Autophagy: Anti-Aging, Self-Eating Cells!
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
The word “autophagy” comes from the Greek “auto-phagein” which means “self eating.” Autophagy is a normal process in which compromised cells are cleared away. Even a healthy person must undergo autophagy, it’s one of the body’s natural modes of detoxification. Cellular damage can happen as a result of normal metabolic processes, but the rate at which damage occurs can be increased by things like stress, electromagnetic radiation, and free radicals.
How Does Autophagy Work
“Self-eating cells” sounds scary, but it’s a good thing! By clearing out old, damaged cells, you make room for new cells that are young and healthy. Without autophagy, you would continue to accumulate dead, damaged, and oxidized cell parts which accelerate aging, neurodegenerative disease, and cancer.
Naomi Whittel, autophagy expert, uses the comparison of a kitchen. Imagine cooking dinner, then wiping the counter, throwing away the scraps, and putting the leftovers in the fridge. That is autophagy working correctly.
Now, imagine cooking dinner, and leaving the mess. Grimey counters, pile of dishes in the sink, and smelly food left out. In this scenario, the smell and mess will continue to build up to the point where you will get unwanted consequences such as mold and bugs. When autophagy is compromised, dead and damaged parts linger in the body, which also leads to unwanted consequences like disease.
Autophagy Benefits
Autophagy is being touted as one of the best anti-aging hacks. What exactly are the anti-aging benefits of autophagy? Read on to find out!
Click here to talk to a functional medicine doctor about taking back control of your health.
More Efficient Cellular Recycling
If you thought self-eating cells are weird: apoptosis is cell suicide! This programmed cell death can be useful for getting rid of seriously compromised cells, like those with disease, but in general apoptosis is much more wasteful than autophagy. Apoptosis also causes more inflammation and metabolic waste. Autophagy is a cleaner, more efficient way to keep cells healthy.
Virus Elimination
While a healthy immune system will turn off a virus making it dormant, it doesn’t actually get rid of them. The virus is still in your body and able to replicate. Cue autophagy, which is how your body can actually rid itself of the infected cells. If you’ve ever experienced nausea when sick with a virus, you know it’s hard to keep down anything (sometimes even water). This is your body’s way of inducing a fast–fasting sets autophagy into motion.
Additional autophagy benefits include:
- Better skin, with less eczema, acne, and signs of aging.
- Stronger and more resilient muscles.
- Better brain function, including mood, memory, and mental processing.
- Preventing neurodegenerative diseases.
- Reducing inflammation.
- Healthier gut; less chance of leaky gut syndrome.
How to Increase Autophagy
Fasting
Fasting, whether for several days or intermittent fasting, is one of the most powerful ways you can call upon your body to stimulate autophagy.
One or two days of fasting is enough to induce autophagy, though days four and five is when you will reach peak autophagy. A fast-mimicking diet, in which you consume between 800-1100 calories per day, can also induce autophagy.
Intermittent fasting has a ton of benefits:autophagy being one of them! By restricting your eating window to an 8 hour block (or less), you can maintain a healthy level of autophagy daily. A common intermittent fast is skipping breakfast.
A Ketogenic Diet
When we are eating a lot of carbs and sugar, our body is burning glucose for fuel, has sharp blood sugar spikes, and high insulin levels. By getting into ketosis, using fat for fuel, we stabilize our blood sugar, lower insulin, and start producing ketones. Mixing ketosis and intermittent fasting is a great combo: once you’re in ketosis, it’s easy to go longer between meals because you start burning stored fat for energy. Ketosis plus intermittent fasting is an excellent way to mimic fasting and induce autophagy.
Exercise
Just like fasting, exercise is a ‘body stressor,’ but they are the good kind of stress! At least 30 minutes of exercise has been shown to induce autophagy.
Sleep
Autophagy and metabolism follow diurnal circadian rhythm–your body’s sleep-wake cycle. By getting good sleep, you boost autophagy. These days, people face a lot of sleep issues, like insomnia. It’s important to practice good sleep hygiene in order to prepare your body for bed time. Blue blocking glasses, turning off electronics, and keeping lighting low at night can all help your body prepare for bed time.
Takeaway
The literal translation of autophagy as ‘self-eating cell’ does not do justice to the importance of the body’s natural process of cleaning compromised parts. Everyone can boost their levels of autophagy, whether by getting into ketosis or partaking in fasting. The anti-aging benefits will keep you looking, feeling, and functioning young!
Is fasting right for YOU? Click here for a consult with a functional medicine doctor.
References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990190/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3790331/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3389582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463459/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4260725/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991639/
The Pitfalls of Intermittent Fasting| Podcast #233
We all want to be fit, but are we doing it the right way?
In this episode, learn the pros and cons of intermittent fasting. Also, other types of windows is included in today’s podcast. Stay tuned!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
01:14 What Is Intermittent Fasting
02:09 Ups and Downs
Evan Brand: Yeah, maybe you should define intermittent fasting first. How do you even say, yes this is considered intermittent fasting, this is not considered intermittent fasting, what do you make of that because some people say, well, I just don’t eat breakfast because I’m too busy, I mean are they technically doing an intermittent fast or not. How do you classify it? Excellent, really, really.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Good point, so intermittent fasting is you’re compressing your feeding window, so it could be 16 hours of not eating – eight hours of eating, that may look like you’re eating between noon and 8:00 p.m. right ,it could be an 18 by 6 where you’re eating between 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. so you compress it to a six hour window, it could be a 20 hour and then a four hour eating window, maybe you have a meal at 4:00 p.m. or let’s say 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. right or 7:00 p.m. you could do that so that those are your big kind of compression windows and then there’s the O mat which is one meal a day where you’re doing just one meal once a day and you’re having like a 20 plus our feeding window, does that make sense?
Evan Brand: Yeah, it does, it does so there, there are some benefits in terms of hormones. It’s crazy to me that the human growth hormone goes up, I don’t really know the mechanism or the why behind this, I know that your HGH production does go up when you’re in a minute fasting, I wonder why though because to me the fasting is more of like a stress response so maybe, it’s part of the stress response the HCA goes up we know that you know, you may get a little bump of cortisol too right to kind of put you in that hunting mode like, hey you’re not eating, are you not successfully hunting, it’s time to go, so you may get a bump of cortisol but the HGH, I just think it’s interesting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well there’s a, um, a glucose suppression test or an HGH suppression test where they’ll actually give you a shot of glucose and then they’ll actually watch growth hormone drop, so though actually they’ll give you glucose and then they’ll test your growth hormone after they giving you glucose and they’ll see your HGH drop, so I think a lot of it has to do with the surging glucose and or insulin acutely does knock down your growth hormone. I think that’s part of the reason why keeping insulin low does increase growth hormone, now in that stage of the game though a lot of bodybuilders still use insulin post-workout and they primarily use it to open the cell up so they can drive more nutrition and more amino acids into the cell, aka the muscle cell after workout, so I dunno insulin is anabolic and is used anabolically but stimulating insulin acutely via glucose and food can also drop growth hormone down acutely as well, so it’s a double-edged sword with insulin, that makes sense?
Evan Brand: It does, it does. I would just say the important thing to remember with intermittent fasting too is you still have to focus on good quality nutrition, like if you wake up and you’re only eating six or eight hours through the day but all you’re eating is some like paleo protein bar and then like a green smoothie that’s, that’s not enough. We still have to remember you still got to get good quality nutrition, good quality calories. I see a lot of people where we’ll look at their food journal and let’s say they are doing intermittent fasting, they wake up and they’ll have a smoothie, which is like you know protein powder in an almond milk, that’s it for their supposed lunch and then they’ll do like a chicken salad, it’s like, no way, you’re not gonna feel good on that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, yep, so in general somatostatin, which is we’re gonna be released by so somatostatin inhibits growth hormone release in response to growth hormone, releasing hormone to stimulating factors such as low blood glucose growlin binds to receptors of the somatotropin, the pituitary that stimulates growth hormone and potentially stimulates growth hormone so from what, how, I’m reading this is basically that low blood glucose is gonna have a stimulatory effect on growth hormone release. Therefore, higher blood glucose is going to decrease that feedback loop.
Evan Brand: Okay, yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hypoglycemia, a potent stimulus to secrete growth hormone, so hypoglycaemia produces an abrupt sustained rise in the level of growth hormone so it makes sense if these low blood sugar states or lower blood sugar states can increase growth hormone, it makes sense if you’re doing the opposite and you’re spiking your blood sugar, that it would negatively impact growth hormone.
Evan Brand: Well, we know with other hormones too like ghrelin, that’s your hunger hormone. Ghrelin normalizes when you’re doing intermittent fasting and we talked with so many people where they notice that they are just not as hungry, you know you feel like you’re just gonna starve to death but you just don’t, you’re not starving and I guess part of that’s probably because you’re producing ketones, would you say.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, ketones have a strong appetite suppression effect. My big concern is this, right, here’s my big issue just kind of putting it out there so number one are you a healthy individual. Okay, if you’re a healthy individual and your symptoms are relatively under control and I know that may not be a good marker for health because you may still have some health and balances with your thyroid or autoimmunity or gut and you may still be symptom free, right, but let’s just use, hey I’m feeling relatively good health wise, I’m symptom free but I think doing more of these intermittent fasting things can be helpful, number one. Number two, it also depends on how stressed you are during the day because your body needs nutrients to run. It needs nutrients to run. Now you’re gonna get caloric forms of energy just by releasing fat that you can start burning for fuel but that fat is not B vitamins, that fat are not nutrients so for and foremost. You’re not gonna get adequate levels of nutrition. Number two. We know people even in fasting states. Let’s just use the the British sailors from Europe to coming to the new world. I think in the 17 and 1800’s they were called limeys. Why were they called limeys? Because they would basically be on these trips, coming overboard they had a lot of nutritional deficiencies. They would get scurvy so they basically, their capillaries would dissolve, so to speak because they didn’t have enough vitamin C and they would they be chewing on limes the whole trip because they found that limes would help the vitamin C and prevent their capillaries from rupturing from the lack of integrity, from the lack of vitamin C. Essentially scurvy, so they needed vitamin C so there’s a there’s a level where just fasting and not eating enough calories eventually bite you in the butt because you’re not getting nutrition in. There’s eventually that balance and my other balance is, people say, well your nutritional needs go down when you’re fasting well I get that because you know ideally your body when you’re in a fasting state, it’s down regulating your metabolism, right, so if you’re in a fasting state, you can go into PubMed and type in hypo caloric state or hypo caloric and low thyroid hormone or low triiodothyronine or increase in reverse t3, the scientific literature is very clear that thyroid function will drop, your overall metabolic rate will drop in response to a local or ik environment reverse t3, which is your inactive thyroid hormone that clogs two receptor sites. Where your thigh will go increases, so there’s this balance of, yes, your thyroid hormone, your metabolism will drop, your metabolic needs will drop, but is that necessarily a good thing, because we want a robust metabolism, you don’t drop your metabolic needs and then still feel incredibly robust. Now if you already have healthy thyroid function to begin with, it may not be that big of a deal, maybe you’re on the top 25% of the reference range and now you start moving mid range, but what if your bile, what if you’re already a little bit below mid-range and then now you start dropping way below? You see what I’m saying here, so it’s a slippery slope people talk about your metabolic needs drop when you’re intimate and fasting or doing these various techniques, but why what’s happening and what are the ramifications of that and if we already have thyroid issues and I already have blood sugar issues, we already have adrenal problems and hormonal issues, that that could actually be a stressor to you, people don’t remember, people forget that fasting is actually a stressor to your body because you’re not getting nutrition in. The people that benefit the most from fasting are people that number one have really irritated gut. Their digestion is really poor so not digesting foods as much helps a lot. They’re avoiding a lot of food allergens. Number two and they already have a relatively healthy metabolism because you can still be on a ketogenic Paleo template and you can still get a lot of the benefits of fasting, which is the lower insulin. The growth hormone and still get adequate nutrition and still have at least two meals today. My recommendation is at least two meals a day, I’ll pause there and let you kind of give me your thought process, I don’t want to go too deep on so we chat a little bit more .
Evan Brand: Sure. No, that was all great. I just wanted to point out for me that I had so much stress just working with clients and moving from house to house and all that, that when I looked at my blood my reverse t3 was too high. I was actually up into the low 30s which is really high for reverse t3 and I was really, really cold. Now I haven’t retested my blood to confirm that the reverse t3 has gone down but I just wanted to have my comment that I’ve personally experienced what you just mentioned which is that if you have your stress bucket already full you and I are busy go, go, go, go, go during the week, my bucket was already full, I couldn’t afford to skip a meal so I’m on three meals a day and I saw it on the blood work to confirm and I felt it my hands, my feet, you know, I had the, the circulation issue some of that was related to mold and all that nitric oxide but I do know that my thyroid, I could definitely feel just the weakening of myself if I were to do just a protein shake with breakfast and not an actual solid breakfast like you’re talking about, I was just nutrient depleted based on the amount of stress, my seesaw was unbalanced.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, about my typical breakfast though I’m doing, I like doing an iced coffee, I feel like I get very good cognitive benefits with some caffeine and some coffee, and I also add in butter. I add in collagen and I add in MCT oil, so number one, I’m bumping up my ketones first thing in the morning. I’m getting adequate calories and I’m getting a good whack of amino acids as well so I have that good, of course, I’m taking a good multi support pack as well so I’m getting some extra vitamins and minerals and then I hit up the good fats and the ketone precursors then, uh, maybe I’ll also sip on some celery juice just to get some extra potassium and B vitamins, so there’s that you can go into it fasting. I mean, I have no problem with it, I’ll typically pick one day a week where I’ll just do a coffee and then I won’t eat til 2 or 3 o’clock, I’ll try to do that one day a week. I find a lot of people are taking intermittent fasting and they’re making it their lifestyle and I can’t tell you how many people I see that are chron- that chronically skip meals and have blood sugar issues, and have adrenal problems and a lot of symptoms – I’m not saying this causes, that but it is a stressor and the stronger and healthy you are, that stressor can have a lot of benefits if you can overcome the stress of what it’s causing. If you already have enough, let’s say, stress balls and your stress bucket that may be enough to put you over the top and I personally find that a lot of people don’t have the reserves to be able to overcome if you already have a lot of issues, you can’t fast or starve your way out of it and this is a fine line where this intermittent fasting thing becomes an eating disorder especially when in your feeding window you’re not getting enough nutrition and you’re not meeting your metabolic needs for the day and I think it’s really easy to do that when you’re doing a nomad or you’re doing one the two meals a day, because now your meals gotta be essentially fifty percent bigger than your typical lunch or dinner and then number two is if you’re doing a one meal a day, I mean, good luck eating 2, 500 calories or 2, 000 calories at one sitting. Let’s say, I need 2 500 calories and you’re under the auspice that well my metabolic needs have dropped, okay we’ll try getting 2, 000 calories a meal, that’s pretty hard. I mean you need a big, big salad. You need a lot of fat at least, maybe one and a half avocados on there. You need a lot of nuts, a lot of seeds, you need a really good fatty dressing, you need at least 8 to 12 ounces of protein on there at least that maybe even 16, so it becomes is really kind of delicate balance and I see a lot of people that have a lot of hormone issues that are falling into that trap and are coming in, and it’s not enough to get them over the top.
Evan Brand: Yeah, I mean not that I want to get into calorie counting and all that because I get bored, but I’ll just mention a cup of broccoli, which is maybe an average serving size 30 calories, so if you have a woman, it’s like God hormonal problems and she has, you know, a small piece of meat and then a cup of broccoli as her dinner, it’s like, good Lord, you maybe got five to six hundred calories.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah and I’ve seen a lot of people online there’s dr. Berg he’s another guy that puts a lot of content out there I think he has a lot of great content but he does he’s a big one meal a day guy and again you know let’s say you do 10 servings of vegetables okay there’s 300 calories there, all right, you need 2,000 calories a day so you’re gonna need a ton of fat and you’re probably gonna need you know I’m I’m 6 to 220 pounds right I’m gonna need probably a 16-ounce steak or 16 ounces of protein in there to get that to get enough nutrition, I’m gonna need a lot of fat, I’m probably gonna need two avocados cut up, I’m probably gonna need a really fatty dressing that strange ___[14:42] has a lot of nuts and seeds, so, but also that’s a lot of food to digest at one time.
Evan Brand: That’s true.
I think it’s gonna be a lot so you’d probably need extra HCl and extra it’s still a lot of stuff on your tummy
Evan Brand: I’m looking up bison meat. You know, cuz I really like enjoy a bison burger. Let’s, so let’s say, this one meal a day person or even a two meal a day person, let’s just make up a story that you did a bison burger with veggies for lunch and a bison burger with veggies for dinner a 6 ounce bison burger a hundred and 85 calories, granted you get you know almost 40 grams of protein but not even 200 calories from it and-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You put your calories there, let’s say you, let’s say you do four servings of vegetables with it, okay? Maybe you’re at 120 to 150, I mean, you gonna have to have a lot of fat, you have to eat a ton of fat.
Evan Brand: I think there’s a lot more people now that we’re kind of like flushing this out together I feel like there’s probably more people in this space under eating than overeating
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s what I was saying. Intermittent fasting can be a slippery slope to an eating disorder, like, okay you know, let’s have a conversation about what differentially differentiates anorexia and intermittent fasting because I could imagine someone being anorexic saying, hey look at all the awesome benefits of this, I’m losing weight on this, but obviously, there’s one person is trying to meet their caloric needs and burn fat while the other person is burning everything right there burning fat there are bag of bones you know muscle they’re fatigued you can see their their bones so there’s obviously this fine balance and I really want to draw a line cuz I’m just seeing a lot of stuff on line where the line is totally blurred and I could see that being an eating disorder clinically.
Evan Brand: Yeah, makes sense. Alright, here’s another example. A lot of people are doing like almond butter, almond bars etc., maybe this is the snack that they do that for a cup which nobody’s eating a cup of almonds, that is a lot of almonds, so well give them the benefit the doubt, maybe it’s a half cup but a cup of almonds around 500 calories. So let’s say you had a handful of almonds with that bison steak and your broccoli so you’re it maybe 250 and then you throw in an extra 200 or so with the almonds, you know you’re still less than 500 and if you do that twice a day you’re still only at a thousand, God that makes me feel like I’m under eating.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know, doesn’t it? So that’s why I just I scratch my head being like, yeah, your metabolism goes down, you need less but why is it going down? It’s going down because your body’s freaking out that there’s not enough nutrition there and it’s down regulating metabolic pathway so my generalized advice is if you have health concerns or health issues, get them under control. First you probably want to start with at least two solid meals a day and at least one shake or some kind of a smoothie or maybe a bulletproof coffee or a butterfat coffee with some extra nutrients in it. Maybe some celery juice as a good breakfast, you’re getting a lot of nutrition calories amino acids you’re starting your day with a lot of ketone precursors and then two really good meals later in the day a lot of good vegetables, that age me a lot of good fat, lot of good protein avoiding the leaner meats, that’s good, or if you have more issues, we may just want to even start with three solid meals, alright. People that have a hard time gaining weight, we’re doing four meals a day yeah and then I typically recommend as we get healthier, we can choose one to two days a week where we do an intermittent fast and let’s start with a, let’s start with a 12 by 16 by 8 so we eat between 12 and 8 because you can still get three meals between 12 and 8 pretty easily, yeah, but you don’t have to increase your meal size that much as soon as you compress it to a 18 by 6 or 20 by 4, now you only get two meals now you got to eat 50% more in each meal to get your nutritional needs up so I’m even-
Evan Brand: Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. Even at that point though you’re probably gonna feel sleepy or fatigued or bloated or something by the time you eat that much food, you know, I mean you’re at that point you’re trying to remedy the digestive issue but in those cases smaller more frequent three or four a day is probably gonna be better than two huge ones.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: This is the reason why people get tired after their Thanksgiving Day meal, I mean, yes there’s a carb issue but there’s a size issue when you eat so much food there’s a lot of resources your body needs to do that to digest it and break it down so that’s part of the reason like people get tired after these big omadd’s, these one meal a day things. This is a lot of digestion that has to happen. That’s a big problem as well.
Evan Brand: Yeah, this is an important conversation. You know, like on the surface people may listen like, man this is boring, just talking about do I eat two meals a day, do I eat three meals a day, but really this is like your foundation of the gas tank. You know we dig so much into supplements and adaptogenic herbs and restoring gut issues and eradicating parasites and infections and all that, but that’s like the, the level 201 or 301 stuff. This is like the 101 stuff where if you don’t get this right you can’t really advance to the other stuff because your compliance will fail, because you feel bad or you’re too tired to stay on a protocol.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. We mean you will keep everyone nameless but we’ve had some friends and colleagues where we have these little healthy debates about this topic and they’ve been very pro intermittent fasting which we are but we’re more with caveats, and one of the big caveats are how many people that we see that have gut issues gut infections or compromised digestion already, I, 95 yeah and and then now you’re gonna tell me, okay now, now eat 50 percent more at the meals that you eat so we can compress that feeding window down. I mean, do you think that puts more stress on that I justice system or less I mean definitely more?
Evan Brand: Yeah it’s well and on also the difference to is you and I are not just publishing a video here’s the 20 benefits of intermittent fasting and then you send people on the way we have to find a cup-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s a lot of click bait and we have direct people go online and they read lots of stuff. Everything can work with the right situation and the right person but at the same time, everything has a possibility of not working so then if you’re producing content online it’s great because the people that want to find it will find it. The problem is when you’re dealing with people we need to not try to squit put a square peg through a circle hole. We have to understand who may be beneficial for and who it may not be beneficial for so we have to be able to look at it as it’s not an on/off thing, it’s who’s the best candidate for this and if you’re not the best candidate here’s why and here’s what to look for, so if you’re having issues and you’re struggling, here’s the reason why and it’s not you. You may be doing everything totally right there may be other things we have to look deeper at like the adrenals like the gut issues, like low stomach acid achlorhydris or hypochondria, gut infections thyroid issues autoimmunity so these are all really important things that could be the reason why an intermittent fasting thing may not be the right fit for you, or the reason why you’re struggling. Number one and number two, if you have things under control, let’s start with a sixteen by eight and see how we do and then you can move to an 18 by six and see how you do and just make sure you can get at least two meals a day, I think the omadd’s a little bit bad because of how much you have to eat at one time, that’s no different than a Thanksgiving Day dinner personally.
Evan Brand: Yeah, it’s just a one big feast. You know it would be really sexy to say everybody could just do this or that but the nuance is something we have to bring up just because we’re working with people one on one and if we give them a protocol and they fail or they don’t get a result we’re looking for then we have to come back and fix it so you know obviously our perspective is gonna be a bit different than somebody who just makes a blog article or a video because if they follow our advice, we have to follow up with them, hey, how did it go, so this is more of like the, the behind the curtain information than what you’re typically gonna get in an article or a video o podcast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, ep anything else Evan, you want to highlight on the topic?
Evan Brand: I would just say what you started to rant on and then you, then you stopped. Which is get the clinical data, get the laboratory information. You mentioned adrenals you mentioned thyroid, you mentioned the gut, you know do a good work up on yourself if the world were so simple that you could just diet and exercise, I mean we would have fixed people’s problems. You know I don’t know 20, 30, 40, whoever knows how many years ago but there’s so many people still doing paleo or Whole Foods diets or keto diets or whatever and they’re still miserable. They still, you know, feel bad. They can’t sleep. They’re overweight. They’re depressed. They’re anxious. They’ve got skin issues. So, if diet in the exercise were the variables that actually gave you a result then we wouldn’t be talking. So get the workup done, if your doctor will run a full panel or they can look at your ferritin and address anemias as you and I were kind of talking about off air, look at the thyroid, the reverse t3, get your free t3 run, get your antibodies run, go above and beyond your standard blood work, use that data to help guide you and then if you need a practitioner, reach out to Justin, reach out to me. We love helping people, you know, we don’t care about whether you pick one of us, we just want you to get better and if you keep spinning your wheels, you can’t do the same thing over and expect different results so you’re like, I’m gonna swap, you know, my protein shake that was a pea protein for a grass-fed whey protein shake, that variable may do nothing if you don’t address your gut infection, like for me, I continue to lose weight and have terrible skin until I fix my gut and then finally I was able to bring my weight back up and get my skin health back to normal and I was eating no dairy and no gluten, still suffered-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, and I’m just curious, people that are listening, if anyone had good responses during intermittent fasting, just put it in the comments. Anyone that’s had negative reactions to intermittent fasting, I’m curious as well, put that in the comments. I like to just chat about that briefly just to see if anyone’s had negative reactions and we just want to look at and be able to draw the line, there’s a very fine line between having an eating disorder and anorexia and doing intermittent fasting and getting adequate nourishment, because most people that are already having health issues, that are reaching out to intermittent fast and they may already be nutritionally deficient and they may already be moving more into a nutritionally deficient state even with adequate eating, they’re just not getting enough of that food and that may further exacerbate the nutritionally deficient state, I mean, think about it, if you’re getting enough calories, but let’s say your diet isn’t the best, ok, well let’s say you have 25 or 20% less nutrition than, let’s say, a whole food based diet but then now your calories cut in half or cut in half by maybe 60% of us 40% less but now the food is more nutritionally dense but, but you’re just eating less of it you may not have enough nutrition in the food to make up for the caloric deficit does that make sense?
Evan Brand: Yes, yes, it does.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s out of community, this much food, but let’s say this much of it was nutritionally dense, but now you’re eating this much food and all of it additional, you dense, you still have this gap over here where you’re missing this nutrition again I’m doing some hand stuff so if you’re listening on the podcast, you may want to check out the vide, we’ll put the video link below but either way we have to make sure if you are doing some kind of an if, or intermittent fasting thing, you are getting adequate amounts of nutrition –
Evan Brand: Yeah, I felt more anxious when I did it. That’s my personal thing when I would try to either push my breakfast back or skip a meal, you know, I get on the call with clients I’m working, I’m working, I’m burning, burning, burning, you know, the candles lit. I’ve got this stress in my bucket, adaptogenic herbs help regulate it but I still did not feel that good, satiated, calm, relaxed. I felt like I was running from a bear so then when I ate breakfast had a good passengered sausage or a bacon or some blueberries pecans and I was satiated, that’s stress response was shut down my body’s like, oh okay Evan’s not starving to death, we don’t need to go hunt today, hunting was successful you can relax now, so I mean, there’s, there’s the primal wiring system behind all this that people forget about.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100 percent, so Kelly, Kelly Clark or Rob Kelly Clark writes in when I was I had negative reactions, I felt like I was crashing every morning lightheaded shaky, not able to think quickly and thoughtfully, I see that a lot but then that writes in intermittent fasting has been great, it’s been helping my bloating, controlling SIBO, sometimes I think people have an overgrowth simply reducing the amount of meals help starve them off. I would push back on that and just say, you may be able to have similar benefit by just cutting out some of the fermentable carbohydrates, so people that have benefits on the SIBO, I do agree you’re not, when you’re not eating, you’re starving off some of those microbes, the problem is you actually need to kill some of these microbes to just the diet change, alone is you’re starving some of them out but you’re still not. You need to wipe them out too and there could be some other deeper infections so that’s part of the issue and I think you may also be able to solve some of that by cutting out the higher FODMAPs and making sure some of these things are cooked because when you have a lot of poor microbiome issues, you need fiber to feed good microbiome but when there’s too much bad critters there, that fiber, especially from the fermentable, the higher fermentable foods the high fat Matt foods, that could be enough to feed that bad bacterial overgrowth.
Evan Brand: This is true. Well, that’s where the order of operations comes in, right? We’ll see a lot of people, for example, the lady that I work with that had the worst candida overgrowth ever, was a lady who was drinking five kombuchas a day and I was like, my god, okay, you took something that could be good, and you did way too much of a quite good thing.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And how did she feel? She got bloated after it?
Evan Brand: Oh she was terrible bloated, rain fog, she was drunk. She said, I can’t even focus, she said, I looked down at my paper, I can’t even see what’s in front of me, I mean, she had a ton of cognitive issues as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if you see that, that’s a really good sign and you can be on top of it and know those symptoms ahead of time.
Evan Brand: So what did we do? Well, we got rid of the kombucha too completely and we came in and used an anti microbial protocol based on a stool test that showed she had not only sky-high Candida but she had a ton of back growth – so it’s like, yeah, probiotics are cool, yeah, kombucha is cool, good supplement but not in this case, you gotta, you gotta take care of the bad guys first.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally, and someone wrote and, this is a great question is: what do you think about a 12-hour fasting? I think that’s something that’s granting. Everyone should be able to do that, I think that’s awesome so if you’re looking at finishing dinner around 7 or 8 o’clock you know have breakfast till 7 or 8 o’clock on the am side. I think that’s great and I think that’s something that everyone can and should be able to engage in and part of the reason why you can do that is when you’re sleeping your metabolic needs obviously drop because you’re not moving, you’re in a kind of hibernation state so your metabolic needs go far less, so you can fast for that period of time right, so that I think 12 hours is your really good compromise for anyone with a lot of metabolic issues and then if you’re feeling more up to it then you move more to a 16 by 8, and then if you’re feeling even better then you can move to an 18 by 6 and you can try it a couple days a week and I just always tell people try to take your more stressful days and have something in the morning those more stressful days even if it’s like some celery juice and some amino acids and MCT oil if you want to keep it simple or a simple smoothie all the way up to bacon and eggs if it’s, um, if you want even more nutrition.
Evan Brand: Yeah, good advice, and, yeah, good question I’m, I’m on like a 12 hour fast I guess you’d say I eat around 6:30 actually, no, I’m more than tha,t I’m like 14 hours cuz I don’t usually eat till 8 see. I’m almost at 14 hours and I feel good I feel solid. There was a time of my life though where I needed a snack after dinner and that maybe just been my gut issues, adrenal issue, something like that it sounds like isn’t everybody doing the 12 hour fast but no, we have ton of clients that are like man 9 o’clock comes around and they’re going and rating the fridge and that’s because something’s messed up and it could be brain chemistry related to which is a whole another podcast, it could be serotonin or something that’s causing night cravings.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I personally find people that have lunch let’s say around 12:00 or 1:00 and then they have dinner around 7:00 or 8:00 there’s like a seven or eight hour gap that when they eat that dinner, even though it’s a normal-sized dinner, they went so long there’s a caloric and nutritional, deficit so they have extra cravings after dinner because they’re trying to fill in this big gap here, remember that number one, and then all just making sure you’re eating enough protein in fat and good fibrous vegetables that will fill you up and then try to choose a healthier snack after dinner, so my big snack as I put my son down and I’m gonna have some unsweetened coconut yogurt and some fresh berries like raspberries or blueberries, pretty low sugar so I’m getting protein and getting fat and I’m getting a little bit of carbohydrates not much, I mean, you can Google a handful of raspberries, it’s probably maybe five or six net carbs so it’s not much at all but it will give you some good nutrition and it’s tasty too so it gives you that dessert kind of feel with that would be the negative consequences.
Evan Brand: Yeah, a lot of people disrespect their lunch. We could do a whole another hour on this. I know we got to wrap up but you know so many people think of their lunches just, let’s get it over with, you know, let’s rush to the fast food, let’s rush to Whole Foods and stop at the salad bar and shove something down my face in five minutes and go back to work and I’m not gonna say that I haven’t rushed through my lunch because I definitely have, but I try to be as conscious as I can to slow down and chew my food into eat because that’s like your midday fuel, up you know like if you’re in the race and you pull over to the pit stop and you know the guys are trying to refill your Formula One car and you take off while they’re still filling the tank, you’re not gonna finish the race.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100% and so my lunch is probably about four or five servings of veggies in a salad, a full avocado, some nuts and seeds and then like a nice, good dressing, a nice avocado or olive oil-based dressing and probably eight ounces of protein and that works great and I feel satiated. I feel really, I feel really like get a lot of nutrition in and I would just say the only people that I would say, the twelve-hour may not work for thre are people that really have very poor blood sugar issues and their blood sugar is dropping during the night and they’re waking up. To the people where I would say, you probably want something within two hours before bed a little bit of protein, a little bit of fat people, that have very low cortiso,l may need the teaspoon to a tablespoon of honey with a tablespoon of coconut oil before bed because their blood sugar is dropping, so I would always say sleep would trump the idea of being in a 12 by 12 fast.
Evan Brand: That makes sense. That it does, I was at a point where I had to do that and now I don’t so that’s, that’s a good sign of progress when you cannot wake up through the night due to the blood sugar issue, there’s other causes to wake up the mill tonight-
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But yeah, if you, toxification issue too could be a gut infection, that’s in cortisol, that’s waking you up so you know as functional medicine doctors, we understand the potential algorithm and we go through our checklist of what the possibilities could be.
Evan Brand: It’s just funny how we start out with such a simple topic but then we expand upon, that’s because in the world of, as you said, like click bait and titles and all that, people just don’t slow down enough to understand the different variables, and I think it’s very important to slow down and to hear these different pieces of the puzzle because if you go to ten different people and you ask them why you’re waking up in the middle of the night, you’re gonna get ten different answers and so we really want to help you understand the mechanisms behind things not just like, yeah, you need to take a melatonin supplement.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah and we’ll probably put the title of this podcast a little bit clickbait, like the pitfalls of enjoyment and fasting but I want to be clear, there are people that can benefit and, and most should be able to benefit, we just want to make sure the people that don’t here’s why and and if you want to be someone or you think you’re someone that could benefit ,make sure you go into it with relatively good health because I don’t want you to walk into it and then have health issues and those health issues don’t get better, maybe yet go backwards a little bit and you’re not sure why and so that could be a stressor but if you go into it relatively healthy and that stress starts to accumulate will you at least know that it’s because of the intermittent fasting. but if you are has strong enough and have enough you know constitution health wise, then that’s great, you know enjoy those benefits and maybe do it a couple times a week versus every day.
Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. Well, let’s wrap this thing up. If you all want to reach out to Justin, he works with people around the world and we send labs to your door, except for blood. We send you out to a lab for that but, fit stool you’re in a lot of the advanced functional medicine testing, we’re very grateful and lucky that you can do that at your house and you send it back through the mail. You get the reports back, you go over it and you make a protocol, you get better, so that’s how you do it, that’s the logistics of it. So reach out to Justin at justinhealth.com and there’s like, I don’t know, hundreds of more pieces of content so if you’re just finding us and you’re like, man, these guys are pretty cool, I want to learn more, well there’s more content type in whatever thing you’re looking for on his site. Me, my website evanbrand.com, we do the same thing, so you know, please reach out if you need help, don’t wait till you’re suffering in that rock bottom, it’s much easier if you know something’s off and you fix it now versus like, hey I’m at the end of my rope, we’re generally somebody that you know the person’s already been to twenty practitioners before they get to us but it’s, it’s a really nice, sigh of relief for us when we get somebody who’s like, yeah I got some stuff off ,and then we fix it before they’re at a critical state.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly and then if you guys enjoy it and you’re utilizing our services already as a patient or supplementation or just utilizing some of the products we personally recommend ourselves on our stores, if you’re not doing that we appreciate you doing it, but if not give us a share, give us a thumbs up, give us a like, share the content spread. This information, it’s totally free to friends or family, so they can improve their health and also engage in the discussion, put your comments below, I love to know what you guys are thinking it gives me something to think about regarding future topics and your questions really, I think, drive what future content will be about. When people ask a lot of the same, same things, I want to answer more of those questions, so it really motivates us to create new and even better content, that’s inspired to support our listeners
Evan Brand: Yep, well, great chat. I enjoyed it and we’ll be back next Monday
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Having great chat man, you would go on, take care, bye.
References:
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-pitfalls-of-intermittent-fasting-podcast-233
Conventional Medicine to Functional Natural Medicine | Podcast #232
Conventional medicine is a system in which medical professionals treat symptoms in diseases using medicines, or surgery. Functional medicine, on the other hand, is a treatment that focuses on optimizing the functions of the body organs, which involves holistic or alternative medicine.
Today’s podcast guest is Dr. Russell Jaffe. Dr. Jaffe is highly respected in the functional medicine industry. As a physician and scientist who aspired to be comprehensive, objective, empiric and experiential, Dr. Jaffe started his career searching for deeper understanding, wisdom, evidence, and insight in mechanisms of health.
Dr. Russell Jaffe
In this episode, we cover:
00:51 Medical Research to Functional Integrated Nutritional World
10:32 Intermittent Fasting
15:02 Keto Diet
34:15 Importance of Vitamin C
58:56 Importance of Vitamin D
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. Welcome back to the beyond wellness radio podcast. Today we have a phenomenal guest, we have Dr. Russell Jaffe in the house. Dr. Russell is a Ph.D. MD nine years all at Boston University. One graduation lots of good knowledge there and Dr. Jaffe was really on the conventional medical side. I really want to dive in we’re gonna get his story and how he converted moreover to the functional natural integrative kind of model. Dr. Jaffe runs the perk supplement company, he also runs the company called Elisa Act which does premier testing for food allergens. Dr. Jaffe welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Thanks for having me
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Well, let’s just dive in. I want to hear your story and how you went into this mainstream medical research kind of world environment over to the functional kind of integrated more nutritional world. How did that happen?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well I was trained in need in academic medicine at Boston University then I matriculated to the National Institutes of Health where I was early on the appointed to the senior staff which is a bit of an indication that my science was acceptable and of course I was skeptical about anything that I didn’t learn in academic medicine in internal medicine in clinical pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In fact, when I heard that Queen Wu, an acupuncturist in Washington DC, could get results that NIH could not get. I went with great skepticism and ended up doing a seven-year apprenticeship with him
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Then I then I heard about yoga and I heard about Dr. Ramamurti Mishra an MD Ph.D. cross-trained in Banaras, wrote the textbook of yoga psychology commentary and Patanjali sutras. I went as a skeptic and I was his acolyte for five years, then I met a Cambodian Buddhist monk named Anti Dharma Aawara and I had the last 30 years of his life from 80 to 110 mostly together
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow that’s amazing
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So, I came as a skeptic but when I… but I was also curious and because I was curious, I went outside my silo I went outside my immediate peer group. Because I can tell you that when I started to bring information about traditional oriental medicine and acupuncture to the National Institutes of Health where it’s practiced today. I can tell you it was met with great indifference and crashing silence. Because these were very smart people who knew that they knew more than anybody else because they were at the NIH and I was you know with them. But I was also outside, curious, finding mentors who had answers, wisdom, traditions that I knew nothing about. You know I mean I knew from nothing. So, I had the time with Queen and with Ramamurti Mishra, Dr. Mishra and with his Cambodian Buddhist monk Anti Dharma, and yes, my world has absolutely turned around if you will. Why? Because I now advocate nature nurture and wholeness, I advocate physiology before pharmacology. I advocate eating what you can digest assimilate and eliminate without immune burden. I can tell you if you get restorative sleep and you keep your neural hormones and balance then gratitude will rise up at least in the springtime when you see the earth renewing itself. So yes, I do think that a functional, integrative, personalized, primary, proactive, predictive, personalized prevention practices is the medicine of the future, and my work is to speed the transition from sick care to health care. Because most people get sick care today, they really don’t get health care. In your clinic they get health care in my world I would like everyone to get health promotion health care preventive, proactive care. But that is a dream today, that is an aspiration. It is also a necessity because the cost of sick care is going to sink the businesses of America. We’re not going to well, let me summarize very quickly who. Uwe Reinhardt, a very famous Princeton health economist. He says, if you just look at the rise of chronic disease today and projected forward a generation or so, everyone’s gonna be in a hospital bed taking care of the person next to them. No one’s gonna be working or paying taxes that’s clearly not a vibrant productive society.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct 100%. Now I’m just curious having it’s such a, you know strong conventional background MD, Ph.D. and having to had such an open mind to pull in other modalities and other forms of natural medicine and you know you’re looking at obviously the outcome you’re looking at the effectiveness. What it’s your colleagues think cuz I mean obviously conventional medicine, the allopathic pharmaceutical surgical approach, it tends to rely on not addressing the root cause and it tends to not have a preventative nature to it. So, when you are looking at these natural forms of medicine obviously prevention kind of comes in we’re gonna be talking about predictive tests that can help us look at and assess and maybe prevent some of these things but what did your colleagues think did you feel like they were threatened? And then what was the atmosphere around with just the drug industry? You know cuz that kind of motion one direction.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well I can. I’m gonna answer your question but before I answer it, Merck Sharp & Dohme gave me their annual award one time. I got the meritorious Public Health Service Award one year; my work was featured in the New York Times at one time. So, I was not unknown or unrecognized, I got to teach every year because NIH has its own University on topics that I was interested in that I was interested in introduced.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But to answer your question especially about people who have advanced degrees they either come out of what’s called the Decartian Reductionist Mechanistic way of thinking, in which case I will not talk to them because they won’t understand what I’m saying and it probably will be uninteresting or irritating to them. Then there are the people who come out of the Garrettian Rudolf Steiner.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Before that, there was a theorist as Hoenn half before that you can go all the way back to Mymanatis and Hippocrates. But I will mention that Hippocrates practiced on the island of Kos because the conventional doctors and Athens drove him out of town.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Because ah was for radical to their beliefs and now, he’s a father of Western medicine
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Unbelievable so they, you did get some accredited you did get some accolades but not enough to incorporate a lot of these things in mainstream medicine. So, there’s still kind of a block.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well that’s above my paygrade.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: My responsibility at the time was to do my job.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To publish to communicate to inspire to inform to motivate and I’m glad to tell you that many of the people who are skeptical of my enthusiasm at the time have gone on to research in these areas and now they too have come around and an example, a very important example, but it’s just a personal face on this conversation Dr. Tony Lamas, Gervasio Lamas, he is the chairman of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami and he is on the Faculty of Mount Sinai Medical School in New York and he led the tact trial funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute NIH NHLBI he is the superb cardiologist, very conventionally trained, who now has documented the benefits of chelation therapy especially for people with diabetes. And we’re both on the rostrum today, we’re both on the program teaching other doctors. What we find to be the information that inspires us that keeps us younger and I will mention that he and I just got off the elevator just before our interview and he noticed that I had lost 65 pounds and I mentioned
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I wasn’t going to find them again and I noticed that he had lost some weight. And so we commiserated with each other because it’s not easy to get to your lean weight but you feel so much better your restorative sleep is so much better your digestion so much better your moods are so much better. That from my point of view it’s absolutely worth doing in fact it’s an investment in my future and others have heard this I don’t know if you have, Dr. Justin, but I’m planning to be dancing at 120 and I want you and I want you to be with me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful. That’s wonderful that’s excellent. Well, also you got your CCN as well so you obviously have it your conventional medical training. When did you go and start learning more about nutrition, in general?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I actually, I actually helped found the IWCN, I was the program director for the first eight years of the certified clinical nutritionist program, I believe that I have CCN number one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow so before we dive into some of these predictive markers and I also want to you know get a sense of your background too because you also started a supplement and lab company which I think is very unique as well, but before we go into that, what would you say, give me a breakdown what’s your typical day like breakfast lunch and dinner, how do you spend your day doing a lot of research what’s that day like?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well thanks for asking. Here’s my day, I’m kind of a farmer which means I go to bed early, I get up early. I get up usually before dawn and I happen to have a wonderful mattress that I love and I stretch before I fall asleep, I stretch when I get up before I get out of bed, then I kind of check myself then I have a morning shower while the coffee is brewing and I do get organic shade-grown tea buried coffee from a wonderful guy who roasts the beans the day he sends it to you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And while the coffee is brewing, I take my shower and I stretch again in the shower and I go through a mental checklist to see if there’s any part of my body that really needs help today. Then the next thing I do aside from putting on some clothes usually, is I make sure I’m well hydrated and I am now following a fellow who believes that it is better, in the long run, to take almost all of your calories in just six hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmm so intermittent fasting?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, you can call this intermittent fasting. I like to think of it as intermittent digestion or…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: What is it whatever is the good side of fifth to me fasting is, I don’t want to fast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I have resistance of the word not in the process but I tell you that my mornings at this point now I know breakfast is the most important meal of the day but please don’t knock me out about this. That’s what I actually do and I’m going to be honest with you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: My mornings I stay hydrated I sip on coffee, I don’t put anything into my coffee there are no extra sweeteners in my home. You’re sweet enough as you are you don’t need to add sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And by the middle of the day I’m beginning to feel hungry, and where am I in the middle of the day? I’m at my R&D center in Vienna Virginia which is also my home. So four days a week I get to think write meditate and then I go out in our permaculture biodynamic food forest garden, where my job is to sit and watch the pollinators pollinate and the birds eat the birds, seed. And then my other job is to pick whatever is right for dinner because we like to eat from our land. We have a biodynamic Community Supported Agriculture CSA that we belong to and once a week we get very fresh food. And yes we go to Whole Foods but we only buy things that are whole. In my home, there are very few packages. We don’t need them. There are devices that make it easy to cook things work very well very quickly, yes we have steel cut oats not rolled oats and yes we put them in water or some broth overnight so they pre swell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I’m trying to think what else for me I often in the evening before bed I have about a half an hour where I get in a warm tub of water that has a cup of Epsom salts and a cup of baking soda that helps detoxify and relax. When I’m in the bath five minutes I do deep abdominal breathing just slow rhythmic breathing if you want to know what abdominal breathing is like watching a baby they all know how to breathe in there happen watch most adults, they under ventilate, they hypo ventilate they have so many traumas growing up that they’re daring to move that’s right they breathe from their chest which is not where the action is it’s these little tiny air sacs called alveoli, I really am a doctor at the that you have to expand your lung so I five minutes of abdominal breathing than 15 minutes of active meditation. My friend Robert Leichtman wrote a book called Active Meditation: The Western Tradition and published around 1976, still in addition highly recommend it and anything that Bob Leichtman has ever written because most of us have days that are structured I have earned and I worked hard to get this didn’t happen overnight but I worked hard to get to the point where I had a team with people that could take care of the day-to-day and in fact it’s better for me to not even interact with that because I’m constantly fixing things that aren’t broken.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But if they if they can’t solve a problem well then it’s mine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Four days a week yeah four days I’m a week I’m at the R&D center in the woods I get eight to ten thousand steps a day in and how do I doing that well I have a hands-free telephone and when I’m talking which I offer them, when I’m talking I’m walking.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That makes sense I have a setup here where I’m on a treadmill at my desk and when I’m sitting I have a like basically it’s called the QB and it’s put by spending on us and you can bike. So I do the same thing
Dr. Russell Jaffe: That’s wonderful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And just can just curious about protein consumption in fat consumption.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: oh well it’s, first of all, understand that the clear and the recent studies completely support what I’m going to say. The Greek Mediterranean diet is the healthiest diet the next healthiest diet is the Japanese diet. In both cases you take in lots of fresh things in joyful ways with lots of herbs and you have 60% complex carbs, 20%, of calories from fat and 20% of calories from protein now why do I say that, because if you want insulin resistance then go on a low carb high protein high-fat diet. If you want to increase your risk of atrial fibrillation and magnesium deficiency and all the consequences thereof go on a low carb high protein high-fat diet. It’s in vogue it’s called keto I even hear that South Beach is now a modified friendly keto. I don’t know what a friendly keto is. I know it keto, I know a ketoacidosis is it’s called starvation.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You will lose weight if you if you do what Bob Atkins and others recommended for many years which is eat a lot of fat a lot of protein and zero as close to zero carbs as you have… weight but you but your bones will melt.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what’s your there’s a lot of data coming out from over at Duke University, Eric Westman, a bunch of other Doc’s on the ketogenic kind of template you know they’re modifying it anywhere between 20 or to 50 grams of net carbs typically around thirty thirty net which typically gets you like eight servings of green vegetables a day. What’s your take on that? Because there’s lots of data with less mass…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The folks that the folks at Duke are doing good folks at Duke are doing good work there is an integrative medicine group at Duke at they’re part of. However, you can call that what you want you can call it a rose or a petunia it remains what it is it’s not ketogenic. Ketogenic means you deprive yourself of carbohydrates and you force your mitochondria cells, the battery of the cell to use fats and amino acids for energy. So what they’re saying is if you’re truly ketogenic you’re in starvation and what I said before applies now what they’re saying is we want to have a best of both, we want you to have the option of more fat and more protein. So we’re gonna cut the carbs half of what I said. So I said 60% not and I’m remember I said no added sugar so that 60% from fiber nuts and seeds and things you have to chew those are the thing and fruits and vegetables which turn out to be associated with long life and good health and depriving yourself of fresh fruits and vegetables I don’t think anyone today who really knows about the true functional nutrition literature as a fellow of the American College of Nutrition as someone who was on the National Nutrition Consortium appointed by Mildred Seelig at ACN today. I can tell you for sure that the Greek Mediterranean diet is associated with the healthiest long life and the best energetic mood stability symptom reduction from diet alone. Now it’s not it’s more than diet, of course, it’s what you eat and drink it’s what you think and but in regard to eating and drinking with respect to the folks that do they’re trying to take a very overlooked problem identify it and find a solution by splitting the difference. As someone who is in academic medicine, I can tell you I’m splitting the differences often what’s done but it rarely turns out to be very helpful.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: When you say splitting the difference do you mean just instead of consuming zero carbohydrate kind of like a carnivore diet they’re doing essentially you know six to eight servings of green vegetables keeping the net below 30. Is that will you mean by splitting the difference?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes I’m saying that the healthiest diet is 60% complex carbohydrates, 60% lots of fiber, 20% from protein, 20% from fat in which they’re very nicely…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Would you customize the carbs if you have a patient that’s coming in with a let’s just say elevation in fasting insulin let’s say greater than 10 or at 15 or a functional or a glucose tolerance that stays up high 2, 3 hours after a meal. Would you make exceptions to cut the carbs lower if you’re dealing with those patients?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: If you want to reduce hemoglobin A1c if you want to improve glucose-insulin ratio, if you want to improve Homa which we studied in our diabetes outcome study which we talked about if you want. But if you want to optimize any of those parameters as you should. You must keep the fat less than 20% of calories, and you must have at least forty to a hundred grams of unprocessed fiber in your diet daily. That means 60% from complex carbs, 20% from fat, 20% from protein. Now if you include seeds and nuts if you include seeds and nuts you get healthy oils but remember that as soon as you remove the oil from the seed or them but, the protective factors are gone and now you have something that air is the enemy now and so there are no edible oils in my house. We cook with broth, we cook with wine, we cook with juice, we cook with foods that are wet. We like wet foods we started all of our meals with something wet and warm. That Americans but it’s a makeover that adds years to life in life to years.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now you talked about 20 wouldn’t… go ahead.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No I was just trying to kind of guild that point which is I had insulin resistance when I weighed 65 pounds more than I did now.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I can tell you the last the last two hemoglobin tests on myself for 4.5% and the best outcome goal value is less than 5% and even a little bit about five and you begin losing years on the far end but losing quality of life today. It’s a bad proposition.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: We need it turns out we need a lot of fiber we also need a lot of probiotic good bugs and then we need a lot of nutrients that come from things like fruits and vegetables. Especially healthy fruits and vegetable.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To me today the minimum is organic I prefer biodynamic and actually, I would prefer to grow it myself if I quit.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s amazing. Now you talked about having the fact go higher that causes insulin resistance. What’re the mechanisms? We know fat doesn’t really have much of an insulin genic response I mean you have some with protein more with carbs. So what’s the mechanism of fat getting higher and causing more insulin and just to be clear right, we want to draw a line between you know process kind of more rancid omega-6 or more trans-fat right and then we kind of have our healthier saturated fats in the category coconut oil maybe gear butter and then, of course, we have our unsaturated avocado, olive oil, those kinds of things.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Let me jump in on that and just just to make a very important point. EVO, extra-virgin olive oil is a fraud waiting to be revealed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay let’s hear it yeah why.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yeah well why because my family I went to Tuscany at the time when you harvest olives and you bring them and overnight they grind very slowly on this grinding wheel you know this is a stone wheel and one comes out is dark green and viscous and delicious and they eat it there and they love it there and you can buy it commercially. What you buy and this is actually what happened we stayed there all night in the morning there was this mountain of spent olive mash outside the building, and this big truck from Bartoli comes by and I say what’s happening and they say, Oh hahaha Portola is going to take our spent olive mash and the first time they process it they’re gonna call it EVO.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So it’s a fraud waiting to happen. Ghee, on the other hand, can be liquid sunshine Beatrice from hunter wrote about that many years ago but remember the ghee comes from the cow and if that was a healthy cow that’s fine. But most ghee is contaminated with the products at the cow ate including glyphosate, including lead and mercury and… I okay and and now if you want to make a fondue and you want to use some organic grapeseed oil a few drops, I will not tear it out of your hand in fact there is i feel to show you I’m not totally consistent there is a small bottle of grapeseed oil and we made fondue with it. If you tell me you have organic peanut oil and you want to do a stir-fry, I’m killing a few drops of organic peanut oil in a wok or a cast iron pan, it’s fine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s okay.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But most of the oil should come from Whole Foods seeds and nuts. The complex carbs are what regulate a slow uptake from the gut of sugar and the minerals that are necessary to process the sugar so that you actually enhance insulin functionality by having a lot of fiber in the diet. Now let’s flip to the other side let’s slip to the other side. Assuming that you will agree with me that you’re sweet enough as you are and therefore you don’t need any added sugar.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I totally hear that.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now most now most of the studies that the people have cited included sugar and complex carbs as carbs. Sorry, that’s not fair look at the diet studies that use Whole Foods as their source of carbs. They got the best insulin resistance below 20% of fat from calorie… fat as source of calories, less than 20% of calories from that. Now, why is that? It turns out the more fat you take the more rigid are the membranes of your cells and it’s a little complicated biochemistry but trust me I’m not making this up. When the cell membrane itself this is the wrapper around the cell this is a very important packaging but very dynamic of thing membrane when that membrane becomes more rigid the fit between insulin and the insulin receptor becomes less efficient, and you develop insulin resistance but since your…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Doesn’t that membrane get more rigid more with trans-fats though then or like vs higher quality omega 3s or higher quality saturated there’s no difference in that? mm-hmm.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well let’s go back to the trans-fat comment. Kumar Kumaroh and Marianne showed in the late 70s early 80s, trans fats should not be part of the human diet, trans-fats should be out of your diet it’s not hard today because even the companies that used to advocate for them agree the trans fats bad bad bad yes trans fats do make rigid membranes but they’re bad and suggestible. Now stearic acid saturated fats are more rigid unsaturated fats are more flexible and fluid. You want to have more EPA DHA as omega-3, but you want it from a source that was distilled under nitrogen to remove the toxic metals and to avoid air oxidation damage of the delicate EPA DHA then you need enough magnesium in your body because magnesium acts as an antioxidant to protect the EPS, the unsaturated fats when they’re in trend.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting, now when you talk about some of these fish oils how much does it matter if it’s a triglyceride or an ethyl ester what’s your opinion on that?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: In my opinion on that is that there are two points of view, one advocated by company a and the other advocated by company b. There are virtues to both what is critical from my point of view is that the distillation of the oil whether it be a triglyceride an ethyl ester or not, that the distillation be under nitrogen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nitrogen is important is that preventive grantee oxygenation doesn’t happen essentially.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: To prevent what will be irreversible oxidative damage to the delicate essential fats that you are interested in it yes so you must have still under nitrogen and then you want to take the traction that has the most EPA DHA of course, and now you want to micellize that in a soft jell because that will protect it until you swallow it and the micellized little droplets get into the body easier because it’s not easy to take up either the triglyceride or the ethyl ester you need some bile you need a gall bladder that works and as I started to say what’s really important is the quality of the EPA DHA because you can make a case on both sides, which means we really don’t know the answer yet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And of course like you know you run a supplement company so we, you’re going out and you’re trying to find a person that to buy raw material offered there are obviously different tiers right you can go and buy cheaper stuff like you would maybe the equivalent of a burger at your local McDonald’s or you can choose the high quality grass-fed organic beef at your local farmer correct, so you’ve different options on your keys…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The reason that Park Integrative Health the reason that Park was founded in 1987 was because I wanted to use pharmaceutical quality and above raw materials all the time. And I was told by people who knew better that our cost of goods was going to be so high than I would have a hobby and not a business. So I did something that some people do which is I took the marketing budget and I put it into the cost of goods I put it into the quality of the bottom the quality of our service and we’ve grown quite a nice business, thank you, over service without having more than a few dollars for marketing. Because you’ll never see a sports celebrity endorsing a Park product but if you take a Park product, you’ll feel the difference because if you use the higher quality raw materials and you put them together so that it’s only active ingredients all the time which is something we pioneered. Now you have a safer, more effective form that when you study it as we have in community-based outcome studies delivers feel the difference results and as you know we have an unconditional guarantee because we trust people to feel the difference that Park approach that is use the highest quality and monitor it very carefully, because people will promise the moon and deliver modified dog poop.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sense. And then with your a fish oil what’s your opinion do you like the triglyceride, or the ethyl does it matter and then what’s the difference is to kind of put it in in layman’s terms.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well right see the difference is that eventually these delicate fats are going to get into a membrane as part of a triglyceride, and a triglyceride is three carbons, that’s the backbone and coming off of each of those carbons is a long chain called a fatty acid. Now the two position there’s one two three the middle position the tube position of the triglyceride is the source for your cytokines thromboxanes and prostaglandins it’s really important so if you put a racemic acid in there or you put it on mega six fatty acids in there you’ve got a completely different response than if you put in EPA or a DHA in there. So in that sense, you would think the triglycerides are better. But it turns out that the body is going to deconstruct and reconstruct a triglyceride so that’s not so critical and the ethyl ester, not the methyl ester ever the ethyl ester is easily taken up it has better bioavailability so if you say to me this is a person with a perfectly healthy gallbladder, across the coin both of them are okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: If your bile from your gallbladder is limited, well then you should have the ethyl ester.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then when you’re producing the product what’s the how are you preventing the oxidation from happening outside. I’m just keeping the temperature down. Are you putting like a rosemary antioxidant, how are you keeping it stable?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well when I said, first of all, there’s a pharmaceutical-grade fish oil company.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’re choosing a good quality right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No I’m choosing way above a good quality, the best food-grade right right right so there is food grade which you can think of as floor sweet. Then there is quality grade we can think of as better than floor sweet things. Once you get up to American Chemical Society to reagent grade to pharmaceutical grade and above, now you’re at a different level. You’re dealing with different companies you do different they provide different kinds of documentation you do we do third-party pros production testing on all our products because even though we trust our suppliers verified by President Reagan used to say Rastenburg.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly yeah that makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So what happens is the fish oil is distilled under nitrogen the middle fraction the concentrate EPA DHA is basically put into a sealed container, it then goes to the place where it’s going to be micellized into the soft gel where it is immediately and without any exposure to oxygen, put into tiny droplets that are easily taken up from your gut. And by the way, you don’t get the burping and the comeback that most officials have you can bite into this fish oil soft gel and you’ll find it very delicate because it’s not rancid.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and then if you consume, so if you were to consume rancid omega-3s you essentially have more lipid peroxidation correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You would have more lipid peroxidation and it would be a member of studies there have been several studies recently that said, oh we thought fish oils were good but they’re not really good. And if you look at them carefully these were people taking fish shows made in oxygen fish oils that were rancid and should, in my opinion, should not be consumed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: is that just robbing from your antioxidant reserves it’s sucking up more vitamin C what’s it doing in your body?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well it’s doing several levels of harm yes you’re right when you start with something that’s damaged and oxidized than the body has to use antioxidants which is protective but he has to use antioxidants in order to somehow get the oxygen off the molecule that has it. Because when you put oxygen on a molecule like a fat, it’s like putting a hand grenade on the fat. When that oxygen comes off the recoil energy is going to be so high that you’re going to break the membrane of the cell you’re going to damage the cell that’s a bad thing. And now you have a molecule that kind of fits in where an omega-3 or omega-6 should you know triglyceride in a membrane, but it doesn’t have the right shape. It’s got this big extra oxygen on. So peroxides are bad epoxides are bad anything that robs your antioxidants are bad and most people need help with their antioxidants so anything you can do to preserve to enhance the function of your antioxidants like ascorbate. Is to your benefit and anything you do that depletes your antioxidants it’s the opposite.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and what does that do to your cell membrane? Is it making the cell membrane more inflexible?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: It’s not only making it more inflexible when the oxygen comes off the recoil energy is so high you actually break the membrane and very often the cell is killed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow I really appreciate your biochem background it really helps and I know you’re also famous for doing a vitamin C calibration. Can you talk about the vitamin C calibration and who can benefit from that?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right so let’s talk about the C calibration also known as the C cleanse and the reason that we focus on a ascorbate, known as vitamin C it’s really an antioxidant does not think of it as a vitamin A vitamin is something you need a little love to activate enzyme catalyst. Albertsons Georgy pointed out that ascorbate is as important to survival as light and oxygen. When you’re that important you’re kind of really important and the end the next question has to be, well how much, how much should I take. Now Linus Pauling famously said 9 grams then he said 18 grams and I got to ask him why he said 18 grams and he said because doctors are so dumb they could only remember a number and if I say it long enough then they’ll remember and I said but doctor timing shouldn’t it be individualized he said of course but doctors aren’t smart enough for that. I think people consumers are and I think that people aren’t a functional integrative and holistic medicine are and so the C calibration the C cleanse means that every 15 minutes you take a certain amount like a gram and a half, three grams, six grams, every 15 minutes and notice I said grams, not milligrams. But of course, you use fully buffered fully reduced l-ascorbic nature’s form is l-ascorbic you want to fully reduced not the partially reduced fully reduced and by the way our source of ascorbic is fermented. It’s done by natural fermentation but under a nitrogen blanket so that during the production of the ascorbate, which is triply recrystallized under nitrogen which is it’s a challenge but it now gives you nature’s form in a concentrated way. And then we have a balance of minerals potassium, calcium, magnesium, and zinc you need all of them in a proportion so if you need one gram 10 grams or a hundred grams you still get the minerals that help the ascorbate come in and help it work.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And so what’s the goal how high do you go up to and then do you ramp down how does the whole process work and why should people be looking for symptom was.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well what they’re gonna do is once a week they’re gonna check their C calibration they’re gonna do it by taking the ascorbate every 15 minutes until they cleanse, until they have an enema from within, until they have a flush something so unique that until you’ve had it you don’t understand it but once you’ve had it once you know what I’m talking about. So you rapidly get toxic matter and fluid pumped into the rectum and evacuated from the tosh that’s why I meant by an enema from within. They do that once a week we do that once a week now in between you take 50 to 75 percent, so let’s say it took 10 grams to cleanse, you take between five and seven and a half grams. I recommend that people start at 50 percent and move up to 75 percent over time. You do the cleanse every week because the amount you need will likely go up over some period of time as you overcome the repair deficit that your body has accumulated for years or decades, and when you finally get to Plateau which means for four consecutive weeks your cleanse is the same amount. Now you know the amount you need on a daily basis, you’re taking three quarters of the amount to do that cleanse and you keep doing that until you get bulky or lose your stool indicating that repair has finally completed and now you do ramp down see now you check it once a week as you need less and less. And the goal is to need less than four grams, and when we checked about 4,200 people that reported their C cleanse. The people who are asymptomatic and healthy cleanse on four grams or less. They’re people who had just a few symptoms cleansed on four to ten grams the average person cleansed on ten to a hundred grams and there are people who need well over a hundred grams which is a hundred thousand milligrams to cleanse but it is safe and for it is safer for people to do this because the amount of oxidative damage, the amount of oxidative toxic material, the amount of nutrient-deficient oxidative processed foods that people are taking in the stress of high tech living has dramatically increased the amount of ascorbate that people need, ascorbate is the mother or maternal antioxidant that sacrifices herself so that all the other antioxidants can be regenerated and protected. so ascorbate is the critical one to test and the c cleanse is the way to find out how much you as individual mean.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially just to kind of recap at your doing about one teaspoon of the L ascorbate reduced powder which is about 3 grams 3,000 milligrams every 15 minutes or you’re taking more of it and you’re trying to get to a place of bowel tolerance where you’re essentially you’ve saturated your bowels or saturated your vitamin C stores and now the stools start to get loose and that number may be higher in the beginning and as your vitamin C levels get more repleted, or topped off so to speak, then that threshold to move the bowels as you said drops. Is that correct?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well no let me clarify my friend Bob Cathcart introduced bowel tolerance. It has a fatal flaw. The fatal flaw of bowel tolerance is you creep up on the amount you need as opposed to the cleanse where you rapidly ramp up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you’re doing degree increments though right teaspoon 3 gram 50 minutes.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No let me say again what I said before. If you’re really healthy if you’re really healthy you use 1/2 a teaspoon which is a gram and a half.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Gram and a half got it
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right if you’re a typical person you do use a teaspoon which is 3 grams but many people there are many people who need 2 teaspoons which is 6 grams and they need it for hours and if you do 6 grams for 4 times in an hour that’s 24 grams if you do that for two hours that’s 48 grams. Most people will cleanse in that time the idea is to rapidly saturate the body with the ascorbic so that the ascorbate can energize the rectum which is really from the kidney embryologically and pump toxic matter and extra water in to the rectum and that would come whooshing out flushing out cleansing up. So yes it’s the same idea, but it’s the next generation after bowel tolerance it’s the C cleanse or the C calibration. And it really depends on how well you are. If you’re really well you don’t need that much but if you’re a typical American, even 3 grams and I just had a someone contact me about this they took 3 grams every 15 minutes for 5 hours.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s a significant amount.
40:45 Yes sir, but if they had done six grams they would have flushed and calibrated but after five hours what they proved was they had a lot of oxidative burdens and they need a lot of ascorbic. So you really do, I really recommend that folks read the literature that we have, this is free to download online, you can look up C cleanse, you can look up joy of living the alkaline way or alcohol a guide, and we want folks to help them we want to help people understand themselves so they can do it smoothly, efficiently, and generally within a couple of hours. So I personally do my cleanses on the weekend and I can cleanse within a couple of hours. But often we hear from colleagues that people try say a teaspoon and that means three grams every 15 minutes, that means 12 grams an hour, but they need 70 grams to cleanse and it’s gonna take them more time than they’re willing to take and. I don’t think it should be your whole day you shouldn’t be sneak on waiting for a cleanse the whole day.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So if that’s the case, could you go up in tablespoon increments if you wanted to go faster?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well understand that you want something close to an isotonic iso-osmotic beverage so when you go to 6 grams or 2 teaspoons, you’re now talking about at least eight ounces.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And if you go and if you go above that you might go to 12 or 16 ounces, most people don’t want to drink that much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: I have no I have no objection to that. I’m just saying that I don’t make it too concentrated and don’t make it too dilute, you don’t want hypotonic, you don’t want hypertonic. You want as close to isotonic as you can get and that’s why what we recommend is as the upper dose is the two teaspoons in 8 ounces. Could be water could be your herbal beverage could be a juice that you diluted one to one with water. And by the way, some people find if they take the recycled glutamine or they take a dose of magnesium and choline citrate or they take a dose of the digestive guard before the cleanse. That things go more smoothly and more easily.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent and I’m just trying to wrap my head around what the difference between this cleanse and just typical bowel tolerance by vitamin C. Is it because it’s in the L ascorbate reduced form with the minerals, does that make it different? What’s happening is different.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well Bob has gotten himself recommended sodium L ascorbate and he did that because he knew that ascorbic acid would pull the dentin the calcium out of the teeth you know so you don’t know use ascorbic acid. He didn’t want to use a synthetic form and I agree with him on that, but what he said is you just keep taking it until you feel until you until your poop. That’s called bowel tones. Here’s here’s the fatal flaw with bowel tolerance and I spoke with Bob about this and he agreed with it was a very honest guy. When you do bowel tolerance, you have a very high probability that if you have a long transit time long digestive transit time as many Americans do, that you will recirculate toxic matter throughout your body and feel worse in contrast with the C cleanse you quickly ramp up, saturate the ascorbate throughout every cell of your body, and then pump the toxic matter and the extra fluid into the rectum, and it comes out quickly, and you don’t get the recirculation of toxic matter. People don’t want to feel worse on the way to feeling better.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well you motivated me. I’m gonna go pick some up and do my own vitamin C calibration very soon. Excellent. So let’s transition the conversation you talked about there eight predictive markers for your health to kind of give a window kind of your check engine light so to speak to see how you’re functioning in an optimal perspective. So let’s just kind of break down those eight markers briefly and let’s do a quick little blurb on each of them, so what’s number one?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well yes. Now with regard to predictive biomarkers, we reviewed hundred-thousand lab tests because we wanted to know what covers epigenetics and epigenetics is everything that’s not genetics. Epigenetics is everything you can influence with your lifestyle. It turns out to be really important, it’s 92 percent of your life Steinhaus epigenetics influences your genes, your genes are not a fixed blueprint they’re rather dynamically acted upon and modified by your habits of daily living, and your habits of daily living are summarized epigenetics and there are eight of these tests and I’d like to go through them and I’d like to point out what’s unique about our interpretation. And some of these are familiar, hemoglobin a1c. And the best outcome goal value is less than 5%. Now today if you ask most diabetologist, most doctors who specialize in diabetes don’t tell you that they don’t want to know the fasting glucose they don’t want to know the fasting insulin, the 2-hour postprandial. They want to know the hemoglobin a1c. It’s the average sugar stuck on to your hemoglobin protein over three or four months. So it’s a very good average risk predictor, it’s an oil cause morbidity mortality predictor, it predicts whether you want to live ten or more years pretty accurately, and the goal that is less than 5%. Now the second test is high sensitivity c-reactive protein, HSCRP, and you do need the high sensitivity version. Pointed out that while c-reactive protein is a good measure of acute inflammation, the more common chronic repair deficit which is what inflammation really is it’s really repaired deficit, that can be measured with a high sensitivity c-reactive protein known as HSCRP and that should be less than 0.5.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is that the same as the cardiac CRP? I think it’s the same, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes yes sir yes sir. Originally Read Crew who is a cardiologist thought that the high sensitivity test was cardio specific, and it’s sometimes referred to as the cardiac CRP
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That helps.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And yes, yes no I’m glad you brought that up. It is it’s not cardiac-specific, but it is sometimes called cardiac CRP and it is the high sensitivity or the HS CRP that we want and the best outcome goal value is less important
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I see a lot of patients that want the HS CRP but their lab whether it’s a quest or LabCorp only has the cardiac and from what I’ve seen like you just said it’s the same thing.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh same thing same thing yeah. So the next test the third test in the sequence is known as homocysteine. This is a plasma test and you must process especially within 30 minutes or the lab shouldn’t even run it, but a plasma homocysteine predicts atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease, almost better than any other single marker and when you combine the predictive biomarkers the way we do you’ve covered all of your cardiovascular risks and you notice what’s in here and what’s not in here we can talk about what’s not in here at the end. So the next test is your immune tolerance task. Oh sorry, the homocysteine should be less than 6 the homocysteine should be less than six. And that, yes homocysteine should be less than 6 again don’t pay any attention to the lab range healthy people have a homocysteine less than 6, they have a high methionine, a low homocysteine they are protected from cardiovascular disease and they can methylate which is a very important function for moving things around in your body. So homocysteine value less than 6 on the plasma properly done specially
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if that level is on the higher side what nutrients should we add in to help bring that down? Assuming a diet and lifestyles good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes well you’d be surprised actually how much B complex including folate, how much magnesium and choline citrate, how much betaine hydrochloride known as trimethylglycine people need in order to keep a healthy homocysteine, and you can look at all these cycles if you want because I’m a biochemist and I do it in my sleep. But the bottom line is you need at least a super B complex, you need folate probably milligrams a day, you need trimethylglycine at least 250 milligrams a day, you need enough ascorbate to protect and two other antioxidants, and with that and with enough magnesium and choline citrate to activate your ATP, you too can have a low homocysteine a nice high methionine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting and they just the back story for everyone listening they can look at it here is Kilmer McCully who was a Harvard researcher that discovered the homeless cysteine atherosclerosis link. Was basically laughed out of Harvard me 10 20 years ago in this discovery, but now it’s becoming mainstream and its even part of your predictive markers for overall health.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Kilmer published in 1967 when I was a young scientist in Boston, I knew him then. He went to the VA and distinguished research career but you’re right he got left by other parties. He was right and he was right, and they were in it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep interesting.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now the fourth test is the immune tolerance test known as LRA, lymphocyte response assay. Lymphocytes are specialized white cells, and they respond to things that are foreign and harmful, but they don’t respond to neutralizing and helpful things. So you want an LRA the LRA by ELISA/ACT is what we recommend and the goal is to have no intolerance is to be completely tolerant in your immune system, and healthy people with a healthy digestion and a healthy intake of the nutrients they need. The few of them that we found too are asymptomatic tend to have no reactions out of hundreds and hundreds of substances that we can now accurately measure on one ounce of blood, as long as it gets to us within a couple of days.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now with that test, how is that different than your typical food allergy IgG your IgA. Is it companies out there like Everly Wells a big one you see on Facebook all the time which I think is looking more IgG IgA? How is that different from that typical you know food allergy that’s more antibody based?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: The antibody tests were developed in the 1950s, they were outmoded in the 1980s, they’re still offered by most labs because they’re easy to do and impossible to interpret. So when you get an IgG antibody result, you have to ask yourself. Is this a beneficial neutralizing helpful antibody or is this a complement fixing harmful antibody? You can’t tell.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So essentially with the ELISA/ACT, you’re looking at the lymphocytes and you’re able to see if there’s a t-cell kind of mediated response to these foods specifically? Is that how you look more specifically?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes. The innovation that we brought to immunology was the first amplified procedure done on the surface of a white so-called a lymphocyte. And the novelty is that we can do reproducible tests that is less than 3% variance. So we do a functional cell culture more precisely than a physical chemistry lab measures an antibody, and the point you made that you jump to is correct. More important than b-cell antibodies and more important than distinguishing helpful from harmful b-cell antibodies are the t-cell responses which you can only get cell culture, only get from a cell culture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the IgG and IgA, that’s more B cell-mediated and…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Hundred percent. Not more these cells make antibodies
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Antibodies, correct.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: B cells make antibodies through specialized antibody factories called plasma cells. When you do physical chemistry, say hi GG or any antibody measurement, and I don’t care if you used a cooked antigen, I don’t care if you use a freeze-dried antigen, I don’t care if you used an aerosolized antigen, I’m telling you if you’re measuring antibodies you’re doing old-fashioned physical chemistry and you can’t interpret whether it’s good or bad and since you don’t know the function and you need to know the function I say don’t do tests that are intrinsically incapable of giving you the information you need. And then the point you made is well made which is T cells are more important than the antibodies, and you get nothing about the T cells when all you’re doing is old-fashioned physical chemistry. So we outmoded this in the 1980s we have over eighty thousand cases in our database, we’ve done over twenty-five million cell cultures, we published more outcome peer-reviewed studies that show the benefit of this approach when it was applied just by people living their lives. But as you said a lifestyle program, a program to add life to years and years to life, and we’re more excited today than ever because the data continues to come in that we have an advanced approach. It’s part of this predictive biomarkers suite of advanced interpretations and I’m glad to tell you that we at the Health Studies Collegium have been able to pioneer much of this validate it to the satisfaction of our most difficult critics and now make it available to colleagues and consumers.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. Now your test for this is the Elisa act biotechnology test now I’m just curious though. Is the liza the same thing as the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay test? Or is that just kind of a play on words there.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no it’s very specifically Elisa act, which is the coming together what you said Elisa, with a CT Advance cell culture technique
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay so it’s combining it. Okay.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So it’s the first time, first time that an amplified procedure was done, not with a sandwich assay like a conventional Elisa introduced by Bursa Aiello in 1953, back then this is using a lymphocyte enzyme that when the cell is resting, when it doesn’t see anything that it reacts against, the enzymes turned off. Because this is the same enzyme that turns the cell on when it needs to go through mitosis and reproduce itself. We were fortunate enough to figure out the specific kinase at the MHC locus for those of you who are super technical. The antigen presenting cell in this autologous ex vivo cell culture wiggles over to thelymphocyte presents the processed antigen at the MHC locus turns on the kinase we see the results of that. This is the bringing together for the first time I’ll be Liza, just as you said and cell culture.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting so you’re able to get the antibody response from that, the IgG IgA IgM, you’re able to get the immune complexes, and then you’re also able to look at that the t-cell activation there too, all three
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Exactly right C lymphocytes are smart enough that they will only react to harmful antibodies. So we get the meaningful harmful antibodies and we ignore the helpful neutralizing antibodies and then yes, we get the immune complexes which is IgM anti-ag G antigen and most importantly we get the T cell reactions.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent, very good. What’s the next marker?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, the next marker, the fifth one is measuring the pH or the acid alkaline state of your urine after rest. It turns out after six or more hours that the urine and the bladder equilibrate with the bladder lining cells and now you get once a day a measurement of cellular metabolic status. And if you lack magnesium, you have metabolic acidosis if you have enough magnesium you have a healthy happy cell. Why is that so important? Well magnesium is not just an electrolyte that balances calcium you need one molecule of magnesium for every ATP molecule to do any work in your cell. You need magnesium to activate your mitochondria so you can get the toxins detoxified. You need magnesium to activate hundreds maybe thousands of enzyme catalyst. You need magnesium to protect essential fat’s in transit, magnesium is nature’s calcium channel blocker. The problem has been that until very recently magnesium has been notoriously hard to get in, it tends to run out as soon as it comes in, and therefore it’s been forgotten. Now what we did was find out how to make inverted micellar nanodroplets, so you combine ionized magnesium salts with choline citrate and now you get enhanced update and chaperone delivery to the cells we’re hungry for it. So now we should remember magnesium.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wonderful, excellent. What’s the next marker.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well the goal value from pH is 6.5 to 7.5 if you’re below that you’re too acid and you need more magnesium if you’re consistently above 7.5 it might be catabolic illness and that’s something you don’t want but we could talk about later.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we want like we want the urine though the saliva it doesn’t quite matter
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no urine urine and the reason we want the urine is because that’s what we standardized, but more importantly if you put a Kirby Cup, if you put a little plastic discover your parotid gland in your mouth and you collect pure parotid saliva you two can measure the pH of that. But having had that done to me when Frank Oppenheimer was a postdoc and meet at some subjects, very true people will do that. What we call saliva or spit it’s a combination of gingival fluid zero sanguinis exudate some saliva sub submandibular some parotid, it turns out that saliva is not what you think it is. At least not in most Americans mouths and and talk to the dentist. There are very few Americans that have a healthy mouth.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then with the urine, are we testing first morning urination, or they can be another example?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no no there’s only one time of day. You can only get a meaningful measure after six hours of rest. So when after six hours at rest the next urine… yes, and you by the way during those six hours you can go to the bathroom and go back to bed. You just can’t go to the gym or the kitchen
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, because you’re gonna create acid byproducts on your muscle activation.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And other than after those six hours of rest, there are somewhere between 20 and 40 variables that influence urine ph at any random time
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That totally makes sense.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Right the next measurement, the next measurement is vitamin D, specifically what’s called 25 hydroxy D but if you just ask for a vitamin D that’s what they’re gonna do. Now there are three forms of vitamin D and there are some experts who say measure all three of them. I do not advocate that, partly for cost and partly for practicality. So if you think there is something wrong with the way their kidneys are processing vitamin D or their liver is processing vitamin D then you might want to do all three different what are called isomers. In general you want the 25 hydroxy d and the goal value is 50 to 80. Now there was recently an article in New York Times, and a very distinguished science writer says, almost everyone in America is low in vitamin D it’s normal to be low in vitamin D so don’t even measure vitamin D and don’t supplement. Now did you understand what I just said it do you understand how silly that is?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely yes okay absolutely.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Let me clarify for everybody, because I know you know this, but when vitamin D is below 20, well of course your bones are gonna fall apart, but more importantly you just tripled or quadrupled your cancer risk.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And you probably tripled your cardiovascular risk. Because vitamin D we call it a vitamin, it’s actually a neurohormone. It actually regulates cell division; it does a whole lot of things and we know in my opinion the best outcome goal value 50 to 80 the vitamin D council I believe says 40 to 70 but that’s close to 50 to 80. And the ranges that we have said were the values that we have said give you a certain latitude. So if you take a little bit too much vitamin D, and you get up to 90 or 100 I have no concerns. So when I say 50 to 80 I don’t mean that 81 is a problem, I’m saying the safer range that we know to be effective and protect you from the profound chronic illnesses 50 to 80. And how much vitamin D do you take? How much vitamin D do you take? Well as much as you need to get into the 50 to 80 range.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah as much as you need.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: And I take and I prefer for people to take drops under the tongue, so they can absorb, well that’s a turkey word be careful of that but drops under the tongue before you swallow them are easily taken up and many many people over forty million according to my colic. Over forty-million Americans don’t absorb vitamin D from their gut. They’ve got to take it up they’ve got to take it up.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting
Dr. Russell Jaffe: From their mouth
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah Hollen he’s also he’s also a researcher over ABU as well right at your alma mater?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: that’s where I met Mike Hollen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay he’s been there for a long time right. 34 years.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: About that he’s developed the fundamental methods in vitamin D research he’s known as dr. sunshine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah absolutely now I’m seeing some people online they’re pushing back a little bit cuz we have vitamin d3 the pre-vitamin D we make on the ski. Somebody hits it that cholesterol I think goes through our liver and gets forming the 25 hydroxyvitamin D, which is calcidiol and then calcidiol hits the kidneys and gets converted to calcitriol. So more people I’m seeing are saying hey we had a measure calcitriol or that the vitamin D that’s activated to the kidneys and they say there should be like one to one ratio on the d3 the 25 hydroxy versus the 125 which is the calcitriol. What’s your opinion on that having that one-to-one or the 125 is?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Having spoken to 12 different world’s experts and their opinions matter and mine doesn’t cause vitamins not my particular expertise. I can tell you they each have a different opinion. With respect to what your folks, were saying if you have the resources and you want to have the maximum useful information. Then at least you would measure the 25 hydroxy and the 125 hydroxy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: But you might want to measure the precursor as well. If you’re going to do that, but I will offer to most people for home the value proposition including how much is this going to cost…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Leads me to conclude for most people to start with 25 hydroxy D. No disrespect on the question but just start with 25 hydroxy D bring people into the 50 to 80 nanogram per ml range. Then if you have any question or if you want to just be a more scientific and evidence-based practitioner, when you get them into range then measure and see if you have a one-to-one ratio.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And what if there’s not was it would there be something you would do specifically. I know some data says you should give resveratrol to help with that some today it can be an infection kind of thing. What’s your take on why that may be skewed we’re 25 is higher and 125 is lower?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well you raise several very good points. My friend happens to own resveratrol globally and I can tell you they’re going out of the resveratrol business because resveratrol tall has very low bioavailability. It is a polyphenolic it is in red wine, especially granule red wine. However, because it is very low bioavailability, which means very low solubility. When you give it in the doses that people have tried to give it, you end up irritating the gut and irritating the immune system. So we have for a long time at least the last 25 years advocated the safer more effective polyphenolics and activate your innate immune system and do many wonderful things for you. And that’s quercetin dihydrate as the flavonoid, and soluble OPC ortho proanthocyanidins for the chemists as the flavonol, because you need flavonoids and flavonols. These are the colorful compounds in foods but almost all of them in high doses are mutagenic which means oncogenic which means promote cancer because they have such low uptake and they can be irritating, and if you irritate the immune system enough, it will become very upset.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Make sense
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Flavonol but safer the soluble OPC we have them together in different forms because they help prepare they reduce pain they enhance many functions of the innate immune system and when your innate immune system is functioning, you are in a repair mode where you don’t have to call in the extra troops. What’s called the adaptive immune response which are the lymphocytes and the other delayed immune reactive cells. So, which one is to provide a lot of energy to the innate immune system so it can defend and repair you, so they can recycle foreign invaders down to their building blocks and make them available for the body to build itself up? And then more importantly, after you do defense you have to do repair. Well, most Americans are in defense mode almost all the time. You can think of it this way, during the day we do more defense work when we’re getting restorative sleep, we do more repair work. Ah notice I snuck in restorative sleep. Now if you need restorative sleep, then you might need that salt and soda bath the dichromatic light which we didn’t talk about but that goes along with it the abdominal breathing, the active meditation the magnesium and choline citrate, maybe tryptophane with some zinc and b6 so that your body can make the serotonin and the melatonin. I never give serotonin. I never give melatonin because the body never floods itself with those neurochemicals and neural hormones. I give the tryptophane in a way that it goes exactly in the brain where it’s needed, where the brain turns it into serotonin or melatonin as needed. And by the way, it has a very short life in the body because it’s too potent to leave around. So, we follow physiology before a pharmacology, but that also means we study physiology and frankly most of my colleagues today, they know about pathology and I am a double board-certified pathologist, but they don’t remember physiology and biochemistry flummoxes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I agree healthy egg yeah biochemistry and physiology and when you apply it that becomes Clinical Nutrition and functional medicine essentially, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: So now the next, right. The next test is an omega-3 index, want to know where you are omega-3 to omega-6 this is Bill Harris’s test. Can be done on a blood spot, and the goal value was more than 8%, and the quick anecdote is that Bill Harris was in the offices of Professor Patti Deutsch at the Military Medical School, she and I are friends I came by because I was going to confer with her and bill was lamenting the fact that it’s so hard to find adults with healthy omega-3 levels. Patti points to me he pulls out a Lancet he calls me up a few days later he says your omega-3 is 13.2% something like that I said well is that better than eight he said well we think it is if you know that above eight is good we know that above eight is good but let’s say that you were just a consumer or just a listener to this show. You might assume that 13 is better than eight. But I’m a scientist so I had to ask Bill is it really better than eight and he’s an honest enough scientist to say we think it is we pray it is we hope it is come back and five or ten years we’ll have more day. So that’s the omega-3 index. And then we only have one more and that is a urine test, this is the measure of oxidative damage and risk in your DNA it’s called 8-oxoguanine that is 8-O-X-O-G-U-A-N-I-N-E, 8-oxoguanine, and because it’s a urine spot test, we actually have a value per milligram of creatinine. So, your best outcome value is less than 30 milligrams per milligram of creatinine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Is a test in organic acid by Genova it’s called 8 hydroxy – deoxyguanosine, it sounds very similar to that I know that’s an oxidative stress marker?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, yes. I think that we’re talking about the same molecule I can tell that this molecule has several different names, they’re all the same you want the DNA, the nuclear DNA oxidative stress marker that’s the one you are.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it that’s correct good.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Now we help people interpret tests that other labs do. So we folks want to know about these best outcome goal values and how to attain them, then you would talk to our health coaches and our nutritionist. If you want to have them perform they can be performed through our lab or through your lab although the LRA is distinctive to us, and the omega-3 index is distinctive to Bill Harris.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good. And then what’s the range you want to be in for the omega-3 again?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Yes, for the omega-3 index you want more than 8% to be omega-3
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And with yours, you were up to 13 you were saying right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: 13 plus.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay so what we’re going to do…
Dr. Russell Jaffe: At the moment there’s only one person who has a higher value if I remember correctly from what Bill said, and it was actually a youngster, was a teenager but this mom took very much pride in telling us how much omega-3 she got her kids to eat.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And if they’re a high threshold for that just because of the lipid peroxidation would you say eight grams, four, six, what’s your high-end recommendation you know we’re assuming farmers pharmaceutical-grade super high quality, so it’s not oxidized.
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Well if the question is how much EPA and DHA do I take and I would never take an oxidized product and I would never recommend anyone do that. But I currently take 8 to 10 grams a day, and that may seem high but I can tell you that given my particular background, that’s what seems to be needed to keep all the other parameters in the range that I would like them to be. So I’m personalizing my intake.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Plus you’re also probably calibrating the L ascorbate which is you know stabilized membranes too, right?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh of course and I take the polyphenolics and I take the super B complex that has a full mineral complex, and I occasionally take some extras in because I’m a man. So yes and I take prebiotics probiotics and symbiotic. So yes I actually sent someone a photograph of the 12 supplements that I take a day and I take two to four doses a day of those supplements. Now I’m like everyone else when it comes to opening-closing bottles, I understand that it’s a commitment I have made because it helps me feel and function so much better. By most physical and functional measurements, I’m half my age and if I can keep that up if I can keep that up for another 30 40 years it’ll be a good run.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent Dr. Russell Jaffe, it’s been an amazing podcast. Lots of knowledge bombs lots of great information. Were there any other biomarkers that all the eight?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: No no we got through all eight of them yeah that was pretty quick but thank you for being such a good host and for making sure that I stayed on top
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I’m gonna put in the show notes here, we’re gonna put the links to the ELISA ACT biotechnology food allergy lymphocyte test. Will put the vitamin c el ascorbate, the potency guard powder links, and everything so if anyone wants information, we’ll put it down below. Is there anything else you want to leave the listeners with here today dr. Jaffe?
Dr. Russell Jaffe: Oh gosh yes, I would like folks to know that in the 21st century we have to save our own lives. You cannot rely on science from the 19th or 20th century. I’m not even sure today you can rely on an expert. As Jackie Mason, the comedian says, in the phone book or wherever you look up your doctor its lists every condition and whether they were present or absence the day your problem occurred. And I’m just trying to be a little bit humorous about it, I think consumers should be very active today learning about themselves through self-assessments, through tests that can be interpreted to best outcome individual levels, as we’ve just been talking. Now, this is a new paradigm, this gives information inspiration and if you put some effort perspiration in, you can recover decades of quality life, and you can feel and function better tomorrow. It’s the best value that I have found in all my years in science and by the, way this is not only how I follow through I do walk my talk. But this is how my parents live near the end of their life and the way my children live today. So put us to the test and find out how well you can feel.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well thank you so much I think you did a phenomenal job taking the hard science, biochem science, and applying it and making it practical so people can apply it so, thank you so much I look forward to having you back soon to dive in deeper and you have a phenomenal day that dr. Jaffe, you take care
Dr. Russell Jaffe: You the same, thanks so much.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks so much, bye now.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKqHwkdOpc
https://www.merck.com/index.html
Audio Podcast:
http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/conventional-medicine-to-functional-natural-medicine-podcast-232
Blood Sugar | Podcast #194
Welcome to another functional medicine podcast with Dr. J and Evan Brand! This video talks about blood sugar, and other relevant things revolving around it, such as symptoms, Insulin resistance, Cortisol response, and nutrition. Stay watching for additional information about the benefits of fasting and the influence of the gut to the body’s blood sugar.
To effectively listen to what the body needs, knowledge is essential for knowing why it’s doing what it’s doing, so keep subscribing for more videos. Don’t forget to share!
Dr. Justin Marchegiani
In this episode, we cover:
01:12 Mood, Blood Sugar, Insulin Resistance
06:43 Total Fasting Benefits
11:00 Gut Influences Blood Sugar
18:50 Precautions in Taking Antibiotics
22:00 A1C Test
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey, guys. It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome back to the podcast. Evan. Evan Brand, my friend, how are we doing today?
Evan Brand: I’m doing great, man. I’m excited to chat with you. We came up with the idea of chatting about blood sugar. It’s a low hanging fruit that people still don’t dial in, but yet they want a Silver bullet to fix their problems but their blood sugar is still not addressed. It’s like, you can’t skip that and go to this magic supplement if you want to be truly happy and healthy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I mean, the whole goal of blood sugar stability is not relying on your hormonal system to buffer the high’s and low’s, right? Blood sugar goes too high, right— the pancreas has to come out and drop it down. Blood sugar gets too low, the adrenals have to come out and punch in some adrenaline or cortisol to bring it back up. Maybe even a tiny bit of Glucagon, right? So, you get these hormonal roller coasters where your hormones— like, imagine— Let me just— Let’s say this. Like you’re driving a bumper cart, right? But you’re driving it so smooth that you’re not bouncing off the ends, right? So, most people, they basically pinball or bumper cart their blood sugar through the day, and they’re chronically relying on their hormones for either side. The problem is,
Evan Brand: Yup. So, tell people what that would be like. These are like the banana and cereal breakfast people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So, number one is starting your day with a whole bunch of refined carbohydrates. My— My belief, based on physiology, is we have
Evan Brand: Yup. And with mood— I want to bring that up. You may be hungry by 10:00 AM and you’re not able to go in between meals. Like, if you’re— if you’re listening, if you’re unable to go from breakfast to lunch and you have to snack in between, that’s a sign that your blood sugar is off. Other signs, we could say, irritable, if you’re shaky, if you get stressed out, you get hangry if your meals are delayed. That’s a sign that blood sugar is off. You mentioned the Insulin pee. So that could be excess body fat if you’re Insulin resistant. What else would you like to add to the list of symptoms? Anxiety, I know, is a big one that which—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anxiety and mood issues. Because of that those bumper cart rails— It’s like the third rail on the sub— on the subway, right, where it’s— there’s like, you get shocked,
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So people do get
Evan Brand: So, it sounds like you’re saying you want to graduate someone up to maybe an Intermittent fasting plan. You might not just take somebody that went from eating garbage to straight Intermittent fasting. But they hear about Intermittent fasting ‘cause it’s trendy, so they don’t go and dial in blood sugar first. They’re just like, “I’m gonna go fast. I’m gonna get off McDonald’s or whatever garbage and go fast,” and they wonder why it doesn’t work. Is that what you’re saying?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, a hundred percent, as we need nutrition around our system. And
Evan Brand: Yeah
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One, if you’re massively Insulin resistant, yes it can help. The difference is, well, you’re still not putting the nutrition in your body to run those systems. If we look at glycolysis and our Krebs cycle and Electron Transport Chain, it requires nutrients to run. So, my— my philosophy is, let’s get those nutrients in there. Number two, there’s a benefit because you’re not eating a whole bunch of inflammatory glutinous foods that may have a lot of in— inflammatory reactions ‘cause those foods aren’t good themselves. My thing is though, “Let’s try to get the nutrition in, and let’s also cut the inflammation out as well.” The third thing is that someone’s gut’s really, really, really messed up, that’s— it could be helpful ‘cause then you just dope anything in which can let the gut heal a bit.
Evan Brand: Uhmhm—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now, my thing is, there are other types of diets out there, like the GAPS Diet, or even an extreme kind of elemental kind of GAPS diet where you’re still getting nutrition in but you’re using cooking and processing methods to
Evan Brand: Yeah. more people think, too, that the fasting is gonna cure everything, but as you mentioned, you’ve got to have these different amino acids. These are creating neurotransmitters that are creating hormones. So, fasting is
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One hundred percent. So, number one, fasting is a stressor on the body. Right? We know it’s a stressor ‘cause our body will produce hormones to downregulate our metabolism. Just go type in Hypocaloric diet and Reverse T3.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You’ll see Reverse T3 levels go up. You’ll also see even Cortisol levels go up. Why
Evan Brand: Yup. That’s a great analogy. Another thing too is the Cortisol’s probably a motivating factor, ‘cause in ancient times, if you weren’t eating, your body thinks, “eventually you’re gonna starve and die.” So it’s probably gonna motivate you and maybe give you a little bit of the anxiety to push you like, “Hey. You better go hunt because you can’t just be starving like this all the time.” So, uh— There are benefits, but—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One hundred percent. So like— There’s like one camp that’s like— that’s fast their way to health. There’s no magic. It ain’t nothing.
Evan Brand: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right? If that’s the case, you know, every concentration camp victim in World War II would have the secret to health. That’s just not that way, right?
Evan Brand: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now,
Evan Brand: Yep. Well said. Is there anything else we should say about blood sugar? The gut influences blood sugar too. We do find it with a lot of people with gut infections, which is something we test everyone for, with parasites, bacterial overgrowth, etc. Kind of like this fasting thing you’ve mentioned. Some of these gut bugs are stealing your amino acids. Lyme and some of the coinfections with that can take amino acids too. So, if you do have gut bugs, that may be part of the reason why your blood sugar is crap. SO if you’re trying to do adrenal stuff, you’re trying to do fasting work and you can’t adjust, you’ve got to get the gut looked at too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One hundred percent. Right? So a lot of these, let’s just say, uh— microbes or infections, they like processed sugar. Processed sugar is really easy for our body to— to process, right? It’s really easy to take in and to utilize it for energy, and it’s— it’s kind of has its addicting-like effect that can boost up Dopamine. So these critters get that and they produce chemicals inside your body that causes you to crave it. So— That’s why I see a lot of people like, “Oh! Well, just eat what you like and do this, and listen to your body.” O— How do you do that? How do you do that if you have infections or yeast overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth, and these critters are causing you to crave certain things that may not be right for you but may be right for
Evan Brand: Exactly. I mean, if I ate what I felt like eating when I had a Candida overgrowth, I would
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah! So there needs to be an educational component there, and I think a lot of people kind of mess that one up, and they kind of get more kind of intuitive on it. But it’s good to have that. But you’ve got to be in a— in a balanced place to use your intuition if not the chemicals, uh— or the— the microbes in our body will produce things that will cause us to override that.
Evan Brand: Yup. Is there anything else we should mention on— on the blood sugar conversation?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah. So [stutters] I’m like the analogy king, right? That’s kind of like, you know, you meet someone for the first time. The first couple months, or maybe six months to a year, you’re in this massive honeymoon phase, right? And you just— Everything is just amazing, right? It’s kind of like that with
Evan Brand: Yup. Yup. That’s for sure. So get tested. If you have gut bugs, fix those. If you have adrenal issues, fix those because it’s tough. It’s tough to stabilize blood sugar if you have adrenal stress.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s very rarely mentioned. And then also, the— the nutrient density aspect too, right? So, plants are great. Plants aren’t quite as nutrient dense. The only exception for that is if you juice them.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right? Five hundred calories of Kale is 16 cups of Kale. Very hard to do that in a day, let alone a sitting. Five hundred calories of grass-fed beef
Evan Brand: [laughs]
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …steak. Alright? That’s not a problem. Try putting down 16 cups of Kale.
Evan Brand: Oh my God. Let me mention this while you’re on that topic. I ha an—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now, [crosstalk] I’ll drink— I’ll drink some green— green veggie juice that’s got six or seven pounds of
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I’m not gonna— I’m not gonna
Evan Brand:
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Evan Brand: …last week. Uh— She’s been a Vegan for two years, and guess what? She just got diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s the problem with Vegan Vegetarian diets.
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I can say who these diets are great for. People that are more Insulin sensitive, they’re more ectomorph. They tend to like— They take in carbohydrates. They get this propensity to want to exercise and do work, and they— and they love the
Evan Brand: That’s crazy. I know I had her run some of her numbers and it was close to that. I asked her like, “What’s your breakfast, lunch, dinner?” It was just vegetables and pretty much beans like every meal. I was like, “Good Lord!”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and if
Evan Brand: So her A1C level was a 6.7. So, right there, type-2 diabetes, and she’d been promoted a Vegan diet by some nutritionist, and she tried it. And two years ago, she was eating
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup. People tend to lose the craving of meat because they don’t process it and digest it. And then the Vegan Vegetarians, the— they compare the nutrient density. They— they do it
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …or even in a day, to a realistic amount of meat that someone could eat in a meal. Eight ounces of meat’s pretty realistic. Even my wife will have an
Evan Brand: Yup. Yeah. Powders. There are some like greens powders…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Powder is what?
Evan Brand: …I don’t know.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But still— I mean, that still you’re kind of processing that in too, and you’re not getting some of that fiber, and, God forbid, you had some carrot to that, then you— you’re adding a lot of sugar as well. So you got to be careful with that. That’s a double-edged sword.
Evan Brand: Yeah. We had a question about the type of
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One hundred percent. I love it. Any other questions that we can pull here that are pertinent to today’s talk? So guys, if we’re doing a podcast, we always appreciate keeping the questions
Evan Brand: Yeah. Tho—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Anything else, Evan, you can…
Evan Brand: Well…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …see there?
Evan Brand: …there was one question that we could hit on uh— just because it—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Find out the scenario and— and if there’s an option to do like
Evan Brand: Yeah. Justin’s selling different probiotics. I do too. You could just check at our sites, justinhealth.com. He’s got several. Evanbrand.com, I got several. We use professional healthcare companies to make all of our products. So you want to make sure that they’re legit. If you just go to Whole Foods and you buy a probiotic, we can’t guarantee the potency of it. You definitely want to go for practitioner grade for probiotics.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Cool. And then—
Evan Brand: That was—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then I see uh— a question from a patient here. I’ll answer the uh— the question here. Uh— “Heavy eyes, headaches, fatigue, brain fog, currently taking Thyrobalance— two
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …maybe some Estrogen-modulating types of herbs like some Maca. I use a product called Femmenessence that I get great results with. And then, of
Evan Brand: Maybe some liver stuff too, like sometimes with the…
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhmhm—
Evan Brand: …cycle being off. Sometimes it’s just— you could throw a little, simple liver support in, a milk thistle, burdock root, dandelion— something like that— maybe some dandelion tea. It’s in that category— stuff that might help and can’t hurt.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and then this person’s also mentioning that they started some GI Clearing, some gut killing herbs as well. The liver, the immune system, and
Evan Brand: Yep. I think that’s good
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Awesome. Great.
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] I think we’re out of time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: …for the great feedback. Excellent and I think we had a great chat today, Evan. Is there anything else you wanted to mention at all or add?
Evan Brand: Uh— Just get— get your— get your A1C tested. Like if you are concerned about blood sugar, if you’ve got Type-2 or Type-1 Diabetes in your family and you’re kind of paranoid about blood sugar, you could go to a pharmacy. They have a test kit called A1C now, and you can get a test kit for like 20 bucks and it’s a simple finger prick you can do at home to test your A1C, which is like your average blood sugar over the last couple to several months. And you could check it. I mean, you could have
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right here. So— A nice little 20-dollar glucose monitor. Do a functional glucose tolerance test, not the conventional one where they give you 75 grams of
Evan Brand: Yeah. Yeah. So uh— The functional testing, what number are you looking for?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— So below a hundred
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So, the sleep aspect is there. Lots of studies on college students. They were, within two weeks of sleep restriction, they were able to make them
Evan Brand: Oh my God.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So sleep resistance, and then why, right? Well, part of it could be because there is research that sleep deprivation can deplete Magnesium. Magnesium’s very helpful for blood sugar as well. So there’s lots of
Evan Brand: Yep. I’m sure we could chat further but we should probably wrap it up. So check out, if you want a consult with Justin, check out his site, justinhealth.com. If you like to consult with me, evanbrand.com. We look forward to helping you guys, and we’ll be back next week for some more fun.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Give us a thumbs up. Give us
Evan Brand: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: My link is justinhealth.com/candida.
Evan Brand: [crosstalk] Just wrap up. Just wrap up. But if you guys want to go buy the event, I had a guy this morning, a new client who purchased my Upsell Talk, which is where I did an hour case review of reviewing a client’s labs and making a protocol. The guy said
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. And then, do you have a
Evan Brand: I don’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: crosstalk] Want me to get you a link so
Evan Brand: Nah, that’s fine. Use your link. People can have them. Go for it. Thyroidresetsummit.com. Go register for Justin’s event. It’s gonna be awesome.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome, man. Hey! It’s been totally real, Evan. Great chatting. Let’s talk real soon.
Evan Brand: Take care, man. Bye.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You too. Bye.
——————————————————————————————————
REFERENCES:
http://thyroidresetsummit.com/
http://justinhealth.com/candida or https://candidasummit.com/?idev_id=22861&idev_username=justinhealth&utm_source=22861
Jimmy Moore – The Complete Guide to Fasting – Podcast #132
Dr. Justin Marchegiani welcomes his special guest, Jimmy Moore, in today’s podcast about fasting and nutrition. Listen to them as they engage in a very energizing and interesting discussion on how to do intermittent fasting for a therapeutic reason.
Learn about how fasting benefits and affects our bodies in many ways and be able to apply the guidelines involved in a successful fast. Get valuable information on supplements supporting the Ketogenic diet and know more about cholesterol issues, including the testing involved and its possible root cause.
In this episode, we cover: 
07:21 Fasting
11:40 Thyroid Function during fasting
18:43 MCT oil, Ketones, and other supplements
27:27 Ketones and Neurological Conditions
34:50 Lipid Panel: Cholesterol
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani. We have my good friend, Jimmy Moore. And one of the biggest podcasts on the Internet here. He is a—he’s one of the guys that I look to for inspiration, kinda how I MC kinda my podcast coz Jimmy is— does it so right. Jimmy, how you doing today?
Jimmy Moore: Hey! What’s up, Justin? I love how enthusiastic you get. We all have our radio boys when we come on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Jimmy Moore: We’re just talking to each other then, “Hey, hey, guys we’re back here on the Justin Marchegiani show.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hahaha. Well I always love how you exit your podcast. You say the person’s name, you’d say, “His name is Jimmy Moore” And I love that exit. It was just so great.
Jimmy Moore: I still do that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. I love it. It’s so great. I’m gonna do it today, too, as a little tribute for you.
Jimmy Moore: That’s cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But Jimmy, how have you been?
Jimmy Moore: I’ve been good, man. Just like us Tony before we came on the air. It’s just busy busy all the time and it’s the way I like it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. I know you had a book that just came out recently on fasting. Let’s dig in. How’s that going? I know you did that book with Dr. Jason Fung.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Talking about fasting and how to do it therapeutically. Just kind of any listener that’s trying to get some more information on fasting, why should they get that book?
Jimmy Moore: Well, we wrote the complete guide to fasting, Dr. Fung and I, uhm— because when I was looking for a resource on doing some longer facet done some intermittent fast pretty naturally, when you’re ketogenic, you know it’s extraordinarily easy to intermittent fast. I mean, if you go longer than or—or shorter than eight hours without eating between meals, you’re not doing it right. So intermittent fasting was very easy for me and I was even finding that pushing it to say 36-ish hours which is basically an alternate day fast also was pretty easy. So I want to try to push the envelope a little bit and do these longer fast. Well I met Dr. Fung of all places in Cape Town, South Africa he and I shared
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Jimmy Moore: — the stage together at a big low-carb conference that happen there a few years ago. And I went up to him after hearing his talk. I’d never heard of him before and he was talking about fasting as, “Oh, here’s somebody that does something about fasting.” And so, I said, “You know I’m looking for a good resource on doing some longer fast. What is out there?” And he said, “Nothing.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Alright. So we’re back. So the last question we were talking about the fasting book and you mention you did it with Dr. Jason Fung, so tell me about kind of how that started?
Jimmy Moore: Yes. So he when he and I decided we wanted to collaborate on a book, I decided to start fasting myself. Again, I’ve been doing some— some intermittent fast but I wanted to push the envelope and see, “Okay, let’s see how I do with a little bit longer fast— no, context here.” I used to think fasting was the stupidest thing in the world. Why would you purposely starve yourself? It just made no sense to me. But that was under the thinking that I was starving myself. Once I realized it’s not really starving yourself. You’re doing this for therapeutic reason. That’s when fasting started to make a little more sense, especially when it was spontaneously happening on an intermittent level. Really, all you’re doing is just extending it a little further than that to give your body the benefits that you’re looking for. So I did a—a goal in September 2015, to go 21 days in a row of fasting. Now the longest I’ve ever made, it was like 6 1/2 days. And that one, I told this uh—story in the book, The Complete Guide to Fasting, that I— I took communion on the seventh day of a fast. And I was planning on going seven days on that one and to communion that day at church, got home from church and you know what happened, Justin. I crashed so hard.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So hard.
Jimmy Moore: And so my blood sugar got down to low 50s which in and of itself isn’t a horrible thing when you have higher ketone levels.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jimmy Moore: But I wasn’t testing blood ketones at that time. And I was definitely in hypoglycemia because I was so hungry, and I was just curled up in the fetal position. And my wife’s like, “Please eat something.” And I was like, “I’m four hours away.”
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh my gosh.
Jimmy Moore: I did in the beating uh—and—and breaking that fast, but that was kind of my horror story of fasting. So when I came to this one, I said, “Jason, will you kinda pay attention to me. I will not take communion this time. God will forgive me. Uh—and – and –
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you’re thinking with the communion, it created like a reactive hypoglycemic spike? Is that what you’re thinking?
Jimmy Moore: It really did.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: Because I had gone, like I said, over six days without eating.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Jimmy Moore: Suddenly I introduce this in—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Even a tiny bit. Anybody that has ever had communion, its’ just a tiny little wafer and a tiny little cup of juice. Uh—I mean very tiny and just that little bit, Justin push me over the edge in a hypoglycemia. Now that wouldn’t happen under normal hospices uh— if I just taken that in—in a fed state.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.
Jimmy Moore: But in a fully fasted state, uh— and my body just wasn’t ready for even that little bit of carbohydrate. So anyway, 21 days—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: I attempted and September 2015, I made it 17 1/2 days in a row which was almost triple what I had done my longest before. So I was pretty happy about that. The only reason it ended was Christine and I were actually on vacation and I was having a good time. And that was stress and I found that stress for me as a very insulin resistant man, hits me harder probably the most people. And so, I couldn’t continue with the fast. Now some people said, “Well fasting itself is a stress and it can be early. But I think the longer you do it, the longer you stay on it, you actually find that it’s very sustainable beyond the first three days. The first three days can be pretty tough and we talk very openly about that. I definitely tell people day two is gonna really suck, worse than anything. But if you get through day two, it’s nirvana after that.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awesome. Can you step uh—half a step to your right. Perfect. Now I got your whole beautiful face in there. Awesome. Love it.
Jimmy Moore: I’m trying to balance where I’m in. I ‘m in my bedroom so it’s like I –I’m like we’re doing st—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You look perfect right there.
Jimmy Moore: So the question I have for you is, what was the big difference between being able to go 30 days versus 7? I know the reactive hypoglycemia thing but it sounds like you’re at 7. Seven so, long way from 30. What was the different things that Dr. Fung was uh—coaching you on that was helping?
Jimmy Moore: I never actually made it 30 days. Uh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.
Jimmy Moore: The longest I’ve done is 28 days in January last year.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Wow.
Jimmy Moore: 28 out of the 31 days uh—so wasn’t 28 in a row, but it was 28 of the 31. Again, travel rears it— reared it its ugly head and uh—kick me in the tail. Christine had to make uh— emergency trip to go see her family in Virginia. So I hop in the car and what does the stomach start doing? (growl sound) Great.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, man.
Jimmy Moore: So I end the fast. But that—that—But that’s self-awareness.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: You gotta know. You got fit fasting within your life. And so if life happens, and life happen that day, and of course we had to drive home from that. When life happens, you just have to deal with it and not fight back. Uh— listen to your body and I’m sure you preach this pretty often to your listeners, listen to your body and pay attention and respond accordingly. Don’t fight those signals that tell you something’s wrong.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I totally agree. Now when you mentioned not fat—not eating for 28 days, so what does that look like? Is it just simple as you’re just not eating? Or are there certain things that you’re doing with hydration or minerals?
Jimmy Moore: Great question.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What else is there?
Jimmy Moore: Yes. So when I first started doing these longer fast, Justin, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to need something.” Because anybody that knows my history, you know, really eating literally all the time. Uh— it’s kind of funny to think, “Oh, not eating at all? What—what?” So, I decided I’m going to do it with bone broth, with some sea salt so that gives you a little bit of uh—nutrition there—minimal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: Coz I’m only having a cup or two a day and this may be like 80 calories for 2 cups of bone broth and really minimal nutrition. I also did a little bit of Kombucha but I’ve since cut that out. I found it was actually tearing my gut up pretty bad. Because I thought that I would need it to preserve gut health during the fast. What I’ve found is my gut health has actually done extraordinarily well without the Kombucha because of the fasting. And so we definitely into that coz I know that’s kinda your heart and soul, too.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: You talk on gut health. So uhm— so I did that and of course, as you mentioned, hydration, hydration, hydration. I didn’t really count how much water I was drinking but I was drinking quite a bit of water. And— and the interesting thing is people sometimes they will just do water only. I would say do salt water in there as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Jimmy Moore: Because that helps to balance out the electrolytes and if you’re using something like pink Himalayan sea salt, you’re getting those trace minerals of the potassium and—and the other things that are gonna keep your electrolytes in balance. That’s a concern a lot of medical professionals have about these longer fast, is where do you get your electrolytes? That’s how you can balance that out. And I’m a big fan, so was Dr. Fung of, kinda adding in that salt from time to time as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I think when you’re under stress and you’re in a stress response, one of the big things that happens is that hormone aldosterone can go loaded and that cause you to pee out a lot your minerals.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it that sounds like adding in the extra minerals, electrolytes, and also some—some little bit of amino acids in there, really made a difference for you.
Jimmy Moore: And speaking of elimination—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: You wanna get down and dirty.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah, let’s hear it.
Jimmy Moore: So you actually do pee quite a bit, and—and that’s natural especially if you’re coming from a non-ketogenic state. You’re suddenly flooding your body with ketones by not eating anything. And so, when that happens, all the glycogen? Pheww— right outta you. And so what happens? You pee your brains out. And even if you’ve been ketogenic, you’re gonna have that as well. And those are kinda gross, but it’s real life, people. So here we go—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s cool. Keeping it real.
Jimmy Moore: But then the thing that come—comes out the other end, though, that’s the most interesting thing to me. Coz you think, okay, after a few days you’ve not eaten, all that’s gone. Uh-uh— I’ve gone really long times without eating and by day 12, day 15, you’re still seeing stuff come out the back side. And it—it freaked me out coz I’m going, “What else is in there?” It—it just it’s amazing we don’t realize just how much gunk is still in there. And you can definitely explain maybe why that stuff’s still in there that deep into a fast when you’re drinking plenty of water every day, you’re getting adequate salt which would ostensibly make things move along pretty—pretty good as well. Why would there be stuff still in there, 12, 15 days later?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, I think some of that, too, is if you look at the composition of your stool, half of it is gonna be bacteria-based. So It just could be bacteria that’s replicating in the gut just kinda having this kind of passing its lifecycle. That could be one aspect.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s definitely not the fibers in the food aspect.
Jimmy Moore: No.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That part is not there. But the other half of your stool is gonna be the bacteria so that make sense. So that’s good that you are having regularity there.
Jimmy Moore: Oh, yeah. Definitely regularity. I would say the the—the uhm—the normality of the stool was gone by day 5. In other words, it was all kinda soupy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: After day five. And–and from what you just said that make sense.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Totally. Now the big concern that I have with patients—coz I have a lot of patient with blood sugar issues and adrenal issues—is that when you–you cut calories, you know, one of the big things you’ll see in the research is— just type in, “hypocaloric diet” and “low thyroid” or “low T3”
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani:– or “triiodothyronine” is we see the thyroid kinda down regulate. We see the body temp go down. We see the reverse T3 go up. We see the free and total T3 go down. What did you evaluate your thyroid function during the fast and all?
Jimmy Moore: Here’s the most exciting part I think about fasting. When you’re doing it deliberately as a therapeutic uh—resource, and let me give the caveat, I don’t think everybody needs to do really long fast.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh-hmm.
Jimmy Moore: I think most people probably could get most of the benefits of fasting just from doing uh— like a 16-8 or 18-6 type of—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: —fast. If you did that, I think probably most of the population would do well. This is for those people that are the type II diabetic that are the very insulin resistant that do have a lot of obesity that they want to try to deal with. Uhm—this is uh— who it’s for. Now you mention hypocaloric diets. Here is the thing. Hypo caloric diets can be very detrimental to you. So let’s say, 5,6,700 calorie a day type of diets. That will actually slow your metabolism down. People worry about, “Oh, I’m gonna ruin my metabolism. It’s gonna slow —
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jimmy Moore: —my basal metabolic rate.” And all this, yada, yada, yada that you hear. And the research definitely bears it out. We’ve seen it with the biggest loser contestants.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jimmy Moore: Here’s the thing. When you eat no calories at all, which I’m defining as that bone broth and the Kombucha, anything like less than maybe a couple hundred calories, that actually is a far different creature than a hypocaloric state of 5,6,700 calories. Fasting actually revs up your metabolism and gives you a lot of health benefits and impacts those hormones in a different way than even eating just a little bit which blows people’s minds. So thinking, “If I just eat a little bit, then that’s better than not eating at all.” No. Actually it’s a lot better to not eat anything at all again defined as 200 calories—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: — than to have even a little bit calories. And your body thinks it starving and it’s gonna hold on to everything, whereas fasting releases it all and lets this cascade of really cool hormonal effects are to happen.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Interesting. Now what about people that have blood sugar issue, would they tend to go hypoglycemic? How do you address that on —when you’re going to do a fast?
Jimmy Moore: So if there’s concerns about that, obviously keep a very close eye on that and obviously this should go without saying, let uhm— medical professional follow you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: —while you’re going through this. Uhm— so don’t willy-nilly do a fast on your own especially if you have known issues like hypoglycemia. But what we’ve seen and what Dr. Fung has seen— he seen well over 1000 patients in his intensive dietary management plan uh— in Toronto, Ontario Canada and he actually has had some hypoglycemic patients come on and it actually regulates their hypoglycemia. So it doesn’t mean that their blood sugar doesn’t go down —it does. When you fast, it goes down. But the cool thing is, you have a corresponding rise in the blood ketones.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ketones.
Jimmy Moore: — which then steps in the place of that. So that yes, you have lower levels of blood sugar, but it— but you’re completely asymptomatic of hypoglycemia.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Now what do you think about adding in synthetic ketones while doing the fast. Like the betahydroxy butyrate calcium salts. Are you concerned that if you do that while you fast, you may go up into that ketoacidosis rate? What’s your experience there?
Jimmy Moore: So I have used it uh— in the early days and I would say, use it for the first maybe two, maybe three days, but Justin, by the time you get today 3-4, you’re seeing betahydroxy butyrate levels of 4,5,6 very easily without exogenous ketones. So I would say, it’s probably a good idea in those first couple days especially day 2 where it’s hell—haha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Tough to cravings.
Jimmy Moore: —to take it then for that purpose to kinda get through that period coz you’ll feel the effects that you’re in the fully fasted state because of the extra ketones. But then once your ketones naturally go up on their own, you can back off and completely eliminate those exogenous ketones. So I think as a beginning uh —part of the fast, absolutely. As you go higher, know and—I— I don’t think ketoacidosis would be a concern because you have to get extraordinarily high level—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 25, right? 20’ish—
Jimmy Moore: of blood ketones. Yeah. 20+ milli molar and I think the highest I’ve ever seen, and this was without exogenous ketones, was 7.6 Very naturally, again, it was early on when I started keto and I started kinda really doing this. Your body levels out over time, but blood sugar at the same time as 7.6 was like in the 50’s and so I wasn’t worried about it in the context of a lower blood glucose level. And if you’re fasting, your blood glucose level is gone drop like a rock.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Okay. And I’ve seen a lot of people do the therapeutic fasting with severe insulin resistance. It can be a game changer of turning that insulin resistance around right away.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And get them back on, you know, the right type of guy whether it’s a paleo, low-carbish, you know—
Jimmy Moore: Sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 60 carb, 20 protein, 10—10—or 20 protein uh—10 carb. Whatever that macro rain—
Jimmy Moore: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You figure it out with your clinician and work on that. I think it’s a great starting point. My issue is with the low-calorie. I always see a lot of patients just automatically they tend to go lower calorie to begin with. And it’s hard to see if their fatigue is from a low-calorie issue.
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: —or adrenal, thyroid issue. And the calories you can be driving all of the above.
Jimmy Moore: It could be both exactly where the one is feeding it to the other. And— and I do a Thursday podcast called, “Keto Talk” and my cohost on that one is a practitioner out of Arizona, Dr. Adam Nally and he sees 10, 15,000 patients a year. And so he’s seen literally everything come through the office and he says, “The biggest issue that he sees time and time and time again especially among women is they’re not eating enough calories when they go keto.” And so you gotta have adequate calories or it’s just a moot point.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Definitely the fasting is therapeutic coz we— we need nutrition to run our body and we won’t be getting those nutrients in a fasting state. But when will be doing some severe uh —U-turns with our physiology when it comes to insulin resistance for sure.
Jimmy Moore: Absolutely. That’s why you do it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Also, I had a little flashback when you’re talking about the constipation thing.
Jimmy Moore: Uh-oh.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I flashback to one of your podcast a few years back when I— you are interviewing— not Ornish, when uh — Mc Dougall.
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And he kept on referring you to Mr. Moore—
Jimmy Moore: Ho-ho—how’s your constipation, he told me.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. He kept on saying, “How’s your constipation, Mr. Moore?” “How is it?” So I kept on having those flashbacks there. That was an excellent interview that I think uh —everyone should partake in. It was just a uhm—amazing.
Jimmy Moore: It was fun. Hahaha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: —just you showing your patience on being able to stay calm. That was unbelievable. You’re a saint.
Jimmy Moore: What’s funny is behind the scenes, my wife could hear what was going on.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: She heard it very quickly took a turn for the worse. And she— I mean I had on mute and she was like, “Don’t let him run over you.” I’m like, “I got this—I got this.” Hahaha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That was probably one of the podcast— one of the best podcast that I’ve ever seen. It was great. Love it.
Jimmy Moore: You gotta have fun in podcasting and sometimes talk to people that you don’t agree with and they can hang themselves.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. Well, we’ll put that topic behind us. Uhm— literally and figuratively.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you—
Jimmy Moore: See ya.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I know. Next— what’s your experience using MCT oil or other types of ketone precursors to help to kinda push yourself into a higher level of ketosis?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. I think they’re great adjuncts. Like we said a moment ago—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: —with the exogenous ketones in the beginning of a fast, I think anything that’s gonna give you even a psychological boost, I know that physiologically you should be getting a boost in your ketones because MCT is a precursor to that. But I think anything that’s gonna make you feel better about what you’re doing and how you’re fueling your body and—and the end goal of—of feeling better and getting healthier, is a good thing. So just be careful if you do add any of these products like MCT oil, specifically. I remember first time I was gonna—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Loose stools.
Jimmy Moore: —two big tablespoons full of this stuff—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, yeah.
Jimmy Moore: And two hours later, I can’t get off the pot. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hahaha—
Jimmy Moore: Hahaha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Jimmy Moore: So you gotta—It’s beware at that point and—and be prudent about it. Obviously, listen to podcasts like these. Uh— it’s gonna help you, you uhm—you know, and read up before you kinda jump full-fledged. I think sometimes a little bit of knowledge is dangerous, Justin. Because people think, “Oh well, I can do this on my own.” And you probably should not do it on your own.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I hundred percent agree. Now you mentioned that certain people the fasting may not be the best thing for, especially when there’s a lot of active stress.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And is that because of the stress hormones affecting blood sugar and insulin levels?
Jimmy Moore: Blood sugar and just how you feel in general. I— I think all of those things uhm— it’s just not a good idea. I mean obviously, if you’re malnourished and underweight, you shouldn’t be fasting either coz you’re gonna lose weight. Uhm— if you’re pregnant, obviously you should not be uh— fasting because you’re basically trying to build a little one inside you.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jimmy Moore: You’re going to needing to, you know, feed you and that baby. Uhm —I think if someone comes from an eating disorder, like uh—anorexia or bulimia, get that under control first. Uhm— and just— and children. If you’re under age, and you’re still developing and growing, probably not a good idea to fast unless the only caveat I’d give to the children is unless they’re very severely—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: — obese and diabetic and this is something that could be therapeutic for them. But again, in general, children probably should not be fasting.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. Would you say if you also have like an active thyroid or adrenal issue, would you say get that under control before trying that?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. You definitely want to get those things under control. Uh— it might help those things, it might— but I think getting those under control through nutrition first, and then as an adjunct in the process of your healing, adding in a few times a fasting just to see how you do, is definitely there is no downside to trying it uh —a time or two, just to see how it impacts you. And— and that’s the theme song, we say again and again with what I like to refer to as the other “F word”.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Nice.
Jimmy Moore: With fasting is you just gotta try it. And if it works for you, great; If doesn’t work for you, great. Move on back to your Paleo diet, your ketogenic diet and be happy with where you are.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. And I spoke at 2015 low-carb cruise, and one of the things I talked about was thyroid function and insulin resistance. So, if you are insulin resistant, that can definitely affect thyroid function. And fasting may be a good short-term modality to help get that insulin resistance which would thus, help with thyroid T4 to T3 conversion, too.
Jimmy Moore: And see, it’s all related.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: People like to say, “Well, I have uh— heart disease, I have diabetes, I have cancer.” Guess what guys, they’re all metabolic diseases, they’re all cut from the same cloth. Uh— thyroid disease, the same thing. They are all cut from the exact same cloth and—and knowing that, keeps you so much more knowledge and power than probably most medical professionals.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally, 100% agree with that. So looking at some of the supplements that you’re using, I know you’ve up with your own line with Dr. Adam Nally there on your Keto podcast.
Jimmy Moore: Yup.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Let’s talk about some of the—the core or the big three so to speak. Uhm—what are those and then where do you—where do you stand on synthetic ketones, too?
Jimmy Moore: So uh— big three in terms of what the big uhm— supplements are?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Exactly. What are those big three supplements that you’re doing?
Jimmy Moore: The big three—like—haha
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Haha—
Jimmy Moore: We have two uh—two products in the line. Currently, one is multivitamin that’s very specifically uh —targeted to people on a ketogenic diet. We call it Keto Essentials. And we literally load that bad boy up with all kind of stuff uhm —and so in six pills, you get like all the vitamin D that most people would need. I believe we have 2000 IU of the vitamin D in there. We have biotin. We have uh—just a lot of things, K2, that you don’t usually see in a lot of multivitamins. You definitely can’t find this formulation in like uh— vitamin shop or anything like that. So uh— we worked hard and this is one that Dr. Nally actually uses specifically with his patients that he puts on a which is like 99% of the people that come through his door, he puts on a ketogenic diet. And then uh— uh—the other one is blood sugar tends to be an issue a lot of people deal with. And so Berberine Plus is the name of the product that we came out with there and it’s for Berberine, Banaba leaf and chromium all known to help lower and modulate your blood sugar levels. And the cool thing about that one is when you lower blood sugar, guess what also happens, you raise in the context of a low-carb, high-fat diet, you raise ketone levels. And so it helps you get into ketosis. Uhm— I would think that fish oil probably is a third one that’s really essential work we’re—we’re kinda looking into what we can do from an omega-3 standpoint. But I think getting that right balance of Omega 3’s is so essential. I personally just love cod liver oil.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it.
Jimmy Moore: And use it pretty often and definitely high quality pharmaceutical grade. Don’t buy the ones that are, you know, Walgreens or whatever.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely.
Jimmy Moore: No offense but just they’re just—they’re rancid, they’re nasty.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Jimmy Moore: And—and when you fishy burp, that’s a really bad sign—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Jimmy Moore: that you got a bad one.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jimmy Moore: So— and then you asked about exogenous ketones, I’m still kind of— I’m still kind of filling that out because there’s a lot of companies out there really trying to get on this bandwagon with exogenous ketones. Uh— I think I was telling you before I came in the air, I don’t like to way some of them are being marketed.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: Into ketosis within 45 minutes or less—No, you don’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: You get ketones in your blood system.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally.
Jimmy Moore: But you’re not in ketosis. You’re not keto adapted and then some of the other marketing is like, “Well, eat all the carbs you want, just take exogenous ketones and you’re in ketosis.” I’m like “No. No. There’s some dangerous implications there where you’re raising your blood sugar with these carbs you’re eating and then suddenly you’re raising blood keto levels. That would be a concern for ketoacidosis at some point if you go overboard.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Big time.
Jimmy Moore: So I’m very leery about this, Justin. And very open about it I do think exogenous ketones have a role in the Keto community where people that are struggling may be just starting off and they want to kinda feel some of the effects of having ketones in their blood system. This will do that for them and again, a psychological effect of, “Oh, well I already have ketones in my system, now it motivates me to go do it endogenously while I’m doing it exogenously. I think that can be—that can be a good use for them. But just these people that are pushing it and eat your carbs and have ketones at the same time, no— don’t do this. Don’t do that anymore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I totally agree. I see a lot of these companies. They do that and they don’t really emphasize the dietary aspect of pus your physiology into nutritional ketosis by making the right diet and lifestyle changes. They’re just like “Hey, let’s forget that let’s just take this magic pill and get in the ketosis.” But we’re saying maybe do both. If you do some of that and then you make the diet changes than you can have a really beneficial effect.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah and unfortunately, I think a lot of these companies are just in it for the book.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: For the trend and, you know, Keto is very, very hot right now. I wrote Keto Clarity three years ago, and it’s still under a 1000 on Amazon. It just blows my mind how help long that book is just lasted. But it’s because so many people are truly interested and I’d— I don’t want anybody to get confused that Keto— exogenous ketones is anything close to being exactly the same as endogenous doing it through a low-carb, moderate protein, high-fat diet.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it. And what’s your take using endogenous ketones for like neurological disorders? Whether it’s epilepsy or whether it’s Parkinson’s or neurological conditions. What’s your experience with that did?
Jimmy Moore: Did you say endogenous or exogenous?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— I’m sorry I would be talking about exogenous.
Jimmy Moore: Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So extra ketones. So let’s assume—
Jimmy Moore: Coz I heard you say endogenous—Wait a minute, uh—eat low carb and then—haha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So endogenous is what’s happening inside. That’s the low-carb—
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: —that moderate protein diet—
Jimmy Moore: Right. Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then exogenous what we’re putting into our bodies. So what’s your take with that with some of those neurological conditions?
Jimmy Moore: Oh my goodness. I think these are the people that that was made for that. O-o—other than like the Navy Seals which I know Dominique D’ Agostino’s been kind of leading the way of creating these things for the Navy Seals to kind of help, you know, enhance their mental performance.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: While they’re out there. And plus they do a lot of fasting as well.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Jimmy Moore: So they do a lot of the endogenous ketones that way. So, yeah. Absolutely. These are the very people that I think they’re trying to reach this really cool ratio of glucose to— to ketone and if they’re doing it endogenously and—and working voraciously even more so than just someone just trying to heal insulin resistance, they’re going upwards 85-90% fat and then the rest is protein, carb. They’re doing really hardcore trying to get those ketone levels up for a therapeutic purpose. So don’t misunderstand me as, “Oh, I’m gonna go eat 90% fat. Jimmy Moore said it was okay.” No, I didn’t. For the purposes of Parkinson’s and—and some of the things that you mention, I think it, along with exogenous ketones, can be very uh —very therapeutic for those people because quite frankly, the brain— your fat head, by the way, Justin—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: And so am I. We all are. We’re all like we have— was at 70% fat—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup.
Jimmy Moore: —in our brains. And there are some glucose uh— functions in the brain but your body makes all the glucose you need endogenously. So you don’t have to eat, you know, uh— extra glucose in order to get it into the brain. So the brain’s gonna be fine. The brain’s actually going to be more than fine. It’s gonna be optimal when you start eating low-carb, moderate protein, high-fat. And then adding in these exogenous ketones, the brain just goes wild when you’re in a ketogenic state.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally. And you talked about brain here just one second ago. Now we are— we are 70% you know, fat in the brain. Uh— Tom —Tom Naughton uh— his video, “Fat Head” a few years back.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It was just absolutely great. It was really emphasizing that. But in our brain, right? We look at some of the enzymes that are active in our brain. There’s one enzyme called insulin degrading enzyme. And that enzyme’s really unique because that enzyme’s also the enzyme that mops up insulin and also mops up plaque. So imagine someone spilled a whole bunch of insulin on your floor, right? And yet Mop comes in, and mops up that insulin but there’s some plaque on the other side of the floor because the mop’s so saturated it can’t mop up the plaques. In other words, that mop can only mop up so much gunk in the brain. The more insulin that’s there from the excess sugar and carbs, you have less of that mop’s utilization for the plaque. And that’s part of the mechanism of Alzheimer’s and some of these Dementia brain conditions.
Jimmy Moore: Alright. I wanna see an illustration of that on your website now. So—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Haha—
Jimmy Moore: The mop that’s dripping with insulin can’t get the plaque—Haha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do a chalk talk later this week. You got it.
Jimmy Moore: Cool.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It will be uh —dedicated to you, Jimmy.
Jimmy Moore: Cool. There you go.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So we talked about the insulin piece, that’s important. What’s been your experience with fasting or using very— like you know, 200-500 calorie diets? And I know you said below 200. I had some experience using hCG. Some of the hCG protocols—
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The Human Chorionic Gonadotropin. And using that to basically tap into your body secure fat sources and kinda having this appestat, you know, the appestacin or the brain kinda re-regulating that. What’s been your experience with that, if you have any?
Jimmy Moore: Can I be honest about hCG?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: I’m extraordinarily skeptical uhm— I know it’s helped a lot of people actually uh —know a lot of patients that have gone through that. I have not personally done that. Uhm— and I think the thing that scares me the most about it and maybe you can acquiesce my fear, is the— is the very, very low calorie. I think I find more benefit from being under the 200 than being at 500 with hCG. And it could just be my naïveté and not knowing enough about it, but I’m— I’m just extraordinarily concerned anybody that goes through that. Because once you go through the round of hCG and you go back to eating somewhat normally again, maybe a ketogenic diet, I haven’t really seen anybody continue to sustain the benefits from that. So that would be my only caveat concern about this.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I’ve done it with a couple dozen patients. I’ve done it myself personally. My wife tried it a few times as well. And it has worked profoundly if you do it right.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Couple of caveats, there’s a lot of homeopathic’s out there— homeopathic drops—
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Don’t recommend that. If you do an hCG, you should do it the injection—
Jimmy Moore: You do the injection.Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You should do the injection.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And the easy way to do it as you should know because if you get a pregnancy test, you should test positive. It’s a great way to freak out your husband, by the way. Okay.
Jimmy Moore: Test positive— Will a guy test positive for pregnancy as well?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I —I think they will because that’s still gonna spill out—some of it will spill out in the urine.
Jimmy Moore: I so wanna do that to freak out Christine.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hahaha—
Jimmy Moore: Hahaha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I tried it with a sublingual and I tried it with a homeopathic—
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You will not get a positive pregnancy test. And again, my wife has tried it, not me. I’ve done the injection but I haven’t tried it yet.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I’ve seen it work phenomenal. It took her about one year to gain the weight back.
Jimmy Moore: Wow.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And she felt great. Going— that— In the first five days was tough, but you are able to keep it off. And again, you know ,the quick—the key is what do you go back to?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You go back to a really good diet.
Jimmy Moore: That’s right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: She’s kind of a Paleo, low-carb.
Jimmy Moore: Sure.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s where she—she lives. Uhm— but again, the key is don’t go back to a crappy diet. But the science behind that is the hCG is tricking the body. And this makes sense more with the female physiology.
Jimmy Moore: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Not so much the male. You’re tricking the body that you are pregnant and your body is tapping into secure fat stores coz it’s trying to pull calories out so the baby can be nourished and fed. So the whole idea is you’re tapping into those secure fat stores. That’s the stores you normally wouldn’t tap into if that hormonal level wasn’t there. And there’s been a study at __was the British endocrinologist—
Jimmy Moore: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: —that came up with this in the 60’s.
Jimmy Moore: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: There’s a study in the Lancet where you have two group: one without the hCG, low-calorie diet; one with the hCG. And the group with the hCG loss more calories and also kept it off longer as well. So just kinda—that’s from my experience and pretty good.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. I’ve interviewed a few people about hCG on the “Livin La Vida Low Carb Show” over the years. So I’m curious the 500 calories is key. You’ve gotta keep it down so basically you don’t overfeed your body because you’re tapping into the body fat stores to make up for the rest of calories that you need. Is that the theory?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes and no. I— I’ve modified it over the years where I still boost the calories up a little bit more upto —
Jimmy Moore: You do. Okay.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: — thousand. I played around with that coz you still get—
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: —similar results. And also adding in— they recommend no fats but the only exception is been for me is MCT Oil.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I find it boost up the ketones the more helps with the appetite.
Jimmy Moore: I would be willing to try a 1000 calorie one with the hCG injections that— that sounds a little more prudent. I think the 500 was what just freak me out. Every time I saw that it—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I’ve had so many good experiences with it with people that already have healthy diets, healthy everything.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And that’s like my go to with patients that are like at their wits end with their diet. Everything else is right— exercise, lifestyle, supplements, gut. That’s kind of my last go to. So I’d be curious to see your— your take on that.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah maybe will give it a go.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. Very cool. So we talked about the ketone, we talked about some of the supplements which I think are really good. Now we talk about you— you talked about it before in Keto clarity kinda looking at your lipid panel Can we talk more about lipids when you’re— when someone’s reading their lipid panel, is there cut off for you? With your cholesterol so high that they should worry at all? What does that look like for you?
Jimmy Moore: Total cholesterol is that you’re referring to?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Total cholesterol. Correct.
Jimmy Moore: Yes. So I was just talking to this lady that was going in at the mail place I’d take books every day to the mail and this lady was there, and I don’t know how it came out, but her —her total cholesterol she just shared it with me. I guess she knew what I did for a living. And so, you have 620 total cholesterol and I’m like, “Okay, that’s high. I’m not really worried about total cholesterol in general, but that’s really, really high.” And so I said uhm— “So usually when your blood lipids are that high, do you have, you know, something else going on? Do you have like maybe infections in your teeth or something?” She’s like, “Oh, yeah.” and she pulls out the bottom of her teeth.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ohh— Oh, man.
Jimmy Moore: She had six all pulled out that— that probably had infections in there from root canals that she’s had done. And this was the bad part. This was the part that just broke my heart, Justin. She just spent over $10,000 mercury amalgam galore all in her teeth. And I’m going, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s why your blood cholesterol has gone up so extraordinarily high.” So I think in the context of knowing why it’s high, it does matter. Uh—but it’s not the high number, I told her. I said, “You should be very thankful that you have that very high cholesterol because that’s the only thing that’s saving you from dying right now because of the inflammation.” And so it kinda startled her. “I just spend all this money” and like, “I know but total cholesterol can be an interesting marker if it starts to go up because it should clue you when something is going on somewhere in the body and it’s usually an inflammatory response somewhere. And teeth is a big one for a lot of people. I actually have four root canals done when I was in my early 20s, mercury amalgams.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Argh—
Jimmy Moore: And 2013, actually wrote a book, “Cholesterol Clarity” and an in preparation for that book, I thought well, I learned that infections in your teeth can be a big player in your total cholesterol. So I went and got them all cleaned up. I went to a holistic dentist down the road from here, he took all the mercury amalgam— amalgams and put good stuff in there and he cleaned up all of the root canals and the infections that had taken place. I can literally taste the infection that’s how bad it was.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh—
Jimmy Moore: So he cleaned all that up, and Justin, and in one year, my total cholesterol jumped a 100 points just from doing that. No other changes, just from doing that. And so it can be uh—uh —kinda your first telltale sign something serious might be going on. So that’s the only weight that I really give total cholesterol. I think looking at triglyceride – HDL ratio gives you a whole lot better indication.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Jimmy Moore: You know, any, maybe necessarily cardiovascular issues uh—and NHS CRP to kinda see you like the inflammatory response. There’s a lot of inflammatory uh —numbers I know that you run.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: Uhm—in—in your office. And so I think cholesterol helps to a degree, but not to the degree that most mainstream medical professionals think it does.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think you’re a hundred percent right. Anytime I see like, you know, over—over mid 300 cholesterol, the first thing I always go to rule out is make sure it’s not a hypercholesterolemia issue with it.
Jimmy Moore: Right.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s just a genetic issue with the—
Jimmy Moore: Right. And I had that tested, by the way. I have a 5% chance that I have familiar hypercholesterolemia which is, no, I don’t.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right. Exactly.
Jimmy Moore: And that—And then it lead to—“Hey, maybe there’s something— oh yeah, had all these root canals, I had the mercury and that— that was the thing.” And now my— my blood sugars uh — or blood sugar — blood cholesterol is still pretty high. It’s in the 200’s but that’s not abnormal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, that’s not an issue at all.
Jimmy Moore: And we can talk about the context of uh— of a ketogenic diet, that’s not abnormal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. I don’t worry until they’re into the mid 300’s.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But any than that
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: —to—where’s the HDL—where’s the HDL at?
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Just curious.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. HDL 75.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s beautiful.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So your ratio right there still under—It’s still under 4. That’s still beautiful. And at 3 ½, you have the risk factor.
Jimmy Moore: And—and 360, so yeah, exactly.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s less than 1. That’s beautiful.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t have an issue with that. But uh— you know, but if there is an issue, we’ll run the LDR receptor, the P—PCKS9 test, look at the genetic markers there and if those aren’t there, we’re doing all the things that you mentioned. Also looking at thyroid function.
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Because low thyroid function cause— can cause—
Jimmy Moore: Will raise cholesterol—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: to creep up.
Jimmy Moore: Yup. Do you run an NMR at all?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm— Yeah. I do run an NMR. I was using the VAP before.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But then after they got shut down.
Jimmy Moore: Yes.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I’ve been doing more of the NMR to look at the LDL number.
Jimmy Moore: NMR is like the only game in town now. HDL Labs is gone now, and VAP is gone.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: How about—how about the Cardiac IQ, is that still there?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah, it is. But I think NMR has a little more prominence.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.
Jimmy Moore: It’s got legs coz they’re like only game in the— in the subfraction game, so to speak. That I think more and more doctors are accepting that one. Although I will tell you my own medical doctor just down the road from here in South Carolina, he stopped running them. And I’m going, “Can I please have an NMR run coz I want to keep around small dense LDL particles” “Well, you’re gotta have pay for it out-of-pocket.” So insurance won’t even pay for it anymore.
They don’t have a code for it anymore at my local doctors office. So I run it on my own anyway I can— I can do it NMR for about— about 50 and done and done. And in that way, I know where I am.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. That’s so smart. And again, I’m imagining the main reason why they’re not running it is because there’s no modality that they can do to change it.
Jimmy Moore: Well, they don’t know what to do with it. That—mainstream medicine they even run the standard lipid panel. They don’t know what to do with it. So that— that’s we’re getting deep into an issue with the mainstream medical system. They run so many numbers that they just don’t know what to do with it. “Okay, you’re normal.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: And it’s like normal of what?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What?
Jimmy Moore: Sick people.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. Exactly. And also the fact that uhm— also when you’re looking at those test, typically the prescriptions gonna be a statin.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The statin won’t touch particle size and won’t touch LDL number per se.
Jimmy Moore: Right. Well kudos to this uh— this postal lady coz she said, “They tried to put me on this medicine. I told them, I ain’t taking that ever.” It’s like, “You go girl.” Uh—so she was—she was really— do have a fasting story regarding uh—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: —cholesterol when I did that September 2015 fast, 17 ½ days, I tested all of my blood markers uh —cholesterol before and then did it after. Do you know when that 17 ½ days my total cholesterol dropped a hundred points. And my LDL-P which was on the NMR like profile test, it dropped a thousand points.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Whoa.
Jimmy Moore: And small LDL was pretty low already but it even dropped another hundred or so points. Uhm— triglycerides obviously went down as well. HDL slightly went down which you’re not eating food, that make sense coz—since dietary fat tends to help your HDL go up. I wasn’t eating anything so uh— really interesting markers. And then the uh— really advanced lipid marker lipoprotein little-a actually was in the 400’s. I’ve always had really high lipoprotein little-a, like 423, and it dropped down to like 130 in 17 ½ days.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow.
Jimmy Moore: Nothing moves that. No drug moves your numbers that quickly. So uh— I was pretty impressed by the— just the therapeutic fasting. Just that little bit of fasting how profound it move those cholesterol numbers.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: What If you’re someone that was going to their conventional position. Could just fasting for a day or two make— move the needle in the right direction so you’d be out of that danger zone?
Jimmy Moore: You know I didn’t test after a couple days. That— this will be a fun test to do.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: Like uh— I like do daily NMR’s or whatever—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: I just see when that— that dramatic shift takes place. I don’t think it would in that very short amount of time.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.
Jimmy Moore: Uh—I know some people they try to get like good health insurance or life insurance policies based on the cholesterol numbers.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: I never get those preferred rates because I can’t get my numbers down that good. Uh— although, uh—you could do it with uh—you know, 10-day fast to try to get those numbers down. Get the good rate and go back to eating, it would go back up again. But, yeah, it’s uh— you know, I haven’t tried that but, that— would—If I could uh—make a little—If I can sell a few more books maybe I’ll do that daily NMR just to kind of keep an eye on what’s exactly happening.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great work. Kinda doing the circle run here. We hit the fasting book, fasting clarity; hit the Keto clarity; we hit the cholesterol clarity; Are there any other key topics within those three books to give out now, that you wanna hit on? That you just feel is really important to address?
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. I mean, we’ve hit all the—the key points with that. Uhm— I’m obviously still writing books and still continuing to— to try to get information out there. The next book that I’m—I’m working on is kind of a sequel to Keto Clarity uh— coz all these people read that it was meant to be an entry-level book. I get some weird reviews on Amazon top uh—uh.com sometimes for Keto Clarity like, “It’s too simple.” Like, “Yeah. That was the point, dude.” Hahaha— I wanted it to be entry-level coz keto can be a little complex. You start talking about gluconeogenesis and ketoacidosis.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Gluconeogenesis. I love it.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. Exactly. Oh, you remember that. Uh —And so I uh— wanted to go a little bit deeper and so Dr. Nally, uh—my keto talk co-host and I are actually working on a book called, “The Keto Cure” which will take all the major disease states uh—that a ketogenic diet helps with and show you the metabolic pathway of why it works, supplements you can take that would correspond with the ketogenic diet. And as a very last resort, any medications that might be an adjunct for that particular condition. So we’re really excited to get that book out in September uh—like a settl— kind of a long-awaited sequel to Keto Clarity. Uhm— and then another piece that’s not being talked about a lot, Justin, is the whole uh— mindset. The whole uh— getting your brain in the right— uh and loving yourself in the process.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.
Jimmy Moore: I guess it’s a long time to say a lot of people give you the “Here’s the how to” “Here’s the practical” And some people say, “I just hate how I look.” “I just don’t know” They don’t love themselves. And so I’m teaming up with a registered holistic nutritionist named, Meg Doll. Uh— was Meg on the cruise the year you came?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: She may have been. Sounds familiar.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. So I— Anyway, she and I are collaborating on a book called, “Keto Freedom” coming out in December. And then I just signed the contract as of the recording of this, like today, uh —for my next book after that called, “Weight Loss White Lies” There are so many shysters in the weight loss industry and I’m so sick and tired of seeing them on television and in print magazines. And people believe the garbage that’s put out there about what they need to do lose weight. And so, “Weight loss White lies” is gonna come in 2018 and I’ve already asked my publisher, “Can I please just rail against everybody?” So they don’t let me do that and uh— really excited to get that out there. Constantly working on new projects trying to uh— help other people, keep doing my podcasts. I do five podcast a week now between the three shows. So stays busy.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s great. You are the major podcast guy over the last 10 years. Now you’re into the whole authorship field. You’re doing great. Any of those book hits uh—hit New York Times best seller?
Jimmy Moore: You know, Keto Clarity came so close.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aww—
Jimmy Moore: It was 22 the week it would’ve hit. And—and some of the behind-the-scenes games people may not know about. There’s publishers that actually pay their way to get on the list.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s hard.
Jimmy Moore: And so—You know publishers pay their way to get on the list the week I would’ve it. Uhm— and so I missed it by two on that one. The Ketogenic Cookbook hit 21.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Aww— one away.
Jimmy Moore: But “Ketogenic Cookbook” did hit International Bestseller status as did the uh—the book after that one uh— was “The Complete Guide to Fasting” that came out on October uh—we originally called it “Fasting Clarity” but then we got into writing it and, “Oop, we need to change the title.” Coz he didn’t want to necessarily stick with the same form as the clarity books. And so “Complete Guide to Fasting” also it sold out in six hours on Amazon.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow. Unreal.
Jimmy Moore: The day it came out.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Everyone listening, let’s help Jimmy get to number one here on his next book.
Jimmy Moore: Hahaha—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well, thank you. And yeah, we’re really excited about “The Keto Cure” and yeah, we’re gonna keep doing our thing, man. Getting the message out to think we’re all passionate. All of us in this community are passionate just about educating people and helping them change their lives.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: We’ll put the links below to all the Amazon— all the Amazon links to the books of people can easily access that. Awesome. And if you want to get in touch with Jimmy, livinlavidalowcarb.com livinlavida pod —livinlavidalowcarb podcast, and as well as the Keto talks, right, with Adam McNally?
Jimmy Moore: Adam Nally.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Adam Nally.
Jimmy Moore: Yeah. He’s been called McNally. He’s been called worse, so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hahaha—
Jimmy Moore: that’s just from Jimmy Moore. Like Keto Talk with Jimmy Moore & the Doc on Thursdays. And then I have a brand new podcast that started with Dr. Fung in January called, “Fasting Talk” so that’s also out there, as well, fastingtalk.com
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it, man. Excellent. And last question I asked all my guests here. If you’re stuck on a desert island and you can only bring one supplement with you, what would it be, Jimmy?
Jimmy Moore: Well, I wouldn’t need vitamin D if I’m on a dessert island so—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No. You wouldn’t need that.
Jimmy Moore: One supplement— I— I would bring MCT oil.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I knew you were gonna say that. That would myself ahead of time.
Jimmy Moore: Hahaha—Or coconut oil, either one—
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Something to increase uh— ketones naturally. Love it, Jimmy.
Jimmy Moore: Or to be fuelled, you know, coz if you’re—because you’re probably gonna have to fast quite a bit. So if I’m fasting, I want some fat in my body.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally makes sense. And you’d be a pro at that. I mean 28 days, man. Coz me and you in a dessert island, I think you may have me beaten, man.
Jimmy Moore: Well, I’ve got a little more uh—uh— meat on my body as well. I would survive a little longer.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I hear you.
Jimmy Moore: Awesome, Jimmy. Hold on, I’m gonna do it. His name is Jimmy Moore. Thanks Jimmy. I appreciate everything.
Jimmy Moore: His name—is Jimmy Moore.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it.
Jimmy Moore: Thanks so much for joining us here today on the Justin Marchegiani Show.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I love it. And again, thank you for being an inspiration on the podcast. I listen to your shows for a lot inspiration and just kinda how do I captivate the crowd and just be a really good host and kinda like prod for those good questions and that good uh—interactive feedback. So I appreciate that, Jimmy. I think the spontaneity helps and—and when you’re good friends with the person you’re interviewing, that also helps a lot. Uhm— and yeah, behind-the-scenes, I try to mentor a lot of podcasters. People don’t realize that I’m talking to a lot of these people that are coming on new and I’m happy to do that. I’ve done this a very long time and I love every minute of it.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it, Jimmy. We’ll get you back on as soon as that book comes out.
Jimmy Moore: Thanks, bud.
Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Thanks so much, Jimmy. Take care.
References:
http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/
Cholesterol Clarity: What The HDL Is Wrong With My Numbers?
The Ketogenic Cookbook: Nutritious Low-Carb, HIgh-Fat Paleo Meals to Heal Your Body
Intermittent Fasting Pros and Cons
By Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Intermittent Fasting
What’s the deal with intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting is a very cool modality that involves avoiding calorie intake for about an 18 to 20 hour period. The best times to do intermittent fasting would be after you finish your dinner the day before, let’s say around 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. When you wake up the next day, you would skip breakfast, and you would continue going without food until somewhere between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. This would give you a solid 18 to 20 hours of fasting.
Intermittent fasting has many great benefits. One of these benefits is cellular autophagy. Cellular autophagy is a process by which your body recycles protein. Some of the benefits of intermittent fasting include longevity, increased insulin sensitivity, neuroprotection, improved mental clarity, and an increase in anabolic hormones (hormones that help rebuild your body).
The nice thing is that when you’re fasting, your body is increasing its production of ketones. Ketones are the breakdown products of fat, which your body uses for energy. They can also help suppress your appetite during fasting. Many people think they may be starving during an intermittent fast, but with the ketone production, your body’s hunger pangs are kept in check.
The Problems with Intermittent Fasting
Many people shouldn’t be intermittent fasting, especially if they have problems with blood-sugar stabilization. I see many individuals, especially female patients, who are hypoglycemic. Certain people may have a very difficult time stabilizing blood sugar, to the point where their blood sugar actually drops very low, to the point where they feel jittery, shaky, and anxious.
Your adrenal glands have to stabilize your blood sugar during periods of fasting. If your adrenal glands are not working properly, you end up throwing your body into a more stressful situation where your adrenals have to produce extra secretions of adrenaline to keep your blood sugar in a normal range.
Click here to know if you can benefit from intermittent fasting.
Gluconeogenesis and Blood Sugar
There is a process called gluconeogenesis, which is where your body converts amino acids from protein to glucose. The hormone that facilitates this process is cortisol. If your cortisol function is imbalanced due to adrenal fatigue, your ability to use gluconeogenesis as a means of blood-sugar stabilization is decreased. The only way you can bring the physiology back into balance is by going on an adrenal-healing diet and addressing lifestyle stressors, like sleep and emotions, as well as any hidden infections. Going on an adrenal program that uses specific supplements that support the adrenals helps decrease the recovery time significantly. I find healing someone’s adrenal fatigue is 50% managing physical, chemical, and emotional stress and 50% following a customized adrenal-support program (1).
As long as you have enough protein in your diet, (my minimum recommendation is 0.5 grams per pound of lean body weight), you will be able to keep your muscle mass when you go into a gluconeogenic state.
My recommendations for intermittent fasting have always been that you need healthy adrenal and thyroid function to truly benefit, without causing extra collateral damage. Research has shown that low-calorie diets decrease thyroid-hormone production. So if you already have low thyroid-hormone production, throwing your body into a fasting state will decrease your thyroid-hormone production even more.
Thyroid Lab Testing and Intermittent Fasting
Before you take advantage of intermittent fasting, get your adrenal glands assessed via a salivary cortisol rhythm and also run a complete thyroid-hormone panel, including TSH, free T3, total T3, total T4, free T4, T3 uptake, and thyroid antibodies. One of the biggest stressors put on your endocrine system is to stabilize your blood sugar, so before you add more stress to your body, make sure you can handle it first.
Intermittent fasting 1 to 2 days a week can be a great start! I recommend choosing days that aren’t very stressful. Your adrenals are always doing their best to handle everyday stress; the more stress they are under, the less ability they have to multitask in regards to managing inflammation, producing sex hormone, and stabilizing blood sugar. Choose a nice Saturday or Sunday that is low-key where you can kick back and relax, go for a walk, watch a movie, or do any other non stressful social activities.
Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting
I am a big fan of Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting. Using a high-quality coffee source, such as Bulletproof coffee (that doesn’t contain mycotoxins), with grass-fed butter and MCT oil can be a great way to give your body an extra supply of healthy fats, which will allow your body to produce more ketones for fuel (these fats are also anti-inflammatory). Using bulletproof intermittent fasting will allow your body to operate with a higher level of energy, providing your body with more ketones to burn, while at the same time stimulating cellular autophagy and its other healthy antiaging benefits.
Click here to know more about Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting
To learn how to make Bulleproof Coffee, feel free to watch the video below!
References:
1. Cortisol increases gluconeogenesis in humans: its role in the metabolic syndrome.