The Top 5 Anti-Aging Techniques to Age Gracefully | Podcast #342

Hey guys! In this video, Dr. J and Evan discuss the factors that affect the aging process. They are more straightforward—and less invasive—ways to look younger than mainstream or conventional ways. Dr. J suggests incorporating a few of these habits into your daily routine that won’t just leave you fresh-looking and it’ll boost your overall energy. Watch the video to learn how. Of all the places on your body, your gut is silently receiving different food that can cause the entire aging process. That includes standard precautions such as maintaining a well-balanced diet rich in good fats. But there are also quite a few ways that you may be aging your body without knowing it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

3:00:   Inflammation

7:21:   Insulin Resistance and blood glucose

16:59:  Sleep in the aging process

27:46:  Fasting Techniques

30:26:  Importance of movement and exercise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

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

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

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

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

Evan Brand: Oh, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evan Brand: Right. Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Always easier.

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

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

Evan Brand: Yep! Yeah, and people…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah.

Evan Brand: I think an Infrared one…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ignorant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/the-top-5-anti-aging-techniques-to-age-gracefully-podcast-342

Recommended products:

TRUCOLLAGEN (Grassfed)

Organic Grass Fed Meat

Air Doctor Air Purifier

Austin Air Health Mate Plus

Magnesium Supreme

How Your Diet And Blood Sugar Can Weaken Your Adrenals | Podcast #340

Changes in blood sugar levels may be a sign and symptom of adrenal fatigue. In the early phase of adrenal fatigue, you can see hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) and, in an advanced phase of adrenal fatigue, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is the usual presentation. 

The thing is, you may not notice a problem with your blood sugar levels, but that doesn’t mean it’s terrific. It is essential to monitor and know the symptoms of having a diet full of food content that send your blood glucose on a roller coaster ride of high and low levels. These glucose level swings can result in damage to your blood vessels, raising your cholesterol, and put you at risk for heart disease.

Dr. J and Evan recommend having yourself tested (not guess) and checking the food you include in your food template because they can be the reason for your chronic issues for so long.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:47    Adrenal Blood Sugar Physiology

9:26   Intermittent Fasting, Carnivore / Keto Diets

18:45  How Intermittent Fasting Helps

24:43  Hypoglycemia and Adrenal Stress

31:08  How Mold Affects Adrenals

35:00  An App that Helps Monitor Your Diet

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we are live. It’s Dr. J here in the house with Evan Brand. Today we have an awesome podcast topic on the queue here, we’re going to be chatting about how your blood sugar can weaken and negatively impact your adrenal glands, we’re going to be talking about blood sugar, how it affects your immune system, how it makes you either strong or weak, we’ll be talking about nutrient supplement changes that you can do to help with that, as well as diet and lifestyle changes. So I’m excited to dive into this topic. This is a relevant topic that we are applying and seeing with our patients every day, especially ones that have adrenal issues, or adrenal and cortisol imbalances. So really excited to chat about this. And what’s happened today, man?

Evan Brand: Hey, not too much. Let’s dive right in. So let’s set the stage for people. This is a conversation that maybe didn’t happen. Historically, we didn’t have the chronic 99% of the time, we’re stressed and 1% of the time we take a vacation, we didn’t have that kind of lifestyle historically. And so I think now, you’re kind of talking about this with me, before we hit record, the average person is just so toxic, they’re so stressed. They’re sleep deprived. They’re on stimulants like caffeine, and they’re having these spikes and crashes all throughout the day, pretty much everyone is on both the stress rollercoaster. But they’re also on this blood sugar rollercoaster too. And that really affects the adrenals over time. So that’s where I want to set the stage with people is that we’re in a society that’s doing quick fixes. When we feel a blood sugar crash, we go when we eat the organic cookie. Now it’s an organic cookie instead of an Oreo, or it’s a gluten free cookie instead of an Oreo, but it’s still a cookie, and then you end up crashing again. So I want to set the stage of even though you could be doing paleo or similar diet, a lot of people are still having issues of blood sugar regulation, and we think adrenal is is is one big part of it, which is then connected to the gut. So really, we could make this thing like a three hour episode, but we’re going to try to condense it to half an hour.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. So let’s kind of do like an adrenal blood sugar kind of one on one physiology review for people just kind of coming into this. So your adrenal glands produce a hormone called cortisol, right, which is a glucocorticosteroid. Big word right, the first half of that word is glucose, meaning it helps pertain to blood sugar and energy. And so the more your blood sugar debates goes up and down, the more hormones have to be produced to buffer the highs and lows. So the more we keep our hormones snaking along, or we keep our blood sugar at let’s say in this example snaking along or stress snaking along throughout the day without big up and down spikes. Our hormones are called to the rescue far less. So. If I eat, let’s say one, I’m not eating at all. Let’s say I’m fasting, right and I’m not really good at being fat adapted, your blood sugar is going to drop and when your blood sugar drops, that creates a stress response. The first thing that happens on this low blood sugar drop is going to be a spike of epinephrine or adrenaline. Right? So epinephrine or adrenaline is like the key catalyst to wake up and call cortisol. So you get this epinephrine or adrenaline or catecholamines surge again, they are all the same thing. You have epinephrine, norepinephrine, you have adrenaline, you have noradrenaline, you have catecholamines. They’re all the exact same thing, same name. They’re just meant to confuse people. So just kind of put that out there. If I use these words, they’re 100% interchangeable, okay. So you’re going to have this surge and adrenaline. And that’s going to bring up your blood sugar when it brings that blood sugar up. This is when you may feel anxious. heart palpitations, this is May when you get a little bit dizzy, nervous, sleepless, irritable, right, sweating, you know. So when you start to have when you’re on those blood sugar rollercoaster, when this blood sugar drops and starts to come back up, you may have symptoms that make you not feel that well. And so then, of course, what comes up after that adrenaline surge is then cortisol is now going to help bring it up the rest of the way. So think of adrenaline is the it’s the, it’s the first responder, right. It’s the person on the operator line, getting the police ready to come to your home and then the police to come 1020 minutes late, that’s cortisol. Okay, they come a little bit later to the show. And so that’s important. So when you understand your physiology, that’s, that’s good. The next component is when your blood sugar goes back up on the high side, that’s where you make a whole bunch of insulin. So insulin can make you feel tired, it can make you feel fatigued. Insulin activates a lot of lipo Genesis, that’s fat storing lipo, meaning fat Genesis, creating and so when you start to have when you’re on a blood sugar roller coaster of high to low blood sugar, okay, this creates this high level of insulin, a lot of label Genesis that creates fatigue. And then of course, when you have a high level of insulin that brings your blood sugar back down, because insulin is opening up the cells trying to get blood sugar into the cells to either burn it or store it. And if you’re not active, and your cells are already full of glycogen, and you’re not actively doing something like walking or running or lifting guess what your body then shunts and partitions that fuel into the storing phase. So if you’re active, great, you’ll burn it. If you have muscles that have glycogen storage, you’ll convert it to glycogen which is glucose. Storage sugar storage. And if those two capacities are tapped, then we start going to fat storage starts going more to life with Genesis. So we’re on this blood sugar rollercoaster. So high blood sugar up high blood sugar up, a lot of insulin drops it down, right, then we have this, this really high drop high to low drop, this then stimulates a lot of adrenaline, catecholamines and then cortisol in the app, this is called reactive hypoglycemia. And then the other type of glycemia issue that we’re going to see is going to be usually fasting too much not eating enough low calorie diets, skipping meals, that’s more like this, that’s your blood sugars like this. And it just starts to drop into this hypo category, you know, maybe below 75. One goes up first. That’s the reactive, it’s reacting going high and then dropping, that’s reactive hypoglycemia, that’s typically going to happen due to poor diet, too much sugar, too much carbs, not enough protein on a fat. And then we have just general run of the mill hypoglycemia, usually from poor meal timing, skipping meals, too much fasting, typically low calorie dining. And again, if you’re doing a lot of intermittent fasting, but you’re low calorie in general, throughout the day, that can easily drive low blood sugar too.

Evan Brand: Wow, well said so the average American, they’re experiencing more reactive hypoglycemia because they’re on sodas, they’re on the Milky Way bar and hiding in their desk drawer at lunch, the person listening to us who’s hopefully relatively dialed in, they’re going to just be more in the standard, we’ve just called to us maybe a standard hypoglycemia situation. And then how do the adrenal is play into that? Because what you’re saying is happening is that, let’s say, and this happened to me, I can tell you firsthand what happened. But what kind of open it up. So intermittent fasting, you’re saying that could could drive that and you’re saying there, you’re kind of hinting at the fact that maybe the adrenals are too weak to help you’re seeing the adrenaline can be released, and it’ll crank it up. But you’re saying, Okay, I got like a recording, stop and start. So just making sure we’re good. Okay. So you’re saying that, in a normal situation, the hypoglycemia can start to happen, adrenaline should come up, kind of bump you up, give you the little nitrus booster, but you then you need cortisol to push you to the finish line. But you’re saying in the case of adrenal stress, the cortisol may not be able to get you up to the right amount. And that’s how an intermittent fasting situation could be not good for you. Is that right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. So then if you don’t have good adrenaline output, or catecholamine, output, like so how do we know that as we look at organic acids, if we see imbalances and vandal Amanda later home of anolyte, these are amino acids that are precursors for dopamine and adrenaline. And again, dopamine is a precursor to adrenaline. So when you’re constantly stimulating adrenaline, you’re actually pulling dopamine down. And dopamine is really important for satisfaction, mood focus, right? So if you’re chronically stimulating adrenaline, you’re going to have adrenaline issues, you’re going to have dopamine issues that can create a whole bunch of problems. We’re going to know that because we’re going to see an organic acid test showing a lot of imbalances in those catecholamines. And if our blood sugar, if we have very low cortisol, we run a good quality Dutch test we see chronically low free and total cortisol, it’s going to be hard for our body to bring that blood sugar back up and we can kind of stay a little bit more hypo. And that can cause that irritability, that faintness, that fatigue, cognitive issues, mood issues, brain fog, it can create all those problems. So if we don’t have good when people talk about adrenal is people mostly just think about cortisol. When it comes to adrenal, they don’t think about the adrenaline catecholamine dopamine connection. And so when we talk about adrenals, we have to really look at the outer part of the adrenals. That’s the cortex. That’s where cortisol lives, that’s where aldosterone lands because we’ll talk about it in a minute. aldosterone plays a big role with minerals and holding on to minerals. And if our minerals go low, like we see in pots, right, which is a postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome that has to do with minerals being low sodium chloride, potassium, right, that can create a lot of symptoms similar to hypoglycemia. And so we have to look at the the cortisol component, but also the adrenaline the adrenaline tends to happen more in the medulla medulla M for more middle part of the adrenal gland. So it’s good to look at both and that’s where having a high quality adrenal test that looks at free and total cortisol, as well as an adrenaline, dopamine via the organic acids to look at what’s happening with the catecholamines and neurotransmitters.

Evan Brand: So how would this work? Let’s say if you weren’t doing intermittent fasting, let’s say you switched off of that maybe you were having these hypoglycemia episodes, the adrenals. were too weak to give you the cortisol output you wanted. So instead of intermittent fasting now you’re just doing like a carnivore breakfast, maybe you’re going to do a grass fed steak or maybe you’re going to do some pastured eggs or some pastured bacon. Is that enough to pull you out of that? Are you going to need some support? Would you recommend we throw in like a little bit of honey, some blueberries, you know, maybe something else to pull you out of that spike like is meat is meat enough? I guess is the simple question.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what happens with proteins that you’re consuming is your body is going to be able to one, it’s going to be keto adapted. But again, not everyone’s keto adapted, you have to be metabolically flexible to be keto adapted, where you can actually take a lot of the fat, right, you have a glycerol on a free fatty acid, and you’re able to break that down, pull off some ketones and start burning more fat for fuel. A lot of people just can’t transition to that, because they’re very metabolically inflexible. And so protein and fats not going to be a viable source unless someone’s really dialed their diet in for two to four weeks, and really had that metabolic adaptation. Now, some people, their their insulin levels just dropped to low, and let’s say maybe below four or so or even below two on a fasting insulin test, they may need more carbohydrate. And, again, if they’ve been doing the diet for a month, and they’re in there, they’re having good proteins and good fats at every meal. And maybe their carbs are really low, we may want to add a little bit more starch in because sometimes they feel better doing that because it actually blunts the cortisol spike or the adrenaline spike that the body is trying to create to mobilize that glucose. So it’s like, we can add a little bit more carbs in via healthy, safe starch. And that blunt some of the cortisol and the adrenaline is being produced to mobilize that internally, some people, their insulin levels are really high. And by keeping the carbs super low, they’re bringing their insulin back into the sweet spot, and they’re actually good. And then when they add more carbs in, they actually feel worse, because their insulin is going out of balance, and they’re starting to get more into fat storage mode. So most people I find tend to be more on the insulin resistance side. So I always default to lower carbohydrate out of the gates, and then fine tune later once they kind of hit the wall. And you know, a good way that to see how you know, if you’re hitting the wall or not, is get to a place where you’ve been doing it for a month or two, make sure your body is pretty good at burning fat, right? So you’re eating good proteins, you’re eating good fats, that initial keto flu is over right, that first couple of weeks of getting fat adapted headaches, mood issues is over, then you can try adding a little bit more carbs in maybe at night. Have a sweet potato, a little bit of white potato, a little bit of a say starch, see if you feel better or not. If you sleep better, if you have more energy, if your workouts are better, recovery is good, that’s a good sign that that’s better for you if you don’t feel better. Or let’s say you’re you know, you’re very overweight, and you probably want to work on keeping the carbs in check longer, again, the benefit that you have with good fats and proteins, it’s hard to over eat when you’re eating good fats and proteins, because there’s good satiation signals to your brain that tell you to be full. That’s like peptide yy, adiponectin. coli cytokinin. There’s really good feedback regulations, people are like, well, it’s all about calories in calories out, it’s like, but not all calories, tell your brain that you’re full the same way. So you have to look at the the epistatic regulation of appetite, right and certain neuro peptides are going to be produced with certain foods, you’re not going to get that same stimulation, eating pizza eating Pringles drinking refined sugar, you’re not going to get it. And that’s why it’s so easy to overeat those foods, and you never really feel satiated, try eating you know, half a dozen eggs with you know, cooked in butter, it’s gonna be really hard to still be hungry afterwards. As long as you don’t eat things too fast, where people really go awry with proteins and fats is they eat things too fast, is about a 10 to 20 minute delay in those kind of chemicals telling you you’re full. And you really have to give your body that 10 to 20 minute buffer time. So eating slower, chewing your foods up really well, not overly drinking, when you consume those foods, giving yourself five or 10 minutes once you finish your meal before you get seconds. That plays a big role, because it’s really easy to overeat with these foods, when you don’t give it enough time. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, look at the marketing of potato chip companies, veggie candy, just one, they know that you’re not going to get leptin and all these other beneficial compounds and tell your body your full. So the marketing companies know what they’re getting into, they know you’re going to eat a whole bag of chips, because you’re never going to get that signal that you’re satiated. And that’s where you’re going into trouble. So let’s go back to the adrenals for a minute. So you mentioned running a Dutch panel looking at low cortisol. So what you’re saying is if you’re going to see a flat panel, or maybe just maybe it’s not flat, maybe there is some sort of peak on the cortisol in the morning, but it’s very weak. So overall, you would just say there’s a low cortisol output, you’re saying those people are going to tolerate intermittent fasting less, those people are going to tolerate very low carbs less so they may need a little more bump while they get their adrenals back on board. Is that safe to say? 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: If their cortisol is really low? Yes, it just depends kind of where they’re coming from. Right? If they’re coming from being overweight, being more insulin resistance, being more tired, being more fatigued out of the gates, always in a default to lower carb. If they’re coming from already being at a reasonably healthy weight and being pretty active already. Then I’m going to default to adding a little bit more carbs and so it just depends upon where someone’s coming from. So it’s always good to look at someone’s Samantha type right? ectomorph endomorph mesomorph right. endomorphs like The linemen write in football. And again, this can be like any one, but they’re just have a larger, higher propensity to put on weight, write the message, or then they have the ectomorph. This is more of the natural kind of basketball player type, they’re just more taller and more leaner, hard to put on muscle, hard to gain weight. And then you kind of have a blend between an ectomorph and an endomorph, called a mesomorph. Think of that as the M for middle, right. And this is kind of more like your linebacker in football, right. And again, these are extreme examples, but helps to kind of tell the tell the story, right? Not everyone’s a 300 pound lineman, I get that, right. But people have this propensity to put on more weight. But a mesomorph, someone that’s kind of more in the middle, like they could be taller and leaner, but they also can be bigger as well, they’re kind of in between. So usually, people are in one of the three of these categories. And usually, if you’re more on the ectomorph side, you’re going to be able to tolerate carbs pretty well. So that you have to just kind of like you know, see kind of where, where you feel best. And there’s a lot of people out there like let’s just say let’s people on the diet side, I’ll just I’ll call Chris kresser out, right? Chris? kresser is a ectomorph. Right? suit. You know, Paul jammin a ectomorph. A lot of people out there that like recommend more carbs, more higher carbs, more whole food, carbs? And it’s like, well, of course, you’re going to recommend that because you’re an ectomorph, of course, right? So you have to look at the people that are recommending certain things and look at what somato type they are because certain somatic types are going to have a propensity to handle macronutrients differently than someone else. So it’s good to look at that as a general template. But in the end, you got to fine tune it, you got to look at it, my default way of looking at because of insulin resistance is being so prone, because refined and processed foods have been eaten ubiquitously, you know, over the last 20, if you look at the macronutrient trends over the last 20 or 30 years, right, its proteins gone down a little bit fats has actually gone down a little bit. And actually cards have gone up. So when you look at that general trend, we can just assume out of the gates that most people are going to have carbohydrate problems, not protein and fat problems. And if they do have protein in fat problems, it’s usually from junky trans fats and or junky omega six refined vegetable oils, not healthy animal fats. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, very, very great points. And that’s important for people to listen, I mean, you’re hearing a clinician speak, you’re hearing the clinicians brain, because as you mentioned, if you get into some of these other people that may not be practicing clinically with people, they’re going to be able to give you a cookie cutter answer and you did not I was kind of probing you to give me some like buzz wordy, you know, like something I could post on Twitter type answer, but you gave me a clinicians answer. And I hope people appreciate that. Because there’s a lot of variants with this. And I know it’s frustrating, because when you listen to a podcast, you’re like, I just want to be told what to do how to do it. Give me the sparknotes? And your answer is there’s not really a sparknotes there are some categories, if you will, that we can put people into I’m definitely probably closer to ectomorph. And so I do better. Like if I do a grass fed steak and I throw some extra organic wild blueberries in with that for breakfast, I feel so much better with that extra little blueberry hit, as opposed to just the steak versus let’s say, my grandmother who had an high a one c score, she’s going to do much better with just the steak and she’s going to go but better lower carb overall.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So it’s good to know, I’m kind of more of a mesomorph I’m kind of in the middle. And I just I look at you know, the problems that we as society have as a whole, generally speaking, and I kind of just create my recommendations to have the largest bang for the buck regarding the average person. And then of course, when patients come in, then you kind of look at them, you kind of look at their height, their weight, you know, especially you see a lot of women, you know, in their 40s. I’m like, well, where were you in high school in college it regarding your weight? Oh, I was 80 pounds lighter. Okay, so we know there’s some metabolic damage there. If you put on 80 pounds since that time, right. So then, then it’s good to really make sure we we support them being better fat burners, I think the next step I wanted to hit would be intermittent fasting. So someone in the comments here will talk about this, they talked about omad, or one meal a day, I’m not a huge fan of omad. Now people can do it, if they’re wanted, they have pretty good adrenals their diets really good and they’re very metabolically flexible. Okay, with omad. It’s one meal a day. So you need all of the calories that you need in one day in one meal. So number one is you’re going to be eating a meal that’s like two to three times bigger than what your typical meal would be. Because if you need, let’s say, you know, I’m six to 2015 pounds, right? I need like 3000 calories a day, if I’m you know, relatively active, well, 3000 calories is a lot of food at one meal. Okay, it’s a lot of food. Because you need your your micronutrients, you need, you know, your amino acids, I need probably at least half a gram per pound of body weight minimum for protein. So I need at least let’s say 110 grams of protein, that’s a big meal. So one, you need really good digestion, you probably needed over an hour to sit down and actually eat that meal if you’re not going to be sick because that’s a lot of food to eat at one time. So you probably need an hour to eat it. You need really good digestion really good enzyme and acid secretion. You need an hour to sit down and be able to handle it and you probably can’t move much for an hour afterwards because the meal so big, it’s it’s the equivalent of a Thanksgiving Day dinner. Right? And so you got to be careful with that.

Evan Brand: I think let me just give you a little I’ll give you some numbers real quick just to show how hard what what you’re describing would be. So for example, I love bison. So if you were to do a which this is going to be your fattiest cut, if you could do a bison ribeye, a 10 ounce bison ribeye, you’re going to get roughly less than 500 calories, maybe like for something like 450 to 480. So if I just did it as 10 ounces. So I mean, God, let’s say you did 20 ounces, which would be very hard for me to do a 20 ounce bison ribeye, you know, you’d be maybe close to 900 calories.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, and so you’d probably need at least you know, if for me, right, you’d probably want about 25 to a third of your calories coming from protein right around there. And so you’d probably want about that steak would probably have to be about 20 ish, maybe a little more ounces than that. That’s a lot to do at one time. And that’s not including the six to seven servings of vegetables that you may want to do with that as well.

Evan Brand: And then what Yeah, I was gonna say, and then what else are you going to do? Let’s say you did like a cup of broccoli, that’s like 40 calories.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. So you need like literally eight cups of that or like, you know, 60 it’s becomes really hard. 

Evan Brand: Yeah, cuz I see why you don’t recommend it. So so your overall, your overall messages, you think maybe two meals a day, you could get away with a one meal a day you think for this type of conversations can be really tough.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, two meals is good. Two meals, you can do it in the morning, I mean, you may want to have like a little bit of bone broth, or something very gentle on the liquid side. Again, if you’re just trying to do intermittent fasting, it’s easier to do one, I don’t recommend it every day. But it’s easier to do like, you know, keep your eating window between 12 and eight, or let’s say two and eight, I think it’s easier that way gives you enough time to have a meal at two o’clock, five o’clock, or let’s say to, let’s say two o’clock, six o’clock, and maybe a little snack before bed, if you’re still hungry, you want to fill in the gap, right? So it’s a little bit easier from a nutritional standpoint to get your needs met. Again, if you’re having a lot of hormonal issues, I don’t recommend doing a lot of fasting out of the gates. Think of fasting as a stressor, it’s a stressor on your body, just like exercise is a stressor. So imagine your personal trainer, someone’s like super unhealthy. They’re out of shape. And you’re like, hey, come to my CrossFit class tomorrow, I’m 100 pounds overweight, come come across it, it’s like well, you know, with their weight being where they’re at, and how inflamed they’re at, they’re gonna be like, literally in bed the next week, with sore joints sore back totally hurt. So you have to make a recommendation based on what’s best for them. So you may say, hey, let’s just do like a 10 minute walk tomorrow, right? So a 20 minute walk, let’s say a five minute walk after every meal, that may be a better recommendation, right? So think of like the Oh, Matt, or like a lot of this intermittent fasting. That’s the equivalent of jumping a very overweight, unhealthy person into CrossFit. It’s the equivalent, it’s still a stressor on the body. Now, if you’re healthy, guess what? It’s a stressor that you can adapt from and get up and get stronger. But if you’re not healthy, that stressor is going to break you. And so you kind of have to know that, hey, this is an application of stress. And the question becomes, does your physiology have the ability to adapt to that stress based on where you’re at now? And for most people that are that we see clinically? No, that’s not gonna be the case. Yeah, there’s always weather. Yep. I always weather under Should I rather undershoot it have that person feeling better, less or less tired? And kind of in kind of gauge up then overshoot and make them feel worse?

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said. So this is the anti boot camp podcast. You see those boot camp signs? It’s like, they’ll just come in and they’ll just kick your ass on day one. I mean, they don’t care. You’re 300 pounds five foot tall. 300 pounds, haven’t walked a mile in 10 years and they’ll just come in and throw you down. Give me 50 them Yes. Boom, boom.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, if your life if you can come home and just like recline back and chill and read and watch TV or just hang out all day, you’re not doing much. Okay, fine. But most people have like, have to work they have to do things, they have to do chores, they have kids and family and responsibility to take care of so it’s like their life can’t revolve around that right? So obviously with the TV show and that’s what their life is, you know, you can get away with stuff when that’s what all your focus is. But for most people, you know, that’s not the reality that we’re in.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and if you want to go another direction with this, please do but I just wanted to bring up one question here that came in the live chat. And for people listening if you want to join us at the time of this recording, maybe we change the schedule but for now we go live every Monday somewhere around 11am Eastern on Dr. Jay’s Justin health YouTube channel so if you want to check them out, that’s how you can join us in the live chat question here. Does sugar or caffeine effect? I think they meant effect. The sugar caffeine weaken the adrenal is the most. I don’t know if they’re saying like either one. I would say both are a factor in people going to Starbucks and getting their dessert in the cup, which they call coffee. That sugar caffeine combo, I would say is a super big issue with hypoglycemia and adrenal stress. What would you say?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I think it depends if someone’s doing a cup of coffee or two in the morning and they’re consuming it with some fat and some protein like maybe they’re throwing some collagen MCT oil in there. That tends to time release, the caffeine tends to not be as big of a deal because the caffeine is going to be out of their system, you know, by the time they go to bed. So if they’re doing a cup or two, as long as they are not getting anxious, anxious or irritable, or Moody, or any of those negative symptoms afterwards, I’m okay with a little bit of caffeine. And again, if you’re on the fence, just pull it out or choose something that’s more decaffeinated. Choose a coffee substitute, like to Chino, or do a decaf, kameel or decaf green tea. See if you feel better if you don’t notice a difference where you’re not feeling worse with caffeine, a little bit’s okay. And if you want to time release it, a little bit of fat in there and a little bit of collagen, will time release it and just do it in the you know that first hour or two getting up, don’t do it in the afternoon hours. If people that get in trouble are the ones that do it usually after lunch, and they’re trying to get at that second when between three and five. And then it’s it’s causing a second cortisol surge at night because that caffeine still in their system around 10 to 11 o’clock at night.

Evan Brand: So what you mentioned is good, but your average person’s not doing what you’re you’re doing. They’re wrapped around the Starbucks drive thru, they’re gonna go get a venti caramel frappuccino with frickin whipped cream and six pumps of syrup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so what we’re talking about zero sugar in the coffee, we’re talking totally black with the exception of maybe some MCT or, or a heavy coconut cream. Or if you can handle dairy, maybe a heavy whipping cream, some kind of a good fat in there that you can tolerate. Maybe it maybe it’s just MCT oil, maybe it’s some collagen as well, because that time releases it and really allows it to go in your system slow. Someone on the chat talked about using glucose and sugar to keep their blood sugar stable throughout the day. Like that’s literally like going camping and keeping your fire going all day with paper and kindling. It’s just it’s not practical, because you’re never going to get keto adapted, you’re never going to become a fat burner, when you’re literally relying on glucose to keep your blood sugar stable all day. That’s the problem. And that’s like, you know, physiologically, the antithesis of health. Because really be healthy, you really want to be fat adapted. So you can help burn can help get energy from fat, it’s the most stable energy source, that’s not going to require up and down dips. So the equivalent of that is getting energy from logs in a campfire, which burn a lot longer and stronger than let’s say kindling a paper. So you just have to look and say, if I’m camping, the goal was I want to really get my heat from those good logs, not killing your paper because I don’t have to be feeding it all day long. That’s the difference.

Evan Brand: Yeah, and some of this biochemical talk people may dislike to now and like, turn into a zombie. So if you’re listening to this, you’re like, well, how does this actually change how I’m getting through my day. So that example that Justin’s mentioning with the really good fatty coffee versus the really sugary coffee. So this is the person who, like I know, you’ll do fatty coffees, like during our podcast, so you’re going to be burning clean, and you’re going to have a good energy burn throughout the entire morning, versus the person doing the sugary caffeine, they’re going to crash Two hours later. And then they’re going to go for maybe as this person mentioned in the comments, or they’re going to go for fruit or fruit juices or something else, they’re going to get that quick hit of kindling again, and then they’re going to crash. So when you’re at work that you’re not going to be performing at your best. I mean, if I were in charge of like a massive company, and I had the ability to give people support, I would say, hey, look, everybody can do a nutritionist console, let’s say you had like a warehouse worker. And we found that the output of the warehouse workers were 20% more efficient, if we all had them on more animal based higher fat diets, as opposed to these people. You know, when I used to work at UPS to pay for my college, you’d have these guys who on a four or five hour shift, they pull out two or three candy bars just to get through the shift. And here I was eating just my grass fed ground beef before I went in, and I was stable the whole time. These guys could work for an hour, they got to go do a bag of chips, they go to the vending machine, get the coke, and then they go do the Cheetos. I mean, it was literally it was crazy to watch.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, exactly. And there’ll be a lot of people out there. And this is why I talked about this amount of time to people that you’re going to see breaking all the rules that I’m saying these are going to be the vegan vegetarians, the high carbers. And when you’re an ectomorph, you can handle lots of carbs your body has the ability to take those carbs shunted in Burnet right away. And then these are the people that get energized with more carbs. Like if I if I give you a glass of orange juice and a bunch of carbs, these are the people that want to go out and literally run a marathon because their body handles carbs, and it just fuels them up and makes them so energized. And so we all have vegan vegetarian friends that just literally eat carbs all day, right? You know, you see the fruitarians that are out there. This is a big thing. I think in the 80s. at Apple, there was a big like fruitarian called they all ate fruit was like unbelievable. And you see people that are energized, energized. These are ectomorphs these are people that can handle that I still don’t think it’s healthy, I think as long term ramifications with insulin and oxidative stress. But people can do that based on kind of their natural genetics, metal type and how they can handle fuel. Most people aren’t at that place. And so you kind of have to really look at getting good proteins and fats in there and manage your blood sugar accordingly. And so, the only other thing I wanted to highlight was oh yeah, let’s say let’s say you’re doing a fast like a two day course. free day fast if it’s a punctuated fast, and most people want to faster, they’re keeping their stress down, they’re not going to go work 12 hours a day and deal with stress, because when you’re fasting, you’re not getting nutrients in your body via vegetables, or fruit or protein. So you’re relying on primarily your fat for fuel. And obviously, protein, you’re doing what’s called cellular autophagy, where you’re recycling proteins. And ideally, you’re recycling some of those, you’re getting some of those for fuel, you’re also getting a big bump of adrenaline and cortisol for those couple of days. So you may feel pretty good and pretty alert if your adrenals are strong. And then of course, you’re you know, you’re getting a lot of the fat because you’re tapping into fat, but long term, that’s not good, right? Because we know, any person that’s been on a long term starvation, like diet, you know, you just look at people will were to post concentration camps that were starved, but no one walks out of that healthy, right? It’s impossible. But for a short two to three or four day period, you definitely can. And the key is you have to keep your stress down and under control, maybe do some bone broth, or do some minerals as well to keep your minerals and your electrolytes up. But most people that will still be the equivalent of a CrossFit workout. And if they’re metabolically unflexible, that could break them as well.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said another question here, I have a friend that lives in mold and is super stressed. How does mold affect the adrenals? Well, it is a huge cause of adrenal issues, mainly because it’s creating this alert response, it’s creating a sympathetic stress, the body’s trying to react to it, hopefully, the body’s reacting to it, meaning that there is some sort of immune response. And maybe there’s some antibodies that come in, maybe there’s some detox pathways that are ramping up. So hopefully your body has a reaction, but it’s a huge adrenal stress. And I would say, even if they’re not living in mold, and you just have mycotoxins in your system, that can be an adrenal stress, or two, I know for me, I had a lot more baseline anxiety when I had just mycotoxins in my system, and I wasn’t being exposed to mold, my wife experienced the same thing. So we were doing adaptogenic herbs to help regulate the adrenals. But once we’ve detox quite a bit using binders, when we’ve done many podcasts on that, my baseline anxiety is back to the way it was before, which was I didn’t have baseline anxiety. So yeah, I can tell you firsthand, it’s a big, big factor.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, the first thing we have to do, if we have issues with mold is you one, you got to get your environment more stabilized, make sure you’re able to digest and break down foods and get good proteins and good fats in there. Also, on the flip side, right, I’ve talked about, you know, some of the fasting benefits and stories, we have a lot of we have a large group of people out there that are carnivores, like they literally just eat meat all day long. And they do amazing, right, and so like, you have to look at both sides of the camp, because their success stories on both sides of the camp. And so you have to understand why someone may have a success story over here, and not over there, or why someone over here has one but not over there, you have to look at it in a kind of non dogmatic type of, of mindset, right? People kind of have their camp and say, Well, this person over here has to be lying. It’s like, Well, probably not. And, you know, we’ve seen 1000s of patients. So I’ve been able to kind of understand why certain people on the high carb get great success and why people on the extreme low carb, and why somewhere in between tends to be the biggest bang for your buck, right and, and then who are those people that way you can make recommendations and push people to either direction, so they can get better results. Because it’s like you’re either you either have like my allegiance is to getting the patient the best result not to using a tool to get them to the result, I put enough tools in my tool belt so I can be non attached to the tool because I want the result to get happen for the patient. Some people are really, they’re really attached to the tool, and they want this tool to be what gets them the result. And you really have to, as a patient, find doctors that are unattached to the tool, they really just want to get you the result that you’re looking for.

Evan Brand: Yeah, well said and, you know, me being an ectomorph, you would think I wouldn’t do well with just tons of meats and fats. But I do great, really low carb and there is some discussion of mold and fungal infections and candida overgrowth and CBOE and CFO and some of these things, that people will do better. And I definitely had a history of a lot of gut issues. So I think for me, that’s part of the reason I do so well low carb as an ectomorph. But I certainly feel fine on starch and white rice and berries and, and all of that. And I’m kind of lucky, I guess I think it’s a blessing to be able to do both, it’s a blessing for me to have a grass fed steak with just blueberries for breakfast and feel fine all day. But it also be cool to do some rice with some dinner and have no issues with it. 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You have enough of a solid foundation with your proteins and your fats and your nutrient density. Where those those a little bit of carbs, it’s not gonna be enough, it’s kind of like you have a fire going you have a good log already in there. If you throw a little bit of kindling extra in the fire, it’s the fire is still gonna be there, right still gonna be strong. And so that’s kind of where you’re at and the more metabolically flexible you get, you know, but in the end, you got to listen to your body, right? We got we got to be we got to be data results driven, not not dogma driven. And if you feel great doing something, and you know your nutrient density is up and you’re in you feel good and you feel energized and you feel flexible and you don’t feel inflamed. That’s really important.

Evan Brand: Here’s what I recommend this podcast is brought to you by Daybook. No, it’s not actually brought to you by Daybook. But Daybook‘s a cool app that I have on my phone. And I love it, because I’ll pull it up real quick. I love it. I wish I could share my screen on my phone somehow. But anyway, I love because I can just scroll through it. So people don’t audio, you’re not going to see this at all. And I apologize. But anyway, it’s cool, because you can look at it. And you can go may 27, may 25, may 23. And you could just scroll through and you could be like, oh, look on May 3, I wrote here that I did a grass fed steak and a big old bowl of white rice, and my blood sugar crashed. So it’s fun to be able to report back. I know there’s a million apps out there. But that’s just one that I like, because I like to be able to hit the plus button, start new notes, do voice to text, whatever I can and then boom, I can look back, and I’ll just be like, oh, here, here’s where I messed up. And so I think people have to track this. You’re mentioning that listening to your body. If you’re busy, you got kids, you got a job, it’s tough to know, oh crap, what day was that, that I did the rice and then I did the grain free this and the gluten free cookie or whatever. If you can track it in the app, you can report back, so picking out but that’s what I like.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I like that. Also, just for my autoimmune patients listening I see a lot of patients that have thyroid issues hashimotos other autoimmune issues, blood sugar fluctuations high to low can definitely increase immune activation. I have a couple of studies here. I’ll just kind of give you all the overview just so you could take on what sticks was study right here talking about the effects of hyperglycemia on an inflammatory response. Another one here, the effects of induced hypoglycemia on inflammation and oxidative stress with patients that have type two diabetes that they made diet changes where they restricted calories and gave them Metformin to cause low blood sugar levels. And they saw an increase in immune response, they saw an increase in monocytes, and platelet aggregation, a whole bunch of things right. And so you know, we’re talking about inducing low blood sugar in a in this could get out of a study on this directly. But we could do this with a bad diet with hypoglycemia from a reactive hypoglycemic diet, like someone consuming a Starbucks macchiato with extra pumps of Carmel in there and you create a low blood sugar response. That way, you’re going to activate interleukins cytokines monocytes immune responses that are not going to be helpful and may even flare up your autoimmunity. And so the more you can snake your blood sugar along throughout the day, with good proteins, good fats and the right amount of carbs for you and your activity level versus up and down swings, the better it will be we know the data on on low blood sugar and the immune response is profound and people that have autoimmune issues, you really have to work on that. Yeah, right here. Although the underlying mechanism remains unclear, increase inflammatory cytokines and leukocytosis are reported after hypoglycemia, suggesting a link between hypoglycemia and in formation. And again, this hyperglycemia will be a little bit different than let’s say intermittent fasting, hypoglycemia, but the faster your blood sugar drops, right? The more inflammation, the more your body’s gonna create a hormonal response, that’s not going to be helpful.

Evan Brand: Makes total sense. Here’s a lady grace left the comment for it. She said she used to do one meal a day and two meals a day. And it felt like a badge of honor when I could fast for longer, but I realized it was stressing me out and not optimal for digestion. Probably meaning saying she’s not optimal for digestion. Yeah, it’s just too much too much at one meal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So you know, if you do that, you know, I think you come at it a couple days a week, make sure you’re relatively healthy. Make sure you take some extra HCl or enzymes, make sure you carve out a little more time to eat that meal, so you’re not stressed. Also, just just go and run your food through chronometer. Like, if you’re getting two meals a day, you know, go go carve out what that meal has to look like you’re gonna find it’s about 50% bigger on average. And that’s just a lot more food and a lot more time and you got to make sure you’re not stressed because we all know what happens when you eat a big meal and then you’re stressed you feel even worse you feel totally weighed down, you feel nauseous, then your next meal you don’t even want to eat it because you’re still just upset. So yep, I think we hit today really good. I would just say like understand the connection between cortisol, adrenaline, your immune system, why some people get great results doing different diets and other people right read between the lines be results driven, not dogma tool, modality driven. It’s really important right? Check your biases at the door. Outside of that I hope this podcast resonates with different folks if you want to reach out and you want to get individualized help from Evan, EvanBrand.com you can reach out to Evan. Dr. J here JustinHealth.com. You’ll see schedule links. We’re happy to work with patients worldwide. You know we are in the trenches rolled with our sleeves rolled up dealing with people every single day so we’re here to help outside of that if you enjoy the content, put your comments below let us know what you liked the best and please share with family and friends that could benefit it really helps propel kind of our life’s mission to help more people every day. Appreciate it. Anything else Evan?

Evan Brand: No that’s it Take good care and yeah leave us a review on your Apple podcast app we’d love it if you’re on Justin health show or if you’re on my show and brain show, give us a review, we’d love to see what stars you think the show deserves. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of five stars we’d love to add to it that helps us in the rankings so more people can hear us. So thank you so much in advance and take care yourself.

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References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/how-your-diet-and-blood-sugar-can-weaken-your-adrenals-podcast-340

Recommended products:

Adrenal Boost

Adrenal Revive

DUTCH Adrenal Test

Deluxe Mold Test Kit

Organic Grass Fed Meat

TruKeto Collagen

TRUCOLLAGEN (Grassfed)

Amino Acid Supreme

Genova NutrEval® FMV

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

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

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

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

 

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

1:43  Inflammation in the Brain

3:50  Improving Brain Function

7:41  How Food Affects Brain Function

11:24 Insulin Resistance on the Brain

24:11 Improving Blood Flow in the Brain

27:16 Glutamate Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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References:

https://justinhealth.com/

https://www.evanbrand.com/

Audio Podcast:

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

Recommended products:

Brain replete

Serotonin replete

Dopa replete

Antioxidant Supreme

TruKeto Collagen

TRUCOLLAGEN

Organic Grass Fed Meat

Holistic Farming, Improving the Food Chain, Your Immune System Starts with Good Food – Joel Salatin | Podcast #290

For today’s podcast, Dr. J has got a treat for you! Joel Salatin, American farmer, lecturer, author, and owner of Polyface Farm. He is one of the most famous farmers with his successful, unconventional techniques (agricultural methods used at Polyface are “beyond organic”).

Dr. J is talking us through the food journey and how a strong immune system starts with our food. We open with segregation vs. integration in conventional vs. unconventional farming. The benefits are obvious, and Salatin chooses not to mass produce to maintain a holistic and environmentally friendly business model. We shift into a discussion about quality and nutrient density of foods. We look at how some recent studies, documentaries, and food movements sweep over the fact that organic grass-fed meat is of a far superior quality to fast food meat. The quality of mass produced meats, fast food “meats”, and organic grass-fed meats are all different, and Dr. J and Joel acknowledge and elaborate on this. Much is covered during this podcast, but stay until the end to learn how our food-spending habits are changing with the times. While we used to spend 18% of our income on food and less on health, now it is the opposite. Dr. J sees this need to spend more on health in direct correlation with the quality and nutrient density of today’s foods. Spend more money on good quality food that is high in nutrients and you’ll spend less on hospital bills, etc.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Intro to holistic farming

07:01 Junk food epidemic

19:47 Food processing plants

26:16 Politics of food

31:10 Nutrient-dense food

37:00 Plant protein vs animal protein, bacteria, biomass and the climate

44:24 Food labels and grading system

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And we are live! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here in the house with Joel Salatin, who is one of the most famous farmers out there who runs Polyface Farms, an organic natural farming association.  We’re gonna talk about all things farming, health, immune system.  Let’s dive in.  Joel, how are you doin’ today?

Joel Salatin:  I’m doing great and it’s an honor to be with you, Dr. J.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, thank you so much.  So, I first came upon you, how long has it—maybe 10 years ago now?  In the documentary, Food Inc?  Has it been 10 years?

Joel Salatin:  Yes, it has been 10 years.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow! I remember that movie.  There was a couple of things.  It really kinda juxtaposed conventional farming methods.  You bring in the cows then you bring in all the corn and then you have to move everything out.  Get the corn you know—get all the cow patties out because of all the toxins that happen in it and then you see this wonderful juxtaposition where you have these cows, you move them throughout the pasture.  You bring in the chicken to eat the remains of the stool they bring.  You have this beautiful synergy in your farming and it was like this complete circle where the conventional system was just so, let’s just say, it lacked that holistic nature.  Can you just kinda juxtapose, you know, the farming on the conventional side this with the more holistic farming just so the average person—

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s stepping into this, understands the difference?

Joel Salatin:  Sure!  Well, you’ve laid it out very well.  One of the big differences is segregation versus integration.  I mean—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  In the industrial system, the animals are segregated from their environment, from their feedstocks.  They’re cooped up in a house.  They breathe in their own fecal particulate all day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct.

Joel Salatin:  Their waste goes into whatever lagoons.  I mean, if North Carolina didn’t get a hurricane every 2 years, the whole state would be full like a toilet tank right now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Joel Salatin:  You know, from all the clogged lagoons.  Where—and then it goes to, you know, to wherever the food gets, to wherever it goes, into a great huge processing plant that’s also segregated with razor wire and no trespassing zones from its own community.  Whereas in our system, it’s a highly decentralized system, a highly integrated system where the environments of open land, forest land, and water integrate closely.  Wildlife is not considered a liability.  Wildlife is considered an asset.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Correct.

Joel Salatin:  Pollinators are encouraged and so the animals are each in a habitat that allows it to express its phenotypical distinctiveness.  We call it the pigness of the pig, the chickeness of the chicken, ah so that they can fully express their, you know, yeah, their physiological uniqueness.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Totally makes sense.

Joel Salatin:  The animals are moved from paddock to paddock.  The chickens come behind the cows.  The cows eat grass.  I mean, they are herbivores so they don’t grain and they certainly don’t eat dead chickens and chicken manure like the industry feeds them and the manure fertilizes the pasture like the bison did that built the great soils of, you know, America and then we process locally and we, you know, we feed our foodshed and so everything is this circle.  I mean, even our composting, we build compost with pigs.  So instead of using—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  Great big machines, you know, to turn these piles, we actually just put some corn in it, turn in the pigs and the pigs aerate it and stir it like a big egg beater and of course, the pigs love to do this.  We are not asking them to do something they don’t like to do.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  100%, I like it and I’m not an educated farmer but I could just see the holistic in this and the synergy and it just made sense.  Now obviously, there’s business and, you know, the whole market type of feeds, this conventional type of way of living or producing animals in a conventional way, is it possible to still make money as a farmer and produce food holistically like this or is the profit mode of just really, really change the direction in how farming is moving?

Joel Salatin:  Well, absolutely.  It’s possible to make a living this way.  That’s what we do.  We’re not a non-profit.  We are a for-profit outfit and now, that said, it’s important to realize that much of the food sold in the supermarket is not honestly—the cost of that is not honestly gathered.  I mean, the fact that we have a dead zone the size of Rhode Island and the Gulf of Mexico, that is a direct external cost of industrial agriculture or the fact that half of all cases of diarrhea in the United States come from foodborne pathogens.  You know, what’s the case of diarrhea worth?  I don’t know what it’s worth but it’s not very fun and so we have all these additional costs that are not captured in the supermarket price and so we say, we’re the cheapest food on the planet because we are not polluting anybody.  We’re not, you know, we’re not polluting anybody’s, you know, backyard barbecue with a stinky air and we’re not giving anybody a case of diarrhea and we’re not giving anybody MRSA and C. diff with subtherapeutic antibiotic use.  So there’s—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I just wanna interject real quick.  You said, “A dead zone in Mexico or the Gulf of Mexico?”  Can you elaborate a little more on that?

Joel Salatin:  Yeah, well the Gulf of Mexico, of course, is the ocean and the right now, in the Gulf of Mexico there’s a dead zone which is a toxic—where there’s no oxygen and nothing grows and it’s the size of Rhode Island right now and all those trip fishermen—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  Fisherman that made a living in that large area, there’s no longer anything produced there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, wow.  I didn’t know that.

Joel Salatin:  Yeah.  So I mean, it’s big.  I mean, it’s the biggest dead zone on the planet right now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Interesting.

Joel Salatin:  And not mention the many that are just, you know, internal but no, that’s a direct result of industrial, chemical and you know, run-off down the Mississippi.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, I see.  So it’s caused by the pesticide run-off and it’s creating a dead zone where just life can’t happen because of all—

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  The toxic soup that’s happening there essentially.

Joel Salatin:  That’s right.  That’s right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Okay, very interesting.

Joel Salatin:  That’s right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And you have really touched on it too much, I’ll dive into, I wanna get thoughts on it is there is an inequality in regards to junk food being cheap partly because of a lot of the government subsidy, right? 20 billion dollars or so for wheat and soy, so when you throw that on, it’s gonna make these foods artificially sweet so when you see the Dollar Menu for instance, it’s really not a dollar, it’s probably orders of magnitude above that.  Can you talk about the junk food epidemic with high fructose, corn syrup, soy, all these refined processed foods and how they’re artificially cheap?

Joel Salatin:  Well, sure.  I mean, the entire whatever farm program, USDA program, is dedicated toward subsidizing, concessionizing A) not only a large-scale enterprises to the exclusion of small-scale enterprises.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  And you know, amalgamation and centralization and all that, but also to certain products, certain crops.  There’s only 6 crops that get subsidies.  Now they call insurance because subsidies have become you know—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:   Too politically incorrect.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Too politically, yeah, exactly.

Joel Salatin:  So now they call insurance.  But there’s only 6 products that have that you know, corn, soybeans, wheat and rice.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Granola?

Joel Salatin:  Uh, not granola.  Cotton.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Cotton.

Joel Salatin:  And the other one is sugarcane.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  Sugarcane.  So those are the 6 crops that are officially in that, you know that, kind of—well, the old subsidy program now the new insurance program, and so anytime you have incentives for just 6 commodities, guess what?  You’re gonna get a skewed cost structure and an inordinate amount of production in those particular commodities and so that’s exactly what’s happened.  And of course, you know, when you talk about junk food, you gotta realize that junk food is not necessarily less expensive than nutritious food.  I mean, a Snickers bar, the price per pound of a Snickers bar is more than the price per pound of our, you know, grass-finished beef for example.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I think I heard you once say this, I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong.  I think you were talking about your organic eggs versus the conventional eggs and you’re like, “Hey, yeah. This is the twice the amount of cost but do you know that the amount of folate in here is 20 times more.”  Can you talk about the nutrient density?  And is that about correct?  Is that number about correct?  From the quote from before?  In regards to the folate and eggs?

Joel Salatin:  Yeah, so we participated with Mother Earth News Magazine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  In a study back, oh I don’t know, 5 or 6 years ago.  They got tired of people—of being whatever panned and excoriated for saying that there was a difference from carrot to carrot, egg to egg, you know, pork chop to pork chop and so they said, “Well, let’s do it.  Let’s take, you know, pastured eggs.  Let’s find some farmers and settle this dispute.”  And so they got 12 of us and we send them to a lab and they measured it for 12 nutrients.  One of them was folic acid and the official USDA, you know, nutrient label for eggs is like 48 mcg per egg of folic acid and our eggs averaged 1,038 mcg per egg.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  No, I mean, yeah, so your magnitude of 20—this isn’t a 5% difference, a 10%.  This is like, you know, magnitudes.  The same thing is true with like grass-finished beef compared to corn-finished beef.  For example, riboflavin.  Riboflavin is especially—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  B2.

Joel Salatin:  You know, yeah, and it was like 300% higher.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  And, and so you know, these products.  When you talk about a salad bar, you know, being able to exercise and fresh air, and sunshine and/or grass in a salad bar where they’re moved every day to a new spot and you get this fresh salad.  The keratins in that salad completely changed the fatty acid, the nutritional profile—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Joel Salatin:  Structure of the, you know, of the meat, poultry, egg.  You know, whatever it is on the protein.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And this primarily just has to do with the fact that the cows are eating a natural diet.  They’re getting lots of greens and then of course, the greens aren’t gonna be laden with GMOs and pesticides and then you’re cycling that through, and then you’re providing the synergy in with the chickens that eat the fecal debris afterwards, which then re-fertilized, and then it just creates this healthier microbiome.  Healthier microbiome in the soil.  Healthy soil microbiome creates more nutrients in the grass and then the circle just continues.  Does that—

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Sound about right?

Joel Salatin:  Right.  Yeah, you’re in the ballpark.  Essentially, the diversity in our microbiome can only be as diverse as the diversity that we’re feeding it in our food and that can only be as diverse as the soil food web in the soil.  I mean, every like tablespoon of soil has more beings in it—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  Than there are people on the face of the Earth.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Joel Salatin:  And so if we—so if we reduce half of the soil bacteria, you know, with chemicals and make it simplistic and then we only do mono speciation of plants and animals growing on that soil, and then we send that into a sterile processing facility and what comes out as sterile, there’s not much there to feed our microbiome.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Joel Salatin:  And so, you know, when I go pick a carrot out in the garden, I don’t even wash it off.  I rub it off on my pants and get a little bit of that dirt.  You know, I can always imagine these dirt like the acetobacter and mycorrhizae.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  They come in and they go down and I swallow them and they hit their destined cousins down in my gut, right?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  Like, “Oh, hello, cousin.  Where have you been?”  Yeah, you know?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  And they have this family reunion of microorganisms, you know?  I can just–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That makes so much sense.

Joel Salatin:  Going on.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That makes sense.  Are there any bigger companies like Tyson or any of these bigger farming companies that are trying to do what you’re doing on a larger scale?  Obviously, they’re doing it because they feel like they can be more efficient in how much product they produce.  You know, we can argue about the quality aspect as you already just did with the nutritional density on the carrots, on the eggs, and I imagine that goes with the grass-fed meat.

Joel Salatin:  Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And the vitamin B2.  So there’s a nutritional density component that they are not measuring because I think they get paid by the pound, not by the nutrient, right?

Joel Salatin:  That’s right.  Nobody in the indust—nobody in the food system gets paid for nutrients right now.  Now that may change.  I mean, there’s some cool technology coming out with little handheld spectrophotometers.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  You know, which is Abby’s machine on NCIS, you know?  The mass spec that she’s always got.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:   Yup.

Joel Salatin:  And so there’s some interesting technology especially now in produce where we’re trying to measure, you know, wavelengths.  So there’s some cool stuff coming but yeah, you’re right.  In the food system, nobody really gets paid for nutrition.  They get paid for pounds and bushels and of course, that is not a measure of—that’s not a measure of quality.  It’s a measure of quantity but it is not a measure of quality.  It would be like measuring the effectiveness of a college by the number of diplomas it produced rather than the quality of jobs that graduates got.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Love it.  Great analogy.  So essentially, we have a system that is really good at getting animals fat and big, which then they get paid more because of the weight versus healthy and nutrient-dense—

Joel Salatin:  Yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Which then provides more health to the consumers and I just—I tell my patients when they’re going out shopping, you really have to change your mindset when you’re shopping.  You have to say, “Hey, how can I get the best price?  No, “ How can I get the most nutrients for my dollar?”  And when you do that, the organic higher quality, more local foods will always give you more nutrients per dollar versus more bulk per dollar.

Joel Salatin:  Right. For example, in beef production, a lot of people are familiar with ionophore either implants or supplements in like a mineral box.  Well, these ionophores are basically steroids.  They don’t actually increase mass.  They increase the cell’s ability to hold more water and so you get more weight but you don’t get more nutrition.  I mean—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Ahh.

Joel Salatin:  The poultry industry right now, I think Tyson sells something like a billion dollars a year worth of water because they put chickens in chill tanks and agitate them so the birds take on water and the industry—like 10% of the weight of a bird in a supermarket is water.  And so there’s all sorts of little tricks and techniques to try to, you know, abscond a few more pennies for nothing out of the supermarket which is why we promote actually just circumventing the industrial food chain.  Whether it’s a Farmer’s Market, an on-farm store, a farm that ships to you, you know, directly to your doorstep.  I mean, there are now all sorts of alternatives to the mainline orthodox food system and all of those offers, in general, you know, better alternatives than you can find down at Costco and Walmart.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:   Where the only way to get into those places—several years ago I had a bunch of—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Joel Salatin:  Costco vice-presidents here and we—they spent the day.  They were excited about what we were doing and they asked me then at the end.  They said, “So how we get your stuff in at, you know, Sam’s Club and Costco?”  I said, “Well, the first thing you have to do is let a truck smaller than tractor-trailer back up to your dock.”  That was the end of the discussion.  They could not even—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  There wasn’t enough scale.

Joel Salatin:  No, they couldn’t imagine a system where a truck smaller than a tractor-trailer back up to their dock.  So, you know, this was the kind of—it’s a prejudice within the marketplace that excludes, you know, positive alternatives.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  Essentially, they’re looking for more scale and this is more of a decentralized way of doing it just because of, you know, it’s the big companies are kinda wetted to this conventional system because it’s all a weight-driven system not a nutrient-system so you kinda have to change how the system for it to make sense on the financial side to grow.  I mean, is it possible like if you had more money right now if someone gave you a hundred million dollars, could you scale this thing to the size of a Tyson, while producing the same food quality?

Joel Salatin:  Sure.  So what a great question and you know, our most questions and criticism is price and scale.  You know, can you actually feed the world this way and so the way I envision it is to explain to people absolutely this scale, in fact it scales just fine but it doesn’t scale like an aircraft carrier, it scales like a million speedboats.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  And so we believe in scale not by taking something—not by taking a stationary piece of infrastructure and turning it into a mega, you know, infrastructure but rather a whole lot of decentralized, democratized—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  Infrastructure all over the landscape so that instead of 150 mega-processing facilities worth 3,000 employees, the country has maybe, you know, 50,000 smaller scale abattoirs or canning plants or processing facilities scattered all over the landscape devoted to their own food, you know, their regional foodsheds.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  And so one is scaled by duplication, the other is scaled by whatever, you know—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Subsidy or?

Joel Salatin:  Empire building.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  The Empire Building.

Joel Salatin:  Build a bigger coliseum instead of building a whole bunch of little theatres.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  Now that makes sense.  There’s a quote by John Paul Getty, “You’re better off getting 1% out of 100 men than 100% out of 1 man”, right?

Joel Salatin:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So it’s kinda like that?  And it’s probably safer for our food supply.  I mean, you can go read—you read stories of Russia before the revolution where all the starvation and stuff would happen and you know, because you had one farm controlled by the government and then that went sideways, and everyone starved, right?

Joel Salatin:  Sure, yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  So it makes sense from a safety standpoint for sure.  Let’s talk about food processing plants right now.  There’s a lot of hoopla where things were closed off because of the COVID-19 thing and then they had this big supply chain that was moving and they had to kill animals off because that supply chain couldn’t move and the supply chain was so tight in how they brought animals in, fed them, brought them to slaughter.  If they couldn’t slaughter them on time, the whole thing got backed up and they had to kill them.  So you have this supply chain backup.  You have the whole food processing plant owned by a lot of companies outside of the country that are—it seems like they’re selectively choosing food from outside of the country versus inside the country.  Can you talk a little bit about those politics?

Joel Salatin:  Sure.  So the idea there is that these processing plants, remember half, almost half of the US processing plant capacity right now is owned by China and Brazil.  They’re owned by foreigners.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  So, you know, these companies are above whatever national politics.  You know, they’re global in scope and loyalty.  They have no loyalty, you know, to a culture, to a country, to a place.  And so what happened was in these big plants, as the coronavirus came in, they started—they were unable to continue to operate.  They had a lot of workers get sick.  You gotta remember that right now, the only place in America where thousands of people are working shoulder to shoulder every day in wet, damp, cool, damp conditions is in these large-scale processing plants.  It’s not happening anywhere else.  And a lot of these workers are themselves living in difficult conditions.  They come from Somalia.  They come from, you know, all over the world and I’m not being xenophobic.  This is just a fact.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  Most of these workers are foreign workers.  They’re trying to save pennies to bring, you know, additional family members home.  So they’re crammed, you know, 10 people in a house that we would consider only big enough for 4 people.  They crammed 10 and 20 people in these houses and they’re scrimping pennies so they’re eating, you know, they’re eating out of the gas station and they’re eating SPAM, you know, to eat cheaply.  So the living conditions, they’re in a new culture, they’re under the stress of a new language, I mean, there’s a lot of stress in their life and stress of course, you know, reduces your cortisol, okay?  And so, then you become more susceptible.  My point is that these huge plants are incubators for sickness.  Whether it’s COVID or anything else and so when you have a very small plant, a community plant like we co-own one that has 20 employees.  It’s a small community plant and we—you know, we have 20 people and we’re spread out a lot more because, well, it’s small, you know?  And there are 2 guys over on the kill ford, 2 guys in the back pack machine, 4 guys in the cut room and they have a lot of room.  It’s just not shoulder-to-shoulder like these great, great, big plants that are basically assembly line.  We do stuff by hand with individual knives and individual workstations and there’s a lot of room and there’s not that many people and we’re hiring neighbors and so it’s better working conditions.  And so, the fact is, that the small decentralized plants are simply less vulnerable to pathogenicity of any type.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  Of any type whether it’s on the food or in the people.  They’re just less vulnerable to pathogenicity than the great big plants.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, 100% and I remember in Food Inc that you were slaughtering a chicken outside in the open air with the UV light coming through and, you know, we’ve seen data that a lot of these coronaviruses cannot really survive more than 1 minute in 75°F temperature, 40% humidity so it seems like the sunlight or the UVC rays are really powerful natural disinfectant that you’re utilizing to help keep your food clean.

Joel Salatin:  Yes, absolutely.  And so a small plant, you know, has more windows.  You know, workers can step outside for you know, for lunch or a break.  I mean, there’s just a lot of additional, whatever, resilience in a small facility.  So that was one of the big glitches in the food chain system.  The other big glitch that happened was that when the restaurants were closed down, the food industry has 2 very distinct, whatever, journeys of food.  It either goes into wholesale and you know, and restaurant trade or it goes into the retail trade.  And as you can imagine, those 2 trajectories are completely different kinds of packaging, completely different kinds of distribution, everything.  And so what happened when the restaurants closed down, everybody started buying retail, while the industry couldn’t adjust their packaging and their, whatever, their fabrication lines—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  Fast enough to adjust.  I mean, we even had it at our farm.  At our farm, we never ran out of ground beef.  We ran out of ground beef for 3 days.  People were going, you know, going ballistic.  We don’t have ground beef.  We had 5,000 pounds of 5-lb packages of ground beef for our restaurants but that was not for the ret—you know, our retailer customers didn’t want 5-lb, you know, 5-lb packages of ground beef.  They want 1-lb packages of ground beef.  And so—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  And so our retail customers saw us being “out” but we had plenty.  It was just in bigger packages for restaurants.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.  That’s—

Joel Salatin:  You know, so we encouraged people, we said, “Look, here’s how you can do it.  You can take this all home, cook it, and then what you don’t eat, freeze it, and you can use it another time.  Or you can take a hacksaw, you know, whack in quarters, you know and move.”  So we were doing all sorts of creative things with our customers trying to get them to understand the meat is here, you just might have to help us and you know, meet this glitch here for a little bit.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  No, that makes a lot of sense.  And just from a national security standpoint, you know, it doesn’t make sense allowing foreign people to own so much of our food supply.  I mean, the gateway of our food supply being these food packaging plants.  It just doesn’t make sense that they would—that such a large percent of them are owned by international companies.  That is so mind-blowing!

Joel Salatin:  Well, it is and you know, you can really see it right now in the last I think I’m right on this, in the last like 30 years, the US has gone from one—from roughly 1% to 5% of our food being imported to today, it’s 20%.  In other words, 1 out of 5 mouthfuls of food that an American takes is now coming from a foreign place.  We are becoming more and more vulnerable to these kinds of shocks within in the system.  Of course, you know, during this time, China for the year leading up to the coronavirus, for that year, China depopulated half of their pork industry.  You know, China consumes half of the world’s pork. Just the country of China consumes—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  Half of the world’s pork and in China, pork is the number one, you know, animal protein.  In America, it’s chicken.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  It makes sense.

Joel Salatin:  Chicken, but in China it’s pork.  So when the African swine fever came into China and by the way, it decimated the large producers more than the small ones, but when it came into China they began depopulating and so China was entering this whole COVID-19 thing short of pork, and so here we were with empty store shelves and Smithfield, which is owned by the Chinese, were sending 20% of our pork to China to help meet the African swine fever shortfall in China—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  While our grocery shelves were empty.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow, this is unbelievable and the politics of food I think are really important because it just—you gotta have common sense with a lot of these things.  And when you have a lot of these international companies running these food processing plants, they are selecting for their fellow international probably subsidiaries I imagine, so then they’re picking meat from these international companies and bringing it here and then leaving our domestic farmers in the hole, kinda empty-handed, with all these extra supply and they are just being given money for the—by the government to sit on it essentially, right?

Joel Salatin:  Yeah, well, I don’t know how much the subsidies, you know, go into those big outfits.  I can tell you that probably the single, you know, when you talk about the politics of food, probably the single biggest issue here is that it is not necessarily money if you will, but it’s regulatory where it’s very, very difficult for a small, you know, community abattoir to get in the business because of very scale prejudicial—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  Scale prejudicial requirements.  That’s one reason why Congressman Tom Massie from Kentucky—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.  Kentucky, yeah.

Joel Salatin:  Has put in the prime act to try to allow the intrastate, not interstate, but intrastate sale of custom processed beef and pork and so that a lot of these little community abattoirs can actually join the marketplace and aren’t excluded from the marketplace.  The cost of getting into this is extremely expensive in its primary regulations.  You know, you can go out and shoot a deer on a 70-degree day and feed it to your kids and give it to all the neighborhood and you’re a great American, but if you do one pig on an appropriate temperature day, you’re a criminal.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  And so this is not about food safety, it’s about market access.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  There’s some common sense or form that could be done, I mean, if I was the agricultural czar and I could do a couple of different things right now policy-wise to just improve the health of this country, I think number one, I would get rid of all farming subsidies.  Because I think number one is you have to show people, the Americans, what the true cost of food in your junk food is, number one.  Number two, I would adjust a lot of the food stamps/SNAP program.  People that need food, I think you give them a stipend to actually get the real food from their local farmer so you actually get the real food and you can’t spend it on junk food and crap and sugar, and anything else because I think if people need assistance, the worse thing we can do is give them crappy food and then they end up being on more drugs and—

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And they are drained on the healthcare system because then you pay twice and you know, chronic healthcare is actually probably more like 10x, right?  So I’d start with those first 2 things if I were to do anything just to let the free market, and then I probably would do more on the education side because I think people need to be educated about nutrients, not just how much their food weighs.  I think it’s about value.  People look at their food and they don’t have the value component.  They just kinda look at it as, “Okay, it’s you know, this chicken is the same as that chicken,” and they don’t have the value component and that takes education to people like you and people like me.

Joel Salatin:  Right.  Well, I’m with you.  I’ll vote for you.  When you run, I’ll vote for you.  But yes, I agree with all those things and in fact, one of the best ways to educate people is to actually put good food in their mouth.  Most Americans have never actually eaten what we call nutrient-dense authentic food.  I mean, this coronavirus has brought some interesting people into our farm store.  A guy came in last week and you know, he had never shopped anywhere except Walmart and so he, you know, with all this coronavirus stuff, he came to us and he got a couple of, you know, 5 chickens or something and said it would take them a month.  He called back the next week and he said, “I’ve never had anything like that.  We ate them all in a week.”  And what it was, it was his body telling him this is real nutrition, you need to eat this.  Just like—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  A little anemic 6-year-old came in with his mother.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  You know, this is little itty-bitty little child.  Mother said, “Oh, he’s such a picky eater.  He won’t eat anything.”  She bought a dozen eggs.  She called us the next day and she said, “He’s eating 6 eggs in a sitting.”  Well, the child he was eating, but he was starving to death.  He was starving nutritionally.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  And so when he got really decent nutrition, his body, you know, whatever, it woke up.  You know?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  That’s a better wokeness than the politically correct wokeness.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.  No, that makes sense.  That makes a lot of sense.  Yeah, when your body has the nutrients it needs, its metabolic systems run better and yeah, they literally will generate more energy which helps with the energy and focus and mood and everything.  Now I’m just curious to get your take.  I mean, I’d lecture my patient on whole food and how animal nutrients—animal bioaccumulate plant nutrients.  So when you have the vegan-vegetarian argument versus being able to eat whole food, healthy animal products, number one, the argument tends to—it tends to create a straw man.  The first argument is it tends to create all meat as conventional junk food McDonald’s meat and I think we have to be able to differentiate that.  I don’t talk about the organic broccoli in someone’s backyard and compare it to the soybeans on a monoculture farm.  So we have to be able to differentiate the quality of the meat, number one.  And then number two, we have to look at the nutrient density like you mentioned.  I know animals bioaccumulate plant matter.  I think it’s something like 8 lb of grass goes into 1 lb of cow meat.  So there’s bioaccumulation and when you look at the nutrient density studies comparing a carrot to liver or beef, or your egg yolks to any type of plant, you’re gonna see this increased nutrient density. Can you—what’s your argument on the plant-based nutrition side or the more the plant and animal-based side especially the animal side?

Joel Salatin:  Yeah.  Well, you’re exactly right.  You’re exactly right.  The problem is that with things like, you know, Cowspiracy and Game Changer.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Joel Salatin:  They refuse to differentiate that there can be a better way to raise a chicken or a cow—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Joel Salatin:  Than a poor way to raise a chicken or a cow.  I’m liking it to this.  It’s as if you and I, let’s say we live on Pluto.  We’re looking down at the Earth and Pluto says, “Hey, that’s an interesting-looking planet down there.  I wonder what their education system is.  How about we get 2 volunteers to do down there and check it out?”  So you and I volunteer, we jump in the flying saucer and we come down to Earth, and we happen to land in the schoolyard of the worst school district with the worst superintendent—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  In a school with the worst principal and we go visit the worst classroom with the worst teacher.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  Worst parents in the whole country.  And we watched this for 2 days.  We go back to Pluto and they say, “Well, what did you find?”  We’ll say, “Man, if education is like that, we shouldn’t have any education.”  You know?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Joel Salatin:  And that—so when you—when all of your data points are from a dysfunctional system, you’re gonna come up with a dysfunctional conclusion and that is what has driven the data points, the science, the data points of you know, Cowspiracy, the UN Long Shadow report, the EAT-Lancet report, all these, you know, anti-animal, anti-meat things are—they don’t come here to do their data collection.  You know, they go to feedlots, they go to factory farms, they go to, you know, desert irrigation.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  And it’s all those systems rather than a truly holistic functional synergistic type system.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, anytime someone makes an effort to create that straw man and not let—and not really argue against the premises that you’re making, that’s sophistry right there at its best.  I mean, we see it all with a lot of the people talking about climate change and the methane produced by cows.  Well, okay, you know, well, let’s talk about the fact that methane is significantly reduced if not totally neutral with cows that eat grass.  And so, you know, we’re just supporting now an argument of cows eating more grass and keeping the grains and the corn and all that crap out of there.  But the argument still—the goal post constantly gets shifted in the plant versus animal argument and I think it’s a combination of the two but we gotta acknowledge there’s a different way to raise these animals in a healthy fashion and the results totally change.  And we’re not even talking about the bioavailability of plant—

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Proteins versus animal protein.

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s a totally different argument.  The assumption is that all plant proteins are absorbed and assimilated the same way and the anti-nutrients aren’t affecting any of it and also that the amino acid profile is the same.  We know that animal-based amino acid profiles are gonna be more sulfur-rich and the plant-based profiles are a lot of times are gonna be incomplete and you have to combine different proteins like rice and beans, etc.  Your thoughts?

Joel Salatin:  Yes.  So yeah, exactly so a lot of people have never heard of a bacteria in the soil called methanotrophic bacteria.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Joel Salatin:  Methanotrophic bacteria lives in pasture.  It doesn’t live under corn.  It doesn’t live under asphalt.  It doesn’t live in feedlots.  It doesn’t live on factory farms.  It lives under perennial grasslands.  Methanotrophic bacteria in a healthy grassland, there’s enough methanotrophic bacteria.  Methanotrophic is it’s a bacteria that eats methane.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Eats it.  Totally eats it.  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  Yeah, it eats methane and metabolizes it and feeds it back to plants, okay?  And so in a healthy pasture, you know, perennial grass situation, there’s enough methanotrophic bacteria in the soil to eat up all the methane from 2,000 cows per acre.  That’s how constructive and regenerative nature is.  Now, nobody is gonna have 2,000 cows per acre.  The point is that nature has all the mechanisms necessary to make sure there’s no waste stream.  That everything has a place of reconstruction and regeneration that there’s no landfill in nature.  There’s no away.  There’s no waste stream.  Every waste stream is the beginning of something else.  And so that’s—so methanotrophic bacteria—so you don’t hear in Cowspiracy, you don’t hear them talking about methanotrophic bacteria, they just talk about, you know, feed lots and factory farms and things.  And so, you know, it’s important to understand that there’s a lot in the system that they’re not talking about. Even to the point that how much water it takes to make a T-bone steak.  Well, they don’t measure the urine that comes out of the cow or the bacterial exudates of the biomass when healthy biomass exudes bacteria, that’s the number one coalescent for water vapor in the atmosphere.  Water vapor can coalesce around ice particles.  It can coalesce around little pieces of chemical or it can coalesce around bacteria.  90% of it coalesces around bacteria and bacteria just is exhaled by the biomass, trees and grass and shrubs and things.  And so, when a cow stimulates through proper grazing measure, when a cow stimulates biomass production in the forage, it actually comes alive with additional exhale bacteria that allows the clouds to form, rains to come, and stimulates water.  I mean, this is all out of Walter Jehne from Australia, probably the, you know, the world’s foremost, you know, climatologist, climate change guy talking about how atmospheric moisture is the Earth’s radiator and the problem is that none of these climate changers are talking about, how do replenish the radiator of the Earth?  You replenish it with biomass-induced bacteria exhaling from the plants.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Joel Salatin:  And how you do that is with the proper animal pruners around the land and not continuous grazing, not overgrazing, not desertification, but proper animal management to stimulate the abundance of the biomass on the landscape.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Can you just re-say that like in 15 seconds again?  It was a lot—I wanna be able to connect those bullet points because there was so much said there.  Can you just kind of reiterate that just a little bit more succinctly again?

Joel Salatin:  Okay, so moisture in the air, water droplets condense.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  They condense around ice particles.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  They condense around little pieces of chemical, cloud seeding.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  And they condense around bacteria.  They’re favorite one and the one that’s most conducive is the bacteria.  The bacteria comes from the exudates of biomass, green material, vegetation.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Got it.

Joel Salatin:  And so it’s the vegetation that stimulates the condensation that makes the clouds that helps to create functional water, you know—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Joel Salatin:  Water cycle, you know, hydraulic cycles in the world.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And is it just vegetation and the vegetation that’s coming from the cow’s actual food that they’re eating in the grass.  Is that where that vegetation’s coming from?

Joel Salatin:  Yes. Because if you don’t prune biomass, then it tends to become stale and dormant and doesn’t—I mean, a grass plant goes into senescence.  You know, in like 60 days, a grass plant goes into senescence.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  So if something doesn’t come along and prune that grass plant, you know, it turns brown and the bioaccumulate—the, you know, the photosynthesis stops.  And so it’s the herbivorous pruner, that’s why the planet has so many herbivores—zebras and elephants and you know, llamas and alpacas and caribou.  The reason for all these herbivores is to keep this vegetation freshened up like pruning an orchard or pruning a vineyard to make it, you know, to make functional.  So the problems associated with domestic livestock and herbivores is not the problem with herbivores, it’s the farmers and ranchers who manage them incorrectly to not allow them to do the job they were supposed to do as freshening up, you know, pruners.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  It’s excellent.  It’s such a holistic cycle and everything is affected.  Everything affects everything.

Joel Salatin:  Yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  From the soils to the plants, to the cows to the atmosphere, to the gasses being produced and you know, I always tell my patients, old foods can’t cause new disease and I don’t think we can—I don’t think new farming methods will ever beat the old farming methods that have always been there because it’s just the closer you are to Mother Nature, it seems like that’s the better way to do it.

Joel Salatin:  Well, that’s for sure.  And nature always fills, you know, we believe here at our farm that nature’s default position is fundamentally wellness.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  And whereas in the industry, they consider the fundamentally default position as sickness.  So we’ve gotta make pharmaceuticals and drugs and GMOs and all these things to override nature’s propensity towards sickness.  Whereas we believe nature’s fundamentally well and if it’s not well, my first question is what did I do to mess it up.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.

Joel Salatin:  What did I do to override the immunological terrain?  And so we’ve actually—I’ve actually co-authored a book with Dr. Sina McCullough, it just came out 2 weeks ago.  It’s, the title is Beyond Labels and it’s all about going beyond, you know, beyond just the labels in food and understanding how foods produced from a, you know, a practical standpoint.  How do we make food decisions, proper food decisions and get beyond just being stuck on, you know, paleo, keto, organic, whatever it is, but you know, and labels of sickness?  You know?  I have this.  I have that.  But just going all the way beyond labels in life and I would encourage folks to, you know, to see it and it’s written like a dialog from a farmer and a PhD.  So it’s—and you know, it’s—so it moves, when you get tired of me, you get her.  When you get tired of her, you get me.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  I love it.  That makes so much sense.  That’s great.  And on the conventional side, you see grades like select or choice or prime, right?  How does that correlate to your meat?  Like where does your meat kinda plug in to that typical grading system?  Obviously, that grading system does not—I don’t think look at the hormones, the antibiotics, the grass-fed or grass-finish nature of that.  Can you talk about that grading system and compare it to kinda where yours plugs in?

Joel Salatin:  Sure.  So that grading system was started in the early 1900s when everybody was using candles, you know, tallow for candles and so the grading system was developed so that the fat content could be measured because cattle received way, way more value if they had enough tallow to make candles.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Hmm.

Joel Salatin:  This was before electricity.  And so the select choice in prime—that whole grading system has nothing to do with nutrition, it has nothing to do with taste, it was nothing to do with eating quality.  It’s strictly a measure of fat percentage in the animal based on—well, okay, so now we got enough fat to you know, boil down to make candles to light our houses.  That’s how archaic it is and yet it—this is what happens with government programs.  As you know, government programs they start and even when they are, you know, a century out of date, we got electricity, they still keep them functioning.  You know, one of the things with eggs for example.  You know, you get a carton of eggs, it says Grade A, Grade A large eggs.  I’m having trouble with my bud here.  It keeps falling out.  You know, when you get a carton of eggs, it says Grade A large eggs.  So what does it mean?  It has nothing to do with nutrition.  It only has to do–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Joel Salatin:  With appearance and the size of the air cell and the viscosity of the albumin.  It doesn’t have anything to do with—but people, they see this, you know, stamp of Grade A or whatever on an egg and they think somebody has checked it for Salmonella or Campylobacter or something.  But nobody has checked them for any of that.  It’s strictly an aesthetic grade in the market so that we don’t get crinkly and extra-long or extra fat or whatever you know, eggs in the marketplace.  And so, this is one of the big—this is one of the reasons—this is what Sina and I are bringing out in our book, Beyond Labels, is some of this background stuff, people look at these labels and they assume it means all this.  I mean, like if somebody is checking all these unpronounceable things.  Doesn’t the FDA check monosodium glutamate?  No!  It’s generally regarded as safe.  GRAS.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  And GMOs.  Who’s checking GMOs?  Nobody.  They’re considered equivalent to non-GMOs, GRAS.  Generally regarded I think it is—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  Generally regarded as safe.  You know more about that than I do.  But generally regarded, GRAS.  And so there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of unnatural fake compounds in our food that if they get GRAS designation, nobody checks them.  Any company can add them to food without any check whatsoever.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, and there’s no real safety studies behind it or anything which is kinda sad.

Joel Salatin:  No.  There’s no safety studies behind it or anything.  And so many of these stamps and inspections and labels, they have nothing to do with nutrition.  None of these labels has anything to do with nutrition.  And I think if you and I could get all the listeners here today to understand that none of the labels has anything to do or measure either A) nutrition or B) pathogenicity, you know, they don’t measure antibiotic residue.  None of this stuff.  That all the things—here’s the thing.  The thing that consumers fear, the things that worry consumers that they would like to know, none of that is on the label.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Exactly.  Exactly. The toxicity, the drug residue, the GMOs.

Joel Salatin:  The nutrient density.  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Maybe even mycotoxins.  Exactly.  The nutrient density which is the most important thing and that kinda comes back to one other thing that, you know, I first learned about in the documentary where I first found you, Food Inc was I think it was Michael Pollan was talking about it is that the percent of our income that we spend on food today is about 8% or 9%.  It used to be 15% to 18%.  So we used to prioritize a lot more of our income to food quality and that prioritization has shifted and of course, the disease management and all the drugs that are being taken I think directly correlate with the lack of investment in our food quality and then we end up investing in drugs on the other side to kinda balance out the other end.

Joel Salatin:  Absolutely.  You know, 30 to 40 years ago, the average American spend 18% of their income—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  On food and 9% on healthcare.  Today, we spend 9% on food and 18% on healthcare.  Those numbers have completely inverted in the last 30 to 40 years.  That’s truly profound and in fact, that inversion really accelerated in 1979 when the US—I call it the US-Duh.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, USDA.  US-Duh.  Yeah, that’s a good one.

Joel Salatin:  Their first food pyramid, remember the food pyramid?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  And they put Cheerios and Twinkies on the bottom as you know, the most important stuff.  You know, the grains and we can track our diabetes, our, you know, our obesity.  We can track all these things directly to the consumption of the way the USDA had told u to eat.  The fact is, the sobering fact is, if the government had never told Americans how to eat, including hydrogenated vegetable oil and demonizing butter and lard back in—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  You know, if the government had never told Americans how to eat, we would actually be healthier today.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  100% and because special interest lobby and they get their piece out of that food pyramid or that my food plate—

Joel Salatin:  Exactly.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  The recommendations are based off on financial interest, not about what makes us healthy.

Joel Salatin:  Absolutely.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah, and it kinda goes back.  I think people need to look at it from this perspective—old foods don’t cause new disease.

Joel Salatin:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And if you kinda go into that kinda model, that gives you the foundation to move forward for sure.

Joel Salatin:  Right and a kind of a corollary to that is that we didn’t get this pandemic because there was a lack of a vaccine.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Joel Salatin:  It’s not like a sickness fairy floated over the planet and said, “Let’s see what are they lacking down there? Oh, they’re lacking a vaccine to COVID-19.  So we’re gonna sprinkle some of that down there.”  You know, we didn’t get this because we lacked the vaccine or lacked something.  It’s always a result of some sort of mismanagement or you know, misapplication of things and nature doesn’t like vacuum.  You know?  If you’re not getting enough good bugs, they’re gonna put in some bad bugs.  Nature doesn’t like a vacuum.  So nature’s gonna fill the void with something.  So if you’re eating junk food and if you’re, you know, if you’re drinking Coca-Cola instead of, you know, good water for that matter, nature’s gonna fill that deficiency in your cell structure.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  100% and also, I saw a study recently, because how vaccines work is, they’re stimulating the TH2 branch of the immune system that makes antibiotics.  I saw a study talking about the TH1 branch of the immune system and how other coronaviruses that we’ve been exposed in the past, our TH1 immune system has kinda been primed so a lot of the high amount of asymptomatic cases, these are people that get the infection, show no symptoms, are infectious maybe for a week but then develop antibodies long term.  A lot of the reason why they were asymptomatic is because they have a TH1 immune response to the virus and the TH1 is like our natural killer cells, right?  This is like in the army, there should be like the Navy Seals or the Delta Team.  These are the first responders to go in first.  Think of the antibodies as the infantry that comes behind alter, so you take a vaccine to increase the infantry but the TH1 immune system which is typically ignored—part of good health, good nutrition is gonna help increase that TH1 immune response and that’s part of the immune system we totally forget about.

Joel Salatin:  Well, absolutely.  You know, that’s so fascinating they way to hear you describe that which is really cool because I was just on a podcast not long ago in person and they tested every guest for coronavirus antibodies.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  And with a blood test and so you know, the doctor came and he pricked my finger and took my, you know, took my blood and it was like a 15-minute test and he said, “Well, you know, you haven’t had it.”  I said, “Well, have I been exposed to it?”  He said, “Well, the antibody test only tests your secondary immune system because if your first—like if your first, like if your skin, if your exterior immune system was good enough, it will never even get into your antibodies.”

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s the thing.

Joel Salatin:  So he said, “I can’t tell you if you’ve been exposed.  All I can tell you is did it get through your first immune system, not your second immune system.”  He said, “That’s all I can tell you.”  And I thought, my goodness, as much as we can’t even tell that, that’s incredible what we don’t know.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  100%!  We forget about that TH1 immune responses.  There have been studies with people that if they have gammaglobulinemia, meaning they don’t have the ability to make antibodies and if these people have gotten exposed to infections and have been able to fight it off because of the TH1 immune system, which we don’t really have a great way to measure because it’s not like you make a natural killer cell specific for the COVID-19 where you can go test it.  Where antibodies, they’re a specific locking key that you can test for herpes or for chlamydia or for COVID, right?  You can test it.

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Because there’s a specific shape of it.  You don’t quite have that same, you know, I’m not an immunologist but you don’t quite have that shape recognition on the TH1 immune system where you can go look for it specifically.  So it’s a little bit tough—

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  To measure.

Joel Salatin:  Right, yeah.  And you know, and that just shows how trying to reduce everything in life—to reduce everything in life to some sort of empirical hard, whatever, formula, ratio—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  Material is just—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  I mean, this was the problem with the Human Genome Project.  You know, remember when the Human Genome Project launched?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.

Joel Salatin:  And they said, “This will take, you know, this many years and we know based on mathematical statistics that based on genetic variability, we know there will be a 100,000.”  I remember it like yesterday, “There will be a 100,000 pairs on the DNA strand.”  Well, goodness.  This has to be the only Federal Government-funded project that ever finished at half the budget in half the time.  The reason isn’t because they only found like what 24,000 pairs.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yeah.

Joel Salatin:  I said, “That’s mathematically impossible.”  And that launched the entire new, new sphere of study called Epigenetics, which is how—which is the hanky-panky, the hanky-panky going on up and down the DNA strand.  Nobody knew that before and so it’s amazing how we—as we western empirical, you know, Greco-Roman Western reductionist linear compartmentalized thinkers try to break apart these pieces, life becomes more magnificent, more mysterious, more awesome, more complex, more beautiful than anything we can imagine.  And so why don’t we just—why don’t we just back up and enjoy the beauty?  And let’s drink water instead of Coke and let’s eat, you know, real carrots instead of make-believe carrots and real cows instead of make-believe cows, and let’s just back up and enjoy that nature is way more beautiful and complex than we can ever try to break apart anyway.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Totally.  I think that really just summarizes everything.  Just to kinda piggyback on the whole DNA project.  I remember this.  I was in college at the time and I remember what, 98% to 99% of all DNA they labeled as junk DNA because they didn’t understand it, right?  Junk DNA are these DNAs that are non-encoding, right?  They’re not essentially encoding proteins.  Turning off right? And turning on.  And that’s where I think a lot of the Epigenetics plays into.  They just labeled 98% to 99%–

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Of all DNA they didn’t understand that wasn’t encoding things as junk, which is unbelievable.  The hubris in science to just label—

Joel Salatin:  Yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  99% of something junk but I think that’s where a lot of the Epigenetics play in and we know nutrition and sleep and hydration and managing stress—

Joel Salatin:  yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Really control a lot of that DNA that we don’t understand and we just label junk.

Joel Salatin:  Yeah, that’s right.  I mean, it’s similar to black hole in the cosmo—in the cosmic, you know, physics to labeling black hole because somehow when you don’t appreciate the electrical components to the universe that you can’t mathematically justify all this just with gravity and mass and so well, we gotta have a placeholder to make the math work so we’ll call them black holes.  We have never seen one.  We don’t know if they exist but the math doesn’t work and so we humans in our finiteness, you know, we’re always coming to this big thing trying—we try to make the complex too simple and we try to make the too simple to complex.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yep, I 100% agree, Joel.  I think you did a wonderful job summarizing that.  How can listeners support you?  I mean, can they buy your food online?  Do you ship it?  How can they support you?  How can they support other people like you?  What’s that next step?

Joel Salatin:  Okay, so yeah, there’s an entire, you know, network of people like us and yes, and we do ship.  We do ship now.  We started it last year.  We ship nationwide.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Excellent.

Joel Salatin:  So yes, you can call us up and now, I’ll tell you right now we’re struggling to keep up, okay?  But we’re, you know, we’re growing more.  We’re doing some things so we can try to meet the demand because we’re very cognizant that this whole coronavirus thing has stimulated for the first time large-scale cultural discussions around immune function.  And that’s an exciting—that’s the exciting silver lining to this whole cloud is that people for the first time on the street talking about building immune systems.  That’s an exciting thing.  So yes, our website is PolyfaceFarms.com and you can, you know, you can order food there and you can get information, books, you can see where I’m speaking, of course, most have been canceled but now they’re coming back.  I’m actually gonna be—July 9th I’m gonna be doing 5 presentations.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Wow.

Joel Salatin:  For, it’s called A Day Up The Creek With A Lunatic Farmer in Orlando, FL at the national—Libertarian Party National Convention in Orlando.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Cool.

Joel Salatin:  How about that?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  That’s awesome.  Very cool.

Joel Salatin:  Yeah, yeah, so anyway, yeah.  PolyfaceFarms.com is our website and I’ll be glad for anybody to visit that be glad to help anybody that’s trying to get some help.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  And also, you’re an author, you have many books.  You have many books as well so I imagine getting some of the books—

Joel Salatin:  Yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Would be very helpful.  I think you had a book you should recommend that kinda dovetail with this topic?

Joel Salatin:  Well, certainly the book by Dr. David Montgomery on—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Yup.

Joel Salatin:  On soil, that’s, yeah, that’s a powerful, powerful book.  I mean, there are, there’s a new one just coming out.  It’s just been literally just been released by Diana Rogers called Sacred Cow.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Uh-hmm.,

Joel Salatin:  In fact, I—it’s so new, I just—she just sent me it.  Yeah, here it is.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Love it.

Joel Salatin:  Here it is.  Sacred Cow and of course, our new book, Beyond Labels is just out and it’s too far away to reach.  It’s over on the other counter, but yeah, these are all books that really speak to this—you know, the whole message that we just talked about today and will help, you know, dig in a little deeper.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Is there any other ways people can donate or help besides that?  I know there’s like farm to legal defense funds for some of these—

Joel Salatin:  Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Farmers that are really getting hit hard with some of these lawsuits.  Is that a good method?  Is there a site you recommend for that?  Are there any other ways people can help?

Joel Salatin:  Oh yes, Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund is my number one recommended, you know, kind of charity in this.  What people don’t realize is that as soon as you stepped out of the orthodox seat today, you step into a hearsay and hearsay is not liked by many of the government regulators and I mean, for example, they don’t even like that we love customers to come to our farm.  You know, they think that they’re gonna bring disease.  And so that’s why, you know, all your industrial farms, they have big, you know no trespassing signs and you know, they don’t want people—and so what has happened is we’ve disconnected so much from our food that in the industrial food, when you invest in that meal, it’s like prostitution food.  It’s a one-night stand.  There’s no romance or no—

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Joel Salatin:  There’s no understanding of that food and so we want people to come and visit the farm.  See the cows, touch the chickens, you know, pick a cherry off a tree, okay?  And actually have a memory.  There’s actually information that indicates if you sit down for a meal and what you’re eating, if you have a memory—if you have a memory that goes beyond that meal, then it actually helps your digestive enzymes to digest it better if there’s a memory that goes with that food.  And so, you know, we’re all into building those connections of wanting people to do, but Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund is a wonderful organization that’s providing legal help for those of us who dare to question the orthodoxy to hold us by the hand and work us through to either fight in court or to create workarounds so we that don’t have to get a license or comply.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  You know, I’m a huge fan.  I donate money to that every single year.  I think it’s great and I just urge people to shift the values of food and don’t look at just price.  Look at the nutrient density when you go to purchase and remember that study that Joel did there, 10x, 10 to 20x on the folate and the pasture-fed organic high-quality eggs versus the conventional.  So you really get a bargain even if you’re spending you know, twice the amount of 10x more.  I’ll take that deal any day.

Joel Salatin:  Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Awesome, Joel.  Thank you so much.  Is there anything else you wanna leave the listeners with?

Joel Salatin:  No, you’ve been a delight.  We’re, I think we’re two peas in a pod here and I can’t thank you enough for taking this issue and for giving me an additional platform here and just bless you, bless you for what you do.  We need a thousand like you.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Thanks so much, Joel.  Really appreciate it.  Love to have you back anytime you have anything else important you wanna share.  Thanks again.

---

References:

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:

https://justinhealth.libsyn.com/holistic-farming-improving-the-food-chain-your-immune-system-starts-with-good-food-joel-salatin-podcast-290

Natural Solutions for Diarrhea | Podcast #239

Diarrhea is a common sickness that deals with disruptions in your gastrointestinal system. Diarrhea is characterized by frequent, watery stools, abdominal cramping, and bloating. In most cases, diarrhea can be treated at home and it will resolve itself in a few days. You might experience Diarrhea as a result of a viral or bacterial infection, sometimes, it’s because of food poisoning. If left untreated, it can cause pain and dehydration to a patient. 

Learn more about the natural solutions for diarrhea, what to do when you have diarrhea, and look through what natural medicine can do with curing diarrhea. More info with Dr. Justin himself and Evan Brand.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

00:20 Everything about Diarrhea

05:01 Common medications

09:29 Chronic Infections

20:25 Food and natural solutions

26:36 Essential Oils

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Hey guys it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani here. Welcome back to the podcast. Evan, how are we doing today my man?

Evan Brand:
I am doing great. We’re here to talk about a glorious topic that somebody has to cover because if we don’t cover it, well then who the heck is going to get to the bottom of their gut issues.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
I know everything about diarrhea it’s there all the key things about diarrhea. What you can do? Why is it happening. Natural solutions. You really want to focus on getting to the root cause.

Evan Brand:
I had IBS for a long time, probably a decade.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Oh by the way just to kind of chime in before we dive in on the diarrhea aspect is we’re really working on upgrading the audio quality today everyone. So you’re listening on YouTube. We’ll put a little podcast link as well so you can listen to the higher grade audio give us some feedback on it, let us know what you think and if you really enjoy it, please give us some extra shares.

Evan Brand:
This should be like the ultimate studio quality based on how we’re recording it now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yeah. So we’ve changed kind of how our recording methods. If you guys like it, let us know. We appreciate it.

Evan Brand:
So I had IBS for prolly like a decade. IBS is really a terrible stupid term because it really just means that you don’t have a clue why you’re suffering from gut issues. So, we will mention constipation just because it’s often for people to alternate where one week or one day, they may have diarrhea, and then the next day, or the next week, they may have constipation. So a lot of people do alternate like that and there’s many different causes. So our goal today is to try to break down some of these big triggers, and then talk about some of the testing options to investigate this problem, and then talk about some of the solutions, like what are the palliative things, what are the little low hanging fruits that you can do, but then what are the root cause strategies you have to implement as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Exactly. So one of the first things that’s happening with diarrhea is obviously motility is fast. Now the problem with that is, you’re going to you’re going to have malabsorption. It’s gonna be harder to break down protein absorb fat ionized minerals and absorb a lot of these key minerals for healthy metabolic function, thyroid function, mitochondrial function. So it’s really easy to have brain fog, fatigue, and to not feel like yourself. And especially to this inflammation of your body sucking out a lot of these minerals, pulling water into your small intestine and colon to kind of get whatever irritant is out. So then if these minerals are low, that can lead to more [inaudible] issues as well and minerals are important for healthy blood pressure. So if you’re getting dizzy, or standing up fast or having heart palpitations, or feeling anxious. These are all common side effects with diarrhea. Now we look at the long term effects of diarrhea or long term solutions or I should say solution slash causes, because they’re connected, are going to be chronic infections; parasites bacterial overgrowth H Pylori. We’re going to see a combination of low enzymes, low hydrochloric acid, levels and obviously inflammation in the gut. And the more inflamed the gut is the more things will be shuffled through the intestinal tract at a faster rate making it harder to absorb a lot of these nutrients. And when these nutrients aren’t absorbed, it creates this downward spiral because we need these nutrients for healthy metabolism, healthy adrenal, healthy thyroid right, selenium, magnesium zinc for healthy thyroid, magnesium for healthy mitochondria.  Well now we start to have more and more nutrient deficiencies which continue to make these problems worse and worse and worse every single week. So it’s really this downward spiral and we have our chronic issues like I mentioned. And then we have acute issues, food issues, could be like food poisoning, like an E.Coli or salmonella, or [inaudible] chemical Baxter type of infection that causes an acute diarrhea, could be a gluten sensitivity issue as well. We’re gonna expose to a food allergen like dairy or gluten casein etc. and that’s creating inflammation that’s causing your intestinal tract to not be happy and to move things out faster. Also bacterial overgrowth typically with hydrogen gas, dominance regarding SIBO, the hydrogen gas can really affect motility and typically cause things to move along faster.

Evan Brand:
Yep. All great points. In my case I had H Pylori. So we know that was messing up all my acid production which is why I wasn’t digesting my food very well, once I got rid of the H pylori, then I retested the stool and that’s where I showed up with those parasites like crypto and giardia. And then once I got rid of those, finally I was able to get the diarrhea under control, and so I told the story to you many times on different podcasts we’ve done together where when I was in college I would have to figure out where the bathroom was, and that was just part of my lifestyle. I just thought OK, just find the bathroom and you’ll be fine. And many people they take the Pepto-Bismol or the Ammonium AD or whatever other type of prescription or over-the-counter anti diarrheal medication, and they just live with it. They keep it in their purse, they keep it in their backpack, and they just assume I just need this medication. And we always want to point out diarrhea is not a deficiency of anti diarrheal medication. There is something going on. So don’t just keep putting duct tape over the check engine light. You have to address why your check engine light is on in the first place.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
What are the most common antiviral medications. We have things like Pepto-Bismol, all right. These are gonna be anti diarrhea, Maalox would be another big one, those are the big kind of like over-the-counter types. Now one of the things that we’ll use in natural medicine which I think is great, is if we have some kind of toxin or irritant. The easiest way to help decrease that effect on the motility is bind it up. So we’ll use activated charcoal or bentonite clay taken with that food or questionable food were taken while motility is on the faster side and that can really help slow things up.

Evan Brand:
I’ve got my favorite one right here on my desk. Toxins Bind from Beyond Balance. You can only get it through practitioners but this is a game changer for me, one, the detox mode. Two, it’s very helpful to slow things down just a little bit. It’s not going to get you to a point where you’re constipated. You know some people can’t get constipated on binders if we are doing some type of detox protocol, but it’s very easy to mitigate that. Just throw in some extra magnesium and vitamin C and usually it’s no problem at all. It’s kind of like a gas pedal. You know some people they’re so into diarrhea territory they need full those binders multiple times a day to slow them down enough to have normal stools. But if you’re on the other side where you may tend towards one loose stool here or there, and then you get slowed down too much, then just throw in the extra vitamin C magnesium and you’ll be in the sweet spot.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Exactly so the big thing is we’ll throw in the binders like we talked about. Also dehydration is big. So we may add an extra minerals whether it’s Redmon’s Real Salt you know a full teaspoon with water shoot it down, a lot of conventional people are gonna go in the direction of PD light, which is going to have a lot of junky dyes and high fructose corn syrup and not the highest quality minerals so we want more natural minerals support. So Redmond’s real salt is a great way of doing that. You can also sip apple cider vinegar is excellent. Get some really good mineral support you can sip sauerkraut juice is excellent. There’s also some really good electrolyte formulas that are kind of blended together don’t have all the extra dyes and flavors and sugar in there. So those are good options as well. And if we need some extra glucose or extra carbohydrate we’ll just throw in some coconut water. Coconut water is your natural electrolyte formula with glucose or with sugar in there because it got a little bit of coconut sugar, but it’s not going to be on the natural side and it won’t have all fructose corn syrup in there that’s kind of going to be extracted from corn, right. So you’ll get some extra potassium from the coconut water and then we can always throw in some extra Redman’s real salt or even some new salt which is potassium chloride based salt so we can get our potassium and we can up our magnesium, and our sodium, and our chloride, and our magnesium ,and our sulfates. These are great ways we can get our minerals up. Also extra Pellegrino or Topo Chico good quality mineral water. On top of that will be really helpful for rehydration and getting your electrolytes.

Evan Brand:
When my tummy is upset. I’ll go for ginger tea. I’ll do a double bag a ginger tea, or even mix one bag of chamomile with one bag of ginger and then just throw in like a half or a quarter teaspoon of raw honey. And that’s pretty good too. You know some argue there’s a lot of different minerals and trace nutrients and stuff in honey. I don’t really use honey as a source of nutrition though, I just use it to taste good.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yes I think that’s great. Now ginger is excellent as well. Typically ginger has some natural prokinetic effects to it. So it really helps with slow motility, but let’s not forget diarrhea tends to have an inflammatory component to it. So a lot of these natural prokinetics that help with slower motility. Well they also have anti inflammatory qualities to them. So if we can decrease inflammation in the intestinal tract, that can really help modulate motility. It’s too fast and kind of bring it back down.

Evan Brand:
Yeah. Now, speaking of inflammation, it is possible that your diarrhea situation is more than just an irritable bowel situation that could be triggered by parasites H Pylori, bacterial overgrowth Candida. It could be an inflammatory bowel disease or some type of autoimmune disease like Crohn’s or also Diff Colitis. So we don’t want to discount the fact that your situation could be more serious. So, we don’t want you to listen to this podcast and just go drink ginger tea and think everything’s gonna be OK. You really need to work with a practitioner who can help you get the proper testing done to make sure it’s not something more serious, especially if you’ve been suffering with chronic diarrhea.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
One hundred percent. So we have these chronic infections that need to be looked at. So you really want to hook up with a good functional medicine doctor that can help you look at what potential infections or gut stressors could be there. And then let’s not affect this is really important. Let’s not forget the emotional stress. So we know emotional stress is going to interplay with the adrenals, and the adrenals is are part of that stress handling sympathetic nervous system. So we have the bridge to the parasympathetic which is the relaxation. Calm down, that’s the break. That’s the brake on the car to kind of slow things down, and then we have the gas pedal which is go go go go go, and the bridge from the parasympathetic, the brake, to the gas pedal, go go go. The sympathetic are the adrenal. And so when we’re activating those adrenals and we’re heading that fight or flight response, one of the big things that’s going to happen is motility tends to go faster or it can go faster because digestion disrupted. So when we have poor digestion because the sympathetic nervous system’s up, we have less enzymes, we have less acid. We’re going to have less breakdown of these food. So I said that things can go faster. They can also go slower too. When we have poor digestion, things can go fast or they can go slow. So the same root cause may be in effect though. That’s the kind of hard thing is, you could have someone can have diarrhea. The other person could have constipation and it could be similar root causes regarding adrenal and stress and in digestive aspects. You really have to look at everything from a root cause lens, and we connect the hormone component to it as well. And then let’s not forget, thyroid, one of the main symptoms of low thyroid can be low motility. Because thyroid hormone has a natural migrating motor complex stimulating effect, meaning it helps stimulate those wave like contractions. That’s the migrating motor complex which helps move food through. Now, with diarrhea, thyroid typically may not be as much of an issue but definitely with constipation, it could be. So slow motility low thyroid increase adrenal stress, increased cortisol, increased sympathetic nervous system. We could very well have diarrhea partly because of that and who knows what kind of stressors in the gut are affecting it. Food could stress it out. Infections could stress it out. It’s a two lane highway of communication going from, you know, the adrenal to the gut. It’s not just a one way, it’s two way; stress in the gut can cause adrenal stress, stress in the adrenal it can cause gut stress and vice versa.

Evan Brand:
Yeah. Think about a time. Yeah it totally does. Think about a time where you’re really scared. You know you had to slam on your brakes in the car, or you had a big business meeting, and you’re worried, you’ve got to sit down with the boss, man. You get scared and people get that nervous tummy, makes perfect sense. I think people forget about how much stress could play a role in their gut symptoms.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
If you look at kiddos, right kiddos, they don’t even have the ability to manage their urine or bowels, it’s because at their age they don’t have the parasympathetic nervous system kind of built in yet, so they’re more sympathetic dominant. Cause sympathetic stress causes bowel or urinary release. And think about it, right, we all have had that story of someone who literally whether they wet their pants because they were so scared. Right. Why is that. Because the sympathetic nervous system can cause a release of the bladder or even the intestines. We see it more with the bladder because it’s more readily available. It’s easier to do. So we’ll see a lot with that level of stress can affect the bowels and affect the urinary tract.

Evan Brand:
Well I’ve read stories of different people in the military where they are in an active shooter situation or they’re in a hostage situation that people poop their pants. You know it happens. It’s not fun but it happens. So that just goes to show what the adrenal stress and the hormone peace can do to your gut. Now you mentioned medications, so we didn’t talk about drugs that people are taking that could be messing them up though. So what about like acid blocking medications? I would suspect that acid blockers are going to make the situation worse. And if you’re trying to control your reflux situation, but now you’re lowering your stomach acid, now you’ve got all this undigested food, you’re going to be much more likely to have diarrhea type issues if you’re on acid blockers.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
100 percent so acid blockers make everything worse. Let’s say it was an acid issue, and you’re coming down the acid levels in your intestines, well a lot of times that’s not an excess acid issue. Usually it’s the guts lining is worn down so thin it just can’t handle much acid at all. It’s kind of like you want a great massage because you’re back some pain but that back when you have a sunburn at the same time so that back massage causes pain even though it’s really not, it’s just you’re in hypersensitive mode, right. The same thing with your gut when you when that gut lining, when that gastric ecosystem that you just can’t handle much, so you may actually need more, but your tolerance is too low, and the number two, if you don’t have enough acid or esophageal sphincter which is basically the connection between the stomach and the esophagus can stay open and we don’t have enough acidity. So then the food sits it rots acid after the fact forms from the rotting of that food, then it can raise up through that open esophagus sphincter, and start burning that lower part of the esophagus.

Evan Brand:
Let’s talk about kids for a minute. We do see quite a lot of kids, you know infants, toddlers, you know, five six seven eight nine teenagers, that are dealing with gut issues of different types. So if we start at really really young kids, you know, like breastfeeding age and those kids have diarrhea, most of the time we’re going to blame that on mom, probably having gluten or dairy or some other food allergy. And the diet now, so my daughter Summer, and when she was about maybe one and a half, we got her first stool tests done and that’s where she actually showed up with H Pylori plus a virulence factor. And she had either one or two parasites. I want to say she had a blast though and inaudible] amoeba but I can’t remember without looking at her labs. And so she had multiple factors. You know mom’s diet was clean, so we knew it wasn’t that, but you know she had just act like her stomach hurt, you could just tell she was in pain. And so, we gave her some liquid antimicrobials and we got rid of it. We retested the stool the H Pylori was successfully gone, and then she had some bacterial overgrowth and Candida. So we did another round of antimicrobials and then finally her guts and in a good place now. So it’s hard with kids because sometimes if they’re too young, they can’t express to you what’s going on, but you know by the time they’re age three four or five, hopefully they can tell you, Hey, my tummy hurts and if the kids [inaudible] then you know, hopefully paleo template and they’re still having issues, then you can get testing done on kids. It’s easy, stool and urine can provide a lot of information.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
One hundred percent. My son Aiden had significant diarrhea a few weeks back, significant, I think it was a food issue. So one of the first things we did is we kind of gave them some extra anti inflammatory support, we have some ginger in a liquid form to kind of calm his tummy. We added some extra binders and activated charcoal to bind things up, and then I just kind of looking at him I could tell, though based on how everything came about. There was definitely a food poisoning episode to it. So I got him on some specific liquid anti-microbial herbs and within twenty four hours his bowels were solid.

Evan Brand:
That’s great.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Two days of like pure liquid. And anyone that has infants that we’re diapers, is not fun to clean up. So I was able to get that stabilized within 24 hours, made a huge difference and he’s on a regimen right now, more than likely he got some kind of infection. So we have him on an antimicrobial regimen, that’s liquid, because it’s easier for kiddos to get the liquid down, and then we have months and probiotics as well. Now that’s one other thing, probiotics can have some really good anti inflammatory benefit. So with diarrhea, we may even add in probiotics while we’re doing the herbs, just because they can really help kind of calm the gut down which may provide some relief with the diarrhea. And that’s important because I need to make sure we’re absorbing those nutrients, so we can get diarrhea. Like you know, compressed or dialed in. Then that’s going to help nutrition absorb a lot better. And then we used all the antimicrobials as well, that made a huge huge difference. But one other thing I want to highlight, because you were talking about acid blockers in the spiral of negative consequences that can happen with that, well same with antibiotics, because antibiotics are commonly prescribed for diarrhea as well. What if it’s not a bacterial issue? What if it’s a parasite? What if it’s a yeast overgrowth? What if it’s a gluten sensitivity reaction? Well guess what? Now you just knocked out a whole bunch of beneficial bacteria, maybe you create more inflammation. We know antibiotics can create mitochondrial stress. So it’s not good taking unless you know it’s an a help. Right? So then you could create a whole bunch more issues with the guts. Now we have this rebound overgrowth occurring and now we may have more issues that intensify over time because of that antibiotic. So we really got to be careful if we’re going to just throw medications at things kind of willy nilly.

Evan Brand:
Well said. Well, take someone who has chronic fatigue. You mentioned the mitochondrial damage. We know that’s associated with antibiotic use. So you’ve got someone that’s tired maybe because they’ve just been pooping so much, they’re exhausted from all the mineral depletion, we talked about the adrenal stress. You take that chronically fatigued person, you throw antibiotics in the system, they’re going to become more tired. So now they’re not even motivated enough to get up and cook the healthy nutritious foods they need to heal their gut. So I love that you brought that up because my next thing I was going to say was, well let’s go down the rabbit hole and change that. Let’s turn the tables a little bit. Let’s take my daughter. Let’s take your son and let’s put him through the conventional medical rabbit hole. What would have happened. We would have taken your son to the pediatrician or my daughter to the pediatrician and they would have said, Oh they’ve got diarrhea. Well, probably a bacterial issue. Let’s give them a round of antibiotics. There’s going to be a huge rebounding of Candida possibly skin issues that would happen.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
What if there was a parasite?

Evan Brand:
Exactly. It wouldn’t it worked.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yeah. What if my son got exposed to some gluten. No. Well no. It’s not going to fix that.

Evan Brand:
And most of the time when people come to us they’ve already been through that route. You know I’ve had many people that have been to their pediatricians with their children’s health issues and they’ve been disappointed at the level of care they’ve received. So they come to somebody like you or I. And we say look we really don’t want to use antibiotics in this case, number one because we have the clinical data. We’ve run the genetics full testing, we’ve run the urinary organic acids, we can tell you with confidence on the piece of paper, look, we’ve got this parasite, this bacteria, and we’ve got Candida overgrowth. So, yes you could use antibiotics for those bacteria but our success rate is so high using herbs. Why throw in the big guns if we can use things like olive leaf and Berberine and clove and other herbs that will still do the same antimicrobial benefit without killing mitochondria without killing good guys. There’s just a better way to do it and that is the way to do it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Exactly. We also may make changes with foods, we may cut out from fermentable carbohydrates, if there’s bacterial stop being fed by it. We may lean more on a gaps or a kind of a soup or stew or kind of bone broth type of template where foods are more in a liquid form to make everything easier to digest. And also we’re going to add an extra anti inflammatory [inaudible], aloe, slippery elm of course, Evan mentioned ginger already. These are excellent things to help kind of reduce inflammation maybe even turmeric or curcumin. Conventional medicine typically won’t touch that because, what are their anti inflammatory medications? Well they’re Prednisone, maybe [inaudible] right. These non-state real anti inflammatory is which actually can rip up the gut lining more and create more problems. So a lot of times these medications won’t be recommended because they may create more issues on the intestinal side. You know the major side effect of [inaudible] is alterations that kill 20000 thousand people a year, according to a New England Journal of Medicine. So they tend to not to to reach for many of these anti inflammatory is because they tend to cause more problems than not. But in natural medicine world, we have a lot more anti inflammatory that are natural and they aren’t going to have those side effects and can be added into your diet and really have beneficial effects.

Evan Brand:
Yeah. It’s crazy how quickly you could get down the rabbit hole and not end up any healthier than when you went into a hospital or immediate care center. You know, when we talk about antibiotics, we’re assuming that if you did have a bacterial infection, we’re assuming that that is a non antibiotic resistant strain. But what if you’ve got C. Difficile for example, which kills so many people you know diarrhea could be C. Diff.  C. Diff is something that we see as an infection. Yep. And C. Diff has become very very resistant to antibiotics to where these gastroenterologists are recommending stronger and stronger drugs sometimes, even resorting to I.V. antibiotics to kill the Clostridium. I’ve never had an issue getting rid of Clostridium using herbs. I’ve seen it countless times I know you have to. It disappears with the antimicrobials that are natural because see, herbs are not a single mechanism, right, you can’t just say well there’s this one alkaloid or this one polyphenol it doesn’t work like that in nature. There’s so many things that we don’t even fully understand what’s in there. We just know hey Berberine has all this other stuff that comes with it and the package deal gets rid of C. Diff where antibiotics just may not.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Exactly. That’s why we’ll add in specific Sacramice  or bifida or lactobacillus species to really calm things down. My big kind of warning for everyone listening is if you have an excess of blood in the stool, it’s not stabilized or the electrolytes in the minerals dropped so low lower, so fast that we’re dizzy, light headed we may need to go to an E.R. to get an I.V. and they kind of get things stabilized while you get things on track. Same with the blood and the stool. So just keep an eye. Things are really intense. And symptoms are ratcheting up fast and you can’t get fluid in, you can’t get electrolytes in, you can’t get things stabilized. Conventional medicine may need to be used to at least get things stable, and that’s going to be on the extreme side. We’d like to at least draw a line for people listening so they aren’t incredibly dogmatic and only go the natural route for the majority of people that would probably be fine. But if you’re in that camp where you can’t stabilize, an I.V. with electrolytes will be helpful. If excessive blood in the stool, then we may have to look at getting that at least stabilized in the meantime while we come back to this we should never ignore it. We should always come back. We may need some level of stabilization first.

Evan Brand:
Yeah well said that happened to my grandmother she had started. I think it was privately to a medication she had started, this was a couple of years ago where she ended up vomiting and having diarrhea. So she was losing liquids out of both ends.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yes.

Evan Brand:
She couldn’t keep any water down. Her blood pressure was starting to get messed up. She’s already dealing with atrial fibrillation. So she had some heart issues going on as well. I just told her, look, this is a situation where you just got to go. So she went to the E.R. they gave her fluids. Unfortunately, they put her on antibiotics. So then she ended up having more issues with the antibiotics but as soon as I got her back home I was able to pump her full of 50 to 100 billion couple times a day of probiotics and then within about three days, one overnight, but within about three days, we got her bowels normalized again. So she was in a situation where you know especially at her age, she could have gotten really big trouble if she didn’t go to the hospital.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Same thing happened with my son. We were just able to get enough activated charcoal to slow the motility up and all of his drinks had extra electrolytes, extra minerals, extra nutrients, in the drinks. And then we just kept everything really cooked and really easy and on the lower FOB map side as well, and that kind of helped stabilize things, and then getting some of antimicrobials and really help too.

Evan Brand:
Yeah I mean if you have vomiting going on with diarrhea at the same time, one things that our pediatrician did say that was helpful early on in my daughter’s life was, I think she was around six months old. She got, we think it was like a rotavirus or some other type of virus maybe a no real virus. You know vomiting and diarrhea, so coming out of both ends and in the pediatrician we spoke with she’s supposedly more functional. However she still recommends a lot of antibiotics and things we don’t agree with. But, she said, give it two to four hours after vomiting before you try to throw anything and even breastmilk, even water, just let the gut rest. And I thought you know what. That’s actually a pretty good idea because sometimes, if it’s diarrhea and vomiting you get in a rush to throw stuff back in. But if the gut is so irritated sometimes you may just need to just fast for a couple hours and don’t do anything yet. Obviously, there’s a podcast, we’re not consulting with you also you see how there’s so many huge variations of this, and there’s such a spectrum of what may need to be done.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yeah. How I would handle that is I would just come in there I’d let it rest for a bit. I’d add in some bone broth, some ginger tea, everything very liquid, bone broths, maybe some collagen and amino acids keep it very simple, very gentle, start working in a little bit of probiotics in there as well, start working in a little bit of binders and just kind of get your bowels stabilized, and if we can’t, big deal we just go get an I.V. on board well that buys us a little bit more time. We don’t have to worry about any electrolyte or hyponatremia issues from losing too much fluids.

Evan Brand:
Essential oils or something we should mention, some people get crazy with essential oils, like they’ll say that all essential oils are for everything, or essential oils cure this and cure that. You know I’m not going to go there, all I’m going to say is that essential oils can be helpful. There are some clinical double blind randomized placebo controlled studies of patients with irritable bowel syndrome and by using peppermint oil.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Peppermint’s great.

Evan Brand:
They have significant improvements in quality of life-

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
That’s fine.

Evan Brand:
So coconut oil, avocado oil, put a little bit of carrier oil, just put a couple of drops of peppermint oil, rub it onto your tummy, that can be a game changer. Now I’ve seen people like putting like, lemon essential oil and stuff in their water. I just I don’t personally ingest essential oils, I just use them topically.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yeah. That can be helpful though. The dilimening in those citrus oils or essential oils can definitely help with the diarrhea. So there is the component limiting in the citrus or orange or lime or lemon that does have some natural antiviral qualities, but again, when it’s more subtle that works, some of the herbs that we’re doing, the amount that we’re giving, acutely is so high. And if you were to take that, let’s just say an essential oil liquid form, you’d be shooting down like half the bottle a day and some of these oils can be very abrasive. That’s where it’s nice to have it in a capsule form or a liquid form that’s designed to allow it to get down smoothly without all the taste problems.

Evan Brand:
Yeah that’s where I get concerned. It’s like, OK, grapefruit seed essential oil, maybe that’s a good thing but lowered. I don’t want that going down my esophagus really.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yeah. So it me essential oils can be great when it’s gentle stuff, can be really great for kiddos too, when they can’t swallow just being able to get a couple of drops in them. It can be very soothing on their tummy but when it gets more acute, that’s what we’ve got to pull out the big guns.

Evan Brand:
Yeah. So fever, that was another situation we forgot to mention, and we talked about the bleeding. We talked about the vomiting situation that can make things more tricky complicated. And then also fever but fever may be the body’s natural response too. So like this immediate idea to suppress a fever may not be wise either. I think it’s just a case by case basis. That’s why a conversation like this gets kind of hard.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Yeah in general my perspective on fevers, if it’s below a hundred and five degrees, we don’t worry about it. Fevers for the most part are always going to be fine as long as there’s not head trauma, if there’s head trauma in the hypothalamus maybe has an inability to regulate temperature then we get a little bit concerned. So head trauma from a car accident, or a fall, and then a fever ensuing afterwards may have to be a little more careful of that. But if there’s no head trauma involved, then we have a fever, then we’re just going to work on supporting the immune system because that’s the body raising the temperature to kill off Mesophilic bacteria. Medium temperature bacteria that will die around 100 hundred and one hundred and two. So it may go up a little bit, that’s below 1 0 5 you’re more than likely fine, conventional medicine we’ll typically recommend Tylenol way sooner which in my opinion is going to decrease glutathione. Actually not my opinion. That’s according to research. It will decrease with glutathione levels, and it will decrease your body’s ability to kill that bacteria. So my opinion is hundred and five or below you’re probably fine as long as there’s no head trauma. Either way please see your conventional MD regarding that. Just to be honest.

Evan Brand:
Yeah. Well said CBD oil just give a brief mention to it. You know I think people overstate the benefits of CBD oil just like they do with essential oils, like you can, oh my left pinky hurt, oh! CBD oil. You know so people get a little carried away with it however I used it for my daughter, I use it for myself, CBD oil does have benefits, now is it going to be as helpful as an  aloe extract, the raw ginger extract, or berberines or Pau de Arco or olive. Probably not, really. I mean I think it’s great and it can modify things, but I just don’t think it’s necessarily root cause as much as some of the other things we talked about.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
I a hundred percent. So that was an excellent podcast. He really went in deep on the clinical side. I hope everyone is valuing this information. If you do, give us the thumbs up, give us a share, and let us know your comments below, what you liked about this article, and what future topics you would like us to chat about. And if you want to dive in deeper, if you feel like this article resonates with you or a friend or family member, head over to EvanBrand.com to schedule a consult with Evan, or JustInHealth.com to schedule a consult with myself. We’ll put links down below. We work with patients virtually all over the world and we’d love to help you out if you’re ready for that next up.

Evan Brand:
Sounds good. Well great conversation I hope this helps people and we’ll be back next week.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Excellent. Hey man it was great chatting with you. We’ll talk soon.

Evan Brand:
You too. Take care.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:
Take care. Bye.

Evan Brand:
Bye.

---

References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/

Audio Podcast:  

http://justinhealth.libsyn.com/natural-solutions-for-diarrhea-podcast-239

Herbs to Support Digestion

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

Digestive issues are so common that many people don’t know that the way they are feeling isn’t normal. Time and time again, patients will come back to tell me that they can’t believe they aren’t bloated and gassy every time they eat!

Bloating, gas, abdominal pain, fatigue, diarrhea, and constipation all indicate your digestive system is not working properly. We all would benefit from replacing processed foods, refined sugar, and gluten with organic, whole, fresh meat and vegetables. If you have already been eating a paleo-type of diet and are still having digestive issues, you might consider working with a functional medicine doctor who can help you identify which foods are your specific triggers.

Digestive Health, Herbs and Functional Medicine

There are many beneficial herbs for digestive support. Whether you’re supporting your long-term digestive health, or in need or a quick fix for a tummy ache, there are herbs that can help. Today we’re going to look at some of the best herbs to boost the production of digestive enzymes, and soothe your digestive system.

Dandelion is an all-encompassing medicinal herb. Dandelion is bitter, which catalyzes intestinal enzymes and stimulates the manufacture of bile. This delightful garden plant also supports the liver by filtering waste from the bloodstream.

Dandelion leaves can be cut into pieces and included in salads, or used in juices, to get your digestive juices running smoothly. Dried Dandelion root from trustworthy herbal manufacturers makes for an excellent tea.

Chamomile acts on the gut’s enteric nervous system, which is very sensitive to changes in the environment. Chamomile is soothing to the stomach & intestine and acts as a calming antispasmodic herb. This herb is your go-to for calming a nervous stomach, treating gas, diarrhea, and indigestion.

Chamomile tea is an extremely common (and delicious) way to reap the benefits of this herb. Kids love it too!

Marshmallow, or Althaea, is a great herb for soothing any inflammation along the digestive tract. Marshmallow root is actually sweet- making this a tasty way to calm your tummy! Marshmallow root is perfect for gastritis, ulcers and irritable bowel syndrome.

This herb actually provides the most benefits when you have it cold! Add 1-2 tbsp of Althaea root to 1 cup of cold water and allow it to soak for a couple of hours so that it becomes a thick liquid. You can also use this plant as a powder.  

Licorice This wonderful herb is regarded as a soothing tonic and is used as a calming demulcent to protect and soothe the mucous membranes of the digestive tract. Licorice also protects the gut lining from stomach acid that can cause queasiness and indigestion. The herb has both anti-inflammatories as well as has antispasmodic properties. The active nature of this herb provides a calm laxative effect and also works well against diarrhea.

Licorice is a powerful synergist; when combined with other herbs, the benefits of all herbs are boosted. Try taking licorice with fennel, ginger, or chamomile for a comprehensive digestive tonic!

Angelica is a wonderfully aromatic herb, and conventionally, it is the root that is most preferred. A tea infusion of the roots relieves gas, bloating, flatulence, and aids kidney function. This herb is carminative in nature- meaning it will help prevent gas or help relieve gas if you’re already bloated.

The volatile oils that exist within Angelica have antispasmodic effects, helping to alleviate intestinal spasms, gastric ulcers, diarrhea, and indigestion. The herb is full of antioxidants that check free radical damage to the tissues and alleviate gut inflammation.  

Calendula This bright flower produces a calming and gentle anti-inflammatory effect along the digestive tract and further protects it from future damage. Calendula helps regulate bacterial growth inside the intestine.

These natural remedies have stood the test of time; herbal tonics have been used all over the world for centuries. So next time you’re feeling bloated, try making yourself a mug of herbal tea and experience the natural relief for yourself!  

 

References:

1. Functional Wellness, Part 3: Digestive Health: https://experiencelife.com/article/functional-wellness-part-3-digestive-health/

2. Dandelion: the key herb for liver health, better digestion and beautiful skin: https://www.naturimedica.com/dandelion-the-key-herb-for-liver-health-better-digestion-and-beautiful-skin/

3. Chamomile: More than calming: https://herbalelement.com/blogs/news/chamomile-more-than-calming

4. Healing the Gut with Marshmallow Root: https://journeyofhealth.org/healing-the-gut-with-marshmallow-root/

5. Licorice Root: A Digestive Friend: http://www.medicinehunter.com/page/licorice-root-digestive-friend

6. ANGELICA ROOT, Angelica archangelica: https://www.gardenoflife.com/content/Herb/angelica-root/

7. Calendula: 30 Amazing Benefits and Uses: https://thefreerangelife.com/30-uses-for-calendula/

8. Herbs to Improve Digestion: http://www.medicinehunter.com/herbs-improve-digestion

The Harmful Effects of H. Pylori

How Functional Medicine and the Paleo Diet Can Address H. Pylori

A majority of world’s population have H. Pylori bacteria living in their stomach. This damaging bacterium has been revealed to be the main source of fatigue and other common health complaints. H. Pylori invades and damages the stomach’s protective mucus layer, thereby leaving your stomach susceptible to ulcers.

The Harmful Effects of H. Pylori

H. Pylori is commonly transferred by sharing food and drinks with other people, and multiplies very quickly through the saliva. Those with a weak immune system and other health issues are particularly susceptible to contamination.

H. Pylori is the primary cause of poor digestion and stomach ulcers. This bacterium impedes on the stomach’s capability to manufacture mucus, and irritates the inner lining of the stomach. The irritation turns out to be so severe that it leads to the pathogenesis of stomach ulcers. More than 80% of gastric ulcers are due to H. Pylori. This bacterium, if left untreated, can lead to stomach cancer.

H. Pylori Causes Fatigue

H. Pylori can cause fatigue by blocking your ability to absorb vitamin B12 and iron. As we know, the two common causes of anemia are a vitamin B12 or an iron deficiency. This means that if you’re taking B12 and iron for anemia but still aren’t seeing results, you might have an H. Pylori infection.

Role of Functional Medicine

The gut walls possess more than 70% of the cells that build up your immune system, and a whole host of bacteria. When you think about gut bacteria, you might be thinking of the symptoms that are manifested by gut imbalances. It’s true that a gut imbalance can negatively affect your ability to digest important nutrients. However, by making conscious diet choices, you can help overthrow the bad bacteria and promote the proliferation of the good guys!

Role of Paleo Diet

The Paleo diet focuses on eating natural food that is extensively available. If you’re suffering from H. Pylori infection, here are some great foods to incorporate into your diet:

• Quality meats – Such as grass-fed beef and lamb,  and wild sockeye salmon.
• Eggs – Pastured eggs, the yolks will be a deep, rich yellow-orange color.
• Fresh Organic Vegetables and Berries
• Natural oils –Avocado and Coconut oil are some of the best.

If you’re suffering from any digestive issues or fatigue, addressing the health of your gut with the help of a functional medicine practitioner should be your first course of action.

By treating any gut infections and optimizing your diet, you can reduce your symptoms by addressing the root issues.

Creating a Healthy Home | Podcast #201

We all care so much about the sense of wellness around our home. But sometimes no matter the cleaning that we do, we wonder why we still feel not comfy, and healthy. Chances are, we’re missing out important details – details on molecular levels.

Today’s podcast talks about molds, air filters, the scents that we wear, even the healthiness of waters we drink. Watch this video as Dr. J and Evan Brand give us the geeky advice in creating a healthy home.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani



In this episode, we cover:

01:15    Mold Issues

02:41    Air Filters and Paints

14:30    Bug Sprays

16:49    Chemicals in Water

20:02    Air Filter Systems

27:10    Enhancing Detoxification

32:23    All About Scents

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there! It’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani, Evan how we doing today my friend?

Evan Brand: Life is good! Look, it’s like 88 degrees in October this is unreal in Kentucky everybody is like freekin‘ out, but– I’m loving every second of it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent man! Love to hear it. So, what’s going on? any other updates for me on the health front? Let’s cook ’em.

Evan Brand: Hmm… Not too much is cooking I’m still working on my course as you know our time these days is so valuable and limited that its– I had this idea in my head like I was gonna get this thing done by the fall and then here it’s comin’ out on the fall and I don’t have it done. So, I know we’ve chattered off here about our– our courses that we’re working on and we just have to make time to do it. But that’s my only update and in terms of projects everything else is just– stay busy with the clinic and us keeps spreading the– spreading the good word, I mean, we get so much good feedback that I know we’re on to something great and we need to keep goin’ until– I don’t know when, I– I don’t see an expiration date for– for– for when our hustle stops.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I hundred percent agree with that, that make sense to me. So, we chat about in the pre uh– show here that we wanna chat more about kind of healthy home, creating a healthy environment, air water and such, uh– in that realm so, why we don’t dive in? Go ahead.

Evan Brand: Yeah. So, the reason I– I brought this topic up is because I had a guy who– uh– came to me for his wife’s health issues and what he noticed is that everytime they left the house, her symptoms would get a little bit better. So, even if they went to the grocery store for an hour, if they went to their parent’s house for a night or two, you know his wife’s joint pain, her brain fall, her energy levels her symptoms would all change, it would get significantly better. We’re talkin’ 60-70% better just by leaving her house, okay. So, some would say well maybe that’s EMF, maybe that’s magnetic fields, maybe that’s charged electricity, maybe it’s this or that. And turns out it was a mold issue. And so they had mold in their basement that they weren’t aware of–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh huh…

Evan Brand: –and I guess that mold was circulating throughout the whole HVAC system they got a test on from the E– E as an Evan, M as in Mary, S as in Sam, L as in Larry. em– emsl.com, they’re like the mold scientific laboratory. They got a test kit from them and the mold levels in their house were off the chart. And so they’re moving. Because they already had paid somebody to remediate and it didn’t work. So– they just decided to downsize anyway into a smaller house ’cause their house didn’t need the size than it was but now they’re moving, and so hopefully she gets better but man, this just goes to show you, no matter how perfect your supplement protocol is, if you got an environmental–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh huh…

Evan Brand: –issue, like molded home or other toxins in your home maybe bad paints or lead or whatever else, you can still be sick despite having a good supplement protocol and all the lab testing and all that.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, hundred percent agree. The couple things that I do with my home is I got a couple of different air filters. I have uh– an advance air– air filter I have uhm— an Air Doctor one as well as a Molekule. So, I have three different air filters and they work really well, keeping the environment good, I mean, for a while, I just didn’t need to even have an air filter in my office and I’m like, “Wait a minute, I’m in this– couple hundred square foot room like most of my life, like let’s make sure the air quality is phenomenals“. That’s one thing I’ve done in the last handful of months to upgrade some of the air filters, get more of them and, that’s made a big difference, I mean I definitely feel like uhm— I’m breathing cleaner air, uhm— you know, you’d walk into– your office and you kinda’ feel like “Hah! I just kinda feels a little bit, you know, just not fresh, you know, not super fresh and that’s really improved which I– I do enjoy that. And then of course, uhm— the water filtration aspects’ great, I mean I have a whole house water filtration set up, as well as a, under the counter reverse osmosis set up with a– a post filter that adds minerals back. And those are the two big things, getting the air right, and getting the water filtration right. I like the whole house, ’cause it takes care of everything, and if I’m in like, you know, upstairs, like in– don’t have to buy shower filters for all the showers like and, just drink out of the water in my– in my bedroom at night if I need to. But I typically, you know, ninety percent’s gonna be consumed through my under the counter reverse osmosis, and it’s doubly filtered right through the whole house and then through the countertop.

Evan Brand: Yeah, your hair, your– skin, your nails, I mean you can see a lot of like, physical improvements too. People say, “Well why is it so important to filter the air?”. Well we hit on like the mold piece, VOCs are another thing, the Air Doctor that you and I both use, uh– that does filter out– VOCs which is great so if you did for some reason have like a toxic paint that’s off-gassing, you can’t filter some of that. Now I would say it’s best if you can go in and use like a mineral-based paint. The one I use is called Romabio— R-O-M-A-B-I-O, they’re out of Georgia–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Ain’t that water-based though?

Evan Brand: —oh, it’s potassium. It’s literally like ground-up potassium, and you mix it with water and then you paint it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it’s water-based

Evan Brand: I guess so, yeah ’cause you mix. It’s half and half.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

Evan Brand: You take this bucket they give you, you add water, and then you put it on.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean it’s tough ’cause you go water-based, it definitely doesn’t quite last as long.

Evan Brand: Ahh.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: The oil-based paints, they have a lot more VOCs but they get hard. They get really firm afterwards and it becomes more solid so its– you know, double-edged sword. We’re having some painting on this week so– guess what, we’ll be out of the house for the weekend, just we’re– goin’ on a family trip. So– when I’m gonna have my air filters crankin’ anyway and–

Evan Brand: What are you gonna, are you doing any– are you doin’ any special brand or what are you– what are you looking into for paint?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh I just use the standard Sherwin Williams uhm— because it– it works really well and it last long. Cause for me it’s like, there’s gonna be VOCs, but I’m just gonna run the air filtration and keep the windows open.

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And I’m not gonna be in the house so– that way when I’m back, I’m good to go.

Evan Brand: And I don’t know, it’s like cause that stuff’s gonna off-gas after it’s dry, or do you think that the off-gassing is not as much?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: No, it– it’s after 7 days, it’s– it’s done.

Evan Brand: Really?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But I mean having the air filtrations gonna– you now, mitigate it. Cause that, the air filtration will mitigate all the VOCs.

Evan Brand: True. I just was more paranoid than you so I just got the mineral-based stuff. It’s still on the walls so far but if it– if it fails then I’m– I may switch over to something else.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well it depends like if you’re doing wall stuff, water-based paints’ fine. If you’re doing like cabinets, or things that are opening and closing, and getting wear and tear, that’s where you want like, an oil-based paint.

Evan Brand: Okay, we just did walls.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so for like a harder door that’s being opening and– opening and close or cabinets, uh– for your walls I think water-based is probably fine cause you’re not– you know, there’s not wear and tear on the walls.

Evan Brand: Okay, okay, good point. So– so let’s go back to the water piece, you know, I was mentioning like hair skin, nails, you know, we have a lo– a lot of compliments from people that– that do start to filter their water, they’re like “Man! I didn’t know my– my hair would get better”. So for example my wife and I with her skin. In the winter time, we used to put on lotion all the time. Now, I never have to put on lotion. My skin is so much more– I would say regulated I guess with– with– the– the filtered water that we bathe in so I had to recommend it if you don’t have it already if you don’t want to invest in a whole house filter. They’re really not that expensive, they’re, you know– with plumbing, paying a plumber included, maybe a thousand bucks for your whole house. And the one I have from the Pelican System, it last for 5 years before you have to change it so– that’s pretty awesome. But if you don’t wanna do that, you technically could just get the shower filters. Justin and I have talked about different brands, the Berkey one is what I like, the Berkey shower filter. And it reduces I think like 98% of the chlorine and some of the other chemicals.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Got it, yeah, I mean I thi— I think those are gonna be, you know, very very important kind of things that you can do to help improve health. Now, I mean– with the air you mentioned we have the VOCs that we’re cuttin’ out, we’re also cutting out potential pet danders. Uh– wh– what else are we removing ___[07:20] the air filtration?

Evan Brand: Well, I think the Molekule – correct me if I’m wrong, cause you have one, I do not – is– I believe that thing kills viruses and bacteria too. I do remember reading something on their sales material about killing pathogen so, I mean, not that random people that are sick are coming into your house but if you’re concerned about living in– a place where– you’re– let’s just say you’re having people come in or out, or maybe you’ve got roommates or something, I’d like to have something that kills bacteria and viruses too, and I believe that system does. What about molds? Didn’t they say something about molds’ pores that it can kill too ’cause it’s like a Zepa instead of a Hepa filtration?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah it has this– electrical component to it that– that actually kills a lot of the viruses and a lot of the compounds and it has the– the post-filter afterwards. So it has this component there using light where it kills a lot of these compounds and then it goes to the post-filter. So I mean that’s this interesting new technology so, you know, I have all three of these different kinds of filters. So I’m experimenting and trying them out but, I think it’s something that’s noteworthy; I think a lot of people are using it; also it looks really nice. I like it. It just really– it’s like a nice piece of furniture that sits in the corner and it’s taller and skinnier so– it doesn’t take up a lot of room. A lot of these air filters that look so steril and medical–

Evan Brand: Yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –where it’s like “Oh, man! It’s just appalling seeing it in the corner of your living room”. Uhm–

Evan Brand: [laughs]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: But this new– I like this one. And the other ones, we just hide iin the corners in our bedrooms but this looks really great and it does filter out the viruses. There’s this uhm– this– this– light kind of compound to it that really makes a– a big– a big difference. So I mean–

Evan Brand: [interrupts] Okay. So I– [crosstalk]. I wanna chat about testing a little bit you know, people are like okay, “Is my home toxic?”, “what can I do to test?”. Well the emsl.com – that’s a mold laboratory – I think they also do water testing as well. So just check out emsl.com and you can actually order test kits from there. They have facilities all across the U.S. and maybe internationally, I’m not too sure on that part, but you can do a mold test. I believe what you do is you collect a bunch of dust, like let’s say on your dresser. You just scoop some dust into this, and you send it off, and they’re gonna let you know what the contents of that are. So that’s the first step in terms of testing. The second step is to test your body. Uh– Justin and I use a test from Great Plains, it’s very good called a MycoTox Panel and you can actually test for Ochratoxin and– Stachybotrys and all sorts of other potential pathogens that could have come from food but could also come from environment. And then also, we ran a panel called the GPL-Tox which is a chemical profile test done via urine, and we looked for certain chemicals. One that I look for all the time is Perchlorate. And Perchlorate, is– it’s– crazy how many people in Florida have this chemical off the charts because of rocket fuel. When you use rocket fuel, I guess Perchlorate is an ingredient in rocket fuel. So people that live Cape– where Cape Canaveral is, where they’re lau– launching a– rockets and such, the people that I– I’ve worked with near Cape Canaveral, their Perchlorate levels are off the charts. And on the lab, it says, it disrupts the Thyroid’s ability to produce hormones; and– you and I were looking at some research earlier, the mechanism of this is it’s inhibiting the iodine uptake. So it’s almost acting like fluoride or bromide what it sounds like. Well maybe it’s blocking this receptor and then iodine can’t do its job so– uh– that’s– that’s huge and– and– where this Perchlorate come from, well if it’s not from rockets then it’s from fertilizers, it could be coming from bleach, but then it’s also in your tap water. The good news is, some of the filtrations we talked about can actually filter out Perchlorate. So literally, every single day if you’re drinking your tap water at your house and the fridge filter does not count, because the fridge filter does not filter Perchlorate–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly.

Evan Brand: And you’re cooking, let’s say like you’re doing some steamed broccoli, you put that water in there, that water is now coated all over in your steamed broccoli– that’s Perchlorate, and you could be eating little small bites of Perchlorate every day and you wonder why your thyroid doesn’t get better when you take thyroid supplements. So this is the level of– specificity you have to have in the modern world and I don’t get paralyzed by it, I mean you and I focused so much on action steps that– some people are like, “Oh my God the world’s so scary and dangerous”, but it’s like, there’s an action step associated with this though.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, a hundred percent. So on the water side, you know, we just really wanna make sure at least and under the counter– slash countertop filter that– you know, that has a– a tank that can filter everything out really well. There’s a couple of cheaper options if we need as well. Of course, we can always go to a whole house which makes it even easier because in all rooms, and everywhere, and showers are taken care of as well. Uhm– there’s various air filters like I mentioned, the– the Molekule, they have– the– the Peugeot technology which is interesting. That’s the– the phyto-electrical– uhm— component one. That’s the newer technology that’s just come out in the last couple of years. So, with that, the Peugeot is the photoelectroche— electrical– electrochemical oxidation. And it– basically uses light to break some of these chemicals down. So it uses basically an oxide component and oxygen component. It creates C02 water trace elements as– as it reacts with the various virus or component and actually kills these things. So that’s kinda’ cool. And then we just have our basic Hepa Filter technology that just– is– you know, down to a 3-micron level that filters these components down, so we have that as well. Uhm–

Evan Brand: The reason it’s good that we also have the Air Doctor and we recommend you all get one too is because, that one filters down to .003 microns, so most Hepa systems especially something you wanna get at like Walmart or Target, filters down to 3 microns, but like car exhaust and diesel for example, a lot of these industrial pollutants, those are actually 2.5 microns in size, meaning that a 3 microns’ system won’t work. You’ve gotta go smaller, you’ve gotta get .003. So that’s the– that’s the specificity, you gotta pay attention to, cause if you go to Target and you get a Hepa filter for like a hundred bucks, yes it’s better than nothing but we want you to have no pollution, no car exhaust floating around in your bedroom.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup, 100%. So, I mean, lookin’ at that, is there anything else you wanna talk about in the chemicals like the Perchlorate, I think it’s really powerful because that’s just the component like you mentioned with the rocket fuel that can kind of come in there and bind in and it– it– affect iodine, the uptake into the thyroid gland and iodine’s used to make thyroid hormone. Remember T-4, T stands for thyroxine, the 4 stands for the number of iodine molecules. And then you have this iodination process where all these iodine molecules are bound up. And then you have uhm— the enzymes, the ___ [13:40] uhm— comes in, pulls off an iodine and makes T-4 to T-3 which is your active thyroid hormone. So we need a healthy iodine but, you know, we also make– need to make sure that chemicals aren’t coming in and blocking the uptake. And a lot of uhm— a lot of toxins that are again aquarium based, they put stress on the liver, and when the liver’s stressed, that’s gonna deactivate the amount of these enzymes that are being produced cause these enzymes come from the liver and they help activate, take the T-4 and convert it to T-3. So if we have more liver stress, it’s gonna affect the conversion enzymes. It’s also going to affect the iodine uptake as well, so it’s couple of different mechanisms. We have the iodine uptake, and then we also have the conversion of the thyroid hormone.

Evan Brand: Yeah, the other thing I wanted to mention in terms of like home toxins, are like bug sprays. Lot of people talk about bugs whether it’s like ants, or roaches, or wasps, or bees. And a lot of these insecticides, these also are tested on the GPL-Tox. And I see most people add elevations in these toxic chemicals. So if you’re spraying for bugs, even if you’re not doing it, and you’re hiring a “bug man” to come and spray. I had one client– she was off the chart with the Permethrin category of uh– toxins, and she said, “Yeah, I’m scared of spiders every time I see one I call the ‘bug man’ and have him come just bomb my house.” And I was like, “Oh my Lord…”. So– there is a uh– a company, I th— I don’t know if it’s the brand name or the product name called Orange Guard that we have used with great success, it’s like an orange peel extract and we had a–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yep.

Evan Brand: –we had an ant problem at our old rental house and so I just sprayed the perimeter of the house with an Orange Guard, it smelled delicious like oranges and it got rid of the ants in like two days and there was no toxins in walls.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah in my property here we use the company called “Chem-Free” and they came out and they use some essential oil blends and, a lot of times like for the bees, they would use like a peppermint oil type of blend, and they use that for like the cockroaches as well, and they would spray. That one’s good. I mean, I like it, because a lot of these components, they aren’t super toxic, or they aren’t gonna be as toxic on the essential oil side, and– you can– and they worked. They actually knocked some of these uh– insects and roaches down which is great so you can still have– you can still have y– you know, the effectiveness of knocking some of these animals out but not creating the toxic environment as well.

Evan Brand: There’s another company that you can look up, you can even get them on Amazon. They first were revealed on Shark Tank it looks like, but it’s called the Wondercide. And Wondercide they had like natural pet care products but then they have home pest protection stuff too. So they do have like uh– a p– a peppermint insect repellent. And they have like an indoor pest control, and then they have an outdoor one which is what I use for all the ticks, because the ticks are really bad in Kentucky; and it’s a cedar oil. So you hook it up to your water hose, and you just spray it, and it makes your whole place smell like cedar, which if you like that smell, good. And– we did see reduction in ticks for sure. It didn’t cure it, like it’s not gonna magically eliminate bugs but it sure repelled them.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Totally, yup. I think that’s great. [crosstalk]

Evan Brand: So Wondercide– Wondercide, if people wanna look it up they have like organic soaps and stuff like that too but mainly I’m talking about for their home protection.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. You know, what other compounds are we worried about people getting exposed to that could be an issue. And of course we have the pesticides from our food, uhm— we have ate with the chlorine based water. Not just the chlorine but the chloramines that may form as well. So that’s one of the nice things that filtering out a lot of the chlorine is the chloramine compounds also get reduced. We have the reduction in fluoride. Remember, fluoride can have an effect of blocking out that thyroid receptor side as well because it is a halide. It’s in that 7th row on the periodic table of elements and that could be a problem. And remember, the fluoride in your water isn’t just fluoride, it’s Hydrofluorosilicic Acid so there are other nasty components that are in there. It’s not just like oh– uh– sodium fluoride, it’s other stuff that’s uhm— in there as well. So if you go look at it in your water filtracing— water filtration center, you’ll see it’s got this number, I think number 4 on there which by the CDC it’s– means it’s pretty darn toxic.

Evan Brand: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And again I would say they dilute it down to a certain amount part per million but still uh– not good if you’ll look at the amount of part per million in– two phase, right. You’ll look at the pinky side of it, read the back of it, it says, “do not swallow”. It’s– it’s got a poison control label on the back of it. So I– I’m very careful on fluoride. Just go to PubMed, you’re gonna see a lot of studies on fluoride decreasing IQ poi– I– your IQ by 10 points. Uhm– studies up in Great Britain, study that came out about 2 years ago, looked at fluoridated communities and non-fluoridated communities and drew correlation of more thyroid diagnosis or diseases, diagnoses, in communities that have more fluoride consumption. And we know the mechanism potentially could be that these fluorides, the halides that’s then blocks out the iodine and we need iodine for this iodination process to make thyroid hormone, right?

Evan Brand: Yup. And the– the other chemical I forgot to mention so far, lot of it is being banned and removed but it’s Triclosan or Triclosan, and that comes from a lot of your conventional soap, it’s an antibacterial. There’s studies on that showing that it does reduce your uh– T-4 level. So it does reduce thyroid hormone levels. If you’re washing your hands 5 times a day, let’s say you’re a nurse or something in a hospital setting, you’re using this conventional toxic soap, that’s not good. That means it’s no surprise that a lot of people in the healthcare field themselves have issues, I mean, some of it could be the toxic soap they’re using 20 times a day. And then all the skin care stuff that’s in the– that’s an easy one we test for all those chemicals. Nail polish, on that chemical profile test, they look for nail polish, they look for resins, they look for hair dyes, lot of women dye their hair, and then cosmetics so– gotta make sure all that stuff’s clean. If your shampoo or conditioner has like artificial fragrances in it, we know those fragrances can hide Phthalates and all sorts of other endocrine disrupting hormones.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%, absolutely. So the air stuff we talked about, the VOCs, right, the vo– volatile organic co– compounds, right. Uh– we just talked about, you know, a lot of the pet stuff, the allergenic stuff, the mold stuff a lot of these good– the better filter can filter out some of the mold, of course we have to figure out where that molds coming from, so you may wanna do an ERMI Test, to see if there’s any mold in the house, or if you can visualize or see it, it’d be good to have that remediated by an expert– typically use some concrobium on it afterwards to help, but you really wanna get someone that can remediate it, it–  if it’s an issue. Uhm– so that’s on– another component there. Anything else on the air side, the air allergen side Evan?

Evan Brand: Well I was just gonna– I was telling you before we got on air here. I brought– maybe you should look into this. It’s really this fun, you don’t need it but it’s fun. The uh– IQAir system, they have a portable air quality monitor system and I can test the levels instantly of the CO2 level in the house as well as the pollution level. It’s looking for the 2.5 micron molecules so I guess in the city or to be– pretty helpful but where I live, you know, there’s not much around to– to pollute the air. But what I’ve noticed is, in the morning, you know, you’re breathing all night, so you’re exhaling a lot of CO2, and we know that CO2, once you hit like a thousand parts per million I believe, the– headaches, fatigue, can start to happen, and my C02 levels in the home typically in the morning are about 1500. And if we just open the windows up, for 10, 15 minutes, we can get the CO2 levels down by like a thousand points. So we go for like the red category to the green category in this meter. So I mean, that’s free, first of all to open your window. Now if you live like in India, and your air is so toxic, you probably don’t wanna open the windows. But if it’s a decent air outside, and– you could open the windows, that alone, is something that could significantly change how you’re feeling.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Yeah I– hundred percent agree. Uhm– anything else with the water component. Of course, we talked about all the different compounds in there, now the big things that I use, one of the good ones that I like is the Air Doctor, that’s a good one. If you go to my site, I have the Air Doctor as well as the advance air setup those are both good units. If you go to justinhealth.com/shops and click on Justin Health approved products, I have some links to those, and again, Evan and I only gonna recommend products that we actually use. I think it’s important that you actually use the product and you believed in it, I think it’s great. Uhm– it’s nice to have people that are guinea pigs that can kind of sign off on it as being a good product which is great, so if you wanna purchase that, you can do that, you can get more information there. Uhm– the other component is the Molekule, is a nice one. It’s a little bit more expensive. So the other two, the Advanced Air and the Air Doctor, are about half the price, that’s a good first step if you’re tryin’ to get your foot into the– into this area of cleaning out air quality and improving it. If you wanna go a little bit more whole hog then the Molekule’s a– uh– a better option uh– on top of that, looks a little nicer as well. So those are my top three. Now there are some whole house systems but you gotta look at the fact that, you know, I like the fact that I can bring my unit with me if I were to travel, if you– if you’re moving, those kind of things and maybe a little bit more difficult to– pull it out, install it so you have to look at you know, are you gonna be in a long term. And also it’s nice to be able to bring it and put it right in your room and be able to have control over it.

Evan Brand: Yup, well said, and a– the whole house system is I mean, they do exist on the market but I do not heard too many good things about ’em. I know they can work but I think it’s better off to just have a purifier in your room because it does. In this, maybe this is just like theory or marketing talk but in theory, the– HVAC system has to work harder because when you’ve got a– a whole house air filtration system sitting on top of your– what do you call that, your– What’s the name of that Justin like where the fan is connected to your HVAC system?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.

Evan Brand: A blower, where it’s connected to the blower? You have to–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.

Evan Brand: –that blower has to blow harder through all the multi-layers of the filter. So it makes that system work harder and make shorter the life of it. [crosstalk]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah and you also– yeah and you also have these vents and things. There’s a lot of– there’s a large distance between where the air is coming from and getting cleaned out, and then through all of the vents to where it gets to your room. It’s just nice having it purified right at the spot where you’re at, so it doesn’t have to really travel more than a few feet to get to you.

Evan Brand: Right. Yeah, so, that’s what I would do. And I have test– that’s cool thing. I’ve tested Air Doctor and all the other systems to discuss with a portable monitor. The lower the number the better. The number coming out of the Air Doctor it’s a zero. So, I know that it’s legit, pure air coming out of it which is great. [crosstalk]. Yeah you gotta check it out man. It’s uh– if you just type in IQ Air, and you type in– it’s called Air Visual Pro, I’ll put the link up in the Hang Out for you.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh great!

Evan Brand: I’ll send it to you. I don’t think the– the– the listeners will be able to see this link but I’ll send it to you. But it’s called Air Visual Pro, and– you know, I’ve got a practitioner account with them so you do get a slight discount as a practitioner. And uh– and that’s what I have and it’s just a little small thing, and it’s like, you know, smaller than a computer but it runs on batteries and I just– I just– I’m ___ [24:15] with it man. I’ll take it to the restaurant and say, “Hey what’s the air quality in your…”, take to my friends’ house and say, “Hey, what’s the air quality in your house?”. It’s just fun.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, that’s really cool! Oh wow. Amazing. I wonder what the– what 2008 Olympics, was it 2010 in China? What they had in Beijing?

Evan Brand: Oh gosh.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I heard the air quality was just absolutely terrible. I– I just see on the IQA website it has one looking at– at Beijing, versus the one looking at the office in the Beijing has the ratings that are to the roof meaning mo– more toxicity.

Evan Brand: Yeah the cool thing is there’s an app with that uh– device as well so you can check your air quality and see how it compares to like other cities. It’ll show you what’s the tiniest air, what’s the most toxic air, and– and people they can, if you want, you can have that thing hooked up to Wi-Fi which I didn’t but, that way you can upload your data and people can see it around the map, “Hey, here’s this guy in– wherever, and here’s his air quality”. So it’s pretty neat.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Love it. Anything else you want to address here so far Evan? What do you think? Anything missing?

Evan Brand: I– I think– I mean– we’ll always do a part 2, part 3, you can never stop talking about toxins but I think we’ve covered a lot today. Clean up cosmetics, look at yourselves, look at your shampoo and conditioner, don’t dye your hair– Now there is an organic hair dye but I don’t know anything about it. I know it exists, so seek out like organic salons, don’t get your nails done like, “that’s bad”, like maybe go to an organic salon. I measured a nail polish resin every single week in clients, the women who get their nails done every week on the GPL Tox, their certain chemical is off the chart. And it just– it causes headaches, nervous system issues, thyroid issues, so– I don’t– I’m– I’m a guy so I don’t get my nails done so maybe for women, they’re like, “Oh my God, I have to have them done”. Maybe there’s a better way to do it I just don’t know of any.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right.

Evan Brand: But– but look at it, get the GPL To– if– if you have– if you’re a woman listening, and you don’t believe me, run a GPL-Tox, look at your toxic load, and then maybe you’ll believe me. Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Or it’s this you know, do your best to find a higher quality organic salon that has some products that are gonna be less toxic. And, or– if you need to, just– take some extra antioxidants and or glutathione before you go or at least support those path while you still spread it out. A lot of those toxins are gonna be more water soluble, so it– it’s not something that you’re gonna like hold on too as much, so if you take good detoxification support you’ll secrete it pretty fast. And you just try to find you know, I know like some of the salons my wife would go to there’s like a small little upgrade where they can– choose an organic product that’s less uh– toxic low. So that’s a good option–

Evan Brand: Yes.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –if you– have that.

Evan Brand: Yup, and a– I interviewed doctor Shaw, the guy who invented that toxic lab, if you wanna hear more about detox, just look at fandbrandwilliamshaw, S-H-A-W, calls and that interview, because we chatted all about mitigation strategies, and then also more about like you said glutathione, NAC, uh– precursors for detox, amino acids to help detox, sweatings, saunas, so that’s a good one.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And also one of the things that shaw said from that interview if I remember correctly, you tell me if I’m wrong, he said something like one of the best things you can do to e– to enhance detoxification is to to sweat more.

Evan Brand: Yeah, that’s a– that’s a– it was a number one thing. He personally did not use a sauna, all he did was he– likes to go for runs and ride his bike outside and sweat. And he keeps his chemical levels tested and they’re always relatively low. He said, he did not see more of a benefit unless someone was too sick to exercise. To exercise and sweat, versus sauna and sweating. He said the whole near infrared, far infrared, the whole– debate about it all, he said sweating is the key, it didn’t matter how you achieved it in his words.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s interesting too because remember, Shaw also– didn’t really eat organic either.

Evan Brand: You know, that guy he– he taught at restaurants every single day.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so there was a differen— I mean, I find that with a lot of my– my PhD researcher friends, there’s kind of a disconnect uh– with what they’re studying and applying it in their real life. It’s kind of this weird thing. I f–

Evan Brand: I agree.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –I forget uhm— I think it was Alessio Fasano? He used to be a gluten researcher over at Harvard, he’s got a lot of uhm— you know research on gluten and how it increases ___ [28:07] which can create leaky gut. Yeah I’ve seen– I’ve heard people that have gone out to dinner with them and they’ll order a big freakin’ ball of pasta, and eat it right in front of you. You’re like the premier glutton researcher and you’re talking about how gluten creates you know, gastrointestinal permeability a.k.a leaky gut, and you’re sitting there eating a bunch of gluten?

Evan Brand: Tell me about it, that’s a [crosstalk]–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You know, here’s the deal, like if I’m gonna cheat, right, I get it, like I may cheat sometime, I always try to just do to a gluten-free cheat, and I’m sure it hel— aren’t gonna cheat in front of people that are health-oriented or patients, I wanna be a good example. If I’m gonna cheat, it’s gonna be like, you know, no one’s gonna be seeing me, so to speak right?

Evan Brand: [laughs]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So the fact that you’re– you’re doin’ it openly in front of people means that you’re probably doin’ it a lot more frequently…

Evan Brand: Right. I know. Well doctor Shaw, I was blown away by that, I said, “So you eat out everyday?”, he said, “Yeah, I don’t pack my lunch”. And I thought, “Man, so you’re getting glyphosphate exposure everyday”, and we know parts per billion is enough to damage gut bacteria and affect mitochondria. I mean, that just means bold to me so, I don’t know man, I guess they always say once you uh– there’s– there’s a saying about this I– I don’t know the exact saying but something along the lines…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That you don’t want to bless or something? [laughs] or–

Evan Brand: well, well, no, he used to say–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: He knows. He’s not– he’s not– he’s not ignorant but I guess, there– there is uhm— what is it, there– there— there’s knowledge is power, but– but true knowledge is applied, uh– no, uh– knowledge is power only if acted upon it, only if applied. So you could know all these stuff but you gotta truly apply it to get the benefit right.

Evan Brand: We– well the saying, I was thinking of was something along the lines of like your hero, like a lot of times people have like a hero, or an idol like, “Oh I really look up to this person”, and then they figured out how they truly are, and they’re not what they think they are. There was a movie about that, I don’t remem— oh, w– wait– it was uh– it was that– it was called “The Fault in Our Stars”, it was a book, it was a movie about the girl who had cancer and she loved its author, and this author, she was just obsessed with him and she goes to meet him and he’s like a miserable alcoholic drunk.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.

Evan Brand: Did you see that movie?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I– I saw that movie, that’s a good one and the I think– yeah, I won’t give the spoiler but that was a good movie, yes.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so– so– yeah, so– maybe your— your idol may not have as dialed in as even you do.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%. Let me just add one la– last thing, so, the–

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –the key things that we’re lookin’ at on the– on the water side, of course, are gonna be– fluoride, chlorine, uh– pharmaceutical drugs, whether it’s birth control pills or statins or antidepressants, people flush things down and it’s hard to get those filtered out.

Evan Brand: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uh– we’ve mentioned the chloramines,

Evan Brand: Hard drugs–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And–

Evan Brand: There’s hard drugs in there.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hard drugs, potentially heavy metals, mercury, lead, parasitic cyst and or infections debris, so those are gonna be the big things on the water side, and on the air side we have the asbestos, right? That’s can create the– the Mesothelioma cancer, we have– various dust mites, uh– pollens, fungus, bacteria, viruses, we have the phemaldehyde, right?

Evan Brand: Poten– [crosstalk]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, we have the uh– the PBDE– the– what is it, the–

Evan Brand: It’s a PDB–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Pyrrhotites.

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, PDBEs, yeah. uhm— the wha— what does it stand for? Help me out, uh it’s– it’s a– it’s a bromidated compound. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers. [crosstalk]

Evan Brand: So that could be– in your couch cushion, that could be in your the– your office chair, that could be in your children’s pajamas unfortunately, which is ridiculous,

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. They put a lot in the– the kids’ mattresses, so we spend extra money to buy an organic wall mattress that didn’t have the flame retardants…

Evan Brand: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And we also spend extra money to not get the flame retardants in– our babies’ uhm— not stroller, what are they call, not the– what’s the terminology the–

Evan Brand: The car seat?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: A, the– the carrier– the carrier. So there was one brand I think it was uhm— I think it was Uppababy, I think it was the Henry, it was the only one on the market last year we bought and it did not the PBDEs the flame retardants so we did the Henry one, we did an organic mattress that didn’t have any flame retardants. And of course we have– we have uh– a fire alarm in my son’s room so if there’s an issue, we’re gonna know. We don’t need a– heaven breathing toxic chemicals for such a– a low-risk issue.

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Then we have the leads, especially if you have houses before 1978– 1978, lead could be used in that. We have various pesticides esp– especially spread out on the lawn, or if you live on the golf course there could be a potential pesticides going in that way. We use various uhm— phthalates which could be from vinyl flooring, it could be from shower curtains, it could be from detergents it could be from the PVCs in your piping, it could be–

Evan Brand: Oh.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: –from the food packaging.

Evan Brand: Here’s a– here’s a PSA man, this is the biggest announcement ever, please, everywhere I go in society, I smell people’s terrible laundry. You go in line in the grocery and you stand behind somebody in their flower-fragrance on their laundry. It didn’t used to be like that back back in the day, I don’t remember smelling people’s laundry.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Dryer sheets man. People use, like a– we have the most hypoallergenic uhm— cleanliness detergent, I mean we have one I think, we upgraded, we’re using seventh generation like un-scented but we upgraded one more beyond that. If you go to skindeep.org we searched the number one brand on there, just zero smell. People are using one, they’re using– laundry detergents that’s got a whole bunch of crap in, but then they also use a dryer sheet on top of it. And it is like–

Evan Brand: So that’s what it is…

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s the dryer sheets.

Evan Brand: Oh my.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s totally disgusting, I mean, oh my gosh, it just gives me headache.

Evan Brand: I get yeah– I get an immediate headache and part of me thinks well, does that mean I have a leaky brain, or does that mean that I’m just sensitive to it because it’s a toxic chemical. I feel like everyone should get a headache from it because it’s toxic.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well for me it just smells nasty. It’s just so overpowering– it’s so overpoweringly– str– overpoweringly strong. It’s like people that need to– consume very high sugar foods. Like for me, my taste buds get overwhelmed, right?

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So it’s kinda like that I mean, I think you just– you get a little bit uhm— you know, the less alcohol you drink, a beer kinda gives you a little bit buzz, it’s kinda like that, the more you gotta exposed to it. I imagined that probably it wouldn’t be an issue.

Evan Brand: So here’s my– here’s my– here’s my couple announcements–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sure.

Evan Brand: –and then I know we gotta–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Sure.

Evan Brand: –we gotta wrap up. Switch over to free and clear, unscented laundry detergent, even whole food cells, their own brand of organic laundry detergent it’s all plant-based and packed in so I they help the grease and all that crap. How do you close– Go fragrance-free, and then, do a fragrance-free or free and clear dryer sheet if you absolutely have to have it. We personally use the wall balls on our dryer, and that works as a replacement of dryer sheets and you never have to buy dryer sheets, the wall balls work perfectly. And then number 2 thing is– the perfume. So there’s a chemically can test for called xylene, that’s the parent chemical on the toxin report. So many people wear perfume, especially like I go to the park and you’ve got these women in their work out clothes, and they run past you, and then 2 seconds later comes the breeze with them of their perfume. It’s like good Lord, let’s go to nature, to just pollute it with– with pot– so many different potential toxins from the laundry, to the perfume. So please, please please, nobody wants to smell that crap, and you’re making yourself toxic, I measure it everyday so from a clinician perspective, I’ve got proof– what these perfumes are doing to you and nobody else wants to smell that crap either.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, for me, the deodorant that I use actually has a really nice scent. Uhm– I use a brand called native COS– native COS and they have a coconut vanilla uhm— it’s actually a women’s uhm— deodorant but it’s smells great, I mean it doesn’t smell overly feminine at all, it smells very neutral.

Evan Brand: It’s real though.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, it’s real, so like for me, the deodorant that I use, I– I can smell it from the outside so it has the slight kind of uhm— you know, nice coconut vanilla smell, but it’s totally natural essential oil based, so– for me that’s where I get my scent from a native of couple brands. I– I put another ordering last night for a nice little uhm— rosewood, sandalwood blends. Sandalwoods are great essential oil for– for a guy. If you wanna have like a nice little– kind of slight masculine, kind of musc smell to you, sandalwoods’ great for a guy. My wife would use some lavender every now and then, and that’s a great– great kind of lil— a little bit more of a feminine undertone. So if you want a– a slight kind of smell to yourself, a good essential oil that’s non-toxic can be great.

Evan Brand: Yeah, yeah. I’m not against scents completely. But if you have to smell, if you just wanna walk around smellin’–[crosstalk]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow, and you know, sometimes, less is more, right?

Evan Brand: Absolutely, so yeah, look at those natural ones, the native, I do have some of the native too. They sent me some some stuff there, I want to respond to the podcast, and then– I– never heard anything back, so I may have to reach out, say “Hey, free deodorants for all listeners!”, that’d be cool.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah I’m sensitive like I will react like my armpit will get super red, and their coconut is excellent. There’s citris herbal musk, I didn’t react a little bit too but I can use it for like 3 or 4 days in a row and then take a week off and I’m fine; it’s just like…

Evan Brand: Good you said that cause my wife had the same thing happen with the citris one and the lavender.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.

Evan Brand: She can only do it three days and then her armpit goes super red and inflamed she has to do with unscented only.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yup, unscented, try the coconut, vanilla too. That’s worked great for me. And they have uhm— they have a rosewood or sandalwood that just came out and they have one other– I think eucalyptus– mint one that’s out as well. So I ordered like 3 or 4 flavors last night, and the coconut vanilla is excellent.

Evan Brand: [laughs] Is that flavors? You could– you could it eat, you could–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, you can– it– I mean, it’s clean, you know. And again for me it’s like, “You know, I’m– I’m busy, I’m working, I’m sweating– I wa— I also want protection as well. And let’s face this, a lot of these natural, you know, deodorants, they don’t really provide much protection at all and–

Evan Brand: The native– the native works man.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Very good, I mean, at the end of the day, I’m like, “Yeah that smells great!”.

Evan Brand: The listeners didn’t hear that but he sniffed at himself. That one– that one in the Primal Pit Paste was the other one for me that worked pretty good but is a little harder to put on so the native is the best in terms of like, I’ll rate that number 1 for now.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And like, the– the Primal Pit Paste is got a little bit more of a sticky coating to it, where like the native is like a very dry coating, so if you like, put your shirt on whatever, you don’t feel like it’s stuck up in your armpit there so that’s kind of a nice thing about that.

Evan Brand: Yup, we went longer than we were supposed to but we just– we started thinking of all these other tangential toxins that people need to be aware of so I hope it’s been helpful, uh– if you wanna reach out to Justin you can, his website is justinhealth— so justinhealth.com, you could reach out and schedule a consult with him, and he’s also got another doc on staff, so if his availability is crazy you can get with him. And then for me, my website is evanbrand.com, you can reach out there. And– either way, whether it’s us or whether it’s somebody else that knows what they’re talking about we just hope that you get the help that you’re looking for and that you can achieve the next level of health as soon as possible.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Let me just hit the last three things.

Evan Brand: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Right on to another big one which is a– you know, it’s a– element in the soil and that can come up at– you know, for its– its– it’s actually in the rock, you know, in the foundation of where your house would be deep underground. And when you’re there it can come up to the house and that’s linked with potential lung cancer at levels I think greater than 4 ppm as what the CDC wants to blow. Uhm– we tested our house at one point, it was 8, so we have uh– we got a right on kit in there to help filter that out. We haven’t– down below .5 so radons and ___ [38:47] especially, you know in the midwest, in south that can be a potential problems so if you haven’t got it tested you can buy a radon meter on Amazon or you can pay someone I think for 75 bucks that come out and have your house tested, that’s important.

Evan Brand: Well said.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Of co– of course just like respiratory particles such as, you know, wood stew, fireplace, kerosene pipes, cigarettes, those kind of things, cigar smoke. And then we mentioned the volatile organic compounds. These are gonna come from paints, paint strippers, woods, aerosols, air fresheners, auto products, dry cleaning, clothing, household products, those are the big ones so. A good uhm— air filter will help with a majority those and of course a good water filter will help at the components we mentioned. And again, for me, justinheallth.com/air, justinhealth.com/ water are the ones that I personally use in my house.

Evan Brand: Yeah, you mentioned that a– the air freshener so I forgot about that. I’ll tell you, uh– one little thing I do, this is a secret, I’ve never revealed this, but now the secret’s’ out of the bag. If I go to a place- a public place and there’s a plug-in air freshener, I pull that thing out and throw it in the garbage before I leave. So if I go in the– if I go in the bathroom, and there’s a plug-in or you walk in and then– [sneezes], and you get sprayed with fake chemicals as soon as you walk in to go pee, I just pull the thing out the wall and throw it in the garbage.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 100%.

Evan Brand: That’s my little public uh– that’s my little public duty. I’m helping all of you guys have les fragrance in your bodies.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Well you were doin’ that uhm— survey last year where you tryin’ a– a petition where you’re tryin’ to get the uber drivers to pull the– the scented things out of the car, right?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I got over 2000 signatures on it and there was someone else kind of uh– I don’t know if it was food [crosstalk] benlycnh who shared it or something– somebody shared it and then they got thousands more signatures but I’ve still heard no updates on it but uh– luckily it’s very rare for me to have to take an uber or taxi but this problem happens every day where me– even they’ve asked preposted about how he talked in uber and the guy had like seven little Christmas tree fragrance–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Awful.

Evan Brand: They have like– he had a headache, he was dizzy, and etc. after he got out of his uber so, this is a real problem and I hope one day that we can educate people and just do natural fragrance or no fragrance at all.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, uh– the good– the essential oil, there’s gotta be some essential oil like, you know, the–

Evan Brand: The citrus one. They have a citrus– there’s a citrus like odor-absorber that would work perfect to people can put under the car seat–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes, yes.

Evan Brand: No one would know it’s there and it would take care of all the toxic–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It would stop a lot of the odor. That’s to– totally make sense Evan.

Evan Brand: Yup. But that’s all I gotta say so check out the links and then you can check out justinhealth.com for consults or evanbrand.com. We love helping you guys. We really appreciate the good feedback, so feel free to write us a review on the podcast on iTunes because it does help us.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Great, and we’ll put the links below on some of the products that we like and use personally so you guys know it’s already betted. Give us a thumbs up, give us a share, give us a shout out, give us a comment down below; we appreciate you guys engaging; sharing is caring, thanks for everything. Evan, you have a phenomenal day, we’ll talk soon.

Evan Brand: Take care man, bye.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.

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References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/

Air Doctor Air Purifier

https://justinhealth.com/water-pitcher