh I feel deprived, or I miss this food. I miss that food” I mean I’m still trying to get my grandfather off chocolate milk, you know. So, it’s like we got a long way to go. People would think our families listen to us on everything but at least my family doesn’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s tough. For sure the key this is to have substitution mindset like what’s the substitute, what’s the switch, what can we incorporate in there that will provide similar mouthfeel, will you feel good about it, you enjoy, the taste’s good, but you’re not getting the crap. So, I love options like these. Especially the carbohydrates and the sugar in a pretty good spot. So, I like it. That makes a lot of sense man.
Evan Brand: What about the serials and all that? Have you found any alternatives? Cause so many people “why do I do I can’t have serial anymore?”. Like what do you push people towards in the morning?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’re some decent lite paleo granola that’s out there that’s more nut and seed based. So that pretty good. And then you can use like a coconut milk kinda thing for it. If you’re on autoimmune templet, that wouldn’t be as good because its nut and seed based.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a good option as well in the morning. Option number 2 is just a really simple collagen-based smoothie, you know, some good collagen powder, unsweetened coconut milk, and then some frozen berries. Or just you know, a butter collagen-based coffee, butter collagen-based tea. Or kinda like my go-to is pretty simple, pretty easy. Yesterday we went out to eat in a restaurant near us that we, I was able to get like an egg florentine, so it was like an eggs benedict with over bacon and vegetable, and tomatoes. So it was like a really nice kinda lower carb, good fats, good protein, tasted really good, felt good. I don’t get a chance to do much eggs benedict so when I go out, I’m all over that.
Evan Brand: Nice, we had a question here from James. Happy Monday to you James. He says that, when we talk about gut health, what organs are we referring to besides the stomach?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So when we look at the intestinal tract, right, we have a mouth, that connects to our esophagus, connect to our stomach, our stomach then connects to our small intestine, three parts of the small intestine duodenum, jejunum, and ileum, then down here at the… at this side, bottom right-hand side. The ileum and the cecum meet up. This is where the colon starts, the colons up here, ascending, transverse, descending, sigmoid and then anus rectum. So, that’s kinda your generalized intestinal track. Everything from mouth to esophagus to stomach to small intestine to large intestine to rectum, anus and out in the toilet, that’s it.
Evan Brand: Yeah, and then organs. So other organs we’re referring to, gallbladder is a part of digestive process, pancreas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Gallbladder and liver, its gonna be hanging out right here that dumps into the small intestine to be the duano hepatic ampulla. That’s a big one, splints more of a red blood cell kinda graveyard. Not much with the splints
Evan Brand: Pancreas.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pancreas will help more excrete whites with the enzymes, it will help with the blood sugar component from the insulin and glucagon.
Evan Brand: Depending on how crazy your mealtime is. If you’re one of those people, you know how many people I see driving on the highway eating, stop doing that people. Eating sandwiches while they’re on the highway like trying to merge on. Lady’s got like a wrapper with a burger on her hand.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The worst time to be eating, I mean definitely fight-or-flight nervous system response. I hope they’re at least doing some hydrochloric acid and enzymes but they’re eating a sandwich. Probably not there yet.
Evan Brand: no, they are not there yet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly
Evan Brand: Here’s a question from Carol, she said, love the idea of keeping the enzymes on the table. What company are you purchasing your enzymes from? We have costume manufacturing, so we work with several professional health care companies for practitioners, and they make special blend and products for us. So, you could check out Justine’s site, Just In health, Ge’s got several different enzymes on there, I do on my site EvanBrand.com as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct, yeah mine’s enzyme synergy, HCL supreme, and then digest energy is kinda my lower dose enzyme hcl, blend I like those. Evan has… Evan, what’s the name of yours?
Evan Brand: Mine’s pure digest. That’s my go to. That’s the one that got DPP 4 in there for an accidental gluten exposure. 200mg butane per capsule. Here’s a question from Matt, ill be taking a trip to Greece sometime next year, definitely will take charcoal and enzymes, I’m mostly worried with water, all I drink is reverse osmosis. Do I just resort to bottled water?
Yeah, I mean I don’t see an issue with bottled water. Or if you want something that… if your just like super anti-plastic, you could do the Berkey sport, the little blue bottle, I think I may be made of silicone but it’s got the berky filter in there and you just out in your tap water and you can suck it up through the straw and as you’re sucking to the straw, it pulls the water through the filter, now it’s incredible and its relatively cheap too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah those were good. I don’t have problem with drinking out of a plastic bottle it its you know, special occasion kind of thing. Like in general, like I was up in a bout this weekend and I rough like a whole bunch of chiccos with me. So, I was able to do that, but sometimes it’s just not convenient because I don’t want the glass breaking, you know. O I don’t want the glass clanging around my ca from there. So sometimes I use that can, I use another type of water sparkling brand or you know. I’m typically doing fiji for a higher silica, or I’ll do the evy on for the high mineral content. I’ll do that. The key thing is, just make sure you keep it out of the sun. if it’s plastic, you know. If I’m outside drinking it, I have a backpack and it goes right in the backpack afterward. I don’t wanna have it the sun’s rays. My biggest concern with water is they just put it on the pallet, leave it outside, let it sit in the sun. so typically, you know, you want it pulled inside right away because the UV Rays from the sun will cause the plastic to deleach some of those estrogen compounds in the water.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I trust like Wholefoods the way they handle their stuff cuz if they get a truck full of fiji water, they’re gonna unload the truck directly from the truck un the darkness and in to the store and then the case of the water may even be inside of a cardboard box there where you are not getting the sunlight to hit it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Wholefoods, in those stores they have… you can just see right. They have a smooth tracking containment inside the store. You’re pretty darn safe cause it’s going from inside to outside or inside the store pretty smoothly. So that’s at least a good option for it. So, I like that.
Evan Brand: Yep. We had a question here from Judith, she says she has an H. Pylori. She can’t get better and she’s got pain constantly. She’s using Matula tea, everything makes her tremor. I don’t know if she’s talking tremor like T-R-E-M-O-R, but she spelled it tremor like a tremor for your hair, and anxiousness. So, yeah I mean if you got H. pillory, obviously there’s some random supplement that Justine and I both have that could help that. But really, you wanna be working with somebody with this cause if you’re in pain constantly and you’re anxious, there could be some other things you need to do. We don’t necessarily want to give you H. pylori herb or you may need adrenal support and other things.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There could be other infections going on there. A lot of people who are going after gut infections, they don’t have the ability to regulate blood sugar and energy, and they tend to feel more anxious like this. This is a common symptom that I see when people just go after the gut and don’t fix the other things first.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, this is a common side effect. This is why we really wanna have a comprehensive program lined up and not just spot treat people with a gut bug. Sometimes you can do that when people are in really really really really good health and their infections are more acute. You can totally do that. But in more something chronic, in a more other fatigue,harder issues are in play, you really have to line things up and a really systematic approach to get the best results.
Evan Brand: Yep. Yeah. Well said. So, Oliver asks; Do you guys tolerate raw milk kefir? I don’t do any. I probably tolerate it; I just don’t do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t do well. I had a patient get me a gown of like really awesome super high-quality grass-fed pastored milk and I’d still have a lot of diarrhea from it. So, I’m just like, it’s not worth it for me. The only dairy that I can do well is yea and butter and then if I do kefir, its gonna be coconut based, I’ll do coconut based kefir.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s just not worth it for me to try so, I just don’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Suzanne writes; What can I do to fight hunger cravings. I do not eat after 5 pm but I wake up crazy hungry. I drink a lot of lemon water with some Himalayan salt.
So, yeah. You probably need to be eating a little bit later. If you’re going to bed around 10-11, that’s you know, 5-6 hours before going to bed without food. So, there could be some blood sugar instability happening. So, if you’re walking up at night, you may wanna have a nice, little, simple snack, protein and fat by your nightstand and try eating within 2 hours before bed. Again, if we’re having blood sugar issues and those sugar issues are waking you up, that’s the next logical step.
Evan Brand: Yeah, may need some adrenal support, you may need some chromium, you could throw some cinnamon on a baked sweet potato with butter. Have that for dinner that may stabilize the blood sugar a little bit too. I really really love using chromium and other minerals to help so, there’re herbs that you can use too. There are some like glucose, modulating glucose control herbs that we use, but once again, that’s something that you don’t wanna guess and check on. You gotta get to the root cause.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then Carol writes in; Are your products that you mentioned safe for 2 years old and up?
It depends, most 2-year-old can’t swallow pills that are in our product so we have special tincture that are liquid based and they tend to be easier to dose. So, we can dose them. We like the tinctures for the younger people.
Evan Brand: there are couple chewable products we used for kids too that kinda depending on what it is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re talking chewable for actually like clearing herbs?
Evan Brand: Uhh no. I’m talking for digestion.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: For enzymes stuff.
Evan Brand: Yeah, chewable enzymes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: Chewable aloes, things like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. There’s some DGL and aloe up there I’ve seen and then there are some enzymes that chewable that are good.
Evan Brand: I know. For killing, no. I don’t know of anything that can kill that’s chewable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. There are pump based that I like and then dropper ones that are dropped based. Then you can kinda dial that dosage up. So those are the ones we typically like and we can dose it up better. Just more individualized.
Evan Brand: Judith had a question. She said; can I call on the phone, please?
You know that what that makes me think off? That makes me think we should have like a call in podcast where people can call in and talk and tell their questions on you know, like on the air so to speak, like a radio. That would be fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I don’t know how we do it. Im,sure there’s a way.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m open to that. For sure I think I need some kind of a call board and plug it into my computer. Something we can look at. Anyone has information on it, let us know. We’ll put it in a queue.
Evan Brand: That would be fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Couple more questions, George writes in. hey,George hope you’re doing well. I typically do ashwagandha to dry herbs versus the tincture. Ashwagandha and tincture taste absolutely horrid especially if you take wrong ashwagandha. One of the worst tasting herbs next to Tribulus.
Evan Brand: I do ashwagandha and tincture actually with the sooth formula, the adrenal sooth formula I do and I mean…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Blend?
Evan Brand: Yeah it is a blend. I mean it does have; well it has motherwort in it which is equally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s liquorish too?
Evan Brand: Uhh. No there’re no liquorish. Its ashwagandha, rishi, motherwort, ziziphus, albizzia. It’ pretty horrid. I have a lot of clients who like “I just can’t do it”.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. But there’s a blend. But if you do ashwagandha 2 to 1, meaning 2 times the amount of herbs to the alcohol’s in there, most people do like awanda 2 or awanda 5. So, its literally 5 to 10 times less potent. It’s not even close. But when you really do 2 to 1, it’s like holy god! It’s crazy.
Evan Brand: Oh man. Judith, how can you contact us. So, Justine, you can reach Justine at his site, Justinhealth.com. there’s a scheduling button if you need to schedule a call or there’s also contact information if you just wanna email.
Let’s see what else here. Me, my site, Evanbrand.com, same thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: Do you wanna answer this one here from Christian?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. 9 months ago, I was diagnosed with candida, came up 40 on my oats test, feeling a lot better and got rid of it, lost too much weight, how can I gain back the weight and not look sick? So, first thing first. Not to be a wise guy, but you have to make sure you’re eating enough. That’s number 1. You have to make sure you’re getting enough calories. Sometime when people do a lot of killing, that killing can actually decrease the appetite. So you have to actually run your food chronometer. Justinhealth.com/cronometer, make sure you’re getting enough calories, number 1. Number 2, if you’re more of an ectomorph or its hard for you to gain weight, you also have to look at your macronutrient ratio. Ratio a protein fat carbs and increases the percentage of your carbs. So, if you’re 30 of 40 percent go to 50 of 60 percent. And still, ry to make sure you’re doing grain free based carbs. Don’t get extra grains in there just to get more carbs. Do more squash, sweet potato, plantains, you know those kinds of things instead.
Evan Brand: You know what I’m gonna say based on his comment, right. I’m gonna say there’s probably more than just candida, you know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you’re feeling better and you’ve gotten retest, that’s great. But you would also wanna get a high-quality gut test on because the oat will not look out the parasites. It won’t get the parasite. It will look out bacteria and fungal metabolize and that’s it.
Evan Brand: it’s extremely rare. I mean whoever they say 9 months ago they were diagnosed with candida. Whoever diagnosed you with that, I mean I can legally diagnose anyway, but I would be very very suspicious that you had just candida. It’s very rare to see. I guarantee there’s probably maybe some parasite, bacterial overgrowth, h. pillory. Something else going one cause I feel like candida’s usually kinda late to the party whereas the bacteria and the low HCL from the h. pillory and the parasite, those kinda disrupt the gut and then I feel like candida moves in. I guess it could happen. Chicken or egg, who cares. But I feel like candida is a secondary issue to a primary parasite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly and typically the timing of how we treat. We typically do the h. pillory first, parasite, bacteria, 2nd or 3rd and then candida last. That’s kinda the general way in which we treat, Robert. Hope that helps.
Evan Brand: Yeah, Robert’s question for those listening, he had a question on what should you go after first. Candida or sibo? I mean honestly, a lot of the herbs used tho have multiple properties that we may use blends of herbs that are anti-microbial and anti-fungal so you kinda killing 2 birds in 1 stone. But I guess it depends on the serenity of one issue we may use more inti fungal as a posting, anti-microbial if its parasites who may have parasitic herbs that could kill fungus. So, its really just case by case basis.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And I thank Guererro about this zoom meeting thing. I’ll keep that in mind, I think it’s good. Matt writes in; Would there ever be any benefit to not save carbs for the evening? So, meaning to do your carbs in the morning. So, that’s like kinda common sense where lot of people load up carbs in the morning. Again some of the data suggest in the carb backloading community that better at night. There’s also some data that some people tend to sleep better with a little it of carbs in their system at night. Also tends to help with fat burning and such. So, I typically always, let’s just say lean on the carb backloading mindset but always tested out. I mean there’s data out there but then you gotta use your clinical experience. So test it out to see how you do and see how you feel.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I got a question from Jac. Should one take probiotics daily?
I mean that’s like such an open-ended question. I mean we could spend an hour on that subject. We probably have spent hours on it. I’m kinda on and on face right now with probiotics. I’m doing some special probiotics blends to help lower regulate histamine. And then I’m also doing some Saccharomyces boulardii. So, I’m doing those daily for probably months, but now with my daughter, cycle her on and off probiotics, throwing some Saccharomyces. It kinda just depends on what you’re doing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct, correct. Now in general about people taking herbs between meals, couple things to say about that is, I use to say like do your herbs hundred percent before food, which I think is great. You typically take at least five minutes before food. the problem is you get a lot of patients that are like they forget, and they just won’t do it. Then they’ll forget half a time so then half a time they’ll never taking the herbs. So, my perspective is ideally five, five minutes or more is fine especially you’re not getting nauseous, but if you forget, still have it. Like still have it, always do it. Eating your food and forgetting is not an excuse to not take it. I always try to draw that line with patients and if the patients are more sensitive, we’ll typically do it with food anyway just so it mixes in and it’s a little bit less potent as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, the question Justin was answering was should you take herbs between meals or with meals. I would say amino acids. That wasn’t the question but just to overeducate people. Amino acids, we’ll like to have those on empty stomach cause they can peak. But hers, I like herbs with meal and a lot of gut killing protocols we do the herbs are suggested with meals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, exactly.
Evan Brand: I think that was different question unless you saw more then we can kinda circle back to the food poisoning thing and then talk about testing real quick and wrap it up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I appreciate Judith’s comment as well. I got a question here from Facebook from Dawn. Dawn hope you’re doing well. What type of protein powder do you recommend for smoothies? So, Dawn, for like autoimmune kinda template, we typically lean more on just plain collagen or just plain P protein. So those are the big ones that will do if we’re just kinda on more autoimmune side, and then typically gotta low sugar berries, ripe berries, blueberries, raspberries, they can be frozen, and then some unsweetened coconut milk tends to be a pretty good shake option. And then in my line,I do the true collagen to the true P and then I have one called the true keto collagen, which is a really good collagen-based smoothie that sweetened with vanilla and cinnamon and that is still autoimmune approved. It got some MCT oil, I added some taurine in there and a couple more amino acids and coconut colostrum. So, that one’s a really good one and it mixes awesome with unsweetened coconut milk.
Evan Brand: Nice, I mean I’ve not had… many people have issues with hemp. Hemp protein. A good organic hemp protein could be okay. Some people don’t like, feel like they digested as well as the P, but I feel okay with hemp.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean if someone’s on autoimmune, I would say no. but if they’ve been able to kinda reintroduce nuts and seeds, and they’re doing good then I think it’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that.
Evan Brand: Okay. So, circling back if you’re ready. Circle back to the conversation, we started about the food poisoning and going put to restaurants and traveling and all that. We talked about kind of preparation kit of having your binders like your charcoal, your soothing gut nutrients, like maybe your aloe, and your glutamine. You mentioned using some of your GI Clear 4 and 5 products with like berberine and anti-microbial herbs like oregano oil and then I would just say doing a once a year testing on your gut system, My daughter just turned 3 over the weekend, and we’ve already done 5 stool tests on her. She’s not even 3 years old yet. But that’s cause she has a lot of issues on het stool. So, she had h. pylori, then we got rid of it. Then had 2 parasites, then we got rid of those. Then she had a bunch of bacterial overgrowth, then we addressed that. Then she had candida, now we’re working on that. So, man it’s been a, it’s been a ringer what she’d gone thru. So, for her, we’re doing more often than once a year for testing, but I would look getting an organic acid urine test we’re on. And we’re often running that through a mycotox screen now where we can look at mold toxins for people, because diarrhea and abdominal pain can be caused by mold, by mycotoxins. So, we’re running that now cause sometimes we find people don’t have gut infections, but they have mold that’s why their body is creating diarrhea cause they’re trying to flush out toxins. So, doing the urine once a year would be a good idea and then doing the stool test, we like to use GI Map stool test. We often use that one. And that’s a DNA-based one where we can look at all the different infections people have. We can look at your inflammation to determine well, is it the infection, is it the inflammation, is it both. How’s your pancreatic enzymes function look. Are you eating and reacting to gluten? How’s that look. How’s your fat digestion look. We can get all those pieces of data. Just really at the end of the day a lot of people have these great questions here. But a lot of questions are… they’re too general, and really you need a clinical data. You need to see the answer… the question, do I need probiotics daily. Well, I don’t know. Why don’t we look at your bacteria flora, and if you’re low across the board, the answer would be yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One hundred percent. So in general for everyone who’s traveling and has a food poisoning issue or wants to be careful, it could be a food poisoning where food poisoning could mean like there’s just mold in the food, there could be some E. coli in there. Then you upgrade to like infections like h pylori and actual parasites, there could be a little bit longer lasting that aren’t gonna go away at night and then you obviously have food allergens and the inflammation from food allergens. Whether its glute, whether it’s the junkie vegetable oils, MSG, those kinda thing. So, typically the charcoal, the enzymes, the HCL are great for binding up the bad foods and maybe the infections. If you have the issues and they’re acute, you wanna hit the GI Clear 4, GI Clear 5, oil of oregano, Goldenseal, higher dose or berberine. Those things are gonna be great. Higher dose probiotics lactobacillus bifidobacter, enzyme, HCL, activated charcoal with the food at that point. We do not worry about taking charcoal before meals when we are eating questionable foods or when we are sick. We try to bind things up. And prevent excessive diarrhea and such.
Evan Brand: Yeah there was a question earlier about like a shilajit and fulvic acids. I used a product that has charcoal and fulvic acid in it and shilajit as well. And its from Beyond Balance that’s a practitioner company. You need a practitioner to order that. But it’s a product that we use called tox-e bind. And it’s a binder. Very very helpful. So I’m using that personally and have a really good experience with it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, I love that. Very good. Well,today was a great chat, man. Excellent. If you guys enjoying the podcast, make sure you head over to Evanbrand.com. Evan’s got some great information there. Really good stuff. Justinhealth.com as well to reach out to me. And of course, you can schedule consult with Evan and myself if you want to dive in deeper. And if you’re enjoying these guys, smash the like button, hit the share, hit that bell so you get notifications. We appreciate connecting with you all and we will be back next week. You guys have a phenomenal day, talk soon.
Evan Brand: Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Take care, Evan. Bye.
Evan Brand: Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/water-pitcher
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-solutions-for-food-poisoning-podcast-231
Stomach Acids, Enzymes and Insulin-Driven Issues and Supplementation | Podcast #191
Welcome to today’s live podcast with Dr. J and Evan Brand! Watch as they dig into the different issues concerning gut health and supplementation, like Insulin-driven skin problems, malabsorption, enzymes, kidney stones, detoxifying and other digestion-related topics they randomly answer.
Stay tuned for more functional health information, and don’t forget to share!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
02:15 Estrogen and Insulin-Driven Skin Issues
05:50 Enzyme Synergy Versus Digest Synergy
10:00 When to take what Supplements
16:25 HCl, Enzymes and Digestive Supplements
19:49 Organic Buckwheat Crisp
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Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, there! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Evan Brand is here in the house as well. Evan, how is your Father’s Day, man?
Evan Brand: Oh, dude, Father’s Day was great. It was my second. Was this your first…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …Father’s Day?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I may— I guess it’s my First. My— My son last year at this time was in my wife’s belly…
Evan Brand: [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …I think six months— s— so, six to seven months in. So he was still— he was still alive and kicking, so it felt like my second. But, yeah. It was great. I got this awesome little gift from my wife.
Evan Brand: What did you get?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This. She made this little thing…
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] Oh! Dude, that’s great!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and then that’s me with him. That’s Aden right there.
Evan Brand: Oh, man.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And he’s a super little healthy dude. [crosstalk] Really healthy…
Evan Brand: Actually nice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But yeah. That’s— Melts my heart. [inaudible]
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] Yeah. Your wife was uh— Your wife was showing me his swimming skills when I was over at your house so we went to the pool. Uh— He— He’s doing pretty good for a little guy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He’s doing great. I, too, took him out to a steak restaurant in Austin, and he had a little meltdown halfway through. He forgot to check his diaper. Like— It’s this like…
Evan Brand: Uuuh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …the most obvious thing sometimes.
Evan Brand: [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s like phew!
Evan Brand: [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But he was eating a whole bunch of steak
Evan Brand: That’s amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. He just crushed it. And the thing is he has had no real exposure to sugar outside of like having berries so it’s really interesting because he is totally carnivorous, will choose meat over anything else. Where— I see lots of other parents, where their kids are getting like lots of these like eating Yogurt, sweetened things, a lot of juices. I really feel
Evan Brand: Do you do uh— applesauce with them?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— Actually, we’ll just cut up apples.
Evan Brand: But no applesauce?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— In the beginning, we did a little bit but not much. I mean, we do like a little bit of mashed sweet potatoes or mashed Avocado. Uhm— But no, not a ton of applesauce. He’s able to just— We do a lot of
Evan Brand: That’s smart.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: That’s smart.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, absolutely. So I know we only have a little bit of time today so we’re gonna just do a live Q&A. We had a couple of questions here. So, we’re gonna just dig in. Let’s go through them.
Evan Brand: yes, let’s do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh— Gabe writes in, “Lately, my wife spends seeing more tiny moles started to appear on her face. Any explanation why?” So,
Evan Brand: Yeah. You got— You always got to start with the diet. I think that’d be the most simple thing, right? Make sure…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: …she got like a Paleo template to start with, she’s regulating Insulin, and there’s always other root causes that could affect Insulin too. Like gut issues can affect blood sugar, which could affect these Moles.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. So I would always look at the— the blood sugar, the quality of food. I’d look at pesticides and chemicals in the environment. I want to make sure those things are under control. And then, of course, you know, the gut’s a mirror of the skin. So,
Evan Brand: Good point.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— But— Yeah. But, you know, a lot of the herbs we may use. Like in my
Evan Brand: Yeah. You— You kind of briefly mentioned some of your supplements, but I want people to understand that uh— you know, part of your goal is to provide professional grade supplements to people even if they’re not your clients or patients. So if you guys tune in to this in the future, if you’re tuning in right now, you can go check out justinhealth.co— justinhealth.com. There’s an entire library, basically online natural pharmacy so to speak, of various nutraceuticals and things that Dr. J has formulated. So when he says like, “Hey! My GI Clear 4,” that’s what it means. And you can go check out those formulas. So, we’re always happy for people to piece together these herbs but,
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks, Evan. Thanks for the plug. And then,
Evan Brand: Yep. Good advice. Uh— Let’s go over here to uh— Juan. He was asking, “A Glutathione injection, is it great in an IV?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh— IV, I think is great if it’s— if it— if you have a really acute exposure. The problem is most people can’t afford or do an IV daily. So, I think an IV, acutely, is a good situation,
Evan Brand: That’s far smarter. You don’t need an IV. I think an IV is unnecessary because of the Liposomal technologies.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Evan Brand: Yeah. I agree.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then, uh— Charlie writes in, “What’s the difference between Enzyme Synergy and Digest Synergy?” Uhm— Digest Synergy, basically has some different types of acids and a little bit of Pepsin. It— It’s lower on the HCl and has
Evan Brand: Yup. Good. Good. Good, good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Both great products. So here’ another one from uh— Juan, “I took Lamisil. It worked great for my fingernail, fungus and toenail fungus. How can I detoxify my liver from the medication? I tried other things like T3, Oil Oregano, oil, and nothing worked.” Well, first, uh— I mean, you give me your two cents here, Dr. J, but I would say, you got to get tested. I mean, you’ve got to take a look at your liver. If you’re concerned, and you want to detoxify, why don’t you look at your
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: …before you go down some like liver detox program. You might not need that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think that’s great. And then, if you’re really having a hard t— You said, “I took Lamisil. It worked great on your fingernail fungus and toenail fungus.” So you’re saying— I
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup, well said. Let’s go over here. Uh— Don’t know who this is. Kind of weird name. Uh— “Small amounts of Calcium citrate a meal’s okay with kidney stones?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, with
Evan Brand: I don’t think you want Calcium, period. Nora Gedgaudas, a mutual friend of ours, has a great article on Calcium. You really just don’t need Calcium supplementation uh— hardly, ever.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, basically, Calcium citrate does reduce the risk of oxalate deposition in the kidneys. So does the Potassium. So does Magnesium. I just rather be using Magnesium and Potassium personally. Uh— it’s harder to get those minerals,
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Let’s keep going here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I had a large in my back. It fell off after Keto and fasting. Totally makes sense. That’s all about Insulin, right?
Evan Brand: That’s cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. Makes a lot of sense. Seen that before.
Evan Brand: Here’s Tom. I’ll read this one for you. “Vitamin D, trying to optimize absorption one meal a day in the evening. Should I take Vitamin D on an empty stomach or with the meal in the evening and risk melatonin interference? Any suggestions?”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean, I would just try to do it in the morning because it makes sense. Vitamin D is typically gonna happen when the Sun’s up, not when the Sun’s down so try to time it in the morning. If you forget, as long as you can take it, and it’s not gonna mess up your sleep and you can relax and wind down, I think it’s fine. A lot of my
Evan Brand: Yep. Sounds good. Keep going here. Anita, “Can you talk about the best time to take probiotics, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Biotin, Zinc? Is it too much to take all together with a meal?” The answer is no. You can take all of that together. The main issue is standing here. So first, I’ll have my two cents. You need to get…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …your Ferritin look there. So, I’d get a blood panel run to look for Anemias ‘cause you can take these magic— magical mira— miracle supplements like Biotin, which every woman under the sun is taking now, and it might not resolve your hair uh— thinning issue. So get the blood work done. Investigate, first of all, and then, in terms of probiotics, we always recommend that you do those on an empty stomach or maybe around bedtime, because then you’re not competing with stomach acid. So, the probiotic can kind of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I would just say, anything mineral or amino acid-wise, do it with the food and I’m fine with it. Probiotics, empty stomach, unless, let’s say, acid resistance strain like Omega Support, that can be done with food.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Uh— Let’s go over to Oliver here. Would drinking Water Kefir with mears— meals help or hinder digestion as regular water would?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— I would just say, it probably would help ‘cause a lot of the Kefir
Evan Brand: Yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a pretty good rule of thumb. And also, do you feel undigested? But when your digestion is more compromised, you got to be by the book. When your digestion is less compromised, you can have a little bit more uh— latitude in what you do. But as long as you feel good, you’re okay.
Evan Brand: Yup. Let’s keep going here. What’s your time? I know we got— How many minutes more do you have like?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We got five more minutes.
Evan Brand: Okay. Uh— Here’s a question from uh— Charlie. Can you just do the H. pylori part of the diagnost— diagnostic solutions test? The GI Map is too expensive. Charlie, I don’t know if you can do it on the GI Map. I know you can with BioHealth. You can do just an H. pylori antigen. However, I would hardly not recommend you do that because if you’re gonna spend money, period, to get any testing done— you know, whether it’s Dr. J or my protocol, our protocols are very importantly based on having a full picture. So imagine like trying to estimate what your— what a puzzle is just by looking. What’s that analogy where you look at the tail of something and you’re like you have no idea there’s an elephant in the room ‘cause all you saw was the tail.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Yeah. It’s basically you’re walking in around— you’re walking in there blind, or you’re just each person stealing the part…
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …of the elephant trying to guess what it is, right? And, there’s also an assumption too. The assumption is, “Oh, I treated the H. pylori— or I treated the other parasites. I only had the H. pylori. Therefore, I only want to look at that.” And a lot of times, you may have other infections that come back on the retest ‘cause these infections were barred in deeper into the gut lining. So you want to rule that out.
Evan Brand: Well, use me as an example.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: I— I had Crypto. I had Giardia. We came up with the protocol and guess what? On the retest, the parasites were gone and H. pylori showed up. So then I had to do a second protocol to kill H. pylori ‘cause it was barely in.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, some people like ninety or a hundred percent of their symptoms go away. Okay. Fine. You know, you’re feeling amazing. You only want to test for one thing. Money’s tight, fine. But, if not, I will always retest the whole thing, just to be in the safe side.
Evan Brand: Okay. Okay. Yup. I would agree. If so, how much is it? Uh— Pricing varies. Pricing changes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You can go to my site, GI Map test cash is 3.99 and then, we provide the superbill codes so you can always submit it with insurance and you can also use
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Uh— Let’s see here. Gabe, “Uh— I like to make my 7-year old smoothies, which he enjoys (he does look a bit underweight) Is it okay to add a bit of your guys’ Collagen…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: …and protein pow— Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm— [crosstalk] Of course, without a doubt.
Evan Brand: Super high-quality. Uh— “Iron.” This is a question from Michelle, “Iron-68, Ferritin-51 after a high-dose Vitamin C IV, which resulted in oxalates everywhere. It caused hair loss too. Trying to recover. All those levels suboptimal? I feel oxalates were chelating minerals.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t know. Those le— Those levels are good.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I think so.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Again, I like to see Iron saturation in your— in your UIBC and TIBC, but overall, those look good.
Evan Brand: Yep. Uh— Mike, “I got my Viome Test in 23andme Test done. Just wondering which other labs I should run? (many health symptoms)” Mike, you got to get an adrenal test run uh— Justin and I would point you towards the Dutch, which is
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: …BioHealth #201 CAR…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.
Evan Brand: …Adrenal panel. And also, we would recommend you would get the GI Map. The Viome Test sounds sexy and the marketing is great but the
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m gonna go
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …really smart guy. But I mean, they’re just on his Viome test. They’re just recommending foods to put there like your gut bacteria back in the balance. And it’s like— It’s like sweet potato, Avocado, Romaine lettuce. It’s like really like is that gonna be the key? ‘Cause there’s always people that I’m already seeing. They’re already eating a really good Paleo template where they’re getting a variety of those kinds of foods are ready.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— I just don’t— I—
Evan Brand: Yep, right. Just a couple more then we’ll wrap up here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Josh, “Can long-term Ox bile cause problems? I’m having less bloating with eating fat but much more constipation than some nausea.” I’m guessing he means while taking Ox
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, I want to know. Are you taking Hydrochloric acid and enzymes with it? I want to make sure that’s dialed in. I want to make sure that you actually got to the root cause of your low bile issues. So, were you having a lot of gallbladder issues, or are you having a lot of floaters? If you were and that helped, that’s a good sign. You can always taper off the bile a little bit and see if that helps. But make sure the HCl and enzymes are there, and then also make sure that you really fully address the gut issues ‘cause sometimes parasites like Giardia and stuff can kind of cause bile issues, so can SIBO. So I’d want to make sure all of the root issues are addressed but all the other digestive secretions are also supported as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. Uh— Digestive supplements are great but there’s a reason you’re having to use those to mitigate symptoms. So there’s probably something under the hood. Uh, Shanice, uh— “Which herbs are best to treat H. pylori?” There’s a ton. We use many different ones.Dr. J’s got a whole line that he uses for H. pylori. I’ve got a whole line that I use for H. pylori. So, it depends because if it’s just H. pylori by itself, which is pretty rare, usually there’s uh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo!
Evan Brand: Uh— I want to see. Don’t think we could just give you a list and then, you throw it together and have success. You need to get tested.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. But in general, like Mastika’s gonna be uh— one that’s used for a while. I like Clove. I like Berberines. In my line, it’s like GI Clear 2. It’s my H. pylori killer. But you really want to get treated ‘cause most people very rarely just had H. pylori so you don’t want to fall for that.
Evan Brand: The domestic gum, yeah, that is one thing you could—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …you could throw at it and it could definitely help mitigate it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Mastic gum has adaptogenic qualities too so it is a very safe herb too.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep. Absolutely.
Evan Brand: Yeah. “There is Candida too,” she says, so yeah. That— That’s very common.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly! So you want to combine that. And then Josh writes in, “No floaters but uh— no poor Steatocrit on my GI Map.
Evan Brand: Good.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So that’s a good sign. So uh— I don’t know why you’re pushing
Evan Brand: Yep. I just want to add two more cents to the question…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …form Shanice about the H. pylori. And then, she said
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …which generally does in a Candida Overgrowth. So it’s very common. I’d say, 90+ percent of the time, we see Candida and H. pylori together.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes! One hundred percent.
Evan Brand: Uh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Cha— Charlie says Dr.J have you killed H. pylori with your patients in 30 days using GI Clear 4?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— I would never do it by itself, but if I were to do a minimalist protocol, I would do at least GI Clear 4 and 2, or typically, 1, 2 and 4. One (1), 2, and 4, or if there’s Yeast along with it, we’ll do 1, 2 and 5. So, it just depends on what other stuff is going on, but 2 has to be in there. And if there’s no Candida, I would probably throw a 4 in there with it ‘cause it’s very high in Berberine and Goldenseal.
Evan Brand: And— And just to also add ‘cause I know how you work. Uh— You’re likely gonna be doing some type of adrenal support, potentially, some binders [crosstalk] or detox for it too. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo.
Evan Brand: Uh— We— We can’t just come in and kill, kill, kill! Uh— We got to support the other body systems or you won’t make it through the protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, most people, you know, they’re used to like, “Oh! I have chapped toe. It’s antibiotics.” Or, “Oh, hey! I get an STD. Here’s—
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. Let’s wrap up if you’re ready.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then, hold on. One last thing, “Organic Buckwheat Crisp because of bre—” Uh— So, yeah. Buckwheat is more of a root, so it tends to be okay. But if you’re Gluten-sensitive, definitely cut it out for a month. But that could be something you try to add back in. And then, Ali Mo writes in, “Is
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s how it works.
Evan Brand: M— My uh— My— I just saw that coming— come through about the Buckwheat. My comment would be that it is a cross-reactive food. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Can cross-react.
Evan Brand: Uh— Your body can still think that it’s Gluten and could still trigger an autoimmune issue or something. Or if you ar— already have autoimmunity, you probably need to step away from buckwheat and its— and the other
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. At least an AIP Protocol for uh— a month, and then you can add it back in. Don’t make it a staple, but if you want to have it a couple of times a week, uh— I’m okay with it. Just make sure it’s— you know, your issues are under control and you add it back in methodically.
Evan Brand: Yeah. And if your gut is healthy, you might be able to get away with it. If your gut’s not healthy, you may have a flare of some sort. You just have to pay attention.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very cool. Hey, I like that picture of the bird over your right shoulder there.
Evan Brand: Oh, thanks, man. Yeah. I took that picture. Let’s say uh— female cardinal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Evan Brand: I got a bunch of uh— whenever you come over to my house, I’ve got a bunch of canvasses everywhere of pictures I’ve taken of different birds and stuff over the years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and you recommended that bird idea. Bright…
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] Oh! You’ve got birds in?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [crosstalk] …a lot of kind of birds.
Evan Brand: Oh, yeah. I was playing actually. I heard a pileated woodpecker, which is the largest woodpecker in North America, the other day, about this tall. I heard him calling so I got out the bird app and I played the song— his song. And then, he flew in to go see who is singing. And, he flew right over my head.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, my gosh! That is cool, man. Yeah, the older I get, I kind of get into things like that. Like when I was younger, I was like, “Who cares?” But now, I’m like, “Oh! That’s cool.” [crosstalk] It’s cool watching birds.
Evan Brand: I love watching birds. I love birds, trees. Yeah, I love it all.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, man. Oh, hey! Today was a great chat. Appreciate it. We’ll be back next week, my man.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Tell— Uh— Tell people about the— the links.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. So, uh— click below for the Thyroid Summit, thyroidresetsummit.com. And also, Evan’s got his summit going on right now, justinhealth.com/candida. [emphasis] justinhealth.com/candida, to get signed up for Evan’s [crosstalk] Candida summit.
Evan Brand: I got to go check out. Go check out the Candida Summit ‘cause we had a couple people in here talking about gut issues.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And we need to get you a link for your— for my— for the summit for me, so then you can get some credit there.
Evan Brand: For sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, man. Hey! Great chat with
Evan Brand: Bye.
——————————————————————————————————
REFERENCES:
https://justinhealth.com/healthy-living-store/
Viome a Breakthrough in Gut Microbiome Testing with Naveen Jain Viome Founder Metatranscriptome
https://thyroidresetsummit.com/
http://www.justinhealth.com/candida
Using Spore-based Probiotics (Sporebiotics) to Improve Your Health – Podcast #157
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand talk about spore probiotics and their importance in modulating the immune system. Learn about Th1 and Th2 immune system, understand the negative effect of vaccines on them and know the role of probiotics in the imbalances created by vaccines.
Gain information on some of the probiotics strains and know how their acidity and timing of intake impacts absorption. Discover the answers and explanations to questions about lectins and digestive enzymes in relation to probiotics.
In this episode, we cover:
03:00 EMF’s and Infections
06:29 L. Gasseri and Histamine
09:16 Th1, Th2 immune system
18:55 Paleo template and IBS
24:48 Lectins
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yo, yo, yo! It’s Dr. J here in the house. It’s a great, magnificent Monday. I got my little Topo Chico, a little sparkling bubbles here. Evan, how was your weekend, man?
Evan Brand: Oh, life is good. I don’t remember the weekend. The weekends are so weird once you have a baby. I’m sure you figured out the same thing. The weekend is just like, it go by and then all of a sudden, it’s Monday again. And I just love working so much that it’s like, “Oh, it’s Monday, my favorite day of the week.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I feel the same way, too. I love Mondays coz I love getting back in the swing and creating content and seeing patients and getting all these uh—great feedbacks of people getting better or you know, you get challenging cases that really cause you to roll up your sleeves. So I definitely like that, for sure.
Evan Brand: Me too. And how was it for you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was great. Uhm—this weekend, my wife—coz we’ve been—we had a baby like a month and a half ago, it’s the August 21st and for the first, she went out Friday and Saturday night. And I had babysitting duty. It was great.
Evan Brand: Oh man, I’ve never done that myself_ the 15th month old.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not yet? Yes. She went out and she gave me a bottle, you know breast milk in a bottle. And just gave me uh—you know, a little bottle but, you know, it created a little balance there because she’s been basically breast-feeding often on every hour or two for the last six weeks. It’s hard because she was—
Evan Brand: Did she text you the whole time missing the baby?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, I was kinda giving her updates. But she was feeding, doing the SNS and then pumping and then the time that all finished, the next feeding started in 45 minutes. You can imagine that for five or six weeks. It’s really hard. Now it’s getting like two hours after or an hour and a half to two hours. So now it’s like, “Oh, it’s getting a little bit better.” You know, two hours, you can at least close your eyes and get a little bit of be restorative sleep in there. So that’s good.
Evan Brand: That’s great. Cool. So you were uh—you were the babysitter.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it, man.
Evan Brand: That’s awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Life is— it’s crazy how life is, man. Just things continue to evolve and you get satisfaction out of different things. You wouldn’t think it. Holding your baby and having them smile at you or just hold your finger whatever could be that satisfying but—ain’t it funny how that all changes?
Evan Brand: I know, man. It’s great. It’s like DNA trick. So we’ll take care of them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Now, we wanted to talk today about the probiotic, speaking of DNA. We want to talk about probiotics. And probiotics—again, we’re gonna hone the topics. We talked about probiotics before but we’re gonna really address the area of spore probiotics which are like the cell walls of the specific spores called bacillus spores. There’s a couple that we use in our clinic called Bacillus Clausii Subtilis and Coagulans. Bacillus Coagulans, Subtilis and Clausii. Those are the big ones that we use and these are the basically the cell wall of these kind of bacteria which is the spore. And they have an awesome, awesome benefit of modulating the immune system. Couple other things we find – a lot of these microbes in our body— fungus and bacteria and parasites— EMF’s or electromagnetic frequencies have a real negative effect on making these infections worse. And what refining is some of these bacillus strains, some of the spore strength can really help combat against the negative effects that EMF has with some of these critters. That’s another good benefit. I’ll open up the floor to you here, Evan.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So EMF— I mean I’ve done episodes on this since the inception of the podcast in 2012. So it was five years of talking about it in some shape or form. The more I learn about it, the more that I learned it affects everybody’s systems. So like you just say, uh—I’m gonna say it in a different way. The EMF can actually strengthen the virulence of these infections. So someone’s got parasites, yeast, fungus— we may need to look at bringing probiotics in and really upping and upping and upping the beneficial bacteria to try to counteract the effects of EMF. Now just because you’re not sensitive to EMF, doesn’t mean that it’s not a factor, right? You might not have the headaches or the— the ringing of the ears that a lot of people talk about where the heart palpitations. Like you may not have true EHS like Electronic Hypersensitivity Syndrome or EHS or they have different names for. If you’re not that sensitive, it doesn’t matter. You’re still going to benefit by protecting yourself and protecting your microbes by using either these bacillus spores that we’re going to talk about or just by using other types of probiotics. And at the right time, uh— one thing I wanted you to hit on Justin is talk about the timing of bed and how we can work this in because many people go to whole foods and they buy a probiotic and they take it and then come back to us and they say, “Dr. J and Evan, I took probiotics and I feel worse. What’s going on?” It’s all about timing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. So there’s a couple different things. So a lot of probiotics like your bacillus uh—sorry—your lactobacillus, acidophilus, right? Your bifidobacter kinds of probiotics, right? These probiotics tend to be more acid-sensitive. Now there are some that Evan has in his line that are acid-resistant because during this—this like a sphere that it kind of is acid-resistant. And taking that and kinda get through some of stomach acid. We may also just hide it on an empty stomach to bypass the stomach acid so we can have that bacteria intact when it gets to the small intestines, the colon. And then we can have a lot of benefits with immune modulation. We can have uhm— a lot of benefits of boosting up the healthy bacteria so we get better B vitamin pers—uhm— increase coz we get the good bacteria produce a B vitamins. Also, healthy bacteria, I know with the bacillus strains that we see, one of the great things as it helps convert sugar to vitamin C. And vitamin C is super important for collagen, for immune function, for oxidative stress, right? Oxidation is the apple that you cut open then it sits on the countertop and turned brown or the nail left outside that gets rusty. That’s oxidation. That’s a loss of an electron. Antioxidants like vitamin C can help donate electrons to prevent the oxidative stress. So healthy bacteria and particularly the bacillus strains can really help with the vitamin C uhm— conversion from sugar, which is great. And then your other strains like the bac—like the lactobacillus acidophilus, right? These produce acids, which are great coz acid– acidic environment actually keeps a lot of the bad bacteria and fungus in check from growing. That’s why a lot of people do great with apple cider vinegar. It is like this cure-all because the acetic acid has got a very low pH that makes it really hard for microbes and not so nice microbes to work and also can stimulate your own HCl production as well.
Evan Brand: Yup. We have a question from Haley. She said she read that the strain L Gasseri reduces histamine. Have you ever heard of this? Yes. I have heard of certain strains of probiotics helping to reduce histamine. I don’t know if this is correct, but I remember seeing that the Rhamnosus species—I could try find this journal I had bookmarked— I believe the lactobacillus Rhamnosus was something that actually increase histamine, which is why some people may feel worse. I just found it here. Histamine production by lactobacillus Rhamnosus. And Haley just said she read other strains can increase. Yeah. I’ve read the same thing as well, which is why typically, we’re gonna use a combination. And we’ll likely going to have a blend. So if you’ve got some things that are stabilizing histamine, you’re typically going to counteract the other one that could increase histamine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Again, people that typically are histamine-sensitive, a lot of times probiotics in general can create histamine intolerance. Uhm— so I see a lot of people that will just do a really good, you know, lactobacillus or bifido bacter or lactobacillus plantarum, whatever, like that may cause them to get bloated or gassy. If they are probiotic intolerant, one of the things we go to is we go to a spore-like probiotic because people that are histamine-sensitive tend to be able to tolerate that well. And one thing we like about the bacillus spores is it’s acid resistant. So you can actually take it with food, which can make it a little bit easier to process than taking it may be on empty stomach. So we like that.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Now, like you mentioned, you and I use some specific types of probiotics out there. They can have an encapsulating technology, where you can reserve them.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Evan Brand: So this doesn’t mean that you have to ditch all other probiotics. It just means unless you’re using the formulas that Justin and I have, if you’re not using ours, then you want to use a spore-based because all the other ones, unless it says, “Hey we’ve got some special— if you’re looking at the label— unless it says, “Hey we got a special tableting technology that protects from stomach acid” you’re kinda wasting your money on most of the probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, absolutely. I know the ones that we typically use they will put like colony forming units on there, which you know, that’s like how many probiotics that are in there. There’s a couple of things to look at. Number one is— is that the colony forming units of the probiotic that were put in there when it was bottled? Or how many they expect to be in their expiration one or two years later? So number one, when we put the CFU on that bottle, that’s gonna be how many we expect to be there in 1 to 2 years later when it expires. So, you’re ideally adding so many extra in there. So you’re compensating for potential things that may knock it out like heat or shipping or storage stuff. Just things that are normal with getting that product to the patient. So when you know what’s in the bottle there, you’re typically getting more than what’s in the bottle because we have to make sure we overshoot and compensate for all the little mishaps that may lower it.
Evan Brand: Right. Well said. So, talk about the immune system a bit. You wrote some notes before the show about the TH1 and the TH2 immune system. Can you talk us through that and kinda break down what TH1 is, and 2, which some of us are TH2 dominant in the modern world now mainly from vaccines. And that the TH1 system, this kind of seesaw can be balanced out with the use of these spore probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Great question, Evan. So a lot of people their TH2 immune system is over stimulated and your TH2 immune system— think about it— it’s the antibody-based immune system. It’s the humoral-based immune system. So the whole goal of like your immune system is you have like the front-line defense. This is like the Army Rangers, the Delta team; Seal team six, the Navy SEAL’s, right? These are the people, they get in there first and they make—they make stuff happen, right? These are the guys that go in there first. They radio back and then the infantry comes in second, right? So they give the infantry, they come in a few days later once they got Intel and you know everything’s been surveilled, right? All the special forces, they radio in the special forces are the cytotoxic or the natural killer kind of that cytotoxic first branch of the immune system, the TH1. And the TH2 is kinda more that delayed antibody-based immune system that comes in after the fact. And when we look at what vaccinations do is they boost up to give a little bit of that compound that you’re trying to develop an immune response to i.e. the infantry and you’re trying to boost that up. So you’re trying to keep basically this infantry that’s hanging out, that’s waiting—that’s waiting for that critter to come in. The problem is when you boost up that infantry more, more, more, more, more, more, well, there’s collateral damage that can happen like allergies and other issues on the immune side if you continue to boost it up too high. And that’s why one of the big trade-offs that has happened with a lot of vaccinations over the years is a lot allergies, there’s a lot of ADD, there’s a lot of other parts, a lot of symptoms that can happen just because that a part of the immune system is so over stimulated. And when we dig to some of these bacillus spores, right? That can help knock down the TH2 by boosting up the TH1. Think of it as a seesaw as one side goes up, one goes down. So when you boost that TH2 up so high, you’re basically decreasing that cycotoxic, those Navy SEALs, those Army Rangers, right, that Delta force, right, that were lowering that. So by knocking that seesaw down on the TH2, we do it by boosting up the TH1 and those bacillus force can be super helpful at doing that.
Evan Brand: Yup. And medicinal mushrooms, too. We can stack mushrooms on this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Evan Brand: …with these and we can help modulate TH1. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We can totally do that.
Evan Brand: We got a couple questions. We have one about food combinations, we have one about infrared sauna. Here’s one from Tessa that’s on-topic about probiotics. “Is it good—is it good to take with digestive enzymes?” I guess you’re saying, “Is it good to take digestive enzymes and probiotics together?” My answer would be no. Generally, just because the stomach acid is likely going to kill those. Now even if you are taking a super high professional grade formula like Justin and I are using with you, still, we don’t want to try out a breakdown that technology. If we can preserve those bacteria and get that to the colon, where it’s really gonna do the good thing, I would take your probiotics before you go to bed. Because there’s no competition for stomach acid at that time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup. So I think taking up probiotics in the morning when you get up first thing or before you go to bed at the very end. Take your enzymes with food typically you can do enzymes before meal, too.
Evan Brand: Uh-hmm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm—again, but typically, with the meals also fine as well. And regarding uhm—did you ask about food combining, yet?
Evan Brand: Well, I didn’t read the question yet. I just said best food combinations. Once you can’t go wrong with like meat and salad.
Justin M: Yeah. It’s typically meat and non-starchy. Meat and non-starchy vegetables, chicken and broccoli. Those kind of things. Typically, fruit by themselves. Again, that may cause blood sugar stuff. So, again, I typically only deal with food combining stuff where maybe starch and fruit are eaten a little bit away from things if there’s a lot of digestive issues. And if there’s a lot of like fructose malabsorption, when you really can’t digest much fruit either, fruits gone.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And they may not be able to tolerate much starch. And again, some of these changes when you go lower FODMAP, too. When you go lower FODMAP fruit or lower FODMAP starch that may get better. And if you also up the HCl and the enzymes, some of those symptoms that you may see a relief from when you food combined correctly, right? You may not need that.
Evan Brand: Yup, well said. There were two other things we wanted to mention about the TH1, TH2 system. One, you mentioned like ADD or you know, some type of developmental problems like autistic children, they could have an issue with—with their TH1, TH2 balance. So this is where the spore biotics can come in to the equation and fix it and then also food sensitivities. Now a lot of the stuff gets better, too. You know Justin and I talk so much about parasites things like H. pylori infections, bacterial infections that are suppressing stomach acid. So food intolerances are typically related to the gut, but also, we found that this whole immune system thing can also be a factor and just by getting more beneficial bacteria and the right strains as well, all the sudden food sensitivities go away and you can start adding stuff back in that you used to not be able to tolerate.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Some of that just because there is a little bit of peanut oil sometimes in some of the vaccinations as a preservative and uhm—there’s also uhm—some proteins in there. So a lot of peanuts, you know, peanuts the last 20 years has been a huge one. I mean you can’t even take a lot of times peanuts into a regular elementary school.
Evan Brand: I know. It’s crazy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I think that’s part of it. I there’s a lot of theories that are out there saying that. So, I mean, may not be super hard evidence on it, but we know that the amount of vaccines have, you know, triple, quadruple over the last 20 years since 91 really—1991. That—that could be a driving factor. That would make sense, for sure.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I was glad uh—Eric Berg. He put out a video about vaccines. Did you happen to see that one?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, I didn’t.
Evan Brand: He has a good video. Look it up when you got time. But it was a good video. He was just like, “What’s my take? People asked me.” He’s like, I don’t like him.” And he’s got full list of all the different things that are inside of those and then plus he talks about all the different things that were deemed safe by the FDA like DES that all those women were taking and then you have all these different birth issues—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thalidomide—with the—with the kids with uh very short arms.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And again, on the vaccine, though, too, if you look at—there’s a big study that was done. I think in 2014. But they looked at kinda vaccine dosages across, you know, how many dosage, or how many individual vaccines across all the countries. And I think it was a lot of the Scandinavian countries that had 75% less vaccinations and better health— better overall health.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I mean, I think just kinda keeping in mind that there may be some benefits from vaccines, but it’s not health never comes from a needle. Not just because you get a vaccine, it does not replace sleep and nutrition and hydration and obviously, a cleaner environment, too, which is huge, right? Plumbing and those kinda things make a massive difference when it comes to infectious disease. But these countries show that you know, much less vaccines dosage-wise, huge difference. I mean they were much— you know, far beyond us health-wise.
Evan Brand: Yup. So if you can’t go back in time and change how you were vaccinated as a kid, this could also give you inspiration about how you approach adult vaccines. Coz now I’ve got a lot of clients I know you do, too that are approaching us and asking us about shingles vaccines that the doctors are really pushing hard for people over age 60. And then also the flu vaccines, which I’ve had people who get the flu after they got the flu vaccine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. It’s a live attenuated virus. You look on the vaccine inserts, it’s 20% chance of having flu-like symptoms because of the vaccine. It’s on the insert. I mean this isn’t even controversial stuff, unless you actually go in there and ask for the vaccine insert like I have. And then you just_ the side effects and you say, “Hey, look here’s a side effect right there. And it’s I mean, chills, malaise, headaches, you know, achy, tired—that sounds like the flu to me. What do you think?
Evan Brand: It is. I mean, well, it is the flu. And the issue, too, with the CDC is that when they’re making those flu vaccines, they’re only coming up with certain strains, right? So if there’s another strain outside of the one you got vaccinated for, you’ll still get the flu that year and still feel terrible.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Plus, you’ve got the aluminum and what other preservatives or things in there that are activating that virus for your or—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Totally. So kinda the idea is when the vaccination side is your manipulating your infantry, right? You’re boosting up, you’re getting a special reserve of that infantry that’s gonna be specially trained for that one little critter that comes into your body, which you know, definitely has uhm—some use for. Now, my philosophy is let’s just get your immune system so freaking strong.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s get all these infantry guys lifting weights and— and you know, rock-solid with the nutrition and diet, so then they’re so ready to go. They’re gonna just plow through any critters and that’s kinda what we’re talking about with all the diet, lifestyle, the nutritional support, uhm—the nutrients to up regulate the immune system, the probiotics like mega spore biotics is one that we use. We’ll put a link below for the link here, my store for that. If you wanna see that. It’s the one that I use. It’s a bacillus clausii, subtilis and coagulans strain that can help balance that TH2, drop it out, pop the TH1—that’s great. Uh—also, medicinal mushrooms like __and other herbs, too. Astragalus,__—
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Andrographis, uhm—silver, vitamin D, of course, glutathione. These are all great immune modulators so we can really get that infantry boosted up and stronger, right?
Evan Brand: Yup. Perfect. Rachel, nice to see you. She’s got a question, “My husband was regular before we went Paleo / Primal, but since about two years, he’s slower, no longer pooping daily, we eat lots of veggies, he’s not a stress personality type. Any advice to improve? Justin, what do you think?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, off the bat, very simple. I would look at just increasing a little bit more starch, little bitt of sweet potato that may shift things, number one. Uh—n number two, make sure the veggies are cooked if you’re doing this more raw stuff, and that’s causing him to backup, do a little bit more cooked, steamed, sautéed— that’s number two. Number three, adding some enzymes and HCl. Uhm— and then number three, get your gut looked at. If there’s still issues with maybe dysbiosis. What happens is sometimes that starch can help feed some of that beneficial bacteria and that gets drop-down when the starch goes down. So pop it up a little bit of sweet potato, plantains, squash, may give that good bacteria a little pop. Uh— but in the meantime, it’s just as a palliative. Uhm— not pooping daily, not passing 12 inches of stool daily is not good. You get something called autointoxication where you start to reabsorb a lot of the toxins in your stool. So a little bit of magnesium citrate daily to keep those bowels moving and then taper off uhm— down the road. You know, give yourself a few weeks to kinda make those changes and see if you can be regular on your own.
Evan Brand: Rachel, I believe you’ve got your stool test back from— from me. Uh so look on there, too. Uh—you know, one thing that I would suggest, too, get your husband a stool test and look at the beta glucuronidase enzyme like Justin is talking about with autointoxication piece. We can measure that with the enzyme and we can fix it. Milk thistle and supporting the liver and getting rid of gut bugs but you know, if there’s H. pylori or parasites or other bacterial infections that he could have, you guys could be passing things back and forth. The infections could be slowing down the motility. I just put out a podcast with this guy, Ken Brown, who’s a gastroenterologist and he was teaching me more about methane and how certain species of these uh— bacteria during SIBO cases are actually slowing the bowel transit time. So, literally, bacterial overgrowth could just be the culprit due to the methane production. And of course, he’s selling his supplement to reduce methane but if you just fix the SIBO, that will also get your bowels more regular. So I hope that helps.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Very cool. Well, anything else you want to add about uhm— spore based probiotics?
Evan Brand: I think it’s something that should be in everybody’s toolbox. I don’t know if it’s the silver bullet. I don’t know if it’s the—you know, a lot of people find something that helps them, so then it’s like this is the only thing you can use out there. I still think there’s other benefits to other probiotics that we use, but I do think it should be in everyone’s toolbox and they should at least consider looking at it and potentially using it. Could you just randomly go and take it if you’ve got a bunch of symptoms? What’s your take? I’ve had so many people take probiotics so willy-nilly and they feel worse. So I really think it’s important to get tested first before you spend your money on this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I find that’s— it’s one of those things where it is other deeper issues there. It’s not gonna be a root causal thing, right? There’s too many other things going on in motion. The more other things are happening in motion, and they aren’t stopped or they aren’t addressed, that it may help a little bit, but it may make no difference at all. So I always say get the low hanging fruit under control and then if you want to add it, then great. If you want to work with a functional medicine provider like us that kind of get things lined up for you, make sure everything’s in order, and then add it in. Some patients I see, it really doesn’t change anything; Some patients, it makes it a little difference; some patients, it makes a huge difference. But we’re not ever hanging your hat on one thing, but sometimes one thing can make a big difference but we never expect to. So then we’re always pleasantly surprised if we get one of those great cases.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. Well, I’d say, before we just become a rambling man, we can wrap it up. I think this was a helpful episode for people. Add it to your toolbox, do a little bit of research. I think we may have done other shows. I’m sure we hit on probiotics all the time, but—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think so.
Evan Brand: But if you’ve got, if you’ve got people in your family that have issues maybe they just won’t change the diet, they could potentially get benefit. Maybe if you’re looking for that one thing to try to get someone started into this field of functional medicine, maybe that spore probiotic is the first step. And then maybe that excites them and that encourages them to pursue the diet, the lifestyle, the sleep, the stress, the infections, the testing and all that. If that’s the catalyst, then that’s awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. How we talk about any supplement is in kind of context of a whole program. Like we’re doing all these different things, we’re addressing all these things and then this is another maybe piece that we plug into. We’re not saying, “Oh, we plug this piece into someone who doesn’t—who’s not doing a darn thing.” We’re plugging it into a program.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Where everything is being looked at. So that’s just kind of our context. S if you’re one of these people that aren’t on a program or aren’t doing anything diet or lifestyle wise that’s really healthy and then you think it’s gonna be that magic bullet, just want to make sure we set your expectations accordingly. And just, you know, don’t forget that majority of antibiotics aren’t just true antibiotic prescriptions if they are in the food supply. So being more organic and eating healthy animal products healthy fats, that’s gonna be helpful so you won’t get that antibiotic exposure which will throw off your gut. And healthy gut bacteria, it produces nutrition, right? Uhm— good bacteria eats, poop and poop nutrition. Bad bacteria eats nutrition and poop. In other words, back it up. Good bacteria provides nutrients in your body just like I mentioned with the spores and the vitamin C which then helps with vitamin K which then helps with vitamin D, of course, and healthy bones, too. But it also—the bad stuff produces a whole bunch of crappy toxins. LPS, lithocholic acid, etc. These things help open the gut lining, make your gut a little bit more leaky which then gets that TH2 immune system overreacting because you got all these undigested food particles that you start developing an immune response to. Not so good. That really gets your TH2 now even more jacked up.
Evan Brand: Yup. Well said. We have one question from Neil. He said, “Do you think lectins are an issue?” Some are saying lectins are real problem, other say beans and legumes are one of the common factors of the blue zone areas. The blue zone, for people listening, that’s like the people that are living to 9000+ years old. They are eating a lot of beans and such. “Love the podcasting.” Thanks for the feedback, Neil. Justin and I when we talk about grains, for example, like with rice pressure cookers, the way to do it. If I do any organic white rice, it’s typically like a treat for me. I put it in the pressure cooker I tend to feel much, much, much better. But beans, I don’t really do beans. Justin, what’s your take?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ll do beans every now. Uhm—but like maybe once a month, but it’s all about context. Let me give you, for instance. “Evan, our massage is good for you.
Evan Brand: (laughs) I would say yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, great. Our massage is good for you. Do they feel good when you have a really bad sunburn?
Evan Brand: Oh, not really.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. Well, think of your gut as like a sunburn. Like your gut, it’s all irritated and inflamed with critters. So the more sunburn and the more intense that sunburn is, the more you may not be able to handle things that have lectins or these gut-irritating compounds in them. So the sunburn gets better, you can handle that nice massage. Your gut gets better and healthier and more infection-free and more good bacteria build backup. Could you tolerate a little bit of uh—legumes here and there? Yeah, more than likely. Some may not, right? There’s not a be-all end-all thing but some may. So it’s all about the context. Typically, the less inflamed you are, the better ability you have to adapt to a stressor like lectins, for instance.
Evan Brand: Yes. So now I’m gonna say the guys name because I don’t want to give them anymore—uh—anymore press he deserves. But there’s a lot of anti-lectin people out there—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: And it’s just like, to me, it’s a sales pitch. It’s probably gonna sell a lot of books coz it’s like, “Oh, my God! Plants are bad for you.” And then I had people emailing like, “I might as well just starve to death. I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that. I might as well starve to death.” And I just—I’m not a fan of any—I’m not a fan of promoting things that instill fear in people. I agree with your analogy. I miss your analogies, by the way. That was a good one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was a good one, right?
Evan Brand: Did you come up with that right on the spot?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Off-the-cuff, man. It’s how my brain thinks. If I can’t create that analogy, if I can’t wrap my head around it, I can’t expect, too, either.
Evan Brand: Well, that was a good one. And so back to my point. I don’t want to instill fear upon people. I agree with your—your strategy and your analogy. Lectins— sure, if you did beans and rice every day, maybe you could have some issues. But if you’re infection-free, your adrenals are healthy, you’re going to sleep on time, you’ve got good relationships, you like your job, you like your boss, you’ve got a great spouse, like you could probably do more lectins, more rice, more beans whatever. And maybe you could get away with it and feel okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. If it was in your 80-10 or 80-20 or 90-10, yeah, you know, it’s part of your 10 or 20, you probably would be okay, borrowing all the things you said.
Evan Brand: Yup. I’m sure we can ramble on about that point. That was a great question, though. Uh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then, also, too, certain foods and have more lectins. Of course, grains are going to be the bigger offender, right? And then you know, you have your legumes, right? Your beans or lentils, but you know, just soaking them has a huge reduction in getting those lectins down. And even vegetables that do, just cooking them can have a huge effect on reducing some of them. So a lot of times, it’s not just the sheer amount. It’s well, how can you prepare to reduce those lectins as well.
Evan Brand: Yup. The pressure cooker for me has been a game changer for the rice.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And just the Paleo template or autoimmune template is a start. I think has probably the best effect at reducing most of those right there, off the bat.
Evan Brand: Yup. Tessa had a question. “My brother has celiac disease. Are probiotics a good idea in his case?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, you—you’d wanna really do a bunch of things, but would probiotics be a part of that plan? Yeah, absolutely. You do a six-hour protocol with this. You’d remove the bad foods. You replace enzymes, acids. You would repair the gut lining and the adrenals and the hormone systems. You remove the infections. You retest or you repopulate healthy probiotics, then you retest.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I agree. Celiac is quite a bit—celiac is the manifestation, but there’s probably 5-6-7 puzzle pieces that have to be laid out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: Probiotics maybe 5% of the equation, it may be 15%, who knows until we—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And if you add in some good probiotics, like in my line Probio Flora or something like that. Would that be helpful? Yes. But if he did it in conjunction with drinking his wheat beer and continuing to eat grains all day, it may be like using—it may be like using a beautiful golden nail on some rotten wood. It’s just like, “Argh, it’s not enough.”
Evan Brand: Right. You got to go deeper. Even the diet— we’ve had celiac clients and patients that come to us where even the diet is not enough because it got infections that are tearing apart that gut lining, creating that leaky gut situation and they’re reacting to everything. So even the Paleo or a gluten-free diet may not be enough. And usually it’s not. That’s why we do what we do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bingo. Love it, man. Hey, let’s chat again real soon. We got information coming up for our listeners. Have a great rest of the week, Evan.
Evan Brand: Take care. You guys, if you need to reach out, justinhealth.com evanbrand.com We are available.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if you like the audio quality, guys, give us the thumbs up. We’re making some tweaks, we’re making some changes. Give us a share. Sharing is caring. We appreciate it. Leave a comment below. We wanna know what you think about. Give us feedback. You drive kinda what we want to talk about next and we’ll answer those questions to you, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Don’t be a lurker. Give us some comments. Your comments are our oxygen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I don’t want you creeping in those YouTube post. We want you out there kinda getting some good info. We appreciate it.
Evan Brand: Alright. Take care.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Evan, take care, man. Bye.
References:
https://justinhealth.com/products/megasporbiotic/
https://justinhealth.com/products/probio-flora/
https://www.drberg.com/blog/the-truth-on-vaccines
Enzymes and digestive support – Dr. J and Evan Podcast #127
Dr. Justin Marchegiani and Evan Brand discuss about enzyme, its uses to the body, as well as its impact on digestion and overall health. Listen to them as they go into the enzyme mechanism related to gut issues such as infections and heartburn.
Know about the acidity levels that may have positive or negative effects to one’s digestion. Gain valuable insights regarding the different topics asked by the listeners which include hiatal hernia, PPIs, and antibiotics. And learn more as these functional medicine experts share their knowledge about diet and supplements that have huge effects on enzyme production and stimulation.
In this episode, we cover:
2:13 Enzyme Production
6:10 Gut issues and heart burn
12:30 Symptoms involved with enzyme and acid issues
24:05 Hydrochloric Acid (HCl)
30:05 Types of enzymes
35:48 Antibiotics and gut health
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there! It’s Dr. J and Evan today. We got an awesome podcast. It’s a great Friday. We are live, too. So anyone’s that tuning in and wants to get some questions asked and/or answered, we are stoked to be able to do that. Today’s topic is gonna be on enzymes and how they can be used therapeutically to help with digestion and to overall improve your health. Evan, what’s going on, man? Happy Friday.
Evan Brand: Happy Friday! It’s beautiful here, the trees are blooming. It is freezing, though. We went from 70° to like 30° so – uhm, hopefully spring is coming because I’m ready to get outside again as soon as possible and go for an extended distance hike.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And people on Facebook here, if you’re not hearing Evan , do your best to head over to the YouTube channel. YouTube.com/justinhealth and click on the live view so that you can see Evan’s beautiful mug staring back at you and get your questions answered. I’ll try to be able to answer questions on Facebook as well as YouTube. So feel free and ask.
Evan Brand: Perfect. So enzymes – where should we start? I mean this is the importance of health; this is the – this is important for longevity; this is important for preventing or reversing disease because you’ve got to build a breakdown of foods with enzymes to be able to actually absorb the nutrients. Time and time again, you and I run organic acids panels on people where we look at amino acid metabolites and we look at these other biomarkers where we find that people are just not digesting their food and they’re not absorbing or assimilating any of their nutrients despite them spending hundreds of dollars a month on food, and organic food. Or they are on AIP diet, and they’re buying grass-fed beef and organic veggies but yet, they’ve got all these symptoms because they have low enzymes. So they could have hormonal imbalances; they could have fatigue; they can have excessive hunger; they could have sugar cravings and carb cravings all which could be tied into this enzyme deficiency because they’re just not breaking down their food; they’re stressed; they’re not chewing their food well. We’re kinda break all this down today.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. I love that. So off the bat, let’s talk about how your body can actually make an active enzymes first. I think that’s a really important first step. So enzymes are primarily gonna be stimulated through the digestive processes and primarily the parasympathetic nervous system. So the more your nervous system is parasympathetic, right? That’s the – the rest in digest. The more you’re gonna have a nice low pH in your stomach. You’re gonna have gastrin stimulated. All these gastric juices uhm – coming about. That’s gonna lower the pH coz a lot of enzymes are actually pH driven. So if we don’t hit that first domino of parasympathetic nervous system stimulate the nice low pH and the nice low pH is from hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid kinda also has the sterilising effects. So if you get some bad, kinda junkie food in there, it’s gonna have like an effective taking maybe you some bleach and putting it on a public pit. It’s gonna help clean it up. So it’s gonna be more sterile environment. So think of hydrochloric acid as like a bleach in your tummy. And also activates the proteolytic enzymes. It starts with pepsin, it takes pesinogen to pepsin. So it gets the digestive enzymes going. And that nice, low pH, all that food gets mixed up with the hydrochloric acid and eventually goes down in your small intestine at least as chyme. And then it stimulates the pancreas to produce more enzymes in the gallbladder to produce more bile which will help with fat. So that’s kinda first domino reaction and it starts with the parasympathetic nervous system response, and it starts with having good hydrochloric acid levels. Now, one thing to talk about here, “How can we stimulate our own juices?” Number one, chewing your food well is gonna be super important. Making sure you really chew, one chew per tooth is a pretty good rule of thumb. Number two is making sure you’re in parasympathetic state – not eating and not being on the go or eating when you’re in the car. Have a good relaxation kind of state. Number three, making sure you’re hydrated coz a lot of the digestive juices come from the liquids that you eat. And then number four, not consuming water for the sake of hydrating while you are eating. The more you consume water while you’re eating, think about it- water has got a pH of 7. 7 is going to take the pH in your gut at 2 and bring it up close to the 7. So these enzymes are pH driven. So the lower the pH, the more the enzymes are activated the more water you drink in the meal, the more you dilute the enzymes that are already there, the more you raise the pH and you deactivate future enzymes from being produced. What do you think, Evan?
Evan Brand: Yeah. So people wanna know the number about the stomach. It is very, very acidic. 1.5 sometimes 1.2 to 3 is the range of the pH. I mean this is so intensely acidic that if you opened up that HCl out of your stomach and put it on your shoe, it would melt your shoe into piece.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Evan Brand: You’ve gotta have that. And I wanna just repeat that because you said it well, but in order to activate pepsin in your other enzymes to break down the protein, you’ve got have an acidic enough stomach. You’ve gotta have enough HCl production.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Evan Brand: And so you’ve got have parietal cells in there that are making the HCl. But if you’re in sympathetic fight or flight mode because your body thinks you’re running from a bear even though it’s just running from email, or you’ve got a bad boss, or you’ve just got some bad news, or you’re eating during a meeting, or you’re eating at your work desk. You know these are all things that are not going to trigger that –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: You’ll be setting yourself up for you know, tummy trouble. And we can talk about some of the implications of what happens if you have this hypocholorydia state which is a low stomach acid state that basically set you up for infections and things like that which we’ll get into.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And again, we got questions coming Facebook and I apologize. People on Facebook are only seeing one side of the conversation here. But – Hey, Steve, how you doing? Off the bat with the gastric ulcer situation. If people have an ulceration or have gut lining issues in the stomach, one of the first things we do off the bat, if we know that history is present, we’re gonna use gut healing and soothing nutrients first. We’re gonna use bone broth, we’re gonna use aloes, slippery elm, deglycyrrhized liquorice, L-glutamine and we’ll kinda coat that stomach there. We’ll make sure the food is well broken down. We may even focus more on the GAPS kind of approach. And add more liquid soups that are really easy and palatable. And we may focus more on enzymes first. Now depending on how someone is doing, how sensitive the gut is can be a good measure of how the gut’s healing. That’s a good sign. So you can start with like a 6 to an 8 to a quarter of the teaspoon of apple cider vinegar with food. Now if you’re gonna add any acids in, you can start with light acid such as Apple cider vinegar, and/or uhm – just plain old organic lemon juice and do it with food because if the stomach is empty, it’s like someone touching your raw sunburnt skin. It is gonna be more sensitive. Put a little food in there, do a nice gentle, very low dose of acetic acid, whether it’ in uhm – apple cider vinegar or citric acid in the lemon. That is a really good step. Quarter of the teaspoon and upwards and gradually work your way up. If that’s good, once you get a full tablespoon and have no problem with food, we can transition you to an actual hydrochloric acid tablet with pepsin. But in the interim, healing, soothing nutrients, and then we taper. We focus more on the enzymes in the HCl because they are less abrasive.
Evan Brand: Let’s back up a bit. Let’s talk about symptoms people may be experiencing if they need enzymes or if they are in this hypochlorydia, low stomach acid state. So I would say, any type of burping or gas after eating, that tells us you’re not breaking foods down.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Huge.
Evan Brand: If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan in the past, a lot of times people go vegetarian or vegan because they say they’ve lost the taste for meat. But in many cases, that just because they don’t have enough stomach acid to digest meat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Evan Brand: And so meat is bad for you, but it’s not. Heartburn – a lot of times people have heartburn but it’s actually too low stomach acid not too much. You’ve got that valve at the bottom of the stomach and it’s kinda regulator. And if your food is not broken down, your body’s smart, it doesn’t want undigested food in the intestines, so if it can’t go down, it’s gonna leak in one place which is up. What about the uh – lower esophageal sphincter? Can you talk about that maybe from like a chiropractic perspective? About how that valve can get stuck open. I mean, can adjustments and massages or stuff help that? Or is that more internal work has to be done?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean you have different issues with the various sphincters that go from the esophagus into the stomach. And then obviously, the stomach into – hold on, one sec. I’ve got a little _ right here. I apologize for that. Okay, so regarding that – you have different sphincters that go from the stomach to the small intestine, from the small intestine to the uh – large intestine. And obviously from the esophagus into the stomach. So the key elements here is we have to make sure the first domino is gonna be the esophagus to the stomach, right? If we don’t have enough acidity, what happens is that esophageal sphincter is they open. So this is one of the major reasons why stomach acid actually helps a lot of people with heartburn. It helps two ways. The esophageal sphincter gets tighten when there is enough acidity. And then number two, food will rot and putrefy and ferments and organic acids will rise up from the food. So if there’s not enough acidity, initially, that esophageal sphincter may stay open, food will rot and then those acids will rise and burn the esophagus. So 2 mechanisms: tightening of the sphincter and the breaking down of the food. If we don’t do that, it rots. So that’s step number one. Step number two, food goes from the stomach to the small intestine. If we don’t have enough acidity, then we’re not gonna trigger the bicarb release from the pancreas when it goes from the stomach to the small intestine. We’re not gonna trigger the gallbladder and we’re not gonna trigger the uhm – the bile salts. Number three, it goes from the small intestine to the large intestine. If we have dysbiosis and low stomach acid and low enzyme environments, we can have ileocecal valve patency where this is kinda the first mechanism of SIBO or the bacteria from the colon will start migrating its way back up to the small intestine and then we start getting all kinds of extra methane and hydrogen gas is increasing. And that’s gonna create more malabsorption, more diarrhea, more constipation, more of those IBS kinda sequela. And then –
Evan Brand: I wanted to ask you one thing. I know we’re – we’re a bit biased because of the people that are coming to us typically they’ve been to 5, or 10, or 20 different practitioners –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Before they get to us which is mind blowing and it’s an honor. What percent of people have a low enzyme state, low stomach acid state, therefore potentially SIBO state? I mean, you and I see bacterial infections. I’d almost say it’s 9/10. But I wanted to see what your number is.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So how many people 9/10 here or out of 10 here do we have bacterial infections? I would say at least half of some type of digestive issue minimum. Uhm – I would say out of the general public, I would say the people that see us I would say a 100% have some level of a gut issue. Even if someone doesn’t know it because – people come, let’s say they don’t have a gut issue, let’s say it’s hormonally driven. If it’s a female, it’s gonna be PMS or mood issues or fog. If it’s a male, it’s gonna be uhm – energy, focus, endurance, exercise, muscle mass, low libido. Again, those issues can be affected by the gut and a couple different mechanisms. And kinda tying it back to enzymes, we always go on our diets here. But if you have enough enzymes and digestive capacity, all the nutrients that make up all the brain chemicals which help us focus and think and deal with stress, also the nutrients that help become our hormones. So the cholesterol and the essential fatty acids they’re gonna become the precursors to our cortisol and our sex steroids. So if we have any digestive issues, any of that could be thwarted by low stomach acid and enzymes. We’re not gonna have the building blocks that we need to – to build a healthy chemicals to help us feel good, deal with stress and inflammation, help rebuild our body.
Evan Brand: Yeah. Just to zoom back out, this cascade, this domino effect you’ re discussing could all happen from you scrolling on Facebook while you’re sitting down to eat your lunch.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: And that’s the important part. So I wanna go back and just mention a few more symptoms of people that you have a need for enzymes and/or increased stomach acid. If you got undigested food in your stool, that’s an easy one. If your stool is floating, that’s an easy one because we know therefore, that the bile is likely not getting secreted potentially due to a low fat or too low-fat diet. So therefore, you’re gonna have that issue. Uh – also fingernails. So Justin and I, we talk a lot about fingernails. So if you’ve got chipping, peeling, very brittle fingernails, you’ve got ridges on the nails, that tells us that digestion is not good. You’re not getting these trace minerals from your food. Uhm – and then last one, we could just say anemia, right? Because if somebody’s got low iron or ferritin levels, we know that they’re eating grass-fed beef or bison or elk and all these delicious foods, but you’re not rice and help knowledge delicious foods but you’re not cleaving off the iron and so you gotta have a lot of acid to do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Couple of just to kinda piggy back on that, you have the fingernail issue, if you run your finger across the other finger, across the arch of it, if you have that’s relatively, you may see some tiny, tiny lines but when you run on your finger, it should be smooth. You shouldn’t see any white spots or little speckles on the finger. That’s a sign of zinc deficiency. Your nail should be relatively strong. If you push it straight down on an axial low position, it shouldn’t really bend. It should stay pretty straight, pretty strong. People that have issues with this, their nails will start to peel. Those are to be more brittle and weak. You’ll start to see vertical ridge and white spots. That’s gonna be your first kind of sign that you’re not quite digesting protein, fat and obviously ionising your minerals especially zinc. That’s number one. Number two, in females, it’s super common, it’s called uhm – keratosis pilaris. So if you look on the females, back in their arm, the tricep here, like this are of the tricep, you’re gonna see this like little dots, like this reddish kinda spots. And this is called uh – Keratosis Pilaris, typically from essential fatty acid deficiencies. And a lot of times if you don’t have enough hydrochloric acid and enzymes, that will show up. So you – you know, you walk through airports or see lots of people, you’re gonna see that commonly on a lot of females’ arms, especially birth control pills can exacerbate it more.
Evan Brand: Why?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh – because it affects digestion.
Evan Brand: Oh – yeah. And my wife for example –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it affects nutrient deficiencies, too. B vitamins, minerals and such.
Evan Brand: So I’ve got two personal anecdotes to what you’re talking about. So when you first looked at me, you say, “Evan, you’ve got a parasite.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Evan Brand: And you said I had two parasites and my nails were terrible. Now they start to get much better because I’ve cleared the infections and now I’m supplementing with enzymes like – you know, it’s water. I love them. I’d take them with every meal. Uh – but also, my wife, when she was on birth control pill as a teenager, she had major Keratosis Pilaris on the back of her arm.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Huge.
Evan Brand: It was crazy. I mean – massive amount. And she thought that, “Oh, my mom had it, so I should have it.” No, that’s not the case. And so now, with the fish oil –high potency fish oil, the enzymes and then making sure the gut’s healthy, it’s gone and it’s amazing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Typically, the birth control pills gonna affect the pH uh –in the – in the intestines primarily the urinary track. That’s one the big things you see with females on the birth control pill. You see increase in yeast infection. They’re gonna affect pH and that vaginal kind of environment. and obviously it can have an effect in the gut, too. So the more you uhm – negative competing opportunistic microbes to kinda invade in there, they’re gonna the shift the environment to be more favourable to them. And that’s gonna take away from the digestion capacity. And the more your digestion is down, harder to breakdown those proteins and fats and ionised minerals. And then you can start getting those deficiencies. That’s why B vitamins, and minerals, and essential fats one of the first deficiency you’ll see on birth-control pill. So tying it back in here, enzymes are super important. Couple of questions from uh – YouTube, pH – like the whole idea pH, I mentioned, people say you wanna be alkaline, the question is where? Where do you wanna be alkaline, right? With the stomach, you wanna be very acidic. In the stomach or in the small intestine, you wanna start becoming alkaline again. As you go back on the colon, you’ll start to be a little more acidic. The urine typically is gonna be a little bit more acidic coz you’re putting more acidic waste out through it. Uhm – you’re gonna have bicarbonate that’s gonna bind with uhm – CO2 in the blood to help rid of the CO2. So you’re breathing out acid via the CO2 and making bicarbonate in the blood. So a lot of pH regulatory systems that are happening. The biggest thing that’s gonna affect pH is inflammation. Inflammation is gonna have an effect on pH a hundred to a thousand times greater than your diet. Uhm – you’ll see –
Evan Brand: Say that again.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Your pH is gonna have about a 100 to a 1000 times more of an effect because of inflammation due to your body, not because of your diet. Now you’re diet – you can have inflammatory things in your diet such as grains, excess sugar and trans fat, but again, meat – people meats are acidic, right? About 5 or so on them. 5- 5 ½ on the pH scale which is logarithmic. But grains are 10 times more acidic than, let’s say meat. And if you listen to my podcast it will be coming in a few weeks with Doctor Robert Rakowski part 2. He talks about that apect. That it’s the inflammatory things in our environment that are creating far more acidity than our diet. But again, healthy green, organic vegetables in every meal, you should be totally fine from the pH perspective and then getting some good extra minerals in your multi-support whether it’s magnesium, potassium, calcium. Those extra buffering mineral should – you should be buying.
Evan Brand: Let’s also bring up alkaline water and how big of a scam and ridiculousness it is to do alkaline water if your goal is to have optimal digestion especially people drinking alkaline water. They buy these expensive machines were they’re pumping of 9 or 10 on the pH scale of water.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: You’re drinking with the meal. I mean, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Now, could there be some type of therapeutic benefit of alkaline water by itself? I don’t really know maybe you’ve got some advice on that. But for me, I’m gonna go with a good spring water or a good reverse osmosis water with trace minerals back in like you do. I mean, for me, the alkaline water, it’s just been debunked so many different places and it’s not worth even talking much more about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’m not a huge fan of alkaline water. The question is anytime someone sells me an alkaline water, I’d say, “What are the buffering minerals that you use to make it alkaline?” And typically, they’re like, “What?” Coz if you got just a really good clean water, I mean, just adding some good-quality electrolytes or a little pinch of high-quality sea salt with the spectrum of minerals, you’re probably gonna be pretty good and that may raise the pH up a little bit. But I’m not concerned about getting up – you know, having super, super alkaline water. I’m fine with drinking water that’s clean and filtered. Infuse some minerals back and I will have a little electrolyte solution. I’d put my reverse osmosis water filter, so I’ll put a little bit of minerals in there first thing in the morning. Or I’ll just – I have a little salt shaker there, too. And I’ll get some extra minerals. And that way, 1 to 2 glasses in the morning, one to two big glasses in the afternoon with infused minerals and just salt my with – with good Celtic or like typically like real salt better just for flavour variety. But that’s a good way to get the minerals. Not a huge fan of you know, these crazy expensive water machines that are alkaline. I think the really high-quality filters are better. And uhm – I like things like Pellegrino and natural sparkling water too because of the extra sulphates that are in there which is so good for detoxification, too.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So, I wanna ask you, chicken or egg question and then we can probably hit some of these YouTube questions about the hiatal hernias and HCL supplementation, all that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: It’s hard to say, did someone get a low enzyme, low HCL state, which then led to undigested food particles, which then were to intestinal permeability or leaky gut, which then set them up for SIBO or parasite infections? Or did the infection come first? Like I told you about yesterday. I had a little four-year old girl that had her stool test back and she had two parasites. And it’s like – being that young, we would assume that HCL and enzyme production would be pretty good, being a tiny little kid. But, she had tons of rounds of antibiotics. So it’s like chicken or egg. Was it the HCL and enzymes that got low that did set her up? Or was it just the decimation of the flora via about antibiotics that didn’t set her up for infections? Which one do you think it is?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes. When it comes to infections, there’s a couple of scenarios how that happens. Number one is your stress. Your immune system is compromised and you get exposed to some infectious debris. And your IgA, your enzymes and hydrochloric acid levels are low and you can’t – you can’t quite – uh, you know, uh – knock it out. It’s just kinda like you leave the drawbridge down in the castle, you’re flying around the Star Trek ship and the force fields are down. So invader can come in, the Klingons can attack, right? Those are my analogies. Now that’s scenario number one. Now scenario number two is you’re relatively healthy and you just get exposed to a large bolus of infectious debris, right? You’re hanging out and you’re drinking some water in Mexico. You’re on the beach in Bali, you’re out in uh – Lake Austin, like I do and maybe someone water comes in your mouth, and you get some GERD, right? So those are the two major scenarios. And it’s – number three is uhm – I would just say food vector, the compromised immune vector.Those are gonna be the two biggest ones. There’s a couple of out there – ones and that’s gonna be the animal vector. You’re just getting exposed or you’re letting your animal lick your face all day, and you’re just not even – you’re not connecting the fact that your cat may have crypto and now you got the crypto infection. Or I’ve seen it with dogs and GERD is super, super common.
Evan Brand: What about this question here about, “Can a hernia cause hypochlorhydria?” What’s your experience from a chiropractic perspective on hiatal hernias? Can you fix those chiropractically? And will that cause low stomach acid?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So regarding hiatal hernias, and I just posted a link online for people on YouTube or Facebook that wanna see the full, kinda dual side of it. We only kinda do my side with the technology that we have here. But regarding hiatal hernia, in my opinion, if you’re only fixing a symptom of the hiatal hernia, if you’re doing a chiropractic adjusment for it. Now I think that’s fine because it palliative, it’s natural. You know, what’s the risk to reward? Very little risk, only reward. We just wanna fix the root cause. And typically that’s gonna be getting the inflammation vector away from the intestines. Once the inflammation is better, the nerves that go to those muscles won’t be sending the inflammatory response that’s creating that tightening. It’s called the viscera somatic reflex. Visceral is organ; somatic is muscle. So the organs and muscles are on a two-lane nerve highway and the more those nerves are stimulated, it’s like the more you do bicep curl, the bigger your bicep gets, the tighter, tighter it gets, right? The more stimulation that goes to that area that’s like pain, the more it can pull that stomach up above the diaphragm which is based the hiatal hernia.
Evan Brand: Wow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You pull it down, but then you wanna make sure you get to the root cause. Inflammatory soothing nutrients, fix the infection, fix the ability to digest the food.
Evan Brand: Okay, good. You answer the question. So you can help with physical adjustments of hiatal hernias but you also gotta be working back to the root cause to make sure it doesn’t just pop back.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. That’s the key thing.
Evan Brand: Okay. Here’s another question then. Uhm – “When can you start minimising HCL?” He’s been taking them for three months. So I guess the question is – is there ever a time where you stop taking them? And I’ll just go ahead and give my two cents first, which is not really. There’s never really an expiration date of when you should uh – minimise HCL. Because if you look at Dr. Jonathan Wright’s book, “Why stomach acid is good for you?”, we look at age. With the Heidelberg test, we see that HCl just drops and drops every year that you get old. Uh – any age past twenty, actually you start reducing HCl. So for me, I consider it the foundation. But what about you?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So couple different theories on that. I think hydrocholoric acid is the most under rated supplements in the toolbox for any functional medicine doctor and patient. I think it’s absolutely essential because if you buy a really awesome, organic diet, healthy meat, healthy proteins, healthy fats, and you’re not quite breaking it down fully, well you’re really not gonna be accessing all the nutrients that are in those food. So I think that – from that perspective, it’s a great insurance policy to access your nutrients from your expensive diet already. Number two, I think it’s something is you get help that you don’t need it all the time but like for instance, I’m heading down to lunch here over at Paris down in Austin. So it’s like I’m doing like let’s say, Friday lunch. I’m really excited about it. I’m gonna bring some hydrochloric acid and some enzymes. Its gonna be some nice little pork chop I’m gonna have there. So we’re gonna up the HCl and enzymes big time. That’s number one. Uh –number two, if people don’t want to be on it all the time, there are things they can do if they need a little support such as Swedish bitters whether its gentian, or chamomile, or little bit of ginger, can very easily just stimulate your hydrochloric acid levels. Or even just a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or a little bit of lemon juice can be really stimulatory for the hydrochloric acid. There are ways you can stimulate it naturally. And also, there are studies looking at gastrin. Gastrin is the compound that’s produced in the stomach that actually feeds back to produce hydrochloric acid. And that compound – that chemical does not decrease as you take hydrochloric acid. So it doesn’t have a negative feedback loop. So negative feedback loop is you take steroids, right? Testicle shrink, right? The feedback is more of the steroids cause the testosterone in the internal production to go down. Now taking that analogy to the stomach, as gastrin – as hydrochloric acid goes up artificially, gastrin levels don’t drop. You don’t have this atrophy happening. So it’s good to take it if you wanna give your digestive system a break or you’re eating a bigger meal and you just wanna make sure you can break it down better so you don’t have indigestion afterwards. Totally fine. Uh – ideally, you shouldn’t need it all the time. And number three is you can artificially or just uh – naturally stimulate it with the bitters, gentian, the chamomile, the ginger, etc.
Evan Brand: Well I kinda use the three S, too. Soup, salad, or smoothie. If you’re doing any of those three, you could probably opt out of the enzymes and be okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Unless you have a lot of digestive symptoms, that’s the key thing.
Evan Brand: Yeah. See, there’s another question here. Dale asked, “Can we share a quick functional medicine perspective on vaccinations?” That – we’d have to save that for another show, Dale.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I went into this with Dr. Robert Rakowski last week. So I would say, Dale, check out that podcast coming up very soon. We go into that a little bit.
Evan Brand: Here’s Betty. She’s got a question, too. What’s the logic behind any acids and PPIs? Profits don’t count as logic. Ahh. Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I talked about this a lot. So PPI is like if you’re – if you’re trying to create the perfect drug that works but creates so many other issues that will create more pharmaceutical dependency down the road, it’s the perfect drug. Let me walk you through it. So you have acid issues because you’re not digesting your food, right? You have you know, the esophageal sphincter ‘s open, the food is not digesting. It’s rotting in your gut, the acids are rising up and hitting the top part of your throat. You start having symptoms. The first thing you may reach for is the over-the-counter Tums, right? Calcium carbonate lowers the acidity, it works. You feel better. Eventually you need to reach for a Nexium or Omeprozole or some kinda Prilosec, a proton pump inhibitor that prevents the hydrogen binding to the chloride molecules that makes the hydrochloric acid. So then you start having less as acid reflux symptoms. It works. You feel better. Now the problem is the more you shut down those proton pumps, the less stomach acid, typically the less enzymes – one of things that starts happening is you become dependent on it because the gut lining becomes so irritated, inflamed. You’re not digesting your foods. So then what happens is you don’t break down the neurotransmitters, you don’t break down the fat and the protein that become the neurotransmitters and the hormones. So you start having mood issues. So now your chance of antidepressants go up, your – your chance of having more anxiety – because you don’t have the L theanine and a lot of the GABA coming in. So your chance benzodiazepines goes up. You’re not breaking down the cholesterol, so your chance of needing Viagra goes up because you have erectile dysfunction coz you can’t make your sex hormones. Uhm – you become more inflamed, typically. So then your chance of needing a cholesterol medication goes up because inflammation will increase your cholesterol. And the more you can’t break down certain minerals like magnesium, your chance of Lisinopril Hydrochlorothiazide, ACE inhibitors, blood pressure medications goes up. So you can see what happens. You’re on this medication and all these other medications are needed to help manage all the symptoms that come from it. It’s crazy.
Evan Brand: Yeah. I was gonna mention some of the research, too. I mean there’s research that links PPIs to kidney disease, dementia, heart attacks, bacterial overgrowth, infections, bone fractures, and also the fastest growing type of esophageal cancer. So there is a lot safer ways of dealing with heartburn than the PPI.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And HCL and enzymes are totally safe if you’re pregnant, too. I’ve had no problems with that uhm – with my pregnant patients – not an issue.
Evan Brand: Should we go to other questions?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Or was there other stuff you wanted to mention first?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think there’s one other element about enzymes – that’s taking specific enzymes on an empty stomach away from food can be excellent for cellular detox, cleaning up scar tissue, and even treating cancer. Dr Nicholas Gonzales, before he passed, was doing that successfully for many years. And you know, taking high-dose enzymes on an empty stomach, for me, that’s a first-line therapy for anyone with cancer. Those enzymes get into the bloodstream and they’re gonna be able to digest any bad cancer cells that weren’t tagged by the immune system for apoptosis.
Evan Brand: And can you mention briefly just the types of enzymes? Coz I think people may think enzymes are just one thing, but we’ve got digestive enzymes we’ve got proteolytic enzymes, we’ve got systemic enzymes which you were teaching me about last night. Uh – uh – talk – talk people through just the different categories. Just that way, we know what we’re covering here.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You’re gonna have enzymes like amylase and such which are gonna be more your carbohydrate enzymes, okay? You’re gonna have various proteases that help digest protein and those will have different names like trypsin or chymotrypsin, right? Protease, etc, etc. And then you’ll have various enzymes, lipases. And these will be more for digesting and breaking down fat. And also, you’ll have bile salts that kinda work synergistically with that. So those are your major categories. Carbohydrate, protein and fat. And like you said, the biggest people that tend to move away from me are ones that have low hydrochloric acid and enzymes, so they move away towards vegetables which actually have more natural occurring enzyme. So they – people that go vegetarian, right? They’re thinking, “Oh, you know, I just feel better on vegetables and not so much on meat.” If the meat’s inherently bad, it’s like, “No, the meat is exposing a weak link in your digestive track.” That’s what’s happening.
Evan Brand: Yup. Yeah. I wanna give a brief anecdote about my use of proteolytic enzyme specifically bromelain. After I got my wisdom teeth surgery, I was taking tons of bromelain and my gums healed in rapid time and the surgeon on the one-week follow-up was like, “Evan, I never seen anybody heal this quickly. What have you been doing?” And I say, “Well, I’ve been popping arnica like it’s candy and also doing tons of proteolytic enzymes.” And he was like, “Wow, this is – this is cool!” So, it worked.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. And when you do these kind of enzymes for systemic use, you want – there’s a couple out there. They’re a lot more expensive coz you’re using more serrapeptidase enzymes which come from the silkworm. Silkworm if you will look at kinda look at the thread that comes from their spinning or however – whatever they produce from a byproduct. The thread that they make their nest with and such is incredibly strong. The tensile strength is unreal. So they are actually extracting the enzymes the silk worms make uhm – make their net out of and they’re using in systemic enzyme formulas. And they put these enzymes in terracotta capsules coz you don’t want to use digestive enzymes for systemic enzyme purposes coz they won’t outlast the stomach. They won’t get to the stomach intact. So you want something that’s enterically coated that gets into the small intestine, and then gets into the bloodstream without breaking down food. You don’t want any food to be there. You want it to be in a full empty stomach. And we use high-dose arm serrapeptidase enzymes enterically coated. And again, they’re gonna be a lot more expensive than your typical digestive enzymes.
Evan Brand: And when are those cases? I mean what – what’s like top few situations where S__ would wanna be on that?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yes. So we’re gonna do that with any type of cardiovascular issues – issues with uh –history of blockages, cardiovascular-wise. Uh women are trying to dissolve endometriosis and fibroids that can be helpful. Uhm – people that have cancer issues that are trying to just knock down some cancer cells. And then also just for uhm – scar tissue in the joints or just the general cellular cleanse that help cleanse out debris in the body. But again, none of these treat or diagnose, right? These are all therapeutic things to help support whatever health issues that are already there. We just have to say that as our disclaimer.
Evan Brand: Agreed. Yeah. So I wanna just mention briefly about infections. So once someone’s got an infection, regardless of how they acquired, whether it was chicken or the egg which happened first, once you’ve got parasites, you’ve got this SIBO situations, etc, you’re set up for lower and lower enzymes and lower and lower HCL. So it really is uh – a long process that we take people through where you’ve got to remove infections, you’ve got to restore the gut, you’ve got to restore the enzymes, you’ve got to heal up the gut lining that are totally damaged. It’s a long process. Uh – Samuel asked – oh no, it was Cory here. He asked what would be the best HCL supplement for somebody with SIBO. And should you take both HCL and enzymes at the same time? You wanna hit on that one?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Take HCL and enzymes at the same time? Absolutely. Because –
Evan Brand: You have to –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I mean enzymes – the only time I give them by themselves if someone’s gut is really raw and they can’t handle it. But again hydrochloric acid will help your body make its own enzymes by activating via pH – via low pH.
Evan Brand: Well – And I wanted to mention too, you know, you and I both got professional enzyme formulas, but the dosing is pretty conservative for that reason.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm.
Evan Brand: So you may only get 200 mg of HCL per one capsule of enzymes and that’s so low that unless you’re just terribly inflamed, you should be able to tolerate such a low dose of HCL like that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. In my line, I have two formulas with HCL. I might digest energy that has lower hydrochloric acid levels that are meant for people that are already have pretty good digestion, but just need a little bit extra support. And then they’ll have some enzymes in there, too. And then I have my two that I break up for more – for people that have more digestive issues. We’re trying to get more of a therapeutic dose. And some can’t handle that much HCL but need a lot more enzymes. So we don’t want the fact that they are in the same capsule to limit how much we can give. So we can go lower HCL, more enzymes, or vice versa. And we’ll kinda throw in some HCL tolerance test 1-4, 1-5 capsules on the HC – HCL. Any warmness, we back off by 1. Enzymes will typically go up between 1 to 4. If we feel a lightening, or better digestion, or improved bloating, or gas, or any symptomatic relief, or just a feeling of better digestion, then we’ll keep it at that those. If not, a standard 1 to 2 capsules per meal is typically okay.
Evan Brand: Here’s another question. “My doctor put me on Ornidozole and Levofloxacin.” Oh, man. “I have hunger pains, fatigue, constipation, felt better for a week and then hit a wall. How effective are these? And side-effects?” So, those are two antibiotics and –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, anytime you take an antibiotic, one of the big side-effect is gonna be a rebound fungal overgrowth, alright? Lots of females have noticed they take antibiotic, they get a reoccurring yeast infection weeks later. And a lot of conventional physicians are actually growing wiser that their patients – their female patients a lot of time, like a Diflucan or Fluconazole after antibiotic. Now again, you’re much better off giving them a probiotic. You can do it even during just away from the dose. And then do a probiotics after a month or two afterwards just to prevent that rebound overgrowth. And a rebound overgrowth is let’s say you have a lot of good and bad bacteria in your gut, you give antibiotic, what happens is you lower all of it. Now, the good bacteria provides a nice environment so the bad stuff can’t grow. So as soon as the good stuff is low, then the bad stuff naturally proliferates. It’s the whole idea of once you clean out your garden, the tomatoes don’t just automatically, the weeds do. You actually have to go in there and plant the tomato seeds or whatever you’re growing. You have to plant those seeds, you have to aerate, you have to put the fertilizer down to create the environment so the vegetables grow.
Evan Brand: Good analogy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You don’t have to do that with the weeds. The weeds are automatically there on auto dial, so to speak.
Evan Brand: That is such a good analogy. Yeah. And it’s amazing. How about unless it’s a life-threatening situation, try not to go with antibiotics, anyway. Figure what the root cause is. There’s so many natural antimicrobials that you and I use in they’re so effective. They have no side-effects, no lasting – anything. They’re in and out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Evan Brand: And then we don’t need stuff like Diflucan which is also terrible, which in many cases you’re gonna just basically piss of the candida. And yeah, you’re gonna get rid of it but then the candida’s gonna come back with a vengeance. And we test your urine, we’re gonna see massive arabinose –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: Or tartaric acid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, yup.
Evan Brand: Back with a vengeance you’ll say, “Oh, I just finish a round of Diflucan.” And it’s like, “Whoa! Maybe it worked for a day, but candida is back and she’s mad.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Alright. So let’s summarize everything we chatted about here, Evan So like, let’s say you’re just tuning in now or you just get really overwhelmed and your eyes got a little gloss over. What’s the Reader’s Digest version? I’ll let you go first.
Evan Brand: Yeah. So to me, reader’s digest version – enzymes and HCL are crucial. They are one of the most important foundations you should have if you want to be a healthy human that lives a long life, plain and simple. And then the caveats to that are well, do have things in your body that you need to work with a functional medicine practitioner and get tested for, such as infections like parasites and bacterial overgrowth like SIBO and candida. Now, if you get the testing piece done, you find out that your free of infections, which is pretty rare, then awesome. Maybe you’re just at a lower dose of HCL and enzymes, and maybe if you do soup, salad and smoothies, you don’t use enzymes but otherwise, you’re kinda cycling on. And you’ve got a cute little glass jar like I do that I shove in my wife’s purse. It’s got may enzymes and HCL in there. I take it if we go to restaurants and I always have it on the dinner table because if its out of sight, it’s out of mind.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Evan Brand: So when I sit down at the dinner table, the enzymes are right there. Uhm – as you get older, we know with the works of uh – Steven Wright. HCL is gonna drop, so to me, it’s not an optional supplement if you want to be healthy. Mother nature just doesn’t care about your optimal digestion once you’re 40, or 50, or 60 because you’re pass the hunter gatherer reproductive age which was like 16 to 20 years old. So mother nature doesn’t want to kill you but she just doesn’t care if you digest your grass-fed beef when your age 40 to 50. So enzymes become a must. You wanna mimic the stomach acid levels of when you were younger and you had an “iron stomach” You wanna try to macht that with supplements.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. And then in the future, what I’m gonna do is, anyone on Facebook, I’m gonna put the link in for the live YouTube side just so we can have people that uhm – want to see the full thing, they can go to YouTube and check out the whole thing. I wish we could make a go live on both sides here but right now the technology doesn’t quite do that. So we’ll shoot over the YouTube link in the future and just to add one last thing. Get the parasympathetic nervous system response going. Make sure you’re in a stress free, kinda relaxed environment; make sure you’re chewing your food enough times, uhm – get the saliva going to help start the digestion in the mouth. Then last but not the least, if you are really gluten sensitive, and you may be getting exposed somewhere like you’re going out to eat, and there maybe some contamination that you’re unaware of, enzymes that have dipeptyl peptidase for DPP4 enzymes can be helpful because that will help break down any bits of gluten. And the more the gluten can be broken down into smaller constituents, the better the body has a chance of dealing with it better. So keep that as a little side note, DPP4 enzymes can be hepful.
Evan Brand: What – When is the right and wrong time to use those?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, the wrong time is I’m gonna have a birthday cake, but it’s okay because I’m taking my DPP4 enzymes. It’s not necessarily for that, but if you are gonna have it though, it will lessen out the blow. But we don’t wanna give someone a crutch to be able to make a whole bunch of bad decisions. But if, let’s say I’m ordering some food at the restaurant and maybe there’s something in there, having it be handled by someone that just have their gloves on that handles someone’s breaded item. So you will do it more for incidental exposure just to prevent that so your body can deal with the gluten of – from that perspective.
Evan Brand: Love it. That’s great advice. So that should in your suitcase then if you’re travelling. We should do an episode on that. I think we did a travel hack episode.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We did.
Evan Brand: We should do a – on the go. Like if you’re not travelling but you’re just going out and about in the city and you may stop somewhere to get some food. What should you have, just in case.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. That makes sense.
Evan Brand: So much fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I’m gonna do maybe another Q&A. If I have time, I’ll make you another quick Q&A taken today. We have a couple of people here that are asking questions. They’re a little bit off-topic which is fine. But we’re only gonna answer the ones that are more on-topic. And I’ll try to have more Q&A conversations wherein we can take of everyone else’s questions.
Evan Brand: Also, last thing. If you have it, you should sign up for SpeakPipe. That way, people can send us audio questions and then we can play the audio clips and put them in for our podcasts.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Great idea, man. Any last thoughts, Evan?
Evan Brand: No. If people need help, reach out. justinhealth.com notjustpaleo.com We’re available and this is the stuff we work on everyday.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it, man. Well you have a- awesome Friday, man and we’ll talk really soon.
Evan Brand: Take Care. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.
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